#turns out once you get good writers who take inspiration from source material to make their own story it works!!

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gritted teeth. i cant believe im saying this but house of the dragon is really fucking good.

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About Plagiarism

I left a long, planned essay on Twitter tonight. I will copy the meat of it here for y’all, as recently a friend was copied (a rarer ship in the fandom, so very noticeable by the writer and their regular beta reader) and it seems we need a Talk, kids. Links and screenshots and my rambling underway.

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Apparently we need to discuss what is and isn’t plagiarism. Especially in FanFic where we're interacting with the same characters, settings, ideas. Let’s start with the dictionary and continue the thread from there (I like the word origin/history personally):

Definition of plagiarize

transitive verb  : to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own : use (another's production) without crediting the source

intransitive verb : to commit literary theft : present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source

The Kidnapping Roots of Plagiarize

If schools wish to impress upon their students how serious an offense plagiarism is, they might start with an explanation of the word’s history. Plagiarize (and plagiarism) comes from the Latin plagiarius “kidnapper.” This word, derived from the Latin plaga (“a net used by hunters to catch game”), extended its meaning in Latin to include a person who stole the words, rather than the children, of another. When plagiarius first entered English in the form plagiary, it kept its original reference to kidnapping, a sense that is now quite obsolete.

“Ideas” is fuzzy in the Merriam-Webster definition. There are story archetypes that exist in many forms. Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth/Hero's Journey outlines many famous stories. And it's popular to say that “Avatar” is “Dances with Wolves” is “Pocahontas” is “The Last Samurai” etc.

But note how while those films have similar plotlines--”Military Guy falls for Native woman, learns to appreciate her Culture, stands up to Evil Bosses”--none of them execute those ideas in the same way. Sully’s story is different from Dunbar’s not just cuz one’s a Science Fiction epic and the other a Western. Disney's “Pocahontas” Very Loosely takes history and uses the same story beats. The Last Samurai uses the Meiji era Westernization. Same ideas, different executions, even beyond settings.

None of these are plagiarizing each other though the ideas are similar. They’re told in their own ways, own language; both in the genres they belong to (Western, Pseudo-History, SciFi, Animated) and how characters interact with each other and settings. Original dialogues (variable quality).

We also see this in books as similar novel plots get published in waves so we end up with bunches of post-apocalypse teen revolutionaries or various vampires or lots of young wizard stories all at once. Sometimes ideas just happen like this; multiple discovery, simultaneous invention, concurrent inspiration, cognitive emergence are all phrases I’ve seen for it. So it happens in original content as well, and legality gets fuzzy (Also why you don't send authors your fanfic ideas).

In existing properties, this gets trickier but even “Elementary”’s Holmes and Watson are nothing like the BBC’s “Sherlock” characters. Who are nothing like other versions of the Detective and his Doctor pal over the decades in various media properties.

FanFic's in a similar position where like Sherlock Holmes we play with the same characters, setting, and storyarcs but give our own spin to them. People can and will have similar ideas about plots. Trick is to use your own words. Take the characters and make the story your own.

I have a good example courtesy of @raelly-writing​. We both ship Wolcred. We both wrote soft post-Paglth’an scenes with Thancred and our WoLs. Both features the couples helping each other undress, examining injuries, bathing, bantering. My fic was written soon after 5.5 part 1 came out. Dara’s is much more recent. Yet at no point reading hers did I feel she was copying my words. The PoVs differ. Our characters focus on different things. Mine has a mini-arc concerning the Nutkin.

The links for comparison’s sake (and maybe leave kudos/comments if so inclined please and thanks). Note while the scenes are very similar no phrases are written in the same way. Mine: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25417882/chapters/76059467 Dara’s: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26067565/chapters/81832915

Dara and I both hang out in certain Discords and I know conversations about Thancred and WoL caring for each other post-battle has come up in those channels and we've both participated. It’s a stock FanFic scene to boot. Cuz it's soft and feels warm and snuggly.

I HAVE been copied before, back in WoW. My case is pretty clear cut so here are the images of my old RP Haven profile (1st, old RP website) and the plagiarist’s RSP (2nd, an in game mod to share descriptions and basic info). 

This was a decade ago on Shadow Council and I think the character deleted so any Availa’s in WoW now aren’t the same person. I left the names to point out what changed. Just the names and a word or 2 to make sense for the class changes as well. Otherwise lifted directly from my RP profile.

The funny part is how the person got caught. Literally walked into our weekly RP Guild meeting that I was running and asked to join. Folks noticed right away the similar backstory; after all there may have been more Outland-born Azerothians. My initial excitement at a character I could weave into our story turned to gut-twisting rage and grief as I recognized my own exact words though. Words I’d carefully crafted and constantly iterated on to improve over time (before and after this incident, until the site died).

When caught they tried to claim their significant other had leveled the character for them and made up the backstory based on Skyrim. If you know WoW’s Outland story and Skyrim’s plot you know how ridiculous that is. Also tried to lie about other drama I knew about thanks to roommate's characters but hey. I had to be blunt that I’d shared the info with Haven mods and other guild officers Alliance and Horde. That we would not “laugh about this” one day though lucky this was “just” RP not original or academic work. Cuz if it'd been monetized or academic I would've raked them through the coals.

I felt violated. Hurt. Had anxiety attacks. They took MY WORDS and tried to claim them as theirs. Have another character born in Outland trained by Draenei; Awesome! Our characters have an instant connect in similarities and differences of that experience. Don’t steal my characters wholesale!

Then the audacity of trying to come into my guild as if no one would notice. ShC wasn’t a large server by then, still active but not nearly Wyrmrest Accord or Moon Guard big. My character was well known due to my writing and RP. Speaking of how easy it is to get caught in specific spaces...A case of a self-published novelist getting noticed for plagiarizing fanfic was discovered recently (explicit erotica examples through the thread).

One way they got noticed was how much content they put out in only a year, lifted from fandom. The examples in Kokom’s threads show how the material was altered but still recognizable. In some cases, just the names are changed as in my experience. In other passages more has changed but you can still see the bones of the original fic poking through in the descriptions and character interactions, even with adjustments made.

Similar ideas happen. Similar plots exist. Same 'ships with friends are fun! In FanFic we’re working with the same material. It’s possible to write a similar scene differently. To make that scene and characters your own. All we’re asking is not to copy others' words. Others' characters. Others' specific phrases and descriptions used to bring those words, those characters, to life. Use your own. In the end you’ll be happier.

I get wanting to have what the perceived “popular people” have. I get seeing concepts others succeed with and wanting some of that too. We all get a bit jealous now and then for various reasons. Sometimes we don't even realize it, consciously. But do it in your own way. Maybe check to see if you’re getting a bit too close to the “inspiration” you admired, maybe reread often. Don’t hurt your fellow creatives. If you do and get caught don’t try to double down. Have the grace to be abashed at least and work to do better. Eventually you WILL get caught. All it takes is once to throw all else you've done into question. Ao3 doesn’t take kindly to plagiarists. Nor do a lot of fan communities focused on writing and RP. Getting back that trust is hard. The internet doesn’t forget easily, for good or ill.

[imaginariumpod]

A Tapestry of Lace and Silk : the visual aesthetic and costume design of Crimson Peak (2015)

 In the dark corners of an ancient mansion, you hear the rustle of a long dress on the floor, there behind a closed door, lies some ghosts and secrets that should never be unearthed. 

A woman walks in the silence. 

Crimson Peak (2015) is a movie directed by Guillermo Del Toro, and is one of the most obvious mainstream examples of the gothic romance in cinema in the recent years. With a story full of ghosts, a secret, a haunted house and of visuals directly inspired by the mid-century gothic romance book covers. This movie is visually highly stylized and immersive in a way I think a lot of filmmakers and studios tend to shy away from. 

While Guillermo Del Toro’s movies tend to always be very stylized and visually cohesive, Crimson Peak is truly the one, in my opinion, where the production design was at its most compelling and beautiful. To me, it’s obvious how much care and attention has been given to even the slightest of details, to create the perfect visual identity for this film. I have read once that the gothic was very decorative, as a genre. From the dark mansions, and the flowing nightgowns to the flickering lights of the candles and the creaking floors. The ~aesthetic~ is something that is very important to a gothic romance story. It’s all in the atmosphere, as well as some important elements of the story in itself, that make a gothic romance. Gothic Romance is a genre that you have to lean into, and Guillermo Del Toro perfectly understood it when it came to Crimson Peak.

Before we go more into it, i just want to warn you all that there’s probably going to be spoilers in this article. I will try my best to avoid being overly blatant about what happens in the story in itself, because that is not my focus. My focus during this article will be on the production design of the movie, the way this movie looks and has been designed, especially when it comes to the costumes and the outfits the characters wear throughout the movie. I mostly want to go deep into the visual aesthetic of this film, from the decors and visual themes to the dresses and outfits that were created for this story. I want to talk about the visual aspect of the movie and how it translates within the genre of gothic and the medium of filmmaking.

Guillermo Del Toro : the cineast 

Guilerrmo del Toro is a mexican director mostly known for having a very distinct style of dark fantastical movies often featuring monsters, myths, the folklore and fairytales. His movies alternate between being made in spanish or english. His stories and movies often explore the dark side of the fantastical, of fairy tales and stories told after the dark.  and yet. they have a hopeful side to them . 

While a lot of his movies were successful, I do think it’s El Laberinto del fauno (2006) (Pan’s Labyrinth) that really established him as a thriving filmmaker, despite how niche a lot of his movies and stories are.   Which, by the way, as a quick aside, Pan’s Labyrinth is a very formative movie to me, I watched the year it came out, when I was 11 years old, my dad brought the DVD home, thinking it was a movie for children. And well. It was not. I ended up being TERRIFIED and yet mesmerized and this was my first contact with Guillermo Del Toro as a filmmaker but it certainly wouldn’t be the last. His movies are crystallized in my memory, and they awakened in me a love of this more gothic and fairy-tale inspired horror. He's definitely a movie director that brings his unique touch to whichever work he’s doing. 

The Gothic is a very prominent part of Del Toro’s work, which he calls Gothick (and is indeed a word that represents the genre that got started by Horace Walpole’s book The Castle of Otranto in 1764) and he describes the relationship he has with this genre as “a way to discover beauty in the monstrous”  The protagonists of Del Toro movies often embrace the darkness that exists around them and within themselves. For Del Toro, the gothic is the “only genre that teaches [us] to understand otherness.” You can see it in the narrative of so many of his movies, which culminates in The Shape of The Water, where the monster ends up being the victim of society, and the real monster is the character of Michael Shannon, who represents the pressure of society,  the norms and accepted and what can happen if you deviate from what is accepted. 

The narratives of Del Toro’s movies reject authorianism in any shape or form, whether the societal authorianism or the narrative ones, and this makes for a way of storytelling that often turns around all expected tropes.His movies are, at their core, anti-fascist and, in my very humble opinion, very relevant during our current political climate on an global level. I really do not feel like I am the right person to dive deep into this subject in a small article on the visual aesthetic of one of Del Toro’s movies, but I want to recommend the thesis The Dark Fantastic of Guillermo Del Toro : Myth, Fascism, and theopolitical Imagination in Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone, and Pan’s Labyrinth by Morgaan Sinclair. That thesis is widely informative and interesting to read and will probably dive deeper in those themes that are always somewhat present in every Del Toro movie. 

He loves using “typical” genre stories and making them his own. From folk tales, fairy tales, vampire stories, legends, he uses these narrative motifs as a template for his stories, but he always subverts them in one way or another, exploring the darkness within. And this is what he also did with Crimson Peak, but now with the gothic romance genre as his template. Gothic Romance is one of those genres that is very formulaic in some ways, it has very common tropes and themes that are often used.   For example, the way he explores the gothic house and its entire symbolism in his early movie The Devil’s Backbone (2001).

[These old-Gothic notions insinuate themselves in the Gothick terrain of del Toro’s films. The ­Devil’s Backbone, a ghost story set in a remote orphanage during the Spanish Civil War, seems at first glance to be a classic Gothick romance, which, as del Toro reminds us in his commentary, focuses on the house, the domicile, as an emblem and warped container of the human self.  This symbolically charged structure, he says, always conceals a “dark secret,” linked to a treasure and deep passions, “that is buried in the past and affects the people living in it.” At the center of the darkness stands “a very pure ­hero—a new set of eyes to explore the secret and through the purity of his heart unravel the mystery.”]

When it comes to his films, Del Toro tends to often use archetypes as a way to effectively communicate certain concepts, but more often than not, he will turn these archetypes upside down.  Del Toro tends to also use a lot of symbols in his movies, weaving a tapestry of overarching themes and meaning. He gives depth to his stories by a use of various artistic and literary references, historical references. building a story that contains layers upon layers. This depth also translates to the visual aspect of his movies, as Del Toro movies tend to be carefully and precisely crafted. The aesthetic is, as one might say, on point. From the somber and fantastical creativity of Pan’s Labyrinth to the epic and vibrants colors of Pacific Rim. Crimson Peak is, to me, one of the most visually beautiful and compelling movies of Del Toro, and this is what we’re going to get into a bit later. 

A ghost story: 

This story starts at the end. This is a narrative device Del Toro also used with Pan’s Labyrinth, the movie starts with the final scene, and we know that something terrible is going to happen, and it just keeps the tension and stakes high during the entirety of the movie, as we keep wondering when things will take a turn for the worse. 

We can see Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska ) wearing her white nightgown, in a scene of fog and piercing white. Her blond hair is flowing down on her shoulders, her face is pale, and her hands.

Her hands are drenched in blood. 

The first sentence of the movie is then spoken : “Ghosts are real. This much I know.” This immediately sets the tone for the rest of the movie. 

And then. It goes back to the beginning, when she was just a young child, at the moment her mother died, when the ghost of her mother, veiled in black lace,  came to warn her, to beware of Crimson Peak… 

Edith Cushing is a young woman living with her father and who dreams of becoming a writer. She keeps trying to publish her story, not a ghost story, but moreso a story with a ghost in it. “The ghost is a metaphor” she says. A metaphor for the past and for regrets and violence that still permeates a place. She then meets Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), an english baronet without fortune, and his sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain). After the sudden (and suspicious) death of her father, she marries Thomas and follows him and his sister back to England, in their strange mansion that stands isolated in the midst of english hills, atop a source of red clay. The Sharpes are an aristocratic family with no fortune and a decrepit mansion where strange things happen, where ghosts roam. 

There’s also a social commentary here on the changing social norms and social classes. While the Sharpes are an aristocratic family, owning land and a title, they are not rich. Their clothes are good quality, made from good materials and hand crafted, but they are also old and not of the current fashion. They are in a very strange place socially, being higher up on the social class and yet, being broke and trying to figure out how to get money to take care of their crumbling estate.

Ghosts are real, we need to remember, and are a reminder of what has been forgotten and what has died. The past is still  lingering on in the present, and violence of the past will not go unpunished. The ghosts of Crimson Peak are terrifying. I do not want to say much about them, because it would reveal too much about the plot and the story, but I want to talk about them in terms of visual design. The ghosts of Crimson Peak are terrifying, they are skeleton-like, and red. Vibrant red. They are nothing like I have ever seen before in terms of ghosts, and this is yet another way Crimson Peak sets itself apart from other movies. 

Lucille says something at the end of the movie, and I will not say anything about the plot, so fear not for spoilers, she says “but the horror… the horror was for love” and I do think it says so much about the movie and about the genre. Gothic romance is not really a love story, but it’s not strictly a horror story either. It’s a blend of love and horror. And sometimes… the horror, the horror will be for the sake of love. 

The building of a haunted house

Production design, when it comes to movies, relates to everything that has to do with the visual identity of the movie. The look and the stylistic choices that are made to make the movie look the way it does. From the costumes, to the sets, to the decor, and all the small details, production design is one of the most important parts of  constructing a movie. It’s those elements that make out how the movie will  look and what it will communicate to its audience.

The production designer works on all the aspects that pertains to the visuals of the movies, along with the director of photography. They manage everything from the costume, the sets and the decor. And they work closely with the director to craft the visual identity of the movie. Guillermo Del Toro always draws from a very vast range of thematic and visual inspirations when it comes to his movies : from gothic architecture, symbolist art, the surrealists, but also more popular inspirations such as comic books and even video games. So many of these elements are brought and matched to visually create a layered look to the film.  

The visual storytelling, the ambiance, the atmosphere, all of these elements are a huge part of what makes Crimson Peak truly interesting. The visuals of the movies were not an afterthought to the script, but were an integral part of how the movie was constructed. Under the directives of Guilermo Del Toro, Thomas E. Sanders [Dracula (1992) ; Braveheart (1995)] constructed an intricate and vibrant appearance for Crimson Peak, which I think is one of the most memorable components of the film.

This movie takes the canons of gothic horror and gothic romance and embraces them, whether it is narratively speaking or visually speaking. I always love a story that leans heavily into its genre and its tropes and convention, only to make use of them in a different and new way. I can mention The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015) as another movie who embraces its genre, here the corny 1960s inspired spy movie, and just GOES WITH IT. I do so much appreciate when any type of storyteller and artist fully work within the genre and then try to expand the boundaries of that specific genre, all the while trying to create a work that is definitely recognizable as a certain genre. 

As I said, the visuals are obviously very much inspired by the canons of gothic romance, whether it's the illustrations that were in the book of the 19th century, as well as all the historical inspirations from the late 19th century in which the movie is set. There’s also the obvious references to the book covers of the gothic paperbacks of the mid 20th century, with their jewel tones, and their heroines escaping a dark and looming manor behind them. Or sometimes, she is exploring the dark winding corridors, with only the help of a few candles lighting her way.

There’s this dichotomy that sometimes occurs when it comes to movies, of style over substance or vice versa. Which to me is a moot and useless point, because style is a form of storytelling as well. The way you construct the visuals of the movies, the decors and the costumes, and the way the film is shot, all of this is a way of telling a story and is as essential to a good movie. Even a movie that doesn’t put the emphasis on “style” also makes a visual choice. Not focusing on the visual elements such as the costumes, or the decor, is also a stylistic choice in itself. Even if the choice is to make the movie devoid of any outlandish visual assets. Taking these decisions are what ultimately make the movie be the way it is visually. A film is a visual form of storytelling, 

When it comes to the sets, the movie is set mostly in two diametrically opposed houses, the airy and light house of the Cushings in Buffalo, homey and comfortable, and the cold gothic estate of the Sharpes : Allerdale Hall. Where the house in Bufallo was full of light and a warm color palette, Allerdale Hall is the opposite. That house is the typical gothic mansion, and one of the most important elements of any good gothic romance. Imposing, dark, with twisting corridors and actually decaying above them. Visually, it’s also distinctive with the colder colors that are used when filming there. It’s the ideal setting for the gothic romance story to happen. Sanders says that the only reference that he was given by Del Toro for the design of this house was the painting House by the Railroad (1925) by Edward Hopper. This painting was the beginning of a very long and arduous process as Sanders tried to create this perfect haunted house.

The house of the Sharpes, is atop a source of red clay, hence its name. It’s decrepit, falling apart, cold. “colder inside than out” says Edith when she first enters it. The house is slowly but surely sinking in the red clay that once used to be the source of the Sharpes’ fortune. Visually, it looks as if the house was bleeding, as if the house was alive. As Sanders says during an interview with Slate : 

“We felt that the clay is the blood of the earth, and it’s also the blood of the house, and that the house was a living thing that embodied the family over all those years.”

Within the genre of gothic horror and gothic romance, the house plays a very peculiar part. Whether it is haunted or not, the house is very much often an important character of the gothic story, on the same level as the heroine or the antagonist or the ghost. The spaces of Allerdale Hale are tight and menacing, the house is full of dangerous sharp angles. This is not a warm house. Del Toro said that he repeated the wooden pattern on the columns three or four times, so that it looks slightly out of focus, like something is wrong, but you cannot pinpoint what it is, exactly. 

Allerdale Hall is thus the perfect setting for this gothic romance to unfold, through the sharp and twisting corridors, with the gaping hole in the ceiling through which the snow falls and covers the red crimson blood of the house. 

A nightgown to explore strange corridors at night:

The main costume designer for this film was Costume Designer Kate Hawley, assisted by Cori Burchell. Even though they hadn’t worked specifically on period movies and historical movies or more fantastical movies prior to their job on Crimson Peak, I cannot help but think that they did a marvelous job when it came to the costume design for this particular movie. Hawley had previously worked on Pacific Rim with Del Toro, so she was familiar with the way he worked and envisioned things. Together, they truly created a wardrobe that was absolutely wonderful for the movie of Crimson Peak. Highly stylized. Imbued with the fashion and artistic trends of the era, without being exactly Literal to the clothing of the time. She used costume design as a vehicle to communicate ideas and moods that were intrinsical to the characters of the story. 

Hawley worked closely with  Del Toro to create the costumes that would be perfect to convey the personality of the characters and would help build the depth of the movie. In her interview with digital magazine JEZEBEL, she says that she definitely considers Crimson Peak to feel like an opera, a piece of music in which there’s two distinct acts, and so the costuming had to also follow those two distinct acts and those two distinct worlds that the characters inhabit. From the color scheme and mood, to the details of the historical period. But most importantly, especially for a Guillermo Del Toro movie, it was vital for Hawley to look at it thematically first. Del Toro movies are always chock full of references to art, folklore and literature, and there is no surprise that the costume design should follow the same direction.

The costumes are an important narrative device as well, the clothing a character wears reflects their personality as well as their narrative journey. It can inform on the status of the character, their place in society, it’s an effective tool of storytelling. A good costume designer will use the wardrobe of each character to say something about the character in themselves but also create a cohesive visual look for the ensemble. From the colors to the chosen fashion style and to the accessories, fashion is a silent mode of communication that we all inherently understand, even if not on a conscious level. The wardrobe of each different character is thought and designed, to fit the character but the movie as a whole. 

As our queen and icon, legendary costume designer and winner of eight separate academy awards for costume design, Edith Head says : “Fashion is not the primary thing, the primary effort in motion pictures is to tell a story”. And clothing do tell a story, whether or not you think they do. This is comes back to what I was saying earlier, that sometimes, people tend to not put any sort of importance on the clothing, considering it shallow and superficial, but I would argue that it’s a very subtle way of storytelling that says more about the character in a single outfit than a whole scene of exposition ever could. 

Edith’s clothes are all very modern and current to the era the movie is set in (ie. 1901) The silhouette of all the clothes she wears are very much within the fashionable silhouette of the era, with the gigantic sleeves, and the cinched waist and slightly flare-y skirt. All of the dresses she wears throughout the movie have the leg-of-mutton sleeves that were so fashionable during the late 1890s and early 1900s.  The color palette of Edith’s clothes is very much within a very soft and warm-toned palette, with a lot of soft yellows, ivories, creams, mustards and golds. this very much visually set her apart from the Sharpes. Hawley says she imagined Edith as a canary in a coal mine, her vibrant yellows and gold outfits in the dark and somber walls of Allerdale Hall. Hawley and Del Toro also used a pre-raphaelite portrait of Helen of Troy by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1863) as a visual basis to work on Edith’s aesthetic. 

She’s a down to earth woman who is ready to make efforts and her dresses reflect this aspect of her personality, they are comfortable and practical, while still having that air of whimsy to them. From the gigantic buttons on her honey colored dress or the beautifully eccentric belt in the shape of hands. Kate Hawley, the movie’s costume designer, says that this belt is just an upscaled version of the small mourning jewelry in which a lock of hair of a loved one who passed away can be found in. “I took these little earrings, these little ivory hands, and we scaled them up so it was almost like a mother's hands clasped around her waist”. (I so desperately want a belt like that btw, it is creepy but i still want it, if any of you happen to find one, please do contact me, thank you so very much.) She matches her hat and gloves with her ensemble, and generally, Edith, is just very visually cohesive and coherent within her own style. 

During a very romantically and sensually charged scene, she wears a beautiful evening gown in ivory satin and ornamented with pearls. She enters the room dressed in this lovely dress and a long satin cape of the same color and a pleated collar, her hair delicately swept up.  This is Edith’s very own dramatic moment, where she gets to dance with her romantic lead and wears an outfit that is a bit fancier than her usual fare. This dress is still within the very soft and pale color palette that represents Edith. This particular dress is visibly inspired by a painting of  the italian artist Giovanni Boldini : The Black Sash (1905), which furthers the fact that this movie’s visual aesthetic is deeper than what first meets the eye. From the delicate color and stark black ribbon down her back. 

Edith, though, is our ingenue heroine of the gothic romance. One of the main archetypes in the gothic romance is the innocent heroine, a young woman thrown into a situation that’s claustrophobic, scary and dangerous. In every gothic romance, there comes a moment where the heroine leaves her bed in her nightgown, it’s a very striking visual that is the mark of the way we visualize gothic romance. She holds a candle, wearing only the lightest of clothing, and goes to explore the darkness within the walls she inhabits. Her nightgown ends up being the most significant outfit of the whole movie, it truly marks her as a gothic romance heroine, while she roams the corridors at night.

 «I’ve never done so many nighties and nightgowns! It’s all about running around in night dresses through long corridors. That also blended to the fabric. When Guillermo said to me, “It’s about a house that breathes,” that’s why we chose the lightest fabric, just a little thing to try and help the storytelling with the idea of the house.»

 Edith’s nightgown is striking, the movement of the heavily pleated garment fills the whole screen whenever she moves, it gives her a certain elegance and follows the cohesive silhouette and color palette that was established for her thus far, with its gigantic sleeves and the soft warm and earthy colors of the dressing gown she wears over her nightgown, as she goes down the dark stairs of Allerdale Hall. 

Where Edith is the innocent ingenue, Lucille is the woman hardened by life and misfortunes. She is all sharp angles and contrasts, where Edith is soft and kind, with a seamless color palette. Lucille’s outfits are stuck twenty years in the past and this is very much a narrative device and tool that’s used through the usage of dress and costume design. By showing her in these lavish but old-fashioned dresses. it serves both the purpose of showing how rich and noble the family of the Sharpes is but also, it effectively communicates how they do not have the means to actually follow the current fashionable trends. It shows that Lucille is not one to want to have something of lower quality or cheaper than she thinks her standing deserves. Lucille is a woman that is stuck in the past and is not truly living in the current times.  I think that even though these details often necessitate a basic knowledge of the dress silhouettes of the late 19th century and early 20th century, this tactic still visually works because it sets Lucille apart from the rest of the world. It expresses visually how she and her brother are distanced from the world outside.

Her dresses and outfits are dramatic and striking, with the sharp silhouette of the 1880s, with the bustles. The colors of her dresses are always in deep tones, like reds, blues or black. The colors are very rich and vivid. The first dress that we see Lucille wearing is the beautiful red dress during the scene where she plays piano. A silhouette typical of the 1880s with the bustles and the very extravagant detailing. That one dress is a striking red, with a skirt that has a long train. The one very important design detailing is the back of the dress, replicating a spine of sorts in the middle of her back. Those sharp angles forebode a sense of danger that is conveyed strictly through the construction of the dress, and the arrangement of the textiles, the various shades of red fabric intertwined to create this gorgeous pattern that goes down the skirt. Her hair is swept upward and decorated with fine red jewels, and the pale complexion of Jessica Chastain only make the whole ensemble more striking. 

Compared to the two other components of the main trio, Thomas Sharpe’s outfits seem much more muted and sober. His clothes, same as his sister’s, are also too old to be fashionable, but made of high quality materials. The color palettes of his clothes are very dark and deep, with touches of deep blues and greens. When you transpose him into Allerdale Hall, he fits seamlessly within the decor, meanwhile he seemed out of space and out of time in the sunny and modern decor of Buffalo. 

A desire for accuracy : 

Historical accuracy is always a point of contention when it comes to movies set in a particular historical setting, in this case in the early years of the 1900s. And before we go any further, is historical accuracy even That important when it comes to an effective costume design ? I honestly think historically accurate costumes are very important when it comes to setting your movie. The visual immersion and world building when your story is set in a specific time and place, like for example, in this movie, set in Buffalo, United-States, and England, during the year of 1901, depends on these important elements, such as the costume design and the decor. Especially when a movie is not tending toward the fantastical. For this reason, I really do think that having period accurate costuming, design and makeup is incredibly important when it comes to immersion and creating a visually cohesive world.

Nonetheless, to me, this part of the costume design is less important than what the costume design says about the story and the characters. As I said earlier, costume design is a very subtle but powerful narrative and visual tool to use in filmmaking. And for this reason, I personally think it’s more important for a costume to be efficient when it comes to storytelling than to try to achieve perfect accuracy. Simply put, a costume designer is not someone whose aim is to recreate historical garments perfectly (if this is your jam, I follow a bunch of creators on youtube who actually do that, using historical sewing techniques as well). Their aim is to use the clothing for a storytelling purpose.

There is this thread by fashion historian and curator Hilary Davidson on the subject of ahistorical costume design and this is what she has to say about Crimson Peak:  

“Kate Hawley's designs for Crimson Peak (2015) are immersed in artistic trends of the fin-de-siecle, making costumes that embody the period's aesthetic spirit without being completely literal” 

When it comes to Crimson Peak, are the costumes historically accurate. For the case of Crimson Peak, the answer is yes and no, at the same time. More than creating historically accurate costumes, Hawley wanted to create an atmosphere, with dreamy costumes that would serve a narrative purpose, and use historical sources as a guideline and inspiration Liberties will often need to be taken to complement the story and to serve the purpose of storytelling  nonetheless, I do think that the more researched and accurate the costuming is, the more complex and interesting it can be . and I do think it ended up being SO SO INTERESTING. 

Costume design is more than simply making historically accurate costumes, a costume designer needs to know fashion history and fashion trends, but ultimately, their job is not to recreate exact replicas of the clothing of a certain historical period. What a good costume designer has to do, is to create a wardrobe that fits the story that is being told, and fits within the general universe it's set in and gives you information on the character. What Hawley did was to respect the silhouette of the period, from the foundation garments to the outer garments, and then, when it came to the actual costumes, she could play around with the details to convey a certain mood and narrative. The underpinnings always do define the general structure and shape of a garment, and it’s one of the most important elements when someone wants to construct a historically accurate costume. Even if, like Hawley, liberties are then taken when it comes to the actual clothing, the “spirit” of the clothes is respected. From the corsets and to the petticoats and all the subsequent layers, it was important for Hawley to have all of these elements in a historical accurate way, because it would change the posture and the demeanors of the actors. It shapes the way they stand and the way they move through the different spaces. 

Visually, Crimson Peak is a masterpiece of a gothic romance. From the sweeping nightgowns to the imposing and sharp gothic mansions, and the scary ghosts behind the door, Del Toro and his team have created a movie that takes everything that is wonderful about gothic romance to the highest theatrical level, and I, for one, always enjoy this visual and cinematic experience. 

[hankwritten]

TFComics Rewrite

I am currently plotting an outline for a TFComics, and I want to get my thoughts about fixes to canon and possibly get feedback. Since this is a rewrite there’s really no *spoilers* or anything, so I’m willing to answer all questions about what I plan to do. Also some characters I’m not so sure about how I want to retool them, so if your have ideas for your fav let me know!

Disclaimer:

This rewrite is intended to critique the content/choices made in the construction and telling of the Team Fortress 2 comic series. It is not a personal attack on the artists/writers/directors or any of the creatives that made contributions to this series, nor is it meant to substitute or replace the official release. This work is transformative in nature, and relies on an understanding of the source material to be understood. TF2 and its characters belong to Valve.

TFCR is working on the assumption that the audience has read the original comic, and as such will skip over scenes and plot points that are unchanged from the original. I don’t think it needs to be said, but this fanfiction will not make sense if you are not familiar with the source.

I also recognize that there are strengths within the comic’s writing and weaknesses within my own. Namely, that Valve writers are gods in the realm of comedy, and I’d rather not try to match them in the regard. As such, I will state up front that these will not be as funny as the TFComics. That is not to say there won’t be jokes (either ones transplanted from the source or some of my own) or that the tone of this will be terribly grimdark, only that my focus will be on improving story structure and character development as those are what appeal to me.

 The Broad Strokes

The goal of TFCR is to give a more engaging story for all the mercenaries we know and love, as--let’s face it--the TF2 mercs are side characters in their own damn story. These are some of the planned improvements.

There will be reason for each of the mercs to actually be there. As it stands, the motivations for almost every character besides Pauling and Saxton Hale are vague and unsatisfying. We’d usually say something along the lines of “money” for hired killers, but clearly Scout doesn’t even know if they’re getting paid, and some of the other characters are even worse. The hunt for the Australium is, therefore, boring. MacGuffins usually are, but at the very least the characters should care about the item even if the audience doesn’t. This work aims to give each of the nine mercs a motive and a reason to be in the story instead of just replaceable joke dispensers.

Explain what “Team Fortress” means, and how it relates to RED and BLU. Long and short: the nine mercenaries we see on the team are not from either RED or BLU but rotate between the two, and were the individuals selected to fight the robots. That means all things do happen to all characters. As Valve pretty much goes with “whatever is funniest at the time”, it’s very hard to make a cohesive theory about “where the hell is BLU team?”, but I’ll do my damndest. We’ll also examine Team Fortress’s relationship with the other capital T Teams, and why they’re considered the “rejects” of the bunch.

Comics 1 & 2 will be removed from the timeline as they serve no purpose, only taking what needs to be known about the plot’s setup and jumping straight to A Cold Day in Hell.

We will introduce the Classic Mercs right away so they can generate threat and play against the TF mercs when they do actually meet head to head.

We will not be killing off Gray Mann. (Not preemptively anyway.) In fact, there will be more focus on him and Olivia as villains facing off against the Admin, providing her foil as the TF2 and TFC mercs provide foils for each other.

I considered waiting until the final comic was out to begin working on this, but that may never happen. Jay Pinkerton said he may reveal what plot they had in store eventually, but considering it took Half Life over a decade to get the “I was once a Valve writer but my NDA has expired and now I can go buck wild” treatment, I’m not holding my breath. The main reason I wanted to do this is that the Administrator’s motivations are not interestingly foreshadowed, to the point where there aren’t even any good fan theories out there. That said, WritingDispenser and Riddle of the Sphinx helped come up with a pretty fun one, which was actually the inspiration for me to get off my butt and start plotting this.

There will be no queerbaiting. This refers both to HeavyMedic (which has been simultaneously used as wink wink nudge nudge joke many times and as encouragement for fans to play their stupid hat game) as well as lesbian Pauling (since femme lesbians are the preferred method for front facing LGBT representation across almost all media, but video games especially). If you need to understand why lesbian Pauling is an issue, Sarah Z coined the term “queercatching” in order to describe word of god confirmations on characters sexualities that are not followed up on in the text. I recommend the full video on it.

Due to the importance of immortality in the theming of the comics, respawn will not be a thing. Deaths we think should have happened previously will be explained as close calls, or that Medic can heal a short time after death. Medic and Scout’s deaths will be cut in the story itself, as after Sniper died and came back, them doing the same thing kinda lost their punch.

Scout

There will be no ScoutPauling hints. It doesn’t make sense to give screentime to this relationship because Valve obviously doesn’t think it’s going to go anywhere so why make Scout turn down advances from other hot women? I mean I get Expiration Date was a Thing but it feels like Scout’s whole motivation shouldn’t be reduced down to chasing a girl who doesn’t like him back.

He’s here because he lost his life’s savings in bad investments and needs the money. That’s it. Which is still somehow more than his canon motive which is question mark question mark question mark

He, Soldier, Spy, Demo, and Pyro all start the adventure with Miss Pauling.

Engages with Heavy on a genuine level when they go to collect him, Heavy doesn’t blow him off when he tries to level about dead dads.

There will be no DadSpy reveal. The way Spy treats Scout has never been “deadbeat dad feels bad about abandoning his kid” but more “this is someone I would kill without a second thought if I felt like it” which makes his reveal in comic 5 feel very disingenuous. I don’t think Valve even had this plotline in mind until comic 3, as #2 still has Spy seeming only to care about Scout’s Ma and not Scout himself. It also makes “seduce me!” retroactively weird.

Uhhh hooks up with Zhanna. This one isn’t critical I just think it’s funny.

Soldier

Soldier is going to be the Ur example of the Admin not treating her people well, as we’re going to lean into the whole “Soldier was only mildly messed up until the whole lead poisoning” thing.

He’s here because he’s blindingly loyal to the cause. He’s actually going to very little from canon because of this actually.

Might be the reason Team Fortress has a reputation of being the lower tiers of the Teams, but that doesn’t mean he’s damn good at his job. Fatal flaw is that he’s unstable, and even though the courthouse plotline won’t be in this fic, it should be noted that he actually does cause problems for the other protagonists due to his short temper. He’s a risky asset, but still essential.

There will be a minor explanation for the WAR! Comic, but I think that’s better saved for Demo’s analysis.

Pyro

Pyro is the character you could cut entirely from the comics and have the least change. Now, they’re going to be Pauling’s right hand. Let me explain.

Engineer and Pyro are implied to live together, and Pyro doesn’t have anything better to do than go with Engie after Team Fortress is disbanded. Rather than having a reveal, we will see some of what is going on with the Admin and friends early on, and see what leads up to her sending Miss P the note that kicks off the whole plot. However, while Engie needs to stay and look after her, Pyro’s skills aren’t useful here, and they are sent as a direct messenger to help Pauling.

They’re loyal, and unlike Soldier rarely mess up orders. They’re also partially mute, making them ideal for handling sensitive info. Pauling trusts them to handle the burning of “Elizabeth’s” paper trail.

Will be using they/them in the narrative voice, but other characters will refer to them as he/him. I considered going with it/its because that’s bubbled up in popularity again, but ultimately I decided against it.

We’ll get glimpses to their train of thought, but like the comics they will remain virtually silent.

Demo

Demo’s role in the cast is going to be very similar to Spy’s. The events of WAR! involved him nearly dying and Soldier taking the win, and he’s very bitter that after all those events *apparently* mercs can just be switched around teams willy nilly and don’t have to kill each other anymore. (As the audience, we know this is because the Admin found out the “make them so angry they won’t ask questions” wasn’t a long-term viable solution, and instead brought TFI forward as a neutral third party that was pretending to mediate the gravel wars.) But Demo’s suspicious, and is only along because he really has been miserable since he lost his job.

This conflict will eventually come to a head, more on that in the Sniper section.

Is fairly forgiving with his teammates. Doesn’t like Sniper but I’m willing to drop a little angst during that submarine scene. Is glad to see Medic actually. Here to be some glue to hold this merry band together.

The Eyelander will not be forgotten after 2 comics because I love this character concept and I think it was underutilized.

Drunk jokes will be kept to a minimum. What I liked about WAR! and Bombinomicon was that it took Demo and showed that they knew how to make him funny without making him one note, which they sort of did in the early TFComics but stopped in the later ones in favor of him….being asleep for the whole plot. I promise 100% awake Demo in my rewrite.

Demo likes Pauling on a personal level, but has trouble reconciling her with his feelings on TFI.

Doesn’t get knocked out by moonshine because. Seriously? Poisoning the Demoman with alcohol? In what world does that work.

Heavy

Not too much to change. Scout doesn’t accompany him when he goes to look for the secret Australium cache, and he engages with Mags and Saxton (which will be when the audience finds out what they’ve been up to) and actually cares about what’s going on with them. He thinks Darling is up to something. Which he is, he’s attempting to unseat both Gray and Helen due to long family history.

Will at least mention Medic. Their reunion falls a little flat since it mostly relies on Meet the Medic for context, as they don’t really interact in the comic. There can be a bit of a flashback to what it was like as all these mercs broke up.

I know uhhh Valve seems to think found family is really dumb, and that these murderers could ever like each other is silly or something, but the mercs do? Like each other? For the most part anyways. 

Bronislava and Yana come alone for adventures, not just Zhanna. Again, no real reason, but sometimes I get to have tacky fanfic stuff in my own fanfic because I Wanna.

Engineer

Engie ruminates on his family history of allowing all this bullshit to happen and just kind of shrugging. Basically Moss’s analysis of the Conagher themes.

Has put a lot of time, sweat, and tears into BLU and now TFI, isn’t willing to let it fall now, even if Admin is basically living on borrowed time. He’s doing this because of the ‘ole sunk cost fallacy.

Also we get to see more of Pauling and Admin’s relationship through his eyes.

Medic

Congrats on being the one merc with an actual arc, Medic! As a reward, you will not be changed much.

I’m actually going to use Medic’s section to say that the Classic mercs will be referred to by their first names in order to differentiate them, and we’ll get little previews of what they’re like from Medic’s perspective before we actually see them fight Team fortress. The battle at the submarine will be more of a fight in this sense, working it out so it seems like surrender is the only option after Sniper is killed.

Final fight with Cheavy will be...not blocked so awkwardly. I mean this is now a textual medium so my work is already halfway done, but still the pacing is so weird. Shudder.

Sniper

These are the big guns. Most changes, even more than Demo. He’s been actually hunting for New Zealand/the Australium cache on his own, and doesn’t want Pauling interfering, saying for a he knows she could have been the ones to kill his adoptive parents.

(She hasn’t, but the Admin did actually order them killed in an attempt to stop Sniper because she thought she could prevent the exact thing that is going on right now which is that Sniper is considering trying to get at it.)

Sniper doesn’t know this, but Pauling, Demo, and Spy eventually convince him to share his findings and help them get to New Zealand.

Spy

Similar to Demo but is less conflicted about it. He knows just because he likes someone doesn’t mean he won’t have to kill them later. 

Spy knows about who killed Sniper’s parents, and tells Demo, sort of as a test to see where his loyalties lie. He also knows that Pyro is Pauling’s confidant for certain things.

Demo questions him about what he’s doing here, whose side he’s really on. But you know. Spy is Spy and he was never really on anyone’s side but his own. When it comes down to it, it might be exactly as Scout thinks: that he’s ditched them all and run off when he had the opportunity. But, big damn hero, comes back in the end.

He’s here mainly to “keep an eye on things.” Also maybe because his gf asked him to keep an eye on her son :)

[mst3kproject]

Mars Needs Women

This is one of the B-movies that a lot of people have heard of, although I’m not sure how many have actually seen it.  It was written, produced, and directed by Larry “They Just Didn’t Care” Buchanan and stars Tommy Kirk from Catalina Caper and Village of the Giants.  Happy belated birthday to Mr. Kirk, who just turned seventy-nine in December of 2020.  That’s not a bad score for a guy who’s done as many drugs as he has.

The planet Mars is suffering from a genetic problem – their chromosomes are so degraded that one hundred males are born for every one female!  Clearly this is not conducive to the survival of the species, so a group of Martians have come to Earth seeking another solution: they want five female volunteers to return to Mars with them and find out if our genes are compatible!  The army brass (all male, obviously) dismiss the idea out of hand, but the Martians cannot afford to fail.  They will have their way with the Earth Women, with or without the Earth Men’s permission.

We all know that Larry Buchanan couldn’t come up with an idea of his own, so naturally this is a remake of sorts.  Mars Needs Women was inspired by Tommy Kirk’s previous movie Pajama Party, which doesn’t sound like an alien invasion flick, but is.  In it, Kirk plays a Martian named Gogo (yes, really), who comes to Earth as an invasion scout but decides not to take over the planet because he falls in love with Annette Funicello.  Mars Needs Women dispenses with the teen hijinks angle in an attempt to be a straight-up sci-fi thriller, and fails miserably.

We get the normal Larry Buchanan types of suck, such as crummy lighting, appallingly awful day-for-night, a washed-out, colourless print, and copious stock footage.  There’s a long bit where the air force tries to attack the Martian ship and fails, which is entirely stock footage intercut with men in uniforms staring at something next to the camera.  We don’t see the flying saucer itself even once during this sequence, although they do have a model of it that shows up elsewhere and is almost definitely the best effect in the whole movie.  Not a high bar, of course, but seeing as they actually appear to have spent money on this miniature, you’d think it’d get more screen time.

The Martians themselves dress like a sort of noir version of the Chicken Men of Krankor.  Their costumes are black wetsuits decorated with duct tape and silver paint, with stupid antennae on the sides of their heads.  It amuses me that the first thing they do after acquiring some ‘Earth apparel’ is complain about how dumb neckties are.  There’s a mention about how they’ve been trained in ‘Earth slang’, which seems to have happened just so the movie would have no possible sources of humour.  When I think about Attack of the The Eye Creatures, I’m kind of grateful that Mars Needs Women never tries to be funny, but it leaves the whole film relentlessly monotone.

The acting is pretty crummy, even from the main characters.  Yvonne Craig (Batgirl – no, not one of them, the actual Batgirl) does her best with the material but the lines she’s given are such technobabble bullshit there are very few people who could deliver them with any conviction.  Almost everybody else is bland at best.  The women scream and faint, and the military guys tense their jaws and glare.  The only decent acting moment actually goes to Tommy Kirk as he describes the conditions on Mars, the dying planet.  His tone barely changes, and yet you can sense his nostalgia and regret.

Do I even need to ask if this movie objectifies women?  Well, yes, actually, I do, and you’ll see why in a minute.  The answer is a resounding yes and a good bit of run time is spent doing exactly that.  Before the opening credits we see three blondes abducted in broad daylight, dematerialized by the simple means of stopping the camera, removing the actress, and starting it up again. One of these hapless victims is taken from the shower.  We later learn that the beam-ups failed somehow, which I assume means the women died, but that’s apparently not worth more than a throwaway line.

Once the five Martians arrive on Earth, they disperse to go hunting for suitable subjects.  The first one goes directly to a strip bar, perhaps on the assumption that the employees will not be married (he’d be amazed).  We then watch the stripper dance at great length, cutting back to it repeatedly in between other threads of the storyline, which suggests that the Martian sat there for hours staring at her before making his move.  He seems to have been the least choosy of the five, simply taking the first woman he gets a boner for.  The others are a bit more discerning.

None more so than the leader, Fellow One (the Martians are Fellows One through Five, which did save the writers from having to come up with ‘alien names’ that sound like synthetic fabrics).  He decides on Craig’s character, Dr. Marjorie Bolen, an expert in ‘space medicine’ and ‘space genetics’ (this may be 60’s for astrobiology).  Her skills seem to be just what the Martians need.  This character is treated terribly by the movie and almost everybody in it. A news reporter commenting on Dr. Bolen’s arrival describes her as a stunning brunette who found it hard to hide her charm behind her horn-rimmed spectacles, and only then moves on to her qualifications.  She gives a news conference titled Sex and Outer Space, and the reporters who are supposed to be interviewing her have a laugh about the good time the kidnapped women will supposedly be having on Mars.  The prop department can’t even bother to spell her name right – it’s written as ‘Majorie’ on a sign even though the r is clearly audible when people say it out loud.

In contrast to this, Fellow One treats her with some degree of respect.  Their conversations about science are mostly nonsense, but you can tell what the script is going for.  They go on a couple of quick dates, one to a planetarium and one to a museum exhibit on human reproduction (yes, this is weird and icky), and while it is rushed, their little love story is actually important to the plot in ways besides Fellow One deciding to abandon the mission so he can bone her.  The movie considers Dr. Bolen a sex object, but from the beginning Fellow One sees her as more than that.

This brings us, in a sideways kind of way, to the thing I find weirdly fascinating about Mars Needs Women: the alien invaders are curiously considerate.  They steal a car, but they take one from airport parking on the assumption that the owner won’t need it for a while.  They request unattached women, not wanting to break up any happy partnerships. And most of all, they ask for volunteers for abduction!  This makes me wonder what would have happened if they’d broadcast their message to the entire world instead of one group of soldiers.  Humans being the way we are, I’m sure there’re lots of people out there who’d fuck a couple of aliens if it meant a free trip to Mars (or move to Mars if it meant they got to fuck some aliens).

The female characters even seem designed to want a trip to space.  Dr. Bolen might well have helped them willingly in exchange for this unparalleled chance to expand her research, and she does find it very sexy that Fellow One speaks to her as an equal.  Yet somehow, the idea never even comes up.  At the last minute, she becomes the helpless princess who must be saved from peril, and Fellow One simply tells her he loves her and asks her to flee.  Why not invite her along as a guest instead of a captive? It’s got to be worth a try.

The others can be made to fit this pattern, too. The stripper?  Maybe she’s sick of being gawked at like meat and would welcome the chance to be among people who will treat her like a queen.  The flight attendant?  She might feel like she’s been everywhere and seen everything – on Earth, at least.  The artist? A whole new planet to inspire her! The homecoming queen?  She’s a journalism major.  What a scoop if she can report back to Earth about the culture and history of Mars!  I want to see a remake of this movie in which the ladies really are volunteers, who must help the Martians outwit the military so they can start their new lives on another planet.

Sadly, this is not that movie, and its exploitative aspects stand rather awkwardly alongside the embryonic feminism embodied in Dr. Bolen, overwhelming it more often than not.  I do want to give it maybe half a kudo, though, for at least acknowledging that women can have interests and ambitions.  I guess the point of the ending is that Fellow One has realized they need to be allowed to pursue those instead of being forced to breed.

Mars Needs Women is probably Larry Buchanan’s best movie, which is a statement on the same level as saying that The Beast of Yucca Flats is Coleman Francis’ – by any reasonable standard it still really sucks.  While it has many problems, I would say that the one that kills any entertainment value is how the narrative totally lacks the urgency the title implies.  The ending should be a race to stop the Martians taking off with their prisoners, but no, it saunters instead.  If there were only some tension in the film, it could have been the guilty pleasure you’d want from a movie called Mars Needs Women.

[letterboxd]

Spectacular Spectacular!

On the twentieth anniversary of its explosion onto big screens, Ella Kemp high-kicks into the Moulin Rouge! once again, accompanied by screenwriter Craig Pearce and a chorus line of jukebox-musical academics and swoony Letterboxd fans.

“You’re always writing for yourself, for the film you want to see. I like all kinds of different films and I think teenage girls do too.” —Craig Pearce, Moulin Rouge! co-writer

This is a story about love. A love born at the turn of the twentieth century in an iconic Parisian cabaret and brought to life in 2001 on Australia’s most spectacular sound stage. A valentine to excess, greed, fantasy and, above all, to the fundamental Bohemian ideals: truth, beauty, freedom and love. This is the story of Moulin Rouge! and how it still burns bright, two decades on, in the hearts of romantics all over the world.

The film, a fateful love story between penniless writer Christian and dazzling courtesan Satine—played by Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman—premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 9, 2001 and opened in New York and Los Angeles cinemas only weeks later, on May 18. Cast and crew fought hard to get it there: unimaginably, writer-director Baz Luhrmann’s father passed away on the first day of filming, and Kidman’s then-marriage was in turmoil. “There were times of beautiful moments, but there were times where we were like, ‘This is so hard’,” Luhrmann recently told an Australian journalist.

And, though this seems strange to say in a world that has since welcomed Mamma Mia!, Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman, making a movie musical early in the millennium was a high-risk pursuit. Luhrmann again: “‘Musicals will never be popular again’ … I can’t tell you how many times I was told that.”

“It’s part of a cycle,” explains Dr. Eleonora Sammartino, an academic specializing in contemporary American film musicals. “It came after a period in the 1990s where musicals had disappeared from the big screen.” Lisa Duffy, Letterboxd member and Doctor of Hollywood Musicals, agrees: “Films coming out [that year] were a lot more dour, so this was a real gamble.”

Nobody understood this gamble better than the film’s co-writer, Craig Pearce, who has been Luhrmann’s close friend and professional partner since the pair were students together. Moulin Rouge! is the third and final entry in what we now know as their red-curtain trilogy, alongside Strictly Ballroom (1992) and Romeo + Juliet (1996).

“Baz had been thinking about the parallels between the Moulin Rouge and Andy Warhol’s Factory,” Pearce recalls. “Places where artists congregate, where it’s more than a place, it’s a petri dish of creativity. Like The Factory, and Studio 54, the Moulin Rouge was a place where the old and the wealthy pay a lot of money to hang out with the young and the sexy.”

At the end of the twentieth century, however, the Moulin Rouge wasn’t all that great (the original had burnt down in 1915). Pearce recalls: “We went to Paris in 1999 on a research trip and discovered, to our horror, that the Moulin Rouge now is just a hideous tourist trap. So we had to go on this journey to find out how this amazing creativity—artists and dancers and musicians—came out of what now feels like this tawdry girlie show.”

With the location and period locked in, Pearce and Luhrmann worked to find the story’s driving force. “This movie wouldn’t work without the exclamation point,” writes Adelaide. Pearce is the first to admit this: “It’s saying it’s Moulin Rouge, but it’s not that one. What we’re trying to do is heighten truth, but you have to start with that underlying truth,” he explains. “It’s not casting around for ‘what would be a cool idea’ because you never come up with one. It’s never as interesting as the truth. Like, there was an elephant in the garden of the Moulin Rouge. And why does that matter? It matters because there are certain inherent logics in the way human beings operate.”

“It's a musical of recycled parts. It’s a story which, beat for beat, has been told for centuries. It’s a staged show drawn from the lives of the characters themselves… This is a film [that] is bold enough not just to say that all art is about finding your own meanings behind someone else’s ideas, and that all art is just copying and stealing, but that this can be totally valid and authentic. When Nicole Kidman sings ‘Your Song’ to the Duke, she’s stealing from the writer, and Luhrmann is stealing from Elton John. But when Ewan McGregor is singing to Kidman, it’s the most magical moment you could possibly imagine. That’s what makes ‘Moulin Rouge!’ a true masterpiece. Cinema has never been more fake, and cinema has rarely been more real.” —Sam

Moulin Rouge! borrows from all over. There are hints of La Traviata, of Cabaret and of Émile Zola’s Nana. There were Toulouse Lautrec’s paintings (John Leguizamo tremendously embodies the painter in the film), Baudelaire and Verlaine’s literature, Jason and the Argonauts, Homer’s Odyssey, and the revues of the 1920s and ’30s. “Moulin Rouge! really embraces that vaudevillian component,” says Dr. Hannah Robbins, a Broadway and Hollywood musicals specialist.

Craig Pearce and Baz Luhrmann writing in Paris (1998) and New York (2019). / Photos from Luhrmann’s Twitter

“This genre lends itself to repetition and fragmentation,” Sammartino expands. “It’s part of the syntax of the musical and has always been, this idea of borrowing from other sources. This doesn’t take away from the daring postmodern approach Moulin Rouge! is defined by, it’s simply further proof that it’s, well, a very good musical.”

Above all else, the core of Moulin Rouge! is inspired by the myth of Orpheus of Thrace and his doomed love affair with the beautiful Eurydice, whom he followed into Hades after she died. “The show must go on, Satine,” the nightclub’s impresario Harold Zidler grimly tells his star, as their world begins to crumble. “We’re creatures of the underworld. We can’t afford to love.”

It wasn’t the first time Pearce and Luhrmann had looked to ancient mythology. Strictly Ballroom’s mantra, which tells us “a life lived in fear is a life half lived” owes everything to David and Goliath. But with the Orphean myth, the screenwriters were looking to dig deeper, to find something much darker. “The Orphean myth is a romantic tragedy in its essence,” Pearce explains. “David and Goliath is more youthful, and it’s about saying that belief can conquer anything. But as you get older people get sick, they die, and life is about resilience and finding ways to embrace the hard things in life and move forward.”

That might sound antithetical to the all-singing, all-dancing nature of the movie musical, but the genre has been trying to tell devastating stories like Moulin Rouge! for decades. “Hollywood is rarely interested in buying and remaking stories with devastating endings as much as stage musicals are,” Duffy explains. (See: Les Misérables, Phantom of the Opera.)

This reluctance can be traced back to the classic era, during which there were rules about the ways a musical could end under the censorship laws of the Production Code. Simply put, they had to have a happy ending. (Which also led to a fair amount of bizarre deus ex machina to guarantee a nice, cheery final act).

But then in the 1960s the Code fades away, and Hollywood starts engaging with violence, sex and explicit trauma on-screen. “We have much more freedom in the contemporary era to have people die explicitly,” Duffy says. “And that’s why we keep returning to Moulin Rouge!: there’s the explicit negotiation of our entry into the fantasy world, and then we’re devastated, and the curtains close and we’re in reality again.”

“It’s one of the great 21st-century films. Baz Luhrmann is only good when figuring out how to make historical periods of excess into contemporary displays of grotesquerie, somehow turning great films (‘French Cancan’) or great literature (‘The Great Gatsby’) into tacky Technicolor vomit that somehow understands the underlying sorrow of the material better than any serious-minded adaptation.” —Jake

The red-curtain trilogy has a distinct set of rules: one, the viewer must know how the film ends from the start; two, the story must be set in a heightened world; and three, it must contain a device that keeps the audience awake at all times, whether that be ballroom dancing, scattershot Shakespearean dialogue, or pop songs.

“Part of the appeal of the artifice is that it gives the audience permission to say, ‘This isn’t real, you’re about to see a fantasy, and that’s okay,’” Duffy says. “The pleasure is the fantasy of it. The whole film is us seeing how Christian is imagining what happened—and the musical is the most extreme genre that allows such imagination.”

The point was never to temper the elaborate, hyper-aware fakeness of it all, but to really commit to it. Says Robbins, “Musicals are ultimately artificial and exclusively constructed. And that’s what Moulin Rouge! achieves and quite a lot of films don’t. It goes, ‘This is where the story is going, this is the energy, this will be played in the soundtrack.’ There’s a deliberate thought process there.”

Luhrmann recently said: “The way we made the movie is the way the movie is.” An under-explored aspect of Moulin Rouge! is how the whole affair, with its ‘Spectacular Spectacular’ musical-within-a-musical device, is an insider’s guide to the mechanics and politics of making ‘big art’. How money can control both the art (the dastardly Duke insisting on “his” ending), and the artists (Satine is never told she is dying, because she is the golden goose upon whose shoulders the success of the company rests; Christian is likewise left in the dark, because he is the scriptwriter who needs to finish writing the show. Both are wrung dry for their talents).

There are shades of Luhrmann in Zigler, the impresario juggling cast, crew, investors and opening dates (Moulin Rouge! was originally slated for December 2000). Christian and friends in playwriting mode are surely Pearce and Luhrmann themselves, searching for the most economical way to say “the hills are vital, intoning the descant”.

And, from the show-within-a-show rehearsals, to the bustle of the backstage, to the gun-chase through the wooden bones of the fly tower, the production details are Catherine Martin to the very last diamante. Nobody does daring bedazzlement quite like ‘CM’, Luhrmann’s fellow producer and life partner. Electricity was the new, exciting thing in Paris at the turn of the twentieth century and this film was lit.

A necklace worn by Satine as a gift from the Duke was made of real diamonds and platinum. Designed by Stefano Canturi, It was the most expensive piece of jewellery ever specifically made for a film, with 1,308 diamonds weighing 134 carats, and worth an estimated one million dollars. Needless to say, Martin won both costume and production design Oscars for the film.

Also among the film’s eight Academy Award nominees: editor Jill Bilcock, about whose singular craft there is a recent documentary. Her breathless, kaleidoscopic cutting (also deployed in Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet) dropped us right on the dance floor; one 65-second sequence contained a boggling 85 cuts. And this is on the back of her superbly judged opening, a scene that repeats itself as she places Christian at both the start of his love story, and its devastating aftermath—heartbroken, unshaven, self-medicating, reaching for the words to begin making sense of his loss.

“I wondered, for the first hour of this, how Baz Luhrmann had managed to balance such in-your-face stylistic audacity while maintaining a genuine feeling of care for the characters and their struggles—is it all down to Ewan McGregor’s wonderfully earnest face, or the way Nicole Kidman’s smouldering-temptress persona is worn down by one of the most charming cinematic uses of Elton John’s ‘Your Song’? But as the ‘Elephant Love Medley’ transformed into David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’, I stopped caring, I just swooned.” —Kat

If electricity was the thing that drove the kids wild in the 1900s, the internet was on everyone’s minds in 2001. We were just figuring out how to juggle tabs and text people. The real magic dust sprinkled throughout Moulin Rouge! is, obviously, the cacophonous soundtrack, which made sense to our collective, fragmented consciousness.

“No other musical of the modern era has so perfectly captured the sense of spinning an iPod wheel every 45 seconds to play something else,” writes Jake of the medley of songs by David Bowie, Fat Boy Slim, Nirvana, Police, Elton John, Rufus Wainwright, Madonna and many others.

Luhrmann and Pearce stopped at nothing to get every single track from every single artist they wanted. The journey took more than two years, and some bodies were left at the side of the road. “You constantly have to kill your darlings,” Pearce sighs. RIP to Rod Stewart’s ‘Tonight’s the Night’, The Rolling Stones’ ‘Under My Thumb’, Prince’s ‘Raspberry Beret’ and Fifth Dimension’s ‘Up, Up and Away’. (Hot air balloons were big in 2001.)

"We wanted the music to be modern, because we didn’t want it to feel like a fusty, crusty world,” says Pearce. “We wanted to find the universal modern parallels that have existed since time immemorial.” But it wasn’t just about finding the most popular songs at the time. “The structure had to be driven by the needs of the story,” the screenwriter explains. “The musicals on film that tend to fail are the ones where the music feels like a film clip. If it’s not serving the emotional needs of the story, you very quickly check out and it becomes boring. With good musical storytelling, it builds and builds to a point where you can’t do anything but express yourself through song.”

Has there ever been a more desperately romantic promise than when Christian starts telling Satine he doesn’t have much to give her, before nailing that one perfect high note to reassure her that his gift is his song? Why, yes: when the mirrored love stories of Christian and Satine, and of the penniless sitar player and the courtesan in ‘Spectacular Spectacular’, meet at their dramatic peak, with ‘Come What May’. (The film’s only original song, it had been submitted for the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack by writers David Baerwald and Kevin Gilbert.)

“Moulin Rouge! was successful because it was using songs from different ages and periods, appealing to different audiences with something they could have a connection to. So it wasn’t just boomers, not just millennial or Gen X,” says Sammartino. “Something like Rock of Ages, for example, was much more narrow in terms of the kind of music you needed to like.”

“This film is a dramatic bitch and I love her.” —Mulaney

‘Moulin Rouge!’ co-writer and director Baz Luhrmann.

There is a pattern to our most emphatic reviews for the film: they come from relatively young people, who mainly identify as women. It’s something critics anticipated back in 2001. The New York Times wrote, in a fairly ambivalent review, that “young audiences, especially girls, will feel as if they had found a movie that was calling them by name”. We don’t have time to fully dig into the antiquated notion that “low art” (the publication’s quippy headline for that review was “An Eyeful, an Earful, Anachronism”) is aimed specifically at women, but surely we have to ask the question twenty years on: does anyone still think this could possibly be true?

“You’re always writing for yourself, for the film you want to see,” says Pearce. “I like all kinds of different films and I think teenage girls do too.” And let’s remember, it was Harry Styles who said of the broad demographic of his fanbase back in 2017: “Teenage girls—they don’t lie. If they like you, they're there. They don’t act ‘too cool’. They like you, and they tell you.”

Robbins: “The rom-com has made the connection between song and emotional display about female pain. The Emma Thompson crying to Joni Mitchell kind of lineage has tempered musicals—people think that’s what Mamma Mia! is: women and mothers and daughters and feelings.” Dig a little deeper and you’ll find a lot of musical-related data suggesting a broader scope. “When I went to see Frozen on Broadway, kids of all genders were wearing Olaf costumes, much more than princess ones. That is not the narrative Disney would like. And when people gender musicals and think of the princesses franchises, they don’t look to the fact that The Lion King and Aladdin were more successful.”

There has been an undeniable effort to reel male audiences in to see 21st-century musicals. On Hugh Jackman’s welcome, flamboyant career pivot (surprising to anyone but Australians), Duffy says: “Casting Wolverine in Les Misérables and The Greatest Showman is very, ‘See, manly men can do it too!’” Let’s not forget that Ewan McGregor had gotten his big break as freewheeling heroin addict Mark Renton in Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting just six years prior to playing Christian.

Indeed, says Duffy, “more of my male friends have seen Moulin Rouge! than other musicals. The MTV tone might have been significant, and there was the ‘Lady Marmalade’ music video—the fact you have all these beautiful pop stars writhing around in corsets. And just having David Bowie on the soundtrack is like, ‘Okay, this isn’t just girl music.’ Pop music offers an easier way to move past the stigma of show tunes.”

Crucially, Robbins notes that all of this prejudice, and the effort to tear it down, is speaking to, and about, a very specific—cisgender, heterosexual—subsection of audiences. “I always wonder where the critics think the queer audiences are. I do wonder if there’s a cis-het vibe going on that has even more to do with it, reinforcing that norm rather than actually focusing on young girls as an audience.”

I asked my interviewees whether they thought, twenty years on, that Moulin Rouge! would be better received today—and which parts of our contemporary cinematic and musical fabric owe a debt to Luhrmann’s jukebox wonder. “We’re more receptive but we have specific demands,” says Robbins. “And today’s musicals sink or swim on whether they meet those demands. So The Greatest Showman is the Moulin Rouge! of now. I think people would be lying if they didn’t say that the cinematography in Moulin Rouge! hasn’t affected almost every movie musical that has been made since. We wouldn’t have ‘Rewrite the Stars’ if we didn’t have ‘Sparkling Diamonds’.”

Duffy agrees: “So many things that come after you can draw a line directly to Moulin Rouge!—Pitch Perfect, Rock of Ages, Happy Feet… but most significantly, Glee would not exist without this movie. The jukebox musicals of the 21st century owe everything to Moulin Rouge! and the blueprint it lays down.”

Among the films that premiered at Cannes in 2001—David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher—was another kooky little number: Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson’s animated Shrek. Two jukebox musicals in the same prestige film festival, at a moment when the genre was considered deeply uncool? What a time to be alive!

If the last eighteen months have taught us anything, it’s that we film lovers enjoy nothing more than a comfort rewatch of our favorites. Moulin Rouge! and Shrek (and French Shrek) delivered untold comfort in the pandemic—but they had also soothed us much earlier, in the months following the unspeakable tragedy of the 9/11 attacks.

“For me it was very much a comfort film,” recalls Duffy, who had discovered Moulin Rouge! as a fresh-faced eighteen-year-old, during her first year away from home, studying in New York. “Part of that was rooted in this really traumatic thing that had happened, and all of us wanting to escape into this fantasy world as much as possible.”

Luhrmann said, in his recent Australian interview, “I love to see people united and uplifted and exulted. It’s a privilege to be a part of helping people find that.” As life outside our homes resumes, Moulin Rouge! will very much be part of a return to exultant living. The live musical—interrupted by Covid—opens in Melbourne in August and on the West End and Broadway in the fall.

Pearce last saw the film on a large screen in a derelict warehouse in London, at Secret Cinema’s interactive, carnivalesque spectacular. “I have to say, I was really proud of the film,” the screenwriter says, finally letting himself speak fondly of his accomplishment well over an hour into our conversation.

“I mean, some people liked it back in the day, but you’re never really satisfied with your work. You just tend to see the things that could have been better. But seeing the love for the film was really, really emotional.”

Related content

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Craig Pearce is currently producing ‘Pistol’—a biopic miniseries on the Sex Pistols, directed by Danny Boyle—and his next film with Luhrmann is a biopic of Elvis Presley, with Austin Butler playing the king of rock and roll. Additional thanks to Dr. Eleonora Sammartino, Lisa Duffy and Dr. Hannah Robbins.

[tamiettitami]

INSPIRED BY @alamborghini

In the last week, I have spent a majority of my time on Archive of Our Own reading Twyla and Alexis fics. In lieu of that, I thought I would create a recommendation post of my favorites, eight of them to be exact. I've wanted to do fic recommendations for awhile, and this seemed like the perfect place to start! Because the community is small, as I mentioned previously, there will be some author repetition, but they're all incredibly talented writers who I encourage you to support.

Check out Justine's list, too, it's linked at the very beginning! Theirs is a bit more extensive considering they've been here for longer and I've just recently dipped my toe in, however, this was a lot of fun for me to put together and I hope you enjoy nonetheless <3

All word counts, ratings, tags, and descriptions are taken directly from the stories themselves. Credit goes to the original creators for the information provided. Also, I've colored the titles according to the length of the fic. Here is the system I've devised to help you easily find stories within a certain a range of words without having to read too much while also helping to separate the titles a bit: PURPLE >2,000 words, BLUE 2,500-5,000 words, and PINK >5,000 words.

Posts marked with * are also in Podfic format. If it isn't underlined, the Podfic is apart of the work hyperlinked in the story's title.

tuck you in, turn on your favorite nightlight by @alamborghini and @anniemurphys

WORD COUNT: 843

RATED G for GENERAL AUDIENCES

TAGGED with Future Fic, Canon Compliant, Post-Canon, Children, Children's Stories, (that aren't always appropriate for children), alexis and twyla have just Seen Things ok, Alexis Rose travels for business and pleasure

DESCRIPTION: Twyla and Alexis' daughter adopts her mother's' stories in the interest of elementary school coolness.

I Offer You My Heart by @landofsonlali and @sunlightsymphony *

WORD COUNT: 10,347

RATED G for GENERAL AUDIENCES

TAGGED with Alternative Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Slow Burn, Tea Leaf reading, Flirting Via Coffee and Pastries, Pining, you know it's an AU because of the seasons, Baked Goods, Podfic, Podfic Length: 1-1.5 Hours, Let Alexis Rose Eat, Twyla Sands' Freckles

DESCRIPTION: Twyla is the owner of a coffee shop in Schitt's Creek and Alexis is a frequent customer, featuring pining, flirtation, and a whole lot of baked goods.

never saw you coming, never be the same by @alamborghini, @anniemurphys, and @landofsonlali *

This is a MUST READ series for any Twylexis fans. I started my journey through the Alexis Rose/Twyla Sands tag with these ficlets and I recommend beginning here as well.

WORD COUNT: 1,938

RATED T for TEEN & UP AUDIENCES

TAGGED with Pride, Post-Canon, Canon Compliant, Coming Out, Twyla Sands' Freckles, Supportive Siblings, Pansexual Alexis Rose, Cuddling & Snuggling

DESCRIPTION: Three different perspectives of Twyla Sands and Alexis Rose's first Pride spent together as a couple.

i didn't know that i was starving (til i tasted you) by @turningtimeinthetardis

WORD COUNT: 12,885

RATED M for MATURE

TAGGED with Character Study: Twyla Sands, Character Study: Alexis Rose, Episode: s04e12 Singles Week, Singles Week Rewrite, Ted is great, But Twy and Alexis are meant to be each other's soft girlfriends, Fluff & Smut, Pining

DESCRIPTION: Twyla knows her natural penchant for kindness can sometimes be a problem. She knows it can sometimes be used against her by people who are more willing to chase their desires than she is.

Normally, she's at least a little ok with being naturally passive, with allowing her desires, her wants, to skate past her, untouched.

Maybe it's because she's gotten accustomed to serving customers at Cafè Tropical and taking unwarranted abuse with a fake smile. Maybe it's because she had grow up faster than any eight or nine year old should. Maybe it's because, well, secretly she's a multi-millionaire and, materially, she doesn't want for much of anything. And she'd be hard pressed for saying she wants anyone in Schitt's Creek.

But once she gets to know Alexis Rose?

Yeah, Twyla wants her.

to be your harbor by @doublel27

WORD COUNT: 4,007

RATED E for EXPLICIT

TAGGED with Post-Canon, Sugar Mama Twyla Sands, Praise Kink, Sex Toys, Strap-Ons, Light BDSM, Light Dom/sub, Service Top Alexis Rose, Sweet/Hot, Tooth-Rotting Fluff

DESCRIPTION: Twyla uses some of her money on things that are special to her. Alexis is special to Twyla. Luckily, Twyla is precious to Alexis.

your body's poetry (speak to me) by @anniemurphys

WORD COUNT: 19,599

NOT RATED

TAGGED with Alternative Universe - Ballet, adventures at youth america grand prix, baby ballerinas in the corps de ballet, oh my god they were roommates, Twyla Sands' Freckles

DESCRIPTION: Ballet has been at the center of Alexis’ life since she was three years old, the first time she saw New York City Ballet perform The Nutcracker. She pulled on her mother’s sleeve, much to Moira’s displeasure, pointed at the stage, and said, “Me!” It was the very first time she felt like her mother saw her. That feeling was intoxicating enough that she couldn’t help but chase it.

She’s seen some of the world's most celebrated ballerinas perform. But she’s never seen anyone dance like this girl, whose name she doesn’t know. The stage lights turn her auburn hair burning red. Her pirouettes are perfectly landed; there’s no struggle at all in the way her leg lifts behind her in attitude to tap against the tambourine she holds above her head. As she flits across the stage, her tambourine extended toward the judges like an irresistible invitation, there is something real in her smile, something seductive in her eyes.

Alexis forgets to breathe.

searching for a sound we hadn't heard before by @hullomoon

WORD COUNT: 867

RATED T for TEEN & UP AUDIENCES

TAGGED with New York City, Kissing, Coda, of sorts, Episode: s06e13 Start Spreading the News

DESCRIPTION: Twyla visits Alexis in New York.

Ladies Night Inn by yeah_alright

WORD COUNT: 15,848

RATED T for TEEN & UP AUDIENCES

TAGGED with Canon Compliant, Alternative Ending to The Canidate (season 2 episode 7), ladies night, Spa Night, slumber party, Female Friendship, Friends to Lovers, really more like, acquaintances to friends to potentially lovers, if we're being accurate, Teen rating is for makeouts and a few refrences to very specific and crucial body parts, No Smut, No Sex, Fluff and Humor

DESCRIPTION: What if Twyla had accepted Alexis' invitation to a ladies night at the motel after her breakup with Mutt?

If you happen to indulge in any of these, let me know you're thoughts as I'd love to chat about them and make some new Twylexis friends. Happy reading! (SOURCE)

[carewyncromwell]

I’m regularly blown away how consistent and well thought out your characters are. 💛💛

How is the process of designing them?

How do you come up with all the different backstories?

And how on Earth do you keep up with all of them? 😅

Awww -- you are too unbelievably sweet, cherie!! *virtual huggle* 💙 

Let’s see here...let’s split these answers properly...

What is the process of designing your characters?

My general feeling on creating characters is that there should be something real at the heart of everything imaginary -- a core of something from the real world that you can refer back to, when you’re having trouble writing for that character or figuring out how a character would react to a certain situation. That “something” from the real world can be a person you know (Jacob’s based off my uncle), a historical figure (Jackson’s based off Harry Houdini), another fictional character you really like, or even just a personality type or archetype you want to explore (Ana is an INFP Gryffindor and Carewyn is a paragon Slytherin). I don’t really care for self-inserts, and generally my characters ultimately acquire aspects from multiple sources, but I find it’s good to at least have one source of inspiration, to start with. Once you have that source, it’s also good to give every character, regardless of their importance in the story, a driving motivation -- something that fuels them in-universe, the way that their real-world source fuels them from a meta sense. It can be anything from a dream they passionately fight for or just what fulfills them as a person...but it’s basically an engine that drives the character’s actions in your story, just as your core source of inspiration is your character’s battery. Once you have those two things -- a real-world source of inspiration and a driving motivation --  they can be a spring that you can return to for the water of inspiration when you’re running on empty. 

Breaking away from the metaphors now so as to hopefully explain my process better, let’s take one of my characters as an example -- Robert Harker / Bartholomew “Bat” Varney. 

The real-world source of inspiration for Bat, in the beginning, was the character of Garrett from Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 -- more importantly, how I felt like a Revolutionary War veteran vampire like him had such potential as a major character and yet in my opinion wasn’t given a proper amount of focus in his source material, as well as what I would’ve personally loved to see in a vampire character when I first read the Harry Potter books and tried and failed to get into the Twilight series. Bat’s motivation is to leave a lasting, positive influence on the world, with the extra time he’s been afforded. 

From there, as I developed Bat’s character and personality, he acquired more elements from other sources. To avoid the “brooding vampire” trope, I made Bat a Ravenclaw, as my mum, stepmum, and stepbrother are all Ravenclaws, and all of them are infinitely more proactive and less prone to angst than I am. To explain the in’s and out’s of why someone like Voldemort wouldn’t want to become a vampire, I developed a backstory not unlike Garrett’s where Bat went off to War and died, only to come back as a vampire against his will with greatly reduced magic. To give Bat an arc that would accent his struggle with a greatly lengthened life-span and potentially watching everyone around him waste away, I took elements of Sirius Black’s history with James Potter and Peter Pettigrew, so as to explain why he’d have trouble opening his heart to love and why he might choose to detach emotionally from others. To give him a reason to be near Hogwarts and better justify his house placement, I gave him an interest in teaching not unlike the one that my stepmother, some of my close friends, and I have. And little by little, more traits crept in, stitching a web from that initial starting point. If Bat was a military veteran, him being a Muggle-born in need of stable money would make sense. If his decision to detach from others emotionally but not physically wasn’t something done out of any sort of angsty reason, then perhaps it was done out of Ravenclaw-worthy logic, since vampires tend to go mad after a while and cause devastation after experiencing a lot of loss. If Bat was the “Sirius” of his friend group, he could take on other aspects from other “lancer”-type characters like Ron Weasley, Han Solo, and Katsuya Jounouchi. 

One can even apply this principle to minor characters. Taking Carewyn’s uncle, Blaise Cromwell, for example, his real-world source of inspiration is an emotionally abusive parent of a friend of mine, only as a Slytherin single father, and his core motivation is keeping his family close to him, like a dragon would hoard treasure. That was all I’d initially planned for him, but with those two things set in stone, it’s made it very easy to write him in multiple AU’s with slightly different backstories while keeping his characterization the same. 

How do you come up with all the different backstories? And how on Earth do you keep up with all of them? 

A lot of elements of my backstories for my characters tend to likewise have touchstones in reality, but as before, it’s all about experiences, whether things you experience yourself first-hand or through other people, through research, or through other stories you enjoy. One of my core interests is psychology, so once I have a character pinned down, I like to try to analyze how this character would react to certain situations, which can likewise color their backstory, as honestly one’s history is built on the choices they’ve made previously. Severus Snape never would’ve joined the Death Eaters if he hadn’t decided to elevate himself through terrorizing others, but he also wouldn’t have ultimately turned his back on them if he hadn’t decided his feelings for Lily were more important than his desire for advancement. If you were to place someone like Carewyn in Severus Snape’s shoes -- namely, making her a neglected half-blood child who grew up with only one true friend -- it’s possible she might have been tempted by similar vices as Snape was since she’s a Slytherin, but she also as a stoic, yet empathetic paragon (rather than the cold, vindictive personality Snape’s been established as) would’ve likely not made the choice to align herself with the Death Eaters, regardless of where she started. 

Just like with developing a character’s personality with just their core source of inspiration and motivation, one can create a whole web of a backstory based on a few core events and how the character established would react to them. Carewyn grew up in a poor house with a single mother and an older brother who raised her more than her own father, only for that brother to disappear mysteriously. Because of her overly sensitive heart, losing one of the most important people in her life hit her very hard, and so she lost all sense of her identity and had to rebuild one anew for herself at school. Because of her proactive nature, she became obsessed with finding her brother, at the expense of every other dream she’d had prior to starting at school. Because of her tendency to “look after” her brother the way he did her, she likewise took to nurturing her friends and became the “Mama Bear” of her friend group. And it can branch off from there.

As for how I remember it all...honestly, that’s something I can’t properly explain, given how friggin’ ADHD I am. XDD Sometimes I make notes and profiles for myself to keep details straight, but other times, it’s really just because these characters end up feeling like such real people to me that I remember these things about them the way I would for my real friends and family. (Or just my historical crushes. LMAO.) 😂

❤  Fanfic Writer Friday ❤      

[linskywords]

criminal-minds-fanfiction wrote a bunch of questions for authors that you’re supposed to let people ask you, buuuut I felt like answering all of them instead of doing my actual job this afternoon. 😄 Here we go:

1) How old were you when you first starting writing fanfiction?

Like 25 maybe? I started writing about a year after I started reading it. I had a fanfiction-deprived adolescence, y’all.

2) What fandoms do you write for and do you have a particular favourite if you write for more than one?

The hockey boys pulled me in years ago and they haven’t let me go. I do sometimes write other things: I almost always participate in Yuletide, and I’ve actually written a bunch of Animorphs fic under a different name (ask me if you want to see it!). Mostly hockey RPF, though.

3) Do you prefer writing OC’s or reader inserts? Explain your answer.

Haha neither. Well, I guess OC’s, if I had to choose -- I don’t read or write reader inserts. But I tend to keep OC’s for original fiction.

4) What is your favourite genre to write for?

I was very confused about fic having genres before I realized this was probably referring to the genre of the canon works. Um...sports. :D

5) If you had to choose a favourite out of all of your multi chaptered stories, which would it be and why?

Don’t make me choose my favorite child. Um, probably the first wolfverse story -- I don’t know if it’s the best one, but I’m very grateful to it for starting the ‘verse!

6) If you had to delete one of your stories and never speak of it again, which would it be and why?

None of them, if that’s an option. If I really had to choose...probably the Kirk/Spock fic I never finished even after uploading it to AO3 and promising to finish it this time. I still want to finish it!! But it would be the first to go.

7) When is your preferred time to write?

I don’t have a strong preference. Afternoon/evening. I like having multi-hour blocks, and I use the Forest app to keep me off my phone while I do it.

8) Where do you take your inspiration from?

Plot bunnies come from all over the place: random thoughts, memes, real-life conversations, suggestions from other fandom people. I tend to have a pretty strong “THIS IS A STORY I WANT TO WRITE” response when something grabs me the right way.

9) In your xxx fic, what’s your favourite scene that you wrote?

Haha this is probably why I’m not supposed to just answer all of these in order. XD I’ll answer for my current WIP: the scene where Geno kisses Sid for the first time. So soft. So angsty. 😈 (My own story has cursed me to love Geno. I am doomed.)

10) In your xxx fic, why did you decide to end it like that? Did you have an alternative ending in mind?

In general: I know how my stories are going to end when they start. Sometimes it does evolve a bit as I write. One thing I’d like to play with is including more of the main characters being together at the end of the story, instead of ending it at the moment when they get together; the latter makes sense from a tension perspective, but I’ve been finding when I read lately that I want more of the happy times at the end, so I’m going to try to move in that direction.

11) Have you ever amended a story due to criticisms you’ve received after posting it?

Only for typos, I think.

12) Who is your favourite character to write for? Why?

Ooooh. Either Patrick Kane or Jonathan Toews. There’s something so compelling to me about Patrick’s fanon voice. And every love interest in every original story I try to write is Jonny.

13) Who is your least favourite character to write for? Why?

I...don’t really write about characters I don’t like? I wish Auston Matthews would shave his mustache.

14) How did you come up with the title for the xxx? - You can ask about multiple stories.

About fifty percent of the titles I come up with are desperate scrambles because I’ve got nothing. The other fifty percent I have a perfect song lyric for from the start.

15) If you write OC’s, how do you decide on their names?

I only write OC’s in original fiction, but: I’ve been phonebanking lately, and I’ve been writing down all the good names I come across. The best so far is someone with the last name Quackenboss.

16) How did you come up with the idea for xxx?

MAGIC.

17) Post a line from a WIP that you’re working on.

Oh...oh no. Um.

“It doesn’t matter what he was thinking about. His knot popped; that’s the important thing.”

Some of you can probably guess what that’s about. :)

18) Do you have any abandoned WIP’s? What made you abandon them?

Mostly on my computer. I have a lot of beginnings of stories I haven’t finished yet; many of them I’ll probably go back to. I tend not to post things until I’m done or close to done with them. (That one Star Trek fic being an exception. Mea culpa.)

19) Are there any stories that you’ve written that you’d really love to do a sequel to?

YES. The 1988 timer one and the 1988 story where Patrick’s a girl who sneaks onto the Blackhawks in disguise. I’d love to do a Bennguin version of both of those.

20) Are there any stories that you wished you’d ended differently?

Hm. Some of them I think I rushed a little. More Than I Could Ever Promise, I think it needs a good old-fashioned battle scene in the mountains at the end to really round out the plot.

21) Tell me about another writer(s) who you admire? What is it about them that you admire?

Have I mentioned astolat? What, only two or three hundred times? I should mention her again, then. Give me that woman’s ability to plot. Inject it into my veins.

22) Do you have a story that you look back on and cringe when you reread it?

Haha. I often have slightly cringy moments in my old stories. You Made My Life an Adventure, I definitely didn’t really know what I was doing yet...

23) Do you prefer listening to music when you’re writing or do you need silence?

I usually listen to music.

24) How do you feel about writing smutty scenes?

Turned on.

25) Have you ever cried whilst writing a story?

Yes. The sequel to My Heart Forgets to Beat.

26) Which part of your xxx fic was the hardest to write?

The Sid/Geno wolfverse story I’m working on now is maybe the hardest thing I’ve ever written. The language barrier is such a new challenge for me.

27) Do you make a general outline for your stories or do you just go with the flow?

I don’t formally outline, but I tend to have a sense of the major plot beats. One reason I love writing fic is that the plot and world tend to be straightforward enough for that. I have a lot more trouble doing that with original fiction.

28) What is something you wished you’d known before you started posting fanfiction?

This will radically reduce the amount of time I spend writing original fiction.

29) Do you have a story that you feel doesn’t get as much love as you’d like?

Like You Have a Secret I think is less read than some of the others because it’s het, but I really love it. Similarly, some of my stories that are inspired by other works (Tangled, Doctor Who, The Giver) tend to be read less because people think they need to know the source material, when really I deviate from the source material so much it’s not important.

30) In contrast to 29 is there a story which gets lots of love which you kinda eye roll at?

Huh. Probably not. I’m definitely surprised when some stories take off -- Kinda Narrows It Down I wrote pretty quickly, on a whim, and I was surprised by the extent to which it resonated with people. Turns out lots of people think Tyler was coming out in that tweet. XD

31) Send me a fic recommendation and I’ll post it for my followers to see! (The asker is to send the rec not the answerer)

Ooh. Ignoring the terms of this question, but: I just read this TK/Patty story and loooved it. It’s a different take on werewolves than the one I use in wolfverse, and it’s super compelling:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/24029188

32) Are any of your characters based on real people?

Hahahahahaha. (I mean...less so than you might think.)

33) What’s the biggest compliment you’ve gotten?

I absolutely love it when people write screaming flaily responses to my fic. Also anytime anyone says that they’ve been having a tough time and my story was exactly what they needed. Maybe my favorite was the responses to More Than I Could Ever Promise that told me it read like a novel; that meant a lot to me right then.

34) What’s the harshest criticism you’ve gotten?

Fandom is amazing; people almost never give me concrit. I did have someone ask once if I randomly chose when to stop writing and just ended my stories there. I was pretty offended, since of course that’s not true at all, but I can see where they were coming from: my stories tend to wrap up after the characters get together, and sometimes there’s a lot of potential story left to tell at that point. But stories have to end sometime.

35) Do you share your story ideas with anyone else or do you keep them close to your chest?

I tend to share them! I find other people’s enthusiasm to be strongly motivating, and sometimes people have awesome suggestions I wouldn’t have thought of.

36) Can you give us a spoiler for one of your WIP’s?

Well, I only have the one. XD Sid...is about to have an important conversation with Mario.

37) What’s the funniest story you’ve written?

Ooh, I’m not sure I’m the write person to answer! No idea, really. My recent TK/Patty is probably pretty funny. Or maybe Quality Time, where Patrick doesn’t understand why he keeps losing track of time when he’s cuddling with Jonny. Anything with a super dumb protagonist, probably.

38) If you could collab with any other writer on here, who would it be? (Perhaps this question will inspire some collabs!) If you’re shy, don’t tag the blog, just name it.

Wow, I have no idea. I’ve never really written a story with someone, so I’m not sure how that would work. I want to say astolat again but honestly I’d be too intimidated.

...no, I’m gonna say astolat. Even if I made a fool of myself I think I would learn a ton.

39) Do you prefer first, second or third person?

Third. For some original stuff I like first person, but third feels right for the hockey boys.

40) Do people know you write fanfiction?

My close friends do. Most of my friends have the vague idea I write fic, but they don’t know my username or anything.

41) What’s you favourite minor character you’ve written?

Patrick Sharp. No question.

42) Song fic - What made you decide to use the song xxx for xxx.

I will legit listen to a new album with a doc open to write down promising lyrics. Titles are HARD, y’all.

43) Has anyone ever guessed the plot twist of one of your fics before you posted it?

I think people guessed where the Tangled fic was going. Though I also liked the guesses that it would be about Patrick’s mullet. XD I don’t really mind when people guess twists -- in the kind of story I write, it’s more about the experience of reading it than about surprise!

44) What is the last line you wrote?

“His parents have always been very respectful of any choices Sid’s wanted to make. They haven’t pried into his private life when he’s tried to set boundaries. But they’re wolves, and they know him a lot better than Jordy does. Sid isn’t going to be able to keep it a secret from them what he’s going through.”

...no guarantee it survives in that form. :D

45) What spurs you on during the writing process?

Getting the story out of my head and into reality! Spoon out that lake, baby.

I also do love the prospect of posting it for people to enjoy and respond to. It’s one of the reasons I find fic so much more rewarding than original fiction, where the timeline to a readership is so much longer.

46) I really loved your xxx fic. If you were ever to do a sequel, what do you think might happen in it?

Things, probably.

47) Here’s a fic title - insert a made up title. What would this story be about?

This exercise might be going off the rails a bit. (If anyone does want to pose this to me, feel free!)

48) What’s your favourite trope to write?

Ooh. Mutual pining. Friends to lovers. Werewolves. :D

49) Can you remember the first fic you read? What was it about?

The first fic I ever, ever read was a random Kirk/Spock one I found through google, and I was like “OMG IS THIS WHAT AROUSAL FEELS LIKE”

50) If you could write only angst, fluff or smut for the rest of your writing life, which would it be and why?

Oh man. Angst, as long as it can have a happy ending. But it just wouldn’t be the same without the smut.

[madasthesea]

I’m sorry for being so mean. I had a really bad day and didn’t mean to say such awful things. But I am frustrated my fics always get ignored, especially by the big names in the fandom such as yourself that claim to support everyone. I’ve written so many fics in this fandom and have been doing so for over a year, yet I only have 30 subscribers. I get really frustrated and feel like I’m a bad writer because everyone ignores me and my fics. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I’m sorry.

(2/2) For a fan community that claims they are inclusive, everyone sure doesn’t act that way. Everyone already has their friends and people like me who don’t have many friends get ignored. The big names in the fandom don’t support or read the fics by the new people. It’s not just me. I’ve never received a single kudo or comment from you or anyone else that’s popular like you. I don���t know what I’m doing wrong but people don’t read my fics.

Ok, I’m answering this in the middle of the night in the hopes that not a lot of people will see it so it won’t become A Thing and then as soon as this fic exchange is over I am turning my anons off forever. Anon, I guess I have to give you credit for coming to apologize, but I have to say, where before I was perfectly capable of laughing off your extremely rude message, I have to say, now I’m annoyed. Because there is not a single instance or bad day or frustration that makes what you said acceptable. You came into my inbox and threw a temper tantrum because you knew my name and I happen to have anons on unlike most of the “fandom big names.” You told me I had the worst fics in the fandom, told me I publish outlines instead of stories and accused me of writing incestual pedophilia because you had a bad day? I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re young because that is the only possible excuse I could give you. As I said in my original response, if I were already an anxious writer, you could have caused me to delete all of my fics and put me off of writing forever. Someone commented on your original message and said that they don’t post their writing because of messages like that one. You’re right you shouldn’t have taken it out on me, and you wouldn’t have if your name had been associated with it. But here we are, and I’m going to try to make it so this never happens again, at least with the two of us. 

Now, onward to your frustrations. I am sorry that you aren’t getting the attention you want, but one) yelling at me on anon isn’t going to fix that. Two) not to be like callous and insensitive, but that happens to almost every writer I know. I’ve been writing fanfiction for 12 years. This is the seventh fandom I’ve written for and no one ever read my fics before this. My first year on AO3 I published six stories and had 500 views total. I get the frustration, but sometimes you just have to get the perfect combination of exposure, plot, and interest. Three) Do you have any idea how many stories get published in the Peter Parker & Tony Stark tag a day? I’m sorry, I can’t read all of them. I don’t want to read all of them, in fact I have 14 different tags blacklisted. Just because I am a “big name” does not mean I owe you a comment or a kudos. If I like your story, I will tell you. Chances are, I haven’t even seen one of your stories, because I’m an adult with a job and hobbies and writing of my own to do. Most of the “big names” are the exact same except a lot of them also have school. If you want someone to read your stories, ask them. Say “hey, I respect you and your opinion, could you look at this for me?” They will probably say yes unless they have a good reason not to. Don’t just sit there and wait for it to happen and get mad when it doesn’t. Also, this is the third time someone has yelled at me for not reading or commenting on their fics and it makes me less inclined to leave kudos in general in case someone comes and gets mad that I read their fic but didn’t comment. So uh… don’t do this again. 

As for the community, do you want to know how to make friends? Send asks (nice ones) not on anon. We can’t interact with you if you don’t know who you are. Reblog our fics. Comment on our posts. You can’t make friends if no one knows you exist. And the only way to show you exist is show yourself in our notes, in our inboxes. Sitting in your corner of tumblr and being bitter isn’t going to help anyone. This fandom is welcoming and it is kind and it is supportive. You saw how many people came to my defense tonight. If you talk to those people, they’ll talk back, but they can’t reach out to every single Irondad blog, it just isn’t feasible. 

And finally, how to get your fics read more. Like I said, part of it is just… luck. I got in at the very beginning, as did losingmymindtonight, parkrstark, several others, and had already established myself before IW came out and the fandom got bigger. Lucky break on my part, but I’m also a good writer because I’m 25 and I have a Master’s in a writing heavy field and I’ve been writing my entire life. Sometimes it just takes practice. But there is stuff that all good fics have in common, so here we go:

1) Good grammar, good spelling, good punctuation.

I don’t know who you are so I have no idea what your writing is like, but this is stuff I had to tell college students as a teacher, so I’m just going to go over it. 

Are there line breaks between every paragraph? No? There need to be. It’s hard to read when all of the words are bunched together, meaning automatic exits will happen, regardless of content.

Do you start a new paragraph every single time a new person speaks? You should.

“When someone is speaking,” I asked, “do you put a comma before the speech tag?” Commas, not periods. Not periods then commas. Punctuation goes inside the quotation marks. 

Are you writing in first or second person (I or you)? Don’t.

Pay attention to your tenses. It is very confusing reading a story that switches tenses every sentence. 

Are you capitalizing the beginning of every sentence and proper noun? You have to. Reading all lowercase takes energy and concentration and readers don’t like to put more effort in than they’re used to. Also it’s just pointless.  

Get a beta reader. Get grammarly (but the free version, don’t pay) or another editing service. Google anything you have a question about. EDIT YOUR WRITING. 

2) New ideas

Every fandom has tropes they love, but not every fic can be a trope fic. Every fic I write is, if not completely new, a spin on a popular trope.

Yes, there are some popular field trip fics, but most of them get lost in the weeds because they are all the same. And most of the people I talk to don’t even like them. (This counts for May dies fics, sensory overload… If you’re going to write it, you have to make it different and you have to make it good.)

Look to other movies or books for ideas, check out irondad-fic-ideas, something. Write something new, something only you can write, and at least some people will notice.

3) Good characterization

Now apparently everything I write is OOC, so maybe I’m not the best person to be giving advice on this :/ (I’m still annoyed. I’m getting over it)

BUT–the best way to write a well-known character is to know the source material. Listen to the way they talk, watch how they move. Ignore fanon. It’s hard, but try. Peter isn’t actually a perpetual ray of sunshine, chatter box 12 year old like we often write him, Tony isn’t 100% sarcasm and incapable of recognizing his own feelings. 

If you can hear the character say it in their actual voice, it’s probably a good line. 

4) Misc.

Fandom rule of thumb: cute fluff and hardcore whump win out over deep character studies on convoluted plot lines. If you’re just looking for hits or maybe a fic to establish yourself, that’s a good way to do it. 

If you’re posting a multi-chapter fic, don’t post it all at once. People will comment on each chapter as you post and you’ll get more hits. 

Respond to comments, especially at the early stages. It makes your readers more invested, it builds friendships, and it makes your stats look better. 

There’s a blog that supports little known writers in this fandom! Rec your fics there!

Make sure to never, ever put “I suck at summaries” or “fic is better than summary” it is an instant turnoff. If you can’t write the thing that makes me want to read the fic well, why would I think I want to read the fic?

Tagging on AO3 is vital. Tag the right relationships, tag the right emotions (angst, fluff, hurt/comfort). I often sort just by these. Always put in the category, (M/M, F/M, etc.) and the rating. There is no reason not to, but not doing so makes people less likely to read. Always tag triggers.

Never steal fics or ideas. If a story inspires you, you can ask the author if you can write something similar and then link in your story back to theirs. Nothing will make you less popular in a fandom than stealing work.

Lastly, I know authors constantly talk about how important comments and kudos are, and they are so important to bolstering spirits, I get that, but if you aren’t writing for yourself first, you will always be disappointed. You should enjoy your fic as much when you read it in your word doc as when you read it online with comments and kudos. And maybe you write really niche stuff that doesn’t appeal to a lot of people, but churning out carbon copies of the Fandom Tropes and hoping for hits is not going to satisfy you and you will keep being frustrated.

Let’s not do this again, shall we? Next time you have a question, ask me nicely.

[yume-fanfare]

hi i am that anon from like 29th Dec (last dang year) who said i read ur tsuki no hime and loved it and that u understand Aizou. i have read more of ur stuff since then and now i NEED to ask you for writing advice, on both characterization and general writing tips since I didnt mention it before. Sorry about that! i just forgot i sent an ask and i do not get notifs at all (or does anon asks not get notifs?) Also, ART STUDENT! That's why the nice art and art leaning!! I feel smart for sensing it

oh yup, tumblr doesn't send notifs for anon asks! but i'm glad you did see the answer anyway

this post is hideously long, so answer under the cut!

so, on characterization: it is mostly a matter of what would they say, rather than what you want them to say. the joke about "the characters do what they want to" instead of what the writer wants is pretty much true if you want them to be in character lol (that's why sometimes a little bit of OoC isn't too bad)

checking the source material is the most important thing: look at prior similar interactions the characters have had and how they reacted

this is kind of hard with LIPxLIP, as there aren't that many translated texts about them but with honeyworks the most canon and reliable thing to use as reference are the mvs. the mvs are drawn in a way that can pretty much be understood even if you don't have the lyrics, and sometimes it's even better if you can't read them, to properly focus on the images better

look at their expressions closely: while aizou is always explosive in his anger, yuujirou often has a more indifferent expression. so, when they fight, aizou is probably the one to blow up first while yuujirou maintains his composure better. it's kind of the classic "this was only a brief passing panel but i am going to expand on it" www

but the thing about fanfiction is that it's always a bit of a character analysis in itself. you don't start writing having already a color-coded folder of possible situations and reactions a character would have for each setting. you just throw the characters in a scenario and then think from there onwards, and eventually you'll be able to have the folder of situations and what you think their reactions would be like. (though, this links back to the prior point, if the characters have gone through a similar situation in canon, use that as guide! plus, finding little references to canon when reading is always fun)

for general writing, i'm going to mostly talk about my own experiences and process! i'm in no way a professional though

the basic is reading a lot. not just books but also fanfic. in fact, since you're writing fanfic, i Encourage you to read fanfic. even if your story ends up novel length, the way of treating the story is different from that of an actual novel. for example, because you're working under the premise that everyone knows the characters already. the general style of fics is different as well.

in fact, the style is the main reason i'm saying this slfkslfkslkf

read a lot of stuff and find a style you like. think of it as sewing together pieces from here and there to make a frankenstein amalgamation: this person's metaphors, the comparisons from here, the descriptions from there

personally, i adore the "long one-shot with a long title formatted (like this)" fics that are mostly feelings and descriptions and as little dialogue as possible, and some that occasionally play with the "show don't tell" rule, and some months ago i read a book whose descriptions amazed me because you could feel what the character was focusing on the most, rather than being general descriptions of the situation (i actually have a lot of thoughts about descriptions but that's a post for another day). but also i really like dialogue and plot-driven stories, descriptions can get boring and before trying to break rules, you have to be really good at following them

but, let's go step by step: developing an idea

for this i'm going to mostly reference the multichap i finished a while ago as an example

i started with just a few vague concepts in mind: non-idol au with aizou who does some sport and likes music but is insecure about his singing and yuujirou who does some music related thing and encourages him to sing in a way that's somehow related to the hozier song to noisemaking (sing), because it's what inspired me to write in the first place

then, from then onwards i wrote down what would happen in the first chapter of the story bullet-point-list-style, including things like the roommates part or the clubs the boys were in (at first yuujirou was in the choir club lol the change was a last second decision that idk why i took) and then bits of dialogue here and there that would be The Turning Points. those first dialogues were for the fight at the end of ch 1, the apology-date in ch 3 and then some vaguely unused ones for the "yuujirou encourages aizou" part, as those were the first key moments i thought of

because, since it's enemies to friends to lovers, an important aspect was character development

not all fics have character development bc not all of them are long enough (if you're aiming for short and sweet then there's no need). but if they do, i recommend you write down how the character was at the beginning of the story and then how they were at the end and then fill in the middle later, think of what those key turning points that made the character change were (the more little things you add, the more gradual it'll be)

samishigariya illustrates this very nicely: the song starts and finishes with the same lines, but the ending ones feel more light-hearted. the beginning has pre-arisa ken and pre-getting-along-with-yuujirou aizou, when they were the lonely people the title mentioned, and the ending, when they're not lonely anymore. the in between can be seen in depth during the other songs: ken before arisa was a playboy who didn't take love seriously, but after meeting her he realized that games were not all there was to love; and aizou used to be quite cranky and high-key a loner, but then he "meets precious things and knows of love". i will not elaborate on that because this isn't an aiyuu post but Oh You Know

for the fic, aizou would go through that same process, more or less: someone who doesn't really form meaningful connections with people but who, in the end, would end up having quite a bunch of people who care about him as his relationship with yuujirou advances too

since the relationship was the main focus, i wrote a very simple outline for how it would develop throughout 5 hypothetical chapters that was just: 1. civil w each other but mostly bad > 2. bad > 3. half friends > 4. pining > 5. date

and then with that in mind and the bullet point list, the final basic outline ended up like this:

there were scraped ideas and ideas that made it in later, but i believe having a simple outline, a bare skeleton to add things to, is important. stories need continuity, development requires a prior buildup

it's especially important in multichapter fics where you post as you write, you need to have a more or less clear idea of what's going to happen because you can't ignore scenes you've already posted

shorter stories don't need it as much, you can think as you go, but it's still helpful to know where you're going with things to avoid getting stuck

and, on getting stuck: don't be afraid of deleting things. if you can't figure out how to continue things, then delete the situation and start again. it might feel like you'd be wasting time but in the end, it is so much better than being stuck on the same scene for weeks

in fact, you don't have to write in order. jump to the next scene and you'll figure it out later. you Can write the scene you want to write and then build everything else around it

it's normal to write a scene and then realize it would make more sense later in the story, or that it would be better if you added another scene earlier, or sometimes you just find it easier to jump from one part of the story to another. rely on your outline to keep track of what you've written, what you have left to write and what's the best way to arrange your story. make your story understandable

which bring us to editing

there's a lot of much better posts on editing stories, but yeah ctrl+f is your best friend: don't repeat yourself too much. and be sure to vary sentence and paragraph length, as well as sentence structure, to give dynamism to the writing

now, i've mentioned before the show, don't tell rule, but i'm going to talk a bit more about it because it's quite important

once again there's a lot of posts that explain more in depth what it is, so i'm not going to expand too much on that, but, very basically, try to avoid things like "then some time passed and they became friends". explain it: what happened exactly? how did they become friends? if it's important, show it to us, instead of summarizing

since things like these make the story longer, it also gives room for more development and proper explanation for things that happen

for example, the fic was originally going to start with them already in the room, and the whole situation would have been explained in a single paragraph somewhere, but by actually adding the scene where they first arrive to the dorms and argue with the lady at the main desk, the story flows better and it let me actually describe their first meeting

and uuuhhh i think that's all? this took super long to write i hope i didn't forget any super basic stuff lol

i want to add that for enemies to lovers i greatly recommend this post bc it's super good but yeah i think that's basically it, if you have any more specific questions just shoot me an ask

[thesunnyshow]

Name: Kim Age: 26 (27 in September) Writing Blog URL(s): @jinterlude​   

Nationality: Filipino-American Languages: English  Star Sign: Virgo MBTI: ISFJ-T Favorite color: Any shade of blue  Favorite food: Ah, I have so many, but I really do love ramen & this Filipino noodle dish my grandma makes. Favorite movie: West Side Story. A close second is Pride & Prejudice (2005) Favorite ice cream flavor: Rocky Road  Favorite animal: Pandas Go-to karaoke song: Upside Down by A*Teens (I think I just dated myself) 

What fandom(s) do you write for? Mainly BTS, but I have written for SVT, EXO, GOT7, Monsta X, B.A.P, & NCT

When did you post your first piece? Oh dang, when? Hmm… I want to say Oct. 2016 (?) on my first blog (I had deleted and came back to Tumblr).

Do you write fluff/angst/crack/general/smut, combo, etc? Why? I mostly write a combo because it just happens that way! My main genres are: fluff, romance, & humor/crack. 

Do you write OCs, X Readers, Ships...etc? I mainly write OCs stories because that’s what makes me the happiest when it comes to writing, but I still write x reader fics for drabbles and oneshots. 

Why did you decide to write for Tumblr? Funny story. The reason why I started writing for Tumblr is because an old group of friends said that I should write a funny story based on a college class of mine, so I did and here we are. 

What inspires you to write? Usually, it’s my imagination, but other times it’s either the song I’m listening to or even the show I’m currently watching. Right now, my inspiration draws from anime. 

What genres/AUs do you enjoy writing the most? Genre wise, I love writing fluff & romance. AUs wise, I’m a sucker for Royal/Royalty. Mafia/Gang & Soulmate AUs would be a close second. 

What do you hope your readers take away from your work? Oh, wow. I honestly never thought about that before. I think for me, the one thing I hope my readers get from my stories is at the end of the day, please do something that will make you happy. Your own happiness should always be a top priority for you. 

What do you do when you hit a rough spot creatively? I take a break! Instead of forcing myself out of the creativity slump, I just take a break and let my mind recharge. Then, I go back to my outline and look over while listening to music that I know will spark some creativity juices. 

What is your favorite work and why? Your most successful? My favorite works (yes, I couldn’t pick just one) are my Royal!AU Seokjin series (Fight for Me & Our Second Chance). I love the amount of time and effort I put into those two stories, and I’m simply in awe at the world and characters I created. My second favorite is my latest Seokjin oneshot, Protecting Each Other. It’s my first story that exceeded 10,000 words, and I’m just proud of how that turned out. Successful wise, I would say it’s, This Little String. It’s a Soulmate!Taehyung oneshot based around the red-string of fate, and every other month, I see someone like and/or reblog it, so I say that’s pretty successful!

Who is your favorite person to write about? Seokjin hands down. I mean, not only is he one of my ultimate biases, but for some reason my creative banks dishes out ideas and inspiration for him like it’s nothing. 

Do you think there’s a difference between writing fanfiction vs. completely original prose? I personally don’t think so. You are still writing original content that derails from the source material (or adds to it), all you have to do is just replace your idols’ name with an original character name, and there you go. What do you think makes a good story? For me, I’d say that if you’re honestly proud of the end product, then that story is good, and your readers will see that. What is your writing process like? First I get an idea, or I like to call it, “it appeared to me in a vision,” then I outline it (if the idea lingers in my brain), and then I start writing and editing. Sometimes I’d sprint with my fellow writers on a server I’m in, and other times, I’d put on music and just let my brain go wild. Most of the time, I’m sprinting with friends. 

Would you ever repurpose a fic into a completely original story? If I had the time, probably. I can see my Royal!AU series becoming an original story with different characters and an expanded plotline. What tropes do you love, and what tropes can’t you stand? I am a sucker for F2L I (friends to lovers)! I just love the idea of dating someone who’s your best friend, so why not date your best friend, if the feelings are mutual of course! As for tropes, I dislike, I can’t say that I have any. I think it’s because (and I feel so bad for this), I don’t really read much stories other than what my mutual friends have written. 

How much would you say audience feedback/engagement means to you? It means the world to me because I do like knowing if I’m doing something right or if I need to go back and edit something for clarity. Mainly, I get likes and reblogs (with no feedback), and while it’s still nice of someone for taking the time to like and reblog something, I would like some feedback, please. I’m still grateful no matter what, though!

What has been one of the biggest factors of your success (of any size)? I think it’s the support of my amazing group of friends/mutuals! It’s thanks to their support that my work is reaching a wider audience, and it just means the world to me that they read my blood, sweat, and tears. I love them so much, especially my close friend, Jey (softjeon on Tumblr)!

Coffee or tea? What are you ordering? For coffee, my go-to is a Caramel Macchiato with Soy Milk (from Starbucks), but lately I’ve been using my Keurig, so I just Peppermint Mocha and 3 tsps of Sugar (I can’t stand bitter coffee lol). For tea, I really like Mango green tea from Gongcha (another boba place chain). 

Dream job (whether you have a job or not)? My dream job is to be an elementary school teacher, however, I am currently working on becoming a social worker where my population will still focus on children/students. So, it’s a good compromise!

If you could have one superpower, what would you choose?  If I could have one superpower, it would be cryokinesis aka ice manipulation!  

If you could visit a historical era, which would you choose? Oh, that’s a tough one, but if I had to choose one, I would go for the 1960s so I can see the Beatles live!

If you could restart your life, knowing what you do now, would you? No, because it’s thanks to those life lessons that I grow up to be who I currently am. Sometimes you have to go through those harsh experiences to be a better version of yourself!

Would you rather fight 100 chicken-sized horses or one horse-sized chicken? One horse-sized chicken, then I can feed my family for months. 

If you were a trope in a teen high school movie, what would you have been? Oh, hands down, I would be the stereotypical geek/nerd. Though, I was called a “preppy” in 9th grade, so that was a first. 

Do you believe in aliens/supernatural creatures? Yup, especially ghosts! 

Fun fact about yourself that not everyone would know? I can say the alphabet backwards! 

Do you think fanfic writers get unfairly judged? Oh, hands down, especially when it comes to writing smut. I’ve seen other blogs condemn writers who write smut about real people, but my thing is that these idols are merely face claims for a character that the author is writing about. 

Do you think art can be a medium for change? I think so! Every artist has a voice, especially with what’s going on recently, we need to be able to use our voices to spread light on certain issues. 

Do you ever feel there are times when you’re writing for others, rather than yourself? I used to think that way, especially when it came to writing x reader inserts since I know that’s what “sells” to the Tumblr audience. Now, I’m perfectly happy with writing x OC stories, and I’m content with my stories getting at least 5 notes. If it breaks 10 notes, then that’s a success!

Do you ever feel like people have misunderstood you or your writing at times? If they did, then I wouldn’t know. Most of the time, I think my writing is okay with people. 

Do your offline friends/loved ones know you write for Tumblr? Yes, my soul friend managed my old blog once upon a time and actually read one of my smuts. I was so embarrassed! But at least he said it was tastefully written, so that’s a bonus? 

What is one thing you wish you could tell your followers? Always remember that it is okay to take breaks/go on hiatus! 

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers who might be too scared to put themselves out there? My advice to those who want to start writing but are too afraid put themselves out there is to simply go for it. I was that person who was afraid to put their writing out there for the world to see, especially with some already established BTS writers on Tumblr, but I went for it. At first, it might be discouraging but know that your mutuals/friends will always be your number one supporter! Use their support as a motivator to keep writing and finding your groove! Then, eventually, all of your readers will start trickling in and showering you with the love and support you deserve!

Are there any times when you regret joining Tumblr? I wouldn’t say regret joining but more like allowing my life to be revolved around it. At one point in my life, it felt like a second job/chore for me, and Tumblr should never be that type of site! 

Do you have any mutuals who have been particularly formative/supportive in your Tumblr journey? Oh, I have so many! The ones that come to mind are definitely Jey (softjeon), Beanie (jinned), Nina (j-sope), Kenz (parksfilter), Renae (mygsii), Atlas (astraljoon), & Niah (randomkoalablog) to name a few! I love these amazing people so much and cherish their friendship to the moon and back!

Pick a quote to end your interview with: "Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we're curious … and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." - Walt Disney

[9or10allgood]

I'm indulging in the Doctor Who marathon on BBCAmerica. It's been wonderful. I'm in the middle of Twelve, now, which is - next to Ten - my happy place.

Thirteen is looming.

Now, before anyone has a knee-jerk reaction and thinks I don't like the Thirteenth Doctor, you couldn't be more wrong. I love her to bits. Jodie Whittaker is awesome. She has poured herself into being the Doctor, heart and soul. I love that she travels with an entourage - going back to the First, the best Doctors do. She's had some really good stories, courtesy of Chris Chibnall - in fact, I give her first series a B+/A-. The second series, however...

Stick with me for a bit.

I like - no, I looo-ooo-oove fan fiction. Partly because it is a fairly consistent reaffirmation of creativity and literacy (yes, I said it!) and courage and daring - because it takes guts to put yourself out there for public critique without getting paid one red cent. But mostly because it is a way of indulging in flights of fancy within a bubble. Because fan fiction is, even when it is "canon compliant", still shading or filling in the blanks or expanding on what the original author set down. And the bubble is a safe place, where everyone (mostly) respects those boundaries between source material and fan fiction.

The perfect example of this is everything that happened in Pete's World post-Canary Wharf. We assume that the Doctor was going to tell Rose he loved her before time ran out, and copious amounts of fan fiction has been written about that. We assume that TenToo rectified that issue at Bad Wolf Bay the second time around. But we don't know, and that's okay because the veil was drawn on Pete's World with the disappearance of the TARDIS, and Pete's World became a creative goldmine. Thank God.

Back in the day (and I swear I still have a point) I belonged to a fan fiction site based on Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. (Not "Dragonmount", thank you very much!) Between twenty and thirty writers, drawn together by our love for that amazingly complex series of books, we wrote - individually and in small groups - epic fiction based on the Age of Legends and the Trolloc Wars, because neither era was portrayed in the books, other than very brief glimpses. Even so, there was a canonical framework that we existed in, and we respected it. For example, there were hints of Aes Sedai being able to fly during the AoL, but that didn't mean that the Sisters during the TW were going to do it, because canon told us that the miracles of the Age of Legends had been lost with the Breaking and were not recovered until the timeline of the books. As long as the canon was respected, the writing flourished - for years. Eventually, though, lines were blurred and the stories suffered, and it's been years since anyone has written anything there.

And now I'll get back to my point.

When Russell T Davies brought Doctor Who back to television, he respected the canon that had been established. He didn't change Gallifrey, he removed it. It had given us the Doctor and the Master and the TARDIS and a running potential of planets and races affected by the Time War that could keep the Doctor occupied for a long, long time. It's purpose had been served. It's *nebulous hand waggle* demise fuelled the great engine of angst that powered the reboot. It heightened what had become a bit of a stodgy "oh, no, it's the Daleks, again" sensibility regarding a cross between a pepperpot and a wheely-bin, and gave them a renewed sense of villainy. It's what made the episode, "Dalek", such a gut-punch. It's what made seeing a mighty Dalek armada when there was only one Time Lord to stand against it so dramatically Quixotic - in an end-of-all-things sort of way.

It should have stayed that way.

I love RTD. I do. He was an awesome showrunner and he, with Julie Gardner, shepherded the reboot through possibly the greatest comeback in entertainment history. But I wasn't comfortable with the (temporary) return of Rassilon et al as his farewell to the show. And, sure 'nuff, it cracked open a door that Moffat bulldozed through with "The Day of the Doctor". And by the time he was through, the Doctor was popping "home" for soup and a bit o' sedition, and the next thing ya know, Chris Chibnall is turning the whole thing on its ear with the Timeless Children business and a convoluted plotline that would've needed an entire series to unravel and still would have read like fan fiction based on a poorly remembered fever dream.

Yes, I know that "Doctor Who" has been "fine-tuning" itself from the beginning. The First Doctor invented his time machine that his granddaughter named "TARDIS" - for Time and Relative Dimensions In Space. Today's canon has TARDISes grown, sentient, and having numbered in the thousands once upon a time. But there's a difference between an adjustment, here and there, and re-inventing the Time Rotor on the fly, as it were. One is a tweak to make the whole better. The other is throwing a bucket of yellow paint across a classic portrait of the Queen just so you can paint galloping horses on it. Why would you do it?

I'm really sad that Graham and Ryan are leaving. I'm really looking forward to the return of Captain Jack. I hope that bringing back someone as integral to the days of Russell T Davies will remind Chris Chibnall that the basic story of the Doctor has always been that an ancient alien from a fabled world travels throughout space and time with a lucky human or three, faces down injustice, rescues those who need it, and dances around fixed points and moral dilemmas with (occasional) alacrity.

And if Chibnall needs inspiration, I can point him to any number of fan fiction writers that totally get it.

[cinemaocd]

The Mirror and the Light raises more questions than it answers

Going into The Mirror and the Light, the third and necessarily final book in Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy, the basic plot wasn’t much in doubt. Thomas Cromwell would rise. Thomas Cromwell would fall. In the summer of 1540 he would be executed. Along the way his son would get married, while he remained single, despite wide-spread speculation that he was angling after the King’s daughter Mary Tudor. Those who Cromwell promoted would be raised as well and some would remain loyal while others would betray him. Cromwell’s fall would come some time after Henry VIII’s unsuccessful marriage to Anne of Cleves, and his role in promoting that marriage would play some part in his downfall. Cromwell’s past interactions with his two most powerful enemies, Stephen Gardiner and the Duke of Norfolk, would also have some bearing on his downfall, since they were the main figures behind his arrest.

These are the undisputed big historical facts that Mantel had to work with, or in many cases, work around. There were many other smaller facts that she had to play with as well, some of which appear in the book as delightful asides like Cromwell putting a neighbor’s house on rollers in order to settle a boundary dispute, or Cromwell importing beavers to control the streams and rivers of England. There was also some evidence that Cromwell had an illegitimate daughter, born sometime after his wife’s death. Mantel massages the timeline to make this fit into her backstory of original characters from the first two books, and cleverly ties the daughter to the seemingly random charge in his arrest that he “sheltered Anabaptists.”

Of course Mantel created a whole plot, a series of original characters, and interpretations of historical figures and events for the first two books. They were fiction, after all. Like any good writer (and Mantel is an excellent writer, always in control of her material), she left questions unanswered to hook readers into the third book. If you were expecting these plots to be tidily resolved, you will be disappointed in The Mirror and the Light. The book fails to resolve many questions, creates more plot threads and then leaves those loose as well. Does that mean the book isn’t successful? I would argue that it is precisely because she fails to resolve these puzzles and questions, that Mantel manages to walk the knife edge between genre fiction and literature with a big “L.” She is certainly aware that these characters have all been the main actors in romance novels and murder mysteries as well as history plays. Indeed that is the subtext of almost every movement of plot within the novels.

While Wolf Hall seemed to be a conversation with playwright Robert Bolt about the veracity of A Man for All Seasons, which made Thomas More the hero and Cromwell the villain; this last installment seems to be deeply concerned with T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, about the murder of Thomas Becket at the hands of Henry II. Cromwell digs up Becket’s bones at their resting place in Canterbury, tears down statues of Becket and even keeps the supposed remains of the martyr in his house, in case the king changes his mind. He  considers commissioning a play that shows what a terrible person Becket was for disobeying his king and bowing to Rome. Henry II was excommunicated, and Mantel dwells on the possibility that if the current Henry suffers the same fate, the whole nation could be lost to invaders given free reign by the pope to do their worst to the heretics. This is one of the reasons Cromwell is so eager to align England with Lutheran princes via the marriage with Cleves. But of course, Cromwell, as always, has half a dozen reasons for everything he does.

Eliot celebrates Becket as a champion of the separation of powers of church and state, a founding principal of modern democracies and one which was much threatened during the time Eliot wrote the play, 1935, with fascism on the rise in Europe. Of course it does not take a rocket scientist or even a political scientist to put two and two together with our own times. Cromwell would be anti-Brexit, pro NHS and anti austerity. Yet, he would also be the kind of neo-liberal who would be quietly feathering his own nest, profiting from selling off National Trust properties all the while making speeches about the enduring greatness of the British monarchy. For every eerily prescient passage about the plague and it’s random destructive path through society, there is a reminder of just how foreign a country the past is: Cromwell--a becon of rationality and enlightenment--believes the source of his fever is a snake he held in Italy. For every kindly head of an English department who is inspired by Cromwell’s leadership, there is a despicable grotesque like Steve Bannon who admires Cromwell’s ability to seize both religious and political power who sees himself, like “self made” white men everywhere, the victim of the elitism that Cromwell faced. 

But these are questions for people who get their essays in front of more eyeballs than I ever will. What do I, the Cromwell fanatic think of the new book?

I think die hard fans of the first two books will be generally pleased with this installment. We get so much more Cromwell than ever before. We are moving more slowly through his life and we are, with exception of a few enlightening flashbacks, solidly in the company of the mature, sardonic, earthy man that we we got to know in Bring Up the Bodies. In short, Cromwell at fifty is a pure joy. Mantel as with the previous installments surrounds him with a crew of lively and memorable companions. From his son who has come into his own as Sassmaster of Austin Friars, to the irrepressible Christophe, who stays with Cromwell through his confinement and walks with him to his execution, cursing the king as Cromwell could not, I love everyone in this English Reformation. Even the bad guys like Norfolk and Gardiner remain fresh. Mantel uses them thriftily, lest we tire of their antics, so that when Cromwell is blindsided by an Easter dinner with Gardiner and Norfolk it is one of the highlights of the book.

As we move closer to his doom, Cromwell has flashes of his fate, but the history fan, or even just the person who has made a close reading of Cromwell’s wikipedia entry, can see it collapsing all around him. Yet, miraculously he never wears out his welcome as other iterations of the character do. As much as I enjoyed James Frain’s Cromwell early in The Tudors his characterization gets more shrill as the story moves forward to the point where his execution is almost a relief. Cromwell is a convenient villain because so many of the facts of his life actually support that conclusion. Mantel used every trick in the book from making him the victim of child abuse, to giving Cromwell a love of animals and children to humanize him in the first two books. In the third she sharpens all of these tools, even as she readies Cromwell to make that last journey from the tower.

In the first two books, there are a number of tropes that are quite worn and flimsy. For example, the idea that it was Cromwell selected the group of petty noblemen executed with Anne Boleyn because they once participated in a masquerade mocking his former master, Cardinal Wolsey. The men were guilty of something to be sure: a kind of greedy, entitled, elitist malice, but not the crimes for which they were executed. It is a weak premise really, but Mantel made it work because of the way she showed the working of Cromwell’s mind, and the way in which she brought the reader so thoroughly into his schemes. By the time you realize that you have been spending time with a mass murderer you are so under his spell that you begin to question the entire premise of narrative fiction. Can any narrator be relied upon? Is there any such thing as a villain or a hero? Are there not elements of both in every person? Can’t the guilt for all of this blood really be laid at the feet of the often childish monarch in whose name all of this happened? Where does personal responsibility begin and end in the midst of atrocity?

All of these larger questions are floating around in the background of The Mirror and the Light and as Cromwell focuses in on the grim task of disemboweling England’s religious houses for personal and political gain, you wonder what price all of this is going to have on his soul. In Wolf Hall, Cromwell fell into a fever, (probably malaria--which had a basis in historical fact) after he managed More’s execution. Though More’s death should be seen as political triumph for him, he views it as a personal failure. Cromwell does not like saints who don’t behave like rational men. He likes men like Geoffrey Pole, who he interrogates in The Mirror and the Light. Pole gives in easily to intimidation, talks a blue streak and is pardoned and released. Cromwell suffers another bout of the fever--which he believes will ultimately take his life-- after bringing down the last and largest religious house in England, the nunnery at Shaftesbury. Now it is true that Cardinal Wolsey had an illegitimate daughter who was housed there, but Mantel takes that fact and weaves into the fabric of her story. Again it is a flimsy premise and again it works because it is surrounded by unassailable bulwark that is Cromwell’s character. Cromwell arrives at Shaftesbury with the vague plan of trying to do something for the Cardinal’s daughter before he turns her out of her home. He winds up disastrously proposing marriage to her in an almost comical scene, a proposal which she rejects with such venom that he weeps for only the second time in three books. This is a man who has lost his entire family, suffered deeply all through his childhood and adolescence and yet this is only the second time he weeps? It’s not quite logical, and like the masquerade plot, it feels all a bit creaky, yet we believe it because Cromwell.

Wolsey’s daughter also accuses Cromwell of poisoning Wolsey, a rumor which has touched Cromwell’s ears earlier in the book, from the dying lips of another bastard child, this time The Duke of Richmond, the illegitimate son of Henry VIII. The injustice of the accusation drives Cromwell’s grief more than the girl’s rejection and he becomes haunted by the idea of who is spreading this rumor. While it could be any of Cromwell’s numerous enemies, it is never fully resolved. On second or third read of this or the other books, we might find the clues that Mantel hid in the story. Similarly multiple readings of the first two books reveal clues as to who terrorized Anne Boleyn by leaving her hate mail, setting her bed on fire and murdering her dog. Mantel has not exactly solved that mystery but she puts the probable solution into the mouth of one of her least trustworthy characters, Lady Jane Rochford, the wife of the late George Boleyn. If Cromwell believes her, he doesn’t say. We are left to decide for ourselves.

In the end, Cromwell’s bout of grief-driven malaria does contribute to his downfall, as he misses a crucial session of parliament, in which Stephen Gardiner forced through a series of laws meant to reverse the Reformation. Cromwell has to stand by and watch friends and fellows in the struggle to create a bible in English, burned at the stake.  In Wolf Hall, Mantel says that a “blacksmith creates his own tools,” meaning that Cromwell created the very laws which he used to take down Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. The blacksmith imagery pays off in the final chapter of the last book, when we are reminded of Cromwell’s childhood nickname “put an edge on it” when he spies the dull instrument with which is to be executed. In The Mirror and the Light, the blacksmith is left at the mercy of his own tools. Unable to find proof of Cromwell’s heresy as a religious dissenter, Gardiner uses the law that Cromwell created to prevent any of Henry’s heirs marrying without the king’s permission. He takes idle gossip started by Cromwell’s oldest frenemy Eustace Chapuys, that Cromwell is planning to marry the Lady Mary Tudor, and uses it to fabricate the evidence used in Cromwell’s arrest. He uses the exact methods that Cromwell used to bring down Anne Boleyn: spin a rumor into fact while using the king’s momentary dissatisfaction as the window of opportunity to make ordinary ambition look treasonous.  

The scenes with Mary are both heartbreaking and hilarious, as are many of the scenes with other possible, past marriage candidates such as Bess and Jane Seymour. Just as Cromwell’s relationship with frequent correspondents Stephen Vaughn flavored the earlier books, Cromwell’s relationship with Thomas Wyatt is the closest thing to a romance that Cromwell has in The Mirror and the Light. Cromwell’s seemingly irrational loyalty to Wyatt is explained away by a deathbed promise to Wyatt’s father (there is also a convenient deathbed promise to Katherine of Aragon retconned into this book to explain the lengths he goes to to save Mary Tudor from father’s wrath). Another flimsy trope that works because of the strength of Mantel’s characterization. 

In prose that is frequently breathtaking and always interesting, Mantel saves some of her best stuff for describing the relationship between Cromwell and the king. If his friendship with the poet Wyatt is like that of a lover, his strange entanglement with Henry is like that of a spouse. In one scene Cromwell and Henry fall asleep together on a sofa. The intimacy is heartbreaking, partly because we know how it will end. When Cromwell is in his most pitched delirium of fever he realizes that Henry will use him up and spit him out. When he recovers himself, he writes The Book of Henry --treasonous advice to some imagined future privy councilor. Even if he does not consciously acknowledge  that Henry will kill him, as he has his other spouses, his fever self, his true self, seems to realize it.

[sunevial]

Reflection

Author’s Notes and Commentary

Well, here we are at the end.

When I started writing The Followers, I genuinely didn’t think it would come this far. I wasn’t setting out to write a literal novel’s worth of content (122,655 words between everything before I edit the original Followers fic, to be precise) about some self-insert OCs that some friends and I ended up creating on a whim. When I started with this project, it was supposed to be some fun little things between friends, a little like DMP in that regard: a fun fic writing with friends where plenty of bad things happen. Except like its source material, it turned into something much greater than even its creator could’ve imagined. 

Nearly everything that we came up with was pure speculation, because at the time, DMP didn’t have a lot of solid lore to build a more canon-compliant AU (not that I/we were ever trying to do that in the first place, but I digress). Part of me is a bit sad that I was never able to incorporate other Awakened or even write fics centered around the Awakened as opposed to the Followers; at the time most of this was being written, there simply weren’t enough characters in DMP for me to have a cast I could write with. By the time there were, there was no way I could take on another project of this size. The Followers fit that niche of having a relatively large cast with varying interpersonal dynamics that DMP now has, and at the very least, I am glad to see I was able to predict something in the major narrative.

This being said, as a person, I love making self insert characters for stories and media. In my eyes, if I can see myself or a character I have made interacting with a world someone else has created, that piece of media has made a world that others can see themselves in. Even in its early days, DMP created a world that I felt could be expanded upon beyond what we were explicitly told, which is how the Followers really came to be in the first place. Even if none of it is canon, the lore of the Followers still reasonably fits with the information we were given in Season 1, and that makes me happy.

(No, I’m never updating this to explore what we know as of season 3.)

A lot has changed since I started writing the Followers, and more broadly, writing anything for myself again. For those who didn’t know, I had a lot of hangups writing fanfiction for a long time due to some events in my past, and it wasn’t until DMP that I felt both inspired enough and comfortable enough with the community surrounding it to branch out into fic writing once again. Throughout this two and a half year journey, material and backstory elements were fleshed out behind the scenes, quite a bit of stuff got retconned within the Follower’s AU, and overall, I have quite simply changed as a writer and a person. I’ve made a lot of amazing friends (and a significant other) in this process, interacted with a lot of wonderful people, and in something that surprised even me, some of the DMP cast themselves have read my work. It’s really helped me break out of my shell and branch out into other avenues, and I genuinely don’t know where I’d be without writing the Followers.

So, to everyone who has been here on this journey, whether you helped develop the characters (shout outs to my fellow creators, Onyx, Missfoxx, ArcherOwl, Arahul, CollectorOfMyst, Caaarl, KyleTheWarrior, you guys are sincerely wonderful and amazing people to work with), been an avid fan of the series, or have simply enjoyed watching all of this from the side lines: thank you. I couldn’t have done this alone, and I’m glad to have gone on this journey with you all.

The Followers: Agents of Stories

I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t have a working theme going into this whole novel long journey, but I will be touching on some of the various themes I began to weave into the story as time went on.

The truth matters.

The truth is the single most driving factor throughout the series. Characters uncover each other’s backstories, Young Priest learns the real reason why the stories of the Followers have been so inconsistent, Vincent learns the truth about his wife, and even the readers of this fic learn the truth about the lore I’ve created for this AU. Wanting to know what is really going on is really the driver of any modern narrative, because it’s often the readers who are in the dark since we can only experience things from (typically) one perspective as we read. 

Truth, like history, is often written by the victors and people in power.

Murder God and the Followers are experts at lying. To them, truth is a tool, and whoever knows the truth has the most power. The truth is complicated, the truth is messy, and for beings that powerful, the truth is objectively dangerous. If word gets out Gale is the Witch’s daughter, if too many people know Young Priest’s sister is in the Void, if people learn that Priestess actually cares about Lieutenant, that gives other people power over them. This is where the idea of unreliable narrators also comes into play; there’s simply things that the reader doesn’t know because of who’s POV they’re experiencing the world through and what they’re going to care about letting other people know. They don’t want people to know the truth. I

A story’s message is more important than the truth.

Good narratives and good historical records rarely intersect well. There’s always going to be embellishment, stuff that is left out or skimmed over, or timelines that are changed to better suit the story someone is trying to tell. Because the truth is often written by people in power, it makes sense for the general scope of the narrative to be prioritized over getting every single detail correct. No one actually cares if Witch lost her pregnancy, if Huntress was killed by another god, if Advisor actually feared something happening to him. People care about the Witch, the human who has fallen from grace. People care about the Huntress, bringer of vengeance and the hunt. People care about the Advisor, collector of knowledge and secrets. As long as the mythos is served, who cares about the truth?

General Questions

What is the order the Followers joined?

Old Priestess, Lieutenant, Witch, Bookkeeper, Advisor, Huntress, Part Timer, Young Priest

What do all of the Followers represent in terms of game rolls?

Old Priestess and Lieutenant are the Murderers, Witch is the Witch (you can save someone and you can kill someone), Bookkeeper is the Minion (aids the murderers but does not partake in the killings), Advisor is the Seer, Huntress is the Gunslinger, Part Timer is the Doctor/Bodyguard (protect one person every night), and Young Priest is the Gardener.

How many of the Followers have been replaced?

Less than you think. Witch is the last in a long line of typically human or quasi-immortal witches who didn’t survive. The Young Priest position has changed hands multiple times due to that role actively needing some human morality to work properly, which usually results in minds being broken or rebellions taking place. 

Can Old Priestess and Lieutenant bleed?

Old Priestess, yes. Lieutenant, no, but I suppose he could make blood if he really felt like it.

The Masquerade chapter mentioned something about Priestess having "ichor" that helped stabilize Bookkeepers' blood. What is that quote un quote ichor?

It’s just her own blood. Priestess donated her own blood to help stabilize Bookkeeper.

How many years did it take for Bookkeeper’s legs to heal? Are there any scars?

Time doesn’t really exist in the Void, but if I had to put a number to it, about ten years. There are some very small scars, but they’re not easy to see. Bookkeeper also never wears anything that isn’t long sleeved, so take that as you will.

Could you stick your hand through Part Timer’s eye hole? How does he function with half of his skin gone? Does he get blood everywhere?

Yes, you can, but you’d soon hit red strings. His muscle tissue and bones are held together with magic and magic alone, so his ‘undead’ side needs blood only in the vaguest sense. That being said, his clothes are almost always bloodstained to some extent, so that blood has to come from somewhere.

What are the Followers’ opinions on sleeping? Do any of them need sleep?

None of them need sleep. Most of them are too busy to ever want sleep. Huntress occasionally lies down for a nap, and Witch slept a fair bit while she was raising Gale.

How do Advisor's…emotion switches work? Could they get unwillingly triggered by something?

The switches are more metaphorical. The idea is that since he understands how emotions are processed and created and how he responds to them, he can willingly enable or disable his ability to feel them. This also means he can, in theory, control his mood at all given times. However, as shown in Inter Spem et Metum, if he has had no reason to experience a certain emotion until that exact moment, it can temporarily render that control useless, as he doesn’t know enough about it to control it.

Can any of them get sick? If yes, what could cause it and how would they get better?

Biological illness, no. Curse based illnesses, yes. Typically if one of them were to get cursed by something strong enough to hold, Witch would be the one to break it. She’s their primary curse breaker. If Witch gets cursed, the others know enough about curse breaking to get her out of it.

Can they get sick from something their own bodies do (ie. hives from stress, allergies)?

Almost all of their bodies are so infused with magic that most problems that would plague mortals aren’t as much of a concern. It would be a little bit like, say, Aphrodite getting hives from stress. While she might look human, she’s definitely not, and a lot of the problems that come with being human don’t apply.

When did Retribution take place?

Before Part Timer joined. That’s the closest to an actual answer you’re going to get.

How many of the Followers actually know each other’s stories?

Everyone has an inkling of the truth of the others, but only Witch and Bookkeeper have let the others know their full story. Bookkeeper has never really cared, and Witch was all but forced to tell her full story. 

Are there any ships that the creators ship among the Followers?

Old Priestess and Lieutenant is shipped by Old Priestess’s creator (Missfoxx), Lieutenant’s creator (Onyx), and me. It’ll never be canon, because Lieutenant doesn’t know what love feels like and Old Priestess will never admit her own feelings, but it is a strong ship between the three of us. Bookkeeper’s creator (Caaarl) and I actually ship Bookkeeper and Witch due to their unspoken bond they developed being the only former humans amongst ancient deities and eldritch entities. Again, non canon, but it’s definitely an exploration for both of us how the two of them would cope with such traumatic transformations.    

What actually happened with Vincent’s wish in Chapter 20?

This was intentionally left vague due to it being from Vincent’s point of view, and Vincent calls himself not a smart man. Essentially, Murder God and the Followers caused a timeline divergence due to their canon ability to fuck up timelines as they so desire. Gale still married Vincent Marshall Reid, but he simply just died in the war overseas and never took Murder God’s deal. Vincent Marshall Reid of DMP canon instead grew up in West Virginia and married Abigail Crane. Essentially, the two of them exist in different timelines now, unable to ever interact again in any meaningful way.

Is Gale going to be okay?

Gale is Witch’s daughter. Witch refuses to let Gale get mixed up with the cults. Even with her current actions and making a deal with Murder God, Gale is considered a free agent and always will be a free agent. She and the kids will be fine. Star sickness isn’t a thing in the Followers AU either, so she won’t be coughing up goop.

What is actually going to happen to Young Priest in Chapter 21?

That’s meant for reader speculation; part of the horror of the Followers is not knowing specifically what they’re willing to do to someone and how far they’re willing to go to make someone into the image they need. I’ll probably expand on how I think he turns out once everything has been done to him, but I can tell you this. His eyes are turned a solid sparkling blue.

[trishyeves]

Poorly Planned Halo Post

TO START WITH: SPOILERS FOR ALL OF YOUNG JUSTICE SEASON 3, DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT. NOT PLANNING ON SPOILING THE WHOLE SEASON, BUT WHO KNOWS WHERE THIS WILL GO

So, because my brain is weirdly cyclical and I’ve randomly gotten back into Young Justice, I’ve been trolling through Tumblr regarding the show. In doing so, I’ve run into a lot of posts that deal with Halo, and they inspired me to write this poorly planned, probably a trainwreck post.

Before I say anything else, I feel like I should make something clear: people react to media really differently (obviously), especially if the material is personal to them in some way. For a lot of people what was done with Halo is season 3 of Young Justice isn’t just hard to watch, it was a travesty that completely ruined the show for them. That is totally fine. I would never pretend I have the authority to tell people if they should or shouldn’t be outraged by something, or mediate their reaction to a show. This is all just a splattering of my thoughts and feelings on this messy as hell lump of topics. If you read this and think my point of view is bullshit and hate what I have to say, I can totally understand why. This is just my two cents, as someone who is genderfluid/non-binary and queer. (Though I am not a person of color, I do not identify as a woman, and I have no connection to the Muslim faith.)

To start with the smaller issues: how Halo does at representing nonbinary people, women of color, Muslim people, and Bisexual/Pansexual/Queer people. I 100% agree that they could have done better in all of those departments, full-stop. In the scene establishing her as nonbinary, it would have been much better if they had established what pronouns she prefers (I’m using she/her throughout because that is what is used in the text and she/her nonbinary people are valid), how she wants to be seen, and it should have been brought up more often. The fact her only brush being interested in a girl/feminine person was a kiss that made her feel guilty for cheating on her boyfriend sucks, as it conflates her kissing Harper with shame. I don’t really feel qualified to wade into the area surrounding the portrayal of her wearing a hijab or the fact that she wasn’t really Muslim, Gabrielle was, but I have heard a lot of people’s thoughts on those topics, and I think they’re important to hear and consider.

On all of those points, I don’t think it’s possible to not consider them at least partial failures. That said, I do appreciate the attempt to give us this intersectional character who can be so many different pieces of representation at once while also being a lovable and well-developed character. I know for a lot of people the failings of her portrayal invalidate any good will their attempts at representation could have fostered, but that’s not how I feel about it.

Onto the big thing: Halo dying, graphically, a lot. It is, to say the very least, a bad look. A lot of people are upset about the fact that one of the handful of queer characters on the show, a woman of color, one who is associated with the Muslim faith, is shown being violently killed episode after episode. They have every right to be. I find it pretty abhorrent too.

It was a bad idea, a really bad idea. BUT I also don’t think it taints the entire show, and I don’t think it signifies that the people creating the show wanted to show women/queer people/poc dying graphically. That was the effect, but I highly doubt malice, sadism, or bigotry was the direct cause.

From here on out, I am talking based on my understanding of worldbuilding, character writing, television production, and what I know about the development of this show in particular. But I am not an insider with special knowledge of what went down behind the scenes, and I could be totally full of shit on a number of points.

First off, Halo is basically a completely original character. The Outsiders comic series had a Halo character who was also a gestalt entity created by a being related to the Source taking over a dead woman’s body, but from what I can tell on the whole they have little to do with her. They made the decision to change her host body’s nationality to Quaraci, probably for better representation, and changed the entity in her body into a Mother Box’s soul, which I am fairly sure was to tie her in better to the overall season’s New Gods focus, the same way they did with altering Cyborg’s origin story.

Second, they changed some of her powers, but one of the ones they kept was the idea of healing and being able to resurrect herself from death. Now, the only way to really make that work in a visual medium is for her to die sometimes, then resurrect. That does create a weird narrative element, since no other characters get badly injured/fatally wounded at the rate Halo does, but it’s a way to show her using her abilities. Of course, a lot of people have said, rightly, that there’s no need for those deaths to be so graphic. They could have been off-screen, or hinted at, or a number of other things. If the season was aired on Cartoon Network, as was originally planned, I am certain that’s what they would have done.

Thirdly, and this is the big one, I am fairly sure the decision to make her deaths as graphic as possible was tied in with it being aired on DC Universe. Sure, the platform means they could do it, but I also think it’s related to why they did it. It’s possible that Greg Weisman wanted to show off some gore thanks to the liberties granted him, but I think the more likely option is this was studio interference. They looked at the audience Young Justice had developed, one that tended heavily towards older teens and adults, and made it a condition for the show being brought back on the new streaming service that they needed to up the age rating of the show itself to match. Specifically, they probably requested more violence and for it to be more gratuitous where possible. After all, this is DC, and we all know how much they adore making things far more graphic and violent than they have any right to be, all for the sake of making their properties look more ‘grown up’.

Now, clearly some of that violence went to other characters. Victor Stone’s transformation into Cyborg is easily the most gruesome version of that story yet, and several characters throughout get pretty terrible deaths. (Baron Bedlam, for example.) But Halo got the brunt of them. After all, they needed to have more violence on the regular, but Greg Weisman hates killing characters, especially in this show. It’s a huge sandbox with as many DC characters from various eras as they can possibly fit inside it, so they don’t want heroes or villains dying when they don’t need to. But they do have this main character, one who can die again and again and again, and who can come back every time. So, Halo became a gore magnet.

I’d also wager that her being non-binary was a late addition to her character, something they only threw in as a scene once they realized that, as a living machine in a human corpse, there was no reason for her to have an attachment to any gender, and when they realized they could use that to bump up their LGBTQ+ representation, they did the scene.

None of this makes what they did good, or right, or acceptable. It still isn’t. I really, really wish it hadn’t been in the show, it turns my stomach. But at the same time, I don’t think they wrote that element for the season in an attempt to sadistically torture a marginalized character. They absolutely should have hired some sensitivity writers to look things over and catch these things, and I hope the controversy all this caused means they’ll be more careful in the future. But I am still happy they created Halo as they did and gave her to us as a fanbase, even with those disgusting death scenes. If Season 4 does actually happen, I think there is a chance they’ll have heard our voices and work to do better. This is a case where ignorance, rather than cruelty, was the cause, at least from what I can see. If you still hate that part of the show, or the show itself, I’m not expecting this to change your mind, and I don’t want it to. I just wanted to throw out my thoughts, before I collapse into sleep from a long shift at work.