#you can pick up the characters or worldbuilding ideas or plot points that you actually liked

[tossawary]

I was thinking about Xie Lian being able to snap the Xin Mo sword in half with his bare hands again, and then I thought to myself... "Wait, Xie Lian and Luo Binghe interaction could be really cute, though?"

Like, let's say that Xie Lian, during his time as a wandering trash god, accidentally falls into an interdimensional rift and ends up in the SVSSS world. His luck is bad like that. But while this is weird, sure, it's not that bad! The worlds are pretty similar and he can still make his living! So, Xie Lian wanders along as usual, curiously learning about this new world, picking through trash, occasionally punching demonic beasts to death to rescue awed civilians.

And at some point, Xie Lian runs into a young Luo Binghe while he's living on the streets. Let's say that Xie Lian rolls into town shortly before the death of Binghe's adoptive mother, has a few sweet encounters with this cute and kind child who doesn't have much to spare for a trash collector, and is there to comfort his new young friend when Binghe's adoptive mother passes away. Xie Lian is still there when Binghe gets thrown out onto the streets and he agrees to help the boy travel to Cang Qiong Mountain Sect.

So, Binghe gets to spend a month or two as a trash-collecting god's apprentice! He doesn't know that Xie Lian is a god. He suspects that Xie Lian is just a very powerful rogue cultivator who is living very humbly for some reason. The time isn't entirely pleasant, because life is hard and Binghe is grieving, but Xie Lian understands pain very well and is an excellent companion. He sees Binghe safely to Cang Qiong.

At which point, clingy Binghe does not want to separate from this extremely nice person, but Xie Lian insists on it. He wants Binghe to have a better life. He's worried that his bad luck will somehow spread to this poor boy who reminds him of so many other people he's loved and lost. Xie Lian supervises the confusing entrance exam, while the adult Cang Qiong cultivators desperately try to figure out who this strange person is (Airplane Bro is going "???!!!"), and then leaves wistfully. Binghe will later look back on this particular period of his life very fondly.

Xie Lian can then go in and out of the SVSSS plot as a person pleases! I think it would be very funny if Liu Qingge ended up with an unwilling crush on Xie Lian as well, when they have a spar for some reason and Xie Lian handily SLAMS him into the ground. Xie Lian would probably end up running into Tianlang-Jun and Zhuzhi-Lang somehow, both of whom I think would end up being a little obsessed with him.

I think that the best place to bring Xie Lian and Binghe back together is maybe after Binghe escapes the Endless Abyss. So that Binghe can have a nice cry session on Xie Lian's shoulder. Xie Lian can possibly then introduce Binghe to Tianlang-Jun and Zhuzhi-Lang. Or else generally fumble his way through facilitating Bingqiu actually communicating and being less of a painful mess. Shen Qingqiu (Shen Yuan) is very confused by this character?! Where did he come from??? Who is he??? He's very nice, though, and Shen Qingqiu is feeling maybe a liiiiittle jealous over Binghe.

(I don't know how to handle the System in this AU, but I do like the idea of the System just... not being able to handle Xie Lian. Xie Lian is a god from a different worldbuild. He kind of just breaks everything.)

(If you want to get a little angsty and ghostly, you could have a plotline in which Xie Lian helps the ghost of Shen Jiu somehow. Qijiu resolution?)

Binghe would probably be open to the idea of getting together with Xie Lian as well as Shen Qingqiu. He has a type! He is full of love! But Xie Lian is definitely not interested and is very good at wiggling away from come-ons, so Binghe respectfully doesn't pursue that passing thought / childhood crush, no matter what Tianlang-Jun is saying about threesomes again.

Binghe ends up using the (tamed? broken?) Xin Mo sword to send Xie Lian (his "gege") back to Xie Lian's own world. (Or Mobei-Jun could maybe do it?) Xie Lian has been gone for years and wants to see how his world is doing. Binghe tearfully promises to visit him regularly and to come get him WHENEVER HE WANTS. Xie Lian pats his head and agrees to stay in touch.

So, then Xie Lian tumbles out back into his own world and into the start of the plot of TGCF. And at any point in the plot of TGCF, he's now able to summon a heavenly demon from another dimension (with a super powerful sword that can move mountains?) who would absolutely be willing to fight all of heaven for him.

Xie Lian generally isn't going to do this, because he doesn't want to involve Binghe in his problems, even though Binghe is CHEWING THE WALLS with the desire to help him in return. However, Xie Lian does really like to go out with Binghe and Shen Qingqiu (and sometimes people like Airplane Bro and Mobei-Jun and Liu Qingge as well) to nice restaurants every other week or so. "So, what's new?" "Oh, I've ascended to heaven again and it's a little troublesome, ha ha. How are you?"

Hua Cheng is... nonplussed. On one hand, he's a little jealous. On the other hand, FINALLY, people can recognize that Xie Lian is the best person in the world. Luo Binghe has GOOD TASTE and is just some well-meaning kid whom Xie Lian likes a lot and who rightly thinks heaven sucks. Hua Cheng is determinedly shaking Luo Binghe's hand and giving him advice from a Ghost King to a future Demon Emperor.

(Tianlang-Jun CANNOT be allowed into Ghost City. He will NOT leave. I think that Hua Cheng is strong enough to throw him out if necessary, but Tianlang-Jun and Zhuzhi-Lang would just keep slipping back in somehow. Permanently banned from the gambling tables no matter what he offers, but Tianlang-Jun is still allowed to hang out at the Ghost City playhouse because he quickly becomes the favorite audience member of all of the ghost actors. He has AWFUL taste. Yin Yu hates this guy.)

(Also, I do think that Xie Lian would not really like the Xin Mo sword at all. E'ming is a beautiful baby boy made from and by Hua Cheng, who is Xie Lian's favorite person in the world who has never done anything wrong ever. Xin Mo is some random blade that destroys Luo Binghe's mental health and turns him into the worst version of himself! Xie Lian could and possibly should snap that possession sword like a twig.)

[byoldervine]

How To Always Have Writing Ideas…

For A New Story:

1. Keep a list. Any time you have one of those sudden bursts of inspiration in the middle of writing a separate story, don’t quit your current WIP or pretend you’ll ‘just remember it’, put it into a separate list. You can always go back to this later on

2. Writing prompts. Look them up, use random word generators, pick a random object you can see, whatever helps you come up with any idea at all. Write a few paragraphs. Can it evolve from there?

3. People watch. Go to a public place and make up backstories for the strangers you come across. That man in the hat is using it to hide his elf ears. That woman with the bright pink hair didn’t dye it, she’s secretly the main character of an anime trying to dodge all the tropes and cliches. That toddler is actually a guardian angel reincarnated to watch over their new baby sibling. What brings them to this place? Where did they come from? Where are they going next?

To Continue An Existing Story:

1. Act it out. Say the words aloud, act out what your characters are doing, get props or people to act off of if you need to. See what feels like the most natural progression of the moment

2. Coffee shop AU, or other substitutional one-shot. Good for establishing dynamics between two or more characters, or even just working out a lone character’s day-to-day. Just write a few paragraphs about your characters entering a coffee shop or similar appropriate establishment/ordinary location. What do they do? What do they order to eat/drink? What do they say to each other? How do they treat the staff and other customers? If all else fails, write what they do after they leave, as if it were an ordinary day for them

3. Rubber duck it. This is something programmers use to work out where they went wrong in their code, but I’ve found it can work for figuring out story stuff as well. What you do is get a rubber duck, or any other object of focus, and start explaining your problem to it out loud. In this case you can read your chapter to the duck, or even give it the full run-down of the plot so far. Warning; side effects may include getting frustrated that the problem was right in front of you and subsequently throwing the duck

For Both:

1. Writing graveyards. I talked a bit about them in a previous post, but writing graveyards are basically just the folder you store your deleted scenes in instead of yeeting them into the void. Reread those, see if they have anything you can recontextualise or repurpose

2. Combine ideas. My WIP Byoldervine is a combination of two separate plots I had that I realised I’d be able to combine - twice. I first realised I could put together my ‘angel and demon heroes protecting humans from a war between heaven and hell’ story and my ‘quest through the fantasy realm to find the ingredients to a cure for a dying god’ story into the same universe as two sides of the same story as a duology. Then I realised I could just remove a few characters, tweak a few plot points and mash them completely together into one book. Combining them works wonders and minimises worldbuilding

3. Go out with friends or family. I guarantee that the one time you’ll be flooded with inspiration is when you don’t have an opportunity to write it down

[papermonkeyism]

I think I'm finally starting to recover, after a few years of artistic dry season.

The plague was a big hit, then losing my job and finally my social life collapsing once my IRL DnD group basically disbanded pretty much destroyed what creative juiced I had always lived on up to that point, and it's been HARD to just not having any desire to be creative or do anything.

But now that I have a job again, and have had it for long enough my bank account is stable, and having been adopted into a new DnD group that's active both in-game (weekly game sessions!) and outside of it (we actually talk and communicate generally as well! It's mostly online, but it's still more than I've had in years), I have started to feel more like myself again. That, and the brain meds. I can't overstate how big it is that my default doesn't have to be brain fog anymore.

Like, I'm doing evening doodles again? I'm actually having fun thinking up creatures and characters and plots again? I stopped carrying my sketchbook and pencil case with me everywhere I went during my dry stint of nothing, but now I actually feel like I'm missing it when I don't have it on me at times, like during coffee shop visits.

And I kinda... want to MAKE a thing again.

(Just thinking out loud again, pay no mind.)

I miss having a Project.

Jumping back into making fully plotted out comic feels a bit too much at this stage, though, so I probably won't dedicate myself wholely to something of that scale.

I don't know what exactly will be the final shape of Arcanth's eventual thing, but I'm currently enjoying myself in the fiddly worldbuilding stage. (And just so you know, in the slight off chance that I might maybe pick Wurr back up again some day, I probably won't tell you about it. After all this time and all the messages I've gotten, I don't trust you guys with that one anymore. Even if I would eventually get back to posting it online, it won't happen untill I have a full year's worth of buffer and that would still be a loooooooong way from now even IF I got back to it full time, and I still have that day job besides anyway.)

But what if...

I think an art book or a zine or something might be more achievable at this point.

I feel like the dinosaur project thingy needs some more fiddling with its eventual format (I know I already have enough concept doodles to fill a zine on its own, but I crave an excuse to go ham with watercolors and make full illustrations), but it's one option I still want to make eventually.

And I kinda want to do a slight redesign for the Singing People. (I bought a skull replica a while ago that had narrower snout than how I had drawn them. And I know it doesn't matter that much, and I can always invoke artistic licence and "they aren't necessarily supposed to be any specific real life dinosaur species, it could always go with the 'undiscovered' route if I feel like it and the Troodon/Stenonychosaurus material is super fragmentary anyway", but I'm pretty sure it would bother me anyway if I didn't at least try it out and see how it looked.)

Though I think I got an idea about what to do with Entica!

Those of you who've been here a while know that one started out as my pandemic project. The world had just shut down along with my job warehouse, things were still new and uncertain, and I suddenly had so much free time and not much to sink my creative juices into, and I wanted something low pressure to do.

So I dug up an old setting from my teenage years two decades ago, gave it a facelift, threw out my teenage baggage and just ran wild. No planning, no plot, just art.

The "no planning" part did get back to bite me when the morbs eventually hit and I finally ran out of the creative juices, but that's still a lot of very good material, right there, ready to use.

But I just thought of a new framing device that would work with the already existing material AND give the character more of a goal and agency to make plotting more fun! And I think I like it.

Instead of a random scribe with no background from a place I didn't bother designing who just wants to see the world, Didor now works for a library that has sent her on a mission [to document something and/or take a message to *place*]. She still wants to see the world, but now she has a background, goal and a motive to do so!

And instead of just hanging around at Maaro's cart while Maaro does her own unrelated thing, Maaro is actively helping in her goal! While also doing her job.

I feel that having Didor be on a field work mission would give it more structure while not having to technically retcon anything already existing, and gives more solid excuse to do things than "random encounter number 82" would. Also potential reasons for further adventures ("While you're already out there, could you maybe also do X on the way?")

Also I want to insert nawani in it earlier. I didn't even have them as part of the setting untill psrt way through, and I want to show them off more.

Maybe a travel journal, perhaps?

[teaveetamer]

i read through a lot of your analyses and i still can't tell what some of your stances are, but i just wanted to know how much you agree with my own stances on edelgard and dimitri/3H.

3H is obviously not a well thought-out political treatise on the ramifications of war and different styles of political change. it just isn't. it ends far too quickly and is too simplistic to ever be anything similar.

what 3H is incredible at is character writing. this is why i simply don't understand why people "hate" edelgard OR dimitri. neither of these people are saints. they've both done horrific things. but they both portray trauma in such fascinating and complex ways that you rarely see in videogames. the parallels they have and the way they see the world are just so compelling to me that i actually avoid finishing CF/SS/AM because it always leaves me feeling so emotional afterward and sometimes i just want a nice comfort game.

that being said, i do take issue with the way dimitri's arc resolves. i think it's extremely unrealistic how he just "snapped out" of his intense mental problems. as someone who has also struggled with mental health, it's a very slow process and often it feels like one step forward, two steps back. i wish that they had left his recovery a lot more incomplete, or that the game had lasted longer so his recovery felt more organic.

this is why i prefer edelgard purely as a character because i think the way she represses her emotions completely and is slowly corrupted by her inability to trust or love herself is a story that makes a lot more sense to me.

I'm not sure in which respects my stances are unclear, but I'm always happy to clarify if you just ask! Keep in mind that this blog is like three years old at this point so if you go back far enough you'll probably find contradicting things, as my opinions have developed and changed over the years. So if that's the problem just assume the most recent stuff is the most accurate.

I will say that while 3H can have some very good character moments, I also think it's incredibly disappointing in a lot of ways. The plot, writing, and worldbuilding being so messy just doesn't give the characters a good foundation to stand on, so character moments often come across extremely hollow to me.

I could name countless examples but I think the most obvious one that everyone picks up on is Gronder Field. First, we're told that this is extremely sad and difficult for all of the characters involved, despite never or almost never seeing the students from different houses interact with each other at any point during the main story. If you don't recruit then it's entirely possible to go the entire Academy portion of the game without seeing a single cross-house interaction beyond the house leaders.

They all point to the feast they had after the battle of Eagle and Lion in the Academy part, but that happens entirely off screen. It's not even really described beyond "it was fun" and "we were all sitting together". Emblem Claude in Engage gives a better idea of what happened there than 3H ever does. A piece of DLC for a completely different game in the series describes what is supposed to be a key interaction better than the game it was actually from!

And then you actually get there and it's contrived AF. There's literally no reason for the BL and GD to be fighting each other at any point but they all kill each other anyway. There's no fog of war. Characters will even recognize each other before they fight and then continue fighting each other anyways despite having absolutely no reason to?

And then it just ends and we're all told to feel very sad about it, but why should we? It's not earned. These characters don't know each other or care about each other, most of them weren't even on opposite sides. It comes across as feeling dumb and unearned, which makes the characters reacting to it completely 100% straight as if it were this huge but unavoidable tragedy come off as confusing and overwrought.

Edelgard's writing as an entire other can of worms that I've gotten into too many times to count, so I'll try to keep this short.

I'll preface this by saying I don't have a problem with people liking or relating to Edelgard in any way. Also, just because something has problems doesn't mean you can't have found meaning in it. I can tell you really enjoy the character anon, and that's great! I wouldn't want to take that away from you.

Buuuuuut since I'm giving my opinion here... I don't agree with her being a well written depiction of trauma. I feel like, especially now, the fandom tends to engage with the Edelgard we all wanted instead of the one we actually got.

Again I'll use a specific example (well actually two) to illustrate my point.

It's hard to take her trauma seriously when it's immediately undercut by her doodling pictures of her crush, getting embarrassed about it, and getting teased. This happens twice. They do this twice! Once in the explore section immediately after Ladislava and Randolph literally die right in front of her, and once after you could have potentially killed Claude and she's talking about being locked in a fucking dungeon!

Like it blows my mind that more people don't talk about this, especially the latter example. You have just potentially killed someone. She's sitting there. Talking about being locked in a dungeon, tortured, and experimented on. And then your character's reaction is to tease her for doodling a picture of you. And they did this two times, so it's not like it was an accident!

So like how am I supposed to read this, exactly? Either the entire scene is bunk and you're not really meant to take the trauma portion seriously, it's all just a big joke, or... or you're supposed to find teasing someone going through a genuine trauma response endearing and enjoyable..? It's just. I've been looking at this scene and the numerous other Edelgard scenes like it and I just don't get there. I don't understand how to read this in a way that isn't incredibly belittling or sexist or SEVERELY undercutting what should be a serious character moment.

But people want it to be this serious, well-written character moment for her. I don't blame anyone for that, because that's what I would have wanted too! But it's just... it's so crazy disrespectful on every level, to treat a female character's trauma like it's a funny quirk or an opportunity to flirt/tease? I can damn well guarantee that no male character would be treated with that amount of disrespect, and we know that because Dimitri exists and at no point is his trauma ever played for a joke or undercut like this! It's not perfectly written, but it's written with respect to the subject and the character.

There's an absurd degree of sexism baked into the writing of 3H that just doesn't get addressed by the fandom at large, so I kind of find it frustrating.

And worse, sometimes when you try to engage with that and critique it you're shouted down or treated as if you are the problem, like I somehow spoke the sexism of the game into existence just by pointing it out.

I could go on but I'll cut myself off here

[sagemoderocklee]

Writers Truth & Dare Ask Game

🍄 🍬 ❄️ 🏜️ 🦴

🍄 ⇢ share a head canon for one of your favourite ships or pairings

got a lot of headcanon asks today in my inbox lol... uh for this ill go with my headcanon about Tenten not being without family since ive got two asks for that levels thing i reblogged earlier to answer

so my hc and how i usually approach Tenten is that she comes from a weapon smithing clan. Her clan originally came from Dragon Kingdom, but like... so, so long ago. like a thousand years ago. they were originally trading in what is now Fire, and eventually some started to settle instead of going back to Dragon Kingdom. They established themselves as blacksmiths and as times changed, became weapon makers almost exclusively. Her clan still makes other things besides weapons, but they specialize in weapon making.

Tenten lives with her grandmother since her parents died during Obito's assault on Konoha with the kyuubi. Tenten's clan lives in the industrial district of Konoha, and Neji (who is alive thank you) moves there after he and Tenten have been dating for a bit.

Tenten, of course, prioritizes fighting with weapons, but she also is a good smith herself, and does a lot of unique work with weapons.

I gave Tenten's clan a name, of course, so her family/clan name is Nie, which means 'pattern of a sword blade'.

🍬 ⇢ post an unpopular opinion about a popular fandom character

drawing a blank beyond all my usual things like gaara being obsessed with naruto being stupid or like the way ppl generally approach Gaara is ableist and disregards his history prior to Yashamaru tryna kill him or lee not being anbu/akatsuki/hokage etc and also ppl making lee sexy is stupid like he's weird looking and thats fine and i think his weird looks are charming and cute... all of which ive talked about before

um i guess ill say that sakura being self-centered is actually a really important and interesting character trait. it doesn't make her an awful, irredeemable character, it's just a character flaw and i think ppl who love her tend to ignore that about her because the people who absolutely hate her are always callin her a bitch etc. like i love sakura but she can be a bitch and i think that's interesting and okay and like if you really like a character you can lean into their flaws without that being like a condemnation of the character. she doesn't have to be like sunshine and daisies to be a good character

❄️ ⇢ what's your dream theme/plot for a fic, and who would write it best?

the dream theme/plot for a fic is one i'd probably just write myself. not like for any reason other than if i have an idea i usually wanna execute it myself, and at this point a lot of my ideas exist within the worldbuilding ive done and not that other ppl dont or cant but my interest are always gonna lean more into the political spectrum of storytelling and i think that's generally my niche and not as many ppl write those stories.

i think if there was absolutely something i didnt wanna write id honestly probably not wanna read it either, so im always like shit at answer these kinda questions cause once i have an idea im like 'ok ill write that someday'

🏜️ ⇢ what's your favourite type of comment to receive on your work?

always gonna love long comments that talk about the themes of the story, that bring up things the reader thinks is foreshadowing, direct lines from the fic, and so on. i like when ppl are like rlly analyzing what ive written and telling me their thoughts and what they think is gonna happen. i think by far my fave thing is ppl tryna guess what's coming and seeing how close or how far off they are, and when ppl do pick up on foreshadowing that is just... chef's kiss.

🦴 ⇢ is there a piece of media that inspires your writing?

i find inspiration in a lot of things and it rlly is gonna depend on what im writing at the time. sometimes i get inspired by music (a lot of my gaalee fics were originally inspired by Florence+the Machine song for instance), sometimes it's like a poem or a book, or a tv show, but it rlly is always gonna depend on what im writing.

but my perspective is that art begets art. art is always in a state of inspiring more art, whether its the originating artist being inspired by their own work or another being inspired by their work, i think art is at its core always birthing more art.

with fic i dont think i could pinpoint one single thing that's inspiring me at any given moment, but i am often being inspired by other things whether it's music or just like an article about something.

[bigskydreaming]

wouriqueen

Unhelpful answer : I don't have one, because in general I really struggle to ever get them to that point where they feel fleshed out. I can imagine their entire life, but personality wise they always seem flat to me. So let me rudely turn the question around 😅: do you have one advice to change that ?

One? No. That would require brevity and I don't do that. Can't stand the stuff. I simply do not partake. Buuuuuut if you're in the market for a gratuitously long and involved post about my process in general, for you to mine for any useful ideas as needed but mostly just existing to satisfy my vaguely defined plans for doing a post about all this at some point anyway and co-opting this as an opportunity to get that off my plate and go yeah this totally counts, one hundred percent what I was intending all along, go me - well then......I totally wrote this JUST for you and am obviously not lying for effect haha who would even do that.

Okay! So.

Hmm. Where to start. Right, so this is totally just my own made-up approach, roughly generalizing how I've honed and streamlined my own creating process over the years. So adapt as needed, don't take it as anything other than a starting point to figuring out something that works best for you. I call it my Three Pronged Approach and I use it for both character creation and worldbuilding. It somewhat comes into play in developing plots but in a different way that doesn't quite match what I'm getting into here, so focusing just on the first two. Actually, we're really just focusing on character, so assume the Three Pronged part applies to the worldbuilding as well (once we get to it) but for purposes of mapping this out, we're starting at a point where the worldbuilding has largely already been done.

It'll take a bit to get to the actual character/personality development part, but I'm not used to actually detailing the process to someone else, or breaking down any specific part of it, let alone outside my own head, so the most cohesive way for me to run through it all mentally is to just lay things out from start to finish, as generalized as possible.

So like I said in that other post, personally speaking, I tend to prioritize character over plot in my approach to writing a story. I almost always start with a setting, with worldbuilding being my initial creation stage and go-to for projects before figuring out a story that suits that setting. Basically for me its the equivalent of mapping out the landscape and laying it down as a base to build upon. For our purposes here, I'm gonna use one of my established settings - you've seen my posts about my Changelings 'verse over the years, so I'm just gonna use that here, since various worldbuilding posts about it are easily referenced here and in my #changelings' verse tag.

Once I have the world I want to work in, which acts as both the foundation and the frame for everything that follows, I figure out my basic premise. What I want to write about happening within that world, in basic logline terms.

I personally do not consider coming up with my premise the same thing as coming up with a plot.....there are ten different plots you could go with for any underlying premise like Character X plots revenge after being left for dead or Character B is hired to Protect Character C from an unknown threat, etc, etc. I consider the premise to just be a snapshot of the big picture as it looks when zoomed out to the nth degree, more just about picking a genre, an overall goal and an obstacle to reaching that - but again, each only conceptualized in the vaguest of ways at this point.

Then, picking a spot somewhere in the setting, within the frame of the chosen world, I 'pencil in' the faceless, practically shapeless figure of the first character denoted in the premise, like sketching out the roughest rendering of them, no details to them whatsoever. And then if there are any others mentioned or alluded to within the premise - with only characters referenced in the premise being absolutely essential to the story at that point - I add the written/brainstorming equivalent of a rough sketch of these other characters and place them somewhere in the background contained within the frame....each in positions relative to the first one, as described by my basic premise.

So the world I'm working in is my Changelings 'Verse, and for a specific setting I'm going with Bordertown, as described in the reference posts above. Let's say for my premise I go with "Character B is hired to Protect Character C from an unknown threat," and so my main character at this point is Character B. They're the first one I put in frame. I add in Character C somewhere behind them, however that's best visualized conceptually, and then on the other side of Character C opposite where I positioned Character B, I just....sketch in some rough, cross-hatched lines denoting some threat to Character C that Character B is standing between.

Conceptually, I visualize this area being big enough that this shading COULD obscure another character, but keep the overall shaded area formless enough that it could just as easily be obscuring some depiction or representation of a threat not embodied by a single character, or even a character at all. At this point, I probably don't even know myself. I don't need to.

Finally, I add in one last figure, even more lightly sketched into frame than the others, because I suspect their position might shift at some point as overall story and character details become more defined....for now, let's imagine this last figure placed in the background as though looming over both Characters B and C. This is Character A, not specifically mentioned in the premise but alluded to and essential to the story even at this stage....because the premise implies that someone had to hire Character B and give them the mandate to protect Character C from the threat.

Granted, this could end up being an organization or multiple people rather than just one character, but we're going with Character A for now even if they just end up the point man or spokesperson for a larger group later in the plotting stages....the point is, even without knowing if the threat is a person, persons, or some other force, situation, crisis, natural disaster or more......an individual had to act with agency to move Characters B and C into the initial positions laid out by the premise, so whomever did that has to be an (or include at least one) actual character.

So now we've got our frame (larger world and time period, ie the Changelings 'Verse in the present day), our background (somewhere within Bordertown), our premise with at least three characters central or at the very least necessary to the story, and some undefined threat.

Next, before anything else, I'm picking a theme. Well, more like themes, as this is where the Three Pronged Approach starts to come into play. Basically, the whole idea of the Three Pronged Approach is at any stage of narrative development where you have to pick or settle on specific elements to be added to either a character, the plot, the greater narrative structure, whatever.....never pick just one. Always pick three.

Going with one, IMO, usually ends up resulting in bare-bones plotting and characterization and runs the risk of feeling kinda...paint by numbers. It gives the overall story and characters the elements absolutely essential to advancing the plot and character arcs, but usually not much else. The characters have exactly what character traits they need to level up through each stage of their character arc, even if they don't know it at first, they're given the specific tools they need to advance to each next stage of the plot, and the precise theme fundamental to whatever messaging the story is meant to contain is kept front and center the whole time, because there's nothing else to shift perception to, thematically speaking.

With just one element picked at any given juncture, by extension always being the exact element essential to fulfilling each aspect of the narrative....your story and characters can easily end up feeling hollow and made to order. Existing purely for the purposes of telling this story rather than feeling like characters that exist and a particular story being told about them.

Now, going with two picks for elements added at any juncture you have to fill in and flesh out with specific choices....better than just going with one, but now you run the risk of things feeling made to order or with the Hand of the Author clearly visible throughout because your story is too perfectly balanced.

With two picks at each juncture, more often than not, you're going to end up with a bunch of perfect foils, each element paired with either its ideal complement or most optimal opposition. The characters have exactly what they need to level up in each stage of their arc....but also, whatever trait most easily gets in the way of that, but never in insurmountable ways. They're given whatever tools are needed to progress them through the plot, along with either a perfect red herring meant to distract them from choosing the proper tool first or something intended to break on the first attempt at passing each obstacle, forcing the character to hunt around for the second, actually essential tool needed to unlock the next stage of the plot. The story's larger theme is either paired with something that complements it perfectly as if made (or picked) with that in mind, or positioned perfectly opposite to act as a thematic foil.

Point being....your story now includes more conflict, less of 'and each and every scene is facilitated by having the exact element needed' making the readers feel its all a little too convenient, and your characters are now more detailed, having internal conflicts and obstacles to realizing each stage of their character arc....

But it still can easily fall into the trap of all of these added conflicts and characteristics feeling superficial and not invoking a sense of stakes...because the second choice of element is so often TOO perfectly selected, in the contexts of each initially chosen element.

The point of the Three Pronged Approach is when in doubt, add not one or two but three options whenever new elements need to be introduced....because with three, the third choice acts as a natural wildcard throwing off the perfect positioning or pairing of the other two. With a third point mapped out in conjunction with every pair of character traits, themes, narrative obstacles....its a lot easier to end up with an organic story, plot and characters because that third angle is almost never going to come across as having been introduced specifically TO counterbalance the other two....the three points simply exist and whatever shape is created by triangulating from each point...its not predisposed to being any particular shape a reader is expecting those three points to make.

And yeah, three points CAN make a pattern, and if all three are still chosen with complementing each other in mind, that pattern will stick out and again make things feel visibly scripted - but unlike when selecting two options, with three there's not that default instinct to pick a clear and obvious partner for the others. Its a lot easier and more likely for your three choices to just be three different choices...and then from THERE you can weigh different ways of juxtaposing all three elements or positioning them relative to each other, and wind up with a lot more (and more nuanced) options than two perfectly paired elements could ever generate.

So, getting back to our outline....I've got my frame (World: Changelings 'Verse), my background (Setting: Bordertown, present day), my premise (Character B is hired to protect Character C from an unknown threat) and next I'm picking themes. Specifically, three of them.

I usually make my first pick of theme with my worldbuilding in mind. The final product of my worldbuilding always contains a bunch of different elements picked with the Three Pronged Approach so the world I'm working with usually already lends itself in my mind to specific themes....and for my first pick I usually grab from one of these. With the Changelings 'Verse, my big themes include stuff like having trouble recognizing yourself in the wake of big and unexpected changes, exploitation of minors and living with the aftermath of that, trying to find a place where you fit when there are no spaces designed with you in mind, the inherent trauma of having your intended life trajectory derailed by a dramatic upheaval of your life that there was no way to prepare for or see coming, etc, etc.

Just running through the list of themes associated with my World/Setting, that was already generated during my worldbuilding process.....one jumps out at me immediately, as a natural fit for my premise: exploitation of minors and living with the aftermath of that lends itself perfectly to a threat that needs to be (and CAN be) protected from. The kind of thing someone would feasibly hire a bodyguard to protect someone else from. A thematic complement to the threat demanded by the premise.

So I'm gonna pick that for my first theme, my big picture, broad strokes, overall Setting/World theme. I'll incorporate it throughout the background, build the plot in a way that leads the characters through the Bordertown setting under an overlying, looming awareness of how many others they encounter have all faced that issue or been impacted by it.

Weaving this theme through the overall setting and tying it to the main threat turns each and every encounter Characters B and C have with other characters - that they might see as like them or that they in some way relate to - into a natural opportunity to pair, contrast or juxtapose their own encounters with this theme/threat to the many varied ways these other characters have interacted with this theme or been shaped by it. But at the same time, with this theme built into the setting as an overlying background theme....none of these encounters are strictly ESSENTIAL to reaching the end of the plot, learning specific character lessons or coming to some sort of thematic conclusion. They're just....there, as needed, providing an indeterminate number of ways you can explore this theme via background characters and what the main characters take away from their encounters with those already victimized by an exploitation threat.

And as a result, I'm less likely to run the risk of seeming like I'm going for an after school message with this story, that it exists solely to build to one particularly thematic awareness or conclusion about this theme. It just....exists, throughout the story, as part of the setting itself.

So that's one theme picked. Now let's add another. Since I picked one to complement the WORLDBUILDING itself.....with that specifically being the reason I selected it and the natural association to that theme in my mind....I'm not primed to pick a second theme specifically because of how it would play off of that first theme. And since my first theme is setting-oriented but also pairs naturally with the premise and gives shape to the threat our characters are trying to avoid/defend against....I'm going to pick my second theme with one of the other basic ingredients of the premise in mind.

Specifically, I'm going to pick the next theme in association with Character B themselves. Character B doesn't HAVE to be the main character, even in context of the premise I picked, and in fact I don't even need to have one singular main character and could just as easily make it a dual POV story that trades off chapters between Character B as the primary and Character C as the primary, but I'm going to go with Character B as the main character. They're best positioned by the premise to drive the action, existing as a character both acted upon (hired by Character A) and acting upon others (protecting Character C), which makes them inherently centralized and enables a natural narrative flow that revolves around them as the primary figure our story is about.

This doesn't mean that Character C can't have their own storylines and character arc separate from the parts of the narrative they share with Character B, it just helps firm out the underlying framework we're hanging our narrative on.

So I'm going with Character B as the central primary protagonist driving the plot of the story and the figure I'm most interested in telling a story ABOUT. Its their character arc that'll act as the tentpole everything else is built around. As stated before, I tend to build the plot as a narrative journey whose largest purpose is to get the main character - Character B in this case - from an initial state of being as a character....to a specific endgoal I want for them. The story ultimately will be MOST about finding a path from who they begin as to who I want them to become by its conclusion, what I want them to be like by the last page, lessons I want them to have learned or obstacles overcome. Ironically, my start point for actually building Character B will be my intended endpoint for who they become as a result of their narrative journey.....and then I'll reverse engineer specifics of the character and their plot from there.

But for now, we're only picking one thing for Character B. Our first selection when it comes to them, the very first addition made to the rough sketched outline of a character somewhere against the backdrop of Bordertown....is a theme accompanying their character arc. Because there's no real point in me picking this theme as a complement or counterpart to the Setting theme, not when there's another third theme to pick that would throw off that balance anyway....I'm just gonna grab bag this shit.

The only specifics I have for my main character at this point is they're going to be in a position to be hired by Character A to protect Character C, a minor, from being exploited in some fashion, but beyond that, sky's the limit. I don't even have Character B's age selected in contrast to Character C, but since their dynamic will be central to the story, deciding whether Character B is also a minor or if they're different from Character C in that regard....this'll help me zero in on a potential character theme one way or another.

Now, there's nothing really stopping me from making both characters teenagers and having some in-universe or character explanation for why one would be picked to bodyguard a fellow teen vs the other being seen as needing that protection. Plenty of directions I could go with that, so its more just a gut preference that I'm not looking to write a teenage main character with this particular story, so Character B will be an adult. Not necessarily that much older than Character C, I have no preferences there yet, but it feels more natural to have them be hired as a protector in part because they're an adult rather than a teen - especially in the context of our setting, with Bordertown being full of runaways and teens kicked out by their families - and I don't feel any particular urge to subvert the natural expectation that anyone hired as a bodyguard would be an adult, so....they're an adult, then.

Which right away fills in some details about genre and overall narrative structure, as I have no interest in writing an adult/minor romantic relationship, so whatever dynamic Characters B and C end up having beyond just protector and protectee will not be romantic in nature. Plus, given the details just mentioned about the setting, and the prevalence of teens in Bordertown, Character B being an adult within that setting sets them up to be an outlier, relatively speaking.

Which in turn further refines the narrative logistics required by our premise, as it helps build a picture of why they in specific would be sought out as a protector - there being a limited number of options for adults familiar with Bordertown TO hire for that role goes a long way towards figuring out why in-universe this character was picked for that narrative role.

And as we narrow down character logistics - by necessity of the premise, Character B is now known to be both familiar with Bordertown and an adult unlike most of its residents - we open up a specific avenue of character selection choices. There's no particular requirement now for Character B to have any specific expertise with being a bodyguard....their suitability for the role could just be a matter of needing someone of age and experience navigating Bordertown. It doesn't mean they CAN'T have prior experience acting as a bodyguard, but still building from the gut at this point, I think its more interesting if they're not particularly prepared or suited for that role, leaving room for self-doubts as to how well they're doing at the job, whether they were the wrong choice, etc. We're laying the groundwork for internal conflicts already.

But since they ARE an adult with familiarity with Bordertown, that also makes it most likely they've been living there for awhile, and it works to say they came to Bordertown as a solitary teenager themselves, and aged into adulthood within it. Thus, even though they're an adult unlike Character C, this still lends itself to them being a Changeling as well.....which makes it possible, and even likely, that they've had their own personal experience with our Threat and Setting Theme, the exploitation a lot of teenage Changelings face by those interested in using them for their magic and taking advantage of their lack of resources and support systems to do so.

From here, we can reasonably sketch in the details/elements that their own experiences with exploitation or even just the specter of it will color all interactions they have with Character C while trying to protect them from it. It gives them a personal stake in what would otherwise just be a job, and begs the question....what does Character B see when they look at Character C? What do they see themselves as in comparison to Character C? Did they take this job because they saw it as a chance to be for someone else what they wished someone had been there to be for them, a shield standing between them and those who sought to use them? Is it just a paycheck and Character B feels they have nothing in common with Character C despite both being changelings and so keeps their emotional distance from them as a result, and if so, are they actually being objective here or are they just lying to themselves about not seeing themselves in Character C?

Did they maybe NOT have any personal experience with being exploited for their magic when they were still a teenager, either because they lucked out or they were powerful or resourceful enough to protect themselves from any attempts....and if so, does their role here and the way they view Character C contain any elements of guilt, deserved or otherwise, does it have anything to do with them feeling guilty for avoiding a fate so many others fall prey to and driven to protect Character C because of that guilt that they CAN'T relate to them rather than emotions born of the fact that they DO relate to them and their plight?

I've got options here, so running through them quickly and still going with what possibilities grab me the most....personally, I don't find guilt to be the best emotional driving force for a larger narrative, particularly if its unnecessary/irrational guilt rather than something actually merited by past actions they took. And as no angle for them actually deserving to feel guilty for avoiding personal victimization is jumping out at me, any guilt they're acting upon here would most likely IMO be undeserved, so.....the guilt angle just doesn't seem particularly compelling to me.

Which means regardless of other particulars, it does feel most right for Character B to have had their own experiences with the Setting Theme of exploitation when they were younger and possibly new to Bordertown, which provides a basis for them to relate to Character C whether they want to acknowledge that or not. Or inversely, they don't WANT to be able to relate to Character C, or vice versa, especially not to the degree they would if they fail to protect Character C from the Threat and they end up going through something similar to what Character B experienced when younger.

I'm personally inclined to knock off the "seeing themselves in Character C but not wanting to acknowledge it and insisting the job is just for the paycheck" option from the jump, just because denial as a central motivating factor is a tricky one to pull off. Any time you have a character arc rooted in an initial denial that the arc is intended to shake them out of at some point, you're giving yourself a clock from your very first page.

At some point, your character has to cut it out with the denial and face what it is they don't want to face, and the tricky part is there's no real way to gauge when and where to set that point in the narrative and if you gauge things wrong and drag the denial arc past the point readers are willing to have patience with it, you've shot your entire story in the foot. If you set that point too early in the narrative, it can make the momentum and pacing of the rest of your story and that character arc feel disjointed and unnatural, and again you've shot your entire story in the foot.

With a realization of denial and pivot to facing the truth as a fixed point your entire character arc hinges on, the most important thing becomes setting that point at JUST the right spot in the narrative and your entire story will sink or swim depending on whether your placed it in the right spot. There's a whole lot of risk in using a denial-based initial motivation and even if you do nail the placement of that hinge point, there's not really any inherent GREATER payoff to that character arc than what you could achieve with others.

So, with that off the table....we're left with two polar options:

Character B already sees themselves in Character C and it drives their desire to protect them from undergoing the things they did.....or they don't really see themselves in Character C, despite having similar history or elements of their backstories, and its a desire to AVOID ever seeing themselves reflected in this younger changeling that drives their desire to protect them from being shaped by the same factors they were and ending up more like them as a result.

Both those options lend themselves to entirely different directions, thematically speaking, with the former option gravitating more towards themes of recognizing the self in the other and the possibilities this creates for introspection or revisiting memories of past traumas, as well as reshaping one's view of themselves in the present - especially if upon reflection, past events or responses no longer look how they've gotten used to assuming they do.

Additionally, there's the angle of being driven by the desire - and opportunity - to protect a younger person you see yourself in from undergoing the same struggles or traumas you faced. This can feasibly be a vehicle for empowerment....a chance to write a new course for history in the form of taking a parallel situation and shaping it to a better resolution than the first time around had, even if it doesn't change the ending (and previous chapters) of your own story. But at the same time, this does the person you're trying to protect a disservice, if you're ultimately only seeing them as a proxy for yourself, or seeing yourself in them to such a degree as to miss or under-emphasize the ways in which they're different from you and their own distinct individual.

And then alternatively, you might also be more securely rooted in a desire to help and protect simply because you want to be for someone else what nobody was around - or chose - to be for you when you needed it. No illusions about being able to rewrite history or need to write yourself a better ending, instead just wanting to be a protector for a younger teen you relate to because they deserve someone to protect them and you're in a position to step up and be that person, so you do.

Going back to the opposite angle of NOT seeing yourself reflected in this younger individual, and being largely driven by an urge to keep it that way and protect them from becoming someone you CAN see yourself in, shaped by similar traumas....again, there's a lot of directions you can go with this. But this larger direction, the drive to AVOID seeing yourself reflected in the other - and by extension, creating a link or association between your protection of them and your goal of keeping them from becoming more like you - this can easily pivot towards themes of shame and self-loathing. Hinting at troubled self-image issues not far beneath your surface that the story's events are likely to exacerbate and make boil over. Not just wanting to protect someone from becoming more like you see yourself, but not really being happy or comfortable with the you that you see yourself as.

All of which can dovetail pretty seamlessly with the internal and thematic conflicts of being the person entrusted with using their power to protect someone while simultaneously seeing yourself as the end result of your failure to use that same power to successfully protect yourself. The potential impostor syndrome of being someone's bodyguard and guide, acting in roles that people associate with expertise and certain qualities of skill, and feeling like a fraud because if you fail them, they'll end up becoming you, and shouldn't that make you even LESS qualified to protect them than they are to protect themselves?

So....looking back at all of the above, and the options they lay out....altruism's all well and good, but in terms of narratives meant to grow a character from initial internal or emotional conflicts to some kind of resolution....altruism doesn't make for a good starting point, in terms of inciting motivations. So that's out.

Recognizing the self in the other and from there embarking on introspective re-examanations of yourself and past traumas and responses.....also a totally valid journey and motivations, but fairly low-energy ones, at least in and of themselves. Not the most narratively engaging.

The dichotomy of seeking empowerment or a fascimile of personal justice through steering a 'younger you' towards better outcomes than you managed for yourself....with the dehumanization of your younger charge inherent in being unwilling or unable to view them as their own person rather than just your second chance....that has the most potential of the "Character B relating to Character C and this driving their desire to protect them from undergoing the things they endured" options.

And in the "Character B not seeing themselves in Character C and wanting to keep it that way" direction....pretty much all of our options feed into each other and can feasibly work as the basis of a coherent character arc in and of themselves. All of which speaks to the strength of that narrative direction...it gives us way more bang for our buck.

We're pretty organically steered towards a strong initial character conflict to serve as a base to launch our character arc from. Character B has a personal emotional stake in ensuring Character C doesn't become like them, which fuels their drive to protect Character C and keeps them invested in a specific outcome, as well as primes them to make frequent and active choices in pursuit of it, whether they're helpful or are just reckless actions born more of their own fears than any actual necessity. We've got a clear direction for our character arc, momentum consistently generated by high-energy motivations that won't peter out until the resolution of the character arc, and self-loathing and shame as initial internal conflicts don't NEED to be earned or rational in order to be compelling.

All in all, there's an easily followed trajectory from that start point through revisitations of past traumas/responses to setbacks in coming to terms with what happened to you and separating how you view yourself from how you view factors that undeniably shaped you and finally culminating in you reconciling your inability to change your past with your ability to shed the negative self-image generated by your past and don a more positive one that will serve you better in the future. With emotional catharsis for the reader built right into that resolution and requiring no additional steps beyond just having Character B reach it.

And now not only have we already mapped out the broad strokes of Character B's overall character arc, including its start and end points, we have a clear selection of possible themes to immerse Character B and their arc in.

Themes like you are not defined by what was done to you by others. You can not make the changes you want for yourself while only acting to change things for a surrogate you've fixated on instead. Trying to protect someone from becoming like you denies them the chance to choose you as someone they want to be like. The worst things you think about yourself and assume everyone else thinks about you probably aren't even on anyone else's radar. Etc, etc.

For a variety of reasons, but mostly a gut instinct saying this one feels right, I'm going with Character B's associated theme as:

"The person you are and that you're trying to protect someone from becoming might very well be the person they want to be and that they're trying to ask your help to become. What you see as the failure to go through life unharmed can just as easily be seen as the triumph of continuing through life no matter how harmed."

Well, a condensed and pithier version of that, ideally. You get it though.

Anyway. That gives us two themes, one tied to the setting and one tied to the main character. Now we have options for what to gear the third theme towards. We could pick one specific to Character C, and no matter how that one juxtaposes with Character B's central theme, the Setting theme will still exist as a third over-arching narrative theme that keeps things from mirroring too exactly while still allowing for mirroring themes to exist. We could go with something specific to Character A, and ideally flesh them out more in the process, or we could pick something geared towards a specific point in the narrative journey, like an aimed-for climax that helps map out the plot structure in the process.

I'm going to refer back to the premise "Character B is hired to protect someone from an unknown threat" and see what jumps out at me this time....and after a second or two, I'm eyeing the motivations and character dynamics as two different or conjoined possibilities.

I already did a lot of legwork diving into possible motivations for Character B and built up most of their overall character arc....but ultimately, the theme I went with for Character B, while complementing everything I settled on there....still actually ended up being more about messaging and a conclusion for Character B to ultimately reach rather than something derived from or associated with their motivations in specific.

And also, I'm looking to find a theme that can weave a connection between Characters A, B and C on at least one shared level, so that we'll have a setting theme that encompasses all the characters likely to appear over the course of the story, a main character theme that marries their character arc to a specific thematic message, and a shared theme connecting the various characters via the comparisons and contrasts it allows me to make between their respective motivations and/or dynamics.

I still don't have any kind of image or sense of Character A, despite now having a pretty strong start to both Characters B and C - an adult and teenage changeling respectively, the latter with a backstory or situation similar enough to the former's own past that Character B worries Character C could easily end up just like them if not kept safe from whomever is seeking to exploit them and their magic.

Additionally, I know that Character B is a fairly longterm resident of Bordertown, who's lived there since they came there on their own as a teenager....either after being exploited in some parallel fashion or being victim of that upon arriving in Bordertown. Character B's age and adult status marks them as enough of a rarity among Bordertown residents, that said age and adult status alone were enough to land them on Character A's shortlist of potential bodyguards for Character C. While not set in stone, its likely that Character B's age/adult status were the primary elements leading Character A to approach them, and they don't additionally possess any particular expertise or experience acting as a bodyguard.

Since I already have several links/connections between Characters B and C, ways that they're alike or things they have in common, and because the most natural choice for Character A's base motivation is concern for Character C, suggesting some link or connection between Characters A and C, even if the roundabout nature of working through a proxy to protect the latter paints a picture of likely estrangement.....that leaves me wondering about possible dynamics between Characters A and B, or what their interactions might look like and whether they might have any shared connections or links as well.

The obvious connection there would be both are likely adults, having that in common with each other and a way they're similarly unable to relate or connect to Character C as a peer. Despite their shared status as adults, Character A would only need to seek out Character B to protect Character C if Character B had skills, resources or expertise that Character A didn't...or alternatively, if they felt Character C was more likely to accept help or protection from a stranger than from Character A.

So, more than likely - and with no gut instinct challenging these conclusions - Character A is not a Changeling themselves, nor a resident of Bordertown, and likely unable to directly relate to the experiences or threat of exploitation that Characters B and C share. They'd still need to possess enough resources - or have some other knowledge of Character B - to become aware of Character B as a potential solution for their needs, and seek them out....as well as have something to offer Character B sufficient to motivate them to take the job despite a lack of experience or interest in being a bodyguard. Additionally, they have some previous connection to Character C driving them to ensure they're protected, but that connection is either flimsy or damaged enough that they're not accompanied by Character C when seeking a protector for them, or attempting to safeguard them themselves.

(Or possibly Character A just doesn't believe themselves as capable of protecting Character C as Character B would be, due to familiarity with Bordertown, prior experiences with those Character C needs protection from, or something to do with Character B's magic - or their actual reasoning is a mix of all of the above).

Again, just starting from the most obvious connections or conclusions and branching out from there if needed....the most logical links to start building there are between Characters A and C in regards to their prior connection. I'm going to say they're parent and child, but estranged. At some point, some conflict between them led Character C to leave the safety of home - with attention paid to the fact that the exploitation of a minor theme paired with the World/Setting/Threat is optimized for a Character C who is a teen under eighteen and still meant to be living at home with their parents or legal guardians. Which would make them a full-fledged runaway, fleeing from a conflict or confrontation that made them view heading to Bordertown as their best prospect.

Pulling back just a little as I notice I've started referring definitively to elements I never actively decided on and are really just assumptions rather than an examination of the possibilities....since I never cemented Character A as a single individual, its worth raising the possibility that Character A is actually a) a parental unit, b) one parent acting in ways both agreed upon but with the other parent remaining behind at home, c) one parent acting on their own despite their partner's disapproval of this course of action, or even without their knowledge of it, d) a single parent acting on their own due to not having a co-parent, be that because of a divorce, death of a spouse, or something else.

Any of those could work well and offer up unique possibilities, but I'm leaning towards C or D, and after giving it a quick mental run-through, I'm gonna go with C, as that gives me the most vivid ideas.

So Character A is one of Character C's two parents, having followed them to Bordertown against the wishes of their co-parent or without their knowledge, after a conflict that has them estranged enough Character A believes Character C would be more likely - and more effectively - helped by a fellow changeling they feel more akin to than by their parent, Character A. Who also can't offer the same protection or experience navigating Bordertown and its threats but was still clearly willing to go to at least some length to try and ensure Character C's safe and protected, including going against/without their co-parent to do so.

Which brings us back to Character A and B's connections, associations or parallels beyond just both being adults....and after asking myself what other possible connections are there to mine there, I've got a big one, that sends the narrative in an entirely new direction but fleshing out a ton of additional elements in the process:

Now I'm thinking....what if Character A is Character B's parent as well?

That solves both the issue of how they find/learn about Character B in specific in order TO approach them, and why, other than just them being an adult in the mostly teen-populated Bordertown, they approach Character B over any and all of the other adult changeling options.

In addition, it goes a long way towards cementing the inciting motivations and reasons given for taking such an unusual job on behalf of a complete stranger....if Character C isn't in fact a complete stranger, but a younger sibling or maybe half or step sibling Character B hasn't seen since they came to Bordertown as a teenager themselves - likely after having run away from their own confrontation with Character A and their co-parent.

A years long estrangement between Character B and their family, as well as some kind of sizeable age gap between Characters B and C, would suggest that Character B likely hasn't seen Character C since they were very young, and raises possibilities for Character C to not initially know/recognize who Character B is when they first approach the latter....especially given how much changelings' appearances tend to change when the Change hits them.

It would also build upon and enhance all the aforementioned connections between Characters B and C, and likelihood of Character B seeing a lot of themselves in Character C, or wanting to avoid seeing them become like them or suffer a similar fate, and increases the personal stake Character B has in all of this.

At the same time, it introduces another potential internal conflict for Character B, and possible obstacle in Character B's attempts to build a connection with Character C or gain their trust.....as Character B's lack of communication with their family and years spent living in Bordertown, as well as personal experience with being exploited....all paint a picture wherein Character A and/or their co-parent did NOT follow Character B to Bordertown or make a similar attempt to ensure they were protected when Character B ran away as a teenager. Or if they did, they weren't successful in finding someone to protect Character B, or hired someone not up to the task.

Either way, it lays groundwork for Character B to be motivated to take this "job" in the interests of protecting their sibling and possibly reconnecting with them, doing their best to spare them from traumas like those Character B suffered, it allows for the potential wrinkle of Character C not knowing who Character B is to them and possible fall-out or issues arising from them later finding out the truth after Character B made a choice to continue withholding it.....and it introduces the possibility Character B's internal conflict about revealing their connection and reasons for keeping it secret (should they decide not to tell them), derive at least in part from Character B's jealousy:

That despite the parallels in Characters B and C's situations and conflicts with their parents, Character A made efforts to continue acting as a parent and showing their concern in Character C's case, that they did simply not make when it was Character B in a similar scenario.

Which, in turn, could exacerbate Character B's self-loathing and shame spirals and delay the development of their character arc, if Character B recognizes their jealousy as misdirected and judges themselves for feeling it and not knowing how to stop.

But to return to Character A, there's also the prospect that Character A's attempts to continue looking out for Character C and willingness to act against/without their co-parent.....are at least to some degree motivated by THEIR shame about not doing more on Character B's behalf or in an effort to reach out or maintain/renew a connection to them. Making their actions here and now only partly about Character C, the actual individual, and partly about their guilt and shame and desperation to do better by Character C than they did Character B. Their own attempt at a re-do or second chance at getting this right.

And there's always the possible angle of them having sought out Character B not just because they viewed them as the best person to try and recruit as Character C's protector, but also because the situation gave them an excuse (or push) to seek them out at all, after however many years of convincing themselves there was no point trying to fix things at this point or there was no chance Character B would ever be willing to hear from them. With Character A hoping even just to some small degree, that this could potentially lead to actually rebuilding a longterm connection to Character B.

And just like that, we've got the broad strokes of not just our A plot, but our B plot as well:

The primary narrative focus throughout the story will remain centered on Characters B and C's dynamic and their growing but tentative relationship, with this A plot having its own emotional components such as in terms of how Characters B and C view and feel towards each other and their situation. It'll also have its own distinct character arcs (or parts of their overall character arcs) - such as how Character B's attempts to protect Character C in the present brings up memories of past experiences being on the victimized side of things without protection....and both Character B's central theme and the resolution of their over-arching character arc are optimized to be woven into the climax and culmination of the A plot.

The A plot's primary character dynamics, thematic messaging and corresponding emotional and character arcs have all they need to be resolved within the structure of the A plot, by the A plot's own narrative beats, with all of the aforementioned able to exist with our without the B plot.

In contrast, the B plot can not exist on its own independent of the A plot's super-structure, but still will contain its own shape, structure and resolution within that super-structure - focusing on Character B's relationship and dynamic with Character A, emotional components distinct to Character B's feelings about their own history with Character A, the latter's efforts on behalf of Character C and juxtaposed with their lack thereof on behalf of Character B, and introspection/revisiting of their own past conflicts with Character A and the events that were set in motion by that and culminated in Character B's traumas after leaving home. With all of the above able to parallel Character B's revisiting of past events and traumas in the A plot, without that being necessary for the resolution of either A or B plots rather than just an available option.

The B plot's resolution, in terms of both narrative and emotional beats, can and should exist separate from the A plot's resolution, as well as occurring before the latter. Character B's ultimate views of their own history, connection and desired relationship with Character A should be settled and established before the ultimate conclusion of their character arc as of the resolution of the A plot. Their negative self-image and shame/self-loathing spirals can't be fully addressed until any insecurities about their dynamic with Character A or feelings of being second place to Character C have been faced and dealt with.

And to bring it back from there to selecting our third theme, one associated with either the shared motivations or dynamics of the characters in regards to each other.....

I'm going with Theme Three being:

Trying to make someone your do-over or second chance to fix mistakes you made with someone else: just a terrible idea destined to end messily for everyone or - no, never mind, there is no or, its just that, there's only one outcome.

Again....just picture a condensed, pithier version of that. It's fine, that can be fixed. Scalpels exist for a reason.

Anyway!

So we've picked three themes, and added them to our frame (world), background (setting), premise, rough character outlines and depiction of threat....

And then we rinse and repeat as needed, with each additional element added to the story or picked for a character.

Sure, alllll of that and we haven't even started selecting traits and options for our characters here, seems a whole lot of work just to pick three themes before even moving on to base stats for the main character.

Except the trick of it is, by the time you get to this part and finally START fleshing out the specific characteristics and physical stats and identity traits of each character....

Even as you begin building your characters from the ground up, fleshing them out and filling in the outline or idea of them one trait or characteristic at a time, you should have enough figured out about WHO they are that you have a sense of their personalities already at hand and available to weave into each newly added trait or character element.

Without even having chosen basic identity traits for Character B, nothing selected or cemented yet about their gender, race, sexual orientation, physical stats or possible disabilities or neurodivergencies let alone the world-distinct character elements like changelings' otherworldly appearances and magic distinct to each individual....

We've already built up an impression of what Character B is like as a person, in relation to others like Characters A and C, in conjunction with our chosen themes, as contextualized by the shape of their overall character arc. And we can use this to inform and quiz and add depth to everything we choose to build into that character from here.

Character B struggles with self-loathing issues and shame spirals born of a negative self-image deriving from their inability to protect themselves from being exploited and victimized when they were younger and new to Bordertown, having just run away from their home and a conflict with their parents, leaving behind a much younger sibling or half or step sibling, and being both hurt and unsurprised when their parents showed no attempt to follow or reconnect with them, or any evident concern for what happened to them after they left home.

Character B has since spent years living in Bordertown and establishing a home there, aging into one of the area's few adults among a mostly underage population where Character B's greater age and adult status automatically confers a degree of authority, experience and capability in the eyes of most others, whether or not they possess any of those things.

We know that when approached out of the blue by their estranged parent Character A after years without contact or indication Character B ever crossed their mind, Character B's personality is such that despite their issues with Character A and the confused and undecided feelings they've awoken towards Character A and their part in the events of the past and Character B's past traumas, and even while feeling jealous and resentful of Character Cand the greater efforts their shared parent seems willing to make on their behalf, they do accept the responsibility of seeking out and protecting the sibling they harbor at least some irrational envy towards.

Additionally, their resentment and jealousy, to whatever degree they're feeling that, coexists alongside their acknowledgment they've missed Character C all these years and wanting to see and know who they've become while keeping them safe....with this also sharing space with their awareness of their paralleled journeys and circumstances, the very thing forcing them to hold up a mental image of how Character A reacted to one child in this situation next to how differently they reacted to the other child in the same situation ALSO keeping them keenly aware of the ways Character C is like them and could end up even more like them. How easily the familiar situation Character B sees Character C in now could lead down the same paths that so traumatized Character B and are the reason for much of the shame and self-loathing they struggle with.

We also know Character B's drive to protect Character C from enduring similar traumas is at least partially fueled by their belief that they're damaged and who they've beccome due to those traumas is a fate they want to protect their younger sibling from, as much as they want to protect them from any specific trauma. That despite all their parallels, similarities and shared circumstances, connection and familial history, all the ways in which Character B can see themselves in Character C and use as a basis for forging a new connection out of the common ground between them....in fact, in part BECAUSE of all these similarities and shared connections and circumstances....rather than being used as an opportunity to grow closer to Character C and build trust, due to their negative self-image, all of this actually feeds into and fuels their belief that the fundamental differences between them come down to the traumas they feel broke them and that Character C can yet be protected from....ensuring they never become more like Character B.

While trying to build a connection with a jaded and untrusting Character C who believes Character B to be a total stranger with a specific interest in Character C involving an unknown agenda on behalf of someone else....none of which are factors conducive to building trust.....AND despite their own barely-shoved-down desire to tell Character C everything....Character B continues to keep who they really are a secret and withhold the truth of their connection and who asked them to protect Character C and why. Their yearning to re-embrace a sibling relationship they thought they'd never get another chance at butts up directly against their assumption that none of this is permanent and there's no longterm connection or future to be built between them, reinforcing their instinct to protect themselves from the inevitable hurt and disappointed bound to come their way once Character C realizes how damaged they actually are and decides to move on, with Character B's unwillingness to trust in Character C - even while asking for their trust themselves - spilling directly out of Character B's inability to trust in their own worth and value as someone Character C would want to reconnect with as a sibling and stick around for indefinitely.

Thus the one truth that could guarantee Character C's faith and trust in Character B stays buried by the latter long enough that its eventual reveal ends up an eruption with catastrophic repercussions for their tentative bond, rather than emerging as a voluntarily shared secret that cements that bond into something more lasting. In Character B's mind, the only defense they could offer as explanation went hand in hand with convincing Character C that having Character B as their sibling wasn't in Character C's best interests. In their self-sabotaging attempt to protect their younger sibling from the threat Character B views themselves to be, Character B is directly responsible for the wedge driven between them and resulting distance Character C insists upon, ultimately leaving them exposed and vulnerable to the larger and actual threat of the very people Character B had meant to protect them from.

Leaving Character B with the belief their only real (or effective) path forward required facing their demons and finding some kind of strength or advantage in the only real edge they had left in regards to these people.....the very memories and experiences of being traumatized at their hands that Character B had spent so long trying to avoid revisiting.

Ultimately, the irony in the resolution of Character B's character arc is it only comes in the wake of Character B reframing past failures to make it out unharmed as past triumphs where they made it out on their own. Examining the possibility they're not someone whose only value is in existing as a cautionary tale, but rather there are elements of themselves and strengths they have that others might see as enviable and worth emulating....with all of this having been how Character C viewed Character B from their initial "meeting" and the entire basis of what trust they'd been willing to put in Character B from the start and that they had been building upon before Character C found out the truth of their familial connection.

Now!

All of that is already at your fingertips and able to be factored in as you select identity traits:

What gender are they - and how might them being male vs female vs trans vs non-binary - impact the personality described above or result in them expressing different parts of it more than others or in different ways?

What race are they - and how might the different options intersect the described personality differently?

Sexual orientation - same question. Any possible disabilities and/or neurodivergencies - same question. Etc, etc.

And at any point, when in doubt, unsure what option to pick or add to a character....default to the Three Pronged Approach.

You want the clearest sense of how Character B would interact with people? Map out three different interactions: what does it sound/look like when they interact with Character A vs when they interact with Character C vs when they interact with one of the Threats?

You want a sense of what Character B is like at their most approachable, when their best traits are on display? Pick or figure out three traits and write how they come across when leading with those traits, as described through the eyes of a different POV character.

Want to layer in personal likes and dislikes? Pick three unrelated musicians and triangulate between them, see what kind of taste in music that creates an impression of, and what that might say about anyone who would point to those specific artists as their go-to choices.

Want a strong mental picture for what Character B is like when they catastrophize, or their inner monologue when spiraling? Imagine three different scenarios for when Character B could have told Character C the truth, and then try and put yourself in Character B's head and figure out what train of thought or particular insecurities or worst case scenarios creates a plausible mindset or logic you can follow in regards to why they didn't take that opportunity to come clean.

In light of all of the above, the character mapped out and described here, what might someone like Character B take comfort it, or consider relaxing? What are three possibilities for their greatest fear and who are their top three celebrity crushes and why.

Literally just.....pick personality traits to choose from at this point, or flip through magazine or online personality quizzes and ask the same questions as them while trying to answer from the POV of Character B, and go with three options or variables as needed, and see what characterization ground that covers and offers as stuff that feasibly fits within the triangle generated by those three points, rather than belonging to some random outlying point far outside it.

Do as many or as few as needed til you're happy with the character and personality/characterization you perceive them to be as of that point, and don't be afraid to pop the hood again later and move some things around until it all feels like it fits within the same singular individual in a more naturally cohesive way.

Aaaaand that's my process! Or I mean, these parts of my process at least. Same diff. Well not really the same at all so much as diff diff but eh. You get it.

Or not. I never can tell. Should probably stop making that part rhetorical I suppose.

[tailoroffates]

Author Ask Tag Game

I don't usually like to talk about myself, but if that's how you play then I'll play along. Thanks for the tag @doublegoblin!

I'm interested to learn about @winterandwords @toribookworm22 @turnthemasunder-if and @comicgoblinart so I'm tagging them with a non-obligatory participation offer. If anyone else would like to participate then join on in!

The Garden that Burned series is what I choose to answer with.

(1) What is the main lesson of your story (e.g. kindness, diversity, anti-war), and why did you choose it?

To be honest my story didn't start out with an underlying meaning. It took me a while to grow and build as an author before I realized I'd unintentionally included little "moral to the story" arcs within my plot and character arcs. Some of the points I touch on are resolving racism, accepting people for who they are not who you want them to be, learning to understand your emotions, fighting and/or coping with anxiety, learning to accept death and manage grief, war is a cycle of hatred, forgiveness despite biases, and there are likely a few other things I can't recall at this very moment.

(2) What did you use as inspiration for your worldbuilding (like real-life cultures, animals, famous media, websites, etc.)?

Well, I really like Elder Scrolls, Tolkien's works, and Avatar the Last Airbender, so I'd have to say my magic systems are inspired by those, however, I've put my own twist on them so they fit better with the lore. The flora and fauna I've created are mostly chimeras of existing real-life plants and animals.

(3) What is your MC trying to achieve, and what are you, the writer, trying to achieve with them? Do you want to inspire others, teach forgiveness, help readers grow as a person?

My MC was initially trying to become the leader of his village, but fate had different plans for him. Now his goal is to end the Divine war between the mortals and their gods. What am I trying to achieve? Nothing too deep. I just wanna share some stories :D If someone learns something or grows by reading my series then all the better. It would actually make me very happy.

(4) How many chapters is your story going to have?

My first book has 24 chapters, but I have no idea how many the second, third, fourth, or fifth will have. Your guess is as good as mine. I suppose I'll try to aim for that same 24 mark, but who knows.

(5) Is it fanfiction or original content? Where do you plan to post it?

The series is made up of original content and I intend to publish each book.

(6) When and why did you start writing?

I started as a wee tot but picked it up as an actual habit when it became therapeutic to me. Writing helps me work through my anxieties.

(7) Do you have any words of engagement for fellow writers of Writeblr? What other writers of Tumblr do you follow?

The best I can say is if writing is a passion of yours but you struggle putting pen to paper try setting a daily word count for yourself. It doesn't have to be a large count, but I promise you will improve by practicing every day. If you can't think of anything to write for the day, look up writing prompts and I'm sure you'll find a few that pique your interest.

As for other Writers of Tumblr I follow, I typically follow the creatives. People who show their passion by posting their works. It inspires me to see so many others writing their stories and participating in the writing community, so I aim to join in on the fun!

[ultimateplaylistmaker]

i have only just now become aware that u gave ur kokichi a bunch of wild religious themes (the exorcism?? the preacher brother?????) and i DESPERATELY want to know more. why he like that-

I'm so glad you asked!

At the start I really wasn't expecting a lot of religious theming with Kokichi, maybe a little because fun demon or jesus symbolism(crown of thorns my beloved). I also knew I wanted them to be a run away from a rather abusive home.

However, then I got onto the problem of their straight jacket aesthetic. I knew I wanted them to have experience with an actual straight jacket, but the question then became how? A mental institute would be the traditional answer but by the timeline of Kokichi I was starting to make it really wouldn't make sense for actual professionals to put a straight jacket on a six year old. So I knew I needed something much more illegal, after some research I settled on an exorcism. After all, illegal abusive exorcisms can contain a lot of absolutely fucked things, and a modified straight jacket while INSANELY cruel, could work for that.

It made some sense as well, Kokichi was a genius even as a child, and a trickster from a young age, add in a heavily religious abusive background and an exorcism starts to make some sense. Especially since it would be a one time thing and thus easier for no one to know it happened. This also gave Kokichi more reason to lean into the demon and straight jacket aesthetics as a form of reclamation of trauma. Also I made their burn scars look like angel wings because I thought it was funny and knew Kokichi would hate that so much. Also something something icarus and melted wax wings.

The preacher brother was added when I was watching a lot of Kokichi twin stuff, and I was wondering how I would use that idea. I originally dismissed it for my big expanded worldbuilding because I just didn't see there being room, but then my brain was like "Serial killer" and the rest was history. So Kouchi was made to be the opposite of Kokichi. If Kokichi meant well but was distrusted, then Kouchi would meant cruelty but be trusted.

With the religious themes starting to add up, a preacher just made sense as someone who could embody that role well. I decided that because of Kouchi's views on their abusive parents, he became killing people he deemed "scum", people who he believed could not be redeemed and must be killed for the Greater Good, twisting holy words to make it seem like a holy purpose protecting the flock and would become one of Kokichi's greatest challenges to pacifism.

From there I had to establish why Kokichi didn't really remember Kouchi, and thus established their parents as living separately and having separated them. which also led into a reason why their mom was so strict and cruel to Kokichi. Which means neither sibling knows what happened to the other, allowing for fun plot stuff (Kokichi repressed Kouchi and only remembers them through their hallucinations, and Kouchi thought their mom killed Kokichi and covered it up as a run away and so he would eventually kill both their parents in revenge)

With the kind of abuse they were experiencing now solidified, it was easy to play into it for more minor details like Kokichi being ambidextrous because they were punished for being left-handed along with solidifying Kokichi as an atheist. Then I started noticing all the scapegoat symbolism around Kokichi in official material and felt very vindicated.

While it's very much a thing more of Kokichi's past then it is their present, it really helped develop Kokichi into the character they are now, and if I had picked a different reason from the straight jacket I have no clue how they would even look at this point. It is definitely a bit excessive and dramatic, but that's just Danganronpa for you, especially with the canon V3 backgrounds. If Kirumi can be prime minister, I can give Kokichi an exorcism. It just seems like the thing that would happen to Kokichi.

I'm sure there's a million little reasons Ive forgotten by now because it has been over a year, but these are the biggest ones.

[minecraftbookshelf]

what is one tiny detail in the wordbuilding of mos that you really love, but have no idea how to fit it in to the writing itself?

sending my best <333

So this is probably going to be a bit more Technical Process Talk than you were hoping for, apologies in advance XD

It's kind of hard to pick something like that because honestly what usually ends up making it into fics is the details. Usually (and there are exceptions) you don't have too many examples of characters just expositioning your worldbuilding for you. You include the relevant details and let those build up to paint an approximate picture for the reader. (this is something I do struggle with sometimes, I'm very expositiony by nature, as this tumblr might indicate XD)

The point being, usually when I'm actually writing a story what happens is I only include little bits and pieces in the story itself. Just enough to provide context, or to propel the plot forward, or correctly set the scene, or whatever the goal is. This also means that I very rarely know what exactly is going to end up in the story until I've actually written it. Posted it even, the amount of stuff that gets changed or cut last minute can sometimes be significant.

There will be times when things are outright explained in-text, one of the benefits of writing an international cast is sometimes they will be lucky enough to have someone explain to them what exactly is going on but a lot of the things I have posted on here will never be outright said in so many words.

That being said copper is microbial which means fungi don't like it because it kills them and I have no idea how I'm going to work this in regarding Shrub and Pix (gnomes are literal mushroom people). I'm going to try but if I do manage it, it will probably be way down the line. Way down the line.

Also thank you for the ask and the well wishes! I'm about to have a couple of days off properly and I am going to write so much and play so much minecraft. And sleep. I am going to sleep a lot.

[pentanguine]

Worst Books of 2023

5. In Search of a Prince by Toni Shiloh

Whose fault is it: School book club

One thing I will say about this book is that it exceeded my expectations. The writing was decent! The author did actually research West African culture and history! Unfortunately, the book simply cannot escape the fact that a) it’s a plot point for plot point retelling of the Princess Diaries; and b) it’s a Christian romance. The villain is a sexually promiscuous woman born out of wedlock (whose motivations also make no sense), and every romantic scene leaves so much room for Jesus it forgets to leave room for romance. At one point the villain says: “Love is for children and pets. Just like Santa.” Spoilers, the last line of the book is “they would say I loved God, loved my country, and loved my husband,” and when I read that I think I retched.

4. Seducing the Sorcerer by Lee Welch

Whose fault is it: School book club and EBF

Honestly, the first part of this book was good. The characters were well-drawn and sympathetic, they had good chemistry and clear reasons to be interested in each other, and who wouldn’t love the worple horse. And then, somewhere in the second half, it all went to shit. The romance was underwhelming when they actually got together, and the sex was thin on the page and way less intense than what the book (and the baffling Goodreads reviews) had been implying. The political situation quickly went off the rails, before being wrapped up in an ending so neat and tidy Marie Kondo could have written it. Everything that can’t be logically resolved gets conveniently handwaved, and compelling character development goes out the window so the author can abruptly focus on high stakes international conflict. The villain is ultimately defeated by the vague threat of an army of enchanted fabric. In a lifetime first, I’m going to say this book needed less politics and more romance.

3. Devil's Night Dawning by Damien Black

Whose fault is it: Mine :(

I should never have picked it up knowing it was by a straight white man. “Great worldbuilding, truly epic,” said the reviews. “Dark, creepy horror vibes,” said the reviews. “It’s so original,” said the reviews. The great worldbuilding is periodic info-dumping on unimportant historical details by someone who thinks they’re writing LOTR and is actually writing a textbook. The dark, creepy horror vibes would be there if only the author could focus on his alleged main character, a demon hunting monk, for longer than one chapter out of ten. The originality is a religion in which Jesus The Redeemer dies on the cross wheel for our sins, and characters wander around saying “the power of the redeemer compels you.” Throw in a few misogynistic knights who casually murder each other while fetishizing chivalry, one (1) female character who of course has a very nice figure, and a lot of irrelevant POV characters who simply weren’t interesting, and I gave up at page 291.

2. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

Whose fault is it: Mine and everyone who’s ever raved about it

I finished this book out of sheer bloody spite, and I wish I hadn’t. Tedious, overly full of itself, impenetrable, opaque, misogynistic, and enmeshed in ideas of machismo and the nuclear family that made it impossible for me to connect with. The truly frustrating thing is that there were many genuinely good moments of skin-tingling horror, but they’re so buried under all the bloated academic hogwash that they failed to make an impact. This book is the guy in your philosophy class who thinks he’s smart but has just never been told to shut up. This book is a male author who thinks he can write women well because he gives them compelling thoughts on sex, motherhood, romance, sex, stripping, modeling, their own bodies, and sex. I would rather live on Ash Tree Lane than read this book again.

All Four Twilight books by Stephanie Meyer

Whose fault is it: EBF

These books are genuinely, appallingly, hilariously, pathetically, bad. As an adult, I try to be charitable to things that I disliked (or in this case, refused to interact with at all) when I was younger, because teenage girls get a lot of shit and the things that they like tend to automatically be labeled cringe, but…these books are actually shit. Not just mediocre, or a little juvenile, or with some notable flaws, but BAD. And they’re not even shockingly sexy! I thought Twilight was the series that parents wanted to protect their innocent children from, in which maidens were ravished by whole covens of vampires, bodices torn, innocence lost, werewolves howling in pleasure, etc. Stephanie Meyer is way too fucking Mormon for that. I’ve never read a less sexy vampire in my life, and yet these were the teen heartthrobs of my youth?? The first book was honestly fun to hate-read, but by the time I got to the fourth one I was just depressed. It opens with Bella feeling genuine dread at her upcoming marriage to “the love of her life” that she’s been manipulated into at the age of 18 against her will, and the idea of this being the thing anyone is obsessing over just makes me sad. It’s just Mormonism with bad writing and worse characterization. Allow me to present my reviews for each:

Twilight: “Such a fucking dumb book.”

New Moon: “A whole lot of nothing happens to the world’s most depressed teenager”

Eclipse: “No plot, just endless rehashes of the same vampires vs. werewolves argument with pedophilia for flavor.”

Breaking Dawn: “The bar was in hell, and she still managed to let me down.”

[sleepyowlwrites]

38 and 39 for the writer asks

38 I answered already and basically I said that I also think it's crazy that I write best when I'm going by the seat of my pants. like, just really, really pantsing it. NO plot, JUST vibes will get me the farthest into a story than any worldbuilding, brainstorming, outlining, or character sheet-ing will.

39. What keeps you writing when you feel like giving up?

I only felt like giving up the one time. and I did. I took a break. I also went to college during that time, so personally I think that was a very good reason to take the break separate from how nothing was working out the way I wanted it to, but yeah. I didn't write original fiction - minus a couple of shorts - for six years. I took a break for a couple years and then started writing fanfiction, which was a fantastic time. I built my original tumblr following with my fanfics, and I actually just had a spam of comments on ao3 from someone finding my fics and enjoying them. in 2018 I started writing original fiction again and I've been going reasonably steady since then - with the exception of November-December since 2020 because I'm too exhausted to write anything during those months.

nothing makes me want to stop writing anymore. this is, I think, due to a few factors.

a) I feel very positively about my writing. I don't always like it. I don't always think it's good, but I always feel positively about it in the sense that I'm glad I've written, I'm glad I'm writing. I don't get discouraged by crap first draft stuff. I also don't really write crap anymore, at the level I'm at. I write decent first draft stuff. not always coherent or going anywhere, but not bad. so it's easier to feel positive about it, but even if it were bad, I still wouldn't dislike it.

b) I write for me. my target audience is me. there is no purpose to my writing higher than the fact that I would like to read it, and right under the purpose is the fact that I enjoy the act of writing enough that regardless of quality, it is always a worthwhile pastime. there are no due dates, there are no rush orders, nothing is keeping me to being a writer except that I want to be. I write for me, because I like it.

c) if I need to take a break, if I'm getting burnt out, or if I'm just generally tired, I'll just do that. I won't write. I won't write plot, anyway. I might write character stats, or ideas, or set dressing, or vibes. or nothing. I'll just think about it. again, it's all for me, I've got the time to rest before I continue.

d) if I come to a point where something I've been work on isn't currently working any longer, I'll put it aside. by now you must know I have so many projects. I flounder if I try to work on only one wip at a time, and so I have current projects, backburner projects, lost in the shuffle projects, barely formed concepts, blank books, all kinds of stuff. there's always something new or reused that I can think about. I don't feel guilty about putting something down and picking up something new. soon enough I'll be picking up that old thing again.

I haven't worked on summon story in a bit because it wasn't working. so I was ruminating about guild story and answering asks about city story and I wrote that scene for apocalypse story. and then! I figured out what was going on with summon story! it was the tone. it wasn't goofy enough. I was trying to shove a plot in where it wasn't wanted. I know how I want to write it now. so I can, whenever I've got the spoons. and the soup. the brain soup.

thanks for asking, Rainstorm!

[birlwrites]

what's your advice for writing longfics? i literally cannot for the life of me.

ok so i stumbled into writing longfics by accident - there was a long time in my life when i too was like 'there's no fucking way i could write one of those,' and then i started coming up with story ideas that i literally could not fit into under 100k words, and now here we are

there are 3 big categories of 'things that will help you,' imo, which are:

keeping your ideas organized, so you don't have to worry about forgetting things

giving yourself flexibility, in case your story starts to go in a different direction from what you outlined

staying motivated - absolutely 100% the hardest part. i'll talk about that last, since the first two are very important for the last one

i think the most important thing to consider is what length will genuinely suit the story you want to tell. that's a matter of things like how intricate the plot is, how many things happen in the story, basically just how much space you need

longfics aren't going to be right for every story and if you try to expand something that really is like 20-25k worth of story into something that's like, 50k+, you're going to struggle a lot

but let's say you have a big story idea that will need a lot of space in order to work! next step: figure out how you're going to keep track of everything.

(this is a LONG POST)

Keeping Your Ideas Organized

if you're writing a shorter fic, you can just scroll through the whole thing looking for a particular detail you want to reference. if you're writing a long fic, you don't want to be wasting your time on that. and you will forget things! i guarantee you will. so you need a way to keep track of plot points and details, in order to make sure you aren't abandoning plot lines and you have continuity

for me, i do this in a few different ways - and i'm speaking about my process for atfhv, which is different from my process for stga, which is also long but has a much simpler plot (so there was less to keep track of)

your mileage may vary, but this is what i do when i have a lot going on (complicated plot, many characters and moving parts):

keep an outline of chapters, in which i write down where i put certain exposition/information, so i can refer back to it quickly.

things i generally include:

plot points/things that happen in that chapter/section (this includes character arc developments)

exposition/worldbuilding/backstory/lore

characters that are introduced in that chapter/section

foreshadowing/setting up future plot points

keep an archive of lore for continuity purposes, by which i mean your worldbuilding, your plot ideas, character information, the little details - e.g., in my doc for atfhv, i have stuff like character mannerisms and backstories, the layouts of important buildings, lists of magical items, plants, and spells, worldbuilding, etc etc etc.

this is so that you don't have to rack your brains trying to remember some specific detail - you always have something to refer to! (you'll also need a way to search through that archive quickly - personally, i have a very detailed table of contents with hyperlinks to section headers, but i can also just search up phrases if i don't remember what sections they're in)

keep an outline - you don't necessarily have to have everything planned out (having a super precise plan may actually cause you problems later - i'll get into that below), but you need some way to keep track of all the plot arcs/points you have in mind - otherwise you will forget some of them. and make sure that however you organize that outline, it can be changed later

which leads me very neatly into the next part!

Giving Yourself Flexibility

there is a long-running joke about how writers will have a plan for what their characters are going to do and then their characters will decide to do completely different.

this is because when we're writing, our brains are thinking about the story on both a conscious and subconscious level - you may pick up on things subconsciously that you didn't intentionally put in there, and now all of a sudden your plan doesn't feel like it fits anymore

and that is a good thing! the last thing you want is to try to jam a story into an outline that doesn't fit.

so, there are multiple ways to do this. if you're writing an entire draft before posting any of it (in which case i commend you for your restraint), then you can pretty easily just go back and edit what you already wrote, or even re-draft if you decide things are going in a really different direction. so you're in a position where it's easier to have a detailed outline because if you need to throw large chunks of it out the window, you can just do that

if you're posting as you go, like i generally do, you need to approach this a little differently. the first question you should ask yourself is: how willing are you to make changes to things that have already been posted?

there's no right/wrong answer to that question. i will say, just as a warning, that you probably don't want to make drastic plot or character changes to what's already been posted after the fact - people who are reading update-by-update will be super confused. but consider how much you're willing to change.

if it's a lot, you can get a little more fine-grained with your outline.

if it's only a little (like me afjshgksjdf - i will fix grammar/spelling errors but basically Nothing else), then you should be giving yourself more flexibility with your outline, to prevent future you from spinning in circles trying to figure out how to make everything fit

which doesn't mean you can't have ideas about how things will go, long-term - it just means that you need to be comfortable with the idea that things will definitely change, and they might change very dramatically from your initial vision. that's perfectly okay, and you can always write another version if you want to!

to that end, i really, really recommend having some sort of document where you put things you like that you have to cut or get rid of. it makes it much easier to get rid of them, emotionally speaking, and you can also refer back to that document if you find a place for those things later

if you're posting as you go, i also recommend mostly writing the fic in order, because your subconscious will pick up on things better that way (plus, less editing later on - as we've established, editing is harder to do when you're posting before the whole thing is completed)

if you're doing the entire draft before posting anything, then it really does not matter what order you write scenes in (although you'll definitely want to read through the whole thing for continuity)

all of this means that in your outline/ideas document/however you're keeping track of plot and character arcs, you need to make sure there's room for you to make changes.

when i was writing stga, as i said above, the plot was much less complicated. i ended up using a private discord channel to keep track of what i was thinking, which worked pretty well because i could pin the key messages, edit messages, delete them if they were no longer relevant, etc

for atfhv, that wouldn't have worked for me, because there's just way more to keep track of (and just because that wouldn't work for me doesn't mean it can't for you - i'm more trying to explain what i've needed for different stories so you can decide what to try)

so for atfhv, i have a trello board for plot points, which works well for me because i can build it all out as i go (i have a column for each month and then the cards in each month are organized chronologically)

i also use color-coded labels to classify plot points (some examples: 'war,' 'school,' various relationship arcs), which is really helpful for me because then i can see all the different plot arcs and note if some color just vanishes randomly - that means i need to check to see if i've abandoned that plotline

and then i can move cards around really easily, archive ones that don't work without getting rid of them forever, etc - so i like that a lot

once again: it is absolutely, perfectly OK to change your plot. if that means you have to cut something you really wanted to include, i highly recommend writing another fic that does include that - don't just cut yourself off from things you want to write because they don't fit into your 'current' or 'primary' wip (if you have such things)

aaaaaand now we get into the hardest part.

Staying Motivated

longfics are super daunting. like. super daunting. i don't think there's really a way to get away from that feeling. it'll come and go.

so i don't have a perfect solution for how to stay motivated on a long project. but here are my suggestions for what will help:

write it because you love it. nothing else will be enough to get you to see it through. write story ideas you really enjoy. put in things you think are fun or interesting. make the actual writing process as enjoyable as possible for yourself, rather than something you're forcing yourself to grind through because you think other people will like it

make it bite-sized. don't tell yourself 'i have to write this massive longfic.' break it down into smaller pieces. i usually break it down into chapters. that is how you write any long story - piece by piece. it's much less intimidating and it's also just how long projects work lol

take breaks. if you post as you go, i recommend setting up a posting schedule where you post chapters slower than you write them. that way, you can take breaks when you want them. and there's no shame in putting a project on hiatus. unless you have a literal actual deadline you have to meet, there's no reason to rush it. do not force yourself to write if it feels like a chore. you don't want to drain all the joy out of something you're doing for fun

don't fall in love with your statistics or activity or any other measure of engagement. this one is hard for me afjskghksjdf. here's the thing: if you're at the point where you know exactly how many comments or kudos or subscriptions or bookmarks or hits your fic has, you are paying too much attention.

that means if you notice some sort of dip in your statistics - maybe some people unsubscribed or un-bookmarked, maybe you didn't get as many comments on a chapter as you normally do - it can feel really heartbreaking. you're pouring a lot of time and energy and effort and love into this story, and it can be very upsetting to feel like you're not getting anything back.

this is why it's so important to make sure that all of that work is for an end product you will actually enjoy, with a process you enjoy. if you're only creating it for engagement, then when you hit a slump (which is inevitable), it'll be incredibly demoralizing.

and i won't lie - even if you *are* creating something you really enjoy, it can still be upsetting to realize people aren't engaging with it. we share stories because we think others will appreciate them. it's okay to want some sort of reciprocal engagement.

and that's why it's so important not to look too much at your numbers. can't get sad about a drop in subscribers if you don't know how many subscribers you have in the first place!

of course, it's basically impossible to really have no idea, unless you're having someone else post your fic for you so you never have to look at it - but just pay attention.

if you notice yourself reflexively checking your statistics, or refreshing your email inbox looking for ao3 emails about comments or kudos, it's time to step back.

write the parts you want to write. i know i advocated writing mostly in order earlier in this post - this part is why i don't advocate writing ENTIRELY in order. in any story, there are the really important parts, the parts we're super excited to write, the parts we really love - and then there's also the connective tissue that makes those parts make sense. if you feel like you're slogging through connective tissue, take a break and write one of the parts you're really excited about

(and, yeah, if you're writing it super ahead of time you may get to that point in the story and realize you have to completely rewrite it - this happens to me ALL THE TIME. that's another good reason to keep a document where you store things you had to cut!)

remember that it's normal to feel unmotivated sometimes. everyone goes through highs and lows with creative projects. if you feel like it's all bad and you don't want to work on it and it wasn't even a good story idea in the first place, you may just need to eat, sleep, shower, go outside, take a break, do something else, etc. take a deep breath and come back to it when you feel ready. it's supposed to be fun.

getting comfortable with change is also a way to help with staying motivated - if you feel like something isn't working anymore, change it, rather than forcing yourself to stick with it

work on other stories when you want to. you're not OBLIGATED to do this, but having a longfic in progress doesn't mean you're forbidden from working on anything else.

i absolutely prioritize working on ttdl over other stories - it's the only one i'm actively posting, and it is also the one i'm most interested in lol. but i have a lot of side projects! so if i want to write in a different style, from a different pov, about something different, i can do that, instead of forcing myself to slog through something i'm not feeling in the moment.

this is the equivalent of taking a stretching break. don't burn yourself out on your story by chaining yourself to it. that doesn't help anyone

don't strive for perfection. it will never be perfect. never ever ever. 'perfect' is this static thing that doesn't actually allow for any nuance, and attempting to write something 'perfectly' can be super demotivating because it's... not actually very specific?

if you want to improve your writing (a completely valid and admirable goal), pick specific skills you want to improve. one or two at a time. look up tips on how to write those things effectively. practice by writing snippets or one-shots or shorter fics. but don't aim for 'perfect,' because 'perfect' doesn't actually mean anything.

lastly, trust yourself.

this applies to everything from pacing to plot ideas. you know the story you want to tell. trust yourself about how to tell it.

and remember that 'writing longfics' isn't some sort of innate personality trait or characteristic - it's not something you're either capable or incapable of doing. there's no benchmark or standard you have to meet in order to be 'qualified' to write a long story. if you want to try it, then try it! worst-case scenario is that you don't finish it, and having unfinished stories is the most normal thing in the world.

i hope that's helpful! if you have more questions, please do let me know. best of luck with your writing endeavors!

[darkdoverpseeker]

25 NB looking for 20+ with one or more plots with lots of room for mutual worldbuilding and character development!

👑 ARRANGED MARRIAGE PLOTS!

preferably set in a loose medieval fantasy setting.

character A (M), ruler of a powerful nation, has been promised a princess’ hand in marriage from a much smaller nation, in exchange for allyship and protection. however, the princess in question, character B, is actually a prince (trans FtM). [ i want to play B on this one ]

character A is a spoiled, out - of - touch, eccentric ruler who demands character B’s hand in marriage while on a “diplomatic” visit to B’s nation.

character A is required (legally or by their parents) to produce an heir. character B is picked more or less at random by A to fulfill this requirement. this particular plot would be smut heavy, and could go both softer or darker directions.

character A and character B grew up together knowing they were always going to be married, as they’d been arranged from birth. but now that the time has come, one or both of them aren’t sure they really want to go through with this.

magic is an everyday part of character A’s life. when character B is given in marriage, they have to adapt to this new life from their own anti - magic roots. could also be an “interspecies” romance (human x fae or something)

🧪 MAD SCIENCE PLOTS!

can be set in a modern fantasy or science fiction setting.

character A creates character B in their lab, either on accident or with an engineered purpose. B could be a homunculus, a robot, an AI, or another synthetic life form of some kind.

character A abducts character B for use in their experiments. preferably smut and whump heavy.

character A slowly discovers that their entire world is a virtual reality created to comfort/entertain character B, who they previously believed to be a close friend. [ i want to play B on this one ]

🕊️ interested in some dark themes, such as abuse, (sexual) violence, noncon/dubcon, realistic depictions of transphobia, and others. bonus points for inclusion of size difference!! not interested in detrans/misgendering kink, but other dark themes can be discussed. i enjoy whump and angst with some comfort, smut, slow burn romance, and maybe a pinch of fluff. we can chat about this more in depth when we start plotting. i will play switches or subs, but won’t do doms without doubling. i have no preference on top or bottom.

i have a heavy preference for writing (non-op) trans muses: FtM, MtF, nonbinary, genderfluid, bigender, and other portrayals are all on the table. i am interested in any genders in any pairing combination.

i may grab more than one partner for different plots. i expect multipara or novella style. i usually reply sometime between same day or it may take up to a week when real life gets in the way. i will extend you the same courtesy.

drop a like if you’re interested. be prepared to let me know what plot you’re interested in, what character you’d like to bring, what ideas you have, etc.

like if interested!

[slashmagpie]

How long do you spend planning/world building for fics? If I should be more specific, how long did you plan the lore and mechanics that feature in Lifeline au before you wrote it? I mean it’s technically based on a video game but still

Okay so actually my answer for fics in general and my answer for LLAU is different! Normally before I sit down to write a fic I will figure out enough of what's going on to write a page of bullet points of lore/worldbuilding, work out the magic system, and draft an outline. I'm the sort of writer who, even when I have an outline, will inevitably drift from that outline and add a bunch of new subplots and worldbuilding elements as I go to flesh out the story more, and I'm familiar enough now with my process to account for that and roll with it.

For example: screenshots from my planning doc for TFatBatG, the fic I wrote before LLAU.

^ Here you can see me workshopping the premise and beginning to flesh out the character arcs, using points from canon to bounce off of. Some of this stuff didn't even make it into the final fic!

^ Parts of my actual chapter-by-chapter outline. As you can see, it's a lot more detailed at the beginning then it is towards the end, and if you've read the fic, you'll notice that there are several subplots that occur during these chapters which aren't even mentioned here. Those are things that I came up with on the fly. Things tend to stray for me more in later chapters than earlier ones, because things just tend to develop organically as I'm writing, and then need to be resolved later.

LLAU, however, is a little different, in that I originally started writing it as a fun chill burn-out project. You see, I'd just finished writing TFatBatG, which was the first longfic I'd ever finished, the first thing I'd written to pass 100k, and also written during a 14 week period in which I finished my masters and started working a full-time job, so as you can imagine. I was feeling pretty burnt out by the end of it. But I also then had a lot of free time open up (started working night shifts), and I needed something to do with that time. I had a bunch of other ideas that I wanted to write (and still want to write!) but trying to start any of them was really difficult for me. I just wanted something fun and easy and chill to work on when I felt like it to try and get me through that burn-out period and back to actually writing.

And then one night on discord we were making moon's haunted jokes, and I went "haha Hermitcraft Lifeline AU" (because Lifeline is a moon's haunted-ass piece of media), and then I went ".....hang on. Hermitcraft Lifeline AU,"

I picked my main characters, wrote up the summaries for EO, MB, and LB, redownloaded the game to play through it, and then wrote and published the first chapter the very next day.

And people liked it! And I liked it! And then I had a 10-day busy period between Empty Oceans chapter one and two where I couldn't write, and I spent some of that time plotting out what I wanted to do with the series and where I wanted to take it. (Shoutout to @/lunarblazes for bouncing ideas around with me!) This planning period was when I decided that Bdubs would be the time monk guy as well as the captain guy, and that Impulse was the Queen, and I figured out the basics of the magic system, but the picture of the series I had in my head at that time was still very limited.

I don't have a proper outline for LLAU: my planning document complains the fic summary, character lists, and bulletpoints taken from the Lifeline wiki. For EO and MB I was using the games themselves as an outline, since they follow the plots pretty closely, and the only fic that had a chapter-by-chapter outline was AfaM (which I didn't even know I was going to write when I started EO; I decided that I was going to write it somewhere towards the end of working on MB). LB has a general outline but it's definitely not comprehensive and has changed a lot since I wrote it (I don't even open the doc when I work on the fic anymore.)

^ The LB outline, up until the point that we've reached now. You might notice that False is not mentioned once here. That's because I didn't realise I wanted her to be part of the story until I was halfway through AfaM.

^ Some of the notes that I took from the Lifeline Wiki, which are basically all the notes I have explaining the magic system, some of which I didn't even use. (And some bonus stuff about PWG which was the basis for Impulse's backstory.)

So yeah: while I had some stuff planned from the very beginning, a lot of the specific details didn't work themselves out until much later in the process. Since LLAU is based on a discontinued game series, I basically came into it with pieces of a puzzle, and I had to figure out how to make them work together; the facade was there and I had to create the inner workings. So whilst I've always had the vague "this is what the magic system can do and this is how it works," a lot of it wasn't set in stone until... I wanna say when I was working on AfaM? That was when I worked out the specifics of time travel and also "time = space = sentience."

So yeah! I do do a lot of planning, but most of that is in the form of me daydreaming on the bus and yelling incoherent ideas in my friend Doc's dms (you may know her as doctortrekkie of Still the Echoes Give Us Light). I have a vague general outline in my head (this will happen, then this, then this), and chapter-wise I tend to have the next 1-5 chapters planned out, but I give myself a lot of room to work things out organically. (Also currently I'm doing a lot of planning/brainstorming for the endgame climax of the fic, so I can begin setting up my dominoes to knock down now that the Impulse reveal is out of the way.) This is definitely not the way I normally write (I prefer having more structure/plan than this), but the fact that this was a fun impromptu project that took over my brain in a way that I wasn't expecting has allowed me to be a lot more fast and loose with it, lol.

It does also mean that some of the stuff that cropped up in EO and even MB is what I would consider some Early Installment Weirdness, and if I was writing it now I would definitely do it differently, but I'm very happy to be transparent about that kinda stuff when people ask. I'm not gonna pretend I'm a genius and that this was some kind of expertly crafted long con plot from the very beginning. I'm figuring things out as I go and having a blast with it.

Sorry for the long ramble! I love talking about the writing process, and LLAU has been unorthodox even for me, so it was really fun to break it down. This is, I think, the creative project I have enjoyed working on the most in my life, and it's taught me a lot of things that I will definitely be taking away with me for the future.

But tl;dr to answer your question: I did very little prior planning and the entire writing process has also been a continuous planning process that isn't over yet.

[flannelepicurean]

Okay so also...

I started finally writing a fic thing because an idea occurred to me that would AT LONG LAST let me use my stupid fucking "Goky and Geets" joke/label. And it let me trot out one of my FAVORITE fun AU settings of, "It's like a Prohibition-era detective story, but it's also the 40s. And the 80s. And stuff. Kinda like Blade Runner, but more fun and less rain. It gets a little Ghibli sometimes. And they drop the bass at the clubs. Fedoras, and classic cars, and lasers, and Madonna on the radio. You know. That one."

And of course, the whole dynamic of, "It'd be kinda like a Batman/Catwoman thing, except Batman's...not that smart. And definitely not that rich. And Catwoman's a little...Dr. Frank-n-Furter?" and LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE just ran completely away with my every intention. And it has turned into something...so fascinating, to me.

Not the least part of which is, if you've been Around Here, On This Blog, you may have noted that one of my very blorbos is a royal little gremlin. And I am not a one who thinks you can't be a fan of both silly monkeys (especially since I like to make them kiss).

But I'm like...legit falling in love with Goku. I don't write him as a protag that often, and not in this much depth or detail, and not with as wide a cast, and it's been a really neat experience. And writing him as a detective (even though it doesn't stick AT ALL to real procedure) is...great. That analytical side of him is beautiful. He just applies it in a different way than I think is expected. Is he the greatest mind of his generation? No, but that's not his greatest strength; and it's not a total deficit, either. He's observant, he's thoughtful, and he can be strategic...he just also really, really wants to fight--which I think is in line with his canon character, too. Because he's actually a pretty witty combatant.

And I'm all of a sudden excited to write combat scenes (which I normally dread and fear), because the first time he really LEAPED into action, I felt like, "Oh fuck. Oh wow. THAT'S the thing!" Like...MOTHAFUCKIN' SON GOKU IS HERE!!!

And somebody about to get they shit ROCKED. REKT. 😂

And it continues to spiral, and evolve and grow; I've put down like maybe 15,000 words in 7 days. It keeps coming through really clear, and I keep being able to focus. And coming back through on editing passes, it's easier than usual to pick up threads and weave them together. To go back and see where it needs a chapter to bridge two points, or where something has grown too much and needs to be split. Or where something needs a different voice, and gets handed to a different character.

And I feel like...outline-wise, and planning-wise...it's there. Tentatively 15 chapters, but that could change. Current stats could put it just over 20k words, but again, no way to tell until it's done. But I really feel like I can get this done. It's been a lot easier to be methodical, and contain the plot bunnies, and just really stay focused.

There are some REALLY interesting things in there for ol' Geets, too, I think. As much as I feel like I'm just kinda hanging on and watching this happen, most of the time, it's been a roller-coaster seeing some canon stuff show up in a very topsy-turvy way, given the weird worldbuilding that's come up, and the necessity of how the story has changed because of it.

Anyway, I'm loving this ride, I know I'm late to the "I love Goku" party, but whatever, I brought cupcakes.

[totallynotreadingatwork]

More Mini Book Reviews

Truly, Darkly, Deeply by Victoria Selman - Not my usual thing, but I picked it up and read it anyway because why not and it was alright! I thought the ending was a bit naff, but the rest of it explored some pretty interesting ideas. It was about a girl whose mum was dating a serial killer (obviously they didn't know at the time) and how his arrest really impacted them.

Temeraire or His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik, book 1 of the Temeraire series - Not me out here almost crying at the connection between man and beast. Seriously I really loved this one, it's like Httyd but for adults, and I'm absolutely living for it. Also I really like books about ships - something about the idea of a crew really appeals to me I think - and this really hit that spot for me. Also, the dragons are cool.

Scarlet by Genevieve Cogman, book 1 of the Scarlet Revolution Series - Basically just some good fun! It's not a vampire romance as many will be pleased to know, and the vampires do actually pose a threat, which is nice. It's set in an alternate-universe French revolution, and explores such ideas as 'hmm, maybe the beheadings were a bit too far but would it really be so bad to take down all the rich people?'. Idk, I enjoyed it.

The Witch's Warning by Joseph Delaney, book 2 (the final book) of the Aberrations series - Very good indeed, Delaney is brilliant at making dark spooky worlds full of horrors and monsters. Just really is a shame he died before he could finish the series as the only thing that lets this book down is that it spends a fair bit of time building up to a sequel that never gets to happen.

The Family Remains by Lisa Jewel, the sequel to The Family Upstairs - Really, really good follow-up book to the first one, using everything you learned about the characters there to build tension in this one. Lots of different things happening, multiple POVs, interconnecting storylines, and wrapping up some loose plot points from the last book. I recommend this pair a lot to people in the library and most seem to like it!

Spook's: Alice by Joseph Delaney, book 12 of the Wardstone Chronicles - God I love this character. As with all of this series, you can definitely tell they're books written for children, but that doesn't mean they're bad, nor do they shy away from some pretty gruesome stuff. We're winding up now for the final book as this is the second to last and things are looking exciting. I can't say too much about this one without spoiling it unfortunately but just know that it's as solid as the rest of the series.

The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne by Jonathan Stroud, book 1 of the Scarlett and Browne series - I actually read this before a couple of years ago and decided to read it again before I read the sequel because I'd forgotten what happened. It's a really good book; Stroud really know what he's doing. If you liked Lockwood & Co. for the character interactions then you'll love this. The worldbuilding is on point, the characters feel full-dimensional, and the hijinks is everpresent. Just a really fun read.

Dracula by Bram Stoker - I went to Whitby on holiday for a few days so naturally took this with me. I don't read very many classics at all so it took a little while for me to tune into the language and get used to everyone taking two pages to say what could have been said in two sentences, but once I did I had a grand old time with it. I wouldn't say it's anywhere near scary by today's standards, but it was interesting to see where a lot of modern tropes got their origins. Also, I've read Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu before and it was cool to be able to mentally compare and contrast them and see where Bram Stoker was inspired by different things.

The Notorious Scarlett and Browne by Jonathan Stroud, book 2 of the Scarlett and Browne series - Just as good as the first if not better. Where the first book focused more on Albert and where he'd come from and his backstory, in this one we explore more of Scarlett's history and how she came to be the person she is today. Fast-paced, witty, and packed with actions, I really enjoyed it and strongly recommend it!

The Mystery of Three Quarters by Sophie Hannah - Read this one for my book club and it was... alright. Nothing special, but not bad enough to not finish. I didn't manage to solve the mystery unfortunately but that's no surprise, though I will say that it did feel pretty convoluted. Not too sure why the character of Hercule Poirot was used other than to cash in on the name of course, and Sophie Hannah is definitely no Agatha Christie, but, like I said, it was okay.

Girls With Razor Hearts by Suzanne Young, book 2 of the Girls With Sharp Sticks series - Sometimes, you just want to read a book about sisterhood and taking down the patriarchy. From some of the fics I've seen around, people who really enjoyed those parts of the Barbie movie might enjoy these books. They're by no means subtle in their messaging, but sometimes I like a book that just lays everything out on the table in front of you because it's borderline impossible to misinterpret them. Definitely feels like a teen-fic book, but that's okay because it is one.

The Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan, book 2 of the Heroes of Olympus series - Do I really need to say anything about this one? We all know Riordan is brilliant.

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield - Oh boy this one was A Lot TM. Kind of an eldritch horror story in Leah's bits, and then a story about mourning someone who's not really gone and learning to let go in Miri's chapters. Very much a 'came back wrong' sort of scenario, but less scary and more just deeply sad. I had to take a break and go look at trees for a while after I finished it. The ending was low-key heartbreaking.

Revival by Stephen King - Sort of promised myself I wouldn't read any more of his books but here I am. This one was actually pretty good for the most part though! Not very horror-y, I didn't think, but still a good story. The only bit I didn't like was when the 52 year old protagonist is sleeping with the 24 year old daughter of his co-worker, but I honestly should have expected that because this is a Stephen King book.