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Not currently writing one but I do have a story and characters squatting in my brain and honestly these losers have gotta start paying rent soon or I'm gonna riot. I need my book money! My budget is crying!

Anyway, it's an urban fantasy werewolf/witch situation with murder mystery for extra Spice.

I am lacking WLW content on my dash -

SO PLEASE REBLOG IF YOU WRITE WLW STORIES. GIVE ME QUEER WOMEN, GIVE ME MORALLY GRAY QUEER WOMEN.

and also like to interact with tag games and the occasional ask game.

bonus if you like genshin impact, oxenfree, night in the woods. omori, or anything similar to those or anime. not required but appreciated okay thank you goodbye

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It might be helpful for people who do this (give unsolicited feedback) to acknowledge that there is a difference between constructive criticism and destructive criticism. And unsolicited criticism is always, in my opinion, destructive.

That is to say; you are actively ruining something.

The key to constructive criticism is 1) understanding the author's intent 2) understanding the author's writing style 3) understanding the genre/fandom and it's peculiarities 4) understanding what the work is intending to convey 5) understanding common missteps in conveying such things 6) understanding the constraints the author's skill level presents etc.

You can not understand all of that without talking to the author first, especially not if it's an ongoing work. You simply can not, no matter how smart you are. That's just your arrogance and entitlement showing.

Any criticism/feedback given without understanding these things and more will inevitably be destructive, not least of which to the author's love of writing. And if you damage that, which you will, then you have become an obstacle preventing the author from writing.

You are being destructive.

Hey, if you don't have something nice to say about other people's creations (gifsets, art, fic etc)

then

don't say anything at all.

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First Lines Tag

Tagged by @j-1173 (it's the first time I've been tagged! Hello!)

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From THE GEEK TRAP (1st draft)

Winston slides onto the couch beside his best friend, Gareth Winters. The TV screen is bright in the dark room, the smell of popcorn tickling his nose until he sneezes. The couch is scratchy beneath him, and Gary hands him a handkerchief [but normal paper, i don't remember what's it called...] which he gratefully blows his nose in. "What did I miss?" Winston asks, then, pulling his legs up onto the couch and under the heavy blanket. He winces somewhat as adjusts the popcorn bowl onto his lap and picks up his glass of sparkling soda, sipping from the straw.

Gary restarts the show with the quick press of a button. "Nothing," he says, putting his feet on the table and nearly knocking over an unlit candle. "I paused it while you were gone." Gary worries his thin bottom lip, glancing at Winston and scooting a little closer to him, hand discreetly sneaking toward the popcorn bowl. He adds, "But did you know that Jason Hill is at the mall with Samantha St Claire right now?"

"No," Winston gives an perfectly appropriate scandalized gasp, holding up his hand in horror. "What a tragedy," he adds, shivering in disquiet.

Gary snorts, "Hilarious," and kicks his foot. Winston giggles, leaning his head against the backrest and popping a few popcorn into his mouth, munching down on them loudly. The TV screen draws his attention; the show's main character pops back up in the middle of an asteroid belt, hunted by hideous space pirates searching for fame and fortune in the cold universe.

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From A GRAVE SO HAUNTING (1st draft)

Vance’s head thumps loudly on the shop’s counter as he briefly dozes off, eyes shutting out of the own accord. The thid his head makes when connecting to the wooden counter startles him awake, the sound echoing through his head and he blinks rapidly, staring at the little bit of the dark wood that he can see. It takes him a long moment to understand what's happened, and when he does, he frowns.

He puts his hands on the counter and pushes up, blinking again at the light from the oil-lamp beside him. Wincing, he mutters, "Fuck," to himself, shaking his head and pushing his hand through his hair, fixing the tail at the nape of his neck as he fiddles with it.

"Are you alright, my dear?" an old lady with a cane and a bum eye asks him, still standing where she's been for the past two hours.

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I don't know who I know here who's okay with tag games so... ehm... if you see this, consider yourself tagged???

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Oh no. The bots found me!

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My writing will be emotional and you will cry.

This is a threat.

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you might be writing, i have been staring unmoving at my doc for anywhere between 1 second and fifty-million years. we are not the same.

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Liam's first entry in The Geek Trap (1st draft) Liam is the temperamental younger brother of the MC's best friend, and he's adorable. Like a prickly little gremlin.

There's a clatter behind them followed by quiet swearing as Liam enters the living room. He flicks the overhead lamp on and grumbles, "Losers," and Gary tosses some inedible popcorns at him. Liam hisses swearwords at them as he almost runs out, and Winston hides his face in Gary's shoulder, snorting.

"That little dude is weird," Gary tells him and Winston hums. Then Gary shakes his head and says, "And I haven't heard anything about them getting back together." He scoots back a little so he can look at Winston, and Winston lets go of him in turn. Gary's got a serious look in his green eyes, reddish eyebrows furrowing as he says, "He's barely popping up on her social media posts anymore. And besides, it's been months now, you know."

Winston hums, tilting his head against the backrest. "I know," he says, tone musing. His eyelashes flutter as another yawn shatter his carefully crafted defenses. He's starting to think it's not very good.

Gary pats his knees, standing and stretching. "I'll pop the next DVD in?"

"Definitely," Winston confirms, then he slowly frowns. "But I've gotta head to the toilet first." Gary's lips twitch, waving him off, and Winston looks to the large—noticeably empty—glass.

It's possible that he shouldn't have drank all that soda.

Share an excerpt that includes a character’s first lines of dialogue in the story

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okidoki, i've added actual links to my new intro post XD

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Redoing my intro post for easier readability XD

Personal:

- call me Ren (this might change)

- I am a he/him (this might change)

- I am an adult and don't wish to interact with minors (this will not change)

- I don't always have the capacity for conversations and even when I do, I'll usually peter out pretty quickly

- I write very queer things, usually romance, slice-of-life, hopepunk or them all at once

- I am currently working on a gay gaslamp fantasy monster romance series as well as various standalone books that jump from contemporary romance to sci-fi, to apocalypses and etc.

This blog:

- had no clear subject but is probably most closely aligned with a writerblr at the moment

- I do not reblog things to this blog unless I am adding something to a post

- related, my reblogs are at @sojourningogre

- some of my tags are: ogre talk, ogre writes, am writing, writing, in which ogre handwaves meta

- I am open to tag games and the like

- I don't currently have wip specific tags for my projects but probably will soon (tbd)

- I carefully curate my following list to ensure my dash timeline does not move too quickly

Other places:

- dreamwidth = more formal blogging, usually also related to writing

- mastodon = more informal blogging both related to writing and not, am probably most active there

- twitch = streams games (currently Hades & Prey) and on the rare occasion some writing

- picarto = writing streams and on the rare occasion some drawing

Support:

- throne.com = my wishlist that's mostly full of very, very gay books

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the addams family meta

so i'm watching the 1960's show right now and what occurred to me is how much of what outsiders think is weird and 'kooky' is just... love. like, the addams family love each other, and they want each other to be happy, so they'll do kooky things like have a room set up for just toy traintracks because Gomez loves them (and also loves blowing them up, lol). there's a greenhouse full of deadly, meat(potentianly human?)-eating plants because Morticia loves them. when Pugsley strays from the 'dark' path and wants to be a boy scouts, sure they have a moment of doubt. and then that's gone and they do everything they can to make him feel accepted and loved.

the addams family love each other, and respect each other, and believe in each other. they support one another, and that's the weirdest thing of all.

like, they have weird hobbies, gothic tastes, are probably quasi-immortal but... they want you to be happy, too. if you ask they'll help you for nothing in return, and they'll probably have a grand time doing so.

they're kind people, open-minded, willing to change their minds if shown proof they're wrong. they're not convinced of their superiority, or think they know better. a lot of the hijinks that make others unhappy lierally only occur because those same others were too afraid of the addamses (just because there are some weird plants, or a traintrack, or Lurch is too tall) to ask them to stop, or quit, or whatever, or just told them they don't like a particular tea flavor (slight exxaggeration but basically correct).

the addams family like what they like, and they're not ashamed of it. they love each other, and they're not ashamed of it. they help each other, and they're not ashamed of it.

like i'm not saying they're not also weird people with weird biologies (Fester is literally a charging station for electronics) but that's entirely secondary. they're not weird because they're weird, they're weird because they accept that 'weirdness' and they accept your normalness too.

ngl, they're just kind people.

i've seen a couple of episodes of Wednesday and while it's not a bad show (like, it's visibly well-made) there is none of that kindness there. and i think it says a lot about us and the cynical individualism that is so prevaloent right now that we lose more and more kindness in every adaptation. and it's really a shame.

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the great thing about finding out what gaslamp fantasy is that i no longer have to describe my wip as "gothic steampunk with magic and monsters"

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there's freedom in setting an unatainable camp nanowrimo goal. now i'm happy with the progress i do make rather than disappointed about the progress i don't

XD

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Writing fiction is just bald-faced lying.

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I'm doing Cam NaNoWriMo right now and I'm working off a... pretty detailed outline.

By which I mean; it's 18k words.

Oops.

Anyway, the key point is that the outline is in an extremely lighthearted tone. I was having super fun writing it! It was a fluffy, lighthearted story with like 2% angst. And now that I'm properly writing it out it is... not that, lmao.

I think the MC might have a Tragic Backstory.

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i played around with book cover designs XD (all assets from Creative Fabrica)

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i am ridiculously proud of myself for figuring out what could have been a real worldbuilding oopsie in my gaslamp monster romance series. so like there are rivers of blood, but there are also seamonsters and water in the faucets. which means there must be a sea with water! (to be clear, the rivers of blood connects with the ocean)

and i solved it!

there are now microscopic thingys in the sea that eats the blood. plantlife (seagrass and algae etc) probably also feed on the blood. i feel very smart for figuring that out XD

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a magic concept

what if magic is the result of a parasite? like, a parasite that gets into you when you're very young, possibly before you're even born. it has magic, but no capability to use it on its own, but not letting out the energy (because it's constantly making more) will kill it. so it gets into humans and the human uses it unconciously at first with strong emotions, finds out they've got magic, and then learn to control it.

maybe when they're older they even learn work with the parasite.

and hmm... i wonder if the parasite is heritable? like how long would it live? if it lived naturally long enough it could crawl out of a corpse and into someone else. if it doesn't live long enough, do everyone just lose their magic at one piont? does the parasite decompose and become absorbed by the human?

hmmm...