#{a new beginning; plot}

[levemetal]

I got Procreate and gave it a test run with some silly AU sketches of course

So have Calamity SJ adopting Hong‘er! Ft. my silly calamity MNQ AU and it’s inevitable conclusion of atticwife Jun Wu in the second pic because I am no longer in control here.

SY tried to be the cool uncle, unfortunately YQY is the cooler uncle so he got the Feng Xin treatment. Binghe about to start beef with a child lmfao.

Ling Wen is new heavenly emperor and I ensure you she is as overworked as ever, but she does not care about heavenly officials marrying calamities anymore. First was YQY, and then Jun Wu. Xie Lian and Shi Qingxuan are really not trendstarters here.

[centeris2]

This seems to be an uncommon opinion but thank god SSO is making (what appears to be) serious headway into the story.

For years it felt like it had stalled out. It was valid wanting main characters and villains to be visually updated before continuing, but it slowed things down.

I'm glad they aren't going "we need to update Mr. Sands, Darko is a pretty old model compared to the Dark Riders, Avalon really needs an update, so does Pi, etc"

Because yes it absolutely would look better if everyone had the same number of polygons. And yes it WOULD be great if SSO picked up those threads mentioned throughout the main story. But if they did that and got all those map areas that had been brought up in the story quests then it'd be another 10 years of filler in the main story until they can 'wrap up'

And honestly I'm tired of waiting. This isn't even an impatience thing, this is a "I've played this game for 10+ years and at this point I don't care how it's wrapped up, as long as it IS wrapped up."

Probably helps that I don't expected a 'satisfying' ending from SSO, I just want AN ending to the main story. I expect Garnok to be 'defeated' and for the Soul Riders to be victorious, probably through the power of friendship. That's all I'm expecting.

[blackhholes]

teen wolf meme: [3/5] motifs -> resurrection

It's different now. I think dying did something to him. It did something to me, too. But none of it was good.

[lazuliquetzal]

I keep on telling people you're the only one who knows how to plot. Can you teach all of us how to plot, please? I love you.

I AM SUMMONED? PLOT BRAIN SUMMONED?

I love plotting. It's my favorite part of the writing process. Plot is "things that happen" and the best part of writing is imagining things that happen. I'm going to assume that whoever may be reading this knows how to imagine The Happenings, so I'm gonna be talking more about structure, but in like, a kinda abstract sense.

A good plot is a little bit more than a string of events. Plot is like music: there's variation in rhythm and sound and melody, but ultimately there's cohesion, because it's all one song. You can have a bunch of wild things happening, but no matter how strange, there should be something that links them all together, because you're telling one story.

Plot structures are patterns in stories. I'm pretty sure most of them were developed as analysis tools (as in, story already exists > look! it follows this pattern) rather than as writing tools, but people use them as writing tools because it's a neat little way to organize the chaos that is "shit happens." Stories follow patterns for the same reasons music follows patterns: we enjoy the certainty of hitting certain beats. But we also like being surprised. A good pop song doesn't sound like a random collection of sounds, but it also doesn't sound like the middle slider of other songs.

There is this shared concept in both music and writing: the idea of tension and release. Basically, you're playing with reader expectation: there's an imbalance in the experience (tension), and we want to see that imbalance resolved (release). All the common plot structures deal with this basic pattern:

You set an expectation

There are complications to the expectation

You meet the expectation

And this rhythm is happening on multiple levels in writing. Scenes follow this structure (we're gonna get past that door, we're gonna find the murder weapon, we're gonna collaborate and come up with a plan) and all those scenes feed into the overarching expectation (we're gonna solve this murder!). I usually think of chapters as their own mini-story, part of the larger whole. And I think of scenes as their own mini-story, part of the larger chapter. I have engineer brain. I see the gears spinning in the clock. That's why all my chapters have at least One Important Thing happening, because that's that particular chapter's Step #3.

And One Last Important Thing:

In music, a delayed resolution is almost always more interesting than the standard resolution. In writing, that means you wanna drag out Step #2 for as long as you can. That's where the bulk of the story is happening, that's how you build tension, that's how you get people to turn the page.

So when you write a fake dating fic, those bitches better not get together until the very end. I came here for fake dating, not for real dating, damn it. If you resolve that expectation early on, you better replace it with a different expectation that's just as engaging.

But also don't drag it out for too long. Sorry. The hard part of writing is learning the difference between too short and too long. Writing is unfortunately a nuanced skill which is why my advice is like "do this but not too much teehee." But tension and resolution is just rhythm, you can build a sense for it if you engage with enough stories.

[lucabyte]

transfem loop + siffrin... you agree

i does agree.... i does in fact ... write a 7k word essay on the subject..... if you would like to perhaps click that link and read it if you were not already aware...... kisses u on the forehead......... sorry its that long but i had to cover all of my bases you know how it is with textual analysis when you're trying to draw a distinction between "headcanon" and "reading of the text" because those are different things.... to meeeeeeee.......

[hotshotsxyz]

the madness on the breeze

(kaos) (orpheus/dionysus) (9.6k) MAJOR SPOILERS FOR KAOS NETFLIX If you haven't seen it, stop reading, go watch it and come back when you're done (pls)

Dionysus doesn’t mean to end up on Orpheus’s doorstep. He doesn’t mean to end up anywhere at all, actually. He’d just… taken a step, and another, and another, and found himself here. Alone. Dionysus hates being alone.

The house is quiet until it isn’t, until broken glass crunches beneath his feet. It’s been days since Orpheus broke that glass, not weeks, not years. Less than a heartbeat in the lifetime of a god, but. But.

But Dionysus isn’t a god, not entirely. Or—he wasn’t always. He isn’t sure he wants to be, not anymore. He kneels and collects the broken glass. He wonders if the shards will cut him. He wonders if he’ll bleed.

(read the rest on ao3)

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Outdrawn

f/f contemporary romance

two cartoonist who’ve been rivals since uni, and now have competing webcomics online, have to work together on the relaunch of a cult classic at the comic press they both work at

they both struggle with art-related physical and mental health issues, and complicated families

[sparklespectres]

I’m really proud of Gwen and Alice for actually talking to each other and trying to open up a little bit? This is very significant character growth from their whole “I know that you know that I know something but I don’t want to say anything before you do even though you aren’t going to say something unless I do first” conversation that they had all those weeks ago !

[catharusustulatus]

Maybe it’s bad to hyper-fixate on one actor but I am so excited for Joe Keery to have bigger roles. I think he’s so great in Fargo this season and I look forward to his upcoming 2024 and post ST slate. It’s high time he’s been cast in some big tentpole films. He leans indie in his choices, which I respect, but dude. Put him in Greta Gerwig’s Narnia. Make him a knight. Put him in a sequel to the DnD movie that came out this year. Make him a cute bartender that’s thrown into a secret plot to steal government info because he’s in the wrong place wrong time. Father son drama. Road trip movie where he falls in love. I could go on….

[clochanamarch]

" look. i know you don't owe me, nor anyone else, a blessed thing. but i wouldn't have picked up the phone if i'd thought of any other option. and i'm not asking you to do anything bad. i promise. i would never do that. but this does need to be done, and i don't trust anyone else the way i trust you. we just need to follow a few leads. nobody gets hurt. i swear to you, @ziminiysoldat. " / S.C.

[hidey-writes]

wip wednesday

In the drifting silence of his empty apartment, Shen Wei presses the door shut, turns the lock. And then, like his body was waiting until he was alone, his legs give out. Shen Wei tips/topples against/into the wall, sinks down to sitting on the front mat/in the entryway. He sits there for a long time, curled into himself with his arms around his knees. The whole time, his body braced for the sound of Zhao Yunlan’s door opening, the sound of footsteps crossing the hall. Waiting, again, for Kunlun to return to him.  But no sound comes from outside his door. At last, Shen Wei tips his head back against the wall, lets out a soft, streaming sigh. The sound trembles in the still air. It’s the closest he’s come to crying in years, that he can remember.

from the up draft of the answer fic. im cutting it veryyyyyy close to the deadline this time ahahaha (nervous!) but the writing is going relatively smoothly (knocks on wood) and i think it'll turn out pretty delicious!!

[boxwinebaddie]

uncle neen!!! welcome back omg i was so sad to see u disappear </3 hyh !!! i had a question i asked last time but i was wondering since ur rewriting ur fics, are u planning on posting them on tumblr? or on ao3? pls be kind to urself too<33

good MORNING, lovie!!!!~ <3 c':

( or whatever time it is, where you are at the moment! )

i'm very excited to announce that you are my very FIRST new ask message on my brand new blog!

( teri is my first follower; ly ter. <33 o//3//o )

***long overdue UN ramble-bramble under the cut. xx

i /do/ miss my six hundred bajillion ask memes and am mourning the loss of all my online creations and great joys as a deranged southpark fanfiction author and the legacy i built with my tiny, gay weird hands

( i will go into it another time, but i had a very, very frightening bipolar episode surrounding my blog and my role on here as a writer, friend and mentor to you all, deleted all my things in a horrible panic, was able to recover them...but in the -- what i hope is the *very last* -- after shock of my episode...i got very scared, very sad and deleted both my dearly treasured and beloved, beautifully cult followed by many of you and other ghosts of sp style fanatics past ao3 account**

**( with peppermint on it at 13k likes which...oh my god, please be gentle with me, that was a very, very hard blow and rough realization for me and i am sorry to everyone who loved that fanfiction and wanted to go back and read it for posperity and personal comfort...i miss her too; rest in peace, pep, my first born. my sweet girl. </3 )

...and most tragically of all, i deleted my tumblr blog, with over one hundred pages of carefully curated content surrounding my sp aus, your lovely, insightful and thoughtful questions and inquiries, also typed with your tiny, weird gay hands answered, in turn, with mine, torched the ev. of those memories in the final blast and lost my window into your world through that medium...

...which is literally heartbreaking to me, because more than even my silly fanfictions or my blog, what i loved to do, was talk to all of you and read your wonderful messages each day and remind myself of why i should be here and continue to do what i do. </333 :'''c

BUT! my darlings, as ravenstan would say, 'it's always darkest before crimson dawn', for the very first time in several weeks ( which, i fear, and i was, full of fear and horrible self loathing/dread every waking and nightmarish moment ), last night, i cried for a very, very, very, long time, held myself together in the broken places -- told myself and the girl i was that i loved her and i was going to take care of us and be brave -- and broke the fever ( a little off key like jersey kyle, but very lovely nonetheless; love you tone deaf king. x my sboyf. )

today, i woke up this morning and slept...PEACEFULLY and woke up PERFECTLY HAPPY AND RESTED...

AND SMILED. QUITE. WIDE!!!!~ :D

and that is a baby step, but it is a step in the right direction and also almost wanted to make me weep like a baby again because i literally have not felt happy or like i do not hate myself for like, i shit you not, over like 15-20 days...it was frightening and fucking horrible! SLAY!

nevertheless ( or the most, finally ) i am excited to welcome in a new era/year of change on my blog and within myself; which is an era of peppermint flavored 'hope i'm healing' in a delicious rem(ember) font.

unfortunately, because i nuked my ao3 account, i do not currently one atm, but am in the process of recovering it.

( i'm not condoning any kind of rude/uncivilized behavior bc people are allowed to do anything they want -- but i'd really like to get my user back and would appreciate it a lot if no one used it to create another ao3 account just because it would be confusing for my readers and disheartening to me to not be boxwinebaddie anymore. )

until then, i will be writing/drafting rem(ember) in my messy google docs, am storyboarding everything to the best of my ability ( which is not perfect, but nothing is -- except stan and kyle to each other -- but god loves a trier, which is why he hates me: i prefer hell where it's drier -- that way my girlfail guylinea will not run. xx )

KALE SEITAN! ;)

posting little snippets of it on here for all of you, probably put it here on my tumblr and post it up to ao3 if i can regain my account/one in general ( i am a little worried that because of how long it's been, the loss of all my followers and, what i assume, is a decreased public or tiktok generated interest in sp, it will do poorly; rip </3 )

-- but the point is...that i want to start doing stuff for myself now. and not because i think i should or create unnecessary stress/sadness surrounding my strength or weakness as a writer or person ( or like, beat the living shit out of myself every single day anymore )...

...so i am writing it slowly, carefully, synthesizing all the info i gathered from over a year of answering your questions ( which helped me develop my sp au styles and their worlds into the lovely, seemingly breathing paper machslayed things they are now ), am going to write the fanfiction i always/wanted/ to write ( i’ve always wanted to rewrite RM, but was so busy and overwhelmed with my blog/my irl stuff that i couldn't )

and i'm calling it...

<3

p.s. ( i love you ): i am going to give my grandmother a copy of the first chapter of peppermint for christmas because i wanted to do something special/sentimental for her and secretly push the gay middle school style agenda ( she is actually very woke and thought my uncle might be gay for a while when he was younger, haha xx ), but i want to give them different names, so that on the off chance it gets passed off to my mom, my dad or manages to travel by world of mouth ( my grandma has a tendency to gab, but i love her a lot ) that it can't specifically be traced back to my dead ao3 or my blog.

so if any one has any ideas for silly interesting names i could give my sons, names for other characters or south park in gen. hit me up! <33

thank you for your interest in my work -- and in me, in general. i love you all dearly, i hope you heal ( i know you will ) and smile, pendejos because got a lot coming up on that crimson dawn and a lot of crazy shit coming down on that *jersey i won't say i'm in luh megara vc*

~SCHARLET sLUt~

cheers! mazel! ;) xx

-uncle nina, in her healing era <3

[edettethegreat]

king lear AU where parents respect their children’s boundaries

Gloucester: hey Edmund what’s that letter you’ve got there?

Edmund: oh it’s nothing dw about it

Gloucester: ok son 👍 I respect your privacy 👍

Edmund: …😒😒

—————

Goneril: hey dad can you send away your knights? They’re wrecking my house

Lear: you want me to get rid of my knights??

Goneril: yes please

Lear: well then of course 👍 I’m sorry they wrecked your house :(

[fairyroses]

She was the only thing I was living for. I’m sorry for your loss, sir, but right now we need to get you airborne. Police will be here any minute. I’m well aware of that. I’m turning myself in.

— SMALLVILLE, “Bizarro” (7.01)

[childotkw]

hi Jordan!

Just wondering if you have any snippets about izuna causing chaos in HP universe with regulus?????

The sound of shattering had Sirius flinching. Regulus, on the other hand, merely sighed and closed his eyes.

A guilty kind of silence stretched out from the hallway, and as Sirius watched, his brother leaned back in his chair and glanced over at the doorway where his strange friend had disappeared through.

“What was that?” he called, a biting kind of exasperation colouring his tone.

Between one blink and the next, Regulus’ friend was framed in the doorway. Sirius startled at the sudden reappearance. He hadn’t even heard the man walking towards them.

“Some kind of vase,” Izuna answered, his teeth nibbling at his bottom lip. He looked young, younger than Regulus even, and Sirius had to wonder if this kid would even be old enough to be out of Hogwarts if he were one of them. “It was blue and patterned with a scene of trees and mountains.”

Regulus put his face in his hands, and even Sirius winced.

Izuna glanced at them, just a quick flick of his dark eyes, before settling his attention on Regulus. “I take that it was important?”

“It was an heirloom,” Regulus said, his voice muffled by his palm, “and cursed to never break - what the fuck did you do to it?”

Normally, hearing his prim and proper little brother swear would be hilarious, but Sirius was more freaked out over how this random young man Regulus had pulled out of a dumpster somewhere was able to break their great-aunt’s unbreakable fucking vase.

Izuna hummed, sounding genuinely interested at the revelation. “It had dark chakra around it,” he said, as if that made any sense - chakra? was that what he called magic? - but clearly only Sirius was out of the loop because Regulus looked up with a spark of understanding.

“Chakra - you’re sure?” he asked.

Izuna nodded. “Definitely. Which makes me wonder how your family came into possession of a chakra-infused vase when your world doesn’t have chakra.”

“You think…” Regulus began.

“Worth a try,” Izuna agreed.

The two of them stared at each other for a long moment, Sirius darting looks between them, before they both suddenly shot off down the hallway. Sirius remained where he was, watching as his little brother left him behind - again - to talk a mile a minute with his new best friend.

Something dark and bitter bubbled in his chest.

[photobombingcryptid]

New Beginnings

Another successful day of of selling his ware comes to an end. It simultaneously marks a conclusion of a street merchant fair that had run for several weeks. It was a busy time, selling, restocking and forging new business relationships.

Blaze is pleased that for once his storage unit of Voyager has been completely empied out.

To celebrate his success, he'd thought of spending the rest of the night by enjoying some ambience of live outdoor music. Just a few streets away, a stage has been set up for a variety of free performances to enjoy.

He wouldn't pass such an opportunity to more or less turn off his processor and filter out his busy thoughts for once.

He grabs some food and drinks from nearby street vendors and settles down on a set of benches built into a stairway leading up a steep street. There, he simply watches the hustle and bustle of life, catching a brief glimpse of day-to-day life of several mechs.

Some exchange looks.

They all move on.

Except for one.

He sees him linger for far too long. At first, he thinks it's a coincidence. He even wonders if he had seen him before somewhere.

Crimson visor. Flickering rotors. Teal coloration.

Helicopter.

Nothing rings the bell.

When their looks both lock in for a little too long, Blaze soon realises their life paths have now intertwined, as the strange mech now makes his way over to him.

@helicrazy