#(but I've already seen a couple instances in where I think this might be happening and I just want to Restate My Intentions here)

[finelythreadedsky]

I don't know if I've asked this before since it's been haunting me for a couple years already, but do you happen to know where the story of Odysseus throwing his shield and landing on it to avoid being the first one stepping on troyan land comes from? I've looked around everywhere, and I see it mentioned it over and over again, but it's in none of the classic texts I've looked into. I haven't seen it in more modern authors such as Tennyson or Pope, for instance, either. Every once in a while I remember and spend the night looking for a source that could have popularised the story, but to no avail.

So... I'm asking you, in case you know and I haven't asked before. I couldn't find it in your blog, so hopefully I haven't

i actually haven't encountered this story in any 'formal' classics setting. i would think it might have been in the cypria, the lost part of the epic cycle that covered the events leading up to the trojan war and the earlier years of the war. a look at the fragments and testimonia we have for the cypria suggests that it did include the death of protesilaus, but there's nothing that suggests the thing with odysseus 'landing' on his shield. that doesn't mean it necessarily wasn't in there, but even if it was, it probably wasn't the cypria that was responsible for popularizing the story.

it sounds like the sort of characterization of odysseus that the athenian tragedians liked, but i don't think there's any trace of this narrative in extant or fragmentary drama. (no evidence for it in the remains of euripides' protesilaus.)

maybe check out dares the phrygian or dictys of crete? they're later latin narratives but i know they were pretty influential for medieval european interaction with the trojan war.

if anyone else knows where this comes from please let me know!

[rays-of-fire-and-ice]

Ok so this is a crazy ask, so feel free to not do it, but for the shipping meme, I'm asking questions 1-15

Get to know my shippings preferences & ships!

Oh boy! This is going to be a long one!

1. List 3 shipping tropes you love

Friends/Childhood friends-to-lovers (have you seen my OTP? It's rare that I don't ship the childhood friends getting together)

Opposites attract / The grumpy one x the sunshine one (I'm putting these two tropes together because while I love opposite attract in many forms, the main kind of ship from this trope I love is grumpy one x sunshine one. Again, just look at my OTP. Also, some of the other ships I reblog, like Ichihime, Rivetra, Kyoru)

Forced proximity (this is a trope I've come to enjoy when done in certain ways, like if two characters need to work together to survive peril, or they're forced into an arrangement that neither is necessarily comfortable with, and the two come realise they might feel similarly about their predicament and start to bond and overcome what's been forced upon them)

2. List 3 shipping tropes you don’t love

Love triangles (hate them with a burning passion!!)

Instalove or instalust (I feel it takes all the development and challenges a ship can have...but if you make it that it's instalove but they discover over the course of the story that they actually work better as friends, WELL, things get more interesting!)

Bad boy x good girl (I used to love this when I was younger, but as I've grown up and gone back to some of the media that has this trope, I realised how awful some of the bad boy characters really were when they kept mistreating the good girl. I also noticed how much the narrative of 'she can change him' was being hammered in and not feeling earned when the bad boy decided to turn his life around. I think this trope can be done well if either a) the bad boy is softened to not be as much of a jerk, b) the kind girl isn't portrayed as being naive, sheltered, or someone that people just walk all over, c) if either character screws up, they get held accountable and do the hard work to make things right and change, d) if the bad boy does do something to the kind girl, that he actually apologizes and means it by showing, and e) that the kind girl is not the bad boy's sole reason to change, that he actually takes the right steps to change, like seeking help from others, and doesn't just rely on her to change him; she can be a motivation and a support for him on his journey, but not his therapist as it were).

3. One emotional aspect of a ship that always gets you

It's all about the emotion aspect for me! If I have to pick only one thing, then it's always going to be when a couple has that one emotional stunted or stoic character and they open up to the one person they feel safe to confide in. This person is always there for them, and harbors a care for them that no one or only a few people do. It's because of this and their growing feelings for them that they decide they will go through hell and high water for this person.

Bonus points if this is a slow burn and it takes the stoic character a while to fully open up, and when they do, it's an emotional outpouring (I go absolutely nuts when this happens).

Also extra points if this moments leads to the stoic person opening up to others too.

And give the work a freakin award if the person they confided in confides in them too, showing they've been through hell as well, and the two characters support each other (ABSOLUTE HEART EYES).

4. One physical aspect of a ship that always gets you

I already answered this question here.

5. Multiship or Monoship?

I'm very open to multishipping for most characters. For instance, I ship Orihime with both Ichigo and Uryu (and once upon a time it was Ulquiorra and Grimmjow...I still have a small soft spot for these ships too). However, there are characters where it's purely a monoship, and I'm sure anyone who's been on my blog for five minutes will see Toshiro is someone I can only ever see with one person. If Kubo turned around tomorrow and said Momo was going to end up with Kira [once I got over the devastation] I think I could be open to it, but Toshiro to me only has one person he could end up with and it's only ever going to be Momo for me (hehe mono, Momo, hehe).

6. Rare pairs or Mainstream?

I think there was a time where I fell into rarepair hell, but nowadays, seem to be supporting more mainstream ships. Hitsuhina has that weird distinction of being both, where it seems to be very popular in the Japanese fandom, but not so much in the Western fandom.

7. Polyamory or Monogamy?

Monogamy, but you do you if you like polyamory!

8. If the ship is physical, reversible or not?

No sure what this question means.

9. Do you always have romantic ships for fandoms?

For most of them I do, but there's the occasional fandom where I don't, like Mob Psycho 100. Whenever I ship two people, it's usually because of their chemistry and how they can develop heir own stories or flesh out each other more. This was definitely the case for Renruki, as I saw the potential for these two to have a dynamic relationship that fleshed out both their characters, and that's basically what ended up happening in the Soul Society arc.

10. How important is the sexual part (if any) of your ship?

In most of my ships, I don't really think about the sexual side of things. For instance, I get uncomfortable with Hitsuhina fanworks that have any sexual connotations around it. Don't get me wrong, teens obviously do those things, but I personally just find it uncomfortable for my OTP (the most I can stand is a heated kiss, I feel like such a wuss! ^^; ). Maybe it's because I've always seen them as a sweet, cutesy ship that don't actually start dating until their in young adult years?

Whereas for something like Renruki or Rivetra, I'm more comfortable with considering and seeing in fanworks that aspect of their relationship. In terms of fanfic, I don't go seeking out mature or explicit fics that are 'porn without plot', I always read fics that have a plot or character exploration and just so happen to have sexual content in them.

I don't know, I think it depends on the vibe of the ship and the kind of chemistry they have together. Hitsuhina has a sweet chemistry, whereas something like Rivetra or Renruki has a more mature chemistry.

11. Opinion on platonic ships?

I COULD EASILY FILL A TOP 50 LIST WITH BROTPS! My goodness platonic relationships are awesome and just as important as romantic ships in any and all media. In fact, I wish I had more confidence to write BROTP fics, it's only something I started to delve into when I joined tumblr.

12. List 3 ships you currently love

Aside from my OTP (because I'll always love them), I'm currently in love with:

Gabiyui from Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku (*gross sobbing* OH MY GOD THEY'RE SO BEAUTIFUL!)

Hananene from Jibaku Shounen Hanako-Kun (*sobs a river* OH MY GOD THEY'RE SO TRAGIC!)

Renruki (*tears in my eyes* It's good that they're canon!)

13. List 5 OTPs from past fandoms

I only have one OTP, and I decided to cheat a little for this one by listing every ship I had in each of these fandoms:

Tokyo Ghoul: Nishikimi, Touken, Mutsurie

Dream Daddy: a Dad Dating Simulator: Damien x Dadsona, Damien x Hugo, Robert x Dadsona, Craig x Dadsona

Harry Potter: Drastoria, Helga x Salazar, Romione, Harmony, Snily, Jily

Death Note: L x Misa

Ouran Highschool Host Club: Haruhi x Tamaki, Haruhi x Hikaru, Haruhi x Kaoru

14. Opinion on the importance of marriage?

For shipping, it's not a big deal. I just love seeing the couple happy and content. I must admit though, I have had ideas for weddings and what certain ships' marriages would be like. Of course, I've wondered and even written a fic about Hitsuhina's future marriage, and even drew their wedding day a long time ago. I was happy to see Renji and Rukia get married, it just felt right for them, and an Ichihime marriage is just so cute!

15. Opinion on kids?

Again, not a big deal for me in shipping. I never go out of my way to find fics where a ships children are involved. If they're in canon, like Ichika and Kazui, then I don't mind and even love seeing some of the fanworks creators come up with the family dyamics from Ichihime and Renruki, but for the most part I just stick to canon and don't go out fo my way to find fics or fanart involving potential children from any of my ships.

Thanks for sending this in! :D

[izzyizumi]

* D O . N O T . R E B L O G [PS@]

I’d just like to reiterate here

Please DO NOT use my @.utistic!Koushiro headcanons / analysis series as a means of spreading further canon hate/criticisms.

You are completely missing the point of the series if you do that because the point of this series is to make a positive case for @.utistic!/Neuro-divergent!Koushiro headcanons as a potential CANON reading, not to spread further Advs hate because your Advs ship[s] didn’t become canon in Tri or whatever.

They also should not be used to further criticise Tri!Koushiro or Tri!Taichi or any other of Koushiro’s relationships. If you do this you are ALSO missing the point because the whole point of the series is to analyze their actions in THE CANON, and how they relate back to how Koushiro acts in the JPN version of early Adventures.

Thank you

[neil-neil-orange-peel]

I only just found out (looking for old photos and articles) that filming the last season of TNS had to be postponed because Rik had broken his shoulder falling down the stairs at his house - I’d never heard of him having any other accidents besides the horrible 4-wheeler one! And I’m like: !!!!! Were there any other mishaps that you know about? Poor bby Rik! 🥺

I have more info about this!

It was actually before the filming of series 3, and ended up being a good thing for the show. 😂 On 22nd November 1990, after eleven terrible years in office, Margaret Thatcher resigned as PM after being stabbed in the back by her own party - this is what the Tories do to their own once weakness or opportunity is spotted, they're ruthless. This was all well and good for humankind as a whole... but it did sort of bugger up series 3 of The New Statesman, which was in pre-production.

Marks and Gran had already written a couple of scripts, but they were scripts where Thatcher was PM. Now she wasn't and their scripts were already out of date! So, what to do? What to do?

Luckily, their leading actor Rik Mayall solved this problem for them by very selflessly, drunkenly breaking his shoulder after falling down the stairs while celebrating Thatcher's resignation. 😂 This put him out of action for a bit, acting wise, meaning they had more time to rewrite the scripts.

It is true that Rik seemed to get injured - or very nearly injured, in some cases - a lot. This somehow doesn't surprise me at all 😂 but poor Rik. The other instances that spring to mind include the time he and Ade ended up in hospital after filming an episode of Bottom/performing a live show (can't remember which). Rik also said the first time they performed An Arse Oddity - which was Rik's first live performance onstage after his quadbike accident - during one of their fight scenes Ade accidentally whacked him with a frying pan and split his forehead open. Rik seemed to think this was very funny. 😂 I've also heard reports that after filming a particularly tricky scene in Guest House Paradiso, Rik managed to knock himself out by hitting his head on something.

As for near misses: quite a few in The Young Ones, because health and safety was basically nonexistent. 😂 There's the exploding oven we see in Oil, where the footage had to be slowed down to cope with the very large - unexpectedly large - explosion. We see Rick leaping away in shock and can hear someone in the audience scream - the shocked expression on his face is actually just Rik reacting, because the explosion was NOT meant to be that big! He might actually have gotten injured by that one, but not too seriously I hope. It happened because the team in charge of the explosives put them in, had lunch, forgot they'd put them in, so put more in. Basically, double the blast power! The other verified near miss from TYO I know about is from Flood. Alexei Sayle mentioned in How The Young Ones Changed Comedy that Rik got a little too close to the bedroom door while he was attacking it with the axe, and there's actually one swing where he very nearly got Rik. I've heard other stories from the set of TYO involving Rik and injuries - including one about him getting knocked out in Sick and having very temporary amnesia, but I really can't verify that because I've only seen it mentioned once in an old Tumblr post.

And as for TNS. WELL. In the last scene of Piers of the Realm (aka the last scene of series 2), Alan B'Stard is gunned down in broad daylight. Rik performed this stunt himself and was reassured it was perfectly safe. That turned out not to be the case. One of the shots bounced off the windscreen of the car and got dangerously close to hitting him in the eye and blinding him. Fun!

Those are all the Rik incidents that spring to mind at the moment, although there are definitely more. 😂 Thanks for the ask.

[randomnameless]

It seems so strange to me that IS went the "fun obviuosly non-canon fanservise game" for warriors and did "wow new lore just ropped let's make a mess out of already messy 3H game" for 3nopes. Was Warriors sales so bad they need a differet strategy? They realized that 3H fanbase doesn't care at all about pevious entries in the series? I've seen somebody talking about how 3nopes is the most plitics in FE game, like Jugral who?

I'm not sure about it -

Of course we have devoted people who most likely only played FE16 and have a very surface reading of the previous games, who suddenly start to misinterpret everything and, as you pointed out, start to call FE16 the most political in a franchise with Tellius and Jugdral...

Or very devoted people who played the other games and, in bad faith, are warping their message to fit with their perceived canon of FE16 (dragons bad in Archanea for instance).

And if they made an all stars warrior game (not like the first one, obviously) I don't think those devoted persons would play a game where you can use Siggy to destroy mooks.

IDK what happened with FE16, but there are clues all around that maybe the devs wanted to make more DLC, but it never happened - because of Covid, or because of something else - so all those assets and "unused" or "ready for the DLC" lore were here, waiting to be used. Why not make a warrior game, since the engine was already there?

Add the hype that made people buy Age of Calamity (a "canon" story about Link'n'Zelda'n'Garon!) and 3 Nopes is a safe choice, Fodlan is FE's golden child (much like Fates was at the time of the first FEW?) so it will sell, add to that the promise of a "different story that could be canon if you want to eat watermelons in winter" and "uwu meet the students with new designs!!" and it was supposed to be perfect!

But then player pandering striked hard, the lords cannot be their best selves without Billy, Clout is Clout'd, Supreme Leader becomes Supreme Puppet and Dimitri is still lost about what he wants to do with his life.

People were starved for new lore for Fodlan since the game was unfinished and never released the promised DLCs, so they banked on it to make this and...

Well.

I'll only take 5 sesame seeds on 3 Nopes's burger, but the rest I can safely leave it on my plate.

And idk about the real sales, but on some social networks, the outcry about the leaked plot (and Clout) was so terrible that apparently people refused to buy the game?? Rhea returning in the freezer and Billy never appearing disappointed some people who might have wanted to buy the game for them, and just don't want anymore.

Coupled with Clout and Supreme Puppet - the "plot" of the game, the thing that is supposed to be nigh useless in a Musou Game is so bad that people don't want to buy it anymore.

I won't say it's a good or a bad thing (maybe they were just on the fence) but for sure, I'm sure they could have made more money if they sold it as a "lol fanservice" game like in the first Musou, instead of showering their previous avatar with praise by writing how sad are the uwu students without them (save for Rhea, who thrives when she's not relegated to uwu'ing about Billy).

[rpbetter]

what's the nicest possible way to tell a close friend their roleplay blogs suck and if they want followers and interaction like they keep complaining about they have to actually put effort into it instead of just making blog after blog and slapping a character on it like that's they need to do. I've tried to suggest this to her before by comparing other blogs that play her muse but she just feels inadequate instead of inspired to emulate them which I understand but it's very frustrating when I suggest a million ways to make her blog better and she brushes them all off for one reason or another and I don't want to say anything because she's like a sister to me. sigh.

Unfortunately, the short answer to this is that there really isn't any way you can make her see this unless she's ready to see it.

But, I don't like giving those sorts of answers, they feel hopeless and shitty, so, let's try this...

Understanding what the problem with your friend and her connecting with this information is, is important. It might help in talking to her about the issue.

What I find in these instances, and a lot of similar ones, is that the mun is unhappy about the results but quite happy with the process. She's enjoying some part of this, it's just not the lack of interaction, obviously. It's the very things she's doing to turn people off of her muses.

I think a lot of people get kind of addicted to new muses. I mean, the entire process of having a new muse:

interest to outright fixation, no matter how short-lived, in a new, inspiring muse

who is almost certainly in a new fandom, and probably, one that is very busy and popular at the moment

"someone stop me" phase, even though they've already decided

picking the perfect URL, creating the new blog, making the graphics and batches of icons

reblogging All The Content about the new muse, at least, the visual content and maybe, a couple of "oof, right in the feels" style short meta posts

plugging the new muse on the old blogs, through friends, etc.

mass follows

new mutuals! Shiny new meme asks in the inbox! New threads!

It's about the newness, the excitement, and the irrationally promising feeling that damn it, this time, the blog and muse is going to be successful, popular even, beloved, the actual favorite iteration of the character in the RPC. Like anything exciting, it's addicting for people. And like anything addicting, it can take hitting rock bottom and going several more feet down, a few times, before they're over it and want to change.

Which is, of course, where you come in with your as-yet failed RP interventions.

What makes what you're trying to do here very difficult is that there isn't a total bottoming out she's going to reach. There will always be something new and exciting coming out with a new and exciting muse that'll fix the problem, in her mind. There will always be the option and availability to create another blog, slap another muse on it, rinse and repeat. With shampoo and conditioner that never runs out.

You definitely had the right idea by trying to get her to contrast between why what she is doing isn't working the way she wants and why what someone else is doing is working out that way. It's just, as you found out, often not the best idea, no matter how well-intentioned it is. With her blogs constantly failing for reasons she refuses to believe, it's incredibly likely she's already done some comparison in all the wrong ways, ultimately going back and forth between blaming the other iterations, finding nothing but errors in the way they write the character and set up their blogs, and feeling depressed that she's not good enough, but they are.

So, you might have unintentionally inflamed all of this! She could be in a place where she's even more likely to believe that what she's doing is great as a defense mechanism for being hard on herself.

I'd also like to say that I'm aware the "right" advice here is, "there's nothing you can do, you'll just make her feel bad, people have a right to RP however they want." But, you're also her friend, and you have to be around the complaining and upset when this just keeps happening.

Furthermore, when we have very close friends like this, we automatically keep trying to fill in the gaps for them at cost to ourselves - every time they make another blog/muse, we get roped into writing things we know are just going to be dropped, making them things we know are going to left on a deserted blog, and so on. Eventually, it makes you feel bad about yourself because your efforts aren't good enough, either. It can really ruin the hobby for you, sucking away enjoyment and creativity you could be spending elsewhere.

I don't think you're wrong in trying to help both her and yourself.

Keep being honest with her. When she complains, be honest about why this is happening. And you can, indeed, be kind and honest!

Let's say that she says something about how she wrote all these opens and no one is going for them.

You could say something like, "that sucks. I liked this one, it's the one that feels and sounds like the character to me. What were you doing when you wrote that? You should rewrite the others to be a little more like that, I think people are looking for more of the character like we saw them in the series."

You're acknowledging that she's right, it does suck, it's a shitty feeling no matter how at fault for it she is. While pointing out something she did good (and, okay, maybe she didn't, maybe they all categorically sucked lol but find one that was even a tiny bit better/that has elements you can use to both boost her confidence and show her what is right, not just wrong). Then, giving her an idea - whatever she was thinking, watching, listening to at that time, she tapped into something more like the actual character, and she could do it again. And telling her what the problem is, at least with this, that people don't want a cardboard cutout muse, they want the one they like from the fandom book/show/movie.

No need to actually compare with another active mun and muse, or tell her that it's because what she's doing is terribly and driving you nuts. Even if both are true.

If she's the one that compares herself to another blog this time, seize the opportunity!

"Well, people like that the muse is developed and like the character they know. When you interact with another canon, don't you want them to be like the character you liked? You liked -current muse- for a reason. When I've felt like that, I reminded myself of why I was drawn to the character and worked harder on writing them accurately and getting their voice down. I think this other blog has done that and you haven't yet."

It's a little harsher, but she may very well only be looking for validation from you that this other blog actually sucks and she's doing great. A lot of complaints on tumblr are that - seeking validation, not help. The entire culture of that shit is not at all helpful. You don't want to try to sort of shock her out of it by being too harsh, but you do want to make it clear that you're not going to just give ass pats and tell her what she wants to hear.

You're telling her why this other blog is more successful, that the muse comes off as the character and is enjoyable to write with. Because the mun put in the effort to make them both accurate to the character and a muse that's fun/interesting/engaging to write with in RP.*

*Not all characters transfer over well to RP, either, and this might also be some of her problem. For whatever reason, some people are deeply drawn to the worst possible choices for them. They will find the least applicable character in a whole series, one with a billion characters that spans decades of material, plenty of viable options all around, but no, it's got to be this one. The one that's impossible for them to pull off, boring or disliked by the fandom, is incredibly difficult to interact with (think manic pixie bullshit, villains that are extreme loners, incredibly quiet and reserved characters, or those who are only ever seen in their canon to be bantering with friends and enemies - people they have established relationships with, unlike someone else's muse, even if that muse is a canonical friend or enemy), or is an active turn off in RP, like an outrageously overpowered character whose entire existence is based on being OP as fuck. That's going to be what they go for. Every. Damn. Time.

If you notice she's doing this, she could be compensating without even realizing it by turning the string of muses into identical and empty clichés she thinks people want to interact with, but that she can still handle writing. And unfortunately, your job is even harder, OP, because everyone has a character type...and your bestie's is Fucking Impossible to RP for 90% of the RPC Population Type lmao I'm...I'm so sorry.

Maybe if this is the case, you can get her to try out a different character that has some of the traits you've noticed she seems to always be drawn to, but without the complications. Work smarter, not harder, though! Propose this as you desperately wanting your muse to interact with x. Some people react very badly to being told "you'd write a great -muse name," others are flattered by it. If you don't know for certain that she'd be flattered, or at least not offended, that she doesn't hate this character or anything, do not say this. Just tell her that you love this character, you think she could handle them as a NPC in a thread, could she please try?

And make that the single most interesting thread in the history of threads. Specifically, for her. Give her tons of engagement with this NPC of the sort she tends to want the most. It might stick and reset some of her perspective on the types of characters she keeps choosing.

You're reminding her that she's a RPer, too, which sounds like a crazy thing to have to remind a RPer, but we do weirdly lose track of this. We get very invested in what we're putting out more than what we've successfully been given, especially when we're not being given much of what we want. So, you're prodding her to recall that there are two parts of this equation, she's been on the side of it - she's wanted to interact specifically with a canon muse because she loved the character/ship with hers/whatever, and has, as we all have, experienced both the disappointment of running through a ton of them who just are not that character and also finding the version that very much is.

This helps to put other people back into perspective in a way that isn't just "interactions." (Read as "desired attention." Which isn't a slam, it's true. It's also not a problem, we all are here to interact, we all enjoy having devoted mutuals and such. It's only a problem when we stop seeing them as anything other than a means to an end for ourselves.) She might be able to relate to them, thus, why they don't like her muses, if she can put herself back into their shoes.

You stick with that and transition it into why she picked the current muse. It's the same deal, there was something about the muse that sparked interest, creativity, etc. What was it? Something that isn't there, or there enough, in her writing. In all the excitement of muse-creation, she's probably let whatever it was slide right out the door. If you can get her to recall that feeling of interest and identify for herself what all triggered it, she might be able to stick with it.

And you've encouraged her again to give people what they want if she wants interactions by developing her muses. You've also done so, if it all applicable and true, by using yourself here, making it feel like not just a common problem, but one experienced and overcome by someone she cares about and trusts.

She might have an issue with needing a lot of high-interest, high-reward scenarios, too.

This is a high-effort, minimum reward situation for her. A lot of us in the RPC have shit like ADHD that can really make this difficult once we're experiencing it in this way, but even those who don't absolutely fall into it as well. So, you'll need ways to make it fun, but...I think if you can sort of kindly trick her into experiencing the effort as its own reward, it'd go a long, long way.

I can't really say what I do, having this problem with high-effort, minimal reward because I don't tend to experience that in RP. The writing is the reward for me, as much as I lose it utterly with happiness every time a writing partner is loving what I've given them. My reward system is set up around the writing and exploring characters. Hers seems to be set up around the reaction to it and amount of engagement with it. You need to try to use the latter to give her some of the former.

If she likes Halloween or Christmas, Fall or Winter, this could be your way into doing it!

Get her hyped about a seasonal prompt list you're doing. This does, yeah, mean you will have to do it, too lol but in the end, any time you aren't able to produce something daily like these lists usually are set up for, you're showing her that it isn't a job she's got to fulfill - the rules are only as strict as she wants to make them for herself. And if you keep yours short and fun, she'll feel like it's perfectly fine and good to do it this way as well. That it doesn't need to be a damn masterpiece or anything, just fun, something different to show off her muse.

While what she's actually doing, in addition to that, is getting in touch with and developing her muse. Importantly, when we write in a way that is just for ourselves like this, we tend to kind of...bond, for lack of a less weird sounding way of putting it, with a muse. It makes them stick with us longer, raising their importance and easier availability to us.

Let her know you're doing this, pick one out you genuinely like, and don't expect her to be down with it immediately. It's work with no foreseeable reward. Except, it's very hard to listen to our friends be excited, proud of themselves, enjoying themselves without wanting to join in. It'll be especially helpful, though, if you think people you interact with will like the posts and comment on them, or even try to turn them into threads if you include their muses (with their consent, of course, and no pressure). If she sees that, it might make it even more interesting to her. You might also have to pose this as her helping you out, that you don't think you'll get more than two done if she isn't doing it as well, as a sort of a challenge she can hold you to.

Whatever you think might work best for engaging her, you know her well, you can do it!

Be there to help her out with ideas if she goes for it. Throw out some easy, fun suggestions you think she might like, that even give her some opportunity to write something with her muse that she doesn't get a chance to. Pull from the muse's canon, is there something in their canon that goes with the prompt word "snow," for instance? Is it something she enjoyed about the canon story? Suggest it. Thinking about both the muse and your friend, is there something else that came to mind about that prompt you could suggest? Do it!

Again, whatever she's most into, it's an angle. Humor? Her serious muse is forced into a ridiculous, funny situation that involves the snow. Angst? A sad memory associated with the snow. Shipping? A romantic, fluffy scene (or steamy one). And so on.

Be there to express interest and encouragement while she's doing it. Don't do things that are going to come off as pressuring or helicopter moming her, of course! Like, asking how much she's gotten done, did she start working on it yet? That's a bad idea, unless she enjoys that sort of thing. Instead, tell her how much you can't wait to see this, ask about how it's going, tell her about yours to encourage her to talk about it.

And be there to be her audience when she posts it. This really seems to be her highest reward, so give it to her. Like the post, comment on the post, tell her in messages. Not individually, all of those things. If you can find a way to that doesn't mess up what you've got going on with your blog, mutuals, other friends, etc., mention it on your blog.

At this point, people might be both aware of her RP habits and wary of engaging with her, but someone might bite if you're enthused and go like the post. If it's applicable, make some jokes about it on the dash, turn it into a moment of inside joke-like crack for people to see. Mention that she wrote this and you loved it, link it or outright reblog her post. Hell, mention that you and her are doing such and such prompts for whatever holiday or season before the fact, that way, it doesn't come out of nowhere to your mutuals, either. Again, if applicable, you can ask to turn it into a thread.

The point, at this juncture, isn't to attract people to her blog and posts, it's to demonstrate to her that this is fun and rewarding. If you can get people to go like the posts, great, but you can only count on yourself to do it at first.

Most people enjoy those sorts of prompts on their dash from mutuals, though. You're always going to have some who feel like it's annoying because it wasn't strictly a RP reply, but whatever, they're not the majority in most fandoms anymore, thankfully. Point is, it's literally showing her mutuals that she's capable of thinking as her muse and working on her muse. It's showing off good things and making her muse more interesting and uniquely hers in a good way. And it's totally possible that she's going to organically generate likes, people wanting to use this as a plot with her for RP, and mutuals who are increasingly following along with every post made.

The hope is that she experiences the beginnings of more interest in the muse than she does making muses, gain some confidence in doing this with the enjoyment of it, and stick with a muse longer than five seconds so that she can actually end up with the interactions she wants.

There are definitely other ways of doing this, the prompt thing just came to mind because it's major prompt season. You've got a prompt list floating around for literally every popular point of interest right now, from whump to extreme fluff to horror to humor. And it's going to keep going until January. It's also something that can be as short as a paragraph or as long as several thousand words, and that a hell of a lot of people don't do all of. So, it's easy, so long as she's got a reason to find it interesting and stay on course with it even a little bit.

You could also try getting her into doing something like moodboards for her muse but with little additions of writing that go along with them. Nothing major, just things like a quote from her muse or a sentence from a starter, thread, whatever.

So long as you can get her to start refocusing on RP being enjoyable from the inside and not just the outside, it's valid as hell to try it! She seems to be experiencing RP as instant gratification and basing that gratification on things she can't control, like popularity.

Right now, even giving her the sober truth that one can write the best version of a canon muse there is to be found, be someone enjoyable and interesting in OOC interactions, and be an amazing writer without that being enough to garner popularity, or even the plots that are wanted. That being a very popular RPer and having more interactions than you know what to do with (honestly sucks ass) isn't a set of absolute values, but rather, variables that are always in flux and often, totally mysterious. It's usually a mixture of total luck, visual appeal, and both mun being on point with what people want to see right this second and muse being the mixture of fanon that is desirable, also, right at this exact second. It is seriously not within anyone's control, no matter how much effort, quality, or even outright bullshit they have to put out there.

If she's ever going to stick to a muse and not find herself envious, upset, and bored it's absolutely got to come from herself. She's got to be popular with herself, enjoying herself regardless of what others are seemingly achieving or want to give her. It's not going to be recognized no matter how harsh or sweet you are about the problem, unless she's capable of really looking at those problems as problems, and I don't think she's going to get to that point through negatively bottoming out. She might get there through the opposite, though!

It's...just going to take a lot of effort and patience from you, with no expectation of reward yourself.

Because it's still likely as hell it's just not going to happen. And while it seems like you are the kind of friend who would find the effort worth it because you care and are invested in her, please know that there's no shame in merely contemplating this and noping right out.

You've got a life and are trying to enjoy the hobby as well! And if it seems like something that could sour your friendship? It's not worth it. You're better off just accepting that she'll inevitably tire of doing this and move on to another hobby, maybe decide to do fandom blogs or something instead that you can support her in.

It's definitely an unenviable and frustrating position you're in. All you can really do is try not to let this negatively impact the friendship, to keep refraining from just outright telling her things she'd find hurtful, and try your best to show her that it's rewarding to develop the muse and stick with it, not a task. That there are improvements she can make to her blog, and that it isn't a negative reflection on her that they can be made. You can try all the compassionate trickery in the world to lead her there, but it's ultimately up to her whether she brushes this off as well, don't let it hurt your feelings or exasperate you too much!

Also, it's totally possible that even if you met through RP and/or it has been a big part of the friendship, you might have grown in different directions in the hobby.

Growing within the hobby is inherent to any hobby you stick to for long enough, especially if you started out in it young. Some people seamlessly just keep growing to things that make them happy, others experience a lot of growing pains along the way as they're maybe ready for change, but only in select areas they have to discover for themselves. Still others grow in a way that doesn't make them very happy, but they're both not ready (or willing) to approach why and what they can do, and also still too attached to the good times they had to reassess whether it's still something they want to do, or if it's something better moved away from into something else.

That's always very difficult as a friend. Difficult in watching your friends not go the same directions as you anymore, even in something as comparatively silly as a hobby, in seeing them not enjoying themselves, and in the possibility that it could signal the end of enjoying the hobby with them. It's sad and frustrating, and can feel lonely, but if you're close enough friends, you've got so many other things to still be good friends over, so keep that in mind!

She might need to keep doing this with her blog and muse situation until she comes not to the realization that she needs to change how she's RPing to get what she wants, but rather, that she wants to stop RPing. That could be the burnout that happens here eventually, but again, not only can you still be great friends, if it makes her happier, it's good.

[tthael]

What are your thoughts on trans eddie? I love it bc I'm trans and eddie is like one of my comfort characters. Since you're the best writer I've ever seen I'm curious on your thoughts.

Thank you, that’s so nice! I also have some Gender Trouble (transmasc isn’t quite the right word) and I think about gender dynamics a lot, and I think Eddie in particular has an interesting relationship with his masculinity in canon that makes him ripe for this kind of analysis.

Back when I was mostly interested in Hobbit fanfiction, I read a lot of good fics that played around with the gender dynamics of the characters; so while I know that genderswap fics can be a hot button issue because of transphobia and accompanying dynamics, I do like those stories when they’re well-written and taken seriously. For instance, this Dwalin/Nori fic by @thorinsmut features a genderfluid pirate captain and an identity porn romance during the Golden Age of Sail (https://archiveofourown.org/works/1861419) and it’s one of my all-time favorite fanfictions (content warnings for violence against animals, discussion of sexual assault, explicit sex, and a genderfluid character experiencing dysphoria). I tend to prefer always-a-different-sex fics, but I’ve also read a couple of a-wizard-did-it fics, like this Coulson/Hawkeye fic by amireal (https://archiveofourown.org/works/1173773) from back when I was into marvel (content warnings for internalized homophobia, explicit sex, and workplace harassment). I myself have had an idea for a while about a Hunger Games genderswap fic where, because 1 girl and 1 boy are always sent to the Games, Katniss can’t volunteer to go in his sister’s place, but he can volunteer to go in Peeta’s place because he plans to die to save Prim.

So, if we accept that gender essentialism treats children assumed to be girls and children assumed to be boys differently (which it does), I think that a transman!Eddie would have a slightly different experience growing up. Canon Eddie has a sort of glass closet going on and a lot of his childhood bullying is homophobic, and it’s implied that this is because he’s not performing masculinity to the expected level. Also Sonia’s abuse focuses on illness, injury, and contamination. She wants Eddie to be “safe” (goes into hysterics when he tries to get his feet scanned at a shoe-store because of the radiation), but she also wants him to be “clean” and “good to his mother.” Especially in the 90s miniseries and the Muschietti movies that take place in 1989 and 2016, a lot of that is coded to involve the AIDS epidemic, needles, and fears of transmission, which means that there’s an element of homophobia to Sonia’s influence. Also, Sonia canonically sex-shames Beverly, calling her “a dirty girl” and saying that she knows all about her, specifically singling her out of the whole group of Losers. There’s an element of sexual protection to her emotional abuse, as well as just a general unwillingness to let Eddie leave the house or get free of her control.

So if we reverse this dynamic and Eddie is a transboy, I think that the pressures he would experience would involve him not performing femininity correctly as a child, because he’s a boy. Eddie would still be very polite and somewhat soft-spoken and dreamy, and he’d be squeamish about bullies belching in his face and Richie playing in the sewers, just like he is in canon; but I think that his discomfort with his traditionally “feminine” responses would come from him instead of externally now. I’d have him lean harder into his traditionally “masculine” interests--cars and trains and other vehicles of getting away from his mother--and I’d have Sonia be even more aggressive towards Bill, Stan, and Richie, to the point of them not ever daring to enter the house the way they do in the 2017 movie because I think Sonia would be just as revolted by the idea of Eddie going around with a pack of boys as she is by Beverly in canon. I think that Sonia would be very invested in Eddie’s appearance, probably pressuring him about his hair and the way that he dressed, probably preferring him to wear skirts and nice clothes instead of things that he could wear to ride a bike or go running around in the Barrens in. I think that there would be a greater element of sexual shaming and body- and weight-policing to Sonia’s abuse, with elements of her wanting to protect Eddie’s “virtue” from “those dirty boys.” @pineapplecrushface wrote an always-women AU Nightingale (https://archiveofourown.org/works/24979312) and while Richie and Eddie are women in this story so it’s not the trans Eddie fic you are looking for, I think that the mentions of Eddie’s childhood bedroom seems pretty accurate for the environment that he would grow up in if he were assigned female at birth--a pink canopy bed and looking for clothes that don’t make him “feel like a cupcake.”

Actually, I think that this might look a lot like Carrie. I know that other people have already talked about the similarities between Sonia Kaspbrak and Margaret White, but Margaret’s abuse tends to orient not just around control but also around sexual maturity and perceived virtue.

I don’t know when or to what degree Eddie would transition--I don’t know if he would take the opportunity to do it while Sonia was still living, though I believe he’d be financially stable enough to afford it very early on. It would all depend on how the writer wanted to handle Eddie’s adult life--is he married to Myra? Does Myra know that he’s trans? Do he and Myra have a sexual relationship? Does Eddie know that he’s attracted to men? Is Eddie out before he gets the call from Mike and goes to Derry? What kind of transition does he want to have, if any? There are so many things to consider and I think it would all depend on what kind of story the author wants to tell--for me, I’d probably write a story where Eddie happens to be trans, and I’ve read some good fic to that effect--Rapacious from the Very Start (https://archiveofourown.org/works/22853020) by InkandOwl (I tried to find their tumblr to tag them and couldn’t) is one of my favorites, though tbh when I read fic I’m looking for explicit sex and that seems to be the core of this series.

But yeah, I’d be down for trans Eddie fic. I think that there’s a lot to unpack there, from how Eddie’s “gazebos” confrontation with Sonia would take place because the primary issue there would not be the idea of keeping Eddie compliant and in the house as a mama’s boy, it would be the idea of keeping him locked in a tower like the witch in Rapunzel because Sonia keeps treating him like a princess; to the idea of needlephobia changing from a threat involving AIDS contamination to perhaps something empowering and self-authenticating like T injections. And Eddie’s such a well-rounded character anyway, I think that there’s a lot of room to dig into his bickering with Richie and his outward aggressiveness and see how much of that is stress and how much of that is the idea that masculinity never shows weak emotions and how much of that is Eddie is quick-witted and thinks arguing is fun. There are also several parallels between Georgie and Eddie, particularly in their relationship with Bill; I think that as a kid, Eddie would think that Big Bill is just the best role model in a real little-brother kinda way, and Sonia would be super threatened by that because she’s Eddie’s mother, Eddie’s supposed to want to be like her.

I think in general I’d be down for most trans fic, as long as it was well-written. In the book there’s an interesting passage from the perspective of Richie’s mother where she reflects on how much she wishes that she had a daughter, because she doesn’t understand Richie and Bill, and she’d feel more confident if she had a daughter she could do things with like baking cupcakes. And I think that a trans Bev would change the way that she experiences abuse from her father, who in the book prefers her to behave in a feminine way (stops being angry at her when he thinks she’s afraid of spiders, because “all girls are afraid of spiders”; becomes irate at the idea that Beverly is playing with boys; obsessive over her virginity) but would behave differently if he thought he had a son and that Bev was transgressing masculine rules.

Anyway! *hammers fist on desk* Bring me my all-trans Losers AU!

[ckret2]

So I've been deeply pulled into the Radiosnake pairing bc of your fantastic writing! Problem is, now I have fic ideas but no knowledge of the Hazbin background. Can you tellI me where I can get more Hazbin info? I've only watched the pilot and read your stuff. I heard there were comics??

That is an excellent question anon, because right now it is really hard to get Hazbin background easily.

Okay, so, the canon info on Hazbin Hotel can be sort of sorted into four tiers, from most to least canon.

Tier 1: The Definitely Canon

There is, of course, the pilot. And then there is an Angel Dust prequel comic, only seven pages of which have been released so far. We’ve been told it’s gonna be finished and we’ve had glimpses of in-progress prequel comics for a couple other characters—most prominently Alastor’s and Charlie’s—but so far that unfinished Angel Dust comic is the only one that’s been officially released.

Finding the in-progress comic pages is... a challenge. Nobody, as far as I can tell, has been specifically collecting all of the pages we’ve seen so far. I was able to scrounge up:

Couple more Angel pages

some Alastor pages

another Alastor page

a random Alastor panel

another random Alastor panel—I’ve seen the full page of this before, Alastor goes “Hello ladies!” and they go “HELLO ALASTOR~<3″ but I can’t find the full page now

There’s a smattering more canon panels on the artist faustisse’s twitter, but I haven’t dug them all out, and some of the posts I’m gonna link in a lil bit have a glimpse of another panel.

If you haven’t already heard of Helluva Boss, I recommend looking into it as well. It’s a second series being created by the same folks, different cast of characters but set in the same version of Hell, so any canon details we learn in Helluva also apply to Hazbin.

Helluva’s pilot is here. Plus a cute music video here.

Earlier this month, during a BLM charity stream hosted by show artist Ashley Nichols—she runs regular streams under the title “HuniCast”—they released a few sneak peaks of future Helluva scenes, all compiled here.

And that’s it for canon. Two pilots, a music video, a smattering of future scenes, part of one comic, a few WIP pages/panels from other comics.

Tier 2: Pseudo-Canon

Everything else we currently know about Hazbin (and Helluva) are things that the creators have told us. Consequently, they’re all pseudo-canon—and likely subject to change in the future as the shows and comics are further developed and released. Some details that were released/described in the past have been contradicted at other times, or else radically changed by the time the pilot came out.

(For example, when Alastor was first created years and years ago as an OC with no plans for Hazbin, he was a demon deer who could shapeshift into a human shape—now he’s a demonized human with a few deer traits. And Charlie and Cherri Bomb used to look very different.)

So until and unless they make it into canon, all these pseudo-canon details are subject to change and should be taken with a grain of salt—but, they also comprise most of what we know about the characters’ backstory and the as-yet-unaired characters.

Pseudo-canon info on Hazbin is scattered mainly between two sources: the creators’ twitter accounts, and livestreams where they take questions and talk about the making of the show. If you and livestreams do not get along (my ADHD and livestreams do not get along), or if you don’t want to wade years and years back into twitter accounts to dig up every scrap of info on the characters the creators have ever mentioned, collating all the pseudo-canon info is gonna be hard. (It’s gonna be hard even if you do want to sit through the streams and dig through all their tweets.) Lots of fans, me included, depend on the absolutely heroic work of various fans who are willing and able to watch hours-long streams and collate a list of canon factoids released during the streams. I’ve reblogged as many of these posts as I’ve been able to find:

Alastor’s sound design (on twitter)

Alastor's Sound Design (post I made with screenshots of weird—but very interesting—subtitles slipped into the aforementioned video)

Sir Pentious and Cherri Bomb’s sound design

Niffty and Husk’s sound design

Charlie, Katie, and Tom’s sound design

Intro song’s sound design

Happy Hotel’s sound design

details from Faustisse (including a pic of a couple costume designs. Most of these posts come from zatyrlucy, who’s been doing a fantastic job of going stream-by-stream to get lists of details from the regular streams by Ashley Nichols and by comic artist Faustisse.)

more details from Faustisse (including a pic of the Von Eldritch family dining room)

Faustisse 3 (better look at that table)

Dollymoon’s Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART ONE (Shoutout again to dollymoon for compiling these, we’ve never spoken but I am eternally grateful for this service. Dollymoon’s posts are THE single most reliable compilation of Hazbin Hotel’s nebulous pseudo-canon facts that I have found to date, including both links to the sources and timestamps where applicable. Dollymoon’s URL has changed since making this post so the “read more” link doesn’t work but the “source” or “reblogged from” links direct correctly to the new blog. Incidentally, the risk of other blog creators deleting their blogs/posts or changing their URLs is why in info posts like these, I always link to my own reblogs rather than their original posts—their original posts might vanish without warning, but I know I ain’t gonna delete my posts, so these links will still work in the future.)

Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART TWO

Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART THREE

Faustisse 4

HuniCast - Australian Wildlife Relief charity stream

I think this was a faustisse stream (the original source deleted these posts, so the comic pages that were originally behind that read more cut are now gone.)

Faustisse stream 6?

And those are all the masterposts of factoids I’ve managed to collect. If anyone has more masterposts, chuck ‘em at me.

Even this isn’t all the knowledge that’s been released about the show. The posts that dig the farthest back are Dollymoon’s, and even they don’t comprehensively cover all of Hazbin’s production. A couple of these characters, Vivziepop created as a teenager, so there’s some truly ancient concept art floating around out there that will have details that probably aren’t canon anymore... but might still be until something happens to actively contradict them.

Tier 3: The Wiki

The wiki is kind of an absolute mess. It’s a chaotic blend of things actually seen in the pilots/comic, things mentioned at some point in some stream somewhere, and wild fan speculation based on what they headcanon as plausible based on the above, all mixed together with very little indication for which is canon, pseudo-canon, fanon, or speculation. Most of the statements on the wiki don’t have citations.

(And, on top of that, half the main characters’ info gets split up into separate tabs instead of just having a normal-ass wiki page, AND their image galleries are on COMPLETELY SEPARATE pages that are linked to in one of the tabs, and the most important characters all have TWO SEPARATE GALLERIES. Which doesn’t have anything to do with the quality of the facts hidden underneath those tabs, but nevertheless drives me up the wall.)

Some things on the wiki were added according to info released so long ago it’s probably changed by now. Some are possibilities that got reported as facts. Other things on the wiki have unambiguously changed, or else are just flat-out incorrect. (For instance, at this moment Alastor’s page still lists him as an overlord, even though it's been confirmed that Alastor is not an overlord despite his power level because he isn’t interested in and didn’t pursue that position, per this stream. For a little bit, somebody’s fanart of their headcanon human Alastor got added to the wiki as concept art.)

tl;dr: the wiki should never be trusted as a primary source. The wiki’s better than it used to be. Even so, at this time, it’s only trustworthy to fill in the gaps of what you already know is true from other, better sources.

The thing it’s good at is it more or less compiles all the known info all in one place. Trying to figure out who the hell this Vox guy is is really hard if you’re reading for mentions of him in compilations of a dozen different streams, much less if you’re trying to comb through those dozen streams yourself, plus a dozen more, plus three different artists’ twitters. In comparison, it’s really easy to, say, just go look at Vox’s wiki page, where all the trivia is compiled. (And Vox’s page is actually one of the better cited on the wiki. Look at all those numbers!)

So, if you need to find out who this character is you’ve never heard of before, if you want to see a full list of the thus far named characters, if you don’t remember whether Alastor likes coffee or tea, if you want to know what Angel’s twin sister looks like, if you need a reminder of Sir Pentious’s death year... check the wiki. It’s an okay starting point.

But, if you see a “fact” on the wiki that you yourself don’t remember from straight out of the pilot, and it doesn’t have a citation that links to a tweet or a stream... regard it suspiciously. And do not trust it unquestioningly as fact until and unless you have seen the source.

Tier 4: Noncanon Creator Shitposting

I’ve mentioned Ashley’s HuniCast streams a couple times. The biggest draw of them is that she usually gets several of the voice actors in the streams, where they’ll happily say nonsense in their character voices. For the most part, they’re not sharing any actual canon info they’ve been given on their characters, just goofing around pretending to be their characters. Nevertheless, a lot of the things that happen in streams get accepted as broad fandom headcanons, like Alastor being into dad jokes. (My favorite, for obvious reasons, is this one.)

It’s easy to find the source audio for all this wonderful nonsense by searching youtube for “HuniCast highlights,” and then rummaging around for animatics people make out of the audio. The only one noncanon video of this sort I can think of that didn’t originally come from HuniCast is a lone one from Alastor’s singing voice (who’s a different voice actor than his speaking voice).

So, obviously, none of these are canon. But they do come from some of the people actually involved in the creation of the show, and they are in the characters’ canon voices, so a whole lot of people treat them as semi-canon anyway. (Even the wiki lists “dad jokes” among Alastor’s likes, which to my knowledge hasn’t come up anywhere except for HuniCast streams.) Since they’re so broadly-known, they’re worth knowing about as important sources of fanon, even if you don’t want to adopt them into your own headcanons. They’re basically the same level of canon as blooper reels.

[notesanddreams]

could you please help me learn to read sheet music? I've looked online but it's so complicated...

*Gasp* Someone actually wants me to teach them something?! I’m honored, Anon ^_^

Learning to read sheet music is very frustrating at first; but I promise you, it’s not as complicated as you would think! Much like anything else, it just takes a long time of dedicated exposure and practice.

(I’ll go ahead and put a cut here, because this post ended up pretty long XD)

At its most basic, any measure can be broken down into pitch (the note) and duration (rhythm). Or, in the case of unpitched instruments (i.e. percussion), you can even get as simple as just rhythm! Let’s go ahead and start with that.

Before analyzing any rhythm, one most start with the time signature. This is the composer’s way of communicating how to interpret each beat, and how many beats go into a single measure of music. The most common in all of Western music, and by far the easiest to understand, is the 4/4 time signature. It looks like this:

So, what the heck do the two numbers mean? It’s very simple, I promise you!! The top number is the number of beats per measure and the bottom is what division gets one beat (we’ll get to what that means in a bit!). So, for 4/4, your have four quarter notes per measure. For 4/8, there would be four eighth notes per measure. And finally, 4/16 would be four sixteenth notes per measure. But what is a quarter note? An eighth note? A sixteenth note? What the heck is with all these fractions?

Well, to the dismay of some, music is math. You get really good with fractions when you’ve done this for a while! I’ll try to make this as easy to understand as I can… 

First, we have the whole note: 

It is recognizable by its lack of stem. An easy way to remember is that it looks like a hole. But the reason it is called a whole note is because it is meant to be taken very literally in terms of mathematics; it is one whole. 1, or 1/1, or however you want to think of it. And what happens when you break a whole into two equal parts? You get two half notes! 

These are recognizable in that they have a stem, but are not filled in, much like the whole note. But what about when you break a whole into four parts? You get… Can you guess?? Quarter notes! Four go into one whole note. They look like this:

Just like the half note, but now filled in. Now, what about breaking each quarter note in half? You would get eight notes, which are to no coincidence called eighth notes. These bad boys:

Or, on its own:

The first image displays two groups of four eighth notes held together by what is called a beam. This only serves to make the music easier to read. You can also beam them together in twos, like so: 

And I shouldn’t need to say at this point, but eight go into one whole note, hence the name. They can be mathematically interpreted as 1/8 values each. So let’s break them in half again, why not?

Breaking eight notes in half nets you sixteen notes, hence the name of this division: sixteenth notes. Sixteen to a whole note. Simple!! On its own, they look like this: 

Notice how it has two flags compared the one flag of the eighth note. It carries over to the beams as well, as you can probably see. This trend of breaking each note in half for the next smaller value continues for, well… Infinity! The next iteration is the thirty-second note with three flags/beams, and then the sixty-forth note with four, and so on and so forth. Hell, you could have a one-hundred-twenty-eight note if you wanted (five flags!!), though they are incredibly uncommon (I have yet to come across one ever in a piece of music). The smallest division you will likely ever come across is the sixty-forth note, and even then, those are mostly reserved for very old orchestral pieces, and even then only used for fast runs in the woodwind section.

So, let’s get back to that time signature. Should make a bit more sense now, I hope? In one 4/4 measure you could have one whole note, or two half notes, or four quarter notes, eight eighth notes, sixteen sixteenth notes, or thirty-two thirty-second notes (etc.)!

Sometimes you may across other time signatures, such as the also-very-common ¾:

The quarter note still gets the beat, but now we are limited to only three of them per measure. You can also have denominators other than four, as well. Take the 6/8 for example, another common time signature in Western music.

Six beats per measure, but now the eighth note gets the beat. Or perhaps 2/2, also known as cut time.

Or more commonly appears as:

So, two half notes per measure… But isn’t that the same as 4/4?! Almost, but not quite. The same value of notes fit into one measure, yes, but since the beat is now the half rather than the quarter note, you have twice the value of note per beat, making it twice as fast as  4/4 written at the same tempo (it’s all just math, friends!). And if that sounds confusing, don’t worry; many students learning to read music struggle with this concept, but it will make more and more sense the longer you are exposed to music. With that said, I will use this to transition to the next topic: tempo.

Tempo is how fast a piece of music is to be played. How it is communicated from the composer to the player can vary. A composer might write it very literally, such as a BPM, or beats per minute. A tempo of 60 bpm would be a beat every second. A 4/4 piece written at this speed would see a a quarter note played at every tick of the clock, or perhaps two eighth notes every second, four sixteenth notes every second, or, getting even more complicated, an eighth and two sixteenths!

But of course, musicians aren’t using clocks to gauge how fast to play something (what a headache that would be!); it is simply a measurement of speed, much like miles per hour. A musician would typically follow a metronome (easily downloadable on a smart phone or found online), or follow the baton of a conductor, who is communicating the beat to an ensemble.

Of course, some composers don’t want their tempo to taken so literally! After all, we’re not robots, and some music is free to interpretation, as well as pushing or pulling the tempo as one sees fit (known as rubato). For this, a composer might write something simple as “Quickly!” or something stylistic as “Mournfully.” There is also a set of words used specifically for describing tempos! These you’ll have to look up (they’re in Italian so it may not be glaringly obvious) as there are dozens of different words with this purpose, such as Allegro, which is a brisk pace that lies around 120 - 132 BPM, in most cases. Or perhaps Largo, a more lethargic speed at around 40 - 60 BPM. Again, if you come across one of these and you don’t know what it means, look it up! They are very well defined, having been used for literal hundreds of years.

Alright, so hopefully by now you understand time signatures and how they relate to certain rhythm denominations, so now we can try to learn some rhythms! As a percussionist, rhythms are my jam, and most of us tend to think of rhythm very differently than wind or string players (or so I’m told). Everyone has their own tricks to reading rhythms, but I’ll try my best to explain how my brain tackles one.

For me, reading rhythms is all about finding the relation of the beat to each value of note. You should know where each beat lies in a selected phrase. This is easily achieved by tapping your foot to the beat while playing, or listening to a metronome. The beat should either line up with certain notes, or come after or before certain notes. Take this rhythm for example:

This is known to some as a gallop, and you’ll see why in a second! In this example, we have four “sets” of notes. If you take a look at the time signature, you will see that they are grouped by beat. Each set is two sixteenth notes followed by an eighth, equaling one beat. The first two sixteenths in each set should take up the same space as the eighth after them. The beat should lay at the first sixteenth note of each grouping. It is difficult to demonstrate this without the use of audio or video, but each set should be played with three fast notes of equal space, with the third note holding the same amount of space as the first two sixteenth notes. When played, they sound a lot like a horse galloping! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRI_Ymc_8Xs

So, that’s just some basic rhythm knowledge. I will very quickly try to cover a couple other rhythm things very quickly (because this post is already getting very long!).

In addition to note lengths, there are also lengths of “silence” known as rests. This is the exact same concept we’ve covered before, but only this time a rest indicates how long to not play for. Simple enough? For instance, this is a quarter rest:

Which indicates–you guessed it–one beat of rest, just like the quarter note. There is also the half rest, equal to the half note, which looks like this:

And the whole rest, which confusingly looks the same but upside down.

An easy way to remember is that a whole rest is a hole, and you can fall into it, whereas the half rest protrudes up. What’s that? I used the hole analogy already for whole notes towards the beginning? Well too bad, I’m doing it again.

And finally, and rests smaller than a quarter note use the flag system as seen before, starting with the eighth rest:

And can go into thirty-second rests!:

Again, the number of flags determines the value.

Moving on to other concepts you may encounter, we have dotted notes. They look like this:

Many beginning musicians panic when they first see these, but I promise it’s really not that complicated! All it requires is some more basic knowledge of fractions c: A dot after a note simply indicates that the duration is that note plus half of that note’s value added onto it. A dotted quarter, as seen above, is a quarter note plus an eighth note in length, or three eighth notes. Easy!

Moving on to probably the most complicated aspect of rhythm, which I will try to cover very briefly, we have tuplets: the bane to sightreaders everywhere. What is it? It’s a little number seen above a set of notes. The most common is the eight note triplet, as seen here:

One “set” of eighth notes would normally indicate one beat in a 4/4 time signature. The only thing a tuplet indicates is how many of those note to fit into one beat. A triplet would indicate three equal spaced notes into one beat. You can put a tuplet over just about any rhythm. Three quarter note triplets, for example, would occupy two beats. And three sixteenth triplets would take up an eighth note’s worth of space. Again, it all just… fractions! I promised you you’d be good at those once you learn rhythm :p

There are also other tuplets other than triplets. These are a bit more advanced, and usually not encountered until intermediate-level playing. You can have quintuplets, septuplets, nine-tuplets, hell, even seventeen-tuplets. It’s a thing. But the main thing to keep in mind when you encounter these is first figure out how much space it’s occupying. Then! Try to fit that exact number of notes into that space equally. It can be a little challenging! But you get much better the more you consume rhythmically-challenging repertoire.

Okay, I think that pretty much covers rhythm! I know it takes a while to fully grasp all the concepts I just talked about, but rhythm is not one of those things one simply masters in a day. It takes a long time to be confident in sightreading them right off the page, but you just gotta push forward.

Now that rhythm is out of the way, we can focus on pitch! It is thankfully much less complicated, and uses far less math. If you’re learning to read sheet music on piano, it is helpful to know which keys correspond to which pitches.

The first note to the left of the set of two black notes is C, and each white note counts up alphabetically from there, as seen above. There are seven white notes in each octave, C D E F G A B. That’s all you need to know for now!

This is a staff:

No, not the wizardry kind.

You can put notes on it!

The pitch depends on which space or line you place a note on the staff. Which lines/space determine which notes, exactly? That depends on the clef you’re using!

This is a treble clef. Go ahead and try to think of ‘trouble’ puns, because I couldn’t think of any. It is sometimes called the “G-Clef” because the spiral portion wraps around the line for the pitch G. In this clef, the “line notes” go as follows, starting from the bottom line: E G B D F. Written as such:

The spaces, again starting from the bottom one, go as F A C E. Written as such:

If you couldn’t already notice the pattern, I’ll go ahead and point it out for you. Moving up one line/space for each note moves up one “letter” in the alphabet. In music, the pitches we use are A B C D E F and G. The next note above G resets back to A, and the note below A is always G. To reiterate this, this line of music:

Starts on E, and moves up alphabetically: E F G A B C D E F.

The next most common clef is the bass clef, sometimes known as F-clef.

The colon straddles the line where F would be. The line notes, starting from the bottom, are G B D F A. The space notes go A C E G. Again, mostly the same pattern as with the treble clef, only starting on the G this time rather than the E.

G A B C D E F G A.

Every clef also utilizes ledger lines, which are imaginary lines continuing above or below the staff. They look a little bit like this:

Ledger lines can go on forever, and follow the same alphabetical pattern as each designated clef uses. Remember how to top line in treble clef is the note F? The next note in that sequence, resting above that line and under the first ledger line would be G, then the note residing on the first ledger line would be A. The “space” above the A would be B, and so on and so forth. If you’re ever confused, all you have to do is count up or down alphabetically until you land on the note you’re trying to figure out.

That pretty much covers the white notes on a piano, but there are also keys in between those, or the black notes known as sharps and flats. A sharp on a piece of music is designated by a #, and is placed before a note, like such:

This indicates that the note is C# (C sharp), or the first half step up from C. A half step is simply the next note to the right or left of any given note, whether it be a black note or a white note, as seen on the keyboard. So, C# is the first black note in the set of two on the piano. You can also have notes such as B# and E#, where the next half step up is a white note and not a black note. These are known as “natural half steps.” A B# is the same as the note C for this reason, and E# is the same note as F.

Flat notes are the same concept, except the notes go half a step down. They are indicated by a small b, and look like the following:

This note would be Bb (B flat) and would be the last black note in the set of three. Just as the sharps, natural half steps still apply to written pitches such as Cb and Fb. It’s all the same!

Alright, we’re close to finishing out this lesson, and our last thing to learn about is the key signature! Much like the time signatures we learned about before, the key signature is almost like a set of guidelines for a piece of music. It indicates which notes must have certain sharps or flats applied to them. Why do this instead of writing a sharp or flat next every single note that requires one? The main reason is to give the player an idea of what key they’re playing from, which aides in playing scales or runs in a piece. There’s a multitude of other reasons, I’m sure, such as saving ink, reducing redundancy, and overall just a more clean and professional look.

A key signature comes before a time signature in a piece, and after the clef. They look like this:

This particular key signature indicates the player must play all unmarked B’s and E’s in a piece as flats, since the key signature has marked the B and E lines on the staff with flats. This particular key is known as Bb Major, or G Minor (I won’t be getting into music theory on this post). A key signature can be ‘cancelled out’ or ‘overridden’ in a sense if there is an accidental written on a note. An accidental is simply the sharps and flats we learned about before, and also the natural sign, indicated as such:

A natural sign tells the player that that note is to be played with no sharps or flats. One important note I forgot to mention before is that any accidentals applied to a note carry on for the whole measure unless marked by another accidental.

You can have up to seven sharps and flats in any given key signature, and you can also have no key signature at all, which indicates that there are no sharps or flats you need to worry about unless marked by an accidental. (On a small, inconsequential note, you theoretically can have a key signature that goes beyond seven sharps or flats by using double sharps/double flats, though this is INCREDIBLY rare to see in a key signature and is really only used by composers to troll players.)

Aaaaand I think that pretty much wraps up the basics of sheet music-reading?? If you still have any more questions feel free to send another ask or shoot me an IM ^_^ Again, it can take awhile to fully grasp some of these concepts, and it really just takes lots of time and exposure to material before you start to get it. Definitely try to find a teacher if you’re really invested in playing an instrument!! They can help you with this type of stuff while teaching you to play with proper technique and how to improve.

[seyaryminamoto]

Hey, I've been meaning to read Gladiator, but the story's really long, so I'm wondering if you can tell me what's currently happening so I can get motivated to read through the 100+ chapters?

Well, seeing as it’s Gladiator’s Anniversary just today, I’m taking the chance to answer your ask and hopefully convince you somehow to join in on this crazy ride :)

Gladiator is a retelling of ATLA, as you must know already. The world of ATLA is very similar to how it is in canon, though I changed a few factors, so not everything is 100% the same. As the summary says, the Avatar wasn’t found by Sokka and Katara at the time where they do in ATLA, and that leaves us with a very different storyline that includes the Fire Nation going down a darker path once the Earth Kingdom is defeated: slavery. It’s Ozai’s idea of making some use of the proud, stubborn Earth Kingdom populace who refuse to obey his rule.

There are major powers at play in the story: the Fire Nation controls most the world but the poles are still their own nations. The Fire Nation navy is locked in a fierce struggle they can’t seem to win against the Northern Water Tribe, while sending forces they can spare to slowly take over the territories of the South.

Sokka won’t stand for such a takeover, of course. Stubborn, strong, at 21-years-old, he decides to fight back and push off the invaders. He doesn’t expect that his plan will backfire on him when a deadly princess with blue fire just so happens to be in the South Pole, as her father’s envoy.

Sokka fights back, but it’s not enough. Yet for reasons he doesn’t understand, Azula spares his life… but the next thing he knows, she orders for him to be taken as a prisoner, and afterwards he’s sent to a slave market in the Fire Nation. The owner of the Amateur Gladiator Arena of a lowly Fire Nation town, Hui Yi, takes Sokka into his ranks and forces him to fight other gladiators to the death on the sand. 

This goes on for two years, until Azula is forced, because of some “mistakes” she made, to find a gladiator in order to defend her ambitions and her plans for her future. And as you must guess, her circumstances bring her to the very same gladiator she damned to this dreadful life.

Alright, so, after this weird summary of the first few chapters, I’ll answer your question!

As we are right now, it’s little less than two years since Azula and Sokka joined forces as gladiator and sponsor for the first time. In between what I explained and this point of the story, they’ve seen been a LOT of strife, trouble from all fronts: they’ve had relationship drama, they’ve met lots of canon characters through gladiator fights and Sokka has faced off against some seriously deadly enemies now that he’s sponsored by Azula. In the larger scheme of things, also, they’ve defeated the Rough Rhinos (after the group rebelled against the Fire Nation’s order for them to stop pillaging the Earth Kingdom), they’ve uncovered a conspiracy by the Dai Li to retake Ba Sing Se, they saved the Fire Nation capital when it was vulnerable through a very clever plot concocted by the Order of the White Lotus, and lots of more things.

(Just to clarify, since not everyone seems to understand it by reading the story: the White Lotus here isn’t comprised just by epic old men who like Pai Sho and tea. The White Lotus has become the only bastion of rebellion against the Fire Nation’s growing empire, and they’re the only opposition that represents a real threat to their rule. Because of this situation, and because of a few factors that will be revealed in due time, the White Lotus has been a little too permissive about new members these days, and a lot of them merely join for the sake of fighting the Fire Nation somehow. In short, there’s a serious amount of not-so-great people in the White Lotus, and there’s also that the traditional members have very different takes on how to handle the war right now, when they think there’s nearly no hopes of defeating the Fire Nation as things are).

At the current point in our story, Sokka and Azula are very much involved in a committed relationship, and they may be more invested in it than they should be. They’ve taken their relationship a little further than they should have (… in short, there’s smut in this story, that speaks for itself). Their struggle, at first, had been about resisting their growing feelings. By now, all resistance was futile and their struggle is about keeping their relationship secret. But so far a few people have discovered it, for instance Toph recently found out about it (chapter 118). The real danger is, of course, if Ozai ever hears of it. If he knew his daughter is involved with a slave… well, the consequences won’t stop at Sokka’s execution. So they have to tread carefully and they know it, but sometimes it’s harder than it should be…

Anyways! Our current story arc is quite an exciting one, since it brings in the White Lotus for the first time since the chapters 51-57. Azula, Sokka and the captain of Azula’s guards, Rui Shi, are traveling across the Earth Kingdom on their way to Yu Dao. Their current predicament is that they’re being targeted, and followed, by Jeong Jeong. The most legendary firebender of Azulon’s time is sending his men after our princess and her gladiator, and nobody really knows why… (okay, obviously I know but I’m not telling xD you guys will have to wait a couple more chapters to understand what’s going on if you haven’t guessed yet, hehe).

As they travel, Azula and Sokka’s relationship grows stronger, as it always does because that’s what this story is about xD If you’re interested in reading Sokkla, I will say this story is, in short, the playground where I can fulfill practically every single one of my dreams about these two. There’s really no limits for it, I get to do it all. The slow-burn, steadily growing romance, the fulfilled relationship where they learn their way around each other, where they learn how to trust each other and share their lives… in short, it’s not only the “how they get together”, but the “what happens after they’re together”, too. In fiction you usually get one or the other, and most my other stories tend to be like that, too. And of course, it’s about how the development of the relationship affects both the characters, how it changes them. Azula has come a very long way from the cold-blooded, detached girl she was when she first showed up. Sokka as well has grown A LOT, as he has learned to see the world through different eyes. Well, to be fair, they both learned that xD 

So, if you want relationship and character development, you’ll find quite a bit of it here :D

Gladiator is a grand scale story: it’s a full retelling of ATLA, as I said, and it features the war as a plot that will become more central as the story progresses. The Gladiator business exists, slavery does, too, and there’s just so much to address that I can’t possibly end things cheaply with a simple “And now they’re together, storytime’s over”. This story is guided by Azula and Sokka, no doubt, but it’s not a story with the only purpose of sating my shippy feels. Its plot is just as important as the romance that sparked it all, and both things are blended together in a sometimes unbalanced mix that sometimes has more of one thing than the other… but well, I try to do both things at once ^^U

If this isn’t enough to catch your attention, sorry to hear it ^^U I do understand, though, not wanting to take the plunge with such a long story. It’s ridiculously long, but I always knew it would have to be if I was going to tell the story I wanted to tell. The good thing about fanfiction is that the writer isn’t limited by factors that usually would be a problem in regular fiction (no one on their right mind would publish a 1.4M story, obviously xD). So yes, I’ve made the most of this advantage. Some might think I’ve made too much of it and should slow down xD but anyways, if you do give the story a shot, I hope you enjoy it. I believe the first arcs are tense and action packed, and they tend to draw people in well enough. Hopefully you’ll enjoy them, and the rest of the story too if you decide to give it a chance :)