#ALSO THANK YOU FOR THE KIND WORDS ON MY WORLDBUILDING AND CHARACTER STUFF... it is what I live for

[chocodile]

Found your work through desperate searches for sylvanian family customisation or recolour resources and WOW your art/characters/worldbuilding are also astoundingly good... gonna be scrolling here a while. Out of curiosity do you do custom/commissioned sylvanian figures or do you have a tutorial/materials list someplace? Thanks for reading!!

Aw gosh, thank you, Anon!

I did one custom commission as an experiment (which I'm sure you've seen if you looked through the tag) and it was pretty fun, but man are these things a time suck! I tried to do too many dolls in too short of a time, got kind of burned out on them, and haven't touched them in months... I'm currently trying to work up motivation to get back into it and finish the projects I have materials for. If I do, I'll take pictures this time and put together a proper tutorial.

Unfortunately I can't take any commissions right now, but I'd be happy to share a materials list! It's under the cut:

The paint used is basic acrylic paint, like the kind you can get from Walmart or craft stores for under two bucks. There's a bit of a trick to painting them without making the fur clumpy, I described the painting process here!

For the hair, you'll want doll hair ("My Little Pony" size is way more than sufficient), a hair rooting tool/kit, and either a heat gun or blow dryer. I wrote some notes on hair rooting Sylvanian Family dolls here.

For the clothes, you can use a number of different fabrics, but you want it to be very, very thin. That super cheap, thin cotton fabric you can find at Joann Fabrics is pretty perfect and comes in a wide variety of colors and patterns, though some stuff like doll-sized flannel you might have to look online for (or DIY--you can use acrylic paint on fabric, it just makes it stiffer). I use ribbon for trim. Other accessories like jewelry, buttons, chains, crystals, and belts can be sourced from craft stores, too... I usually just bring my WIP doll with me in my pocket and hold it up next to anything I'm interested in buying to check if the sizing is right (the lady at the fabric cutting station was incredibly charmed by them, hah). For more specialty items, like tiny hats and replica firearms, you will probably need to look online.

If you can't find a specific accessory, or need to sculpt something like armor, you can try making it out of epoxy clay and painting it with the same acrylic paint you used for the figure. Mod Podge will help seal it and give it a nice glossy finish. (Do not use Mod Podge on Sculpey--it makes it sticky!)

Tails are generally pipe cleaners or occasionally pom poms. Cut the original tail off with wire cutters, digging out as much of it as you can, and super glue the new tail in the hole.

Horns are done with epoxy clay. For big horns on the head, I use wire cutters to cut the pointy part off a pin, embed that in the clay horn, and then stick the end of the pin into the plastic head to more securely anchor it.

Bat and dragon wings are done with leather sheets you can buy from a craft store.

Other essentials: Super glue, sewing kit, Dritz fray check. Super glue is essential for both tails/horns/etc and clothing (it's often better for ultra-fine detail than sewing). Sewing kit is needed for clothing. You will not have much success with clothing without Dritz fray check. It keeps the edges of the fabric from disintegrating, which is a major concern when working on such a tiny scale.

Also this isn't a material so much as a tip: I often use the pointy end of a pin to do fine detail painting. It's also useful for sculpting miniatures.

Hope that helps! Good luck on your customization ventures, and feel free to ask if you have any more questions!

[ask-indigo-park-swapped]

hello person behind the curtain!! the curtain master if you will :) i'm not like super cool and all but i just wanted to say ur doing great with this ask blog and i can't wait to see more of it!! this blog has indirectly (or directly?? who knows) made mollie my fav character!! if we're allowed to ask questions, i do have a few..! 1. what are your pronouns

2. do you have another blog or socials just for like. ur art. i like a lot :]

3. who's ur fav indigo park character in the game and in this au!! i hope u have a banger day/night and ur don't forget ur super awesome and touched loads of ppl (me) with ur work!! oh and have this: You've obtained a self-sustaining pocket sized cat! please take good care of it and i hope it helps improve ur mood when u ever feeling blue okay this was long um bye bye!!!! *runs away*

<naw im sure youre cool in your own way!! youre plenty sweet anyway, thank you for being so invested in my silly little au :DD!!>

<pronouns are funny little things :33c i generally do not care and in fact am encouraging yall to go wild with what pronouns you use for me. check out the pronoun closet if you need ideas for neopronouns to go wild with> <thank you for liking my art!!! im @niftukkun both on here (tumblr) and furaffinity!! i generally tag my art as [#my art] but if youre hoping for more indigo park look somewhere else lmao i dont draw it as much outside of this askblog> <salem for both!! very gender i love them lots. also i have a particular fondness for both potionmakers and shopkeepers so like of course shes favourite>

<again youre very sweet thank you!! ill keep my awesomeness in mind, and i will cherish this lil cat friend. thank you for your curiousity and kindness!!>

[jesncin]

I really enjoyed your excellent deep dive examination of Ma'alefa'ak and the underlying attitudes of ableism present in the writing. It's an aspect of the character that has always disappointed me and, honestly, combined with the hoary old cliche of an Evil Twin just left me cold. (Ma'al also began the trend of DC defining too many Post-Crisis stories around the reveal of YET ANOTHER Martian survivor, only for them to be bad news. Whilst that isn't strictly his fault, he certainly opened that door and no one's gotten around to shutting it yet.) Your remarks about J'onn's beliefs being too ill-defined also ring true. In his original appearance he had a science background, by the Bronze Age this had shifted into a military VIP, before finally doubling back and codifying Manhunter (re: cop) as his profession Post-Crisis. He's all over the fucking map about what his views are, what motivates him, and why, which persists even into the current comics. That's a roundabout way of me getting to my ultimate point: I've become quite fond of your reinvention of Ma'alefa'ak. Initially I was sceptical because I saw little reason to revisit the character, but you won me over by using Ma'al to remedy multiple shortcomings in the MM status quo. Rehabilitating Ma'al grants J'onn a direct foil, expands his (sorely undernourished) supporting cast, and most importantly allows J'onn to define himself by putting his beliefs into action. He's willing to give up his station, his privilege, and his life on Mars to defend his brother's right to live. That conveys so much to the audience and provides us with greater understanding of what makes him tick. Ma'al getting to be more than just despicably EVIL also gifts us with an overtly disabled character who is allowed to express themselves and help bolster the strongest themes of the Martian corner of the DCU. Apolgies for the wall of text. Thanks for all your creative work and I'm looking forward to more!

asdfasf!! oh my gosh thank you so much for all these kind words!! Gosh like I know a good bunch of how I play around with Martian worldbuilding will probably fly over most people's heads since J'onn's lore is not common knowledge to even DC fans, but it's when someone knows the material I'm pulling from and can see exactly how my choices are informed that I get really!! Happy! Emotional! Thank you 😭😭 more martian talk below asdfasf

in short: YES TO ALL THIS! I agree that while Ma'al had a whole history before he came to Earth as A Surviving Member Of An Extinct Race Turns Out To Be Bad News, he still absolutely kicked off that trend of rogues for J'onn. Kind of similar to how M'gann really shifted Martian lore away from ableism and more towards racism and civil war.

Right! I think the fact that J'onn's occupation changes so much (where he's even reimagined as a sort of renaissance man with how many Martian jobs he had) before settling on "generally a cop" makes J'onn's ideals all the more ill defined. Clark is a working class investigative journalist and that informs his heroism! He has the themes of hope, marginalization and survival to inform it too. How does any of J'onn's occupations inform his heroism in any specific way? Especially when modern versions of J'onn reimagine him as both a Black man and a cop (when paired with Martian racism it's even worse) 😭 this stuff needs to be thought through! Most of the time, J'onn's just saving people because it's his job. He's a cop because that's the closest analog to what being a manhunter is on Mars, but then what? Why does he care?

And lastly once more! Thank you so much on the kind words about my version of Ma'al and J'onn! It means so much to me when I can take a "but why him tho" character out of obscurity and get people to understand just how much this change can really benefit not just Ma'al, but J'onn and Martian lore as a whole. I truly believe Ma'al is the key to revitalizing Martian Manhunter as a superhero, and your response perfectly describes why.

It was important for us to still have J'onn grapple with some sort of grief (since that's such a prominent theme for him) but have him actively demonstrate his ideals when put under pressure and show what he truly believes in. J'onn is usually pitched as "Batman meets Superman" because he's an alien detective, but the result is J'onn being redundant of both. We thought, since Bruce and Clark didn't have a choice in the inciting incidents that started their origins, why not make it so J'onn has an active choice in his? We shifted his ideals from his vague "I'm protecting my new home so it won't suffer the way Mars did" to "No one fights harder for what they love than J'onn J'onzz". Shifting the trajectory of the character from grief to radical love.

In the process of re-interpreting Ma'al from being allegorically/coded as disabled to being an explicitly disabled character, Martian ableism can be more properly discussed as the strongest theme to Martian lore (that functions way better than the shapeshifter racism). And in turn, we got to deconstruct the inherit authority-protecting respectability of J'onn's canon heroism.

I like the green guys a whole lot

[fountainpenguin]

hello! I've been reading your fop fanfics for around a week now, and I wanna say that your worldbuilding has some of the most impressive ones I've ever seen for a preexisting IP. you made excel sheets, charts, indepth character bios including species and timelines and etc etc ITS SO GOOD Ive been going crazy over them. also as someone who's been enjoying the pixies recently and planning stuff with them with my own oc story, your worldbuilding with them is so awesome. so good. I really really like it MOSTLY BECAUSE IM PIXIE-HEADED RIGHT NOW BUT YOUR FICS OF THEM AND EXPLANATIONS AND SPECIES BIO KEEPS ROTATING IN MY MIND I LOVE IT. I LOVE THE PIXIES!!!!! I LOVE THOSE SILLY BLOCK CREATURES to the point I've been rereading your class overview of them three times. I love you pixies. also I may have taken inspirations from your species bio or have it in my mind subconsciously while writing my own pixie oc (and more yet to come) like their defining character traits, how they do relationships, etc etc. nothing too big ofc but it's really great that it imprinted on my brain

I'm still a newcomer here and yet to know more in-depth about your universe, but with the amount of posts you have made, I believe I'll be sticking around for more :) thank you!

Thank you!!! I'm glad you like my 'fics and posts. Many, many, many hours of work have gone into my worldbuilding over the last 9 years and I appreciate your appreciation!

I'm glad the Pixies are getting more acknowledgement these days! They're my favorites... I'm happy to see them get a boost in love even though they didn't make it into New Wish Season 1 <3

Here's a Sigfried for you- I like his tie clip :)

I like his fancy crown hat too.

Thanks again for your kind words!

Links for anyone interested in checking out my FOP work & trying to find their preferred way to explore:

#FAIRIES! - My blog tag for FOP content

📕 Easy AO3 Series Navigation - Customize your reading by subscribing to the arcs / characters you like

✨ Worldbuilding Sideblog Masterpost - Lore galore!

🟪 Class Overview: Pixies - Mentioned in this ask

☁️ Cloudlands AU Guide

🌃 City Lights AU Guide

🗄️ Reedfilter Rules AU Guide

🌈 'Fic summaries page

🚂 130 Reasons Why I'm Fairy Trash summaries page

[damnation-if]

I just want to say, as a certified monster fucker, I'm already in love with your story hahaaa <3 I'm glad we're getting more adult stories and the themes in this one are so intriguing, can't wait for the rest ! Alsooo, I really liked the way you describe things? I do not know how to explain it haha but I could easily visualize what was happening and the general atmosphere you're going for and I thought that was neat :^)

thank you so much for your kind words!! i truly appreciate them and i'm so glad the descriptions were to your liking! i have at least some level of aphantasia, so i'm always worried that i'm not describing things enough haha... glad that doesn't seem to be the case!

i was actually talking to my friends just yesterday about how there's relatively few Creacher-y ROs around... so for whatever reason, i guess because it's on my mind, i thought i'd take a bit of time/space here to mention all of the Monsterfucker Approved (TM) ROs that i could come up with, in case anyone else might be interested. this list isn't meant to be exhaustive (in case i miss anyone) as sadly i am yet to become all-seeing and all-knowing 😔

Creacher (Alien)

Rhaxa and Imxa from Project Hadea by my beloved @nyehilismwriting. spikey, scaley, bitey, etc. 👌i also love and appreciate the attention to detail put into worldbuilding for the different ways their species communicates and thinks and so on, showing the culture gaps between them and humans. quality buggies!

Creacher (Eldritch)

Roach from The Passenger... the mc is also an eldritch creacher in this one, which may add or subtract to the enjoyment for various different people lol

Sysba from Attollo; i also think this game in general is pretty monster friendly, with a bunch of monstrous side characters and so forth. the cool kind of neo-gothic vibes give it a feeling a bit akin to a cyberpunk Penny Dreadful... it's about as Monsterfucker as cyberpunk gets i think!

Beacon from Stygian: The Abyssal Lighthouse by my good friend @salty-stories. this one is probably the most Lovecraftian of the eldritch creachers i think, heavy Call of Cthulhu vibes. it's still in progress but i'm personally willing to wait haha

Creacher (Parahuman)

Lorelei and The Other from The Golden Harp; pirates and sirens and mermaids, oh my!

Danny and Isla from When It Hungers by the wonderful @roast-ifs ... the game is still on hiatus but it still lives rent-free in my head always... the monster mcs are So *chef's kiss*

Oisein from The Nameless; due to the sheevra mc there's a Lot of really cool exploration of the boundaries of humanity and stuff like that... we love a "nonhumans shouldn't be able to feel/do this" story... we love it a Normal amount for sure.

Creacher (Indefinable)

Trace from Greenwarden by @fiddles-ifs; an iconique creacher... the game itself also has excellent kind of Appalachian gothic/supernatural vibes and a dark undercurrent of Lurking Monster Foreboding.

Games with Applicably Creacher-esque Vibes

Virtue's End by my beloved friend dani... the ROs might be human, but the mc most certainly is not<3 dark fantasy and sumptuous Monster vibes, what more can you ask?

anything by the extremely talented @thirtybythirty (links to their games in their pinned post). everything they write has a compelling undercurrent of... eldritch existentialism. perhaps the creacher is in fact the Narrative... or maybe the humans were the creachers all along...

the fabulous OFNA: Birds of a Feather - it has the perfect combination of things Not Quite Human and Not Quite Right to create a rich and ominous atmosphere, well-worth playing even though everyone is Technically human lmfao

anyway sorry for rambling on and i'm sure there's a bunch i have missed but. i do feel like it's worth giving praise where it's due for games and writers that we appreciate! thank you again for your kind message (and for giving me a chance to talk about this a bit lol)

[insertdisc5]

Devlog #11: Localization and Organizing Notes

Hello everyone! Welcome to this month’s devlog!

If you just stumbled upon this, I am Adrienne, also known as insertdisc5! I’m the developer, writer, artist, main programmer, etc of the game. The game being In Stars and Time, a timeloop RPG, which is the next and final game in the START AGAIN series, following START AGAIN: a prologue (available here!).  You can find out more about In Stars and Time here!!! 

LET’S GET TO IT. This month's devlog is about localizations and how I organize my notes!

The month of January has, once again, been all about bug fixing. My producer once told me QA and bug fixing would take forever and I didn’t believe her, but it is true. You kill one bug and three take its place.

Bugs aside, the first pass of the localization of the game into Japanese has been completed (thanks Kakehashi Games!) ! Wait did we even mention officially that the game will be in English and Japanese at release. Well there you go! In Stars and Time will be released in both English and Japanese!!!

Now that the first pass is over, it’s time for the very time intensive work of adding all that translated text into the game, as well as translating any illustrations. And after that, the localization team will take over QA, and will play the game from beginning to end in Japanese, making sure everything works well in context!

I can’t wait for Japanese speakers to try out the game as well!!!

Oh! Also, speaking of words, I wrote a post on how I approach worldbuilding, more specifically expressions and swear words and about how Jesus Christ is not canonical to the ISAT universe. Mayhaps it could tickle your fancy?

Uuuuuh this devlog is so short. I feel bad. Well uh (thinks very hard) how about you come with me on a journey, and look at how I organize my notes? Yeah? YEAH!!! (This section will feature: blocked out text) (Also: I realized after writing all this that I did talk about my writing process a bit in my #2 devlog. Well uh you get writing process: 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

I use OneNote for all my ISAT notes! I use it because quite frankly this was the first software I tried and it works. I like how it has tabs within tabs within tabs, so I can easily (ISH?) find any notes I’m looking for!

If you look at the colored tabs, the first one is “demo”, which is everything related to START AGAIN: a prologue (aka: has not been looked at for a year). It contains all the text in the game, as well as general gameplay notes and musings like “hey wouldnt it be fun if I used rock/paper/scissors.” You might notice the text here isn’t in the correct order. That’s a feature not a bug, thats just how my brain works OK!!!!!

The second tab is “Game”, which is the big In Stars And Time tab. It’s divided into a lot of sections, including: 

General Dev Notes, which contains general reminders (“ADD MORE PUNS”).

Random Dialogue Corner, which, as the name implies, contains a lot of random dialogues between the characters. They’re also divided into different sections, depending on what kind of dialogue it is- is it a funny scene, or a more serious one? Is it between characters, or just Siffrin going on a big monologue? Etc. This dialogue may or may not be in the game, its main reason for existing is “hee hee I like when my little guys talk in my head”.

Gameplay and Stuff, which is all about the rpg part of the game. What are the skills? How does each enemy behave? What quests are available? How does the game over screen work? Etc

And finally, a big section filled with The Story, which is divided into acts. From the very start, I knew ISAT would have very delimited story beats, which made it easy to just go “ok, this scene goes into Act 3”, etc. For the text, I make sure to keep all the different drafts I had of a specific scene, partly because I sometimes lose a nugget of Fun Stuff by rewriting a scene, and partly because it’s fun to see how a scene has evolved. I tend to write important story scenes 3 times, each time without looking at earlier drafts to see what comes out, and then frankenstein the scene from what I have.

In general I try to keep as many of my notes as possible, because I deleted a lot of my notes for START AGAIN: a prologue and it makes me sad I can’t look at my thought process on a lot of things anymore. KEEP YOUR NOTES KIDS

Going back to the big tabs, next we have “World”, which is everything related to worldbuilding, relationships between characters, the general timeline, more detailed notes on the culture, etc. I used this tab a lot less as time went on, but at the start it was very useful to be able to refer to it, especially for all the city names and their spelling…

After that, we have the “Devlog” tab, which is my own private devlog! I find it very useful to keep a private devlog for myself, because it helps me see clearly that YES, the game is coming along. Every week, I try to write down where I’m at, any problems that I have, as well as screenshots of what the game looks like. 

I also give myself space to write how I feel about the game! How is it going? Is it fun to work on this? What do I think about the story, about this character, about this development? I think it’s important to write those things down in the moment- I always keep in mind this post by Wreden, the creator of the Stanley Parable- in it, he talks about the reaction to the Stanley Parable, and how getting so many Thoughts thrown his way about what his game means meant that he lost sight of what his game meant to him. In Stars and Time means a lot to me, and I want to make sure future me remembers why!

Next is “meta”, which is mostly coding references. The way rpgmaker (and, I guess, most video game software???) works is by using variables to keep track of quests and whatnot, and so I used this tab to write down “if this variable equals 5, it means we’re at that point in this quest”! I also used it for code I always use but can’t be bothered to remember, like the conditional code that checks if a switch is ON or not. Aka the simplest most basic code. LISTEN I DON’T WANNA REMEMBER CODE OK

After that is the “To Do” tab, which is pretty self explanatory. I try to divide it into chunks like “To do (localization)”, so I don’t have a massive to-do list, but instead lots of small ones, teehee. This is also where I keep my changelog, to write down any changes I make between builds.

And last, but definitely not least, is my “Messy File” tab! This is where I put ALL MY NOTES. It needs different parts because I made a new part every time opening a tab made my computer chug like crazy. Because it has so many words.

I get an idea for a scene in the middle of the night? GOES INTO THE MESSY SCENE. Oh, I realized when I was grocery shopping that I should fix this small bug by doing this! MESSY FILE. Hehe what if I drew Siffrin baldMESSY FILE. Everything goes there, and then every couple weeks I go through it and put all those little nuggets of ideas into their actual tab. I find it useful to have a file that is allowed to be messy as hell, so the other tabs can be clean and neat!

The Messy File tab also contains the “Entire Story”, which is something I wrote in August 2021 when I started thinking I had no idea where I was going. I took like 4 hours to write down the entire story, from beginning to end, and if I had no idea what would happen, I would just make it up on the spot even if I thought it was bad. And guess what. After that, I knew where I was going. CRAZY!!! I did that a couple more times when I felt stuck at a specific point in the story, and it helped me every time. Would recommend.

And, that’s it! That’s how I organize my notes! I hope! This was! Insightful! Somehow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That’s all I have to say for today! Let me know if you have any questions, or if there’s any aspect of the game development struggle you’d like me to talk about! See you next time!!!

AND DON’T FORGET TO WISHLIST THE GAME ON STEAM ALSO IT REALLY HELPS BECAUSE STEAM’S ALGORITHM IS MORE LIKELY TO SHOW OFF GAMES WITH A HIGH AMOUNT OF WISHLISTS THAT’S THE REASON WHY GAME DEVS ALWAYS ASK TO WISHLIST!!! OKAY BYE!!!!

[m0r1bund]

hello! I was catching up on reading NAKAQUOI! and the essay from the most recent entry was such an inspiring method of storytelling. enough so to make me reach out and ask about your website in general (if you're comfortable answering!). what is it like running a lore/gallery site for your work? how and why did you get started? and lastly, what about it keeps you going?

thank you, cheers! -Winn

😭 Thank you so much for the kind words, this means a lot to me. I really enjoyed writing that little essay.

This is going to be a weird and vulnerable sidebar, but I promise I’m going somewhere with it. Honestly, it blows my mind that anyone reads them. I think it’s because I’m still operating on the assumption that this form of storytelling is for n=1 (yours truly) and other people are merely tolerating it, LOL. I used to be way more sensitive about sharing my characters / stories / worlds, because the forms of storytelling that came naturally to me were often received as incomprehensible, dense, and unintuitive by other people. At a certain point I decided that I just had to accept this and become my own hype man. People could enjoy the pretty pictures out of context, and they could be a vehicle for me to journal about the pretend people who live in my head. Good compromise 👍

for someone who talks big about making weird art and finding the 6 people in the audience who truly get it, I don’t think I realized that this could include my deranged essays about things that aren’t real. And yet. AND YET!!!! I think this desire to present my work in a way that’s “more” than just pretty pictures with text attached to them has been simmering for a long time, even though I dismissed it and was kind of embarrassed about it. Which is wild. Because I grew up on bestiaries and warrior cats lore compendiums and video game wikis and morrowind. There was clearly a precedent. And Yet.

Anyway, this desire started rubbing shoulders with the technical limitations of blogs and gallery websites, and also a general disillusionment with social media during the enshittification of the internet. Like, yeah it sucked that my whole body of work could vanish overnight. But mostly I had worldbuilding neuroses that made me want to scratch at the walls, and I knew just enough html + css to be dangerous. In 2018, I had also finished some longer works that made me more confident in my ability to deliver a cohesive Moribund, and these works weren’t intuitive to share on social media… So… I guess that gave me the impetus to stop flirting with the idea of getting my own website and start actually working on it.

M0R1BUND.com used to be a pure html + css + js website hosted on Neocities. It was ideal and I miss it in a lot of ways, because yeah, that IS the most unadulterated control you can have over your webspace. Had a blast with it, experimented a lot, learned a lot, hosted galleries and twines and webfiction and digital collages and ARPG stuff and interactive maps and a webcomic. And it was mine as much as it was the work of kind people sharing sample code on stackexchange, LOL.

Eventually, I felt the growing pains of managing this by hand. Updating ate hours out of my day. There are definitely more intuitive ways to build and maintain a pure html + css + js website, but I was working with what I knew. I started learning wordpress for basedt.net with the hopes of automating certain operations, like posting art to a gallery or pages to a webcomic. It felt intuitive enough that I later rebuilt M0R1BUND.com in wordpress.

It took a long time and a lot of work, like almost a year? And I still haven’t mirrored everything. Wordpress has made things easier to maintain, but I learned the hard way that it doesn't avoid the pitfalls of simpler website-builders… which is to say… whatever it does to make life easier will also make life incredibly difficult if you decide you want to do something manually. And it’s never the stuff you expect.

These days there’s also the baggage of Automattic’s nonsense. Wordpress is open source, so I don’t think it will go anywhere, but it’s still the corporate clownery that I wanted to escape by making my own website. Blech.

Really though, I love running M0R1BUND and it’s the closest thing I have to an ideal “home” for my work. Going to a dedicated website is unintuitive and out of the way for a lot of people, but (indicates generally) what have we just learned about me. This one’s for n=1 and the, like, 6 people who pop in and say hello. You are my people...

Looking forward, things cook at the rate of 2937728839 irons in the fire, and they are all getting done, but they are all getting done sooooo slowly… I’m having fun. Besides having a general compulsion to make art and tell stories and be Understood, I think that’s what carries me thru this. I want to have fun. and I want to trick people into caring about my characters and also the Sonoran Desert. And as Bjork says, I have to get the wiggles out or else the dark times will come.

It’s getting late and I don’t have a denouement for this. Thank you for your kind words! Thank you for asking! hope this answers? hope this helps (???) take the best and leave the rest.

[lifesver]

Im so in love with you and your friends’s interpretations of the victims, can I ask how you and your friends are able to develop such interesting lore for them?

hey anon! this is so, so kind, thank you sm for the message <3 ;; honestly like, i think the best answer is everything my writing partners/pals and i have written on these blogs has been a slow-cooked built over time kind of endeavor! stuff that has definitely changed and developed majorly over the months that we've been hanging around on this goofy website, haha.

i started with this blog back just before the public beta test happened for the game, and for a little bit it was just me and rae sitting here like 'well what if we just made blogs for super niche horror game characters'. which tbh, something rae and i have historically loved to do with our diff muses on diff blogs, just kind of grabbing characters that have limited lore but exist in a cool universe and have a cool 'starting point' to jump off from, sort of. it gives a lot of space to really get creative imo.

ALL THAT TO SAY rae and i were working with like... beta gameplay, character models/cosmetics/baseline lore snippets, and doing dumb stuff like combing through gameplay vids just to try and collect voicelines to see how these characters might interact w each other! and we had some months to wait before the game would actually release, so in that time we simply started crafting our own ideas and it kinda built organically! just sending prompts back and forth, trying to think about what some of the key story beats would be, as if we were retelling a movie or w/e. but i think the most fun part about tcsm is that the inherent gameplay, and how differently each match can go, lends itself well to creating all kinds of different trajectories of where the story Could go, some endings happier than others, some allowing us to explore more dark themes.

for me that's a big part of what keeps me writing on this blog-- the possibilities for exploring, esp within the slasher genre. esp within the texas chainsaw franchise, where imo, the protags are often sidelined/cut down, and where the antagonists can sometimes be more complex and even sympathetic at times. the game itself, despite what the creative team later said, implies that there's the possibility that the victims survive this horrifying event. and there's like, not a lot of exploration done in that area within slashers, i feel? when i do see it, i cheer furiously tbh like hell yeah halloween hell yeah friday the 13th 4-6 hell yeah anoes 1 + dream warriors hell yeah scream movies. i just think there's a lot to expand on in terms of the effects and healing process of trauma, the emotional connection between the characters, and complex dynamics in general that might tend to get overlooked in stories like this usually.

but anyway, through just being silly and passionate, we met our other friends who were equally silly and passionate about the game/genre/franchise/characters/etc, and started slowly connecting our ideas. like sometimes we'll just slam our general verse ideas on the dash, and someone else will start cooking with it and thinking about it, and then we have a whole connected au going. sometimes we'll be writing with each other, and naturally bring up other characters in those replies and it gives a little bit of worldbuilding too.

roleplaying is honestly such a rewarding hobby, bc i get to collaborate with really talented writers and help bring a cohesive narrative together. idk it's like instead of having to sit and write your story by yourself, you got a funny little writers room. except we're all throwing paper airplanes and also crying on the floor sometimes. but like, you naturally get to bounce ideas off each other and learn how your muse would handle certain situations just by interacting with another muse, you know? and i get to read my friends' stuff and go wow! that was a cool use of wording! or wow i really love how they visualized this scene/character thought process, and then i am able to implement certain things to improve how my own writing goes.

when you find writing partners that really Get You on that front and have the same style of worldbuilding as you, it's just really awesome and keeps the passion and muse flowing in a funny echo chamber almost. and it's like, even for people i've written with that haven't stuck around for whatever reasons, sometimes pieces of their portrayals of their own muses will stick with mine, like we all kind of help each other build our character interpretations out. and even if they end up very very canon-divergent as lore is slowly drip fed to us by the devs, we're confident in what we do have built and just kinda change and work things in as we go. it's just nice and no pressure around here, and it's rly just built off of and inspired by each others individual creative passion. ik that's how it is for me, anyway! i love seeing my friends just say w/e random hc about their muse bc then suddenly we might all be talking about a related hc for our individual muses, that kinda thing!

i'm sorry this was super long winded! i hope that kinda answered the question, i got a lil carried away LMAO but thank you again for idk, perceiving our stuff! it's not like fic writing on ao3 so it's always a pleasant surprise when ppl stumble upon our nonsense it's like oh hey man- welcome to our weird little corner!

[venomouschocolate]

Why Do They Talk Like That: a stream of consciousness

Fantasy linguistics are so hard like where do you draw the line... I mean none of my characters are referencing major theistic religions or using real life loanwords or expletives but then there's quote-unquote fun stuff like "sadism" or "lunatic" or "sinister". i.e the Marquis de Sade does not exist in this world, but the concept of pleasure from cruelty does... Latin is not a language there, but I, personally, am writing in English, which has much of its etymology rooted in Latin (as well as pretty much every other language ever), even if there is no hate for left-handed people or indeed the left in this world, so "sinister" is inexplicable in itself now (odd how the left has historically been demonised and that it's also the socialist side of the political spectrum. not that odd really. thank you robert walpole?). The same with "lunatic": the moon is literally worshipped in some areas of my world, but it's still a term characters use, despite the moon having positive connotations.

Where Do You Draw The Line... I can't write in a conlang because a) I am not masochistic but b) I want my work to actually be read. You can imply different languages with accents and word choice and compound words, but ultimately I am writing in the same language for all (despite being bilingual, go me!) and ultimately that language is one that exists only in our world and not in the one that I've created.

While we're here, let's talk about swearing (cursing if you're american?) in fantasy settings. I don't mean "oh my god/s", that's arguably blasphemy and certainly not explicit; I don't mean "bloody" (not really explicit either) because frankly that does tend to fit a fantasy vibe with the type of characters likely to use it (considering the real world stereotypes and thus the archetypes an author will write using it). I mean expletives like "fuck", "bitch", "shit": STOP USING THEM. you absolute buffoons.

Recently I read a fantasy novel which included a whole magic system and several countries with absolute monarchies, etc, and they kept using expletives and it just did not work, and it never does. A step back: I believe that using expletives when writing in a real world setting (provided it's period-believable, of course) can work, and often (not always, not even mostly) works - I do it myself. However, believable expletives and exclamations and intensifiers can and sometimes do make or break worldbuilding, at least for me. The worldbuilding in the novel was fine, good even! But every time the (twenty-eight-year-old) mc used "fucking" or "bitch", I was immediately yanked out of the story and into reality. It was like reading a period piece (say, in the 19th-early 20th century) and seeing "bitch" in the expletive (slur) sense. I don't care whether it would be used: I don't BELIEVE that it would be.

Suspension of disbelief is everything, which (as a theatre kid...) is, I suspect, why musical films don't work: we're primed for a more true-to-life piece, whereas in a theatre, we're prepared to cast a lot more aside. We KNOW they're actors, we know bursting into song is unrealistic, but it's the stage! We believe it anyway. Seeing a fantasy character, particularly one that was meant to be a minor royal, consistently THINK in expletives (and not just exclaim them!) felt to me like watching Mean Girls The Musical The Movie. I did not believe the magic (which was a major plot point so it kind of sucked). I did not believe that the characters saying "bitch" and "fuck" would say those words, especially since those characters were almost exclusively limited to the middle-aged queen, an almost thirty-year-old established to be groomed into mild-mannered obedience, the former queen's guard and a (bastard) prince. I did not believe that the characters whose thoughts I was reading would think them, and thus I did not believe in the story.

If you're going to create a prose-based world intended to be separate from our own in terms of religion/history/sociopolitical structure/magic/etc, you NEED to think about the linguistics. I'm not saying think HARD or be super mega creative: in my sky-worship country, a common exclamation is "stars-be", short for "stars-be-dimmed", ditto "skies-be" and "skies-be-felled". My sun-based little sillies go "be-set" as in "sun-be-set"; the only country in a technological revolution (also the only country with guns): "I'm not wired that way"; "he's gearing for a fight"; "I was shooting for you". Furthermore, when explaining their culture in other languages, they struggle for words, because, for example, a train is a monolingual concept (one falters when about to describe someone as a "train wreck" and just goes "sorry"). It's not clever, it's not particularly original, but, in my opinion, it makes the language, and by extension the world, more believable.

While I'm mid-rant: there's a marked difference between characters of different class and upbringing. My more religious, self-righteous queen of skycountry says "my stars": she rules the country, she is a little crazy insane, she feels that she owns the sky, too. A less-educated character uses slang like "lunar", "feared", "heartfulness" where his posh boy counterpart says "insane", "afraid" and "empathy". And yes, I am totally neurodivergent, and I think about details, and I also study the development of the English language and want to continue to do so at university, so of course I am more drawn to it, but at the end of the day if you're writing prose then the words are really bloody important.

TLDR: worldbuilding is hard; do your high fantasy (or even low fantasy) characters NEED to say "fuck"?

[space-writes]

writing questions tag

tagged by @cherrybombfangirlwrites, thank you!

[ID - a rainbow decorative divider]

What is your absolute all-time favorite idea you’ve ever had?

oh god, don’t make me choose between my children, i love them all. if we measure in terms of Percetange of My Brain Rotted, though, it’s Obedience. Rizeth and Ashenivir I just…I love them so much.

Is there a question you’ve been asked in the past that really stands out to you, and you still think about sometimes?

hmm, not really. most of what i get asked is just character or worldbuilding stuff and i love it a lot, but nothing Spectacular that haunts me or anything

What is your favorite part of being a writer? What parts could you take or leave?

i love coming up with new stuff, and i love when things Connect while I’m working. those little flashes of ‘oh damn’ are so satisfying. and i love working over a sentence to get exactly the right words, building the rhythm and the sound of it into the perfect combination.

i could do without the endless imposted syndrome and the transition scenes that don’t want to work and the feeling like nothing will ever be finished TT_TT

What is your greatest motivation to write/create?

Make Reader Go !!!!!

also, Make Blorbo From My Brain Stop Bothering Me So Damn Much

What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever read or been given as a writer?

You can’t edit a blank page/all writing is re-writing. It’s gotta exist before you can make it good, and then you have to put in the work to make it good. What that process looks like is different for everyone, but it’s the fundamental baseline of all writing, imo. Make it exist, then make it good.

What do you wish you knew when you were first starting out writing?

…how to format dialogue. i spent SO MANY YEARS not realising about how to properly do the capitalisation “When you have a dialogue.” And then they do something. “Like this.”

What is your favorite story you’ve written to completion? Link it if you’d like and can!

Currently my favourite is The Perils of Wanting, which is the first full-length Obedience book (and you can read it here! new chapters go out every other week~).

Otherwise it’s still probably body mine, which is an Obsession fic but also just weird and fucked up and i’m still extremely proud of it. i did everything i wanted with it, and everyone who’s read it is like !!! which, as i wrote earlier, is the reaction i always want :p

(heed the tags on that one though, it’s got. Some Stuff. in it)

Which of your characters would you say has the most controversial mindset? Why do you say so, and how do you personally feel about their ideals?

Rainier or Vivien. Rainier I designed to be awful in some very specific ways: cynical, self-obsessed, manipulative, convinced nothing bad can ever happen to him. I don’t know that it’s necessarily controversial, but also he’s the kind of person who, if i knew him in real life, i would never want to get stuck in a conversation with.

Vivien is just a horrid little man who thinks murder is okay if it’s like, your coping mechanism or whatever.

If you, when you first started writing, met you now, what would younger you think?

they’d be confused and also fucking psyched: “what do you mean we finished a book? more than one?? people are READING our stuff and they LIKE it? a LOT?? woah, everything reads like an actual book now this is cool as fuck. wait, you don’t want to get published any more? hey what’s all this gender stuff, why are there so many boys kissing in here—”

[ID - a rainbow decorative divider]

Blank questions & tags under the cut

What is your absolute all-time favorite idea you’ve ever had?

Is there a question you’ve been asked in the past that really stands out to you, and you still think about sometimes?

What is your favorite part of being a writer? What parts could you take or leave?

What is your greatest motivation to write/create?

What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever read or been given as a writer?

What do you wish you knew when you were first starting out writing?

What is your favorite story you’ve written to completion? Link it if you’d like and can!

Which of your characters would you say has the most controversial mindset? Why do you say so, and how do you personally feel about their ideals?

If you, when you first started writing, met you now, what would younger you think?

no-pressure tagging @viscerawrites @winterandwords @thegreatobsesso and @olliexwrites

[atalienart]

I feel you so hard on the whole "what if my story sucks" thing, I know that other people saying it might be great usually doesn't help much because the issue comes from our own insecurities. I was never one to make up full stories in my head, or at least not ones that required any worldbuilding or planning, I just thought of my characters in daily life scenes lol. But I happened to have a dream with some of my characters in a very specific world setting, and that ignited a spark I guess, so I've been trying little by little to think about the whole story and how it works... I don't know what the fuck I'm doing or where the fuck I'm going with the story, I just get overwhelmed at some point because I feel like I barely make any sense. To be fair I am very inexperienced with making stories that make sense so it's nothing that I wasn't expecting lmao.

All this to say that writing is hard, I'm not even trying to write the story, I'm just trying to THINK about it, so I can't even imagine how complicated it might be to put everything into words with every chapter. I love reading your updates, they make me quite happy for some reason, I really enjoyed your creativity with your characters back when I found your art years ago, they inspired me a lot, and it hasn't changed one bit honestly. Sorry that I rambled a little, I just wanted to say that I appreciate you posting about your creative process even when it gets hard :).

Hugs! I'm sorry you doubt in your story too. I'm very familiar with the chaos of the first story, it's like handling fifty kittens at once xD What I found helpful was writing down the ideas, loose dialogues and facts and then working with all that. Thinking is way harder than writing, honestly. It's weird but when I actually started the first chapter the rest just set itself into place (still, the story needs tons of edits but whatever xD). Anyway, you'll figure it out! I think those little sparks of joy every time something works in your story are worth creating and writing it. You never know if it's good or bad but when you can read about your characters and record their adventures to get back to them later it's so satisfying. I hope you find a way in your mind labyrinth soon, I keep my fingers crossed. Also, thank you so much for the kind words!! ❤️ If you'd ever want to talk about your story with someone (because talking about it helps a lot with figuring stuff out) then drop me a line ;)

[thistableforone]

piling up here some tag games I’ve been tagged in ✨ pt. 3

🌼 this picrew chain - tagged by @occhi-verdi-come-il-mare

i'm so late to this but!! very cute

🌸 5 songs you’re loving right now - tagged by @julesnichols

i'm afraid these are mostly in italian rn ahah

too sweet (hozier)

considera (colapesce e dimartino)

so american (olivia rodrigo)

euforia (annalisa)

modì (gio evan)

ragazzi fuori (clara)

rocketship (llunr)

aria (margherita vicario)

picture you (mumford and sons)

ted lasso anthem (marcus mumford). always.

🌻 15 questions, 15 friends - tagged by @julesnichols

are you named after anyone? nope, no one. my dad just liked the name

when was the last time you cried? i don't remember clearly. maybe last week?

do you have kids? no thank you

what sports do you play/have played? i don't play anything currently, but i used to play volleyball when i was a kid (+ swimming for a couple of months)

do you use sarcasm? not much

what is the first thing you notice about people? the general vibe really, and if they smile or not.

what is your eye color? brown

scary movies or happy endings? i don't watch scary movies!! definitely happy endings :)

any talents? mhh... writing? taking nice pictures? but those don't really feels like talents...

where were you born? north of italy!!

do you have any pets? i have two babies (my cats)

how tall are you? 1,67 m more or less

favorite subject in the school? math, but at the end of high school i really loved literature, english, politics and IT, too.

dream job? as someone said, i simply don't dream of working :)

🏵️ 20 questions for fic writers - tagged by @beckstraordinary

How many works do you have on AO3? 20, a very nice round number!!

What's your total AO3 word count? apparently around 198,713

What fandoms do you write for? i currently write for the ted lasso fandom only

What are your top 5 fics by kudos? Breaking down (the walls) - hope you'll be safe (in the arms of another) - Touch me (like you do) - we should just kiss (like real people do) - no one's keeping score

Do you respond to comments? yes i do!!

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? i think i only wrote one and it was a ff about maura isles

What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? it's rather hard to compare happy endings, so i can't choose

Do you get hate on fics? it hasn't happened yet

Do you write smut? If so, what kind? yes i do, that's how i started basically (i miss it a bit, recently i've not been in the mood much). i'd say that my smut is... unnecessarily long and emotional. i fully believe it's a great way to understand who a character is.

Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? i wrote two - one was a castle x rizzoli and isles crossover about kate and maura together in college that i dnf-ed at a certain point. the second was this supergirl x rizzoli and isles crossover i'm still very fond of. i had so much fun writing that, and i still think it makes perfect sense :)

Have you ever had a fic stolen? not that i know of

Have you ever had a fic translated? yes, very recently!!

Have you ever co-written a fic before? no, i don't think i could

What’s your all time favorite ship? i don't think i have one above all. i was really into caskett (castle) and supercorp (supergirl), but now i've grown past both, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? i have a supercorp wip that i thought was very cute

What are your writing strengths? i think... construction of the line as a whole, if that makes sense. i try to make the words flow well and sound nice together. also dialogue, showing emotions through little gestures, intimacy, and lately introspection.

What are your writing weaknesses? i can't for the life of me write descriptions. of anything. i hate adjectives. i also get hyperfocused on the dynamic between two characters and refrain from including anyone else. oh also worldbuilding/background stuff... i just don't care.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? i don't think i've ever included it. but if i had to, i would do it with my own language.

First fandom you wrote for? only italians will get this one... un medico in famiglia. i still remember the first time inspiration hit.

Favourite fic you’ve written? definitely you said yes as I said please. i'm so proud of it and i was really inspired!!

no pressure tags, for whichever game you want to participate in!! @occhi-verdi-come-il-mare @rancoreedisprezzo @julesnichols @calicomarie11 @fuddlewuddle

[queerofthedagger]

20 Questions for Fic Writers!

Thanks so much for the tag! <3

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

132 which. insane.

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

1,520,700 which is even more insane. anyway

3. What fandoms do you write for?

BBC Merlin, Stranger Things, The Sandman, The Raven Cycle, and Lord of the Rings, and coming soon probably also Black Sails, let's be real

4. Top 5 fics by kudos?

Old Haunts (Are For Forgotten Ghosts), A Study in Choices and Second Chances, I Wouldn't Leave You If You Let Me, Still I Surface in Morning Light, and Fate Rests Heavily On Our Shoulders. I'm never not baffled by the fact that my two most popular fics not only are for HP, but are for Regulus/Harry. Like. That tag has maybe 100 fics???

5. Do you respond to comments?

Yes!! Sometimes it takes me a while but I'll tend to get around to them eventually <3

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I think that's a toss-up between my my s5 Morgwen AU With Eyes Wide Open, and the one where I made the Diamond of the Day worse, watch all my bridges burn

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

This is such a difficult question because Angst with a Happy Ending is kind of my brand. That said, esp where Merlin is concerned, one thing I think about a lot is the inevitability of tragedy and how, no matter how many fix-its I write, personally I believe that most of them, if I didn't end them before the fact, would eventually end in some kind of tragic way, actually. Like. Very rarely is Merlin not immortal, or the world not against them, or or or. So in that vein I guess one of the happiest ones would be We Can Always Run because it's such an utter rejection of destiny, an utter refusal to even pretend they're playing the game.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Very rarely, thankfully.

9. Do you write smut?

Occasionally, yeah! It's a constant process of pushing at my comfort zone tbh, but I do enjoy doing it (ha), so!!

10. Do you write crossovers?

Nope, it's just not really my thing, neither for writing nor reading. Obviously never say never but yk.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Unfortunately (don't do this).

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! Such a cool feeling, I love the thought of them existing in other languages in the world <3

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nope; there have been and are a few plans for that floating around though 👀

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

This is so hard but in the end it gotta be merthur, like, because I love them to pieces but also just for the sheer amount of words I've written for them. Not sure if/how that would ever get topped, especially considering it's like, on-going.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will?

There's a bunch of HP WIPs I would have loved to finish, but I've fallen so utterly out of love with the fandom I don't really think it's ever going to happen at this point tbh.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Worldbuilding, plots/characterization, and prose; I think I'm solid in those and they come easily to me/bring me the most joy when writing. Editing, in a way, because I'm an obsessive bitch with a system about it.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Descriptions; I'm just not a very visual writer, which is not too huge of an issue when writing familiar characters and settings in fic, but becomes immediately and glaringly obvious whenever I 1. introduce non-canon stuff, or 2. have a go at OG. Also planning/outlining; I can make a bunch of notes but if I write an outline, I will not write the fic. I don't think it's necessarily a weakness, but it can make a bunch of additional work when it comes to the plottier stuff.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language?

Not the biggest fan tbh, which I know is probably controversial but odds that your audience will understand it are low if it's more than a bunch of words you can guess from the context? I prefer the ""dialogue," he said in Latin" approach. It's subjective though I get it.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Bandom RPF at like, 12 (not telling you which band peace and love). I took a long fandom hiatus until a couple of years ago though, and under this fandom alias it'd be HP/Tomarrymort.

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

Still There Are Many Names In History, I think. I love a lot of stuff I've written, but that story has my entire heart in it, and the response to it has left me sobbing like. a ridiculous number of times which, like, is not something that I usually have to deal with lmao.

No Pressure-tagging: @prattery @emryses @glaftwlet @snapshotmaestro @merlinemrys @atlantablack @insane-ohwhyfandoms @hazelands @aeonthedimensionalgirl @slantedknitting and anyone else who'd like to, just say I tagged you <3

[linkedsoul]

Hello! Long time Stories of Qelt fan and now a fan of your new story inspired by Baldur's Gate! I was wondering whether you were still planning on publishing SoQ and whether you were gonna write more about these new characters and their world! Your writing is superb and I absolutely ADORE medieval fantasy stories (it's my hyperfixation). No worries if not, I was just curious! Hope you are doing well ❤️

Hello!! <3 Thank you so much for your kind words, it makes me very happy!! <3

I'm still planning on publishing SoQ! For now I'm still monthly publishing on Patreon, but I am planning on eventually doing a biiiiiig rewrite to make it, less, huh, chunky. It's over 200k words just for the first book! I know people here have managed to devour it in one go and loved it as it was, but I'm painfully aware it would be far harder to market to an audience who hasn't followed the project from the start hahaha. It's also something I started writing when I was... eighteen I think? and there is a lot I would now change and improve because I got better as a writer, because I figured out stuff as I was writing that I didn't implement early enough due to the monthly publishing format, etc.

As for Nai and Sylvain (thank you for loving them btw!! <3), I definitely want to explore more of their story in either other short stories and drabbles, or, if it feels right, a longer project like a novella or a fully fledged novel. I'd definitely love to explore their pasts and their respective relationship to REDACTED. For now, there's a lot I don't know about them, and I sort of look forward to learning more myself as I write! <3 It was fun to work on a brand new story and characters without having to think much about worldbuilding, consistency, or even a set future for this project.

Hope you are doing well too! <3

[xieyaohuan]

Writer Tag

Thank you for tagging me @blindmagdalena and @saintmathieublanc! ❤️

How many works do you have on AO3?

43, but many of them are one shots and one of them is a translation.

What's your total AO3 word count?

203,854.

Ca. 120,000 of those words were banged out in just a few months during a single manic episode in 2017.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Ravishing a God (which is still incomprehensible to me as tickle fics normally never get many kudos lol)

I've got you pegged (rushed fic and cringy title)

All a king should be (a collection of 47 drabbles of 100 word -- I want to do a drabble challenge like this again for Homewell or Butchlander)

All God's children took their toll (it's not been abandoned)

Under the Twisted Weirwood Tree (my only crossover fic; I really want to finish this one even though it's no longer my fandom)

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I usually do unless it's hate (and sometimes even then)

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

This is a tough one because most of my A Song of Ice and Fire fic is angst lol. Probably Heart of Darkness? Maybe Joanna (despite the relatively 'happy' ending)? But it's a pretty stiff competition.

What’s the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

I would say Spinster, which is still pretty angsty.

Do you write crossovers?

I've written only one, Under the Twisted Weirwood Tree, which sets A Song of Ice and Fire characters in a semi-modern AU based on The Purge. I really enjoyed the worldbuilding for this one!

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Yes. I gave the wrong name to a character, which REALLY upset at least one person. I think I responded to them in good faith the first time, and then the second time told them to kindly fuck off.

I also used to post my fic on ff.net, where people seem to consider yelling at the author a legitimate type of feedback, and I definitely got a lot of that, but I don't consider that hate since it's just how people on ff.net interact.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I do, in all kinds of directions, but I don't think it's my forte lol.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I think I might have had stuff reposted to websites I didn't know without credit, but it might have just been one of those mirror sites that didn't include all details??

Not to be cavalier about plagiarism, but my internal reports at work get stolen all the time, so with fic, I honestly don't care, since, unlike at work, I'm not actually losing any money. I think if someone took my fic, passed it off as their own, and then got famous with it, I might feel different about that, but that's never happened to me.

I plagiarized @deliciouskeys' title once (for The Dollhouse), but not intentionally because I'd been working on that fic for a while and didn't realize until after publishing the first chapter that my title had been taken.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not that I'm aware.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes, I co-wrote a fic with a fandom friend over 20 years ago, but we ended up never publishing it. Haven't co-written any fic since then, and I don't think I'd enjoy it.

What's your all-time favorite ship?

I don't think I have one since that would require me to maintain an obsession over decades, which is not how my brain works.

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

A bunch of fic I wrote for ASoIaF like Lions of the Realm and Fatherly Love. I won't to finish all my fic because I hate not to, but with these two, I'm pretty certain I never will. Probably a few others in that same category out there.

What are your writing strengths?

This doesn't really show in my current fandom, but I think I have some pretty unique ideas. I'm also willing to experiment and play around with concepts, which I generally consider a strength on the whole.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I lean towards GRRM's ways of telling a story, but without the skill of being able to pull it off (and to be fair, he's failing, too).

Also, I will say that writing in a language other than your native language will limit you in some pretty fundamental ways that can't be overcome, and that can be frustrating.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

The most I do is insert individual words and phrases, and I only do that for languages I actually speak.

I did write one fic in which several of my characters spoke with pretty heavy dialect, and if I were to rewrite that fic now, I would really tone that down.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Published: Lord of the Rings

Unpublished and without realizing what I was doing: Asterix and Cleopatra, probably

What's a fandom/ship you haven't written for yet but want to?

I haven't written published any real Maevlander or real Starlander, and I definitely want to change that.

What's your favorite fic you've written?

Hard to say, but I really like Moonlight on her Face. I'm also rather attached to Ravishing a God, but I don't count that because for something to be a true favorite, it has to outlive my obsession.

I'm late to the party on this one and have lost track of who has already been tagged, so I'm not tagging anyone, but consider yourself tagged if you want to do this!

[mjparkerwriting]

Author Ask Tag Game

Thank you @rickie-the-storyteller for tagging me! Using The Bird Book to answer these questions even though I've barely dug into it yet.

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

There's a lot going on here and my main characters are teenagers (which I never do because I don't really like writing kids). They are learning and growing every day, but if I could name one thing I want people to get from this story it would be the value of friendship, community, and accepting that some things are the way they are for a reason. I want it to be a coming-of-age story, but something that speaks more to me and my community.

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

Oh yes. There are tons of references to black culture and life and it's really a love letter to my childhood and my culture. This won't be the last time I say that exact line. The story is low fantasy so many elements of our world are present.

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

My MC is a teenage boy named Johnny. Johnny is simple. Johnny wants a girlfriend. That is literally it. He is chasing after a girl. BUT besides that, there's a lot going into it and I want people to see themselves in Johnny. When they read it, I want them to be reminded of the stupid stuff they did as teens with their friends.

4. How many chapters is your story going to have?

Not sure. It may be around 25 chapters? I haven't worked out any goals for this yet.

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

This is original content. I don't know how it will be put out into the world, but I will of course post snippets and fun stuff about it here, just like I did with TLBH.

6. When and why did you start writing?

I have been writing since forever. I've always just loved stories and loved telling them even more. I only got more serious about it when I felt like I couldn't find the exact stories I wanted. Then, I realized I could just make those stories. And then, I realized I could just keep making stories.

7. Do you have any words of encouragement for fellow writers of writeblr? What other writers on Tumblr do you follow?

Have fun with it! Do what feels right to you. It's your story, so you are what matters at the end of the day. Don't worry about who will read it. Just write something that you want to read.

I am tagging my "other writers" so that people can follow them and see how cool they are but also so they can maybe do this tag if they're up to it. These are some really cool people and it's very difficult to narrow it down. I just wanna tag all of my mutuals lol: @mjjune @girlfriend-champion @quinnharperwrites @macabremoons @fayeiswriting @writeblr-of-my-own @squarebracket-trick @toribookworm22 @words-after-midnight