#AND WRITE ORIGINAL STORIES FOR MY ***THREE*** WORKSHOPS

[feral-and-or-horny]

I need..my professors..to chill the fuck out. I don't even have time to be horny

[mikkeneko]

Have been pondering, following the latest round of "But why don't authors LIKE it when we leave unsolicited concrit on their stuff? :|a Don't they want to IMPROVE?" discourse:

How do fan authors improve? Because it's not, by and large, through concrit. Some authors have never gotten any kind of concrit, and still improve. I've gotten some in the past, and it definitely was not helpful towards improving my growth as an author. Some authors never have a beta, and yet they still improve.

So. If not through a workshop devoted to the process, or a classroom style series of lectures, or a dedicated editor, how do authors improve over time?

I would say, based on my 20+ years of experience and observation, that improvement as a writer comes in three ways: Practice shaped by self-observation, practice shaped by non-critical feedback as positive reinforcement, and observation of other authors.

Fandom has always been a space where people of different ages and skill levels interact. How it works, generally, is that a new author comes into the scene and presents their work. Readers -- some of whom are authors themselves -- will leave feedback praising the parts they like. Writers will then adjust their style on the next piece geared towards eliciting more of the things that readers said they like. However, in a vacuum, they won't necessarily know what to adjust towards, or what new things to try that they aren't already trying.

But at the same time, these young authors are usually (though not always) reading works by more experienced authors in the fandom. They can see, based on popularity stats and feedback left by others, what people like. If they want more of that attention themselves -- or, just generally, if they want to be part of the community -- they will adjust their works to incorporate more of the parts they perceive as successful with the audience.

They will also -- the more they read, and the more they write -- come to internalize an understanding (often, not even a conscious understanding) of the moving parts that go into a story, of what makes the work work. How to pace a scene, a chapter, or a longer work. How the characters talk, and how different characters talk in ways that distinguish their voices. What sort of language works well to describe an action scene, and what is confusing and uncertain. What words are sexy and what words will jar you right out of the mood. They will pick up these tools by observation, and hone them through practice.

The down side of this, of course, is that sometimes the authors they are observing and imitating may have... less than ideal writing habits themselves. Certain tropes, flanderization, headcanons divorced from the original canon, or various other things can become endemic in a fandom due to this -- but also much simpler and more straightforward writing quirks. (The infamous oh is an example of these.) Sometimes things that I won't necessarily say are bad, I will just observe that they are not correct.

And this is how you got an entire generation of fanfic writers using strong endings on verbs that, in modern English, take the weak ending.

[jujumin-translates]

★ Main Story | Act 13 - Budding Spring | Chapter 20 - Trial & Error

Tsuzuru: Good morning.

Young Man: Good morning.

Tsuzuru: (I mean, this thing is aimed at younger scriptwriters, so I guess it makes sense that there’s a bunch of 20-somethings here.)

Tsuzuru: (Well, but none of them seem like they’re college students, so maybe I’m the youngest one here…)

Madoka: Ah--.

Tsuzuru: Huh!? You’re participating in this training camp too, Madoka?

Madoka: Kamikizaka-san introduced me to it. So you’re here too, Minagi-san.

Tsuzuru: It’s nice to see a familiar face. Glad to be working with you.

Madoka: Likewise.

???: Alright, let’s get things started.

???: Once again, I look forward to working with you all for the next two weeks starting today. Let’s start with self-introductions first.

Akazaki: I’ll get us started--I’m Akazaki, director and playwright. I also run a theater company called “Hako”.

Akazaki: I started doing this scriptwriting training camp ten years ago.

Akazaki: The core idea of this camp is that young scriptwriters can learn a lot by thinking about scripts from the point of view of a director.

Akazaki: This workshop is a place for young scriptwriters to interact with each other, so let’s all work together with a little friendly competition. I look forward to seeing your work.

Akazaki: Alright, your turn.

Tsuzuru: I’m Tsuzuru Minagi, actor and in-house scriptwriter at a theater company called MANKAI Company. I’m glad to be here!

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

Akazaki: To start, I want you to come up with sixty plot ideas with the theme of “theater”. Your time limit is one hour.

Tsuzuru: Si…!?

Madoka: Sixty…

Akazaki: Each of your ideas should be conveyed in 100 characters or less. Alright, your time starts now.

Tsuzuru: --Gh.

Tsuzuru: (We’re being thrown off the deep end right off the bat. So the theme is “theater” huh… And I need to turn that into an entire plot--.)

Tsuzuru: (Nope, no time to dwell on it. I’ve got an hour to come up with sixty of these, so I’ve gotta crank out a plot a minute… Everyone else has already gotten going on it, so I’ve just gotta give it my best shot.)

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

Akazaki: Alright, time’s up. That should’ve been a good brain exercise.

Akazaki: Okay, now, take the plot ideas you just wrote out and swap them with someone.

Tsuzuru: (Swap them…?)

Akazaki: Everyone have someone else’s ideas? Then go ahead and pick three of the ideas you think would be interesting to see.

Tsuzuru: (Someone else’s…!? Wait, no way, does that mean I don’t get to pick what I’m going to write about…?)

Akazaki: Once you’ve picked them, return the paper to its original owner.

Akazaki: Once you have your paper back, pick one idea from those three. You then have one hour to put a full plot together.

Madoka: Um, here’s yours, Minagi-san.

Tsuzuru: Ah, right. You’re the one who picked for me? Thanks, Madoka.

Tsuzuru: (T-These are the three he picked!? I never would’ve chosen those myself. But, I guess they are pretty Madoka-like choices.)

Tsuzuru: (Whatever, I’ve got an hour to pull together a plot. I guess I’ll go with this one since it seems like the easiest one to flesh out…)

Tsuzuru: (God, who even comes up with an idea like this…? Well, me with a time limit, apparently…)

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

Akazaki: Hmm, I see…

Akazaki: I can tell that you were trying to keep things in your comfort zone and there are places where it’s obvious that you were running out of time.

Tsuzuru: Ah… right.

Akazaki: But it’s important to have your comfort zone, and I can tell you that it was kind of unlucky that you had to be dragged out of it for this.

Akazaki: I know it’s natural to want to use your usual style or follow your same techniques, but if you make an effort to throw in new things every once in a while, you can throw a few more tools in your toolbox for you to use later on.

Akazaki: Sometimes you need to be confronted with a more forceful approach like this, that way you can learn to take hits like this more easily.

Tsuzuru: Yeah, I know that already…

Tsuzuru: (It’s important to be able to stand my ground, but that doesn’t mean I can be defensive all the time…)

Akazaki: By the way, why did you decide to come to this training camp, MInagi-kun?

Akazaki: With an in-house position, you’ve got a stable place to write, so is there really a need for you to venture into the outside world?

Tsuzuru: I may have a stable place to write, but I’m always wondering how I can grow more. For my own sake, and for my troupe’s sake.

Akazaki: I see. Well, I think having that kind of greed is a good thing.

Akazaki: This training camp is a workout for your brain, like a real athletic event, so try not to burn yourself out.

Tsuzuru: Right, an athletic event… I was already kinda getting that feeling.

Akazaki: So, that said, why don’t you try and fix this thing starting from the beginning?

Tsuzuru: --U-Understood.

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

Tsuzuru: Aghhh… I’m exhausted…

Tsuzuru: (My brain is fried… I never want to write a single hiragana, kanji, or any other character ever again…)

Madoka: Good work.

Tsuzuru: You still seem pretty lively, Madoka.

Madoka: Do I…? Maybe it’s because I’m used to writing a lot quickly.

Madoka: In the past, my father used to make me do a lot of sudden script revisions, so…

Tsuzuru: That must’ve sucked…

Tsuzuru: But I see… I don’t have a whole lot of experience with having to make revisions like that.

Madoka: I don’t know whether I can say it was a good experience or not, but… I feel like it gave me some more strength for things like this.

Tsuzuru: You sure are resilient…

Madoka: Some of the other participants seemed to be pretty used to writing a lot. It’s probably because a lot of them have experience writing for a lot of different things.

Tsuzuru: That’s true. They did give off the vibe of pros who write scripts for a living.

Tsuzuru: (I’m still just an inexperienced student. The only experience I’ve had writing outside of the company was with Otomiya-san…)

Tsuzuru: I’ll just take all of this as I sign that I still have room to grow.

Madoka: I still have a lot to learn to aim for the new Fleur Award, so… Let’s both do our best.

Tsuzuru: Yeah.

Tsuzuru: (Madoka’s also trying to grow as a scriptwriter for GOD-za. I need to get fired up like that again too.)

Madoka: Well then, good night. See you tomorrow.

Tsuzuru: G’night.

Tsuzuru: (The thing with the way I write scripts is that I just do the same thing I always have, but it’s still kinda refreshing to learn more about how other people write them.)

Tsuzuru: (I’ve really used up all my braincells, but it’s pretty interesting experiencing a new world like this.)

Tsuzuru: (Oh, right, I should check in on the group chat before I sleep…)

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

tsuzuru has entered the chat.

Curry: thanks for the suit

TorORo: you hAveb tkaen your Firstn stepn into becominf a busineeSsman! (1)

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

Tsuzuru: (I’ve got no clue what Citron-san is trying to say, but what else is new… And what kinda name is “TorORo”…)

Tsuzuru: (…I feel like I could write up some material for Citrun with that.)

Tsuzuru: (Can’t believe I felt like I couldn’t even write another character a moment ago. I’ll just jot down some quick notes before I sleep.)

[ ⇠ Previous Part ] • [ Next Part ⇢ ]

• • •

T/N:

(1) Citron’s name in the chat is “都呂々” (Tororo) which is just the name of a town in Japan. I think what he was probably going for was to have his name as “トロロ” (Tororo, just in katakana) as like, a play on his name? Because like, シトロン (ShiTOROn) so it’s like taking the “トロ” (Toro) part of his name and turning it into “Tororo” as a nickname. I decided to translate it as “TorORo” because like, “都呂々” has the pronunciation he was probably going for, it’s just not quite the right way to write it, so I figured the best way to convey that was through weird capitalization as opposed to it being misspelled.

[ineffably-good]

Writing is Scary

Had a new writing experience tonight, which is having my first "workshop" ever, as part of the year-long short story class I'm taking at Hugo House, a writing nonprofit that offers kickass classes here in Seattle--which means you write something, give it to a group of people, and then they all sit around and pick it apart in front of you while you aren't supposed to respond.

People who got a creative writing degree have done this a million times as part of their BS or MFA. I was a plain old English major and then tech writing masters and have never, ever done this in my whole life. I also have not written a short story in over 20 years. A few novels, yes, and approximately 750k words of fanfic, but not a legitimate short story with original characters and stuff.

I gotta say, writing in any serious way (where you're trying to publish) is not for the faint of heart. I'm introverted and anxious and my writing interests have *continually* required me to put myself out there in situations which are scary, like getting endless rejection letters, pitching novels live to agents, and tonight's workshop. I only do it because a) I really really love writing to the point of obsession and b) it's usually worth it, at least in the long run.

Anyway, I have survived, it was generally a positive experience, people were super supportive, and I now don't have to do this again for another two or three months when we get to round two.

[violetasteracademic]

You’re such a good writer. Have you ever thought of writing a book?

Oh my goodness 🥹 thank you darling anon!!

I've actually written three! Though I have not felt any were ready to undergo the query process. And this year my poetry was published for the first time in a literary magazine, which was absolutely surreal. The few times I've mentioned this info here typically people ask if they can see it or if I could share, and I would soooo love to but this fandom is frankly too scary with doxxing and harassing for me to feel comfortable opening up that part of myself here.

I do think in the fic world especially it can be kind of charming and whimsical to just seem like this incredible writer who doesn't even try, but that is not me 😅 where I am at is the result of a decades long dedication to daily writing practices, multiple novel attempts, and improving my craft through books on structure and taking local workshops without access to higher education for it.

It can be scary to reveal how hard you work in creative spaces- because then what if you don't seem as impressive as you should? But writers have really a bad rap for pretending they don't try at all and everything just *happens* which leads to a lot of insecurity and frustration for new writers who are easily discouraged. So I always want to be really transparent about my journey.

Not that anyone asked but I would like to again take this time to encourage any aspiring writers, fic or otherwise, to just *start* writing anything at all! Putting words together in a meaningful way is a discipline. Even if you are naturally talented, that will fizzle out without practice. So write, write, write, and start today, not when you have an idea for a story. Writing begets writing. Go outside and write about the sky at different intervals throughout the day and you might suddenly walk away with the idea for your first novel!

Anywho, this was very kind. Fic is especially vulnerable because even with a solid amount of practice and discipline, it is essentially just a first draft and lacks a lot of the polish a published book would undergo. So it really means a lot to know you enjoy! When people say a published novel "reads like a fic" I know what they mean 😅 without editors, developers, arc readers, ect, I struggle with a lot of fears and insecurity too. But you guys have been amazing to write for. I felt so supported and encouraged from day one even being brand new to the scene, and it fills my heart with such joy to be a part of this fic community!

Fic writing has been really helping me through a deeply unstable time in my life and I'm so happy to have discovered it. Once I get a little more settled and stable, I'll focus back on original work!

[barilleon]

Building Dungeons that Tell Stories

One thing I've been hired to do a lot lately is to write a dungeon that's meant to fit into a larger adventure/product. For example, I wrote the Ivory Tower for Sarah Morris's The City Lost to Dream. I'm writing another one now, for [redacted], and I thought it'd be cool to talk through my process as I build the outline.

You can find a Notion template for my dungeon outline here! But this blog post will talk through it.

First, a disclaimer: This isn't the definitive way to make a dungeon! In fact, not all dungeons need to tell stories in this way. But the vast majority of mine do, because they're attached to one-shots, and I like the narrative completeness this style of dungeon creation affords. There's a narrative throughline to this kind of dungeon, where each room serves a purpose and allows the players to piece the story together. At the climax, the characters can use this information to make an informed decision about how to proceed.

This style is heavily inspired by the environmental storytelling found in games I've enjoyed like Bioshock and Pokemon. Every bit of the environment, down to the smallest aesthetic choice, links back to the main idea in some way. When you put all the pieces together, the image becomes clear.

So let's dive into it:

The Dungeon Thesis

The Dungeon Thesis is the story told by traversing the dungeon. What happened here? What will the party learn from each of these rooms? Every room in the dungeon should be a supporting argument for this thesis.

If you've read my adventure The Workshop Watches (get it here for free!), then you'll recognize the strong thesis there: S.A.M. is a sentient workshop who accidentally killed its creators. Every room inside S.A.M. supports this thesis, by providing more insight into Illumar's research and S.A.M.'s actions since its creation.

The Dungeon Background section can help you with this thesis. Who lives in this dungeon now? Why was it originally created? What conflict is created by the disparity in the answer between those two questions?

While your final draft probably won't have a section labeled "Dungeon Thesis," the entire thing should have echoes of what you put here in your outline throughout.

The Dungeon Gimmick

Not every dungeon needs a gimmick, but it is a great way to make this encounter stand out. Maybe the corridors shift, or the characters are running on a timer. Maybe your dungeon is sentient and very, very curious. When coming up with a dungeon gimmick, also consider the other overarching features of the dungeon. How are the halls lit (and who made it that way)? Are there doors? Do they lock?

When adding a gimmick to your dungeon, make sure you introduce it right away. I'll cover this more in the entryway section, but it's a good idea to establish the gimmick as soon as possible, and keep reinforcing it, so it sticks in the GM's mind (and therefore their players' minds). Here's the gimmick from The Workshop Watches:

Individual Rooms: Purpose, Challenge, and Reward

The meat of a dungeon is, of course, its rooms. I have a three-pronged approach to coming up with the rooms: purpose, challenge, and reward.

Purpose

Why is this room important to the overall dungeon? What can the characters learn from traversing this room that will lead them closer to the thesis? Does it establish the ruthlessness of the villain, betray a secret weakness of your enemy, or provide more context for what's going on here?

You don't always have to come up with the purpose first. Sometimes you look at your dungeon layout and say, "I need more combat." So build your combat encounter, and then retroactively determine why that's necessary to the story.

That's what I did for The Workshop Watches. I added the greenhouse fight because the dungeon needed more combat. I asked myself, "what kinds of rooms would exist in a wizard's laboratory?" and settled on a greenhouse full of magical plants. Later on, I came up with the temperature control mechanic, where S.A.M. would counter cold damage with fire damage and fire damage with cold damage. A burnt section of the greenhouse suggests that S.A.M. has incinerated something-or someone-before.

Challenge

What are the characters meant to do in this room? This one is the most straightforward, but writing it out can help you keep track of the balance between different types of challenges. Combat, exploration, social, trap diffusion, puzzle solving, etc.

Reward

What do the characters get for completing the challenge in this room? Sometimes the reward is just "passage to the next room." Sometimes it's as explicit as "treasure!" But think outside the box for things your players would appreciate inside a dungeon: new tools, the opportunity for a rest, more lore, a role play opportunity.

There can be multiple Purposes, Challenges, or Rewards in one room, but try not to overdo it! Conversely, you can cheat a little bit and have them overlap or omit one ("The purpose of this room is simply to be a place for the characters to rest -- a reward! The challenge is in whether they'll recognize it or not")

Examples

The template has more questions for special room types. I won't go through all of them, but I do want to share some examples from my outline for The City Lost To Dream. Here's the entryway example:

Later on, I realized that there wasn't enough in the entryway. The final draft has a statue of the tower's founder and clues to suggest you should rub the bottom of her robe, which grants you a boon on a check. A fun reward for a History challenge.

Another example, one of the Laboratory floors:

You can see there's multiple challenges here, but no concrete reward yet. In the final draft, the aboleth can help you in a later encounter, but it also grants you three "knowledge" wishes (basically, three castings of legend lore).

The Climax

The climax of the dungeon - the final confrontation. Most dungeon delving games consider some kind of confrontation to be a great cap to the adventure. Combat is especially popular here. Give your characters something to fight!

But almost as important as the fight is the choice. A question I am constantly asking myself is, "The Characters learned all that information you gave them; now what are they going to do about it?" This is a roleplaying game, after all! When the characters learn the full truth of the dungeon and uncover its thesis, it may change their minds about how to proceed. Maybe they must choose between two potential adversaries, or choose whether or not to fight, or choose whether or not to use lethal force.

And that's the outline! I hope it's helpful to folks who are interested in creating this style of dungeon. Definitely pick up a copy of The City Lost to Dream if you haven't already; it's a fun 5e adventure! And let me know what you think of this method.

[taz-ma-raz-skylar]

All credits to Breaking Character for this interview, done MAY 25, 2021.

Inspired by Life: An interview with Taz Skylar and Ross Berkeley Simpson, writers of Warheads.

Centred around a young group of friends as they deal with the aftereffects of war, Tarek “Taz” Skylar and Ross Berkeley Simpson’s Warheads is an eye-opening exploration of the lasting impact warfare can have on people, even long after having returned to the safety of home.

Read our Q&A to discover how this emotional piece of theatre came together.

…

Warheads is centred around a group of friends and how they each experience the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after two of them, Weppler and Morlock, return from war. What made you want to tell this story?

Taz: One of my childhood friends was a Spanish infantryman. He was a larger-than-life character who inspired me to write something about young soldiers. It was evident to me that the goal was never to do a biographical piece, as that would have entailed writing a three-hour verbatim play in Spanish. From the get-go, I wanted to capture the essence of my close friend and put it into a narrative structure that would highlight the struggles that young men in the armed forces go through. Because I was putting on the play in London, I thought it could be an interesting mix to combine that essence with urban London youth culture. And the result was Warheads.

Ross: I have no experience of the army nor urban London youth culture and so, as a writer, I found it quite thrilling to be immersed in a world that I didn’t know. My normal rule of thumb is to ‘write what you know’ – but knowing that Taz had the back-up knowledge of this world meant I could jump in, take it somewhere, and the piece would still retain its authenticity. It was this rare chance to write out of my comfort zone (and Taz’s enthusiasm for the piece) that made me want to be involved.

How did the collaborative writing process work?

Ross: We have to mention Laura Rollins here.

Taz: Yes!

Ross: Laura Rollins, the actor, is a good friend of mine. She introduced us.

Taz: Like many things with this show, angels were just watching over me and dropped the perfect collaborators from the sky. I had written a fair few drafts of the play and done read-throughs, but I’d never written anything before and was having some trouble with the structure for it. And coincidentally, I had just done a monologue slam in Birmingham, where Laura Rollins was a judge for it. We shared the same acting agent at the time.

Laura and I got chatting and I told her I was a writer and that I’d written a play and some pilots. We started to work together (Laura and I) on something else, which never really came to fruition, but in the interim, she introduced me to her friend Ross. She sent me a scene he’d written and I loved his writing. I thought we shared a very similar sensibility and we loosely started chatting about collaborating on something. I was still working on Warheads in the background at this point. I’d done workshops of it, devising sessions with actors read-throughs, you name it… I was hellbent on getting this play to where it needed to be. And one day I just thought I’d send it to Ross to have a look at it.

Ross: I read the original version of the play and my first thought was ‘this doesn’t need me’. In fact, I told Taz that I wouldn’t work on it because there was already a good play there. But then, in a video call, Taz explained exactly why he wasn’t happy: his intention had been to write something about the specific mental effects on the soldiers and this was mostly still missing, and he wasn’t happy with the plot construction.

I agreed to work on a new plot and also to do the research on PTSD and find a way to incorporate this more explicitly. Once I’d learned more about what the symptoms are (night terrors, paranoia etc) a new structure for the piece became clear. This started by introducing the therapist character, which then changed the way the play dealt with time and space, making the scenes choppier in both feel and time.

Taz: CLICK. I learnt so much from seeing the changes he’d made to the play. Then the play went into rehearsals and it changed another MILLION TIMES OVER, pushing the new structure further and further until the structure almost became a character in and of itself. We did a week of read-throughs with the original cast, led by our director, Toby Clarke. Hearing it out loud would shine light on what was still weak, which characters needed to be rounded off. The play still went on unnecessary tangents that needed cutting. The lead character’s arc needed to be rethought. The secondary characters needed stronger arcs. It needed light hearted moments to counterbalance the darkness that permeates the second half. So every day after the read-throughs, I would go home and work on new scenes to try out the next day. Funny scenes. Happy scenes. Bouncy scenes. And slot them in to the non-linear structure to make sure the play could justify its latter darkness with upfront humour. Then it changed even more during rehearsals. And finally, after opening night at the Bernie Grant Arts centre, Ross came to see the play and WE FINALLY MET IN PERSON.

Ross: Yup! We literally met for the first time on opening night. Before that it was a couple of video calls, phone calls and about 400 emails. And it wasn’t even lockdown.

Taz: That meeting was such an emotional moment because this play meant so much to me. He was so supportive and positive about what he’d seen on stage. He’d been in the dark about the play through the read-through and rehearsal stages, where lots of changes continued happening, and his trust never wavered a single bit.

Ross: Well, I wasn’t in the rehearsals so it would have been a bit rich to say ‘why didn’t you use my line there?’ Besides, the changes didn’t interfere with my plot work or the PTSD work I put through it, so to me the changes were entirely positive. I think Taz, the actors, director Toby Clarke and the sound designer did an amazing job making the script come to life.

Taz: This is RARE for writing partners. Too many times writing partners spend half their time arguing about contracts and artistic differences, but between Ross and I, none of that seemed to matter. We complemented each other perfectly and have never even argued once (fingers crossed it stays that way). And I think that’s because we were just very upfront with each other. From the get go, Ross just said…

Ross: “I’ll do a pass on the script… if you like it and use it, we share the credit, if you don’t like it, then just be honest, we part ways and happy days… we’ll find something else to work on.” And Taz said…

Taz: “That sounds fair to me. All I ask is that if ever

we disagree on something, I retain the right to break the tie.” He said…

Ross: “Cool.”

Taz: And I think that’s why we worked so well. Even now with other things I send his way or he sends my way, we act exactly the same. Say what we want or think upfront. Exchange an email detailing what we spoke about so that it’s written down somewhere and go from there.

Ross: It was a thrilling experience as a writer and I’ll be forever grateful to both Taz – for trusting me to move things around in the world he’d envisioned – and to Laura, for introducing us.

During the play, the two characters who aren’t in the armed forces, Tembe and Tena, are rehearsing lines for Tena’s performance in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. What’s the significance of this play in particular?

Taz: First of all, Coriolanus is my favourite Shakespeare play. And second of all, I think it’s symbolic of many things in Warheads. Both of the lead characters are affected by war in two very different ways, and they oscillate between enemies and allies, eventually leading to the savage demise of one of them. A lot of the Coriolanus sensibilities were influential for the feel of the piece, although they may be incredibly subtle.

Can you talk a bit about the style of dialogue used throughout the piece and why it feels right for both the story and the characters?

Taz: Ever since I was little, I would rather listen to dialogue than music. Dialogue is a rhythmical, musical and poetic thing which, to me, is the difference between a great piece and a mediocre piece. So hopefully that’s evident. The lexicon however, if we’re referring to the “Bruv’s”, the “Init’s” and the “fam’s”, that was born out of me wanting to use urban, London youth culture in a story that didn’t involve drugs or gangs, because that’s all that language usually gets associated with. It was a way to connect to the audience that I wanted it to connect to, because they would feel like they knew the people on that stage.

Ross: When I was writing new dialogue I knew that Taz would have to go over it to make it sound more genuine for these characters. I don’t think I’ve ever said “fam” in my life. I just made sure that the dialogue that was needed for my plot strands was included and knew that he’d fix any inconsistencies. There were two exceptions: the therapist – whose voice I knew well, and Tembe, who felt somehow a lot like me. I thought it was hilarious when Tembe later developed into a gay character (without my input) and wondered whether some of my words had something to do with that shift.

Throughout the show, there are moments where the past and present overlap, playing with the audience’s perception of reality. Do you have any advice of how to approach this on stage?

Taz: Anchor the play with clarity to begin with, before you start messing with the audience. Try to keep it simple and then trust the audience.

So, the “anchor the play with clarity” bit refers to the fact that you need to make the audience feel safe and grounded before you start pulling the rug. If the play starts and we don’t know where we are to begin with, the effect will be lost when things actually do start to merge and muddle.

‘’Keep it simple’’, relates to the fact that since it can be innately confusing from the get-go, so the director and actors should do everything in their power to keep everything else as simple and clear as can be. The staging moves quickly from one place to another, so how that is going to be re-arranged should remain as logical as possible.

The other thing is the transition itself, where so much of a story can be told through physical theatre in the actual process of rearranging the set.

Now, when things do start to purposely get confusing, trust that you’ve built a clear enough foundation for the audience to go on the bumpy ride that the latter half of the piece takes them on.

The play offers a platform to openly discuss PTSD. More generally, is mental health a topic that you hope to explore through future projects?

Taz: Exploring mental health in young people — from a first-person perspective — in a way that my mum can enjoy, is pretty much the remit of everything I want to write.

Ross: We have already worked on a few things together since Warheads (who knows if we will get them out there) and mental health is at the heart of those pieces too. This may sound strange but I think, when you’re writing for any character, mental health is always something that goes into any piece.

If everyone in your script was doing OK and not dealing with anything in their lives then it would be a pretty boring script! Of course this doesn’t have to be as extreme as how we discuss PTSD in Warheads, but it is always there. I’ve recently finished writing a gay rights play which deals with the mental torture of having to stay in the closet (write what you know!), and whilst I wouldn’t say the character was clinically depressed, it definitely has an effect on the character’s mental health, so it was still a consideration. But of course you have to treat mental health very carefully and do your research. There are a few reviews online from audience members with PTSD who watched Warheads at Park Theatre, and they were very complimentary with how we handled it, and how accurate and realistic it was. We are so proud that the play was nominated for an Olivier — I am still over the moon! — but the fact that those sufferers said we nailed the depiction of PTSD is my proudest moment in the Warheads experience.

Taz: Ross and I have a great relationship and we will definitely write something together again. It may be about mental health or it may not. But as a topic it’s definitely something very close to my heart.

[aggravateddurian]

WIP Wednesday Whenever: Pain and Suffering Edition

I was tagged by: @shivsghost @ouroboros-hideout and @gloryride for WIP Wednesday, which I am doing on Friday. You'll understand if you keep reading.

I have been fairly inactive this week...

I have aged approximately six weeks in three days. I've been working long days 8am-4:30pm in nonstop meetings, workshops and other activities at work. As such, coming home leaves me with little energy to do a lot. I take a few photos, maybe write a little bit of stuff, but otherwise I haven't been terribly active, so far as creative stuff is concerned.

Virtual Photography

I've got a President's Lady (Vega x Rosalind Myers) set coming out tonight. Otherwise I've got nothing in the VP space.

CyberNoir is on hold, alongside my fics, until after I've recovered from the psychological toll the past three days have put on me.

Writing

I've put a pause on writing my main fics this week because I've been so busy at work.

I finally published Chapter 1 of my original Science Fiction piece 'Freerunners' (via Tumblr for now, until I find a suitable hosting site). Check it out!

I've also published a short story about Vincent Gonzalez (my Male V) and his (very very short-lived) relationship with Panam, called 'Repulse'. Check it out here.

I'm going to tag @wanderingaldecaldo, @streetkid-named-desire and @olath124. Sorry if you've already been tagged, and of course, participation is completely voluntary.

Thanks everyone.

[leenfiend]

I thought the Two Slow Dancers comic would be a fun opportunity to break down my process a lil bit cause this was a lot of undoing and redoing and adding so for any ppl curious it will be under the cut!!

So to start off I actually only thumbnailed what is now page five and six, the original image in my mind was them reaching out to each other in different seasons clothing, I considered just making an animated version of that but then I connected it to the two slow dancers scene I had imagined in my head a month or so back and wanted to make it part of a small narrative:

(I actually did page six first - u can tell by the way my writing is nearly incomprehensible that this idea came to me like a vision in the night)

But then looking at that i said - well surely that doesn’t tell the story enough. I need more. And then I played two slow dancers on repeat for probably an hour while I thumbnailed a surrounding narrative for those two pages and ended up with this mess:

And from there I actually started working on the lineart two pages at a time - I like working on freakishly large two page spreads because to me it helps the flow feel more cohesive, I don’t look at them as isolated pages until I get to the shading part of the process.

But once I sent it to some ppl for feedback and reread it myself a million times I felt like the story still wasn’t reading the way I wanted it to - two out of six pages were “flashbacks/memories” pages and that ratio didn’t really allow for the other four pages to read as a cohesive story in my opinion so I kept trying to workshop two more pages for the front and I went through a few iterations:

I thought at first I would show the outside of the garrison, give the audience more of a setting, and then show the flyer so we know Keith is getting ready for this celebration. But it was too literal for me (even though what I ended up doing was still pretty literal lmao). So then I started with the phone/text messages as a story telling device:

Also this is an example of how I almost always draw the comic panels before I decide what goes in them haha, unless I’m really sure what images I plan on focusing in on the panels almost always end up informing what goes inside if that makes sense. But I finally ended up here when I decided “that’s good enough”

I even did most of the lineart for this composition before I decided the imagery of the jacket was just too repetitive, like we don’t need THREE PAGES of keith putting on a jacket.

So i kind of just moved the left page over to the right, and left the right page blank for most of the rest of the comic process. I finished most of the lineart on the rest of it before I finally circled back and decided to go with a tweak of what I originally thought was a lame idea (I had this image in my head of the lions silhouette against the glow of the Earth for the first page, but with the lyrics “the ground has been slowly pulling us back down” I thought it was just too cheesy, especially because that’s not what the lyrics mean either in the song or in the context of this comic and I didn’t want them to be perceived as so literal)

So this is the thumbnail I landed on for that which eventually turned into the actual final page.

Once I had all of the thumbnailing done the rest was pretty fun work! Just lots of going back in and detailing out the scribbles I had first put down. Now in terms of color, I actually have a secret. Most times I don’t color much at all? It depends on the piece but for most of my comics what I do is this -

I flat greyscale color everything and then use a color curve adjuster inside of procreate to pick a color pallet:

color adjusters are ur friend for picking color pallets i'm TELLING YOU!! I used to have a lot of trouble with cohesive color comps but it's a lot easier for me even without using this method now. Anyway I usually leave it here, in my other comics I don't have any shading or background elements outside of the panels but I figured since I was working so much on this comic anyway, I might as well light it a bit. So I basically just scribbled over the whole composition with a purple marker set on a multiply layer and then erased out the places I wanted light to hit, and then added a soft light layer with colored lights to give it more of a party look:

The only hang up I had during the coloring process of all this was how to color the "memory" pages. I originally just wanted them to be more pastel/blue, I thought that would make them look distinct enough. So I painted/shaded this whole page before looking at it within the rest of the composition and deciding it didn't read well at all and ended up sliding the saturation down to zero and calling it a day:

But I'm happy with that decision because it allowed for the "coming into color" moment with the other memory page and I think it connects better to the rest of the comic visually that way. And that was the whole process! There were tons of other little adjustments I made along the way and other composition things I tried out but I do tend to erase instead of iterate in layers so this is the process I have to show you! As a little bonus behind the scenes, here's the time lapse replay of that initial thumbnail for all eight pages! (it is sideways just because it's so large so if you're on a phone/tablet/laptop just turn ur screen sideways otherwise I'm so sorry lmao)

[themarydragon]

What I'm Working On:

Slightly better title than "Fic Scheduling" but still clunky. I'll workshop it some more.

Currently posting ME fic. "One and Done" will be done this week. "Red Letter Days" will take us into the new year. It's sequel, "Sabbatical" and it's companion "Off the Record" are ready to go right behind it; both are finished but aren't yet drafted to AO3 so I'm not entirely sure the chapter or word counts. It's a lot, though.

Currently playing ME3 so I can finish part 3 of The Chakwas Fic. I know how it goes down, I'm just a stickler for trying to stay reasonably close to canon, so I've got a lot of datamining to do, so I'm writing as I play and playing as I write.

Original Worlds: I wrote a short Original Fiction story just to vent a sadness, and I'm seriously deliberating putting it up somewhere. The OF I was previously working on has been rattling around for half a year now and I think I know how to get past the place I was stuck. Intentionally NOT doing that, though.

Side projects: starting to dabble harder in visual novels and then being hit hard with the OC stick and writing up How My OC Did It and contemplating posting. I've got (finished) stories for three of them now - Blooming Panic, Our Life, and Andromeda Six. Not at all sure I want to post them. If you read this and have an opinion, please let me know, I'm genuinely torn.

Somebody please talk me out of re-writing Howl's Moving Castle from Howl's perspective. I recently read it and decided I wanted his POV and somebody needs to talk me down.

Zelda: I'm at the excerpt-writing stage, where individual scenes scream at me until I write them, and then they go into an unwieldy text file that I read and re-read to get motivation and inspiration and eventually they get copy-pasted out of there into the body of the actual work. Which, if you're keeping track, there will be three of. I've got the Zelda POV well underway, several scenes from the Link POV keeping me up at night, and a full outline for How to Fix "Born a Storm" It is happening, and I am hoping will be what my muse fixates on this winter.

And, as a treat: the Zelda POV will be "Still So It Flows."

"A river is time in water; as it came, still so it flows, yet never is the same." (Leonardo Da Vinci)

The Link POV will be "Restless Waters"

"Do not turn me into restless waters if you cannot promise to be my stream." (Sanober Khan)

Honorable mention:

"Rivers know this; there is no hurry. We shall get there someday." (A.A. Milne)

[my-friends-fan]

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR OCS 👀👀👀

oop! ok so right now i have many lil ideas but not a major storyline (just started a writing workshop and am reading a book for that exact reason lol) but I've got a few ideas that have been in my head for a WHILE.

first there's two characters i call the werewolf girlfriends. maggie is a trans woman who is dating emma, a recently turned werewolf. maggie is a very anxious person but she has proper experience with transitions and help emma, a strong and social eldest child handle her situation and accept it. I'm thinking about it cus I love playing with gender and monsters and as a queer amab who's having a hard gender crisis rn this story is very much close to my heart.

the next is a story i call nightshift: a cafe that is pretty mundane and normal except for the night. at which point it becomes a place for recently dead people to come and have a lovely conversation with the mysterious and mayyybe undead barista and have a last drink before they go to whatever comes next.

then there's the story I'm rly big on right now, i call it the beekeeper. I'm not sure how it fully works yet, but i know there are spots in the world where if someone enters them they're never seen again, special road signs are put up to keep people away from them. and there is a person in a medieval beekeeper outfit who can work with bees to make some kind of magic that closes these liminal spaces. I don't know everything about the beekeeper but i know the first sentence of the story and the description that encapsulates the beekeeper is "some people die and turn into vengeful spirits. others start early"

uhhh that's the three big ones right now. I'd love to make nightshift into a host form, like a podcast or even a roleplaying game. I'd want to make maggie and emma into a graphic novel or a theater play. and i think the beekeeper is worthy of being a book to be adapted into a live action hbo original miniseries (think station eleven)

[isagrimorie]

[initial reactions] Star Trek: SNW 2x09 - Subspace Rhapsody

This was a fun musical episode! I still say Trek shows should be more than 10 episodes because there are some character beats here that feel it needs more than a few episodes to just be and breathe.

(Once again laughing that Paul Wesley managed to escape a musical in TVD only to leap headfirst into a show that would do a musical and he can't walk away. This is laughing in fun btw 'cause I do like Paul Wasilewski and his real-life snarky dry sense of humor, but also, HAHAHA. They got you, Wasilewski!)

I liked it! It wasn't Buffy the Musical, but that's okay, it was fun and it moved character arcs along!

I haven't mentioned before but I really love the medical uniform Chapel's wearing, which I think originated from Discovery s1 and 2.

I love how it took a while for Uhura to sing but when she did, she hit a breakthrough. I love that this was her episode but it wasn't just about Uhura.

The musical numbers I really enjoyed: Uhura's solo, La'an's solo, and Chapel's whole musical number. The three strongest singers of the show.

I'm glad that La'an was able to tell her secret because it was weighing on her so much and I'm glad that

Speaking of episodes where character beats needed more than 10 episodes. It's such a whiplash to go from Spock and T'Pol breaking up to Christine and Spock being together for what 2 episodes? I am glad we got Christine's song how this was something that can change her life forever. (If I'm not mistaken that guy running the program will be her ill-fated fiance). But we've gone from Christine pinint for Spock, to being ambivalent with him, to Boimler throwing cold water into the fledgling relationship with Spock. I wish we got to see Spock and Christine have just an episode or more to be in a relationship and happy.

There's not enough Pelia! (Speaking of, where are the other engineers? I know the answer is most likely covid restrictions but I wish there were some engineers working in Engineering in the background).

You know what? I've tried but I just had a thrill of happiness at all the moments Spock and Uhura were together. I know it's not as popular a ship as Spock/Kirk and Spock/Chapel but the TOS version I'm most familiar with (aside from the original TOS movies) is AOS. And since then Spock/Uhura is my ship. So, I'm just gonna embrace it. I ship them!

The Klingon boy band!

Uhura really is my favorite! I love how she started as someone uncertain of Starfleet to finding connection and family in the Enterprise even though she still felt alone at times. I love that Communications Officer is a vital part of ship's functions. Also, with the way Uhura is, it makes so much sense she makes Captain in the future. She has an air of someone who would be so good in Command.

Speaking of, I wish Discovery had these kind of fun episodes instead of one long story and I think this episode really highlighted the problem with the crew of Disco. Aside from 4 characters we really don't know the Disco crew as well as the SNW crew, I don't know what the Disco bridge crew's 'I want song'.

"I wan't" songs are, according to Playbill:

"The term is thought to have been coined by Lehman Engel, founder of the BMI Workshop for musical theatre composers, librettists, and lyricists. These songs are more than just inspiring musical numbers—in many cases, they launch the journey of a play, allowing the audience to get an inside look at force driving a character's action. They express a dissatisfaction or a dream of the character that propels them through the musical."

It's really sad that it seems season 5 is the season when the show regains their sense of fun. I hope the crew is written more of an ensemble in the final season. Disco is a good show, it just really needs to fix its ensemble writing.

Back to SNW, that was such a fun episode I'm also glad Una's taking her second chance to build more relationships and be more open with her crew. It makes sense.

BTW with all the Red in security and the Gold in Command... it occurred to me that SNW Enterprise crew probably thought Mariner and Boimler were Ops!

Anyway, that's a good episode! Good penultimate episode!

[saunne]

Hi! For the fiction ask game, I'd be interested in 6, 28 & 29! :)

Merry Christmas & Happy NY

Hi ! Thanks for the ask :) I also wish you a happy holiday season and happy new year in advance !

6. Favorite title you used

Hmmm, it's a complicated question cause I always end up thinking so much about my titles lmao. But I'd say This Isn't A Love Story [But A Story About Love]. Not the most original I know, but it is effective and I like the repetition.

28. Favorite work you wrote this year ?

Definitively The Moon Crumbles [But The Sea Does Not Change], my first HSR fanfic ! I was really inspired for this fic and had a lot of fun writing it, especially thinking about the rhythm and poetry of the text.

29. Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?

.... I can't just choose one. Not possible and not happening lmao. Here, get three instead.

He was alive, while we were content just to exist. Was that what drew you to him in the first place, Dan Feng ? This inner fire that animated him, as luminous as his smile and the hearth of his workshop ? It is said, after all, that dying stars are the ones that shine brightest. He was destined to burn just as quickly, after all, in the face of our coming centuries. 

The Moon Crumbles [But The Sea Does Not Change]

He had dreamed of his eyes the following nights. Molten gold and precious rubies forged in unnatural jewels of impossible craftsmanship. Maple and ginkgo branches grafted together in an indissoluble union, wedding bells chime turned into a death knell.

This Isn't A Love Story [But A Story About Love]

He had seen how Yingxing kissed Dan Feng. How his hands, calloused by the forge, carefully cupped Dan Feng's face, his thumb following the edge  of a cheekbone in a caress of heartbreaking tenderness before he joined their lips. Yingxing kissed Dan Feng as the sea embraced the shore, engulfing, imperturbable and infinite. Blade kissed Jing Yuan like a storm ripping through the sky, with the thunderous violence of lightning and the intensity of a pouring rain hitting raging waves. Blade kissed him as if he wanted to steal Jing Yuan's very breath from his lungs, as if he tried to merge their bodies into one, bond to blood, bone and marrow itself, carve out a place in his bleeding heart after taking it apart for everyone to see.

Overskies [If You Love Me]

Thanks again for the ask ! 😊

[yuzukahibiscus]

のせ様’s (No-se-sama) Documented Events (January 2023)

(Note: This was taken from “Eto-Bun” (えと文) section in January Kageki 2023. Eto-Bun is a section written by a particular sienne in each troupe to share some little stories about them or about their troupe every three months. In this cycle of January-March, Ichinose Kouki is the one writing for Flower Troupe. And I thought, why not drabble and translate a little to see what Hanako* has for us!) *Hanako is her nickname as mentioned in OTOME, a biography of all siennes in Takarazuka.

A little introduction to Ichinose Kouki for those who are unfamiliar with her.

Ichinose Kouki・一之瀬航季

Entered the Revue in 2014 as the 100th class. Her favourite roles include Oswald Vickers for "A Fairy Tale” newcomers’ performance. She was originally going to have a newcomers’ performance lead for “Haikara-san: Here Comes Miss Modern” in 2020 but it was cancelled due to the pandemic. Nevertheless, she went on Yuzuka Rei’s “Lock-On” Episode as a guest to talk about what she learnt from Rei, being Rei’s first “shinko kid” since she became Top Star. Later on in 2022, she starred in the Bow Workshop “Junjou” (or Complete Devotion) alongside with Mihane Ai as her partner. She also previously joined Minami Maito in her CAST side-A and was one of the members of Flor5. She will be performing with Minami Maito in her “One and Only” dinner show, also the final performance for Minami Maito as a Flower Troupe member before transferring to Senka.

Hey everyone! Have you being doing well?

I am Ichinose Kouki who’s here on “Eto-Bun” for the first time! “のせ様’s Documented Events” will be the title of this time’s “Eto-Bun” corner. The parent for titling the name is my douki Honoka (Seino) ✨

Readers like you may think, “Eh!? Isn’t Ichinose’s nickname Hanako”...!

Actually, underclassmen do call me “のせ様”~. Hahaha. In Flower Troupe, we call (OG Marika Yume-san) as “Yume-sama”, (Kazumi-san) as “Shii-sama” and others by adding “-sama” to their nickname... how cool is that✨ I also want to live up cool like that! So when given this opportunity of writing for “Eto-Bun”, I have the strategy to induce the underclassmen to start calling me “のせ様” lol.

In these 3 months, I’ll be updating everyone a lot about the charms and updates of our Flower Troupe friends.

Please look forward ☘️

🌻 Intimidating “KAGEKI”

So now, now. Let’s commemorate this as my first entry!

As I start writing, I researched more about “Eto-Bun”... “Eto-Bun” has been a general corner in “Kageki” from the time of! Showa Year 43 (1968).

“What...half a century ago!?” I was surprised.

For reference, once again I opened up the “KAGEKI”s I have at my home again and when I opened the portrait photo, the thing I immediately saw was...

“Yuzuka-san is so cool! The best!”

“This angle is nice✨“

“Hey! My douki looks great too😍”

And it was so fun reading it that this time I didn’t quite want to turn the next page yet. There’s the roundtable discussion, backstage notes. Sometimes I realised there would be new corners and I familiarised myself in reading several of these (“KAGEKI”) books. And very quickly, time passed. Lol.

Has everyone had such experience before!?

I’d say this is why the charm of “KAGEKI” is intimidating.

🌻 Flower Troupe University・Starts School!

As we’re embracing the New Year in the Grand Theatre, now Flower Troupe’s in the middle of rehearsals, but actually from the start, we were arranged with quite an irregular rehearsal pattern.

To trace back the events, this happened in the next day after meeting day (*shuugobi; the day when rehearsals of performances start). As we entered the rehearsal classroom, it was like entering a school. In front of the large white board, there were long desks and long chairs aside each other. Sensei was in her seat and holding a mic, all was readily prepared...How would this start!? We thought as we stay seated. Then Koyanagi-sensei (*director of “Mayerling”) said this.

"Everyone, have you learned the way of speaking Japanese?😁”

For me, I had Japanese lessons, but was not taught specifically the way of speaking it. Then Koyanagi-sensei continued to say, “even for English, when you are admitted into the overseas drama schools, the first thing is to directly learn about the way of speaking for your mother tongue”.

Oh...! So on that day Koyanagi-sensei prepared for us Flower Troupe members a special “Acting Enhancement Lesson Club”✨! What kind of theatrical troupe is Takarazuka like? What does an actress do? She asked us many of these foundational questions...and then started picking siennes to answer🤣 lol.  Then when it comes to the situational acting class, Aoki Tsukasa was given the role of a rock singer character and Hoshikaze had to play her fan and it was a lot of fun. From the Top-san to the most junior underclassmen we’re all given an opportunity to play this, so it was exciting from start to finish...!

When we Flower Troupe members were having these lessons, it really felt like a framed memory of our school life. In a day of these lessons, (we’d be asked) “What is Takarazuka? What is a musical? What is language/words?” and once again we learnt a lot through this process. It was really interesting knowing all of such things...!!

Koyanagi-sensei said, “Everything is about conveying the “language/words”. That’s why it shouldn’t get too convoluted, but it should be enunciated word by word,” and that’s how Flower Troupe University came to an end☘️

🌻 The healing god appears!

During a weekend in the rehearsal period...

Suddenly, the healing god appeared!!

That week was a challenging time for the underclassmen, having to rehearse for both the musical and the choreography for the show (*Enchantement). Our heads felt like being in a state of sea urchin (*maybe meaning full of spikes, frustrated and headaches...) As I returned home for the week, feeling accomplished like “I’ve done it!”, several people seemed to have discover something...

As I saw the car that passed by, isn’t that Yuzuka-san’s dog Noah! Noah-kun suddenly appeared before us...✨

“Ka...Ka...Kawaii———————♡” (Cute)

Yuzuka-san held Noah-kun’s little hand and stuck its hand out of the car window and started waving it✨ Together with Yuzuka-san’s beautiful hand, we saw Noah-kun’s small hand. What-What-What an angel! As Yuzuka-san and Noah-kun waved their hands, that sent the weariness of the underclassmen away. (Besides, Ichinose is always touched by the beauty of Noah’s fluffy fur and side profile. I want to tell you...more about how touching this is) Yuzuka-san, Noah-kun, thank you for making us healed with happiness♡

I have other Yuzuka-san’s episodes I want to share, but ah~! I’m running out of pages!! Please look forward to the next entry...! This time, I’ve shared fully about the appearance of Noah-kun😁✨

Once again... Everyone, thank you for reading this first entry of my “Eto-Bun” to the end. Since we’re at the start of 2023, I’m so honoured to share with everyone my stories☘️ There’s so much I want to record document about but here I’m up at my 2 pages. From the start of the year, it would be the Flower Troupe performance. I look forward to seeing everyone in the audience.

Everyone, please be happy in 2023!

With love! From “Hanako” “(Ichi)Nose-san”.

[ranger-kellyn]

tears of the kingdom has made me desperate to revisit my age of calamity fic, if nothing else so i can start working on a aoc timeline telling of totk and AHHH

idea musing below the read more, but endgame/major spoilers for totk

i've been vaguely wondering how i would work in the totk story line into the age of calamity timeline, and honestly??? i think it's going to be fairly easy. at least...leading up to it lol remembering to work in all the characters who are now still alive will be the main challenge lol

i hear a lot of youtubers saying that "zelda was a dragon for 10,000 years" but i'm pretty sure that that it was actually way longer than that. 10k years ago was the last time calamity ganon broke out, when the sheikah created the divine beasts and guardians. the founding of hyrule, when zelda turned, was an "unknown" years prior to that.

at least, that's how i'm working with it. when i am working/thinking about anything regarding breath of the wild, age of calamity, and tears of the kingdom, i am not at all considering any of the other games. to me, this is it's own contained thing within and around these three games. (mostly bc i never played any of the other games so i wouldn't be able to draw from them easily/fluidly) ((and yes i figure things that were similar to other games happened, but not those exactly))

all that to say, in my head, this is the timeline i'm working with: ganondorf, the original One True Evil™, was sealed away in the hopes that one day in the distant future, link will rise to kill him for good. (a good chance i'm wrong on some of the "canon" of what i'm about to say, but i haven't fully explored totk and won't for a while but w/e i'm Workshopping) hyrule castle was constructed atop ganondorf and rauru mostly as a way to safeguard that chamber until link could get there to take care of things. i still haven't worked out why the sky islands exist now, because rauru even makes the comment if you talk to him atop the first area with a view of the temple of time, "though in my day, this was all on the ground".

but on my initial descent into the depths of the castle to get back down to the sealing chamber, that whole area of downward stairs that seemed to just go on forever and ever, that i just...fell through rather than walked and dealt with all the monsters-- i kept that in mind thinking about how long it must have taken link and zelda to get down there. i remember in the initial trailer for the game, they had a huge ass ox and cart, so even though they got rid of that, it all still sets the tone that it took them...a while. to get down there.

i thought about it on my second playthrough that i started last night, and really looking around at the stairs and cave walls, and i just...i really got to thinking a little harder than i needed to about it.

i thought about what it would take to actually seal something like that away. it gets a pass because it's a Magic World, but realistically, good god the work that would take. our world 10,000+ years ago was nothing like it is now. we were still what? mostly hunter-gatherers. google says "pre-pottery neolithic B". so like, the world is constantly changing. the tectonic plates are always in motion. volcanoes erupt and make a whole new top layer of soil and earth. tsunamis regularly wash things completely away. earthquakes...fires...drought.........

like. hyrule has at least one active volcano, glaciers, is near the ocean--

if i played with even a few of our real world...whatever...to hyrule-- that sealing chamber probably would have caved in at some point, or at the very least, the stairwell leading down to it, along with the murals, and all the other tunnels and whatnot, would have to be rebuilt...pretty often, all things considered.

it's something i'm trying not to stress about while writing, but it will. bug me. lol i'll get over it

ANYWAYS

back on track.

thinking through the botw -> totk timeline:

i am going with the idea that like...Calamity Ganon??? didn't. exactly. Actually. exist. like, sure, ganon did plenty of damage and razed the land, but like...it was only...a manifestation of ganondorf. a way of pressing against rauru's aging seal.

the "first" time calamity ganon rose, meeting the sheikah army, the hero and princess-- getting defeated by them? that was all a part of the plan. and by that point...the general population??? completely forgot about what was actually sealed below the castle. that's well into the "nobody is to ever go down there not even the royal family--NOBODY". too steeped in tradition/fear/whatever-- ganondorf has been "forgotten" about. their focus is calamity ganon. which, at the very least, they all know will return again.

the sheikah get "too powerful" (probably reminiscent of the zonai's god-like powers--who at this point are probably nothing more than legend). the banishment happens, they seal away all their tech to appease the hylians, things...go quiet.

then, the events leading up to botw happen. calamity ganon rises again, and i honestly...think it was in the plan to lose. extra 100 years or not. 100 years is a drop in the bucket in the face of thousands. calamity ganon didn't need to win. calamity ganon needed to get the castle to fall into disrepair as a part of the final act.

zelda mentions something about if you talk to her on the way down; since the calamity, the castle fell into disrepair. then the gloom started leaking out from the depths.

ganondorf needed the ground to be shaken up enough to where the castle part of the seal would be broken enough for more of his powers to really be able to seep out into the world.

the giant pig monster of calamity ganon-- still part of the plan. tear up the ground. rip up as many of the devices that were set to contain calamity ganon as possible. (it's at least what i'm generally going with to explain what happened to all the sheikah tech)

SO.

with that in mind, i figure the "totk" events for the age of calamity timeline...happen very similarly. only a few years after the initial CG event. the castle was shaken up enough. the castle seal was broken. the gloom will start leaking.

but now thinking more in age of calamity terms. botw!zelda and aoc!zelda are....in my mind, different zeldas. very much the same in every way, but i think it's more of a "nature vs nurture" situation. their natures are the same, but i think they had different nurtures. botw!zelda was not a fighter. she was not the "take up a weapon" sort. she had different shit going on. aoc!zelda is a fighter. she's the one who figured out how to weaponize the sheikah slate. she's the one who refused to stand by while link and impa did all the heavy lifting in the breach of demise. she had just enough differences in her life that she could at least take that up while still unable to awaken her sealing powers. BUT STILL. at the end of the day, they're both ARE fighters, just in different ways. i'm honestly struggling to figure out if aoc!zelda would have the mental fortitude to take on draconification. i figure the whole 100 years imprisoned with ganon thing really is what helped botw/totk!zelda be able to do that.

so while i work through that, at the very least, on my drive home from work today, while sitting in traffic, i just...I saw the opening of my fic for the age of calamity sequel. all because i thought something along the lines of, "you know...that was an odd question for zelda to ask her father? 'what is below the castle'? why would she question there was even something down there in the first place? why would she ever wonder if anything other than like...a crypt or something was down there?? it seems like a very...pointed...question...a question that gets asked if you saw something you maybe shouldn't have..."

in my age of calamity fic, the endgame pairing for zelda is zelda/impa, so. obviously. impa will be going with them down into the depths as part of the first change. (really want to get back into drawing so i can try to explain the "future" design for impa more-- bc i'm loving what i'm seeing in my head. same hair length but braided, at least one new piercing, some more ink-- girl looks Good)

and knowing that, i've been trying to figure out "is impa staying the present with link and everyone else?? or am i sending her ass to the ancient past, too?? if i do?? how do i??? what do i??? do with her????"

as much as i would love some antics with "yOURE CLEARLY NOT MY WIFE" from impa with all the Shmelda's running around in the present...i don't think that's the route i will go. (i could prove myself wrong later who knows i haven't finished the first fic lmao)

BUT SO. i had an idea to completely change up how i have impa and zelda originally met. instead of them not meeting until their late teens, i had this idea of them being small children, right around the time of the death of zelda's mother. impa and purah are the children to the king and queen's advisors, and zelda had been good friends with them all her childhood. (for my work, impa is a year older than zelda, and purah is about four years older than impa) after the queen's death, little zelda had been inconsolable-- absolutely shut down, not taking, not emoting-- nothing. purah and impa are both desperate to make their friend smile again, so purah decides, "hey!! why don't we sneak you down to the secret tunnels! there's all kinds of cool stuff to look at down there!" and what she MEANS is the like. staff tunnels and whatnot that are all around the castle for staff to move about unseen. the secret escape tunnels-- things like that.

impa...was less keen on the idea, knowing damn well they're sneaking where they shouldn't be-- and teleporting around with the princess??? it's one thing to endanger your sister. it's another to endanger the crowned princess--

purah presses her, and when it's the first time zelda has shown any interest in anything since her mother's passing-- impa caves.

so down they go. impa's powers have always been strong, but they're definitely less graceful at that age. they "poof" around the tunnels, going down to the docks, around the tunnels, sneak somewhere where they can probably find the three of them treats. zelda has fun for the first time in...a long time. so impa doesn't really stop. they keep going, and going, and going...and going...

and eventually.

the three of them realize they're...in a part of the castle they've never seen. they're too young to be able to put into words how it's different, but it's a combination of just how stale the air is. the architecture. the color of the stone in and around everything-- in front of them is a huge slab of text. it's ancient hylian-- something only zelda can read a few words of. but she knows the words she needs to know from it.

she grabs both their hands. "it says stay out," she says with a gulp.

purah squeezes her hand, not bothered. "that just means there's something really cool behind it! c'mon, impa!"

impa hums, putting her hand on the cold slab. "i don't know...that's...really thick...I can't poof unless I have a perfectly clear path...at least, not yet."

purah, curiosity getting the better of her, needles her. childish taunts of her being a big scaredy cat, big cucco, bawcking at her until she's red in the face and is just like "FINE!!" and then smacks her forehead "but i'm stealing your energy to do it!!" in a manner similar to what she would need to do to sap energy for symbol clones.

she then is able to get them on the other side and it's....even more different. they're at that huge stairwell. the air isn't stale it's old. purah is too busy complaining about how much it hurt to have her energy sapped that it's a few seconds before she realizes that impa and zelda are both...terrified.

the endless stairwell shaft that looks like it goes down to the center of the earth-- this is where impa's fear of heights starts.

absolute silence between the three of them as they stand near the edge, zelda having a death grip on the railing.

it's so quiet, the only thing they hear is one another's shallow breathing...their own pulses-- they don't have to even see a trace of ganondorf, the sounds of their own pulses echoing in their ears is more than enough to terrify them.

zelda, tears in her eyes, "we're gonna get in trouble--"

holding back her own, impa grabs both their hands again and gets them the hell out of there, wearing herself completely out by the time they make it back to somewhere they're allowed to be.

impa almost collapses, so they all sit together against the wall of wherever, not saying a word until she's caught her breath.

weakly, impa finally says, "we can never talk about this ever again."

zelda nods.

purah doesn't even tease her a little about it.

and so they never do talk about it...but they all never entirely stop thinking about it. zelda asks one day "what is below the castle" and gets that cryptic answer from her father. she doesn't even dare try to tell impa and purah what he said.

probably around that point as well, i'm going to have the king dismiss his advisors, their presence reminding him too much of the queen. they head back to kakariko or something idk. but zelda won't reconnect with them for a long time, right up to the point where they originally did for my fic (so about 5 years before calamity ganon awakens in the game)

my fic goes how it goes, and then there's relative peace afterwards, like in botw/totk.

the kingdom is rebuilding, a bright future looks to be ahead of them--

then the gloom. the gloom that they quickly realize is coming from the depths of the castle. depths that has zelda concerned. she meets with purah and impa first. [i'll probably have terrako rebuilt by this point too] "do...either of you remember when we were children, and we went too far down in the castle? When we found that...horrible stairwell?"

impa wraps her arms around herself, visibly tensing. "i try not to remember."

purah grimaces. "i unfortunately remember..."

zelda opens her mouth to speak, but the words aren't quite there yet. eventually, "this has to be coming from there..."

and from there, they agree to meet with the others, the king is strongly against her going down there, but is eased by the fact she'll at least have impa, link, and terrako with her.

from there. i think i'm going to send impa back to the past with her. i think i'm going to use a little author liberty, and--

in the past, after zelda has committed herself to draconifciation, mineru pulls impa aside. "impa...there is something i must tell you," she says between coughing fits. "There is another secret stone. one even my brother didn't know about." (she's the older sibling--girl's got secrets i'm sure of it)

so impa learns of a stone, hidden away, deep on an island, off the southeast coast of hyrule. on a map, she will recognize it as Eventide Island. in person, it's...a completely different island. much larger, and even more dangerous, fraught with all kinds of trials for her, unlocked thanks to mineru--

she gets her own secret stone, and from there...i have two routes, and i'm not sold on either, 100% yet. the title "sage of shadows" keeps jumping out at me, but idk entirely what to do with that. i could either have her go immortal dragon as well, or...i could have her be the one who teaches the people who will become the sheikah that stasis power they ended up using to seal themselves away in the shrines to later test link for the calamity. thanks to her own prowess, and enhanced by the secret stone, maybe she'll be in a different kind of stasis. hidden away in a shrine of her own making, deep within the depths, waiting...waiting...waiting...

but shadow dragon DOES sound pretty cool.......(I like the idea of her dragon mirroring zelda's perfectly, just in the depths rather than the sky)

idk. that was. A LOT. of word vomiting. all to just be like "this is how much my brain crammed into the span of maybe 5 minutes during my commute)

no clue which way i will end up going. i kind of need to. uh. write the first fic to bEGIN WITH....but still. it's nice to like. be writing again, even if it is just word salad.

[barilleon]

Three "P"s for Writing NPCs

I’ve been thinking a lot about NPCs, especially within the context of fifth edition (which is where most of my freelance time is spent). Much like a playwright, adventure writers have multiple audiences. The playwright is writing for a director, actors, and eventually the play’s audience. An adventure writer is writing for the game master and the table of players that the GM is running for.

We want a character to be memorable, but so much of that memorability for players won’t have anything to do with us. It’ll be in the voice the GM uses, potential quirks or mannerisms, or a situation created by the die.

For example, one of the most defining features of Knives Out’s Benoit Blanc is his voice, which is all in Daniel Craig’s portrayal. The original screenplay had something else in mind entirely.

Like a playwright, our job as adventure designers is to understand our NPCs as smaller parts of a larger machine. They serve a purpose and are grounded in the reality of the world we’ve built. But they also have to have some kind of pull to them that compels a GM to use them in the first place.

Now, an actor will spend hours upon hours reading through a script, highlighting lines and analyzing their beats and subtext. A GM won’t do that. They need to embody multiple characters in a session, so hey don’t have the time to do a bunch of dramaturgical work to understand every NPC in the adventure.

I say let the GM handle things such as mannerisms, personality, and quirks of speech. As writers, we should be giving our NPCs three things:

A Purpose

A Place

A Pull

Purpose

This is the most important, in my opinion. If an NPC doesn’t have a purpose in the story, they become frivolous, and they’ll likely slow down play. Here are some examples of game-related purposes:

Giving a quest

Teaching a skill

Offering aid

Acting as an obstacle

Showing your players what to do by example

You can also give your character more narrative-focused purposes as well, like:

Reinforcing a theme

Acting as a foil for a PC

Forcing your players to consider their actions

Illustrating consequences of a potential course of action

The best NPC I’ve ever written was S.A.M. for MCDM’s The Workshop Watches (which you can read for free!). S.A.M.’s purpose was very clear, considering it’s not just an NPC— it’s also the dungeon!

S.A.M. acted as the major obstacle for the party throughout the adventure. But on a narrative level, S.A.M.’s questioning of the party’s actions is meant to call the players to do the same. S.A.M.’s arc as a SMART Lab-turned-bipedal robot reinforces the theme of the adventure: how do we define personhood, and what rights are inalienable to those who have it?

Place

A “place” in the story is how the character is grounded in the world. A good character fits into the world you’ve created, because the circumstances of that world have allowed that character to exist in their current form. This connection to the world helps inform the NPC’s decision-making process.

D&D 5e often uses the “Personality, Ideal, Bond, and Flaw” system to give an NPC a place. When players pick up on one of these four traits, they can leverage them to get what they want from an NPC (thereby fulfilling the NPC’s purpose).

S.A.M.’s place in The Workshop Watches is as a curious observer. It does not understand itself or the outside world, and therefore it is bound to make a lot of well-meaning but deadly mistakes.

You can think of the “place” as the stakes this NPC has in the current story. Your NPC might have a son who is fighting in the current war. Maybe they’re a farmer who resents the culture of adventuring that has made their home too volatile to grow crops. Maybe they don’t care if it’s a noble king or a tyrant or the Devil Himself who sits upon the throne so long as they have enough food to take home to their dog.

Pull

“Pull” is something that makes the GM interested in digging into this character. I’ve found the more invested I am as a GM in the NPC I’m playing, the more my players respond to that character. Also, since GMs are players too, as writers we should make NPCs that they are interested in playing.

So how can we make an NPC that excites a GM? What is the “pull” that’s going to work for this?

I like to use the word pull because the thing that grabs me most about a character is tension. The character may want something that conflicts with their place or with their purpose. S.A.M.’s purpose is to stop the party from getting to the deepest part of the lab, but S.A.M. also wants to be helpful and make new friends (who just so happen to be interested in exploring the lab). S.A.M. wants to go out and see the world, but its place is in the lab. It doesn’t know how to exist in the world. It doesn’t understand basic concepts like, “people die when they are killed.”

One character I loved in Waterdeep: Dragon Heist was Fel’rekt Lafeen, a good-aligned drow gunslinger who serves in the mercenary group Bregan D’aerthe. In Fel’rekt’s story I saw a trans drow who had found his family in the mercenary group. He is fiercely loyal to his found family, but sometimes his job causes him to act against his alignment, something he resented. As a transmasc dude, the themes around Fel’rekt resonated with me, which is, I believe, why players at my table always end up taking a liking to Fel’rekt. I was pulled to his story, and it makes him seem more real in my eyes and my players’ eyes.

Using This as a GM

When I run a major NPC for my tables, I take note of that NPC’s Purpose, Place, and Pull and use them to build out the parts of the character that are my responsibility to build. These responsibilities include creating mannerisms, voice, and speech patterns and improvising their decision-making.

I run S.A.M. like a stereotypical robot: stilted speech with alien inflection, no contractions unless it learns them from the players, and a large vocabulary from the corpus of academic texts it must have been trained on.

One of the quirks I give Fel’rekt is mirroring (something I do with my guy friends). He is always trying to mirror the mannerisms of the other men of Bregan d’Aerthe. He uses expressions he learned from Jarlaxle and his friend Krebbyg. I always describe him doing the same or similar actions as any of the drow he happens to be with. One day when I run Dragon Heist I hope he’ll find a player character to bond and look up to enough to mirror.

Final Thoughts

There are a few other tricks we, as writers, can communicate our NPCs without entirely stepping on our GM’s toes or making them read a ton. Good character art is one of them. Character portraits are just as much a tool for GMs as words.

I try to write art briefs for character portraits that will communicate personality just as much as appearance, which was the case for Bard-Core Brawlers. The portraits for Trifling, the all-girl punk band, showcase the individual styles and personalities of the band members. And Leonardo Boia knocked it out of the park; these pieces help focus my portrayal of the characters just as much as the descriptions I wrote.

Another thing I’d like to see in NPC writing is barks! Like video game barks. Open your NPC’s section with a short quote, maybe an opinion they have on their place or something that demonstrates their pull. I really like how some of the abilities in MCDM’S Flee, Mortals! packets have names that could effectively be used as barks. Queen Bargnot’s abilities have names like “Get in here!” and “What are you waiting for?” This signals to the GM that the queen says these things when activating these abilities, which is delicious flavor baked into the stat block.