#Also from a writing PoV I would die if I wrote smth like that.

[exhaustedwerewolf]

okay not to waste energy being mad about the minecraft movie of all things but I am actually kind of heartbroken by how cynical it feels.

for example, making the creatures that inhabit the world offputting is so indicative of the underlying attitude the film seems to be taking to me. how many millions of minecraft animals, despite being pixels and code, have been genuinely loved by players around the world?

minecraft, despite everything it’s associated with these days, is incredibly earnest in a way that I feel few properties are these days… and genuinely one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing. in its surprisingly melancholic moments in a solo survival world. in the laughs it’s given those far apart from beloved friends, allowing them to be roommates in a beautiful forest cottage or a volcanic fortress or a treehouse palace they’ve built together when thousands of miles apart. in the things people working alone and together have made of it- libraries of banned books made accessible through the medium of the game, scale models of worlds real and fictional, redstone machines with intricate circuitry and incredible intelligence and diligence behind them, in the friendships forged in the pursuit of these creations.

minecraft is collaborative and creative and contemplative in a way few games can be. minecraft, to those who have ‘beaten,’ it, says: everything you need is within you, the darkness you fight is within you, the light you seek is within you, you are not alone, not separate from every other thing, you are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code.

minecraft, when so many games are about escaping from yourself, is about connection with your self, your creativity, the plants and earth and animals and structures around you, the people around you.

for it to be, in this context, a self-referential, debasing cash grab, is not a surprise to me but does feel like a disservice to what the heart of this game is, and symptomatic of a wider trend in a storytelling climate increasingly dominated by spin-offs and reboots and tie-ins and remakes. the writers could have had the courage not to break the fourth wall, not to point and laugh and decry the silly memeable ‘get a load of this guy,’ block game, (and by extension ridicule themselves,) but I understand. it’s the same instinct to make the self-effacing joke before you can be laughed at by others for showing your honest self, to cringe from the vulnerability earnesty demands. that’s fine. personally- and I’m probably not alone- I just wish it wasn’t this game.

[broodsys]

got tagged by @plisuu, thank you again! this'll be fun >)

tagging hmmm lemme see... @jazzmckay | @streganicha | @jellydishes but as ever no pressure uwu also trying to not tag Everyone i know so other ppl can continue to pass it around lmao

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

55!

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

299,998. okay that's amusing i'm glad i looked. i'm two words away from 300k lmfao

3. What fandoms do you write for?

99% dai, with a tinyyy bit of da2. also one fic (that has totally fucked up my stats page bc it's a much more popular fandom) for pkmn: sun and moon (anime) and one for cagaster of an insect cage (anime). my old deleted ao3 had more fandoms, the other big ones being les mis (movie) and inception

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

we're the last to know (pkmn sumo, little cutesy ash/kiawe thing)

sleep just a little longer (solavellan somno smut lmao)

the hidden mage (fenders during dai timeline)

domitable (solavellan smut with solas domming for once)

a matter of taste (solavellan smut where solas is encouraged to figure out his own interests)

5. Do you respond to comments?

yes! sometimes it takes me a bit but i always reply. if it's a long/thoughtful/specific comment i also try to address a bit of what the commenter brings up :')

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

oh that's maybe a day to die for sure. wrote that back in my first dai hyperfix period after it had come out, this is a bad end au where they get stuck in the magic future

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

my longing series comes to mind. nessa lavellan/solas. it was also my first venture back into seriously writing fic and my first dai fic ever since i got back into my hyperfix :')

8. Do you get hate on fics?

none yet, luckily

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

lmao yes i write so much smut. um... what kind indeed? i'll just say it's very character-driven - not always stuff i'm personally interested in, but hey, if it works for them, good. i shall write the thing. i write a lot of different kinks

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

none i can think of... although i do have an outline for a dragon age characters in the star trek universe fic lmao

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not to my knowledge, but i don't go looking, either

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

one, yes!

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

no. considered it at times, but it seems kinda awkward

14. What's your all time favorite ship?

all time....? well i'll say that the ship i've sailed the longest has been fenders fr

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

the fucking. cagaster of an insect cage one. god. i keep thinking about it and fanfic is nonexistent so i feel extra compelled to finish my fic for them but i just have like 0 interest. da took my entire brain over (again)

16. What are your writing strengths?

hmm... your boy can sure write some character introspection!!! honestly tho, one of the things i'm proudest about in my writing is my ability to match the tone to the fic or character pov

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

action scenes, especially fight scenes :x i can do them but they take soooo much longer than anything else and it's an uphill battle (heh) the whole way

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

while i wouldn't write another real language in fic, if it's a fan language (like project elvhen) then i sometimes include short pieces if they're different from what would normally be spoken. so like... arlathan era fic, no, i'm not going to include stuff from project elvhen bc everyone's speaking elvhen all the time. but if it's during dai era or smth and they're speaking common with the occasional elvhen word/phrase thrown in, then i'd add the word/phrase and define it at the bottom

19. First fandom you wrote for?

da2!

20. Favorite fic you've written?

that's gotta be from my bigfic series, antiquation :') specifically i think part 5, paradigm shift, is my favorite of the whole series uwu

template under the cut!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

3. What fandoms do you write for?

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

5. Do you respond to comments?

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

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

8. Do you get hate on fics?

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

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

14. What's your all time favorite ship?

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

16. What are your writing strengths?

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

19. First fandom you wrote for?

20. Favorite fic you've written?

[janiedean]

I was wondering what you feel about the opinion that GRRM hates feminine/non-warrior women because they (Catelyn, Cersei, Sansa) are written with intentional flaws while his warrior girls (Brienne, Arya) are not? Do you agree with that? That Brienne and Arya have no flaws? It was some dumb meta about how the world is against Brienne, but she never does harm to the world, so she's a bad character and GRRM is a misogynist or something. (1/2)

I disagree obviously. Just because Brienne is not a demon doesn't mean she doesn't have flaws or she's a bad character lol. Like... why can't we have an angel in a world of monsters? What's wrong with that? Are these people jealous that Brienne is one of those pure character that their faves are not, so they feel like dismissing her as a bad character to make themselves feel good? I'm asking you because I know you love Catelyn and Brienne so I know you're the best person to ask this. Ty (2/2)

... I mean this has a long answer to give but this *meta* seems to me like it was written by someone who has no idea what they’re talking about when it comes to who grrm hates in his writing or his supposed misogyny because they have it all wrong and I think you pretty much guessed the point, but in order, let’s... tackle this one by one:

grrm doesn’t at all hate cat and sansa and their flaws are... flaws in the sense that he’s writing them like good people who aren’t 100% perfect but like.. sansa’s *flaws* from the beginning are stuff that’s common to most 12yo girls in existence and she overcomes them and she’s generally a good and kind and caring person whose main trait is that she’s good and kind and stays like that so how exactly now she’s written... like you’re supposed to hate her? bc she’s not. grrm never wanted you to hate sansa. he wrote her like a realistic 11-15yo but like most of us were like that at that age or have had friends who were like that, so... what the fuck. catelyn.... like guys the one heavy flaw she has is her treatment of jon but she’s written as a smart person who’s trying to live in a misogynistic society as best as she can and she’s written like a tragic character but grrm obviously likes her/loves writing her, it’s.... like if you read her chapters you can see how much work/love/craft went into them and how he worked on her bg very carefully also she is more of a protagonist than ned until asos when it comes to the stark side like.... how is giving her human flaws meaning he hates her?? grrm doesn’t hate her. the fact that she and brienne end up doing the knightly/lady sworn sword thing is even more of a proof he doesn’t but more on that later;

cersei... well I mean grrm obv doesn’t like cersei that much but a) he’s written a version of that character at least thrice already including the asoiaf one so I think he has an ex like that that he doesn’t particularly remember fondly or smth but like... she’s written to be a villain. she’s a villain. she’s a very well-crafted/thought out villain with a realistic background but diff. from cat and sansa she’s there to be the antagonist period, and just like... cersei and cat are aesthetically the same archetype and they couldn’t be more different so idk wtf are people smoking when saying that and if they can’t read cat chapters without fandom-hates-her glasses idk what to tell them;

brienne and arya have flaws are we serious, like arya has the flaws everyone has at that age (too impulsive/tends to judge people very fast/is too fixed on things/doesn’t listen to people etc) but like she’s fucking nine when it starts and she gets traumatized to hell and back, like arya’s sl to me is creepy af because no 12yo should be like that and it’s a very good trauma exploration but like....... she has faults but she’s not a bad person for obvious reasons as in SHE’S A KID same as sansa same as EVERYONE UNDERAGE IN THESE BOOKS except partially joffrey and even he has a background that explains how he is, like.... arya and sansa are supposed to be written in an equally sympathetic but specular way because they have opposite ways of reacting to trauma ie sansa holds on to her kindness arya gets progressively detached because she has to kill people to survive but you’re not supposed to hate either of them? honestly grrm wrote them with the exact same stakes, anyone who thinks it’s qualitatively different needs to go back and reread it with some intellectual honestly;

brienne... I mean we serious? the thing with brienne is that she’s a fundamentally good person who is written to become the ultimate example of a good knight™ and who is supposed to restore decency to the title after the institution has crumpled into the dirt, so... she’s... good, same as dunk is in the novels, but like: lmao she has a lot of faults, first thing that at the beginning she judges everyone on sight and sees everything in black and white, she has zero preservation instinct and nonexisting selfesteem because she thinks her life isn’t worth her vows and she thinks she’s not fit for anything she tries to do and would have died for a guy who danced with her once like sorry that’s not healthy, which are all things,... she’s... getting over.... because she has a character arc, but saying that brienne isn’t realistic or doesn’t have faults is ridiculous because she is;

now, this concept that grrm is misogynist is idiotic because a guy who has an insane number of female povs - some of which are the same trope ie brienne and arya - and have all a distinct different personality and voice and none of them are like too idealized or too evil and are to a level relatable means he’s everything but because a misogynyst wouldn’t be able to pull that off. like, in any other book brienne and arya would have been the same character, in his they’re not, so maybe like... give him some credit in the sense that the moment half of your povs are well-written realistic female characters and the ones without povs are equally well-written/manage to be fan faves (ie marg and olenna) maybe he’s just... not... a misogynist nor hates women so that’s out of the way;

re cat and brienne: like... saying ‘ah he hates catelyn’ when catelyn is literally the first *lady* who treats brienne like a friend/peer/person she cares about is completely fucking idiotic because guess what if you’re like brienne usually most Attractive Girls™ the way cat is are not your best friends in life (I mean c. calls her a cow and they didn’t even meet on paper lmao and it’s obvious from b’s povs that she has bad experiences with other women in general), so the fact that cat actually sees her worth, accepts her as her sworn sword doing a thing that’s usually just between men, trusts her with her daughters’ lives, thinks she’s a better knight than jaime could be and treats her as it befits her station (in riverrun she had dresses made for her but brienne wouldn’t wear them) and is actually good to one of the few good people in these books who gets treated like dirt by most others should tell you exactly what grrm thinks of catelyn, ie nothing too bad, and that she’s a good person who fucked up on one thing that the narrative knows and doesn’t excuse, but like.... lmao that entire argument falls flat just for that;

Are these people jealous that Brienne is one of those pure character that their faves are not, so they feel like dismissing her as a bad character to make themselves feel good? you’re on to smth but as I ranted on twitter once: this all falls again to the fact that people Cannot Accept The Fact That An Ugly Girl Who Is Going To Stay Ugly is one of the moral hearts of these series and is An Actual Good Person Who Deserves Good Things in spite of not performing femininity, and who’s going to get the guy of her dreams (who is Hot) without settling and without becoming beautiful, and she’ll manage to realize her dreams even without becoming beautiful and regardless of having been treated like dirt because of her looks all her life, and like... apparently that is too much or too complicated to conceive and so either they have to decide she’s not That ugly or make her things she’s not or decide she’ll die early wow and whatever else, but like: the problem is that usually the Pure Moral Center Of A Story Who Happens To Be Female and gets her dreams and the hot dude is standard attractive. brienne is not, she has trauma because of that, and she’s still the best person in there (or one of the best) and she’ll get her dreams and the hot dude, and people can’t handle this specific concept nor admit that grrm, having done a thing that no one else has until now because there’s no other brienne in genre literature/in that way, is everything but a misogynist, since he actually, ah, wait, gave decent rep to people who most times are relegated to playing the best friend who stays single or are usually evil bc ugly antagonist women are everywhere, ugly protagonist women who are actually Good People™ and aren’t a paragon of Pure Virtue and don’t die virgins? not really. so: people can’t handle that brienne the way she is is a Good Person and The One True Knight In Westeros and it’s a sad thing but it just shows that maybe more people should go for that trope and that’s my two cents;

other than that no guy who can write the range of women grrm does can be a misogynist by definition, especially a guy who managed to get perfectly how it feels being a straight nonstandard attractive woman in society in general because my friends if before I stumbled into asoiaf I never related 100% to one fictional character ever there was a reason, and I read a lot, so people can bite me on that thing;

to end and comment on one thing: 

how the world is against Brienne, but she never does harm to the world

congrats to OP they went THAT close to it: that’s the entire fucking point. being like brienne in her society (and not performing femininity™ correctly in ours) means that whatever you do people will criticize you and treat you like dirt even if you don’t mean them any harm. the world is absolutely against her because all the circumstances are stacked against her - she’s a woman, doing a man’s job, looking nonattractive and therefore other women treat her like dirt and men don’t consider her or see her as a threat and hate her for it because she’s better at their job than they are, wanting to be a knight which is a thing that’s technically forbidden bc women can’t be anointed as far as the westerosi law says, who’s doing that because she knows she’s good at it but every single person in her way doesn’t want her to succeed except for a handful, can’t use femininity to navigate the world and she has to survive as a woman in a men’s world in an extremely misogynistic medieval society and there’s a reason why no one but three people takes her seriously, ie that if you don’t count a few people in f&b that are history book material in her context/timeframe she’s an unicum and people tend to dislike it when you’re an unicum/sticking out/wanting to go against the system. the system is absolutely stacked against her, when everything she wants is do good to others and making her father proud and be a knight and find love, and even if it’s not that much to ask for her it’s, on paper, impossible.... and the entire point is that as impossible as it looks she’s definitely going to get it because she’s written exactly for that, and if people haven’t grasped that it’s her arc - overcoming a misogynistic society and living beyond gender roles regardless of your looks which in itself is groundbreakingly feminist - sorry for them but they’ll have a bad wake up call when grrm gets wow/ados out.

and that’s my two cents, but like: there’s nothing wrong in liking characters With Faults or evil ones and you can find Good Ones boring, just don’t try to make it pass like the author is a misogynist because the Good Character is a nonstandard attractive gnc woman because that’s actually a thing no one else ever did.

and this stated brienne is more similar to book!sansa than book!arya personality-wise so it’s an argument that doesn’t hold on even joking. /two cents

[kimblewrites]

WIP Intro: The Red Marksman

TITLE

The Red Marksman

GENRE

Action, Thriller, Political, Mystery, Romance, CHARACTER DRIVEN PLOT so there’s like way too many characters have fun guys hope you enjoy

THEMES

Military, Politics, Snipers, Spies, Siblings, Terrorism, Russia 

SETTING

Moscow, Russia, 2020

POV

3rd Person (Limited)

STATUS

First Draft  (finished during NANO last year and I hate everything I wrote :)

SYNOPSIS

The world has been infiltrated with branches of the terrorist group known as “Al-Ihdar”, and it seems that no country is safe from their destruction and influence - not even World Powers have been able to remain unaffected. 

Dimitri Ivansov, Sergeant of one of Russia’s most feared Special OPs branches, is renowned as the world’s greatest active sniper, earning him the name “Red Marksman” among both his allies and his enemies. The name carries throughout the world, used as a threat, a reassurance, and everything in between.  

Deployed in Syria, far away from the politics of Moscow, however, Dimitri could care less about the ways his identity is utilized. To him, it is simple; being the Red Marksman provides him and his sister with the money they to live. 

However, his world turns upside down as the threat of Al-Ihdar goes straight to his city. Without warning, he and his team are brought to the United States Embassy in Russia to protect high-profile bureaucrats attending a targetted international summit. 

Russia is not the only ones to protect themselves with a sniper. Upon his arrival at the Embassy, Dimitri is faced with the Enigma that is the United States’ chosen sniper. His perfect counterpart - his perfect enemy. 

Dimitri is not unfamiliar with being utilized, but for the first time, he finds himself asking questions about who exactly is pulling the strings, and what the Red Marksman will have to do next to survive this summit. 

CHARACTERS

DIMITRI IVANSOV))

-Russian Special Ops Sergeant

-Sniper

-Politics?? 

-He’s smart, just uneducated. He provided for his sister, Sasha, until he was 18 and could join the military

-10/10 would die for Sasha, btw

-Does what he’s told and tries to leave it at that

ALEXI YASENEV))

-Quiet

-But don’t let that fool you he’s got -4 impulse control

-He’s also kind of a fuckboy and he’s totally aware of it

-A really good spy just bc he’s SUPER sneaky

-Dimitri’s best friend

IVAN PETROV)) 

-An asshole™

-But I love him

-He and Dimitri pretend to hate each other but tbh they’d die for each other 

-Kind of pretentious 

-Very similar to Dimitri hence their rivalry 

ELLE YANOVICH))

-soft

-Literally the softest boi ever

-a bottom

-Also, major inferiority complex

-His dad used to work for the Kremlin and screwed around w/ a CIA agent while he was in the States and whoops there’s a child

-That child is Elle

-Is incredibly smart, though

-he can also run really fast

-Talks way too much

-Youngest of the team and is a major younger brother figure to literally everybody 

-Is dating Anya Syanova

-I would die for this boy no lie

ILYA ALEYEV))

-Pilot

-50/50 Russian/Iraqi

-Everyone is like “oH is YouR paReNt a TerrORIsT and Is thAt whY yoU joInED the MiliTarY?!?”

-But tbh his dad is an Iraqi engineer and Ilya just likes flying 

-Also very soft 

-Super chill w/ everybody, espically Elle

-Probably has road rage

VLADIMIR KUZKIN))

-Isn’t technically part of the team anymore

-He used to have Dimitri’s spot but he hurt his leg

-So now he just gives orders to the new team

-Is Dimitri’s dad

-Is Everybody’s dad

-He adopts every military kid he meets bUT HE’S A HARDENED VETERAN OK HE PROBABLY HAS A HAT THAT SAYS THAT OR SMTH

-He was also born at the end of the Cold War and is kind of anti-American except for Elle bc Elle is his son too

SASHA IVANSOVA))

-Dimitri’s younger sister

-Works analytics for the FSB

-Bc Dimitri helped her survive when they were kids and working an office job as counterterrorism helps him survive now

-The Nice Sibling 

-Friend’s w/ Dimitri’s friends, especially Elle

-Literally, she and Elle are a dynamic duo and she also set him up w/ his girlfriend, Anya

ANYA SYANOVA))

-Elle’s girlfriend

-Honestly the mean one of the two

-A top

-She’s not mean to Elle but just in general, she’s a lot colder w/ the people she meets

-She and Sasha are besties though

-She works for the Foreign Intelligence Service

-Her family all works for the Kremlin, namely her older brother, but she isn’t close to any of them. 

KITRI VINTER))

-Idk why I put her at the bottom, she's literally one of the main characters

-American! Dimitri

-Not really, but she is a Delta Force Sniper 

-Dimitri expects someone like him (cold, calculating, etc)

-But Kitri is Literally???? So Nice??

-An actual ray of sunshine

-Like yeah, she’s super efficient at her job and she’s willing to kill somebody

-But if you met her outside of her work you would have never guessed what she does for a living bc she really cares about being a good person

-Dimitri realizes that that is what sets them apart, bc he doesn’t really ask moral questions about what he’s being told to do

-110% a flirt

-Literally, the second she and Dimitri start working together, she throws him off his game and it’s just sexual tension for the entire book.

-I love her, ok???

MIRIAM LECLERE))

-French Ambassador to Russia

-Is nice but it’s more like “seems fake but ok” type nice

-Don’t wanna say much bc I don’t want to spoil!!!

-Dimitri’s supposed to protect her and yeah

-Also, a flirt expect Dimitri doesn’t like flirting w/ this one

A/N) 

Tbh I kind of hate this storyline but I kind of find the characters endearing and I wrote it for NaNoWriMo and now i’m not really sure whether I should actually continue writing to a second book I have planned or if I should just let the story sit in my head to think about? Idk, hope you enjoyed though :)

Reach out to be added to the taglist

[eatingfireflies]

11 Questions WIP tag meme:

Tagged by @chessanator​! Thanks for tagging!! :D

Tagging @greaseonmymouth​, @hardcoreprince​, @amberlyinviolet​ (i missed you!! ;;;), @billyweird​, @zossie​. But you guys don’t have to ofc!

1. How long have you been writing?

Me and my cousins used to make little illustrated booklets when we were kids. I was around 6-7 years old (probably) because I remember making Sailor Moon comics as well and I was that age when Sailor Moon showed in my country. When I was a kid what I really wanted to do was do comics, but things happened. :”D

2. What are the major themes of your current wip(s)?

I’m trying to think back and most of my WIPs seem to be about life getting pear-shaped and the characters having to deal with that. Two of them will need the ‘Major Character Death’ warning at AO3 if I ever post them. 

3. What do you want people to take away from your story once they’ve read it?

Depends on what fic they read. :”D But if a person got something from my fics that I did not intend, then all the power to them. So long as it’s not ‘that writer sucks’ lol!

4. Would you be excited if people write fanfiction about your wip(s)?

I’m torn because I love sharing headcanons and trends, and I’d be SUPER flattered if anyone wrote fic based on any of mine but there’s also the worry re: accusations of plagiarising and stealing someone else’s ideas. So personally, I’d be excited. But in a more general level it’s a bit of a thornier issue. 

And I know this is an issue with trad pub/canon vs fanfic on a bigger scale (like how some traditionally published writers won’t read fics based on their own work no matter how supportive they are of transformative work because of the whole plagiarism issue (accidental or otherwise)) but yeah.    

5. What’s your go-to writing beverage?

Water lol. I don’t need to drink anything to get going, but I do need cigarettes to function properly. Pls don’t start smoking. 

6. Who is your favorite oc? Tell me about them!

I’m going to talk about an OC from Travelling in company--a Junpei + Phi detective bros fic. So there will be spoilers.

But yeah I really like Hirata Ichirou. He’s the Mr Body in this fic: the character who was written to die so we can investigate what happened. At first I didn’t really know exactly what happened to him (lmao I knew it was cult-related but also personal but I didn’t decide until I was halfway done with the fic) and he was simply a nameless chinpira, but as the fic went on I realised I knew exactly what Hirata died of and why. I grew really fond of the guy. 

He likes to eat parfaits with his childhood friend, I mean. Come on.  

In actual WIPs uuuh. I don’t generally write OCs? Sorry folks. :”D

7. Do you feel that mistakes are important learning tools in the writing journey?

Not if I don’t catch the mistakes and correct them. One of the most important learning tools imo is reading books. Not fics by other people (which btw are really good and writers like franticbabbles taught me a lot about writing) but traditionally published novels. See how its done by someone who (hopefully) has a professional editor to ‘curb their spur’, decide what works for you and what doesn’t. I find that aside from having a beta, it helps you catch mistakes and decide whether you want to correct them or not. 

As Neil Gaiman said--and I paraphrase--your style are the things that you get ‘wrong’. But it defo helps to know the rules before you break them.

8. Rank your ocs by their capability in a footchase (either running after or from smth, your choice)

Here’s a bunch from Travelling in company because that fic has yakuza in it.

1, Honda Mitsuo/Wakaisha #1: very competent man. Can probably kill you with a paperclip

2, Mishima: not incredibly physically active but he has the brains and the resources to make it so he doesn’t have to run very far if he has absolutely no choice in the matter

3, Hirata Ichirou: okay dude. A chinpira and has probably run away from the police/other yakuza members before. Knows shortcuts and dead ends.

4, Satou Keiichi: more buff than fast on his feet. You can trust him to protect you, but not so much when it comes to running after escaping attackers.

Bonus from Kentucky for Christmas:

5, Hugh Grant (not the actor but a detective who insisted he looked like the actor): not very useful. Fell down a building while on the run from gangsters. 1/10 won’t recommend.  

9. Does your wip have romance? tell me about it!! if not tell me about a friendship/important relationship in your wip!!

Oh all the romance. I only write romance fics, didn’t you know? :”D All those mysteries and crimes are just frills for the romance and bonding. 

Right now I’m in the middle of writing a scene where Aoi and Junpei bond over Gunplas. 

10. Do you believe in the advice kill your darlings?

Yes. I have a ‘rags box’ which is a gdocs file where I throw all the lines of dialogue and narrative I had to cut from fics. Hoping that someday, somewhere, I can recycle them in some form. Don’t let them go entirely, they might still be useful for another piece if not the one you’re working on. 

Another thing I learned from this guy who taught Creative Writing in my first language was be mindful of your POV. In an exercise, he made us write about the emotions of an old woman going to a shopping mall right after the death of her husband. I was raring to go. I wrote about this old woman grabbing her daughter’s elbow tightly because she felt she was going to float all the way to the domed ceiling of the mall--that’s how light she felt. 

Teacher: Is that the old woman talking, or you?

Me: How do you mean?

Teacher: That literary~ language, is that her or you? 

Me: It was me.

Teacher: Great, rewrite that. 

Yeah, sometimes we have to kill our darlings, our floating into the ceiling moment, to present the experiences of a certain character fully. And that’s fine. 

(It’s also fine if you don’t want to. It’s just something that works for me.) 

11. Do you prefer plotting or worldbuilding? Why?

Worldbuilding. I’m so bad at coming up with events is why :”D I literally need prompts. But once I have a firm grasp on the world the characters are inhabiting I get more ideas on what they could do and what could happen around them. 

[janiedean]

Laviania, why are you so sure Stannis won't burn Shireen "for the greater good"? I mean... it's a classic trope (Agamemnon) and would be one of the ethics questions (one death to avoid many others) GRRM loves? [not on tumblr, but I'm Wirette on Discort - and by the way, I'm still sorry you have to endure this special kind of anon... but I'm also sickly fascinated by it. Like an horror book, see?)

hi! ;) and eeeh. I KNOW. one day they’ll get tired. 

that said, about stannis, very quickly (hopefully):

in the show it was 100% the agamemnon trope, but in the book there is absolutely nothing linking stannis to that guy whatsoever - they don’t have a similar personality, they’re not the same archetype, they’re not fighting a war for the same reasons and it doesn’t add up;

now, in the book it’s not physically possible unless it doesn’t happen in wow because:a) shireen is at the wall, stannis is going to wf;b) so stannis is stuck in the snow same as in the show right now at the end of adwd and shireen is miles away geographically like how is he going to burn her for the show reasons? he can’t, because she’s not there;c) current summary of the situation in asha’s adwd chapter:That tale she had from Justin Massey, who was less devout than most. "A sacrifice will prove our faith still burns true, Sire," Clayton Suggs had told the king. And Godry the Giantslayer said, "The old gods of the north have sent this storm upon us. Only R'hllor can end it. We must give him an unbeliever.""Half my army is made up of unbelievers," Stannis had replied. "I will have no burnings. Pray harder."I mean, he’s not burning anyone in his prisoners/army which is all unbelievers yet and I have to assume he’s burning shireen? okay but not;d) also, theon pov in winds of winter so after asha’s chapter:The knight hesitated. "Your Grace, if you are dead — "" — you will avenge my death, and seat my daughter on the Iron Throne. Or die in the attempt."Ser Justin put one hand on his sword hilt. "On my honor as a knight, you have my word."... so not only he can’t physically burn her, he wants his knights to put her on the iron throne when a woman couldn’t even inherit it in theory and I have to assume that he’d sacrifice her just like that? nah;

other than the above.... before stannis even thinks of going back to the wall he has to take winterfell which is not happening before mid-wow or the end of it because jon needs to join him/he needs more soldiers/it’s most likely the northern storyline climax and possibly davos has to show up with rickon before that happens or smth but anyway shireen is at the wall, stannis won’t be there before the end of the book if he even goes back at all and there’s no guarantee he actually survives the whole thing, so.... what the hell;

now, melisandre and selyse are at the wall and jon is currently dead and selyse doesn’t gaf about her daughter and melisandre would probably burn her thinking she’s doing the right thing so if you’re telling me that shireen dies burned alive because people at the wall most likely the two of them think it’s necessary for the greater good then it’s a way more likely theory, but that stannis would do that in the books is so out of this world to me I’m not even deigning to consider that as a legitimate possibility and ngl I’ve elected to pretend it never happened in any show only fic I wrote because fuck that noise.

now: dnd couldn’t write stannis, couldn’t give a damn about it, didn’t care about his character either way because they started writing him like they were drunk on tequila since S3 and it was obvious they couldn’t wait to kill him off long before his role in the story was exhausted, but since wow he actually isn’t a bad guy they had to make him do something unredeemable so that they could have brienne kill him in one of the top five most ooc decisions they took for any character in these series (because don’t let it be said that I don’t have immense pits of hatred for their decision to make brienne’s s5 storyline about avenging saint renly and looking out of a window because guys I do and no one wants me to hear all the venom I could spit on the topic) and what’s better than going that route when 99% in the books if she dies that way he won’t have a hand in it.

but since I’m here and it’s stannis baratheon loving hours and the show decided to not give a damn, this is where I would like to state that while stannis is the worst at showing his feelings to people and a complete disaster when it comes to show them to her, he loves his daughter way more than her mother does, he educated her the way you would educate your son not a daughter (it was made clear in the books but she didn’t just have the usual lessons daughters of great houses have, she had the lessons sons have that girls aren’t necessarily given), he thinks of her as his heir and not as someone he should just try to marry off, he wants her on the throne when the last time a woman was on it not as a regent in this universe there was a years-long civil war happening because OMG IT’S NOT A THING THAT SHOULD HAPPEN, and he cares about her very damned deeply when half of the other lords in these books would have despaired knowing their only daughter wasn’t the most palatable marriage prospect (stannis & selwyn should found a club for ‘my daughter is awesome and people don’t get it) and the fact that he’s shit at showing it and that dnd couldn’t grasp the concept that a dude who’s actually great at waging wars and might be a tad too strict when it comes to donning justice is also a disaster human being who’s crap at showing his feelings to anyone except davos but loves his daughter anyway and is that strict also because it’s a trauma coping method not because he gets a boner out of sentencing people to die doesn’t mean that the book version is going down the same path. ;)

tldr: because it’d be ooc and show!stannis hasn’t done three things IC in a row since S3. ;)

[janiedean]

After joining tumblr, my dream of becoming a published writer is forever broken and ruined. It may be drastic but I cannot imagine a future in which I'm a happy writer, knowing that what a large amount of people think is that you can't write about a gay character if you're not gay yourself, you cannot have a poc character if you're not poc yourself etc. It's frustrating and sad. That's what tumblr taught, along with simultaneously complaining all the day about the lack of rep

anon, let me tell you something first and foremost: tumblr is not a good audience when it comes to original fiction and if that’s what you want to do, delete tumblr from your perspectives.

now, I’ll go and say a lot of unpopular things before addressing your concerns, but here we go:

people on tumblr don’t read. or better: either they read fanfic which then they decide to consider the same thing as published writing, and like... while there’s a lot of fic that’s better than some published writing technically, the fact that they say it about classics or stuff they’re supposed to study in school shows that they have no idea of the basic difference in between the two media... or they read YA that gets hailed as the Next Best Thing In Literature when at most it’s a good YA and at worst it’s mediocre stuff that looks revolutionary because they haven’t read the fifteen other things that YA has taken inspiration from. at most they read harry potter when they were kids and never moved on from it, as showed by the fact that it’s 2019 and I still have to see people arguing about sn/ape being BAD OR GOOD when he’s the standard gray archetype, and if you can only think of sn/ape when you think about a gray character and you still haven’t made sense of his moralities or lack thereof, then you haven’t read anything else; (never mind that once I read writing advice like SORT YOUR CHARACTERS INTO HOGWARTS HOUSES LIKE FFS SOME OF US HAVEN’T READ HP THAT’S NOT A UNIVERSAL ADVICE FOR CREATING A CHARACTER’S BACKGROUND)

as people on tumblr don’t read, their understanding of how you write or anything else related to the craft is pretty much useless - like, the only thing each single writing manual agrees on is that if you want to be a writer you have to read a lot, because how are you going to deconstruct tropes (to say one) if you don’t know how those tropes work? or how are you going to play into them if you don’t know how they work regardless? I can’t write a tolkien deconstruction if I haven’t read all of tolkien’s writings back to back ten times at least, I can’t write a good novel about vietnam veterans in the early eighties if I don’t read all the history books on the topic I can find and at least ten tomes about how war-related ptsd in veterans works and possibly a lot of books written by vets themselves. I can’t write a stephen king deconstruction if I haven’t read stephen king back to back ten times either. which shows they think original novels are like fanfic - like, I personally have researched the shit out of things for fanfic, but I wouldn’t ask anyone to do it for a thing they do for free. like, if I see badly researched italian reinassance AU fic I won’t gaf if the author just wrote it based on the anglosaxon tv shows about the borgias around because I can’t expect them to read ten books about the topic to write a thing they don’t get paid for and that just people in fandom most likely will touch, but if it’s a published author that gets paid for it I’ll expect that at least they’ll do some research if they want to write stuff somewhat realistically. people on tumblr think that writing a novel requires the same effort as fanfic, as in, not much when it comes to background work, which is ridiculous, because that’s the difference - with fanfic, unless I write a detailed AU or smth, the author already did that work for me. I just have to expand on it and trying to understand the characters. like, it’s nowhere near the same thing;

which means that people have gone with this concept that ‘you can’t write X if you’re not X’, which is honestly ridiculous and counter-productive because it shoots down any chance that you, as an author, might actually understand what people who aren’t from your background feel like. also, I personally think that if you want to do that and you want to be good at it you need to a) find a way to relate to your characters that goes beyond your differences, b) talk to people from the category you don’t belong to. now, if I had to write a 50k short romance novel about two guys falling for each other at a record shop without too much drama happening, I’d probably just write it myself, some people who are actually guys into guys, ask them to read it, tell me if I fucked it up, get them to explain me how I fucked it up and run it by them until I’m done, but admittedly I don’t need research to find out how people run a record shop. if I had to write a story set in europe but idk there’s a zombie plague and one of the protagonists is a black american tourist I’d go ask someone who is black and american and possibly from the area I decided that person is from to give me background info on how I could write this person etc. and then run it by them after I’m done. if another of the protagonists is idk polish (because there’s not many polish people in mainstream european fiction outside of polish authors), I’d find a polish person to do the same thing and run it by them etc., because I’m not a black american nor a polish person but I still want to write those characters etc. but I mean, let’s say it’s the zombie apocalypse - can I make sure people connect with both of them because they’re surrounded by zombies and as all human beings in existence they don’t want to die? most likely I can. meanwhile I’ll have learned a lot of things about both categories because I talked to people belonging to them;

or, let’s say I want to write some story with a large cast where I decide that for the purposes of it straight character falls for a trans character and it ends well because fuck that I want people to be happy. I’m not trans, but I do know people who are. I’ll definitely talk to them running stuff and ask if thing X is offensive or not etc. because of course I’m not so I can’t know for sure, maybe I’ll stick with the straight POV or maybe not but I’ll definitely run it by them to make sure the thing is actually well-planned/not in poor taste, and meanwhile I’ll have learned a lot about the topic that I might not have known before, which is good because it means I know more about experiences I don’t have which is, guess what, how the entire point of writing stories is. you want people to empathize and feel for characters that might be not the same as them, that’s exactly your damned job, but if you don’t do it yourself first how do you assume others will?

all these people who think you can’t write a gay character if you’re not gay are the same people who think that if you’re a straight woman you can’t write about two men being in love/fucking but you should be able to do it about f/f pairings because since you’re a woman then you have to guess how that works out of that, which shows that they have no idea of how anything works - like I argued with half of tumblr on this topic so whatever, but as a straight woman I think I have more aesthetic tastes in common with a gay man since we both want to fuck men and we both are familiar with handling that equipment, so I’d find it easier to write about that rather than about the contrary as I don’t generally find women attractive in that sense except for like two very specific people who are not a very common aesthetic in general. but like, assuming that in virtue of being a woman then you have to know how it feels to be attracted to women while you can’t possibly do 2+2 about how gay men are into each other when technically you’re into men yourself shows exactly how these people have No Idea Whatsoever of how attraction works, never mind how empathizing with someone else works, never mind of how writing things with research behind it goes;

also, assuming that if you’re X then you can’t understand Y is extremely damaging because it means you can never understand other people’s struggles and that’s......... worrying? I mean, it’s an incredibly dangerous (and calvinist) position to say that if someone is X and so doesn’t know how it feels to have a specific kind of issue then they can’t get it not even intellectually. idk, I’m straight so I can’t possibly understand or relate to why would lgbt+ people want to marry and adopt kids/have their children recognized/have the same rights as I do? are we serious? so if idk I wanted to try and change some bigot’s mind about it when I see that they’re just parroting bullshit and they haven’t thought about it I shouldn’t even try because they’re a bigot and they’ll never understand or change their mind? so people who used to be bigots, then found out their kids or their kids’s friends were lgbt+, listened to them, realized they were bigots and are now allies/supporters couldn’t have done that because at some point they used to be bigots? how the hell do you want people to change or to be an activist or change the world if you don’t believe that people can change themselves or worse that you don’t believe that people coming from any background can’t understand people coming from another background? that’s not how it works. I mean guys ffs I read a bunch of nonfiction lately about endemic poverty in the center of the US out of personal interest and I’m as far from the US and any of those situations as it goes (I’m not a veteran, I never was not taught to read and write even if I finished high school, I never lost 90% of what I had after getting sick, I never needed to hop on a train illegally to go places, I never had to sell my own plasma to buy lunch, I never needed to live in a tent when I was going to middle school after my parents had to move to a totally different state and I never had to go live in a trailer after my house was sold by a bank before I couldn’t pay off my loan, I don’t have a five year old child that won’t be insured because she was born with a pre-existing medical condition), and like... I cried while reading some of them? because I could envision it and I felt like the system failed them and I hate reading about people being failed by a system that should support them, and I swear I’m not a US person who comes from that background whatsoever. I could probably write you a full novel about how immigrants in Italy have it like shit whether they’re legal or not because I worked in the field for two years and one of my oldest friends has immigrant parents and she was born here and she can’t use her ID to travel in europe only because she still doesn’t have a citizenship and she’s been waiting for years to get it. I’m not an immigrant in italy but I’ve known enough, seen enough and heard enough from them that I could most likely do it and it wouldn’t be badly researched. like, you can’t tell people to not tell stories if they want to do it with respect and not wanting to make it about themselves only. that’s bad writing. but if you care about the people you’re giving rep to then you should try imvho;

now: I suppose that you’re belonging to categories that are Not Minorities given how the ask is worded. (same as me more or less unless you consider atheists a minority but nvm that.) there’s a lot of writers around that are Not Minorities and most get published more than people who are actually minorities. people saying that you can’t write X if you’re not X and X = minority are pretty much telling you that you shouldn’t use your spotlight to give people rep when you could and you could do it reasonably well if you do your research and talk to those minorities. so they’re basically going against everyone’s interests because you could learn things and become a better person and make sure your readers empathize with your characters and more rep is always good esp. if well-done. I personally think that people should write about what they want - there’s topics I wouldn’t feel comfortable touching because idk if I could do that well and things I really wouldn’t want to write about so I most likely never will -, but that they should also go for what they want if it’s what they believe they can do. so if you feel like you want to write gay characters or whatever go for it and then find yourself a sensitivity reader or ten before you send your book around instead of worrying about what kids on tumblr who are still arguing about snape’s morality and think that writing the divine comedy is the same as self-insert fanfic think, because they will never create shit for anyone, you might. and you’ll have automatically done more than people who complain about everything but wouldn’t produce one single piece of fiction themselves and wouldn’t most likely waste ten minutes of their life researching the fiction they want to write.

tldr: if you want to write professionally, influence people and give the world good stories, don’t give a fuck about what tumblr says because it’s people who most likely will never read your books anyway unless you want to write the next YA saga that has the same six archetypes of characters in which then the only slightly problematic white cishet dude will be without further ado compared to sn/ape and everyone is going to get sorted into hogwarts houses and people will fight about that rather than giving a damn about whatever message you wanted to pass. don’t give a damn about tumblr and do your thing anon, no one deserves to have any perspective ruined because of this hellsite’s opinions on anything. ;)