#God these turts have so much trauma

[desceros]

hi, just gonna start this off by saying I'm in love with your stories!! Like Dood, I've read your stuff an unhealthy amount of times. I was just wonderin'... *twiddles fingers* if you ever get time, could you drop some tips on how you write your stories? And what I mean by that is, like how you develop your main character and their relationship with the turts, then how you plan your story without getting stuck? Because your stories are flawless and I always have trouble getting past plot holes! (btw, sorry if this was a lot! I completely understand if you don't have time to answer this!)

uwahh, thank you so much!! i love hearing that people enjoy my writing, heehee = v= and i'm also a sucker for this kind of question so thanks for giving me an excuse to talk about it :D

sooo usually i start with a plot nugget (e.g. "a meet cute at the aquarium where you see someone cute through the tank but don't catch their name"). then i think ok, who does that mesh with, pairing wise? for that fic, euclidean line, i wanted to write rise donnie and he fit the prompt very well, so that settles that. sometimes it's 'oh this prompt begs for this character, so i'm going to be writing him now i guess.' just depends.

with the plot nugget usually comes a vibe, and that vibe kind of dictates the mood of the fic. sometimes my fics are humorous (think goldilocks), and sometimes they're more somber (think EL). with that vibe comes the, uh, "mood" of the reader insert character. since i knew EL was going to be a study of donnie's emotional fallout with krang, i wanted to have a reader who was good at dealing with emotions to be a kind of guiding light for him. goldilocks has a chaotic reader to match the chaotic feel of that fic. etc. that gives me a feel for what the reader's personality is going to be, and from there, i can construct other pieces of things like how they react with the other turtles. leonardo is going to react differently to a sassy reader dating raph than he is to an emotionally-sensitive reader dating donnie, after all, so their relationships kind of fall into place once i know who the reader is.

i like to have a "best friend" character for the reader outside of the romantic relationship. it helps the reader feels like a person with a life outside of the romantic relationship, and it also gives them a chance to have conversations that drive a plot beyond just "when are the main characters gonna smooch". not that that kind of thing isn't interesting (i'm a romance writer for god's sake!), it's just not the only thing i like to have going on. so sometimes i pick the best friend at random (e.g. in amaranthine, i wanted to practice writing raph so i made him the best friend character), and sometimes it's pretty important to the plot (e.g. in the tea fic where splinter being the bestie is actually pretty important to the emotional core of the fic). i match the reader's personality to the best friend character as well, and this helps me create a multi-dimensional person. like... what kind of person would leo pine after, but who is also drinking tea all the time with splinter? what kind of person would donnie want to explore pain kink with, but is also best friends with raph? that kind of thing.

as for the plot and how to avoid plot holes, what i like to do is have a connecting thread that weaves through the entire fic. going back to euclidean line, that fic was all about the jellyfish. you and donnie meet at the jellyfish tank because the two of you are drawn to them, comforted by your different traumas by the idea of existing in the life of a jellyfish. so then you take all of the events of the fic and you pin them to that thread. so little things like... meeting at the jellyfish tank. the smut making them feel like they're floating like a jellyfish. painting a jellyfish for his lab. it gives your fic a sense of continuity that ties everything together, and also gives you an emotionally cathartic line to end on. euclidean line ends with the two of you feeling like jellyfish together. the tea fic ends with leo saying your tea is better than splinter's. the bruise fic ends with the same 'donnie thinks about it a lot' line from the opening. it's a kind of... cheat sheet for satisfying bookends.

from there you just expand out and add plot lines one by one. euclidean line had the romance plot line, but also the meeting the hamato clan plot line. it's the same idea with that one with the tension of you the reader knowing that these are donnie's family, but the insert-chan not knowing. they all build on the same idea, creating continuity through the fic.

then, at the end when you finish your first draft, you go through and you just make sure all the little loops are closed. sometimes i'll catch things that i included at the beginning and either take them out because they didn't go anywhere, or i expand on them a little so that they end in a nice bowtie with everything else. eventually you get to where you just kind of... keep all of them juggling in your head and weave them in organically (which is how you end up chronically writing 30k one shots, oops).

WOW that got super long, but i hope i answered your question?? if not you can ask something more specific and i'll try to dig in but this is probably a pretty good overview, heehee. the best advice i can give to you is just never to give up and always keep writing what YOU want to read, because the love of what you're making is really the thing that'll keep you passionate and excited to go forward. good luck, and i hope this helps you a little! :D

[flurry-bace]

"Oh the horrors ™

Oh god, where to start You have MAJOR baggage Mommy/daddy issues GALORE, so much trauma to fill a whole season You cry every time you get hugged Oh and you're probably the most on screen abused character, sorry! Tumblr would defend you with their LIFE and I can't even mention the fanfics, the fandom is dividend between wanting to comfort you or to explore your trauma so much it would make a therapist cry"

GEE THANKS UQUIZ

tagging time: @sillygayoscfan @turts-my-beloved @x-moonsoul-x

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[fandomhopping]

Ok rant time!

so I recently rewatched tmnt 2003 season 6 episode 25 “the day of awakening” and I just see SO many ways this could have gone wrong, for instance:

The turtle could have been turned into kanabos had Cody been literally 1 minute later

the earth could’ve had no sunlight forever

raph could’ve been killed when he made a snide remark to Shokanabo after he was thrown against a wall

Mikey, Leo, and Splinter could’ve not been able to fight off the infection and gotten morphed again

said turtles and rat could’ve been turned on the others

Viral could’ve noticed Donnie opening the blast shield, moved over there, and hacked HIM via touch

these are all the things I can think of off the top of my head that could’ve gone wrong, just while in battle, there are so many things that could’ve gone wrong there before hand too!

and don’t even get me STARTED on the trauma! Imagine this:

After finally recovering from the fact that his body was used for evil against his will because he ate a hotdog! Mikey finally is feeling confident in himself again, then this mission occurs… it doesn’t help that he’s already getting flashbacks and dysphoria the second the enter the moon base, but facing a hideous looking shokanabo with hundreds of people who are victims just like Mikey was, REALLY doesn’t help.

and of course afterwards he has to deal with the fact that once again shokanabo had rotted his slimy tentacles in Mikey’s mind and caused him nightmares AGAIN!

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now imagine he wakes up with a small scream in the middle of the night and quickly shuts himself up. He doesn’t want to wake his brothers! His brothers shouldn’t have to worry about him! So Mikey muffles a sob into his hands and cries until he hear the door slide open quietly but doesn’t dare look at who’s there.

It’s his brothers, they heard the scream (much to Mikey’s dismay and relief) and they comfort him just like when they were kids!

Donnie's rubbing the youngest’s shell soothingly, Raph is tapping his leg to make sure Mikey knows he’s there… Leo is holding him and whispering assurances that everyone is okay, and shokanabo is no more… and eventually Mikey falls asleep with all his brothers beside him. Not entirely healed, but definitely grateful his brothers were there for him when Mikey needed them most.

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Thank you for coming to my turtle talk.