#How to redo this because the editor butchered it. I how to redo it in the new one.

[soncfthewitch]

@theking-blackheart-muses continued from here

Esdras felt Zeus' gaze seep into him, the weight of it pressing into his very soul, a peculiar sensation, neither welcome nor entirely reviling. A strange warmth flooded his veins as if a cascade of ambrosia had been poured into him, igniting his senses.

He felt his cheeks heated under Zeus' keen eyes, a flush he attributed to the sweet nectar trickling down his throat, surely not to the Sky-Father's attention.

When Zeus moved closer, the intoxicating scent of summer thunderstorms enveloped Esdras, the scent he always associated with Zeus, wrapping around him like an ethereal mantle. He took an unconscious step backward, the heat of the god's presence too intense to bear. But Zeus' eyes held him in place. His heart pounded an uncertain rhythm, an arrhythmic symphony that resounded in his ears, drowning out the merriment around him. It was as if the world had shrunk, leaving only him and Zeus, the latter's voice a hypnotic echo that stirred a peculiar restlessness within him. A restlessness he did not understand, a restlessness he certainly did not want to understand.

"Lord Zeus," Esdras said, his voice cracking under the weight of the god's gaze. "I... I sense the gods' whispers, their silent doubts. My youth, my inexperience, it... it echoes in their jeers, their sidelong glances." His gaze brimmed with raw vulnerability, an intimate exposure he reserved only for Zeus. "They see me for who I am, a fledgling god yet to earn his feathers. My mother...," he paused, swallowing hard, "she was a Titaness born and yet proved herself in the war against her family. Proved herself to you. But I...I carry the taint of the old enemy in my veins, a scarlet stain that no laurel wreath can hide." The words hung heavy in the air, unsaid fears and doubts that had haunted him since his arrival to Mount Olympus.

"I apologize, my Lord; I didn't mean to impose on your time with my own insecurities. Perhaps I need more wine and see where the night leads."

[destielshippingnews]

The tragic romance of Dane and Chris Lancaster, or how ‘publishers’ and ‘editors’ butchered my novel

Let’s say I’ve spent 15 years writing a series of horror novels about a young man named Dane Lancaster. Dane’s life is changed irrevocably when his wife is brutally murdered in front of him, and he barely keeps his life. Because of this trauma and a difficult upbringing, Dane believes he is undeserving of love, and that nothing awaits him but a violent, bloody, inglorious death to end a short life. He is a wounded, repressed human who wants to be worthy of others’ love and care, but hides it beneath a rough, gruff, tough exterior that almost nobody can see through. He goes on a quest with his brother to get revenge for his dead wife. The brothers’ relationship is incredibly unhealthy. Dane’s brother is manipulative, controlling and poisonous, but Dane is too co-dependent to see it.

In one of the early novels, Dane meets a young man named Chris. Chris is a soldier who obediently follows orders, but he saves Dane from eternal torture. Knowing Dane changes Chris, and leads him to question authority and eventually rebel against it. He is an emotional stalwart, support and healer for Dane. He helps Dane recover as much as it is possible to recover after his wife’s death, and the series of novels after that sees the two develop an incredibly deep, complex, meaningful relationship. It is obvious to anybody paying attention that Chris is likely in love with Dane, seeing him as not just worthy of love, but motivated by it. Chris sees him as strong and brave, and the only person he could love with his whole heart.

Dane is also intensely emotionally attached to Chris, but due to his difficult upbringing, trauma and internalised fears and anxieties, can’t reciprocate Chris’s affections, or even understand that the intense emotions might be more than ‘brotherhood’ or ‘friendship’, but romantic and sexual attraction to another man.

The two men’s relationship is integral to the novels and the plot, and amasses a huge fandom following to whom the relationship is a rallying point and a lodestar. Millions of men, women, boys and girls see their own struggles reflecting in various ways in Dane and Chris, and are deeply moved by the story of two men caring unreservedly for one another. They fight, rebel, die and start wars for each other, and Chris’s unconditional ‘friendship’ changes Dane fundamentally. Over the years, he wrestles with his repressed self, and begins to understand Chris might be more to him than a ‘brother’, but rather the love of his life whom he would be utterly broken without. Accepting this is uncomfortable and painful, but simultaneously shows him that he is not simply a weapon, nor motivated by murderous hate; he is the bravest, most loving man in any universe. Chris’s love helps Dane carry on without his wife, and as the final novel reaches its conclusion, it is all but explicit that Dane is close to coming to terms with his love for Chris. If only he knew Chris felt the same.

Then Chris confesses his love to Dane to his face, only to be killed and dragged to the void beyond the universe seconds later, leaving Dane broken and in utter despair.

Dane grieves Chris, and demands the Big Bad return Chris to him. The Big Bad refuses, and Dane sort of accepts that. Dane defeats the Big Bad, who demands Dane, the vicious fighter, kill him. Dane, in spite of the man he used to be, refuses, because that is not who he is anymore. The man Chris loved is better than that, and Dane wants to be the man Chris loved.

Dane does not even try to get Chris out of the void, even though he has returned Chris from worse before, and Chris him. He barely mentions Chris in the denouement of the narrative, the man who fundamentally changed him. In fact, Dane’s entire character growth and narrative arc is rendered pointless; he dies an accidental death at a young age, impaled on a rebar, bleeding, scared, and convinced he deserves nothing more, because he is scum unworthy of love. But at least he died saving his heterosexual brother, who goes on to live the perfect apple pie life.

Would you detect foul play? Would it seem to you that the editor and publishing house balked at the idea of two male leads in one of its most successful properties being in a romantic relationship with each other? Would it seem to you that the editor and publishing house butchered my perfectly-crafted ending in order to undermine the character development and growth over the series of my fifteen years of novels? That rather than allowing the story to end in a way that builds on the carefully laid-out groundwork I’d provided, they decided to redo it without my say-so in order to provide a trite, meaningless nostalgia fest for people who aren’t paying attention to characters or clear subtext? That they castrated my novel and defiled my artwork, all for the sake of appeasing readers who just aren’t comfortably with non-heterosexual men, and who don’t care about the messages of self-love and self-worth?

I would. And I sure as Hell would not promote my final novel upon finding out how my publishers had betrayed me and my characters.

[sol1056]

EPs taking the writer's finished and well written work & butchering by changing it themselves bc of their immaturity spite & inflated ego was bad enough. Cutting corners in the story, THE most important thing! and so forcing the remaining staff to butcher their own work themselves bc they have no time and are overworked and so they have no choice is 10 times worse. I didnt think they could get any more unproffesional or disrespectful and yet they did. Who cuts corners in the story???!!!!

I have no idea, to be honest. All I can say is animation costs money (a lot of money) and if you’re going to be redoing things and rearranging things a lot, that’s going to cost. The money’s got to come out of somewhere. 

But since I’d only checked against one other series, I figured I should be more diligent and check against a few more. So I looked up the credits listed for VLD, AtLA, Trollhunters, and the two How To Train Your Dragon series (30 eps on CN, 78 eps on Netflix). I put production assistants and writer’s assistants under ‘non-staff,’ and executive producers under ‘staff.’

Two curious details: 

1. Every series except VLD had production assistants and writer’s assistants (sometimes two of each) — and it appears each PA and each WA got a chance to write an episode. (Which is very cool, because that gets someone started on building their writing portfolio.)   

2. VLD had a story editor and staff writers. Avatar had a head writer and staff writers. Of the rest, only the second HTTYD series had any staff writers; none of the rest (TH, HTTYD1, HTTYD2) had an editor or head writer. What those series did have were co-executive producers who wrote the scripts. 

AtLA and VLD both had EPs with no writing experience. That meant budgeting for someone with storytelling experience, and staff writers, rather than the bulk shared among the co-EPs. That said, both DiMartino and Konietzko did pen episodes for AtLA (and both went on to be creative EPs for LoK, as well). 

It’s actually rather striking that the VLD EPs only directed the pilot, and have only written one episode. It lends credence to the theory that JDS and LM were hired not for their storytelling abilities per se, so much as their (proven) abilities at directing and storyboarding someone else’s story.  

So, with that in mind, here’s a comparison of writing teams across the series. The dark color is the writing staff (credited as staff writer, producer, story editor, or head writer). The light color are freelance additions (independent or assistants). 

This doesn’t really give you a sense of how much work each team had to do, though, since VLD and HTTYD2 (”Race”) had 78 episodes. AtLA had 66, TH had 52, and HTTD1 had only 40. So I did a bit of math as if they all had 78 episodes, with the same proportions. 

I’m not seeing any way to argue that VLD had anything but a seriously lean writing team, especially when you consider there were no writer’s assistants, no production assistants, and no EPs who were lending a hand. If that’s so — and adding in that VLD’s writing team were also tasked with three volumes of multi-part comics — no wonder Hedrick tweeted this: