#I dont have a precise logical super thought out idea on this

[eyeless-jeff666]

Sketch for the role swap AU Im writing! Well its just gonna be a oneshot but atill I liked the idea.

[formless-monkeys]

1 So Otto being autistic is something I've accepted as canon (haha yeah sorry Ciro, no takin' that from me now) and you've made me kind of fond of Antauri being autistic too. MAY I PRESENT, HOWEVER: Mandarin being somewhere on the spectrum, too.

2 This is potentially why he considered Otto HIS "closest ally," but Otto didn't consider him to be his. Mandy could've felt Otto was the only person he didn't have to stifle himself around (since Otto clearly wouldn't have been taught to do so like I suspect Mandy and Tauri were by the Verans, and would never judge him anyway), whereas Otto just saw him as another pal.

3 ALSO, some of Skelemandarin's behavior when he was really happy in I, Chiro could almost be taken as like. Monkey-flapping. (This entire idea is 100% your fault by the way; your post describing your antics when you cosplayed Skelemandy made me THINK, the nerve of you.)

Haha. Haha.

May have thought about this during class.

Mandarin would've spent a good chunk of his time trying to live up to neurotypical standards. Knowing him, he might have taken "I shouldn't act/think like this" down to the core. He'd have to brute force his way through training, repeating lessons not made for people who think like him until he eventually got it. He had to be perfect or else he wasn't good enough for the Verons. He'd come out of training a master of the power primate, with perfect form and perfect precision... but all that repression would lead to a lot of but up energy. He wouldn't allow himself to stim to get rid of it, he wouldn't leave stressful situations because 'normal monkeys can put up with this', so he'd attempt to bottle up the feelings, or use then during battle. It would likely manifest in lashing out at others and a need for control.

Antauri was probably already quiet, so would probably have less trouble conforming to the standards. He wouldn't need to take the conformity to heart, so he would take the lessons and reinterpret them in a way he could understand. He would still be a master of the power primate, but his form would be of his own creation. Using your hands to manipulate the power could've been seen as a sign of someone lesser skilled, but in reality, he was equally matched with Mandarin. He was still raised in an environment where his behaviors were discouraged, so he likely had shame associated with his stims, only allowing himself to do it in private. You cant be reprimanded if they dont see you doing it. Meditation would be the best way for him to recharge from all the sensory hell that he has to deal with every day. He was quiet before, and might've been encouraged to speak more, so he began using quotes from the readings of the Verons. He thinks they make him sound wise (and they do). One must show their best selves to the world, but your best self isnt what the world wants. You put together scripts and predetermined responses to make a best self to show the world what they want. (Aka how I've survived 16 years, haha fake it till you make it!)

Mandarin and Antauri could be on opposite ends of the 'empathy' part of the autism spectrum. Mandarin may need to work hard to read other people's feelings, and may make assumptions that aren't true, "I brute force my way through new sensations, Nova can do that too, by being in the elements to learn to face them!" "Surely the rest of the team thinks we should have more control over everything, right?" "Otto doesn't mind some of the things I'm incredibly shameful about, we must be BESTIES" he probably comes across as rude, when really he just has no idea the impact of what he's saying, it just sounds really cool.

Wheras Antauri seems to be good at reading people, and follows the extreme empath person trend of "I must become therapist/parent figure/support to make them feel better, even if it hurts me." Bottling up your feelings isn't healthy my dude.

Otto, on the COMPLETE other end of things, was just bound by Gibson and Sprx. He could flap his hands and climb around and use his feet for stuff and the other two monkeys would just be like "aight, sure". The worst he'd get is a bit of dismissal if they think he's being annoying... which. It kinda sounds like he's gotten from Gibson, even during the show. (Kinda blanking on if Sparx did this, and I could probably make a whole other post on just Otto). He thinks along the same logic as Mandarin and Antauri, but without the shame being drilled into him. He's a perfect engineer, finding creative solutions and quickly too!

He's probably SUPER empathetic, but not the best at showing it. He makes gadgets and gifts for his friends but really doesnt know how to help on the emotional side of things. He cares just as much but shows it a little differently.

After training with the Verons and working with the team, Mandarin would've latched onto Otto like a fly to sugar. He would've been drowning in shame and self-hatred and Otto would've been the closest thing to a life raft. (Even though antauri would understand just as much. Mandarin might not trust him to not judge because they both had the same training and Antauri doesn't display as openly as otto. Or maybe he misinterpreted something Antauri said as 'oh, he hates these tendencies too!') He was probably so starved for positive affirmation, that he latched on to every source of it he could. (Probably a reason the Chiro clones were Like That to Mandarin) Otto naturally wants to help him, but Mandarin's issues are a giant pile of dirt and Otto has a spoon. If he was more open and honest with the team, they couldve helped him, or worked with him... but he wasn't. He kept as much of it inside as he could, until it manifested in into trying to medicate the feeling of being out of crlontrol. With trying to control the entire city...

Fun thing about certain types of autism, is that being kept in one place, not allowed to move, not allowed to speak, with only your mind to occupy you. It's hell. It is actually hell. Understimulation is a special type of hell.

So glad that after the Verons were destroyed Skelemandarin was able to stim during I, Chiro. Probably was the best moment of his life before being thrown into the OTHER type of sensory hell, overstimulation. The walls are 29394 neon colors and the floor is sticky and squishy and you're actually starving and you're alone and its loud and you keep getting attacked by sticky squirmy monsters.

I'm so glad my cosplaying shenanigans sparked this. This headcanon is... v important to me.

Also, based on this massive ramble; Otto loves mint and Antauri hates mint.

[phanboyo]

Woof so close to the deadline, i can’t believe i finished it. It wasn’t supposed to be half this long, but it just kept going and going and GOING.

@skulking-around-the-phandom‘s prompt: Danny goes intangible through the ground to avoid a painful impact and discovers something very strange beneath Amity Park…

complete; 8,152 words

Danny gasped as his breath clouded in front of him and then sighed. Another ghost attack. It really wasn’t that big of a deal, nothing different from usual, and that was exactly the problem. Maybe it was a good thing that he had fallen into a routine of sorts, but the part of him that forgot all about Desiree kind of wished for something unusual to happen.

He raised his hand. “Mr. Lancer can I use the restroom?” Danny was already out of his seat before Mr. Lancer replied. He transformed in the hallway and shot up through the roof to find Technus closely examining a floating overhead projector.

Danny floated there for a moment, clearing his throat when it became obvious that Technus hadn’t seen him come.

“Oh, ghost child! What a surprise!” Technus said, completely unsurprised.

“I know that’s a piece of junk, but that doesn’t mean you can take it,” Danny said, putting up his fists.

“But if it really is junk, then I’ll take it,” Technus lit his hands up “and you take this.” Technus blasted Danny, who for once had the sense to turn intangible before hitting the ground.

Danny expected to open his eyes to dirt and complete darkness, but instead saw a large chunk of metal illuminated dimly by an old flickering light on the wall. Danny blinked and took a step towards the metal. Upon closer examination, it appeared to be some sort of door, shut tight with a crank like on a submarine or a bank vault. He shook his head.

“Technus first, weird old door later.”

Danny shot back through the earth led by his fist, and was pleasantly surprised when it hit a waiting Technus square in the jaw. “Well that was convenient,” Danny said. He blasted Technus while he was recovering from shock and quickly sucked him into the thermos. The lack of Technus’s presence caused the overhead projector to crash into the ground, smashing into a few jagged pieces. Danny stared at it.

“Not my problem,” he decided, rushing back to class before someone came over and blamed him for the theft.

Danny couldn’t focus much on class after that. He was thinking of the door underground. What could it be? A secret government facility? An ancient UFO, buried by centuries of dust? Maybe it really was a giant underground bank vault. How much money could be in there? Or gold?

He told Sam and Tucker about his discovery after class. Tucker was fond of the UFO idea but he also wouldn’t say no to a bunch of gold bricks, which, Sam reminded, was stealing. Sam thought that it was probably just a reservoir or part of Amity Park’s sewers, which made a lot more sense but also made Danny a little bit disappointed. She was probably right.

Once the final bell rang, Danny was finally able to go back down and investigate. His hopes were significantly lower after Sam’s comment, but he figured he might as well check it out anyway. It took a minute to find the door again, but before long he was back. The door had unsurprisingly remained unchanged. He approached it and put a hand against it. He felt nothing, so he put an earthquake against it. Again, nothing. The light from the old incandescent bulb on the wall was too dim to make out much, but lighting his hand with ectoplasm, Danny could see through the green light that the door was incredibly rusted. He decided that if he wanted to know what this was, he would have to go through the door. So, taking a deep breath, he stepped through.

And was met with darkness. He took another step. Still dark. He kept stepping forward until suddenly his eyes were assaulted with a light much brighter than the dim flickering bulb outside the door. He blinked and looked around. He was in a small grayish room with two large switches on either side and another, much smaller door directly across from him. Danny didn’t know what he was expecting, but it wasn’t just a small boring room.

He walked through the door on the other side into another small room, though this one had three normal-looking doors with faded labels above them. Over one of the doors Danny could make out “rec…all.” whatever text was in the middle had been too faded and scratched out. The labels above the other doors were similarly unreadable. Looking at the doors, Danny wondered for a moment if it really was an old government facility.

Using the handy-dandy “eeny meeny miny moe,” Danny walked through the door to the right.

The room was largely white and metallic. It had an examination table in the center, accompanied by a tray with surgical tools whose sharp points shining in the light made Danny shiver. In the back was a large steel box, which Danny assumed was a refrigeration unit, as well as a counter with beakers, test tubes, and a microscope among other things. There was a sink and a few glass cabinets with various chemical containers and medical supplies, and sitting in a wheeled stool at the counter was man in a white coat who appeared to be in his late forties, reading a book.

He didn’t seem to notice Danny’s presence, so Danny cleared his throat, causing a small clank from the chair as the man jumped and turned to him.

The man froze when he saw Danny and the two just sat there staring at each other for an awkwardly long time, neither moving, neither blinking.

“Hi,” Danny said finally.

The man blinked. “How did you get in here?” He asked.

Danny glanced behind him. “The door?”

“But—” the man blinked again. “You’re from the surface?” He stood slowly.

“Yeah,” Danny responded, taking a step back warily.

“Incredible,” the man said, tapping a finger on his chin. “So the exposure to radiation has caused you to glow, among other things, I’m sure.” He began to circle Danny, who was beginning to feel quite uncomfortable. “Your hair is naturally that white?”

“Um, yeah.” Danny responded. “Who are you?”

The man stopped. “Oh, where are my manners? I suppose it’s been quite a while since I met anyone new. My name is Harold Dire. And you are?”

“Danny Phantom. What did you mean by ‘exposure to radiation’?”

Harold looked somewhat shocked. “Well, er,” he scratched his head. “You know. Nuclear fallout. From the bombs dropping.”

Danny raised an eyebrow. “Bombs? Nuclear fallout? What are you talking about?” Had bombs dropped somewhere near Amity Park and Danny somehow hadn’t noticed? He was pretty sure he would notice the detonation of a nuclear bomb.

Harold looked at him with some mix of pity and distress. “You mean you don’t know?”

Danny suddenly got really really worried.

“I had expected there would be some loss of history or news with the collapse of regular society but this is beyond what I ever would have guessed.” He began pacing and put a hand to his chin again. “It’s like the whole of society has some sort of repression.” He looked back at Danny briefly. “Or perhaps the only ones who were old enough to remember have been killed. It stands to reason that… shorter lifespan… ages ago…” he began muttering.

Danny clapped his palms together. And Harold looked up suddenly as if he had forgotten that Danny was still in the room. “I’m gonna ask again. What are you talking about?”

He looked at Danny. “Right, well… you might want to sit down.”

Danny remained standing.

“Okay, well, we were attacked a little over 40 years ago, before your time.” Danny rolled his eyes. “Russia finally did it. They bombed us.” Danny blinked.

“Russia.”

“Yes, precisely. You know what Russia is?”

“Yes, I know what Russia is.” Danny shook his head. The man was obviously crazy. Maybe this was some kind on underground insane asylum, for the people to were too crazy to be locked away in regular mental hospitals. Then again, the guy was wearing a lab coat. Maybe there was some sort of patient uprising. Or maybe he really had just been down here for a few decades, afraid that the Russians were gonna get him.

“So you’ve been down here alone for how long?”

“42 years,” he said, putting a finger up. “And I’m not alone. There’s Henrietta, and Lilly, and Andy, and Eve to name a few. Oh, I should introduce you! They’d love to meet you!” He paused. “Actually they’d probably incredibly wary and distrustful of a strange person from the surface who broke into the shelter, but you’re only like, thirteen, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“I’m fourteen actually”

“So how did you break in? Are you alone? Do your parents let you break into fallout shelters all by yourself?” Harold opened the door and left, beckoning Danny to follow.

“Um, well I just sort of found it while I was… fighting, and—”

“Fighting? Who were you fighting? Looters? Gangs? Super-powered mutant monsters? But you’re only fourteen.”

“Um, actually pretty close to the last one.” Danny ran a hand through his hair. “And I know I’m young, but someone has to protect the town. Might as well be me.”

They walked through the ‘rec… all’ door and Harold looked at Danny skeptically. He obviously thought Danny’s logic was flawed. “We will be continuing this conversation later, but for now,”

The walls of the room were a deep red color and they were walking on a grey carpet that had probably been plush and light before years of use. There was a pool table near the center of the room and a couple of chairs and a couch pushed to the walls, in one of which a woman about Harold’s age sat stitching something. There were a surprising number of bookshelves around the chairs. There was a card table, where two older folks were playing, and in the corner was a girl Danny’s age leaning over an old fashioned jukebox.

Everyone was frozen in place, staring at Danny.

“Let me introduce you.”

There’s more but i dont want Tumblr to have a seizure again so you can read the rest here on FFN or here on AO3

[sometimesrosy]

story idea anon here! Im not 100% about everything I said exactly but to recap: I have a story idea for basically a series (5 books) and I’ve had it for awhile. The thing is, it’s sci-fi, which pretty much needs plot driven writing. I’m not good at that. It doesn’t make me wanna write. I’m good at character/feelings/relationship driven writing and that’s what makes me want to write and move the story forward. But I don’t wanna give up on the book just because I don’t know how to adapt.

(2) Obviously, because in order for things to happen, the plot is the thing that needs to move forward chapter to chapter in this kind of fiction. I know that. But it doesn’t seem to excite me, at all. I get excited about the slow burn I have mapped out, the story lines that will go on and complete each other from the first to the last chapter, the twists, the romance, the friendships and unexpected partnerships, the cliffhangers etc. All of it. But writing the things the characters are doing?

(3) As in plans and action scenes and fighting and bad guys and whatever? Nothing. It just seems like a chore and makes me procrastinate on moving forward. But I’ve had this idea for so long and I really like it and I really want to tell this story, I just don’t know how to do it right. Do I make it more character/feelings/relationship driven even though it doesn’t necessarily fit the genre? Do I power through the parts I don’t like even though it will make the process last longer? Do I change

(4) stuff? Do I try to change myself and my style? I don’t wanna just give up. Please help. (also i dont know if i’ve been on anon or not cause i just kinda started typing and didnt really stop)

Okay. Sorry for not answering this yesterday when I asked you to send in the missing #1 ask, but I had to do all sorts of other stuff and didn’t have the focus. Now it’s morning and i’m in writing brain, so let’s go.

All right, so it seems like you are struggling with the conflict between what you WANT to write and what you think you’re SUPPOSED to write. 

The key to this struggle is to always let the WANT win over the SUPPOSED TO. Oh, well that sounds like I’m advocating complete and total writing anarchy! Who needs plot! Who needs structure! Nah I’m not. Not really.

BUT I am saying that you need to write the story you NEED to tell, the one that’s humming below your skin. Write the story you want to tell. Write the things that make you passionate. Write the things you’re good at.

Now this doesn’t mean ignore the plot or genre or the things you’re bad at. Facing the frisson of your fears and insecurities and struggles adds a tension to your work and leads you into new places that will surprise even you. So one of the things you can do when stuck between WANT and SHOULD is learn how to BALANCE them. 

Okay, that doesn’t sound like letting the want win, but that’s how I work. 

FIRST. FORGET ABOUT GENRE REQUIREMENTS. I mean, don’t. You know the world you’re writing in and the rules you have to follow. You know what you love about it, work with that. But it’s not as strict as you’re thinking it is. You get to BEND the rules, without actually breaking them. Sure, we love sci fi because of the action and ideas… and sure, i personally might have given up on the literary fiction genre because I was SO bored of it, but if you take the character and language driven style of literary fiction and combine it with the plot and concept driven style of sci fi, what you have is a DAMN FINE STORY. You see what I’m saying? You can use the best parts of BOTH to make your story better. BALANCE. 

You don’t have to sacrifice who you are as a writer to write a particular genre. It’s part of you and it’s your voice and what makes you unique. I’ll tell you a secret. I’m actually a poet. I don’t write much poetry anymore, but I take my poetry and put it into my science fiction and fantasy. My whole writing style is based on, basically, the poetry of the world. I may not give each sentence the attention I would a poem, but the impulse is still there, even if the genre is miles away from what I’m writing. And that makes for a better story. Sometimes I think I’m a better fiction writer than poet PRECISELY because I use my poetry IN my fiction. 

You aren’t WRONG as a sci fi writer because you like to focus on emotions and characters and relationships. You’re a sci fi writer with character driven stories. I guarantee you that people like that. Not all people. And some people will complain that it’s not hard enough or science fictiony enough or too girly or whatever, but, honestly, WHO CARES? Don’t write for everybody. You can’t please everybody. Write for yourself. 

I personally prefer my science fiction to be character driven and I prefer to have some element of love in there, and I need to be able to connect to the characters emotionally. I think this is one reason why I prefer women writers. And one reason why I stopped listening to male critics about “What makes sci fi sci fi.” Because frankly, I’m more interested in how society works and how characters move within society than I am in whether or not my FTL space travel could conceptually work or the intricacies of war and weaponry. If boys want to play technology war in space, they can. I want to find out how that war affects my characters when it’s over and they have to keep living. Now what? 

Oh. In case you didn’t catch that, there is definitely a gender driven status thing within the sci fi community that invalidates women’s stories and glorifies men’s stories, so please make sure that’s not what’s in your head while you are critiquing the kind of story you want to tell. Because if NK Jemisin’s THREE consecutive Hugo awards, and the backlash against her winning them, is not proof that we WANT the different stories, and how some people don’t want us to tell them, then I don’t know what is.

The sci fi and fantasy genre is always changing and shifting to allow for new ideas and ways of writing. That’s what it’s for. It’s speculative. And we like new ideas. There is lots of room for experimentation. There’s lots of room for alien thinking. lol. you see what I did there? The point is, sci fi is about new and different concepts and where they could take us. Go ahead and invent your own genre. Or maybe you’re not inventing it, and it’s already there as a subgenre and you never noticed. There is actually a sci fi romance subgenre, and it’s a subgenre of romance I think. I don’t tend to prefer it because it follows the tropes of romance rather than sci fi, but you can also write sci fi that focuses on romance, like Sharon Shinn. Her stories are very romantic. But definitely sci fi. 

Okay, so that’s some conceptual stuff I want you to think about in regards to your writing process and style. But I also have some practical suggestions/tips/hints that might help you get over your hump. I’ve got two in my mind right now, lets see if I can come up with any others as I go along.

One trick. What I do sometimes, is to set up the overall, grand scheme plot, and really have no idea how I’m going to get there. Like that part you’re talking about, writing about what the characters are doing? None of that is set up. When I get there, I enter into the character motivations. Feelings, thoughts, backstory, personality, goals, desires, fears. ALL of these things are what move my plot forward. Because what I keep asking is, “how would this character react to this situation.” Now if I’ve done my job with character building then I will KNOW because I know my characters history and personality, and I can power the story with their growth and struggles. The question is always, “What Would MC Do?” I drive my plot forward by following my characters through the world I set up and basing their decisions on who they are. Some of them are emotional. Some of them are logical. Some of them are angry, some are pacifistic. All those characters are interacting with each other and shifting the story this way or that. This causes tension and gives us problems to solve and ways to solve it. You pick the ones that get you to your endpoint. Sometimes I think I’ve taken myself AWAY from my planned ending and I’m like, oh well, I guess I need a different ending. And then I get to the ending and, like magic, everything I set up starts falling into place and what I originally planned and thought had failed has been building all along. (GOOD JOB, SUBCONSCIOUS!) That has happened to me TWICE in the past year. 

Another trick. This came from a twitter post where someone was saying how she wanted to just write stories about WLW in love, but she didn’t have a plot. And I said. What do you mean you don’t have a plot? That’s your plot. Love is the answer. Love is the goal. Obstacles to love are what your characters need to fight through. Love is how your characters find strength. I said, make love the super power. Make the villain be the one who is trying to kill love, whether individually or on a universal level. For sci fi there are so many ways to do that. Maybe they’re trying to create a solely logical universe. Maybe they’re cyborgs. Maybe they want to kill a planet that the MC loves, IDK. Use your imagination. Fit it to your story. Don’t create an obstacle and plot that doesn’t connect to your desire for character and relationships and love. MAKE YOUR PLOT ABOUT THAT LOVE. It’s sci fi, you can invent the technology to make it real. Or magic if you’re doing fantasy. IMO it’s the same thing.

Oh here’s another thing. Maybe you need to stop listening to your doubts and internal editor so much, telling you that what you’re writing isn’t right. The thing that helped me get over that obsession with doing it wrong was actually nanowrimo, which I did for the first time in 2006. If you’ve done it before, or if you haven’t, you might be ready to take on this challenge to write a novel in the month of november this year, for this project. You’ve been thinking about it a lot. It sounds like you’re ready. And if you have to focus on getting the wordcount done, and you start focusing on character instead of plot, you won’t have time to get worried about whether you’re being too charactery and not ploty enough. (how is charactery a word but ploty isn’t? anyway.) And then by the time you’ve written it, you can read it over and decide if your plot is thin or it doesn’t move you forward enough, and THEN you can ADD IN THE PLOT ELEMENTS that you don’t write in your process. WHAT? Or you can remove some of the slower character driven stuff and just use it for your character development. Or even take it out and turn it into a short story. THIS is the writing process. The revision process. Just write your little heart out, and then go back over it to add in the elements you’re missing and remove the things that don’t move the story forward. 

TL;DR Whatchutalkin’ bout nonny. You’ve got a plot. You’ve mapped it out. It’s character driven. Stop doubting yourself. If you want more action, stick it in there. Make it relationship/character driven. Don’t change yourself. Make it work. 

ps. i answer questions here about writing, no problem, but i have a writing blog where i try to collect posts (mine and others) about writing, and art and creativity @rosy-writes so if you want to follow or scroll that it might be more focused, although this blog is more active.

[eyeless-jeff666]

Its not turning out how i want I wanna cry

Sketch for the role swap AU Im writing! Well its just gonna be a oneshot but atill I liked the idea.