#I think I'll just focus on completing the general scene ideas I had and try adding the backgrounds bit by bit.

[floofypan]

Akdjakkdjs yes I'm alive! I'm actually in my final year rn so I got a Final Year Project to do before I intern around next year October. xD

Sorry for not being alive, I had the summer off and was just goofing off and drawing anytime I could. ( ˋ ⁻̫ˊ)

I got a little bit of stuff for your LMK AU but they're all just sketches atm hahaha

@floofypan i hope u know I saw u in my notifs and went "*gasp* floofypan!! Ur alive!!" asfkfksjddj

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for wanting to spend a night out with a guy?

I'm twenty, study in university and still live with my parents. I've been planning to move out since I was eighteen, but they told me to keep living at home and not get a job so I could focus on studying while they take care of me financially. This arrangement has worked mostly well in the past years save for a few small conflicts, but it's escalated in the past 3-4 months.

The issue is my time schedule. I have a very active social life, am active in the local art scene, do political work and a lot of extracurricular stuff for university (I'm a straight A student, I might add!). Because of this, and because I'm a natural night owl, I usually come home late several days a week (between 10pm and 2am) and stay out all day for most of the week. This means I can't do a lot of chores, and usually there's a lot of housework because my mum has a bit of a cleaning anxiety and wants to make sure everything is spotless 24/7.

Enter this guy, I'll call him Tim. I met him at a festival last summer and we became long distance friends. Tim has visited me for a day several times before, but this weekend he offered to come over for two days and we agreed to spend the night stargazing together without sleeping. I loved the idea and immediately said yes. It was gonna be just us, a couple energy drinks, and some bench in the city center, and I was really looking forward to it.

The thing is, my mum does not like Tim. Like, at all. She thinks he seems very sleazy and generally distrusts him because he feels "too nice" for her. Mind you, he's just a somewhat shady looking guy who is generally pretty anxious he might make a bad impression, so he overperforms the whole "respectable member of society" act a bit around new people. I've introduced him to my friend group and even the more sceptical people absolutely love him and think he's a very sweet, helpful person. In basically every stressful situation I've ever seen him in he's been deescalating, protective and helpful, and he has on several occasions been my first source of comfort when things went to hell.

Today I told my mum in an offhanded comment that I won't come home between Sunday and Monday and the situation escalated completely. She was crying, accusing me of ruining her month, saying I didn't care about this family, it got ugly. The main point she had was that I was staying out all night with someone who's a total stranger to her and she doesn't trust him at all. In the end we compromised that Tim and I would spend the night awake, but not in the city, at home.

I feel really humiliated by this whole situation and honestly, kind of betrayed, because I was promised stuff like this wouldn't happen, and it just hits in a much safer situation than ones I've been in before (I used to get blackout drunk and sleep at parties a lot.). I'm a legal adult, have been for years now and it's so disappointing that my parents still treat me like a child sometimes and are so judgy towards my friends too. At the same time, I'm wondering whether I've acted wrong too by not telling her about this earlier and not taking her concerns that seriously. I forget sometimes that I talk to Tim every day for hours, but my parents only briefly ran into him once, so of course their view of him is skewed.

PS: I should add that when I told him about this, he immediately apologized, asked if I needed anything or wanted to change the plan and decided to dig out the least offensive outfit he could find so he'd make a good impression on my parents. So he's definitely trying his best.

[aoxizu]

i have, completely accidentally, finished all of the currently available wuthering waves main questline

meanwhile i still have not touched the 2.2 plot in star rail but shh i'll get that scene finished eventually and then i can start questing

but anyway. obviously jiyan and jing yuan have many similarities (general, initials jy, ponytail, voiced by sun ye, chinese, once knew a guy with white hair who later became a criminal), but jiyan just doesn't quite get to the same level as jing yuan does (also jing yuan showed up for me twice. jiyan has shown up 0 times.)

this will go into jiyan backstory spoilers kind of if you haven't yet seen that part of the main quest, and also tone warning: i'm going to complain a lot, and i am very biased.

but like. geshu lin did nothing wrong change my mind

it's like if the luofu was fighting phantylia and there was no astral express, jing yuan tells the army to guard the frontline with their life if necessary and then goes off to fight phantylia alone, and then the soldiers all have terrible morale so fu xuan decides to have everyone retreat and then jing yuan becomes a criminal for giving that order and fu xuan becomes the general

except fu xuan at least has some higher position in the leadership structure of the luofu, but jiyan does not. jiyan was literally just some random doctor in the army who said "hey what if we didn't lose our lives like we signed up to do and all ran away instead" and for that he was appointed general through magic dragon

it's like the game is trying to take a "war bad" stance at the same time as glorifying the military so they can sell the general and convince people to pull for him

and then (main story spoilers) when you go fight the not-bloodborne boss in the north wilds (i play in cn so i have no idea what anything is called in english) at the very end of the quest, jiyan pretty much does the same thing as geshu lin

he has his soldiers stay back while he goes to fight the big bad and the only difference is that jiyan takes 3 more people along with him and he also has the power of a prophecy on his side

i get that the game is trying to paint geshu lin as this kind of like war crazed general but like jiyan and geshu lin are in nearly the exact same situation here, making almost the exact same decision

i am being told that jiyan is different from geshu lin in some way but it's really hard to believe that when it looks like they're doing the same things

chinese culture doesn't like to glorify leaders who only focus on war and nothing else (see: han wudi, qin shihuang) (note that mao zedong and the cultural changes he brought do not agree with this attitude) and i suppose that's the reasoning for why geshu lin is a criminal while jiyan is fine since jiyan knows when to retreat or whatever, but i do not think the game does a particularly good job of showing that

this inconsistency may have also had something to do with the amount of changes that jiyan's character went through during development, since his (cn) va was originally sang liuze (ratio/neuvillette) (which i think would have fit jiyan better. personal opinion), and was later changed to sun ye, and his character was also originally just supposed to be a doctor in the army without the sudden becoming general part, so to a lot of cn players it just feels like kuro's trying to coast off of jing yuan's popularity

i don't think that's necessarily true but it is definitely affecting how jiyan is being seen in the chinese community

though i will say that despite the whole ???ness of jiyan's decision making process, the not bloodborne boss fight was really cool, and i really liked exploring that area

hsr on the other hand avoids the problem with trying to say war bad but also trying to sell a military general by simply having jing yuan focus on strategy, and clearly placing more importance on outsmarting the enemy rather than throwing people and resources at the enemy until it dies

but anyway. i'm still going to try and get jiyan, since i kind of like his playstyle despite it being burst based, though havoc rover does look cool enough for me to seriously consider using them for as long as possible

right now the game is in the weird place of being so new that i can't take a lot of it seriously, since it's still finding its place in the massive 2d-adjacent mobile game environment, but i'm sure it will either a) grow on me or b) become genshin, where i am a "day one player" but barely touch the game

or a secret third option, where it displaces my star rail addiction to plant a wuthering waves addiction, but i find that unlikely since i don't tend to like open world games as much

i'm excited to see where wuthering waves goes and if it can finally provide a challenge to the behemoth that is genshin

you know what the actual problem i have with wuthering waves is? when i take a picture with the in game camera and hit save it doesn't actually save. so i'm restricted to screenshots for the time being

[boxturret]

Steamboy Legoes

I think it just so happened Steamboy came in to my life right when Bionicles started to get bad, so around that time I made a lot of M.O.C.¹s based on the various machines from the film.

Since most of my legoes at that point were, in fact, Bionicles, I didn't have all that many parts to work with, so many of my builds were quite unorthodox. There's not going to be much S.N.O.T.², short for Studs Not On Top³, here. Also legoes aren't some holy relic that must be treasured above all else, so I cut, glued, and stuck paper on things as I saw fit⁴.

I also wasn't very good at taking photos that were in focus, so you've been warned.

Steam Automotive

This, being the first big crazy machine you see in the movie, it leaves a big impression. Its scene and music are also amazing so that helps.

I made this thing so many times. The gearing on the front wheels was always such a big thing for me, the fact that for it to move forward the larger gear had to rotate backwards was really eye opening for me at the time.

I was really quite inspired by seeing someone else's build of it, it was motorised and ran on tracks and had the monowheel on a rod in front of it. It was really cool, so much so that I'll forgive the fact that when the Steam Automotive was on the tracks it was in front of the mono wheel. I can't find it anymore, I swear there was more Steamboy stuff on Brickshelf at one point.

The way the machine has two drivers, a guy in the back in a more standard locomotive cab and then this guy in a tiny chair in front of the weird vertical second boiler/smoke box(?) with a head on it, its so interesting.

Honestly over this period the legoes I had was pretty consistent, but as I studied the reference materials I had closer and got a more complete idea of how everything went together my approaches changed a lot.

This was the last version I made, and probably the last M.O.C.¹ I made in general. It has a really different structure to the others, but some things have been retained. Sliding tires over 2x2 bricks and technic bushings to make tubes is a pretty good technique I think. Probably heretical in the church of lego purity though.

This model was kept together over my dark ages⁵, if you can call the period of time between when the legoes go in the attic to when they go on ebay that. I did think about keeping it, but there were too many parts from bigger sets in there, and I needed money to buy Rahi.

Note how by this point I'd just completely given up on miniature figures. They're just...so ugly lol, catering builds to fit those blocky awkward giants in was just not fun.

Most of the other builds are all one-offs after this point.

Steam Castle

Except this one. I tried a couple times to give it more texture, but it was hard at the scale. Not really notable at all. Basically only made it because I had enough black connectors to make a circle.

Return of the Steam Automotive

It happened again.

This was basically made right after I watched the movie from memory, so that's why all the colours are off. The gears still work!

And I took a second crack at it. its such a pleasing design.

Aero Corps.

Structure wise this one is really accurate lol, but trying to fit it with a miniature figure just doesn't' work. I was really happy with the custom wings.

Aqua Corps.

I was really happy with the arms. I bet its illegal, but who cares lol, it works. Never even tried to fit a man in this.

Blimp

This was the biggest thing I made, and thus suffered the most from my lack of parts. It should be noted that the bulk of this stuff was built at once, even though I never took a group shot.

I had one wright flyer set and that's where all the tan panels for the tiny fraction of the air sack came from, the curve was just some click hinges but the panels were so heavy they had to be held held up with strings.

The biggest problem was always things with multiple identical components. It was a stretch to make the 6 fingers of this crab thing even with such a simple construction.

Legged Tank and Steam Trooper

I love this tank that appears in like 3 shots and in 1 is getting blown up and in another is dead. Why didn't I use a minifig for the steam trooper? I hear you ask, well, the backpack was more important for me, and I couldn't have a breast plate and a backpack without a major headache.

The linkages don't really do anything productive, except make it hard to rebuild the boxor in 12 years. But they looked cool.

This one really benefitted from me getting the collector's edition of the movie that came with a booklet that featured some concept art and renders. You barely see this thing in the movie, and certainly not from the back.

Flying Machine

I call this one the "I saw someone make this on brickset using revolvers and it looked really good, but all I have are brown muskets because my lego collection is a couple pirate sets from before I was born, bionicles, and the wright flyer".

British Tank

This was the second version, the earlier one was too bad even for me.

I didn't have the stuff to make custom treads so instead I just used the giant chain from the wright flyer and faked the thickness lol. I think that's a pretty good Union Jack for being done freehand on a tiny flat tile with some not very fine tipped sharpies.

Yes the boiler was held together with rubber bands why wouldn't it be.

Say hello to Mr. "Everyone in this movie has a moustache because its 1866 but I only have one miniature figure head with a moustache".

I was quite taken with how the gun was a separate unit that could be detached.

Monocycle

Ray's a part of it, it can't stay together without him. Its all just wedged in there. I got some very used lego once that had some parts of an old police station from the 80s in it, and some of the pieces weren't even broken! So I managed to salvage the back half of a bike from there.

I also made Edward.

Since I didn't have any brown sharpies I just stuck on some paper coloured brown with a marker. At some point I found that the glue I was using to stick the papers on also could rub the prints off so that was cool, saved sanding. Very few miniature figures from my childhood remained.

And this concludes a short look at my dark past. If for some reason you want to see more, there's some more photos of the older ones can be found on this brickshelf.

I wrote a big post about Steamboy over here, if this didn't scare you away.

Notes ¹Short for "My Own Creation". ²Short for "Studs Not On Top"³. ³Often abbreviated as S.N.O.T.². ⁴If the sight of such things disturbs you please leave the post now. ⁵Fans of legoes liken the part of their life when they aren't buying legoes to a period of scientific and cultural stagnation.

[swalker2000]

Well, I have watched the movie twice, so here's my full review of Despicable Me 4!

MAJOR MAJOR SPOILER WARNING!

Man, I can't believe this huge wait is finally over. I'm gonna miss the excitement and anticipation, until something else in this franchise is announced I guess lol.

As for the movie itself, I dunno know where to start

DM4, as a concept, is perfect for this franchise. All the family going undercover and being placed into witness protection right after Gru and Lucy welcome a biological baby, and then taking on new identities? Think of the potential! How can this possibly go wrong!?

Well, when we then start incorporating Mega Minion scenes, and Poppy and her parents, and then following a villain alongside all of that. That's how it goes wrong.

All of the ideas for brilliant scenes following the family, developing the characters and expanding on them as people, are rushed through so fast that it felt like they barely even happened. Margo struggling to fit in? Over in a second. Gru and Lucy starting new jobs? Over in a second. Edith and Agnes causing mayhem in their karate class? Over in a second.

Don't get me wrong, these are all AMAZING scenes, especially that karate class one! But again, the chance to really explore these characters is squandered because it felt like the movie was glossing through all of it as fast as possible, just to fit in all the other aspects of this REALLY bloated plot. I enjoyed myself watching those scenes yes, but when I return to this movie in the future, I'm always gonna be left feeling like I just want MORE of them. I'm gonna wear them all out FAST 😅

I also have to be honest. I didn't like Poppy. I wish Illumination would stop pointlessly introducing new characters like her and instead just focus on the amazing ones they already have, especially when we had the baby introduced too. Why not just age Edith up a bit and then have her go on that school heist with him? Would've been more faithful to the franchise imo.

The Mega Minions were also COMPLETELY pointless. Why not just make an entire spin-off movie surrounding this concept? Then, it won't interfere with the pacing of a movie that's also trying to follow the family, a new villain, AND Poppy!

Then, there's the ending. Once again, the concept is AWESOME, the idea of all the past villains coming back that is. But the execution is just...what? Why the heck is Gru singing and being all buddy-buddy with the guy who just stole his baby and turned him into a human-cockroach hybrid, before trying to kill Gru and raise his child as his own? Like, that JUST happened? Excuse me!?

The final fight was also SUCH a mixed bag. In comparison to the past movies, this one doesn't even come close. Gru Junior revolting against Maxime after his dad says he loves him is adorable and a strong moment, but a lot of what leads up to and then follows that is kinda stupid. Didn't really get the same level of anxiety as I did watching DM1 or DM2, or even DM3 for that matter. I guess I just don't buy Maxime as a villain AT ALL.

All I'll say is, that karate class scene and the supermarket scene and the parts where the family are being moved into their new home are the true redeeming moments that save this movie. They're the only parts I'm excited to rewatch again and again and again. The karate scene especially, which reminds me...

Edith getting her own little subplot and attention put a gigantic smile on my face. This movie deserves MASSIVE credit for that, and I don't wanna understate how much I appreciated it! She's SUCH a fantastic character, and when she's given a chance to shine, she definitely✨SHINES✨!! It makes me crave a mini-movie centered around her even more. Out of the gorls, she's been the most ignored in recent times, and this one was an improvement from the last two movies in that regard, even if the gorls in general were still somewhat sidelined.

Speaking of those three, this movie completely neglected the idea of them being concerned that Gru and Lucy would start favoring Gru Jr. as their biological child, and then them both reassuring them otherwise and displaying how much they truly love them. It's a perfect idea that's RIGHT THERE.

This franchise desperately needs a TV series following the family. Like, DESPERATELY!!!

4/10

[zanysmurf]

Sorry if this has been asked before but what is Zany's Smurf gimmick?

see, you think this would be an easy question to answer and by all means it should be! so get ready for a disjointed one. multiple, even. i just kind of say things here:

my original idea was that he'd have a gimmick similar to flighty (always doing various "zany" activities when he's not helping greedy) or jokey (annoying misc. mischief). "zany" is a word people use to describe like any cartoony nonsense, basically interchangable with "wacky", OR a noun to mean an eccentric person (which he was supposed to be) so it's hard to narrow that down. that was supposed to work to my advantage but at the same time it really didn't LOL

one of zany's activities is taking dares when he's bored and he'll do the dumbest things. jokey likes taking advantage of that and smurfs such as smurfette are like "oh for smurfs sake leave him alone. stop daring him to stick his head in dirt for hours" and greedy would say something like "you shouldn't do that type of stuff you need self control." [a smurf dares him to eat 30 cookies] "30???? i can do more than that"

the thing is: i created zany in 2019 for the sole purpose of interacting with my favorite smurfs / shipping him with greedy. i didn't want to use jokey for that stuff, i wanted something that felt more like me at the time. i was like. having a lot of trouble figuring all this out because i usually just wanted to focus on his dynamic with greedy. in older posts you might see him in scene gear with a patterned bandana because i was generally embracing my younger self back then and self-expression / having fun. he fell under 'smurfs if it was modern' or 'what if a modern day smurf was in the show's canon like a time traveler' au imaginings whenever i wasn't picturing him in the show canon, but i think i've drifted away from that (though i still completely get the appeal of the scene zany design)

speaking of him and jokey, i figured maybe they'd pull pranks together or something and when i learned the historical definition of a zany i was like *JAWDROP*

anyway: i'd say zany's gimmick was meant to be unpredictable by nature, but he could also be a vehicle for lighthearted poking at the show itself. ie. he'd be in a cage and notice the bars are tall and wide enough apart so he'd just slip right out. greedy/another smurf would say "how did you do that". and he'd shrug. that's more self-aware than i usually go for but if i was making a joke like that i'd want it to be silly

overall zany is a lot of things the show wouldn't allow: peyo hated when hb made new smurfs so a bunch of them never made it into the show / only lasted a while. his design is very simple but says nothing about his gimmick in a way that i feel would piss off both hb AND peyo. (which tbh i was thinking about redesigning him in some way at some point). there was also a bit of dissonance in terms of "i want this character to be more fleshed out than the show would allow, but i treat the other characters a similar way so it's fine" and making jokes like he's just some minor smurf who by all means shouldn't exist in-universe, ie. "omg remember zany he was in scampering smurfs in the background at 5:06". at one point he had a backstory and stuff that really honed in on the latter idea of "he's too different/not supposed to be here" ie. he used to be something other than a smurf or created artificially but i don't think i even like those ideas anymore

in comparison to fan characters/sonas i've made recently, zany is not one i'm particularly proud of. i love him and greedy but everything was suuuuch a mess. as the above demonstrates, i had far too many conflicting ideas. maybe that's part of the joke of who zany is. or maybe one of these days i'll try and give him something more cohesive. we'll see

[crystalelemental]

This is one of the fics that brought me back to writing. This has been, in one fashion or another, in the works for a long time. Like, before the Legends Arceus fics long.

Valerie time. This follows the structure of the Geeta fic from yesterday, being a sort of "how they met their partner bit." In Valerie's case, how she met her Sylveon. For a fic under 2k words, I feel like there's a lot to this, possibly because of how many iterations this went through, but it is quite possibly my favorite thus far. Commentary under the cut.

*deep breath* Okay, where to start?

During the S-tier post, I did a lot of talking about Valerie broadly, and specifically that I always conceptualized her as a Kimono Girl given her origins in Johto and Eeveelution partner. Masters completely dropped this with the Silver event, but I conceptualize this as purely literal, where Valerie is not presently a Kimono Girl. The question is whether she was (past tense) or has the makings but never was (why for?). I lean toward the latter, and left it open ended as to why.

Essentially, my answer is Trans Valerie. This is one of my big character headcanons, that answer this question pretty decisively. Why wasn't she a Kimono Girl? Because at the time, no one saw her as a girl. Despite admiring them and wanting to be like them, she just wasn't allowed.

Now, I do think she has a generally positive relationship with the current Kimono Girls. I always considered this more of a situation where the old guard was very traditional and wouldn't allow it, but the current group always thought of her like their little sister and were very welcoming. And it was that lens I kept trying to filter this through.

I mentioned the Legends Arceus fics? Initially, I was going to lead into those with a fic around Valerie and Silver, with Valerie going to visit the Kimono Girls, and putting on a special performance about the Kalos region's Xerneas, which would allude to it granting that eternal life to Cogita and Volo, and that its blessing is not always a good thing. This fell through for a lot of reasons. One was that I just couldn't get things where I wanted, and was more focused on the Legends Arceus stuff, so I decided to skip it. Another was that...as I mentioned with the Erika/Jasmine fic, I worried a bit about just dropping the headcanon and not having much else to go on with it, worried about how it would be received or whether I was like...being accurate with the experience? Which I've kinda come to the conclusion that doesn't make sense as a worry, and I'm being ridiculous for no reason, so I'm dropping that entirely and just writing as I feel the character is. I'm hoping that comes across well.

What happened, however, was that this fic started out going through her interactions with the Kimono Girls and that whole "they acknowledge her as she is" thing, but it...kinda still didn't fit right. It felt out of place with the focus of what I wanted the fic to be, which was her meeting Sylveon. So unfortunately that also got cut. Maybe one day I'll have a fic with Valerie and the Kimono Girls interacting, but it's apparently not today.

What's funny is that, around the point I finished that scene, I realized I had lost the thread, and had no idea how I was going to structure her meeting Eevee anymore. On a whim, I decided sure, Eevee's in the woods, that's a place Eevee would live. But this is Ecruteak, and there are ghosts. And the woods are spooky, and connect to Tin Tower, where the trees in HGSS are kind in perpetual Autumn mode. And this is where things started to really take shape, and the entire fic had to go through a complete re-write.

This fic is my first attempt at being ~spooky~. My goal was to tell a sort of supernatural story that's meant to be a little unsettling in vibe, and leaving a lot of what exactly happened open-ended.

The conclusion, as intended, is to question whether Valerie simply changed as a person, or is a different person. Ho-oh symbolizes rebirth, but its powers only work on the dead according to legend. She would have had to die to be resurrected in that way. But I wanted to kinda link that to her Sylveon. I decided to delve into the Kimono Girls all having Eeveelution partners, with the main five being central to Ecruteak's mythology, while Sylveon is an unknown factor. Given Eevee's presence in the woods, and participation in the weird almost haunting and possible Ho-oh encounter, it effectively acts as the fae would, being mischievous and leading a child into the woods to maybe die? Its own evolution into Sylveon following that encounter is supposed to mirror the sudden change in Valerie, who starts to be more confident in how she sees herself.

I'm...really satisfied with how this turned out. I really like where things went and how it came together. And I'm hoping, if you've read this, you enjoyed it too.

[venjamin-kingdomhearts]

Ventus and Vanitas for the character asks!! 3, 8, 21, 22, and 23! Sorry if that's too many? You don't gotta do all of em!

HELLO thank you for the ask!! this is a lotta questions but i'm excited to answer them!! Warning, there's a little negativity since some of the questions ask for dislikes about the characters. I love both Ven and Vanitas, I'm just saying my personal thoughts on them! + If you don't agree with these thoughts that's not a huge deal to me, we just agree to disagree LOL

3. Least favorite canon thing about this character?

Ventus - The "You're awful, Aqua" scene. Please Ventus I know you're upset but APOLOGIZE TO AQUA she didn't deserve that. I wish his and Aqua's relationship had more focus in general, because they're really cute when they're together. I genuinely hope Ventus apologizes to her for being a brat in BBS though

Vanitas - To be honest, anything I dislike about Vanitas comes from fanon, since I feel Vanitas does his role as antagonist really well.

8. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you despise?

Ventus - Two big things.

One: Portraying him as a coldblooded killer when in comes to the KHUX/Strelitzia stuff. I think it's a lot more fun that Ventus didn't mean to hurt anyone, but ended up being responsible for so much pain. It's really tragic, and I think it makes KHUX more interesting as opposed to "Ventus killed Strelitzia out of malice". Also, it's genuinely just funnier like that. I know it's dark but nothing makes me laugh more than the mental image of 10 year old Ventus covered in blood just going "wow is this strawberry jam?? lol how'd this end up here?"

Two: Not the biggest fan of people like. Boiling Ventus' personality to just "oh he's baby". I think Ventus being childish is a really important character flaw, but he's got a lot more to him than just that, and his youthful nature has upsides and downsides. On this note I 100% think Ventus knows what sex is and that that's how babies are made. I know it's a weirdly popular portrayal to just have him not know what sex is at 17 years old. It's also a lot funnier if Ventus just has a different vocabulary from the other characters his age when it comes to adult topics and doesn't understand slang because Master Eraqus taught him that it's impolite to use term XYZ or whatever. Vanitas - Okay this is rough because there's a lot in the KH fandom's portrayals of Vanitas that I really don't like and other things that I really love. But to match Ven I'll boil it down to two big things: One: This one is kinda hard to explain but. I know that Ventus and the Wayfinder Trio DO NOT have to be present in every "Vanitas Redemption Fanfiction" but it really grinds my gears when they're treated as, like, 'close-minded' and completely left out of Vanitas' life. The idea that Vanitas is secretly a good guy and it's just his relationship with the Wayfinders/the Wayfinders themselves are the problem is just such a boring take. They don't have to be on good terms but have Vanitas earn their tolerance, have them settle things, man! It's SO JUICY when they have to work things out or Vanitas feels actual regret and isn't just handed the "you're a good guy now and we trust you" stuff on a silver platter. Ventus, Sora, and Vanitas are a trio...I think that if Sora takes in Vanitas as a friend, he should at least try to understand Ventus' fears about the whole thing.

Two: I think its a BILLION times funnier if Vanitas is shorter than Ventus but SO MANY PEOPLE MAKE HIM TALLER IT PISSES ME OFF. Vanitas and Ventus are either the same size OR Vanitas is shorter. No more tall Vanitas. I am on my hands and knees begging you all. Short King Vanitas. SHORT. KING. VANITAS. As a short person I need this. DO IT FOR ME.

21. If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like?

Ventus - Hardest thing for me to write when it comes to Ventus are. Sassy remarks/comebacks, and times I'd KNOW he'd be a brat but I can't bring myself to write him saying anything too harsh. But my favorite things to do? I love giving Ventus issues/fears that he would reasonably develop after his 12 year nap. I don't care if canon says he doesn't have horrible insomnia after KH3. He SHOULD have horrible insomnia and I WILL write him crying in frustration when he's struggling with sleep.

Vanitas - I actually don't write Vanitas much. I feel like I can't do him justice, but it's fun to have him just be a douche-bag sometimes. I think I'm not great at his dialogue, but writing about his feelings towards Ventus is fun.

22. If you're a fic reader, what's something you like in fics when it comes to ths character? Something you don't like?

Ventus - I LOVE fics where Ventus is forced to take a more responsible role, or has to balance his childish nature with a growing sense of maturity. This is one of the reasons I'm SUCH a huge fan of fanfics where Ventus is like a big brother figure to Sora. I also LOVE LOVE LOVE fics where Ventus' anger is explored like. Oh he is FULL of anger, man. As much love and kindness that's in his heart. There is Hatred there too. AND ANY FIC THAT REVOLVES AROUND HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH SORA AND HOW BEING IN SORA'S HEART AFFECTS HIM. Fic recs that have some of the above tropes!

Hurricane Heartbeat by Dorked

Sleeping hearts often wander by Bommie20

How Long Have You Known Sora, Exactly? by 13thSyndicate

Three Quarters by angeltheatre For Ventus stuff I don't like, see question 8's answer

Vanitas - I love when he's kinda. Forcibly made to form a "truce" with Ventus but keeps testing him. I love fics where Ven's just minding his own business and Vanitas is like "I'm gonna start shit >:)" and they both get called out for being idiots when they fight each other. But OH MAN. MORE THAN THAT. I love love love when fics have Vanitas adapt the attitude of "No one can hurt Ventus BUT ME." it's my favorite flavor of protective Vanitas. For stuff I don't like, see question 8's answer

23. Favorite picture of this character?

[totaldramafan-lauri]

J-just putting it out there: I'm totally fine with asks like the last one. I'm completely cool with it. E-even if I seemed uncomfortable, I was just flustered and surprised, that's all.......S-so, if you wanna talk about that kinda thing with me, g-go ahead.....I-I just can't promise I'll be able to not act a bit stupid......>////////>

Th-the reason why I'm so....h-hesitant.....t-to go into detail with....s-smut of Golden Cheese, when I've written full smutfics before, is.....m-mainly three reasons, and they're all me problems that I-I wanna get better at in the future.....

I-I'm still getting used to the fact that I'm free to talk about that kinda thing freely with my fellow simps now, after so long of keeping it to myself....out of embarrassment of my sexual tastes, and fear of exploring them being seen as gross.......I-I have nothing against other people discussing it, but I've always been shy with it myself.....

E-even after writing it so much, I still just don't think I'm good at it. I've never been confident with my ability at writing smut scenes. Th-they could be FUN to write, but they never seemed to come out in exactly the way I wanted them to, and when I compared my fics to other peoples' fics and saw how much better they were at wording everything, and capturing the mood and the moments....I-I just could never reach that level. I still wrote my fics for fun, but I've never thought they were good. So the idea that other people could want more of it from me j-just baffles me....

Despite this, I've been able to pull it off as well as I could before. But....this time, with HER, there's one extra hurdle that scares me. And that's the sheer difference between her and me. It'd be me, someone with very little experience, writing a character who has literal CENTURIES of experience. No matter how well I try to write, I would NEVER be able to live up to that and capture it in my writing. I can write dialogue, and I can talk about moods, and share headcanons about her (her tastes, her favorite general things to do, etc.), but when it comes to specific sc-scenes with her, I'll usually just blank. Would someone with her level of experience do THAT, or THAT? How would she do it? She knows what she's doing, and I don't. I'm the person writing her. How do I know what to do? I DON'T. Th-that's a big reason why I don't go into detail with my posts about my fantasies. I-I focus on other things....I talk about foreplay, I talk about her voice and the things she says (I DO like writing dialogue, it's the most fun part), I talk about how I feel and the atmosphere around her....b-but when it comes to the actual act, I blank. I can't write it. I can't translate what I'm seeing in my head into text. Not just out of embarrassment, but because of THAT.

I-I hope I explained myself well enough....I-I really wanna get better at talking about it, but.....i-it's really really hard to write the whole thing still.....

D-despite that.....I-I have an idea in my head for a potential smutfic of her that I've had for months....M-maybe if I get confident enough in this, I'll consider actually writing it....

But not now. Not yet......>////////<

[veebs-hates-video-games]

Ok Unicorn Overlord will get its own post at some point now that I'm finally done with it (spoilers: it's pretty great but not perfect, and I still like Engage more for SRPGs I've played semi-recently, but it's definitely one of my favorite things I've played so far this year), but here's some other stuff that's accumulated while I've been busy playing that or otherwise not posting on here.

I finally got around to playing Night in the Woods, or at least some of it. I get why people like it so much, but I think it's just not really my thing. The characters and the world are fun and everything, but when I'm a few hours in and have zero idea how far I am in the game because there's been zero actual plot so far, just random slice of life stuff, I'm probably going to get distracted and go do something else.

I tried to keep going because so many people I know really love it, but then I ran into the problem that it's possibly the only game I have on the Switch that's literally unplayable for me when the sun is up unless I go hide in a dark closet or something. I'm not turning up the brightness for the dark scenes with an average color of #010002 just to get my retinas seared off as soon as it switches to daytime again, especially when I don't have to do that in any other game. I have the fun combo of being noticeably more light sensitive than average but also having moderately bad and somewhat uncorrectable vision, and that just doesn't mesh well with trying to play this game at any time other than the middle of the night.

Death end re;Quest 2 was going to get its own post, but I just can't work up the effort to write it. I actually completely forgot I'd even played it a few days after finishing, that's how little of an impression it left on me. It was such a letdown after how interesting the first one was (despite all the problems I also had with it). I have no idea why they dropped the focus on most stuff that made the first one stand out as unique and went with much more generic horror this time around.

I could complain about the gameplay being less fun this time around for some reason (even though I never used the genre shift mechanics in the original, so it's not like it was because that was missing) or how predictable the story was or how much wasted potential the characters had (please let them have more than one personality trait), but I think I'll settle for complaining about fanservice and call it a day.

I appreciate that they dialed back on the visual side of the fanservice stuff from the first game, even if they probably only did it because so many of the characters are underage this time around, but they made up for it with their characterization instead. Look, if you have the right to write potentially interesting but ultimately relatively shallow characters and fill them with your own fetishes, I have the right to not like it and complain about it. Let Rottie have a personality trait other than "is gay", please. And just because you don't have her running around half naked because she's only 13 doesn't mean you're not still a weird creep for making her Extremely Normal about smelling Mai all the time or for making both DerQ games each have young girls talking about wetting their pants more than every other game I've played in my life combined (with the notable exception of Sahad Ys8, who somehow manages to do it twice as much as these games do combined while still being a pretty likable guy).

Maybe the story finally goes somewhere if you do the NG+ stuff, but I don't have the fortitude to drag myself through that, especially since you apparently need to do all the side quests to unlock all the dialogues, and the side quests suck and are just filler/padding. I didn't mind doing NG+ in the first one because I was actually invested in the story, but I just don't care enough this time. I'm not feeling optimistic about future games in the series, but if they're closer to what the first one was like I could be persuaded to try another if it's on sale cheap enough.

And I guess to end on a positive note, Vampire Survivors is still great. I originally played it on my computer before any of the DLC existed, and I did a bunch of what was in the game at the time but got distracted before finishing everything. I always meant to go back to it and do more and try the DLC, but I haven't been using my computer as much in the time between then and now because seeing is hard.

So I grabbed it and all the DLC on my Switch instead because it's practically free anyway, and I replayed everything I already did before plus all the new stuff, and I regret nothing. The first couple DLCs (Legacy of the Moonspell and Tides of the Foscari) were a bit underwhelming, even if some of the new characters and weapons were kind of fun, but the Amogus and Contra ones were actually surprisingly great. I was expecting crossover stuff to be worse and just a cash grab, but they actually did some really neat stuff with them and they were a lot of fun. I think I would've liked Foscari more if it had a proper adventure mode like the others to introduce you to the new stuff instead of just blasting through it with all your existing upgrades intact, but they haven't gone back and redone that one yet to add that. I suspect it'll be good when they do though, considering everything they've learned from making the more recent ones.

[isa-ghost]

About how much time a day, or a week do you spend on writing your fic?

Cause I've been reading fics for years, but haven't started writing until relatively recently. I always knew in the back of my head that it took time to write and come up with the stories, but until recently I hadn't even begun to actually understand the time and energy it actually takes to write a fic. both short and long ones.

Now that I've started to think more about it, it would probably benefit fandom spaces a lot to more widely aknowledge the time it takes. It could probably help with the consumeconsumeconsume mindset of fancreations that I know that I've had, and that are present in a lot of fandoms, especially bigger ones

100% that last part, yeah.

See, for me it's even more complicated because not only am I squeezing writing between irl obligations like class, homework, work, family dinner, sleep, etc.

But I also have ADHD, so I'm battling my attention span and the temptations of my hyperfixations, as well as keeping up with my friends, fandom spaces, etc. I don't want to neglect any of those.

But focus is very difficult when I don't have absolutely nothing going on, which means I often need to shut everything completely out (which can take a lot of self control). I'll vanish on my friends and social media for hours, but still pause here and there to catch up on what I've missed for a short while before returning to writing because I HATE falling deep out of the loop and having a lot to catch up on is overwhelming. On top of that, how easily words are flowing and such also impacts how much or how long I write.

So I don't know if I have a simple or precise answer as to how long. But nonetheless, it's HOURS.

So far, for the 4 chapters that are published, I've sat down multiple days in a row OR every other day if I have time-consuming irl obligations, and written as much as I could before something depleted my motivation or I reached a good stopping point. Lately that's amounted to 1-5 paragraphs depending on the scene I'm at.

If it's something my plot plan has left more open-ended, it can take hours for me to work out how exactly I want to get to the next plot point. The Ch 3 Pissa date and stretching out the Ch 4 Eggza day was MISERABLE /lh because it was super open-ended since I wanted to give myself room to improvise, I don't like rigidly over-planning things bc a lot of the fun in writing is filling blanks between points. I get some AWESOME ideas in the moment thar aren't initially planned in my plot. For example, the foreshadowing I included in the Ch 2 nightmare where he hears Missa scream? If you check my post of my plan after I published the chapter, I pulled that out of my ass. It was originally just supposed to be a nightmare where he could hear Fit, Etoiles & Missa yelling to each other. I never planned for him to hear what's implied to be Missa injured.

But even though improvising is important (and required at some points of AMFMN), it's kinda hard to sit down and think of what to do with those parts when your hyperfixation streamer streams 3 days a week and on the days he doesn't, you have class + other things to do + other streams you refuse to miss + friends + etc etc etc and therefore you don't have a perfect distraction-free time to just go ham.

It takes a lot of self-discipline and control to not engage with stuff so I can focus on writing. And even still, depending on how cooperative my brain is that day, that can still be hours of writing.

Generally I try to chip away at least 3 paragraphs or get from one plot point to the next per day until the chapter is finished.

So TLDR; I spend hours a day, which totals to even more hours a week, working on a chapter.

It's equal parts because I get in the zone with writing and smash out a huge amount of the plot points planned for the chapter, OR I'm struggling with flow/attention span/a bunch of other things.

Due to my schedule, Tuesdays, Saturdays and Sundays are usually the best days for me to write. But even still, I have class Tuesday until close to noon, possibly other streams (curse you Sneeg and Fit /lh), work every other Saturday, family daily routine things like dinner, and the occasional plans with irl friends.

So uh. I do be battling the horrors sometimes to get chapters out. But now that Phil is finally possessed, I have a feeling I'll be breezing through things easier. I know a lot of what's happening next and I'm a whore for the drama. :3c

You have NO IDEA how much watching people scream and lose their minds over crumbs and currently published chapters motivates me. I'm so fucking excited for late game fic. Like Chapter 9 onwards. Ohohohough

[varreslittlestlambkin]

Thoughts on Dune Messiah

I just finished the audiobook during my work shift and have come away with mixed feelings on this novel. Spoiler warning

One the one hand the rich lore and character arcs of Dune and it's greater universe have expanded greatly and introduced very unique concepts that make my brain spin in funny ways of fascination. (its the Bene Tleilaxu)

On the other some revealed factions felt like strange retcons to have existed and be so important considering how important they are to the narrative as the main mover. (its the Bene Tleilaxu, its mostly them that vex me).

Their wide range of abilities of raising the freakin dead, complete shapeshifting, and robot eyes feel incongruent with how the setting was built in the first Dune novel. Makes me wonder where they were during all that, how no one ever commented on these space freaks while talking about all the other space freaks.

Overall I didn't much care for Scytale themself either, but most of my problems with him stem from Paul's inaction and how his reasoning is under explored so I'll focus on that later.

The opening of the novel with the secret torture from the inquisition that Paul either doesn't know about because he has no reason to foresee it, or the implication that it is so ubiquitous he sees it everywhere and can't stop, mixed with the choking rasp of a tortured historian, writers love writers, and the fervent hatred of the interrogator is I think the best scene in the entire book. It is a shame there was not more like it throughout, herein at the beginning is the perfect showcase of the failure of the empire under Paul, the horrors of the jihad, and a massive wealth of implications said with very few words.

But then we switch to Irulan and the main problems reared very immediately. The narrative feels downright mean to Irulan, and all the female characters in general feel shafted. While she is somewhat of an evil space witch, everyone in the story seems intensely bent on hating her despite her not really doing anything to deserve it. Also its unpleasant how every time the narrative talks about Bene Gesserit control it has it fail every time its a woman doing it, making all woman in the book feel like weak failures. No idea how she comes up with always loving Paul at the end, if I was her I'd knife those kids out of spite for all the shit I had to put up with.

The reverend mother out and out calling her a bitch feels very jarring to her characterization, while she did seem like someone abusive to her subordinates there was always the previous implication of some regard for her students. Jessica both loved and hates her, but I don't know how Irulan didn't ever try to comeuppance her for her constant insults and demeanment with no reinforcement. These reactions are how you lose spies, why would she act like such an idiot.

Chani remains a complete cardboard cutout with no character beyond I love you Paul sure would suck if I were to tragically die, very disappointing. Thank god for Zendaya

Alia despite being an awakened one with generations of knowldge , mental prowess, and Gesserit training is subject to a wealth of failure. Failure to predict the enemies plans, failure to control her emotions, failure to resist temptations. And unnecessary nude scenes where the author talked about her boobs and how she needs married soon. Yay thanks for writing this about a teenage girl Frank. Maybe the teenagedness presents the answer to my questions about here weird characterization, maybe its just hard to balance centuries of knowledge and being young and stupid, or maybe a character like that is just really hard to write.

Her "love interest" Hayt, aka the first of many Duncan Idahos apparently sucks how overspoiled that it is, existed. His chapters provided nothing to me but eastern koans and constant mentions of Mentat computations. Easily the most boring part of the book, he did literally nothing of importance. Then he fucks a kid at the end. I really hope he gets more interesting in future books since he's coming back.

The conspiracy needed more scenes showing the planning and execution of attacks and characters thinking in my opinion. Far too much happens off screen with no forewarning, which is frustrating in a book about the trap of prescience, it feels like a missed opportunity to not have Paul/Reader see stuff coming but being unable to stop it. Could have added to the crushing feeling of the avalanche of fate.

In particular the betrayal of the rogue Fremen and the stealing of a sandworm feel like things that needed scenes. I need the planning, logistics, and mindsets of everything involved, it sounds so much more interesting than Paul deliberately walking into a trap and talking to an annoying Dwarf with big feet.

I especially wanted far more of the guild, as the ones with more limited prescience, with them not being able to see paul and paul not being able to see them there could have been a fun element of cat and mouse baiting each other. But Edric and by extension the guild are the backbone of the conspiracy is treated as joke in favor the Bene Tleilaxu which is all kinds of disappointing. I want more drugged out their gourd mutant fishmen. The horror of the spice is too cool, I want space cocaine dammit.

Paul's not blindness was very cool, seems like Frank Herbert focused on that section of the book the most, we all love the implied blind seer joke. That and it actually shows horrible brutality, which feels too glossed over in this series so far. I don't know about others, but it's hard to feel like the Jihad was so terrible when the scope of horror is confined to maybe barely 4 scenes in Messiah, and like 2 in book 1.

The stone burner scene while drawn out and under foreshadowed is still a great highlight, a bomb made to melt eyes and crack planets violating the established code of conduct feels so uniquely Dune. A horrible cruelty for crueltys sake on massive scale. It's great :]

Chani dying made me feel little. The tykebombs are interesting little guys, wonder how they'll turn out in Children and beyond.

the confrontation with Scytale felt very stilted, between being able to just zip up to the babies because Duncan/Hayt swooned at his own memories for the third time felt silly, though not as silly as magic baby vision. Although that was admittedly kind of cool

Hard to really believe all that conspiracy bothering wound up being the Bene Tleilaxu just wanting a shitload of money, and maybe something else. The awakened Ghola plan just on the timescale within the plot made very little sense, since they didn't know how to awaken Gholas until Duncan did, so why would they plot around being able to Ghola Chani and awaken her, why did they try to get her with Paul at the Stone Burner trap, or even what did the other factions even really needed them for. The Bene Gesserit already had the spy and the Spacing Guild already had the capital and unfindable base. Feels like they should have been more important to the climax.

The Bene Gesserit of course wanted the yummy cummies, but there is a new patch rule about no Turkey Bastering it so that plotline drops, that and several scenes wondering about incest that I cant tell if they were fetishy or just a reference to old nobility inbreeding. Probably the second considering the original Harkonnen x Harkonnen plan.

Perhaps what made it hard to really appreciate was the lack of a unifying fun antagonist like the Harkonnens, no remnant remained apparently to seek revenge. We don't even ever see a Corino plot for revenge that has a scene. No personal intriuge or hatred drives anything like in the first book, takes some of the vim out of it. I miss the evil flying fat man.

As for Paul, it feels like Frank was no longer sure how to write in his prescience and doom, the weight of inevitably from the first book is mostly gone now. The jihad was skipped and his ascension to the throne is done. The only fate left is death and avoiding it but Paul is playing a game of survival only for Chani. Which is an interesting idea, but there is much less implication and foreshadowing of doom in this plotline so Paul just kind of meanders about doing nothing but being talked at and taking few actions. Which makes sense but I would have proffered having him grapple with or justify it.

Hands down the best scenes are the ones of common soldiers and people. The implications of the mass pilgrimages eating up resources causing havoc, the soldiers being disillusioned, Faraok's falling out of the jihad mindset when he was taken under ocean waves for the first time, the secret inquisition, the prayers at Alia's church. These scenes better than any other encapsulate the horror of Paul achieving his Godhead and dominion, about how he broke the galaxy. I am desperately hungry for more of this.

Overall I thought the book was ok. I'm still quite excited to read Children of Dune. I know Jessica shows up in it which is hopefully good because I missed her in this one.

[claudiajcregg]

S5 Pregnancy AU - I’d love to hear about!

Welp, this is embarrassing – mostly because this has been sitting in my inbox for almost two weeks, and I kept saying “I need to write something up!” and then… I didn't. (Or rather, I did, then I forgot to post it.) Sorry for the wait, Lil! Thank you for asking <3 (I'll divide this up because I keep writing about the process and how it came to be, instead of any actual, interesting facts.)

I have talked about this one in the past though I don't have a tag for it. The gist is what it says… (Early) S5 but CJ is pregnant. I had this idea over a year ago when I hit mid/late S4 in my rewatch. I thought it'd be interesting to explore some of her disappointment at that time if you added an unexpected pregnancy to it, even if I had the idea before even getting there, lol. Think, the ending-ish of Han, or parts of Disaster Relief. (Both of which do feature! I surprisingly focus a lot on Disaster Relief.)

The thing with S5 is that the timeline is so weird, and I feel I've also created one that isn't entirely realistic but I think it works within the story. (IIRC, the season starts in “May” but also July, then the Shutdown is in November, lmao. A few of the episodes are sneaky two-parters that flow into each other… See 5-6, 7-8.) I've finally gotten out of the no-man's-land I wrote myself into and the next chapter or two, knowing myself, will deal with 7-8! There are a couple of scenes that should be fun to write! (There are so many details I want to mention that are technically spoilers for early twists…)

Every time I had the urge to write it, I'd edit whatever outline I was working in, and though I kept some details… my muse decided to make a big change early on that completely changed the fic's direction. That, and my inability to write anything succinctly. No reason why this story will cross the 100k barrier in a couple of chapters, tops. (It's sitting at 85k across 12 chapters. I think it'll be less than 20 chapters total. Hopefully.)

This might be too long to share snippets, but I've shared some either on the server or here, a couple of months ago.

For more irrelevant details on the “process”…

As I hinted at, I wrote an outline or two around this time last year, because I couldn't stop thinking about it. When I say outlines, it's a general path for the story to follow – ideas, suggestions of dialogue and/or scenes I write to myself; all focused around some sort of chapter structure. I find it much easier to write if I write down where a chapter might go, even if it's just a few lines saying “This happens → then this → finally this;” otherwise, it takes me months. Some would say that I should post it and get encouragement that way but… I hate being dependent on something I can control even less than my muse? That's not for me, thank you. Mad respect for those who work like that.

It was meant to be short – 1-2 “long” chapters per trimester, more if needed, but then interludes in between trimesters. It's not that. Most chapters currently cover 1-2 weeks, but there is not really a pattern. I was afraid of having a fic that would take over my life like the WOWO did three years ago… And it has, but I've also taken breaks and not felt too guilty about them. I definitely don't want this one to sit in my drive and have me wondering what to do with it.

(The novel, aka WOWO, aka IM AU (2021): 150k written in a little over five months, even with extended breaks over the summer. Still hits, even with all its crazy decisions, maybe because of them, but it's also been too long, and it will always remind me of someone who kinda hurt me. Attempts to replace those memories by sharing the story with others, trying to gather whether it's worth posting, have failed, lmao. One day! Maybe!)

But yeah. Uuuuuhhhh. As I've said… Twelve chapters in ten months, 85k words… It's still not done. In fact, I've repeatedly said I am unsure of how to end it (beyond the obvious), but I'd estimate it to be under 20 chapters. I'm not posting it anywhere yet because I want to be able to edit it as a whole and try to make it more consistent; to add little details as I come up with them. There's also the fact that I am not skilled enough to write a compelling story that mixes politics and emotion into something remotely engaging. As a result, the story's politics are very surface-level, and probably repetitive at points, but it's also true I've always been more interested and focused on the emotional journey and the relationship(s) at its center. (Which should surprise exactly no one who's ever read one of my stories.)

But, as critical as I might sound of myself here, I am having fun writing this and I'm committed to seeing it through. I just keep having ideas for stories down the line, putting actual show events through a 'but she also has a kid' perspective.

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

I always love your analysis of every characters for fanfics you're currently working on, those long posts you wrote about them always add more flavor and depth and it made me wonder.... do you usually write those kind of analysis first on a book or something before you start a fic, or do you just wing it every time?

I love slow burn but I don't think, as a writer, I have enough patience to create one myself and writers like you always amaze me to no end tbh :D

Aww thank you, you're way too kind.

The analyses always follow the work. There is some analysis predating the fics in the sense that I have general aims when I start a story that usually end up being expressed in the analyses, but it's really not until I'm down in the process of writing and developing that they become clear. And if I’m doing fanfiction, I’ve already had the canon character to pick apart for a while. The analyses then are just the best ways I have at explaining what I was trying to do.

If the question is if I like, plan out the story and all the intertwined character dynamics or if I just spitball in the moment, the answer is a little of both.

First off--disclaimer, the strategies I use for developing stories depend if i'm doing fanfiction or original fiction. Fanfiction i have way more story pieces from the start. It's like a sandbox filled with toys. With original fiction someone kicked me out of the passenger side door in the middle of the desert and I have to find water.

If it's fanfiction, nothing gets written down until I'm starting the fic itself. I know some people enjoy great success by outlining their story points on a plan ahead of time, but I never really was helped by that. It's more of a matter of personal taste. That being said, the story and the characters usually have their skeletons by the time I get to the writing stage.

I'm just a big daydreamer, honestly. An idea starts spiraling and then I have a few scenes and then it's more than a few scenes and we get the scenes that I really like and it's just like, constant fiddling and tweaking and discarding in my mind. Eventually I get like, this general shape in my mind as to what the story is going to be. It's not fully there but it's usually got the major beats and scenes I want already determined. If I like it enough, I'll sit down and try to write the first chapter.

The closest I get to like, plotting a fic out ahead of time is less an actual planning strategy and more that i have this long-suffering best friend who lets me spam text her descriptions of my stories. she has never watched a single episode of daredevil, yet she has suffered through extremely extensive descriptions of it, breakdowns of the characterisations, and probably like, fifty fanfiction explanations at this point. i may have left her with slightly more queer polyamory in her mental image of this franchise than there actually is. who's to say.

she is also why nhthcth exists. i was emboldened to finally drop that one by a different tma story i was explaining to her. she retains spiritual custody of danny stoker.

i take a completely different approach to fanfiction insofar as like, balancing character dynamics the way my analyses usually focus on than I do with original fiction. with fanfiction, I have a huge amount of source material to play with. I can spend time batting things around in my head. I actually usually start writing wayyyy sooner with original fiction because i know that i'm only going to figure out who these characters are if i am putting them in Situations that will all be scrapped in the second draft.

By the time I get to the writing point on fanfiction, though, I usually have a pretty solid understanding of who the character is—which is always based on what I think of in canon as the core base traits that make them them and then adapted based on how I think those would best interact with the story. Which is how you end up with things like kintsugi!Matt and hells!Matt, who have all of the same base characteristics but who still diverge. Both Matts are built of what I think of as like, core “Matt Murdock” traits—fear of being taken advantage of, self-hate for his own perceived (not actual) culpability in his abuse, rage, loneliness, effects of ableism, etc. That’s all just the inherent building blocks of Matt Murdock, in my mind, and I already had them from canon before I ever came up with either story.

It’s the way the discussions around these characteristics are framed that really diverge and allow them to stand as variants on the same character. Take ableism—both Matts struggle with the way society treats disability and the sheer anger they experience as a result. But k!Matt’s discussion of ableism is framed around the way the public sanctions these abuses as something that’s both totally acceptable and for the greater good. It’s a very broad, overbearing, societal focus on how ableism has affected him. Because k!Matt’s story is meant to be interacting with the Accords. Granted, that storyline is primarily going to be focused around Luke Cage, and we won’t be seeing it properly until after kintsugi wraps up (Luke’s own aside is going to act as a bridge with the first multi chapter fic and second), but his fears about being taken advantage of are integral to his interactions with Peter, who he perceives as someone exposed to the same vulnerability. Since the overarching narrative theme is societal justifications for abuse, that’s the tint Matt’s own focus on it adopts. H!Matt, meanwhile, needs a story that’s in interaction with Lisa’s.

So much of why Lisa was targeted by stick in the first place and why his method of psychological abuse took such root was inextricably intertwined with her own pervasive feeling of helplessness and anger in the face of her family’s brutal murder. In order to explain why Matt felt so strongly about personally helping her through what happened, it really needed to be emphasized that Matt was recognizing within her his own pain at that age and that no one had helped him. Each instance of abuse related to his disability in Matt’s childhood is meant to develop that pervasive experience of infuriating helplessness. So Matt’s discussion of ableism is all focused on personal experiences rather than overarching societal analysis, because it’s meant to dovetail with Lisa’s journey.

And I don’t want to pretend like these things are like, springing forth fully formed—the act of writing itself develops the characters to an insane degree. A lot of the tiny details I extrapolate on in the character analyses that I drop on here are usually things that are discovered in the act of writing. I talked in a previous post about glaze defects, and how Matt’s imagined Captain America is meant to be a reflection of what he needs, like, mentally at that stage of his life. I didn’t figure out that’s the role of the imaginary captain America was until the second or third time he showed up and the representation of him changed. The base idea of “Matt is superimposing his own thoughts on life as an enhanced person onto this representation of Steve Rogers” was there, but the reflection of Matt’s changing mindset and needs was only figured out when I started writing.

On a much grander scale, the characters are constantly being fleshed out during the writing process. Sometimes it fucks the original plan. I’ve mentioned in a different post that kintsugi actually had a different ending than it’s going to have now—it changed because I developed my understanding more of the characters and realized they would not do what I was planning for them to do. So I said “fuck fuck fuck” and had to tear up my plans for the next installment, but it makes for a better story in the end. You’re building the plane as you fly, to a degree.

See, the thing is, slow burn as like, a style for me came over time. There’s a lot of very old drafts from where I was first starting writing where I have characters changing their minds and coming to these big sweeping decisions and working together very very quickly. It was more as my style developed that I figured out how to slow down. That being said, some of my absolute favorite works on AO3 or in published fiction are short stories or one shots that my more slow burn style is pretty unsuited for. Writers who can encapsulate that kind of emotional weight with very limited space are cool as hell to me.

I will say that my slow burn style came less as a strategy of story development and more as one of character development. Like, it’s less centered around plotting or planning strategies and more of trying to herd characters like sheep without fucking their characterization.

I’m hesitant to call them rules of character development, because there are no rules. It’s more the I have like, a set of values I’ve developed over the years insofar as characters that I keep in mind with each character and how they interact with plot. Like questions I ask myself, if that makes sense. Guidelines? I dunno. The plot has to be constantly balanced and developed with respect to those. But it’s less of what we’ve discussed here and more independent considerations as to what I, personally, think makes for a good character.

[aberooski]

fanfic asks: 22, 30, 49 💫

Oh yay! Thank you for the asks! 💜

22. Do you title your fics before, during, or after the writing process? How do you come up with titles?

This is an interesting one because honestly I don't have any specific point in the process where it happens. Titles just kinda find their way to me whenever they want. Sometimes I'm struck with inspiration early on in the writing process or even before I even come up with an idea, but I like the title so much I have to come up with a fic for it, or I'll have a fic completed and be struggling and fighting tooth and nail with my brain to come up with something to call it 🤭 let me pull a few quick examples from my pantheon!

Once Upon A Duelist, that one came super easily to me. Of course that fic being a Sleeping Beauty au, having the play on Once Upon A Dream was pretty simple to think of but I digress, it was an easy one to title.

Sons of The Stars on the other hand, that one I was ruminating and formulating titles for throughout the whole process and getting nowhere for the longest time. Angel's Tears was like that too when I wrote it back in the day. (Tbh in the market for a new title for that one, I used to love it but recently I've liked it a lot less)

And my Final Fantasy XV fic What Goes In. That one was super easy because I took it from a line of dialog that Gladio has in one of the cutscenes that was actually written into the fic.

And Sustained by Hate is the title of a song from Final Fantasy XIII and well the cutscene it plays in in the game is the scene involves a child trying to murder a man because he blames him for his mother's death, so 😬 but the title was very relevant because the only thing keeping Camula's soul together and keeping her from being assimilated into oblivion was her hatred of Jaden and desire for revenge, so she was quite literally sustained by hate. I actually borrowed or was inspired by a lot of titles from that game's songs and story chapters for the chapters in the fic too aksksk

I take a lot of inspiration from songs for both fic titles and chapter titles, ever since I was a kid writing shitty fics in actual physical journals. But I also sometimes just try to think of something relevant from my own brain aksksk

So yeah they just kinda find me whenever they want to, I don't really have any specific point in time where I come up with titles. But that honestly can be the hardest part of the entire process for me if they don't come to me early on in the process.

30. How much do you edit your fics? Do you edit as you write or wait until you finish the first draft?

This one's easy actually, I usually wait until the end and go back and do it all at once. Mostly because just about every fic I've written in the last like 5 years has been for the YGOBB so I've been writing on a time crunch for a long time and I'm a slow writer so I never had the time to spend editing as I go. I'd wait until the rough draft was done and turned in and then go back and edit after.

Now I've been going back and even editing and revising those fics again because honestly I don't think I did a very good job the first time. But I'm less horrified when I read my old fics now so that's good 😭

I do find myself going back and editing as I go more now than I used to, especially since I'm stepping back from YGOBB this year and taking a break from that. Love the event, but I think all my fics have suffered from the time crunch and I always burn out having to push myself to pump out my fics so yeah need that break.

But generally I do write a fic all the way out before I'll start editing so I can focus on one thing at a time. Get the foundation first and then build upon it. 👍

49. What fic of yours would you say is the best introduction to you as a writer?

Oh boy this one's actually a very hard question for me 😅

When I think about it I'm kinda tempted to say Sustained by Hate (abby's version)(from the vault)

It's a multi chapter fic which is my forte, it's in universe which I don't often do in my long fics, the concept is entirely plausible with Camula being brought back and wanting revenge for her defeat, it works in a lot of my little touches and portrayals of the characters

Dad Crowler, Hassleberry’s leg being an issue for him a lot, Alexis being protective of Atticus like to the max, Jaden going out of his way to try and protect the squad but specifically Sy, Bastion playing the role of team mom, Chazz and Atty's relationship period, and you even get some of my quirks and inner workings of my mind with Mrs. Rhodes and Mrs. Princeton hanging out on the sidelines

Also the blatant, very thinly veiled Little Mermaid reference of a plotline..... I mean c'mon the chapter is literally called Poor, Unfortunate Soul 😭

I also actually wrote a duel and that was really hard and I'm very proud of myself and everyone should be impressed 😭

Anyways that one is very me, there's so much in that fic that's very authentic to me and I think it's probably the best intro to me and my writing in terms of the long fics.

One shots, Salt In The Wound. No question. Maybe when I go back and edit that one A Friend In Need would be good too, and Traffic Lights is pretty good but again SITW is so authentically me as a Syrus stan/kin who has major beef with Zane.

I'd love to say OUAD, you know I would. But that's my magnum opus man, if that's your introduction you've set the bar pretty damn high 😭

And Sons of The Stars, as much as I demand everyone in the universe read it because I worked harder on that fic than anything I've ever written in my life, that is NOT a starter fic. It's 136k. And a whole ass built from the ground up au. And honestly draws on a lot of stuff in season 3 and there's a couple subtle nods to other works in it so it's not a starter at all. That's one to read after you've read a couple aksksk

So yeah, if you want a quality starter fic, Sustained by Hate is probably the way to go I think.

Angel's Tears or What Goes In wouldn’t be bad either if you wanted to see the progression of my work from high school to now. Even with the revisions I've done to both of those fics in the last couple months, in my opinion you can still tell I originally wrote them when I was like 18 years old.

But I legitimately think Sustained by Hate and Salt In The Wound would probably the best options depending on which length of fics you like to read.

Thanks again for the asks, these are so fun!!

☆ Abby ☆

[pazak-thion-brady]

1. Bedroom or cafe's if I know I need to focus and hit a deadline. The human noise helps.

2. When the plan comes together and the ideas just slot together properly.

3. Starting a new song and having no inspiration for what it should be.

4. I usually have PM Seymore binge compilations on in the background.

5. Composer, Steven Sondheim and Joe Hisaishi

6. I don't usually create characters, but fav character I've written for was Chloe Price in Life is Strange musical demos.

7. Terry Pratchet/Rick Riordan.

8. Five man band.

9. Romantic or ballad scenes

10. Ana's Mitchel

11. Listen to songs in the style I want it to be, go ajzijejzdisj this doesn't work, listen to different songs until something sounds right, copy down the sheet music, fuck with it, delete it then try to re create the fucked with version from memory.

12. Alcohol, partying, gaming, general forced socialising.

13. Listen to new music and broaden my stylistic knowledge.

14. For Gideon The Ninth the musical demos, I reaserched Gregorian chant music for the first tike since I dropped out of university due to stress of not understanding shit.

15. Listening to new music

16. Spotify

17. 3-5 hours on a good day. When starting a new project I always spend like 8 hours making the first song taking little to no breaks in a writing frenzy then regretting it the next day.

18. I'll usually throw out the whole song and write something completely new.

19. This is a show of death and love a grizly tale we tell, of liers, lyctors, lesbians and cavaliers that fell.

20. Check my YouTube in bio for the first 5 songs.

21. She owns you.

22. Most I've had is 22, current one is only 4.

23. Multi, that's what works in musicals best. Just to give the lead actors little breaks and time for quick changes.

24. Lyrics are basically just poetry.

25. Linear, non linear plays don't do that well. Might try one, one day.

26. Stand alone. It's hard to do a series of plays. Not impossible but hard.

27. Roughs are my demos that go out as part of a pitch document.

28. Fucking everyone.

29. The gays. Aka me. I write things I want to see.

30. "Oh Rachel see you someday, upon that silver screen. I will hold you close, again, see you soon my queen." Sung by a hopeless tumblr lesbian in a story set in 2013.

31. Captain Aiglamene, she appeared in 1 scene and I couldn't get a vibe for her musical identity so I just went generic as fuck with her.

32. Surt. His music was so fun and just flowed. I wrote his song in 1 sitting.

33. Technically yes. I'm writing music though.

34. Scrawled on the walls. I'm mentally sane I swear.

35. Jesus the lesbian is a wannabee escape artist who just wants to escape Pluto and join her dad's army.

36. She dies.

37. "What's the point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes" Dan Hardcastle. Aka Nerd³.

38. Well the outline is someone else's story I'm adapting sooooo, very good, great success.

39. Not my original characters.

40. Essentially fanfiction, of what if this story was full of gay people singing.

41. Currently 3. Trying to focus on 1 but 3 are burning in the background.

42. Look at fan art and take an amalgam of popular costume parts.

43. Yes in audio book format. I'm horribly dyslexic and books hurt my eyes and brain.

44. This will be in my head all day.

45. It's impressive to make boring non classical music.

46. It would look fucking dark and need to be animated. Animated musicals are fucking pumping potion cat snake.

47. I start by reading the book that already exists and song spotting. Going through the book and going, that scene should be a song. Oh this is dramatic as shit, song. Awsw tender, song.

48. Rock.

49. The middle, it slogs.

50. The current one, lesbian necromancers solving a murder mystery in space and singing.

51. Skeletons, ginger, Catholic, goth, lesbians.

52. I started writing when I was fucking depressed and it helped me out of my mental illness. 5 years ago.

53. It means escape from the darkness.

54. If you're thinking about writing, write. If you keep putting it off you'll never write anything.

New ask game for writers

1. Favorite place to write. 2. Favorite part of writing. 3. Least favorite part of writing. 4. Do you have writing habits or rituals? 5. Books or authors that influenced your style the most. 6. Favorite character you ever created. 7. Favorite author. 8. Favorite trope to write. 9. Least favorite trope to write. 10. Pick a writer to co-write a book with and tell us what you’d write about. 11. Describe your writing process from scratch to finish. 12. How do you deal with self-doubts? 13. How do you deal with writers block? 14. What’s the most research you ever put into a book? 15. Where does your inspiration come from? 16. Where do you take your motivation from? 17. On avarage, how much writing do you get done in a day? 18. What’s your revision or rewriting process like? 19. First line of a WIP you’re working on. 20. Post a snippet of a WIP you’re working on. 21. Post the last sentence you wrote in one of your WIP’s. 22. How many drafts do you need until you’re satisfied and a project is ultimately done for you? 23. Single or multi POV, and why? 24. Poetry or prose, and why? 25. Linear or non-linear, and why? 26. Standalone or series, and why? 27. Do you share rough drafts or do you wait until it’s all polished? 28. And who do you share them with? 29. Who do you write for? 30. Favorite line you’ve ever written. 31. Hardest character to write. 32. Easiest character to write. 33. Do you listen to music when you’re writing? 34. Handwritten notes or typed notes? 35. Tell some backstory details about one of your characters in your story ________. 36. A spoiler for story _________. 37. Most inspirational quote you’ve ever read or heard that’s still important to you. 38. Have you shared your outline of your story ________ with someone? If so, what did they think of it? 39. Do you base your characters of real people or not? If so, tell us about one. 40. Original Fiction or Fanfiction, and why? 41. How many stories do you work on at one time? 42. How do you figure out your characters looks, personality, etc. 43. Are you an avid reader? 44. Best piece of feedback you’ve ever gotten. 45. Worst piece of feedback you’ve ever gotten. 46. What would your story _______ look like as a tv show or movie? 47. Do you start with characters or plot when working on a new story? 48. Favorite genre to write in. 49. What do you find the hardest to write in a story, the beginning, the middle or the end? 50. Weirdest story idea you’ve ever had. 51. Describe the aesthetic of your story _______ in 5 sentences or words. 52. How did writing change you? 53. What does writing mean to you? 54. Any writing advice you want to share?