#I will get into the worldbuilding of a piece of media and read the wiki for a while or watch Lore info or critical analysis videos. But I

[icewindandboringhorror]

I'm so heavily anti-advertising that all pitches sound goofy silly to me/I can never take them seriously, so I have no idea how I'll manage to to advertise my game even if I do finally finish it soon-ish lol...

[coffee-in-veins]

As someone who (very casually) enjoys Eldin Ring, I am very curious what you think

thank you for the ask! ^^ that was quick xD

well, then, i hope you won't be upset about what i have to say about it. i genuinely love it from worldbuilding perspective and it looks cool and thrilling more often than not. other things, though...

for the context, i did my best to like it for like casual 80 hours or so, playing very slowly, very cautiously, and probably very inefficiently, because i would often just chill at the location, so those hours mean almost nothing. i managed to kill the grafted guy, the moon lady, got to meet Ranni (god i remember at least one name from it all without cheating!) and got to the point where i was supposed to get into the autumn plateau which name i won't remember even if you torture me.

and this is my first gripe with the game. this one is more of a personal struggle, so take it with a grain of salt. i struggle quite a lot with remembering names, both irl and in media. i remember visuals, i remember voices, i remember plots. but names? beats me. hell, i only remembered Dis and Rey after like half a year of a deep dive into DD, if it gives you any perspective.

with that explanation out of the way, comes the gripe itself: most of the time, i was completely, utterly and hopelessly lost who were those people, whom they wanted killed and where they wanted me to go. my quests would go something like this:

"Go fight General Radahn!" someone said. I think I saw their helmet, twice, and I remember they are a blacksmith. probably. i remember the voice tho. they are genuinely nice to me, so i'd probably do it.

however, not a single braincell rumbled in that head of Tarnished of mine as i sat in front the screen and looked at them blankly: "Who?"

but the NPC already continued: "They are in Caelid!"

not a drop of recognition. "Where?" okay, i sit and think frantically, i have a map, maybe it has parts named, maybe i won't have to wander for half an hour before giving up and going to the wiki again...? no? well, fuck, maybe some locations are named? right! locations. jackpot, some have 'caelid' in them. ah, the red poison swamp! dude, why didn't you say so? on my way!

me, meeting Radahn: aaahhh, that big dude on a tiny horse! sure! from the promo! wait, who asked to kill him again? and why?

and that was every time. there are dozens of names and places and they all are deeply connected and you somehow are expected to keep it all in your head or make notes on a piece of paper, idk. call me whiny, or call it an aesthetic (put a pin into that, we will return to it later), but wouldn't it be convenient to have something like bestiary that Witcher 3 had, with a tab for people you met or heard about? nothing too concrete, hell, this series is know for being frugal with explanations but... like, something, so i don't have to keep wiki constantly open and ready to alt tab to understand who am i talking to and who are they talking about.

and while we're talking about dialogues, BG3 made me understand how much i need a tab where i can re-read recent dialogues. if not to understand things better with all the ye old-english-y words some of us filthy non-eng speakers have no idea even exist, then to see how those names are spelled so we can search them in wikis later.

and have you noticed a thing which is going like a red string through all of my writing? wiki. hell, i'm writing all of the above using wiki because i still don't remember how those people are called. you get used to it just to know who's who. wanna laugh at me? because i was so stressed out by the first bosses, i completely blacked out at the first boss, only seeing vague shapes, and i genuinely thought that Godrick and Morgott were the same guy for the longest time because i was stressed out, didn't have enough time to look at them and was frantically thinking of moves and skills instead of actually watching the cutscene with proper attention. it didn't help that they both spoke with similar tones and in a ye old-english-y way, and were in the same location. so yeah, you can imagine my confusion during the game later on...

there's one thing, though. constantly checking names in wiki makes you feel like it's fine to check other things too. and, Io and behold, before you know it, you're just tired and grumpy and look up where the hell are things you need, quests you missed, resource nodes... and suddenly, the best part of the game (exploration) is gradually chipped away, without you even noticing.

i mean, i had to look up how the horse is called and I love Torrent to bits, even if he is as responsive to controls as a DD2 bangwagon that was put on two very greasy, very non-cooperative pigs on skis. which is another gripe of mine, but the poor guy is so abandoned in the second half of the game, that it's genuinely depressing.

which brings us to my second most gripe in the game: menus. remember that aesthetic pin? let's get it out. menus are a genuine pain in the ass to navigate, they don't respond to mouse (oh, we're gonna return to that. oh, we're gonna...), and for the first thirty or so HOURS i wasn't aware there were other tabs in the inventory. genuinely. i simply wasn't aware. i hovered the mouse on tabs, they weren't scrolling, and knowing that this is primary console game, i didn't pay much attention to the keys besides those, assuming (rightfully, as i thought) that those were for consoles to switch tabs. forgive me for my 'pc master race' mentality, but i'm not used to things in the menu not being responsive to the mouse. so some of the quest items you see in there somewhere? any tab after keys? nope, i didn't know they existed.

remember painting quests? i loved those. but also i had no fucking idea you carried a copy somewhere in the bowels of the inventory tab. thus, like the moron i was, i would come to them, make a photo of my screen on my phone, and try to go around, keeping the photo up on my phone as a reference. or go back to the actual in world painting to check. my frustration was immeasurable and my pain was immense. or maybe you wanna find the weapon you just looted and see if it is of any use? pff, good luck, hope you remembered its name or how it looked, or didn't have anything in your inventory, else get ready to go through a warehouse of other gear you carry. not to mention that sorting on those is extremely non-intuitive. why are lantern and looking glass and prattling pates in one section but wraith calling bell and mimic veil have separate ones? why is horse whistle with flasks and flasks 2.0? why are memory of grace with the flasks and horse whistle? am i missing something?? genuine question.

quick side note while we’re at the topic of prattling pates, should i even mention how notoriously convoluted the better ending for my sweet boy Boc is…?

not to mention that 'Switch display' option is very... unexplained, to say politely. it turns out you can see how many runes exactly is Golden Rune [7] - if you switch the view. because having explanation of 'use to gain many runes' on one screen totally gives you a hint that it would say 'use to gain 2500 runes' in another.

i mean i get it. the series has a reputation. it is dark souls 4, 5 and 6 with a new coat of pain (or maybe paint), it has to be hard, you gotta 'git good', you have to fight for every sliver of lore and then listen to 12 hours of youtube explanations anyway just to have a semblance of understanding what's going on. but - and this is an important but - there's a difference between working for the lore and being unable to understand what the hell you looted and not being aware you can actually know how rune [6] 'many' differs from rune [9] 'many' without trying to go and use it and make a table with those orrrr - say it with me! have the wiki opened.

also the fact that nowhere does it say that spirit ashes can be summoned only in specific areas AND you need a bell you need to get later on somehow bumbling into Ranni is simply false marketing. i took twin imps as my trinket and boy ho boy, lemme tell you someone was pissed for the first hour of the game...

which brings me to creme de la creme of my gripes. the controls. pc port is... well it exists, and i still haven't recovered from that. it makes you extremely aware from the word go that you're not the target demographic. that you're unwelcome here. that no one looked at it and thought: huh, we have battles where we expect Tarnished to get on and off Torrent mid-fight, so how shitty of us would it be if we make Torrent summon be "F + [arrow up]" for keyboards? you know, so the player would have to get their hand off the mouse. mid-battle. naaah, that would work just fine, ship that bad boi as is! oh, and make it non-mappable too. they have keyboard with 75% keys being unused? who cares! it mirrors gamepad, and that is what truly matters.

i said it once when a pal of mine let me use his acc and try Dark Souls. i think it was the third one...? well, my experience was - 'i'm not fighting the monsters, i'm fighting the game'. and it's pretty much the same for Elden Ring. did you know there's a power off hand attack? i didn't. did you know there's a way of switching your weapon to hold it in two hands? i didn't did you know you can make it on the fly? i sure as hell didn't. did you know your RH attack is bound to your LMC and it fucks your brain when you play because here it plays role and you can fuckup by using weapons in 'wrong' hands? yeah, that i experienced a plenty.

do you know how i know all those? i plugged in a gamepad and oh god all of the mapping makes so much goddamn sense! i had to reverse-map things because i only played FF9 with a controller, and was extremely uncomfortable with it in a non-turn-based game. which left a taste of bile in my mouth.

loading times are awesome thought. i dunno how they achieved that, but that's hella impressive for a game this big.

i ended up liking the world. vistas. lore that people dig into. but this game isn't for me. not because i'm not interested but because i have a setup they clearly don't care about. and it's okay, i guess. but i have too little free time to spend it fighting not the monsters the game sets in front of me as a challenge but the game itself

hope it wasn't too convoluted ^^'

and thanks again for the ask! :}

[goodshipskypirate]

So I've been slowly trying to read The Locked Tomb series, but having just finished the second book after putting it off for months, I think I've come to the conclusion that I'm better off reading summaries to know what has (which I did with Nona the Ninth just now) and will happen (with the upcoming Alecto the Ninth.)

Because while I liked Gideon the Ninth, the more experimental Harrow the Ninth was a bit more off-putting to me. I don't think there's anything wrong with what the book did (though I feel like overall, there's a lot of vagueness about their world and structure that naturally, the main characters would accept casually as a part of their world, but I struggled to try and make sense of sometimes) - the mystery delivered by unreliable framing and narration was obviously an intentional and quite brilliant choice.

But I think it made me realize with books, being a form of media that requires you, the reader, to visualize everything on your own, versus, well, an actual visual piece of media, meant I had a bit of trouble keeping pace with the (deliberately) obtuse, hidden pacing and foreshadowing. Like, I can read books that aren't a straight run from Plot A to Plot B, but combined with the weird vagueness of its worldbuilding (I don't know how to explain it, it's like they do establish its surroundings that I understand enough, but also not enough?), the first 200+ pages were a bit of a struggle.

To Harrow's credit, it still kept me intrigued to keep going. By the second half, I was WAY more hooked. I wanted the zillion questions I - and Harrow - had answered by the end, so I marched forward and was rewarded for my efforts. It genuinely is a good book, I do think the world of the Nine Houses is fascinating in its Gothic morbidness and how it all centers on necromancy, and I get why the series is beloved (The Locked Tomb also gets points for referencing funny dialogues and/or memes that would be obnoxious if the author had overdone them; she keeps it just right.)

I definitely want to see what happens next, but I simultaneously conclude the series as a whole is Not For Me. *shrugs* C'est La Vie. Until Alecto and than I've off to read the wiki summary.

[ladditt]

sorry for getting on my soap box but,

i believe it's symptomatic of a greater shift in how people seem to be looking at media these days. it seems like everything that doesn't service The Plot^tm is seen as excessive and something that should have been left on the writing room floor. this is from fandoms and big studios both.

filler episodes that expand the world building, or allow the characters to breathe? cut it, it doesn't service The Plot

conversations focusing on small character moments? why are these here? they aren't servicing The Plot.

small character inconsistencies, or contradictions that give a greater insight to their frame of mind? bad writing obviously.

inconsequential characters that don't directly impact anything, but contribute to themes, worldbuilding, relationships or just plain fun? why are we focusing on them?! we could have spent this time talking about The Plot!

i know it can be fun ragging on a piece of media for whatever stupid reason, but i genuinely believe that some people think that media should be like, a bullet point summery of the events that take place. and not like, a complex work of art? like they'd rather be reading the wiki than actually watching/playing the thing

I humbly ask the public: why must a Danganronpa character be 'useful'? Is it not enough that they provide laughter and whimsy to an otherwise dismal environment? Is 'useful' only in the context of solving murders, rather than providing the player an entertaining and enriching story?

that's absolutely my take these days too. i definitely joke that XYZ character is Useless but it's all about the funsies

[extra-lost]

Honestly the thing i find the most, idk.. puzzeling, about the whole cody/kote fanon thing is why is he the only one who has a Secret Mandalorian Version Of His Name? Its just... Not that realistic? That no other clone has something similar going on. Like why's he so special? Don't get me wrong i like the character, but as a new fan figuring out the whole thing was actually just popular fanon was quite a bit jarring lmao. I mean people are free to do what they want, but sometimes he feels more like an oc than the actual character in the fandom (which like yeah i realize he has precious little characterization, but whats there seems to run a bit different from what i first thought his character was when i first stumbled onto tcw fic)

Also cody's just a cuter name

[slashmagpie]

How long do you spend planning/world building for fics? If I should be more specific, how long did you plan the lore and mechanics that feature in Lifeline au before you wrote it? I mean it’s technically based on a video game but still

Okay so actually my answer for fics in general and my answer for LLAU is different! Normally before I sit down to write a fic I will figure out enough of what's going on to write a page of bullet points of lore/worldbuilding, work out the magic system, and draft an outline. I'm the sort of writer who, even when I have an outline, will inevitably drift from that outline and add a bunch of new subplots and worldbuilding elements as I go to flesh out the story more, and I'm familiar enough now with my process to account for that and roll with it.

For example: screenshots from my planning doc for TFatBatG, the fic I wrote before LLAU.

^ Here you can see me workshopping the premise and beginning to flesh out the character arcs, using points from canon to bounce off of. Some of this stuff didn't even make it into the final fic!

^ Parts of my actual chapter-by-chapter outline. As you can see, it's a lot more detailed at the beginning then it is towards the end, and if you've read the fic, you'll notice that there are several subplots that occur during these chapters which aren't even mentioned here. Those are things that I came up with on the fly. Things tend to stray for me more in later chapters than earlier ones, because things just tend to develop organically as I'm writing, and then need to be resolved later.

LLAU, however, is a little different, in that I originally started writing it as a fun chill burn-out project. You see, I'd just finished writing TFatBatG, which was the first longfic I'd ever finished, the first thing I'd written to pass 100k, and also written during a 14 week period in which I finished my masters and started working a full-time job, so as you can imagine. I was feeling pretty burnt out by the end of it. But I also then had a lot of free time open up (started working night shifts), and I needed something to do with that time. I had a bunch of other ideas that I wanted to write (and still want to write!) but trying to start any of them was really difficult for me. I just wanted something fun and easy and chill to work on when I felt like it to try and get me through that burn-out period and back to actually writing.

And then one night on discord we were making moon's haunted jokes, and I went "haha Hermitcraft Lifeline AU" (because Lifeline is a moon's haunted-ass piece of media), and then I went ".....hang on. Hermitcraft Lifeline AU,"

I picked my main characters, wrote up the summaries for EO, MB, and LB, redownloaded the game to play through it, and then wrote and published the first chapter the very next day.

And people liked it! And I liked it! And then I had a 10-day busy period between Empty Oceans chapter one and two where I couldn't write, and I spent some of that time plotting out what I wanted to do with the series and where I wanted to take it. (Shoutout to @/lunarblazes for bouncing ideas around with me!) This planning period was when I decided that Bdubs would be the time monk guy as well as the captain guy, and that Impulse was the Queen, and I figured out the basics of the magic system, but the picture of the series I had in my head at that time was still very limited.

I don't have a proper outline for LLAU: my planning document complains the fic summary, character lists, and bulletpoints taken from the Lifeline wiki. For EO and MB I was using the games themselves as an outline, since they follow the plots pretty closely, and the only fic that had a chapter-by-chapter outline was AfaM (which I didn't even know I was going to write when I started EO; I decided that I was going to write it somewhere towards the end of working on MB). LB has a general outline but it's definitely not comprehensive and has changed a lot since I wrote it (I don't even open the doc when I work on the fic anymore.)

^ The LB outline, up until the point that we've reached now. You might notice that False is not mentioned once here. That's because I didn't realise I wanted her to be part of the story until I was halfway through AfaM.

^ Some of the notes that I took from the Lifeline Wiki, which are basically all the notes I have explaining the magic system, some of which I didn't even use. (And some bonus stuff about PWG which was the basis for Impulse's backstory.)

So yeah: while I had some stuff planned from the very beginning, a lot of the specific details didn't work themselves out until much later in the process. Since LLAU is based on a discontinued game series, I basically came into it with pieces of a puzzle, and I had to figure out how to make them work together; the facade was there and I had to create the inner workings. So whilst I've always had the vague "this is what the magic system can do and this is how it works," a lot of it wasn't set in stone until... I wanna say when I was working on AfaM? That was when I worked out the specifics of time travel and also "time = space = sentience."

So yeah! I do do a lot of planning, but most of that is in the form of me daydreaming on the bus and yelling incoherent ideas in my friend Doc's dms (you may know her as doctortrekkie of Still the Echoes Give Us Light). I have a vague general outline in my head (this will happen, then this, then this), and chapter-wise I tend to have the next 1-5 chapters planned out, but I give myself a lot of room to work things out organically. (Also currently I'm doing a lot of planning/brainstorming for the endgame climax of the fic, so I can begin setting up my dominoes to knock down now that the Impulse reveal is out of the way.) This is definitely not the way I normally write (I prefer having more structure/plan than this), but the fact that this was a fun impromptu project that took over my brain in a way that I wasn't expecting has allowed me to be a lot more fast and loose with it, lol.

It does also mean that some of the stuff that cropped up in EO and even MB is what I would consider some Early Installment Weirdness, and if I was writing it now I would definitely do it differently, but I'm very happy to be transparent about that kinda stuff when people ask. I'm not gonna pretend I'm a genius and that this was some kind of expertly crafted long con plot from the very beginning. I'm figuring things out as I go and having a blast with it.

Sorry for the long ramble! I love talking about the writing process, and LLAU has been unorthodox even for me, so it was really fun to break it down. This is, I think, the creative project I have enjoyed working on the most in my life, and it's taught me a lot of things that I will definitely be taking away with me for the future.

But tl;dr to answer your question: I did very little prior planning and the entire writing process has also been a continuous planning process that isn't over yet.

[hellsite-hungergames]

fic recs?? i have many that i could recommend. biggest one though right now is a legend of zelda fic (hyperfixation go brrr):

Moonlight (every single night) by Heleentje (https://archiveofourown.org/works/33768109/chapters/83938897): TIME LOOPS TIME LOOPS TIME LOOPS (and also a Champions Live AU!! how i love to see it)

pretty much, Link has to keep on repeating the five days after beating Ganon. (plus some stuff before that? the starting point for the loop is the morning Link wakes up before defeating ganon the first time around). it is an EXTREMELY engrossing piece of fiction, it had me going "oh shit" and cheering out loud at points. the characters are all top notch, they literally ALL feel so human. plus its depictions of grief are also very very good! because it's a time loop you of course get a lot of the same losses over and over again, but you still FEEL it each and every time. plus from a more narrative standpoint, it is PHENOMENAL with foreshadowing and pointing you in the right direction without giving anything away. it's not a funny or lighthearted fic (although there are moments like that), but that's part of what makes me like it.

also, it has PLENTY of side stories, currently sitting at eight. the main fic is finished, but side stories are still being added! (i feel like i should note that not all of these side stories are by Heleentje like the main fic, some of them are by Ginneke instead.) if you're completely unfamiliar with the general story of breath of the wild i would recommend taking a glance at the wiki first to give yourself some context but it should still be fine? you seem like the kind to jump into fics from fandoms you know nothing about anyway

overall an 11/10 fic for me!

ALSO a much quicker rec for The Pilgrim's Progress by Antares8 (https://archiveofourown.org/series/1051850), which is Over The Garden Wall. a beast!wirt series about acceptance with side themes of scapegoating in some of the later installments, plus some of the BEST worldbuilding i've ever seen in a fic. manages not to fall into the "way-too-dark-and-grim" pit that stops me from getting too far in a lot of longer beast!wirt things. also still a wip, and it takes a while to update, but it's very very good. this one should also be good if you don't know the source media, but honestly if you haven't already seen otgw already you really really should, it's shorter than most movies and so, so good.

i have a lot more fics i could recommend, but tumblr is starting to lag with how long this is so i think i should stop for now :P

I WAS HYPERFIXATING ON BOTW LAST MONTH/EARLY THIS MONTH BUT COULDN'T FIND ANY GOOD FANFIC SO I AM LOVING THAT YOU REC'D ONE

And also otgw is one of my favorite shows so I can't wait to read that

[thefutureiswhatwemakeofit]

Yeah, this is what I mean - Guide is an unpolished, but decent fantasy story. People can criticise sections; wish certain aspects were done better; wish the whole underdark sequence skipped 500 pages of incredibly detailed fight scenes with no relevance to anything; but they aren't saying 'do major rewrites'. The Guide fanbase treats it like any other piece of fantasy media, it just happened to be released as a web serial.

Worm on the other hand, is a specimen to be put under a microscope. There's so many interesting ideas piled into some very questionable writing decisions. Wildbow's inability to let any protagonist have some fucking downtime plus Taylor's 'I always win by getting worse' vibes means the plot is weird as hell but it's full of traumatised superheroes with a neat little classification system that just begs for people to imagine their own funky messed-up guys. The worldbuilding is at once very detailed into how society deals with heroes and wildly vague as to how we ended up there. It was one of the first pieces of webfic to go viral, giving it a Homestuck like effect of way more people knowing about it than you'd expect. The final ending promises a fascinating setting which the sequel immediately ruins by being relentlessly pessimistic (seriously, I'm one of the people who likes Victoria as a character and I could barely finish Ward it's so needlessly brutal to all it's characters all the time, no one ever gets a win unless they are random antagonists no one knows or cares about and the core team from Worm who should have been fun cameos doing well are reduced to struggling beaten up people). Guide is a story I'm happy to read for fun. Worm is a story I'm reading for the wiki, the sidenotes, the people on tumblr who think they can make it better and then say the stupidest headcanons you can think of.

Yknow its Extremely sad that the objectively best redemption arc and enemies to lovers arc ever written will always be obscure because it takes place over a 3.5 million word web serial.

[ninas-gf]

You can get started with Luetin09's "WARHAMMER 40,000 LORE/HISTORY [In Order]" series if you want. I personally recommend it because I wouldn't wish the wiki on you if you're not the type to consume literal tons of content and lore at once (like me)..

Note: This is coming from someone who willingly watched the entirety of Critical Role's main campaigns (more than 400 hours each and longer than the One Piece anime by leaps and bounds to put it into perspective) and continues to do so, so if you're not that type of media enthusiast, take it slower and there are other channels that condense it more.

Also note: It is dark and very mature. It will contain things that are problematic in nature due to the settings and circumstances. This is to be expected as it is the norm in this sense. If you don't like it, please don't continue to subject yourself to it.

THE WIKI HAS 7K PAGES…

and yeah i can tell that it’s not the kind of thing that would interest me personally, but i can see why you like it !! i really don’t know much about it at all, but just by reading the summary/description on the wiki i could already tell that it has very detailed worldbuilding, which i appreciate (a lot of the time the worldbuilding and lore can be the most impressive and interesting part of a piece of fiction you know?)

[discocritic]

putting this under a cut because this bitch got long. 

first, let me welcome you to the fandom. since we’re a pretty small one, it’s always exciting to hear more people are joining! 

my advice for you is just basically what i wish i knew when first joining the fandom a couple years ago. the danger days album, comics, and twitters are the three main pieces of media that the universe is made up of, and some of those can be a challenge to navigate (because i was sure as hell confused when i started trying to figure everything out), so i'll outline some things you might want to know!

i'm assuming you've listened to the main danger days: true lives of the fabulous killjoys album, but there are a couple of bonus songs such as "zero percent" and "we don't need another song about california." those aren't on spotify, as far as i know, but you can find multiple audio/lyric videos on youtube.

there's also a 3-track EP called the mad gear and missile kid that includes the songs "f.t.w.w.w.," "mastas of ravenkroft," and "black dragon fighting society." tmgamk is described in an interview by mcr as a band that the killjoys would listen to. these are also not on spotify but, like the other songs, can be found on youtube.

if you don't want to buy the comics but still want to read them, i know of two (legal) ways to do that. this youtube playlist has videos that show each page of the comics, and this post has pictures of each page.

there are two danger days wikis (with comic spoilers! so beware), but one of them is way more useful and people don't tamper with the information in it.

there's also another little extra comic thing called "dead satellites" that was released for free comic book day a few years ago. it doesn't really have anything to do with the main storyline of the actual comics, but it does offer a glimpse of battery city life and zone bands, which is cool.

there are character twitter accounts for dr. death-defying, party poison, dj hot chimp, newsagogo, agent cherri cola, and gary levko (i may be missing some; i don’t really pay attention to the twitters lmao). here’s a link to dr. d’s and you should be able to find links to the rest through his tweets. 

i would also suggest checking out the danger days side of tumblr! (although you sent this ask to me so i'm assuming you've started this step already.) starting a danger days blog is a great way to get to know other members in the fandom while creating content of your own, and if you send asks to any of the blogs i'm about to mention, i'm sure they'll be glad to interact with you!

@killjoyhistory is a goddamn lifesaver. everything you could ever want to know about the danger days world is collected and archived at this blog, whether it's behind-the-scenes content from the music videos to interviews with the band where they mention danger days to forgotten concepts from the first drafts of the comics!

@graffitibible writes the most in-depth danger days fics with the best characterization and plots i have ever read. and they've come up with some super cool explanations for things in the DD universe. definitely check them out. 

@neon-rat posts tons of great headcanons and has an ongoing fic series called How To Navigate and Contemplate (and i'm promo-ing this because i cannot fucking wait for the next chapter to come out!). Although you should probably read her first fic, How Time Decides, on ao3 for the current one to make sense!

speaking of fics, @enby-partypoison has multiple different DD AUs! with everything from superheroes to ghosts to modern-day, aer ao3 will have something for you! i also had the privilege of working with aer to organize a holiday gift exchange the past december, so ae gets bonus points for that :)

if it's worldbuilding you want, @ruination-formation has tons of headcanons about places and people in both the zones and the city. she also writes tons of fics on her ao3 that you should check out as well.

@tapefish, @funkobraofficial, and @ravenxbones make amazing killjoy art! sometimes i just have to sit down and scroll through their art tags because everything they create is absolutely fantastic.

there are so many other amazing blogs i could mention, but these are a few that happened to come to mind when i was typing this out. but seriously, fire an ask towards any blog and i'm sure they'll be more than willing to answer it!

anyway, i’m going to end this now, because most of this was drafted as i sat in a drive-through for half an hour and lost track of its length, but i hope at least some of this has helped! and of course feel free to drop by my inbox again if you have any questions. 

[escapekissed]

Lucky do you have any favorite pieces of media from the psychological horror genre? Feels like its a genre that matches ur interests very well 👉🏽👈🏽

there are a couple that really speak to me!

first is rule of rose, which is a game that is incredibly formative to me. in a time where i was looking for representation as a young gay person and REALLY into looking up wiki pages for horror games, rule of rose showed me the symbolic trauma of puberty and toxic ‘love’ between girl children and the violence of patriarchal figures that i was looking for. it showed such cruelty but also such strength in its main character, and the symbolism? exquisite.... it also just has such a creepy atmosphere and the fact that the game is near impossible to play along with its shitty graphics for the enemies makes it so. peculiar and creepy in a very special way to me.

catherine is another atlus game near and dear to my heart, tho i dont  think i’m ever going to be playing full body for that exact reason. it’s a game basically about eugenics and misogyny, about gods&devils thinking of women as only reproductive objects and the men in their lives that ‘waste their reproductive time’ being tortured and killed for it, taking away a woman’s choice. i always thought it would be so interesting to do trans and lesbian takes on this game, and i have never really? stopped thinking about how this game is so thrilling in its themes of entitlement and stopping people’s freedom to love as they wish. this is also one of the only horror games in which the ‘human element’ actually interests me. so many horror games give u terrible people and i dont give a FUCK ABOUT THEM. but the way this game shows u just snippets of his life as a ‘break’ from the excruciatingly scary (to me, because time limits scare me LOL), stressful as hell puzzles. and u get to figure out the mystery of what is going on in people who would otherwise be boring to you, but in this game are shrouded in just enough mystery that ur actually interested in their boring day-to-day lives. its so satisfying just to drink with ur buds. its like really great gameplay to me tbh. i also just love katherine and catherine and they frusturate me so much and that’s exactly what they’re supposed to do which i LOVE. extremely effective atmosphere setting and worldbuilding, basically.

the lighthouse is my favorite horror movie tbh because it does suspense so well. the movie is literally themed around suspense, the suspense of not getting sexual satisfaction to completion, of being touch starved and lonely and repressed, of being able to hold ur boss but never kiss him, of being fed lobster but it tastes flavorless and bland and u can smell ur boss’s farts the whole time while he prattles on with disturbing sailor’s tales and barks out orders until he’s lulled into his drink. i honestly love this movie. and the acting is brilliant and unhinged

there’s a few indie games i really like that have been either formative to me or i just??? really like their vibe and i can basically tell from them i would like every game in the ‘genre.’

pocket mirror to me is like, this beautiful game about your own inner toxicity and escaping from yourself. i love indie 64-bit games like this, the background art is so beautiful, and while i’ve never played all the way through it because it scares me too much---i love ib and all the games in the ‘ib’ genre LOL.

doki doki literature club i know is a very strange game to like, but i enjoy it for letting the women be actual characters with their own thoughts and feelings. the pychological horror movie ‘i’m thinking of ending things’ is the exact opposite of this game.'i’m thinking of ending things’ is a backwards approach to feminist horror in my opinion. it’s from a male’s perspective of his hallucinations of a girl that once didn’t give him a second glance and his violence towards her in these fantasies. it takes itself painfully seriously. it pretends to deconstruct something that the director helped soldify (the manic pixie dream girl trope) in the public eye. doki doki literature club on the other hand, the passive character who ‘things happen to’ is the man. the active roles all go to the women in the game and what they do to themselves in order to be loved by not just a man, but the player, and in doing so they often become the all-knowing god of their own prison. like tell me that’s not the dopest thing u’ve ever heard of!

twilight zone is a big one for me but 5 episodes in particular have shaped how i view horror forever. ‘to serve man’---where the greatest, scariest thing in the world is not being able to understand the language another person is actually using and for them to manipulate u using ur own, actually wishing u harm as they placate you with your own interpretations. the episode where a rich man’s last will and testament is for his vain, selfish relatives to wear a mask until midnight that reveals symbolically how ugly they are to him. they bicker all night with petty squabbles, and then at midnight he reveals the mask has permeanantly shaped their faces to reveal who they really are and the abuse he suffered under them. the cornfield episode still scares the shit out of me as someone with an entitled younger brother whose entitlement and anger is often enabled by those around us, and i’ve always thought that it was such a good show of like, how patriarchy enables little boy’s violence. the episode ‘all the time in the world’ where an abused man with a shitty life is finally the last man on earth and he can do anything he’d like to do and all he wants to do is read but then he breaks his glasses. and finally! the episode where toys in a box come to life and bemoan their fate as they realize they will be trapped there forever in clothes and identities they do not recognize. these episodes always scare the shit out of me LOL.

besides that i really like. low-budget passion project indie games. the first that comes to mind is ‘the path’ which is about a family of four sisters of various ages all inspired by little red riding hood who stray from the path and are hunted by the woodsman. and then the game that YOU my dear myers! showed me! that haunts me to this day. basically a tape talks to you about the areas of a house and then starts to talk about the house as a living creature. and the living creature is hungry, without you inside it. the living creature is tired of being alone, it’s tired of being abandoned, it’s tired, and it’s eyes are empty with no one in the windows, and it’s mind is blank with no one in the bedroom, and it’s hangry there’s no one in its basement to feast on, to torment as it has been tormented by disuse.

last but not least, i really enjoy the book ‘sharp objects.’ which is not technically a horror novel. but it is about a serial killer, and about women and abuse and it has some of the best writing ever. so i highly recommend it AND the miniseries (watch the miniseries first then read the book bc the miniseries is like. directed better? but the novel is written and characterized better. it’s also very short u can finish it in like a day and a half).

honorable mentions for horror In General (not necessarily psychological horror) are: 1) the birdcage. i honestly consider this movie entirely unsettling. robin williams failing to portray a man that is actually attracted to nathan lane, which could be because they have simply been married so long but also is just awful to me in general bc it makes me feel like even our outwardly gay but still more masc gay men can’t love and be attracted to femme camp gays even when they’re married to them. the fact that both these men that could be so in love, that were so in love at one time, you can at the very least imagine, are told by their only son that they need to go back in the closet to impress some old ass republicans, giving the message that no matter how succesful you are in the gay community, no matter how bright and wonderful a presence you are, no matter how loving you are, no matter how much you love, no matter how interwoven you are in lgbt-ness, the straight people you love most will still try to change you to impress the wold. horrifying.

2) coraline. its children’s horror but that’s still horror baby! i think lately about how much the movie talks about mothers and birth. coraline calls whybie ‘why born’ and i just think about how much she thinks about creating a new life with a new mother, and how going through that small door into a long tube... it’s like crawling into a new womb and being reborn to a new mother that loves you. and that’s horrific from a feminist perspective in and of itself---that your child would feel so unloved and unimportant to you that she would literally... rather die in this life, technically, rather be ‘unborn’ to you and born anew to someone, someone just like you but better, someone just like you but what SHE wants a mother to be, feminine and skirted and smiling. and then there’s the fact that coraline only gives this up when she realizes her other mother basically wants to change her more to suit her liking in ways that would cause her pain, at which point she realizes this whole fantasy is a lie, not real, something meant to entice her and control her and make her ‘perfect’---the same way she wants her mother & father to be ‘perfect’ in a way that causes her to act out and hurt them. it’s psychological horror that’s technically not psychological horror in the best way, something you can really dig your teeth into, something that has so many layers to it. and the animation! gorgeous!

3) finally i have recently watched annihilation. and it kind of changed my life a little bit.... so often we’re used to viewing monsters as either 1) malicious or 2) romantic/sad/sexy. but the monster in this movie is literally a metaphor for cervical cancer. 

to me, the monsters and the corpses and all the beautiful scenery in this movie, in every color u can think of, a muted rainbow of flowers and nature at its best and most bizarre and sprawling. i often say that monsters are beautiful, but tbh, i feel like... somehow i always mean that in a way that is near-fetishitic, somehow self-depcrating way, where i want to consider what other people think is ‘ugly’ is ‘beautiful to me’ because what i am also ugly to other people as a monster to the cishet white patriarchy. there are things i consider beautiful, certainly, purely beautiful. but when i talk about monsters being beautiful, it is in the way the sublime is beautiful. it scares me, it haunts me, i love it, i want to possess it as part of me, a totem to carry in my back pocket to make the strength in my own ugliness stronger.

when i saw the monster in this movie (SPOILERS) i was immediately unnerved at this bad cgi abomination that bloomed from the most beautiul cgi cancer death cosmos imaginable. it scared me and i had to sleep with a light on for 2 days after LOL. but i was also moved by its gentleness. by the fact that the cervical cancer alien, when it tried to hurt you, wasn’t trying to hurt you at all. it was simply copying your movements. in the movie, it says that the creature wants nothing. it was simply copying. it was simply changing. it’s a prism of nature---and it corrupts yes, and it can hurt people and things and turn them into scary but still terribly unique and beautiful things that also kill---but the movie says that it wants nothing. it simply exists. it’s a part of nature, same as us, a part of the same universe and cosmos, despite being alien to us and stange and hurting us sometimes in ways that it doesn’t understand.

i don’t know. if i quite believe the movie when it says that, though. because i think if you copy someone, like a child would, you are trying to understand them. you are trying to understand yourself. you are trying to form yourself in another’s image when you have none, and you are failing at that, and hurting people and creating monsters in the process, but you are trying as best as you can to be whole and beautiful and sane like the lovely creatures you’ve met on this earth, or this body. to be part of something great and beautiful. to be part of another world.

maybe it doesn’t want anything. but do WE want anything as children, when we copy adults? why did the bear and the alligator try to eat our heroes if they were not hungry? did the bear and the alligator not WANT to eat? i think everything wants to live, and everything wants to grow, and if it can learn to live better and grow better it Will learn even if that is not its explicit intention. does the alien have feelings? does nature? do we have to personify things to understand them? no. does personifying things make us understand them less? no, yes, sometimes. we ask animals and nature to copy us, follow us, so that we can understand them better. the relationship in between----from the hurt, from the pain, from the droughts and the food shortages and the hurricanes and the fireworks---forms from our kindness and understanding. that our crops are useful, and the man-made mutation of our crops and the help of the ran and the sun is also useful. that our animals may not love us, but they need us, and we love them for putting their paw on our thighs to be pet, for following us into the bathroom even when we just wanted a moment alone.

regardless of its intentions, the alien, cancer, every creature, every human, they simply want to grow. in copying others---in trying to touch, to change, to understand, and be close---we learn to live in the same body, learn to live in the same world. the togetherness--the new sight the prism brings---it’s beautiful. it is beautiful to copy, however poorly. it is beautiful to try. we all shape others to our own standards---we sometimes forget we too, were made in own own perception of others’ image.

[theamberfang]

My mind has latched onto Nuclear Throne recently (again), and I’ve been thinking about trying to write a fanfic for it, so I guess I’ll just go ahead and put a bit of work into that. But I’m can’t get into writing the story immediately because the thought of actually drafting a story is immensely stressful quite a bit of worldbuilding needs to be done on my part. There isn’t anything resembling a plot in the actual game really: just a bunch of sparse elements that, on the face of it, are quite confusing to try to piece together.

But for now, what I’ll mostly be starting by rambling out my thoughts on Nuclear Throne lore and how I’ve interpreted things in the nearly 1000 hours I’ve spent with the game.

Anyway, Fish is a good way to begin rambling about things. He comes across as being the leader of the mutants, being the first from the left on the character select screen, generally being in the center of the campsite, and featuring prominently in promotional art.

One of the main things about Fish is that he’s an ex-cop. One of his loading screen “tips” is something along the lines of “one day before retirement”, which is, to my understanding, a trope in cop media of a—usually highly skilled—cop that just wants to retire being pulled into “one last job”. So the implication of this hint is that Fish was a veteran cop ready to retire just when the apocalypse happened. Fish’s B-skin also seems to be an homage to those sorts of action-hero types.

When thinking about applying this to a story, I imagine it being a source of conflict—both with the rest of the group and internally for Fish—since the main bad guys are also cops, the IDPD. Unlike Rogue, he never quit being a cop or anything; again, he stayed on long enough to retire. Yet he does have to reckon with the fact that he fights the IDPD. He could try to justify himself as a “good cop” and the IDPD being “corrupted” with a lot of “bad cops”. But YV—a known cop-hater (and a god)—would probably have something to say about that; and maybe some of the other mutants, too, since, to me, many of them are coded as being from of some marginalized group or another.

It’s a shitty point of reference since I barely know anything about the show or comic, but there could be some similarities to The Walking Dead. Post-apocalyptic setting with a well-meaning cop father-figure leader type. I don’t know how those stories deal with that character being a cop later on, but I did watch the first few episodes of the show.

Oh, and the main thing I’m going off of for the “father-figure” part, other than being an appropriate trope, is Fish singing in the camp. It gives the impression of him keeping moral up for everyone with song, so he seems more openly warm rather than being a cold hard-ass (though, maybe he becomes more of that eventually, if his B-skin is any indication.)

One last thing that contributes to Fish’s leadership capabilities is that he’s smart and resourceful. A big part of this comes from something I don’t remember the source of, but I recall something about Fish being the one to find and repair Robot. Maybe it was from a streamer who was relaying information that they got from their viewers who may have gotten it from a development stream or something. Maybe I just read it on the wiki at some point. But regardless, it’s also supported a bit in-game, depending on how you interpret Fish’s passive ability of getting extra ammo at least. But I interpret it as him knowing where to find resources and/or knowing how to turn junk into useful things; a similar sort of logic could be applied to his Confiscate ultra-mutation. And this lines up well with him being able to repair Robot (who is then also a character that can recycle junk into useful resources).

As for how he relates to the rest of the group, I’d say he works well with Crystal, who I interpret as being the “group mom”. I imagine them clashing quite a bit ideologically, but making things work for the sake of the group. He’d probably be pretty close with Robot; though there could be some conflict based on Fish thinking of Robot as more of a “pet” and Robot having advanced enough AI to think otherwise. Chicken might idolize Fish a bit since she’s a big fan of action movies, since Fish basically is an action hero. Steroids might be one to challenge Fish’s leadership with toxic machismo—but it’s tough to be sure since Steroids is also known as a bookish type. I’m confident in Fish clashing with YV though; just not how exactly, what with YV being a god. Maybe YV isn’t really part of the group and just shows up occasionally, sometimes testing and/or taunting Fish (as a cop-hater to a cop). Lastly, I’d expect Rogue to be the one to really help him understand that “all cops are bastards”; like, she might be on that journey herself after going rogue and is able to bring Fish along.

There’s the matter of what Fish would be searching for the Nuclear Throne for, but I think the Throne is worth exploring on its own.

[nouveauweird]

MEDIA INFLUENCES FOR MY WRITING (IN GENERAL)

I was tagged by Yah Yah of @fluoresensitive​ (thank you!). Since I’m not actively working on a single wip I chose some early and major influences for my work overall rather than just one project. These medias span from childhood to very recently! 

As you can see I am very much influenced by the science fiction and crime genres. Some of these works I was introduced to through school, others through chance or recommendation, and they all left lasting impression. The following WIPs take the strongest influence from these medias: The Puppeteer Plague (sci-fi thriller), Of Rust & Redwood Lungs (space opera? drama), Define Vitality (post apoc drama), Hyacinth Stalks (crime thriller).

TAGGING: @bebewrites - @blossomov - @skeletongrrl - @glittcrpeach - @queenie-dragon - @halohidings - & anyone who wants to tbh

This got long so I’ll put all of this under a cut!

The Magic Treehouse series by Mary Pope Osborne. These were a childhood favourite of mine, a mix of science and fantasy and adventure that made learning something empowering for children. 

The Pyx by John Buell. This pulp fiction has been lurking on my family’s bookshelves forever, since it’s one of my grandfather’s novels. I need to reread it to appreciate it properly because it’s been like 10 years. 

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. I read this in grade 9 and fell in love with its subtle science fiction elements, its post-nuclear apocalyptic setting and the children who find themselves with tele-empathic abilities that make them a target of their hyper religious communities... 

The Host. Probably read this midway through high school after the Twilight craze had died down, but have reread it about 4 times and it makes me cry every time. Say what we will about Smeyer and silly hetero love triangles but she did some really cool worldbuilding with this, and those ideas have followed me ever since. I probably think about this book every time I shower, don’t ask me why.

The Stand (expanded and uncut edition). My dad has a few favourites, and among them are this book and Dune. He convinced me to read it when we were stuck in a cottage for two weeks when I was 14. I got the name Perion from this book, which I gave to one of my most treasured original characters. I also take inspiration from some of the plague and post apocalypse elements but little else.

Level 26: Dark Origins by Anthony E. Zuiker. I watched way too many crime shows as a teenager, and though I think the CSI shows were not so bad, this novel written by the executive producer was real bad. I absolutely shouldn’t have read this at 15 years old it was so fucked up, but it was also the first book to immediately hook me in in the prologue and held me in a tight grip of suspense the whole way through. I’ve never been more fucked up by a book before. The sequel is pretty good too. It is actually media based, and has codes every few chapters that you can plug into the official website where there are short clips shot with real actors that provide additional subplot to the book.

Fringe (2008-2013). This was my favourite show which I was so invested in I recall my sibling coming in to console me during a particularly intense season premiere bc I was sobbing so hard. What they did with some of the science fiction in this blew my mind, and some elements have followed me into my work now. 

Obscura by Joe Hart. I read this last year, and I’ve never really finished a book and wholeheartedly said that it deserved to have a TV adaptation. It’s narrative is suspenseful the sci-fi elements are compelling and the stakes are intriguing. It’s set in space, the main character is a mother, and the twist is fucking delicious.

Bloodchild by Octavia E. Butler. I read this for my sci-fi themed English class last year and was riveted. I haven’t read anything like it before. The whole class reacted strongly to it. I loved the alien species and I love the dynamics between them and the humans, who have become refugees on another planet, and a valuable resource too. Fucked up but in a very compelling way.

The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer. I started the first book at 9 pm before trying to go to bed, and got through the first 100 pages, I had to get up and go talk to by sibling Andy because I was so thoroughly skeeved out by the world Vandermeer had created. I put a lot of trust in this story, because the perspectives shift in the following books and I really wanted more from the Biologist, but ultimately it remains one of my favourite series and a huge influence for my science fiction work. 

Alien (1979) & Aliens (1986). The first “scary” movie I was introduced to as a kid. The monster/alien concept stuck with me and I rewatch the first two films (we ignore every subsequent film). Puppeteer Plague pays homage to the Xenomorphs, and in another WIP (Mare Levest 40) I named many of the crew after Alien Franchise characters.

iRobot (2004). Another action/sci-fi I was introduced to as a kid. It still startles me even though I know the story and have watched it many time. The robots were fucking cool. Spooner’s prosthetics are a major influence in Of Rust & Redwood Lungs (which is a Mars Settlement political drama).

The Expanse (show and books). I only recently got into this series, but it’s become a big inspiration for me for my own space opera wip. I have taken influence from The Martian, The Space Between Us, Interstellar and many other space-based medias for this piece, but The Expanse was the one to really dig in deep with the worldbuilding and I have a lot of respect for it especially because of its diversity of characters, but also representations of various sexualities. 

Runners Up: Panic at Rock Island for its plague themes, The Mentalist and Lie to Me for their unique approaches to crime, Terra Nova for its unique worldbuilding and for also making me fuckin sob during the finale (also shout out to the livejournal fanfic community I was in for that fandom, lmao, I gave Lt. Reilly the first name Laura and someone put it on the wiki), and Bioshock, The Last of Us, and Horizon Zero Dawn for worldbuilding elements. 

I legit didn’t realise I had so many sci-fi influences, damn. You’re a trooper if you read this far.

[ckret2]

hi, im a follower from in short supply who isnt familiar with godzilla, but i love your general worldbuilding and meta, including the godzilla stuff ive read. how friendly would you say your rodorah fic and other godzilla fic is to a relative outsider?

Considering that I was a complete outsider to Godzilla fandom until about four months ago, I'd say pretty friendly!

Nearly everyone who's currently writing Godzilla fics—ESPECIALLY those of us writing shippy stuff—rode in on the wave of hype following "Godzilla: King of the Monsters," which just came out at the end of May. So if you can get your hands on a copy of that and watch it, you'll have seen the one piece of Godzilla media that all of us have in common. That's it! A single two-hour movie and you've got all the canon you need to keep up with pretty much everything we're writing.

And if you can't get your hands on it, there's not just one, but two Godzilla wikis to give you summaries of the movie, and YouTube's currently drowning in HD clips of the big fights in KOTM.

Since diving headfirst into Godzilla fandom, we've all been gradually binging our way through the older movies—independently and wildly out of order, so none of us are working off the same internal repertoire of movies lmao. Most of us have also seen Godzilla 2014 (the direct prequel to KOTM), but I'd bet even that isn't universal.

(I could get you more movie recs if you want, but I'm thinking your priority right now is "as somebody who knows next to NOTHING about Godzilla, what's the minimum knowledge base I'd need to keep up with the fics?" so I'm gonna keep it bare bones.)

And while the lore can get complex—you can dig into deep themes about nuclear weaponry and war and pollution or the complex relationships of dozens of human characters—for the purposes of knowing enough to understand most fanfic? The Necessary KOTM Lore is pretty simple. Godzilla's a giant radioactive lizard, he's terrifying to humans, he swims, and he's either in charge of the other big dudes or he's just determined to keep them from stirring up shit, depending on how you choose to interpret canon. Mothra's a moth, she's the friendly one that actually likes humans, she hatches as a larva and cocoons and turns into a moth and dies and is reincarnated in another egg as another larva over and over, and she's actually considered a goddess whereas the other titans don't get that label. Rodan is a pteranodon that lives in a volcano and we're pretty sure his only goal in life is to get into fights (and, considering his track record in the movie, probably lose them). Ghidorah is a three-headed lightning-spitting golden space dragon and Godzilla's Official Nemesis, his only goal is to destroy life on Earth, he's somehow capable of controlling/commanding other titans, and his heads have different personalities. Godzilla and Mothra are a symbiotic team (what "symbiotic" means is up to fan interpretation) and Ghidorah recruits previously-neutral Rodan to fight by his side by kicking his ass. Sometimes humans are mentioned. People like Madison because she's a kid, she's got survival skills, and when Ghidorah roars at her she roars back. That's really everything you need to know to make sense of most KOTM fic.

Those of us who have seen older movies have been working some of that lore into KOTM-verse fics. Example: I regularly bring up Gigan; he's a character introduced in Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972), and I included him because he had a great Asshole Villains Working Together And Having Fun dynamic with King Ghidorah in that movie. For people who haven't seen a movie with Gigan? I figure they're googling his name, looking at his character art, reading a couple paragraphs off his wiki page, and going "okay I know just enough about him to make sense of his role in this fanfic" and continuing to read. That's what I've been doing when I run into a character I haven't seen yet in someone else's work. None of us have seen all the movies yet so we're all googling each other's references at all times. And most creators I've seen have been perfectly happy to answer "who's that character, where are they from?" questions that folks have about their fics/art. I know I am!

So, the tl;dr is that you really need to know very little in order to understand the fics. The more you know, the more allusions/references you can pick up to other pieces of Godzilla canon; but if you don't pick them up, then they might as well be OCs and headcanons and you can still make sense of them that way.

[ateanalenn]

This is a list of creative writing and self-publishing tools, apps and websites + a few extra that I thought would help!

ONLINE WRITING ENVIRONMENTS

750WORDS – a simple site to keep up a private diary or daily writing practice. You can earn badges and get some neat metrics after you complete your writing.

GOOGLE DOCS – I wrote a whole post about HOW WRITERS CAN USE GOOGLE DOCS!

NOISLI – noise generator and distraction-free writing (with Markdown preview).

WRITE OR DIE – no other app can make you write faster! A NaNoWriMo staple.

WORKFLOWY – a beautifully simple web/mobile app for outlining and list-making.

TWINE – a visual interface for creating “choose your own adventure”-style stories. WATCH THIS VIDEO for a great introduction.

NOTION.SO* – a beautiful web (+Mac & iOS) app for writing and/or creating worldbuilding wikis. CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP and earn 150 extra content blocks.

STATIONERY

GALEN LEATHER – beautiful leather traveler’s notebooks, pen cases, notebook covers and more.

CULTPENS – I order most of my fountain pens from CultPens in the UK. My go-to pens are the Kaweco Sport, Conklin Duragraph and Pilot Penmanship.

PAPERCHASE – I love Paperchase padfolios!

ONLINE DICTIONARIES

BEHIND THE NAME – my favourite resource to research name meanings, and find character names.

WEBSTER’S 1913 – a lovely nice vintage alternative to modern dictionaries, especially useful for historical fiction.

WORDNIK – one of my favourite tools for discovering and collecting words!

MAC APPS FOR WRITERS

SCRIVENER – excellent for organising (and reorganising) longer projects. If you use Scrivener for novel writing, you might like to download my ONE PAGE NOVEL TEMPLATE.

NOTATIONAL VELOCITY – I use this for all odd notes. It’s quick, simple, beautiful, and saves all files as .txt.

FLUX – Flux automatically adjusts the colour temperature of your screen according to the time of day. I find it really helps me with eye strain!

SOCIAL MEDIA & EMAIL MARKETING

BUFFER – I love Buffer not just for their amazing app, but also because they write the best blog on social media.

ACTIVECAMPAIGN* – I have yet to find a more elegant solution for automated email campaigns.

CONVERTKIT* – another fantastic email marketing solution, especially for email courses.

MAILERLITE – a great free solution for drip-style email automation.

BOARDBOOSTER* – allows you to automate posting to your Pinterest boards. Free for the first 100 pins.

CHROME EXTENSIONS FOR WRITERS

NOISLI – simple and beautiful noise generator which allows you to create and save sound combinations.

LANES – if you’re a fan of the Pomodoro Method, this is a lovely extension that turns your new tab page into a pomodoro timer and todo checklist.

MOMENTUM – similar to Lanes, this extension turns your new tab into a beautiful dashboard.

DRAFTBACK – an amazing extension that helps you visualise the writing and editing of Google documents. READ MORE HERE.

STAYFOCUSED – block yourself from time-wasting sites. I use this to combat my Youtube addiction.

ONLINE WRITING COURSES

THE WRITEMBER WORKSHOP – my friend, Faye Kirwin’s beautiful course on making writing an easy, joyful, daily habit.

THE ONE PAGE NOVEL – my course on how to plot your novel on one A4 page.

HOW TO BE THE HEROINE OF YOUR OWN STORY – my course on how to develop your character (and yourself) on one page.

MASTERCLASS WITH JAMES PATTERSON* – bestselling author, James Patterson’s tips for writing a novel.

LEARN SCRIVENER FAST* – Scrivener is an incredibly powerful piece of software, but if you’re having trouble getting started with it, this course can help!

ONLINE WRITING COMMUNITIES

MYWRITECLUB – a site for communal writing sprints and word tracking. You can follow me HERE.

4THEWORDS – a fun, gamified writing community where you battle monsters as you write, complete quests and earn crystals.

WORDWAR.IO – word war chatrooms from the creator of Write or Die.

IOS APPS FOR WRITERS

SCRIVENER FOR IOS – this is hands-down the best and most beautiful iOS word processor.

HANX WRITER – I’ve written about how much I LOVE HANX WRITER before.

NOTABILITY – this is a great app for importing PDFs (such as WRITING WORKSHEETS) and handwriting over them.

AMBIENT NOISE

I find ambient noise to be extremely helpful when I’m trying to focus on writing. In addition to the previously-mentioned NOISLI, here are a few sites/apps you might like to try…

AMBIENT-MIXER – Ambient-Mixer allows you to create your own custom soundscapes, or to use ones created by other users. My favourite is THIS HOGWARTS LIBRARY MIX.

BRAIN.FM – in all honesty, I didn’t think this worked for me, but I’ve seen many people swear by it, so it’s worth a try.

COFFITIVITY – if you’d like to create a café atmosphere in your home, this is the web/mobile app you want.

ONLINE PUBLISHING COMMUNITIES

Wattpad – Wattpad’s strength lies in its mobile app which is very convenient for reading. It also provides great opportunities to connect with your readers and some basic metrics on how they are engaging with your stories. – Since my account was deleted without reason or warning, I can sadly no longer recommend Wattpad as a safe platform to share stories.

GOODREADS – you might not be aware that you can actually publish your own stories on Goodreads. You’ll need to login, GO TO THIS PAGE, then find the small link that says, “my writing”. I admit I haven’t tried it yet, but I love Goodreads as a book community, so I have high hopes. :)

PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS

THE PRODUCTIVITY PAGES – my paper-based goal and task-tracking solution for writers.

TODOIST – a beautifully minimal to-do list app.

RESCUETIME – automatically tracks how much time you use in each app, and gives you a productivity score based on which apps or websites you designate, “productive” and which “distracting”.

TRELLO* – a task-management app that uses boards, lists and cards. A very nice solution if you like a more visual approach. I also recommend adding the SLIM LISTS CHROME EXTENSIONto fit more on your screen.

PDF TOOLS

DOCHUB – PDF editor that you can add to your Google Drive contextual menu, or as a Chrome app.

SMALLPDF – some fantastic PDF conversion and compression tools!

PDFESCAPE – this tool makes me SO HAPPY! You can upload your PDFs and quickly and easily turn them into forms. Love it.

IMAGES

FIRMBEE – a collection of public domain mockups to use for marketing your books.

UNSPLASH – gorgeous public domain photos to use in your blog posts, book covers, or social media graphics.

GRAPHICBURGER – mockups and graphics to use in your ebooks or emails.

CREATIVEMARKET* – a great resource for images, fonts, templates and themes. Don’t miss their weekly free goods!

CANVA – an online image editor that has pre-made templates for Kindle ebook covers.

WEB SITES

WORDPRESS – my site runs on WordPress. I love it, although it can be a bit intimidating if you aren’t very tech-savvy.

ANGIEMAKES* – my WordPress theme is by AngieMakes. It has a ton of options and I really love it!

SITEGROUND* – my web host of choice. Their premium support is top notch!

MISCELLANEOUS

HOTJAR* – create heatmaps of your blog to see where viewers are looking and clicking.

WAVE – As far as I know, this is the only free accounting solution for freelancers and small businesses, and it works a treat!

Links with * are affiliate or referral links. But I promise I never recommend products unless I absolutely love them!

[wordsofkrys]

CREATIVE WRITING TOOLS

ONLINE WRITING ENVIRONMENTS

750WORDS – a simple site to keep up a private diary or daily writing practice. You can earn badges and get some neat metrics after you complete your writing.

GOOGLE DOCS – I wrote a whole post about HOW WRITERS CAN USE GOOGLE DOCS!

NOISLI – noise generator and distraction-free writing (with Markdown preview).

WRITE OR DIE – no other app can make you write faster! A NaNoWriMo staple.

WORKFLOWY – a beautifully simple web/mobile app for outlining and list-making.

TWINE – a visual interface for creating “choose your own adventure”-style stories. WATCH THIS VIDEO for a great introduction.

NOTION.SO* – a beautiful web (+Mac & iOS) app for writing and/or creating worldbuilding wikis. CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP and earn 150 extra content blocks.

STATIONERY

GALEN LEATHER – beautiful leather traveler’s notebooks, pen cases, notebook covers and more.

CULTPENS – I order most of my fountain pens from CultPens in the UK. My go-to pens are the Kaweco Sport, Conklin Duragraph and Pilot Penmanship.

PAPERCHASE – I love Paperchase padfolios!

MAC APPS FOR WRITERS

SCRIVENER – excellent for organising (and reorganising) longer projects. If you use Scrivener for novel writing, you might like to download my ONE PAGE NOVEL TEMPLATE.

NOTATIONAL VELOCITY – I use this for all odd notes. It’s quick, simple, beautiful, and saves all files as .txt.

FLUX – Flux automatically adjusts the colour temperature of your screen according to the time of day. I find it really helps me with eye strain!

SOCIAL MEDIA & EMAIL MARKETING

BUFFER – I love Buffer not just for their amazing app, but also because they write the best blog on social media.

ACTIVECAMPAIGN* – I have yet to find a more elegant solution for automated email campaigns.

CONVERTKIT* – another fantastic email marketing solution, especially for email courses.

MAILERLITE – a great free solution for drip-style email automation.

BOARDBOOSTER* – allows you to automate posting to your Pinterest boards. Free for the first 100 pins.

CHROME EXTENSIONS FOR WRITERS

NOISLI – simple and beautiful noise generator which allows you to create and save sound combinations.

LANES – if you’re a fan of the Pomodoro Method, this is a lovely extension that turns your new tab page into a pomodoro timer and todo checklist.

MOMENTUM – similar to Lanes, this extension turns your new tab into a beautiful dashboard.

DRAFTBACK – an amazing extension that helps you visualise the writing and editing of Google documents. READ MORE HERE.

STAYFOCUSED – block yourself from time-wasting sites. I use this to combat my Youtube addiction.

ONLINE WRITING COURSES

THE WRITEMBER WORKSHOP – my friend, Faye Kirwin’s beautiful course on making writing an easy, joyful, daily habit.

THE ONE PAGE NOVEL – my course on how to plot your novel on one A4 page.

HOW TO BE THE HEROINE OF YOUR OWN STORY – my course on how to develop your character (and yourself) on one page.

MASTERCLASS WITH JAMES PATTERSON* – bestselling author, James Patterson’s tips for writing a novel.

LEARN SCRIVENER FAST* – Scrivener is an incredibly powerful piece of software, but if you’re having trouble getting started with it, this course can help!

ONLINE WRITING COMMUNITIES

MYWRITECLUB – a site for communal writing sprints and word tracking. You can follow me HERE.

4THEWORDS – a fun, gamified writing community where you battle monsters as you write, complete quests and earn crystals.

WORDWAR.IO – word war chatrooms from the creator of Write or Die.

IOS APPS FOR WRITERS

SCRIVENER FOR IOS – this is hands-down the best and most beautiful iOS word processor.

HANX WRITER – I’ve written about how much I LOVE HANX WRITER before.

NOTABILITY – this is a great app for importing PDFs (such as WRITING WORKSHEETS) and handwriting over them.

AMBIENT NOISE

I find ambient noise to be extremely helpful when I’m trying to focus on writing. In addition to the previously-mentioned NOISLI, here are a few sites/apps you might like to try…

AMBIENT-MIXER – Ambient-Mixer allows you to create your own custom soundscapes, or to use ones created by other users. My favourite is THIS HOGWARTS LIBRARY MIX.

BRAIN.FM – in all honesty, I didn’t think this worked for me, but I’ve seen many people swear by it, so it’s worth a try.

COFFITIVITY – if you’d like to create a café atmosphere in your home, this is the web/mobile app you want.

ONLINE PUBLISHING COMMUNITIES

Wattpad – Wattpad’s strength lies in its mobile app which is very convenient for reading. It also provides great opportunities to connect with your readers and some basic metrics on how they are engaging with your stories. – Since my account was deleted without reason or warning, I can sadly no longer recommend Wattpad as a safe platform to share stories.

GOODREADS – you might not be aware that you can actually publish your own stories on Goodreads. You’ll need to login, GO TO THIS PAGE, then find the small link that says, “my writing”. I admit I haven’t tried it yet, but I love Goodreads as a book community, so I have high hopes. :)

PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS

THE PRODUCTIVITY PAGES – my paper-based goal and task-tracking solution for writers.

TODOIST – a beautifully minimal to-do list app.

RESCUETIME – automatically tracks how much time you use in each app, and gives you a productivity score based on which apps or websites you designate, “productive” and which “distracting”.

TRELLO* – a task-management app that uses boards, lists and cards. A very nice solution if you like a more visual approach. I also recommend adding the SLIM LISTS CHROME EXTENSIONto fit more on your screen.

PDF TOOLS

DOCHUB – PDF editor that you can add to your Google Drive contextual menu, or as a Chrome app.

SMALLPDF – some fantastic PDF conversion and compression tools!

PDFESCAPE – this tool makes me SO HAPPY! You can upload your PDFs and quickly and easily turn them into forms. Love it.

IMAGES

FIRMBEE – a collection of public domain mockups to use for marketing your books.

UNSPLASH – gorgeous public domain photos to use in your blog posts, book covers, or social media graphics.

GRAPHICBURGER – mockups and graphics to use in your ebooks or emails.

CREATIVEMARKET* – a great resource for images, fonts, templates and themes. Don’t miss their weekly free goods!

CANVA – an online image editor that has pre-made templates for Kindle ebook covers.

WEB SITES

WORDPRESS – my site runs on WordPress. I love it, although it can be a bit intimidating if you aren’t very tech-savvy.

ANGIEMAKES* – my WordPress theme is by AngieMakes. It has a ton of options and I really love it!

SITEGROUND* – my web host of choice. Their premium support is top notch!

MISCELLANEOUS

HOTJAR* – create heatmaps of your blog to see where viewers are looking and clicking.

WAVE – As far as I know, this is the only free accounting solution for freelancers and small businesses, and it works a treat!

https://www.eadeverell.com/creative-writing-tools/