#I'm here for a good time not a cohesively thematically organized time

[prince-liest]

After an adventure with FedEx misdelivery (the driver apparently actually came back and re-delivered the package), my orchids have arrived!!

The Phalaenopsis Sweet Memory 'Liodoro'! No scent yet, but I've heard that's common for new/stressed plants that have just bloomed, so I'm very exciting for when it decides to grace me with its fragrance. It's clearly a really healthy, mature plant - there's a visible old spike from previous flowering, and the leaves are enormous! There's also a new flower bud hiding behind the mature bloom, ready to open soon. I'm so hyped to finally have one of these. My mom immediatelly called dibs on any keikis it ever makes, haha.

Phalaenopsis Kenneth Schubert 'Hualien Blue Wave,' another fragrant violacea hybrid like the Sweet Memory 'Liodoro'! This one is also has peloric parentage, which is a mutation where the petals of the flower start looking a little bit more like the flower lip. In this case it's the two petals that have more purple ridging on the sides, which I think looks really freaking pretty and adds a lot of charm to these flowers.

And lastly my new (and first ever) cattleya, the Lois McNeil 'Ace AM/AOS'! Cattleyas are very often fragrant in general (as you can see, I went all in on fragrant orchids after first experiencing one with the oncidium I bought a couple of months ago). The photo of the actual flower here is from the listing, as I bought this as a mature plant that is not currently in bud/bloom. However, it has new canes coming up and you can see in the photo that is has bloomed in the past, so I have no concerns about having to wait for years for it to mature!

I actually really love the look of the cattleya canes - they feel much more neat than oncidium pseudobulbs. This orchid may actually end up on my windowsill rather than under the grow lights because these guys love a bit of filtered or morning sunlight and bloom much better with it! Phals can often tolerate and enjoy gentle direct sun as well (I used to keep my phals on an eastern windowsill), but cattleyas are known for liking more light.

I'm so happy with these three plants! <3

[t4tpumpkinduo]

ok here's what my beautiful mind says about the dsmp timeline:

lmanberg - 1.5 years (long enough for independence and establishment, long enough for cjack and cniki to join not long after, but not too long tht cdrm control freak isms don't kick in.)

manburg - 1.2ish years (long enough for the war and tensions and bonds and marriages, downfall included in this. thematic that it doesn't last as long as l'manberg)

^ notice three-ish years pass from here. i'm gnna use ctommy as my guiding point uhh. he starts 14 and three years have passed so

new lmanberg - less than a year. ctommy turns 17 in exile canonically and exile itself canonically took place over a couple months so there's that. doomsday takes place not long after, it only makes sense.  el rapids factored into here

downtime less than a year? everyone getting shit sorted, left adrift, lnv is being built after el rapids destruction.

las nevadas: a year onward at the v least, he tortures dream for canon a couple months then ctechno is left in there a few more. i do think the story peeters a lot around these arcs bcs of the lack of cc organization and communication so theres a lot to trim up. using q as a starting point he's like canon 18-19 at the start of his whole dsmp arc cuz he just got outta juvie. if it's been a year and a half for lmb then that means ctommy is 15 so cq is 4 years older than him which tracks, he's their peer and they know eachother prior. if ctommy is 19-20 in lnv tht makes cq 23-24 which again tracks.

cwilb and cschlatt are frm smplive so they're in their early 20s specifically, and their arcs match that. cjack is ctommy's peer and cniki is cjacks peer so they can't be that much older than him, making their ages keep tracking.

cfundy says he's 22 in the revival apology stream, which if you take away 5 years would make him 17 during lmb which i also think is good? young enough to have the arc he does, but old enough to have the arc that he does. i also think my he got time portaled to vault hunters theory is rlly good and cohesive (yk, cwilbur being a young single father, losing his baby and going kinda nuts about it, the baby comes back to you way older and now neither of you know how to navigate it. cfundy canonically is a crazy redstoner and coder WHERE did he learn that from if he was just around cwil cphil his whole childhood. how does he know iskall enough to INVITE him to the dsmp if he can't venture off anywhere. accept time portal displacement into your hearts.)

sm of the other character ages ofc can be departed frm the ccs thematically speaking (csam being older than ccsam on account of being a father, same w ccphil and cphil father + angel of death isms.) but yeah this is my little breakdown 👍 she textual on my evidence don't play w me

[samanthahirr]

multiples of 10! (for the fic writer ask meme)

Thanks for the generous Ask, @avocadomooon! You gave me so many good questions to choose from, and I've picked a few favorites to answer here:

10. at what point in the process do you come up with titles, and how easy or hard is that for you? The choosing of titles is terrible. It's almost always at the end, when I've finished all my writing and all my edits, and the only thing standing between me and hitting Publish on the AO3 work is the goddamn metadata. I'll belatedly brainstorm some options, tear my hair out for an hour, and then go with whichever title idea I hate the least.

50. do you plan, or do you write whatever comes to your mind? I'm a planner from first to last. There's almost always a 2-day-minimum gestation period between the initial moment of inspiration and when I've finished planning out the story enough to begin writing it. I'll first write a 100-500-word exploration of the idea (getting the shape of the emotional arc, genre, POV, probable length). If it feels longer than a 2k fic, I'll break the story down into a bulleted list of scenes or key story beats. And then I'll expand most items in that bulleted list into their own paragraph-long summaries. And then I'll do any necessary research, and make sure there's enough variety between the scenes/settings, and make sure every scene is actually necessary. And then I'll actually start "writing" the first draft.

80. do you try to put themes, motifs, messages, morals, etc. in your writing? if so, how do you go about it? I'm not one for messages and morals, but I love to use motifs and themes. But those aren't usually among the elements that I plan before writing. See, this is one of my favorite writing hacks: I write in strict chronological order and build off of the story elements I've already introduced. I'm often calling back to elements from earlier in the story, which makes the writing feel really cohesive and intentional. And that's how a turn of phrase or a gesture or an object that I introduce idly at the beginning of a story, if repeated often enough, organically builds to a motif and possibly even thematic significance by the time I've reached the ending.

This Ask Meme is an awesome list of 100 questions for fanfic authors. Feel free to ask me any of them, or reblog it so I can ask you some questions!

[daswarschonkaputt]

Lordy, I want to get to the point where my writing has themes!

i've read ur writing rebell (can i call u rebell?) and i'm going to be real: it already has themes in it. (check out a few of my favourite rebell ficlets: porsche and korn play chess, porsche is angsty about being minor family head, and porsche confronts vegas abt the diamond auction.)

like, one of the very present themes that i have noticed in rebell's kinnporsche ficlets is this idea of leverage and bargaining, not just between porsche and others (porsche and korn, porsche and vegas [what a thing of beauty that was]) but between porsche and himself. porsche noticing the different chains the people around him wear, who's holding them, and how to pick them up himself.

stuff like this gets more pronounced with more longform fic, but it's still there in one-shots and ficlets. just because you're not consciously aware of it doesn't mean it's not present in your writing!

realising when you're doing this and then consciously deploying it will come with time! usually i approach this matter from the perspective of what i'm trying to communicate with my writing, what's the greater story i'm trying to tell -- and then how i want everything to fall within that thematically. but themes also emerge organically, when you tell a cohesive story with a consistent mood.

in the case of sheets, power and agency were very present on my mind right from chapter one, because those were themes from the show i wanted to explore. when i was still in the early writing phase of sheets i sent a dm to my sounding board bestie, chris, with my thesis statement for the fic:

(looks at the "must protecc pete" statement. looks at the concussion i gave him. says nothing.)

writing them out like this was a good way of me checking that i was doing what i wanted to do. and, if you're struggling to keep your writing on target and cohesive, i'd advise doing the same thing. take the subtext out of the subtext, and then go back over your writing with a critical eye. and, if you can't make your writing communicate what you want, go back and look at what you're trying to do thematically and see if it's incompatible with the story you want to tell.

i think it's really important that any fancy technical writing stuff come secondary to telling a compelling and satisfying story. priority one should be doing your characters justice. and -- well, if you do your characters justice, themes very frequently emerge organically.

i do want to state that it's not always a conscious choice for me, either. sometimes i write something and look back on it and i'm like, "oh wow, this was really about consent/depression/sacrifice/duty/insert theme here." but when you're writing longer fic (sheets is 70k) it can be important to check in, remind yourself what you're doing, and make sure you're on target. stuff gets lost in those sorts of stories.

lastly, though -- to anyone reading this who's now panicking about themes in their writing, don't. the best way to get better at writing? do lots of it. the best way to do lots of writing? have fun writing. don't stress youself out about the technical elements of writing -- the most important thing is to enjoy what you're doing. themes and motifs are cool, but they're not necessary to tell a compelling story. like i said: do the characters justice.

anyway, rebell, i hope i haven't embarrassed you too badly. i feel like this is the moment when a student asks their lecturer a question and the lecturer proceeds to pull up their assignment and go through it in front of the class.

tlr;dr: themes can emerge organically, but if you're a try-hard like me you can brute force it. rebell already has themes in their writing and you should read their fic. oh, and don't stress about this stuff and remember to have fun writing.