#LadyTem's writing

[ladytemeraire]

8, 18

8. If you had to write an entire story without either action or dialogue, which would you choose and how would it go?

Oh, this is a hard one. I guess if I had to pick, I'd go without dialogue, because I honestly love threading the needle of conveying nonverbal communication in body language and sensory details.

(Also I've kind of done the "without action/only with dialogue" version, albeit in an epistolary format using text messages and IMs, so doing the reverse would be a fun challenge!)

18. Choose a passage from your writing. Tell me about the backstory of this moment. How you came up with it, how it changed from start to end. Spicy addition: Questioner provides the passage.

(I don't think I've ever shared my writing here before but, well. Rewards of being loved, mortifying ordeal of being known.)

Snippet under the cut because I am an awkward porg:

Mira whirled away and slammed her tablet down on the desk. "Stop lying to me!" The room went deadly silent save for her own hitching breaths, heaving under the steady white noise of the air cycler. "I do not make a habit of lying," V'therin finally said, voice low, every word deliberately measured. No, not measured, clipped, and she flinched; the last time she'd heard that carefully controlled fury, someone had rightfully ended up with a knife through their eye socket. "I especially do not lie to those I care about." "I know." It was barely a whisper. "Then I trust you have a reason for making such an accusation?" "Because it's either that or you're being willfully ignorant, and you're too smart to not see how this all ends." Mira's hands were trembling, the motion starting to move further through her limbs, and she couldn't keep her voice from shaking as she turned back to face him. "I screwed up, Vee. Don't you get it? I got them killed. They're dead, and it's my fault. Your Council will never, ever let me go back to Laethan space, and I can't bring them back, I can't fix this, so just stop -" She made a horrible choking noise and sank down onto the bunk, burying her face in her hands. "Please stop pretending everything is going to be okay."

Ahhhh, delicious, delicious angst. This was one of those scenes where the core of it slam-dunked itself in my brain like Athena stepping fully-formed from Zeus' mind. I may not ever get it to fit into a story proper, but it was one of the earliest scenes that came to me as I was noodling around with this cast and setting - ironically, before I'd even settled on their dynamics, which meant I ended up working backwards based on wanting to end up with the connection that could potentially lead to this scene.

The trickiest thing for me here was navigating the dialogue and really nailing the wording. I knew the core of it, and I knew Mira's first and last lines from the jump; most of the work went into the back and forth in the middle, massaging out the wording and rhythm to keep the tone and pacing and carry the emotion of the scene through.

What it came down to was that advice I read somewhere about "pretend your character can't say exactly what they're thinking or feeling" and applying that to both of them. It's an unbelievably shitty situation, they're both having some Big Feelings, and figuring out how they navigate that grief and guilt both individually and together and how it bumps up against their personality and different cultures (Vee is an alien, which isn't made explicitly clear in this snippet) until it sounded the way I wanted it to was the biggest challenge.

Thanks for asking!

Weird Writer Asks

[ladytemeraire]

Oh hello there, Ageswap AU feels, it's been a while. <3

Similar to what Kinta said, I tend to lean towards completely flipping canon on its head in the Noa arc for a couple different reasons:

We already got "Mokuba gets nabbed and Seto has to get him back" at least once before in Duelist Kingdom and I'd like to see, if not an exact flip of that, at least something that isn’t retreading the same plot points. (In my version at least, Duelist Kingdom in the Ageswap AU plays out fairly similar to canon for a number of reasons, not the least of which is I am a sucker for angst and I have a very specific mental image of how the rooftop duel happens with tiny Seto.)

As noted above, Big Brother Mokuba is very much not as vulnerable as canon Mokuba, so Noa nabbing him in this version would be more of a "yeah, you don't have him, he has you" situation. Which is amusing to consider, but not how I personally see it actually going down. (And yeah, Kinta, I'm with you, I don't want to just give the same dialogue to the other person in these AUs.)

The Big 5 straight up being taken out of the picture was not something I had considered but I am now adding that to my mental Ageswap AU Canon Voltron, thank you Ice for that bit of brilliance. Which introduces its own ripple effect of changes - what are the Squad doing for most of this arc? Since the Big 5 aren't there needing bodies to plug their brains into, are they just locked out entirely? Hmm.

As you can probably tell, I haven't mentally noodled around in this arc as much as, say, Doma (Kinta's sketches for that still live rent-free in my brain 24/7/365 and also I just love the sandbox of Doma in general), but I definitely think this arc in the Ageswap AU deviates possibly the most from canon in terms of How Things Happen. So here’s me just rambling out loud for a bit, feel free to use or ignore my take on things as it pleases you.

I like the squad still being there, mostly to give us a few more characters for the bros to bounce off of; I’m just not sure how and why they get there. Maybe the brothers get nabbed first and everyone else goes “well nuts to this” and dives in after them. Or maybe Noa still just yoinks everyone in from the get-go so he has Options and/or more leverage to play with.

I do think Noa still tries to mess with Kiddo Seto's head, but it requires a very different tack and a lot more effort than it took with canon Mokuba. I think Noa would target Kiddo Seto's curiosity and skills with technology instead of trying to cast doubt on the brothers' relationship, at least at the start.

I also see Noa splitting them up as soon as possible, luring Seto to him of his own volition rather than a direct kidnapping and messing with his head and perception while simultaneously trying to break down Mokuba’s guard. He’s digital, he can essentially be in two places at once, it works.

(This is one place the Big 5 would actually come in handy, being a gauntlet of sorts for Mokuba to run in a similar manner to canon, but I like vicious Big Brother Mokuba permanently removing them as a threat after DK/Virtual Arc 1.0 too much to recant on that plot point.)

I would need to sit down and figure out the exact details of their backstory re: overthrowing Gozabozo before I could really decide how things play out, since that’s what drives a large portion of this arc. Canon Seto’s cruelty as a child was the weak point Noa exploited to get into Mokuba’s head, but if things don’t play out the exact same way in this AU (which I definitely don’t think they would) that wouldn’t even be an option.

Noa’s change of heart in this version is a one-two punch of Kiddo Seto confidently going “hello, I’m a genius and tech is my wheelhouse, of course I can build you a body and get your mind out of here” basically unprompted, and Mokuba gently pointing out and acknowledging that Noa was just as hurt and used by their father as him and Seto, and just. Showing an ounce of compassion and empathy towards someone who is still an incredibly lonely child.

Please consider: Kaiba bros tag teaming Gozabozo in that last duel.

Since this is an AU anyway and we might as well do what we want: NOA/VIRTUAL WORLD ARC COMES AFTER BATTLE CITY FINALS, this is the easiest possible change and it makes so much thematic and narrative sense, thank you for coming to my TED talk.

TL;DR The Noa arc is, at its heart, laying some of the worst ghosts of the Kaiba brothers' past to rest, and reaffirming the love and trust they share despite everything. Keep that core and no matter what details you alter, you’ll have a pretty solid foundation to build on.

(Someone still straight up kicks Gozabozo's office door in though, I absolutely refuse to compromise on this point.)

I know this is a really, really, long shot, but if you are ever in a nostalgic mood, do you think you would be up for a Kaiba Brothers Age Swap sketch set during the Noah Virtual Arc? Like we see how things would play in this au where Mokuba thinks Noah is his brother and we see Seto's reaction?

Hey!

So the thing about the Noa arc is that I actually keep getting hit with choice paralysis every time I think about it in Ageswap

(Longshot nothing btw, my avatar is still Ageswap Mokuba and I'm thinking more about redrawing him than just changing it)

So the thing is that Noa went after Mokuba in canon because he considered him the "weak link" (just like Gozaburo making the same mistake)

Big Brother Mokuba is not as easy to mistake for a weak link, and he's also very much in a different position with Seto, which is also important here

But also Big Brother Mokuba would still take one look at Noa and go "my kid now, fuck off Gozaburo I'm adopting him"

Whereas Noa I think would do a lot more work to screw with Seto more directly

I mentioned this as to @iced-blood, who has no small influence on and has done some writing for the AU, btw, and he made the notable comment that in his mind, the Big 5 would not be a resource available to Noa in Ageswap

Because Big Brother Mokuba is a hard ass motherfucker and would be. Thorough.

Anyway one of the points to the way I AU is that I try not to hit the same story beats so closely that I'd just be putting the same dialog into different characters' mouths, so to speak

@ladytemeraire and Ice are kind of who I think of as the Other Kaiba Ageswap people, so if either of you have any thoughts feel free to add them

[ladytemeraire]

7 and 29 for the writers ask meme?

7. What is your deepest joy about writing?

My deepest joy is when I hit that flow state and the words just sing on the page and I'm able to perfectly translate what I'm seeing and imagining into words.

29. Where do you draw your inspiration? What do you do when the inspiration well runs dry?

Ooh, this is a tricky one. I get my inspiration from all over the place: music, art and other visuals, moments in my own life, grappling with anxiety and grief and any other number of brain weasels and experiences. Sometimes it starts with a concept, sometimes it starts with a character, sometimes the entire structure of the plot gets slam-dunked straight into my brain.

When that well runs dry... well, at this stage of my life I'm pretty good about doing some triage to figure out the root cause. Do I not want to write this particular thing (either because of imposter syndrome or because the latest shiny idea has my attention)? Am I stuck and need to go back a scene or two to find the problem? Do I not want to write anything because I want to do something else? Or do I not want to do anything creative because depression is rearing its head again?

If it's the last, inspiration isn't the issue, and I know I need to set aside re-finding inspiration in favor of managing my mental health. I actually tend to start with that question for exactly that reason; if I can knock that issue out of the flowchart or immediately identify it as the root cause it makes the rest of the triage much easier. (Anhedonia is a right bitch, but it's also pretty easy at this point for me to differentiate not wanting to do any creative thing from not wanting to do this particular creative thing.)

These days, my go-to method for recovering my inspiration is to go back the that initial spark, as the snowflake method of drafting describes it. Because my brain runs on novelty and dopamine (thanks ADHD!), returning to what first got me excited about a project is generally the best way to get the gears moving again. Music also helps with this, I've got a couple writing playlists or go-to "hype up" songs that I can put on to get back in the groove. I also give myself permission to write a terrible version - I literally do the "WORST VERSION" header tip that I saw in a Tumblr post - and sometimes that helps get me over whatever mental hurdle I've got going on.

And sometimes, it's okay to set it aside and take a break, whether that means working on a different project or doing something other than writing entirely. Learning that it's okay to let your brain lay fallow and percolate without actively writing on something has been a difficult but important lesson for me.

Thanks for asking!

(Weird Questions for Writers)

[ladytemeraire]

I do not. Like, absolutely do not. Need more writing projects. Especially ones I haven't already timeblocked out. But this suspense/horror concept latched onto me earlier today and is making my brain go brrrrrrrrrr.

No plot at the moment, just vibes. Might keep it on the back burner and poke it with a stick every so often to see if it goes anywhere.

[ladytemeraire]

So I reblogged a post a while back that said we shouldn’t talk about how “women’s work” is devalued but instead focus on men pulling their weight around the house. While I agree with the latter half, especially in the original context of the post, the first half of that statement really got under my skin, so here’s my thoughts on it.

(Disclaimer up front: please imagine an asterisk on all these statements,that they only apply so far as all the parties involved are equally physically and mentally capable. Don’t start discoursing on me about ‘well what if you have [insert thing here] and can’t do housework’, that’s not what this is about.)

Here’s the thing: yes. Work, especially domestic work, should not be gendered. If knitting or sewing or mending needs to be done to keep your family warm, that task should be done by anyone who is able. If you live in a house/apartment with other people, you should chip in with the chores and the cleaning. If you have children, you should help care for them, and for the love of wool don’t refer to looking after your own children as “babysitting”.

But.

“Women’s work” absolutely is devalued. Especially when it comes to handiwork or crafting. Knitting, crocheting, needlework, jewelry, so many things that are truthfully skilled craftsmanship are seen as “hobbies” or “crafts” and viewed as cheap, in large part because they are seen as “women’s work”. Most* people would never dream of asking someone who works with wood carvings or leather to make them something for free, or for a stupidly low amount. But knitters, crocheters, beaders, etc. get asked these questions all the time. Show of hands, how many people have heard one of these (substitute materials for your chosen craft as applicable):

“Can you make me one of these? I’ll pay for the yarn!”

“You should make/sell [popular fad item], people will totally buy them!”

“Why do you charge so much for your work? You’re just doing it in your free time.”

“Why is this so expensive? You can get yarn for like a dollar.”

“You’re making [item]? So where’s mine, teehee!”

“I thought knitting was for grannies.”

(*I say most because there’s always That One Gimmepig, regardless of the craft in question, but I see it happen a lot more frequently with what most people consider “women’s work”.)

And that extends to the home and domestic activities.

The conversation about the devaluing of women’s work is worth having, and domestic tasks need to be seen as gender neutral and expected of all parties involved. The two are not mutually exclusive, and both conversations are worth having.

[ladytemeraire]

writer asks: journal, narrator, parchment!

Eee yay asks!

journal: do you ever write just so you can enjoy something to read?

Oh definitely. Like, at least half the things I write are just self-indulgent noodling around that will never see the light of day. Even things I do intend to share at some point, I generally write what I want to read. (With fic, this is partly because I get attached to minor characters that no one else seems to care about, so I’m basically going “fine, I’ll write it myself then”.)

narrator: what pov do you like writing in best?

Third-person, specifically third-person close! Half the fun for me is getting to glimpse a character’s inner thoughts and emotions while still experiencing things outside of their own senses (which is one of the limitations of first-person for me, both reading and writing it). I might bounce between which character I’m close on, but I rarely ever go full third-omniscient.

parchment: how often do you or your personal life influence your writing?

All the dang time, though not always deliberately! My own personality and values will inevitably shine through - most of my MCs are female, I’ll always care more about found families and QP relationships than romance, sarcasm is everywhere, etc. - but sometimes I just get to the end of a piece and go “oh god dammit, this is about how I feel about my family, isn’t it?”

And of course, it’s easier to hit those notes in the moment rather than try to create them out of whole cloth. Getting back into writing has actually made me more mindful in my day-to-day life; I find myself paying close attention to reactions, experiences, the way my body physically reacts to experiences, trying to figure out how I can recreate that with words.

I’ll give you an example that was deliberate. I mentioned briefly that back in October I was on the Project From Hell at work. This culminated in working 70+ hours in a single week, including 10 hours on a Saturday, and being completely unable to get out of bed on Sunday because I literally could not stop having panic attacks over the deadline and amount of work left to do. It was genuinely one of the worst experiences of my life, physically and mentally. A week later, after the project had finally ended (and after I slept for like fourteen hours straight after closing the last file), I sat down and slammed out like 2-3k on a scene in a fic I’m working on that was solely focused on that experience and how it felt. I wanted to capture the details of that feeling and make it viscerally real for both the character and the reader, and this was, in the moment, the best way I could find to cope and heal from it.

And, if I’m being honest, I figured I might as well make something positive out of that terrible experience. Creating out of spite is more healthy than just stewing over it, right?

Thank you for the asks!!

(writer asks)

[ladytemeraire]

🌻

I originally thought when it came to writing, I would just have Alastrine’s story and that would be it. I love coming up with stories for my characters, but for the longest time I’ve only had a very small roster. I never got the hang of an ensemble cast; it always felt like too many characters to juggle and intersecting plotlines to keep track of. So I kept myself limited, and tried to focus on making those characters and their story as good as possible.

But then… just within the last year, I started branching out more. Started having other ideas, with new characters. And as weird as it sounds, I think it was a sign that I was starting to recover. See, depression for me doesn’t look like sadness; it looks like anhedonia, losing joy in the things I love and losing my creative spark, and letting them lapse because I just… can’t. (This is what I was kvetching about on Twitter earlier.)

I distinctly remember waking up one day last year, with Shara’s story slam-dunked in my brain fully-formed like Athena, and scrambling to write down a rough outline before it disappeared. Frantic and scared, trying to hang onto it because I was terrified it would disappear, and then scared when it didn’t, when I kept coming back to it. And I just vividly remember sitting there and having the thought: “I’m going to be okay.” And just… crying on my bed, because I knew I was going to be okay, and I never thought I’d get there. And all it took was a story idea, lighting a fire under me one more time.

Long story short, now I have three original stories I’m working on, plus probably half a dozen fic ideas, and at least two of those original projects are trying to become series rather than standalones because my characters are little shits, and I’m just kind of sitting here wondering how I lost control of my writing life and I could not be happier. I know these names make no sense to anyone but me right now, but I know what they mean. I know who they are, and I can’t wait to share their stories with the world.

Anyway. Thank you for the ask and for letting me ramble!

(send me a flower)

[ladytemeraire]

Last Sentence Meme

Rules: Share the last line you wrote, and tag as many people as there are words. 

I was tagged by @akathecentimetre ages ago!

His voice cracks mid-syllable like he’s twelve all over again; he can’t even bring himself to care because, just, what.

I’m enjoying the heck out of the entire scene this comes from, even if I technically should be working on other things.

Tagging: @wizqevelynart @kintatsujo @egregiousderp @kohakuhime @satellitesandfallingstars @elsajeni @gwen-skyes (...why can I not tag you PAGING GWEN TO THE WHITE COURTESY PHONE) annnnnd I’m running out of mutuals who I know for sure write, so anybody else, feel free! As always you’re not obligated to play if you don’t want to :)

[ladytemeraire]

Really Slow Motion - Our Last Hope

A good 85% of the music I listen to these days is instrumental, and the vast majority of that is either movie and video game soundtracks or epic orchestral/ trailer music. Really Slow Motion, Audiomachine, Two Steps From Hell - all of it goes on my general writing/ productivity playlist, and a lot of it also gets put on playlists for specific projects.

When I use the tag “music is emotion searching for words”, this is what I mean.

I want to write things that feel - that make others feel - the way this music makes me feel.

[ladytemeraire]

craftingandfandom replied to your post: State of the LadyTem, 6/29/17

Well, one month later: how do you like being the team lead? Also, did you enjoy your visit home? How is your mom liking her bullet journal?

I’m really liking it so far! I still kind of feel like I have no clue what I’m doing in a lot of cases, but it’s getting better, partly because nobody else knows what they’re doing either. It’s a little frustrating because of how our files are divided/assigned though. The other four teams are roughly categorized by Acetabular Primary, Acetabular Revision, Femoral Primary, and Femoral Revision (we work in the Hips department in case that wasn’t clear lol), and then all my files are the miscellaneous stuff and general instruments. (I’ve seriously nicknamed one of my files “the kitchen sink DHF” because it’s got like 300 SKUs and it’s all just random general instrument crap.) So trying to accomplish some of the same tasks, or apply the same techniques to my files, is a little difficult and requires some lateral thinking.

I enjoyed my visit home, too. It was surprisingly busy, by which I mean we were over at my grandparents’ pretty much every single evening for a family meal of some kind, but that was tons of fun and also gave me something to do every day so I didn’t mind. Also I got to meet up with a long-time friend for the first time in ages, so that was fun.

Mom is liking her bullet journal when she remembers to use it, haha. I think it’ll be really helpful to her as she gets in the habit of using it, but developing that habit of “write down ALL the things!” is one that takes time, as well as remembering to write things down in the same place every time rather than on whatever scrap of paper you have laying around.