#The formatting on this one was better in the original document where I was able to set a different and blackout sections with highlighting

[thearchivistsjournal]

Day 248,

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[kirkscarr]

ok so i just finished my book cover for First, Best Destiny - Part 1 by the amazing @ophelia-j !!

admittedly i was going to wait until i actually attached the text block to the cover before i posted this haha, but i was SO excited after making this cover that i decided to just post it and then update with the finished product later!!

this book is absolutely embedded in my soul, and words cannot even describe how gorgeously it’s written. it’s a book that made me realize - hey, the adventure doesn’t end as you grow old.

you can read it here. i promise you won’t regret it!!!

anyways!!! here’s all of my other bookbinding steps for anyone interested.

cam’s somewhat incomplete bookbinding guide

please note that i am an AMATEUR hobbyist. please do not actually use this as a tutorial.

oh also!! bookbinding terminology will have a * by it which will be explained at the end in order to make this flow better. i’ll also link the tutorials i used at the end of this for anyone interested.

1) Formatting the document! I downloaded the original text as a PDF, and then designed a cover page, grabbed some art from the internet (i know, frowned upon, but this is just a personal copy so it is what it is), and then designed a table of contents and chapter icons!!

*side note! i added which episodes each chapter follows to the table of contents (pictured below) as this book was written as an accompaniment to TOS and the movies.

2) Next, I printed out all NINE HUNDRED PAGES??? admittedly i could have done it in less if I’d used a bigger page size, but sending things out to be printed is expensive so we made do. after printing, i folded them into signatures*.

*there’s an additional note about the paper i used at the end

3) punching out holes in all the signatures! although not technically necessary, I honestly don’t think i would’ve been able to sew this behemoth without doing it.

4) sewing the pages into a real!! actual!! book!! this was the part i was most nervous about. i’ve NEVER attempted to sew anywhere near this large of a book before, so i tried out a new method of sewing in hopes of making it a bit more sturdy. we won’t know if it worked until this book endures some wear and tear, but i’m pretty optimistic!

5) next up is glueing the spine! this is where it really hit me that a lot of bookbinding is just…glueing shit together. later i also added cardstock to the spine in hopes of helping it adhere to the cover better, and a book headband* for decoration.

5) now we’re onto the book cover!! they only sell bookboard in minor bulk around here, so we’re not even gonna discuss how much bookboard i now own… anyways! i glued the faux leather onto the bookboard and then let that dry.

6) last up! off to the cricket! a huge thank you to my friend for letting me borrow her cricket AND supplies! anywho, this is where i designed my cover art. i then adhered the design to the cover. after this step, i realized i…definitely need some kind of sealant - so, if any more seasoned bookbinders have suggestions for this i am all ears!!

all in all, this was a super fun project, and a great way to kill some time while i recover from surgery! i absolutely plan to bind the sequel at some point, but that may be a…ways away. i’m a STEM major and school starts back up soon so…time will be in short supply lol!

To be continued...

Terminology

*signature: group of sheets folded in half, to be worked into the binding as a unit.

*book headband: just look up a picture if you’re curious because tumblr says i can't add any more pictures lol.

*about the paper!! i actually got it from a local specialty paper store, but if you want something similar i've heard amazon has some good bookbinding alternatives!

Tutorials

please PLEASE go check out Jess Less on youtube. she's phenomenal. here are her vids and what i used them for.

don't laugh!! i actually stole MOST of my techniques straight from this video.

i used this one to help me format the book correctly! although i still ended up with some goofs haha (see: any pages on the left side have the page number in the margin LMAO).

[velvetglow]

Alright! So here's Part 2 of my Classic Macintosh Screencap series! Beginning in order of left to right beginning from top to bottom:

The contents of a report about the Anglo Saxons that I wrote.

I wrote this back in 2008! I refuse to believe that 2008 was almost 16 years ago. I was in high school at the time, so please excuse my atrocious writing. Honestly, doing my schoolwork in this emulator (full-screen) was actually quite nice, it served as a pleasant environment for some distraction-free writing.

Artwork by my niece who was around 8 at the time. I'd let her use the emulator environment from time to time to play games or in this case, draw. Crazy that she's in college now, time sure flies.

The Stickies application that we've known and loved in macOS is a lot older than you think. It debuted in Macintosh System 7.5 in 1994!

The contents of the main drive and also the System Folder where the System Software resides. A neat thing about the System Folder: You can move it anywhere even while the system is running, you can stuff it in a folder elsewhere, and the Mac will still find the System Folder and be able to boot from it! It is no longer possible to do this trick starting with the first release of Mac OS X/macOS back in 2001 and the folder is simply called 'System' ever since.

System related settings were in the form of Control Panels, they were essentially little program snippets and you can freely move them in and out of the Control Panels folder. Third party applications would sometimes include their own Control Panels for better system integration. An example would be a Control Panel for your graphics card. Starting with Mac OS X the Control Panels were replaced by System Preferences/System Settings and the panels are fixed. They cannot be removed or moved around.

A simple maze game called Baby Labyrinth.

SimCity Classic is one of my favorite vintage games to play. It doesn't like running on any color setting other than black & white, even telling you to set it to this color setting, then quits. Much older software that was written without color displays in mind might not work and might even crash until you change the color settings. However not all vintage Macs supported setting the color to black and white.

Ok so the disk image is actually a tad bit older than I thought. This saved game was from 2007!

The disk image format style of installing applications by opening a DMG file, and dragging it into an Applications icon in the present day? It's been around since the early days of Macs. It was originally used to preserve the resource fork of files as it couldn't be easily transferred and preserved over networks. Even though resource forks aren't really being used any longer, this method of software distribution has been standard and preferred ever since.

An error message. Nothing serious, the application just couldn't find a particular piece of software.

A game of Risk!

Some wallpapers that came bundled with the system. Hmm... yes purple.

Before Spotlight, this is what you'd use to look for files. Since indexing wasn't a thing that was built into the system, it would take a considerable amount of time to find a document. I tried searching for that Anglo Saxon document that I wrote and about 5 mins later it was still searching. I gave up.

Another feature that has existed for quite a while: The ability to select a startup disk in the Control Panel. Drives that contain a valid System Folder will show up in this panel. Once you select a drive, the system will then boot up from that drive moving forward, until you return to the same Startup Disk control panel then specify a different drive.

I have an actual Mac stashed away in storage that I'd like to share more pics and screen caps, but sadly I'm out of state at the moment and not sure when I'll have a chance to revisit it.

[kaylinalexanderbooks]

🖋️"what inspired you to write your WIPs?"

📖"what has surprised you about your WIPs?"

💻"what perspectives do you write in?"

🖥️"what types of writing do you do?"

❤️"what are your favorite scenes from your WIPs?"

😭"what are the biggest challenges writing your WIPs?"

Hello! Thanks for the ask! (From this game)

This is a lot of questions! Haha super excited though. Sorry I took a bit to get to this. Long of course so it's under the cut.

🖋️"what inspired you to write your WIPs?"

The Secret Portal

TSP's inspiration can be traced back to the Rainbow Magic series. I was obsessed with these fairies as a kid, and at one point role played a story with my stuffed animals on two girls discovering they were fairies. In fourth grade during a creative writing unit, I thought back to this story and decided to change fairies (since I thought I was too old lol) to "people with powers" and I added a portal or something. It has since evolved so much and I don't know where the inspiration has come from. Most media I consume is somehow ingrained into my writing style.

School of the Legends

SOTL was inspired by my love for fairy tale retellings. Whatever After and The Land of Stories stick out the most if I'm being honest.

📖"what has surprised you about your WIPs?"

The Secret Portal

TSP has surprised me by how far it's come. How interesting I find it. How it keeps evolving into something I'm more and more proud of. Smaller stuff, like Lexi deviating completely from her original purpose of a self insert, Gwen becoming more important than I thought, how natural the chemistry between the characters has been, my many ah ha! Moments. How much I've grown as a writer and how amazing it is that I can track my growth across over a decade of my life. The positive reactions I've received. How much it keeps getting better. I love it more every day. Hard work is paying off.

School of the Legends

SOTL is not that far in development but I'm surprised by how fun it is to think about. How hilarious the first couple chapters have been overall. Also, I really like a lot of my ideas for adapting fairy tales and stuff.

💻"what perspectives do you write in?"

The Secret Portal

TSP is told in a multi POV format. One major theme is perspective and the inner workings of each character, and I honestly can't imagine it in third. It's taken a lot of work, and the character voices are becoming increasingly more distinct. There are chapters without one focal character told in third person.

School of the Legends

SOTL is told completely in third person, with one focal character per chapter. I think most of my projects from now on will be third so the exhausting and diligent work from TSP doesn't have to be repeated. Only two other works I have planned feel fitting for it anyway.

🖥️"what types of writing do you do?

I obviously do a lot of original fiction, primarily sci-fi and fantasy. Only one idea that I haven't completely scrapped is realistic fiction, and that will likely stay the same. I love realistic fiction, but find compelling narratives hard for some reason. This idea doesn't even have a plot so that's also telling.

On the side, I do a lot of media analysis. I love reviewing movies and shows and analyzing the crap out of them. Not only does this help me process and document all of my opinions but it also gives me a better understanding of the property, writing process, and story progression that leads to my development as a writer.

❤️"what are your favorite scenes from your WIPs?"

The Secret Portal

Favorite scenes aw man. For TSP, the grilled cheese sandwich debate has a special place in my heart. It's unfortunately very long so obviously I'm going to have to cut it down, which I'm working on, but I'm keeping it as is. Also, the intense moments that I'm proud of stand out. Ash getting manipulated, Noelle and Carmen arguing, Jedi's entire backstory, etc. I become super proud of myself for being able to get invested. Any scene with Robbie and Akash honestly.

School of the Legends

For SOTL, it's not that long, but I love the opening scene for Tierney's chapter electric shocking his brothers. But I am also proud of Úrsula's chapter for being pretty nuanced.

I guess both the wholesome shenanigans and also heavy scenes.

😭"what are the biggest challenges writing your WIPS?"

The Secret Portal

Biggest challenge for TSP is honestly world building. I can figure out character and plot enough with hard work but my brain hurts from world building. Which kinda sucks because I want Alium to be distinct. The good news is, it's coming along, and I like the tiny little processes that I make over time. Little things add up, and Alium is becoming more and more of its own thing. I like that, even if it's hard.

School of the Legends

For SOTL, it's stringing together a narrative and structure. I have a lot of characters and plot ideas but can't connect most of them. There are just so many fairy tales. I have no idea how I'm going to work with this. Maybe just making it a string of one-shots with an overarching plot could work. I dunno. We shall see where it goes.

Thank you so much for all the asks!!! This was so fun! Hope this was a good read!

[amtrak12]

Fanfic Meta: First Draft vs Final Draft w/ Examples (1/2)

Does anybody remember those LiveJournal posts on fanfic meta? Like not actual fanfic, but meta on how to write/post a fanfic? There was a whole big table of links that I can no longer find, but I HAVE tracked down synedochic's posts on dreamwidth. These were hands down the most helpful things I've read on story structure until I discovered Helping Writers Become Authors years later. Just INCREDIBLE work.

Anyway, you still see meta on how to post fic on Tumblr, but you don’t really get writing meta much, unless someone is analyzing the text of a specific fandom. So now that I’m finally hitting the point where I can write to the level of my tastes (or near enough to enjoy reading my own work), I thought it might be fun to bring back that vibe and share some writing meta. Maybe some other fic writers or aspiring writers will find it helpful :)

My current WIP is a Lucifer story called “Can We Keep Her”, and it’s a full sci-fi/fantasy novel length fic. Like it’ll be 190k words long when all is said and done, easy. (And there’s still two sequels planned oops.) It’s my longest fic to date BY FAR, and I am utilizing every skill I’ve ever learned and still learning five more with every chapter. One of the biggest techniques I’ve been utilizing is using multiple drafts to take the story from concept to final draft. Now, I am not following the common writing advice that says to write the entire story first before editing. Maybe if I wasn’t writing fanfic that could work? Or maybe if this wasn’t my first story over 100k words? But right now, that common writing advice is firmly not for me. Instead, I’ve settled into a pattern of drafting several chapters (anywhere from 2-4 with several more outlined in detail) and then going back and editing them into a state that I’m happy with. Then, when they're edited to at least "readable", I go back to drafting. This pattern is working for me and, as a result, means I’ve gone through the outline -> first draft -> second draft -> final draft stages many times over the last few months. Which is why I figured it was a good place to start with fanfic meta :)

Some caveats on my writing system for this fic before I begin:

I did have a broad strokes outline (the major plot points) completed before I started the first draft, and certainly I had those before I started posting any chapters on AO3.

I might be an underwriter when drafting, but I’m an overthinker when outlining and editing so I don’t really struggle with plot holes. It’s more likely I’ll be able to fill in a plot hole later because of some detail I had already slipped into the story.

“Can We Keep Her” is by far my longest fic, but it isn’t my only novel-length fic or my only plot-heavy fic. I gained a decent understanding of what works for me when it comes to multi-chapter fics from my previous attempts.

All that is to say: your mileage may vary on editing chapters as you go vs writing an entire draft start to finish before editing. But the information I’m covering here should apply no matter when you prefer to edit.

It just so happened that Chapter 10 in “Can We Keep Her” provided a prime example of first draft vs final draft. I had a to rewrite the final scene in an entirely new POV, and as a result I still had the original first draft preserved in a separate document. (Typically, my first drafts get absorbed into final drafts through editing or else they get straight up deleted after I rewrite.) So I’m going to provide the first draft of the scene in this post below the cut, and then I’ll share the final version in a separate post (linked here and at the bottom of the post). Separate posts isn’t ideal, but Tumblr formatting doesn’t allow for better options. This way, though, you can open the posts in separate tabs (on desktop at least) if you prefer to view them that way.

At the end of each version, I’ll share my thoughts about them and cover things like why I chose the original POV, why I changed it, what my goals were for the scene, how the second version supports those goals better, and where I still think it could improve but ultimately ran out of time before it needed to be posted. I hope you find these thoughts helpful or at least interesting!

Original closing scene for Chapter 10 behind the cut:

Chloe was late for lunch. After waiting hours, watching time drag on, a family member of Joey Pillegi agreed at the last minute to speak with them over his lunch break. Chloe wore every professional mask in her arsenal to hide her impatience. Dan knew her too well to be fooled, but she didn’t think the grieving brother noticed. Unfortunately, the interview didn’t lead to another clue. The brother didn’t even know where Joey had been living the last six months, let alone that he’d joined a mob.

At least, Lucifer had finally texted after his therapy session had ended. ‘Apparently pink was the missing feature of the infant’s car seat’ wasn’t the most descriptive message, but it offered a few insights. Lucifer had bought a new car seat for Rory, and Rory liked it. Now hopefully, the rest of their morning had gone as well.

The penthouse elevator opened to the sounds of Rory’s happy chatter against the backdrop of the television. Lucifer spotted her immediately, but Rory remained out of sight, presumably tucked inside the largest blanket fort Chloe had ever seen.

“You two have been busy this morning,” she said.

“Hm? Oh, yes the fort.” Lucifer frowned. “The infant has this frustrating tendency to scoot herself underneath the couch. She’s bound to get herself stuck if she keeps that up!”

“So you made a blanket fort instead?” Chloe’s mouth quirked up into a smile. He’d done this before: complain about something and then do something incredibly thoughtful and sweet under the guise of removing an annoyance. She shouldn’t be surprised at this point, and yet it still managed to impress her every time.

Rory finally noticed her arrival and came crawling out of the blanket fort. “Mommy!” She sprinted over and Chloe dropped to her knees to catch her in a hug.

“Hi, baby!” Chloe grinned. Relief crashed over her as she got to hold Rory in her arms again. The morning had lasted way too long, and she was so glad she could check on Rory again. “Did you have fun with Daddy?”

“Lucifer,” said Devil corrected her. “Get her to use my name.”

“Right, sorry.” Though, internally, Chloe rolled her eyes over his continued denial.

Rory bounced excitedly on her toes. “I saw Aunt Linda!”

“I know you did. Were you good while you were visiting Linda?” Chloe stood up and asked Lucifer, “Did she give you any problems?”

“Yes,” Lucifer said. “She accused me of not listening.”

Given the context of therapy, Chloe wasn’t entirely sure who he meant. “Who did, Linda?”

“No, the infant!”

Chloe bit back a smile.

“She also accused me of arguing with her which I wasn’t doing,” Lucifer gave Rory a pointed glare, “until she said I wasn’t listening.”

Chloe leaned down to talk to Rory. “Was Lucifer not listening to you?”

Rory gave her a conspiratorial smile. “No, he didn’t listen at all.”

“At all?” Chloe gasped. When Rory giggled, she grinned.

Lucifer was far less amused. “Okay if the little demons-in-training are going to team-up together then you’re not allowed to gang up on me too.”

“I’m not making promises,” Chloe said, crossing her arms. She smirked at Lucifer’s annoyance.

“Mommy, Mommy!” Rory tugged on her jacket.

“What is it?”

“All of Charlie’s toys were gone!”

“They were? Oh, no!” Chloe had no idea what toys Rory was talking about. They might be toys back at her mother’s house or at a friend’s house or even a daycare her mother had taken her too. But playing along with the girl might get her more answers than asking direct questions.

“Yeah, they were all gone because Charlie’s mad at me.”

“You think someone’s mad at you?” Chloe asked.

Rory nodded. “Charlie is.”

“Why would Charlie be mad at you?”

“Because I flew without him.” Rory pouted either in a mimicry of how she imagined this Charlie must feel or because she didn’t like the idea of someone being mad at her.

“I see,” Chloe said, though Rory’s responses had only generated more questions. “Well, maybe we should just keep our feet on the ground and not fly for awhile. What do you think?”

“Maybe,” Rory said, stretching out the word in a very unconvincing agreement. Chloe hoped Lucifer was right and that Rory couldn’t truly fly with her wings. She seemed to grasp hiding her wings when they were in public, but if she could fly, Chloe feared the temptation would be too much for the little girl to resist.

She turned to Lucifer and in a quieter voice asked, “Who’s Charlie?”

He threw up his hands. “I have absolutely no idea. I thought she was trying to say Charlotte at first, but either that’s wrong or the girl has a poor grasp on gendered pronouns.”

“No, she seems to have pronouns down,” Chloe said, remembering Rory’s firm correction that Roger Bear used ‘she’.

“My only other guess would be an imaginary friend,” Lucifer said. “Apparently young children can have those.”

“Yeah, an imaginary friend is possible… or,” Chloe braced herself as she suggested, “it’s someone she knows back home with her mother.”

Predictably, Lucifer’s face twisted in disagreement.

“You think she was still made by your parents,” Chloe said.

“It’d have to be my father if she was,” Lucifer said. “Mum doesn’t have a way back to our universe. But I still don’t know why my father would try making a baby angel.”

Or why that angel would think you were her father and not her brother, Chloe thought as Lucifer walked off towards the bar. She could almost understand why he was having such a hard time accepting the obvious. If an angel child being born was so impossible (and for Rory to be Lucifer’s only child over the course of humanity’s entire history, it certainly seemed like angel children were pretty damn impossible), then why couldn’t something equally preposterous like God creating a toddler angel on his own be a valid explanation for Rory’s existence? The problem was, they weren’t trying to determine which explanation was more or less likely to have happened. They were looking for the explanation that best fit the evidence, impossible or not.

Rory desperately wanted to give her a tour of the blanket fort. Chloe assured the girl, she could show it off soon and they could even eat lunch under it, but first Chloe needed to talk to Lucifer. After pulling a pinky promise out of her, Rory toddled off to continue her Fringe episode, and Chloe walked over to join Lucifer at the bar.

A large stack of paper rested on the countertop, but Lucifer leaned on his elbows beside it, staring off into nothing.

“Celestial craziness or not,” Chloe began, “maybe you should start looking at this like one of our cases. Keep your mind open to all of the possibilities and follow the leads until you can rule something out.”

“Not everything is possible,” Lucifer said.

Chloe replied, “In Rory’s case, it sounds like none of it is possible. But she’s here, so there has to be some explanation for her.”

Lucifer sighed. “I know.” He turned his gaze down towards the stack of papers, but he didn’t touch them.

“What is that?”

“Just some names I need to look into.”

That was purposefully vague. Chloe reached across him and pulled the stack towards her to read.

“They’re just some names, Detective,” Lucifer repeated.

He sounded concerned, but he didn’t stop her from taking the papers or try to pull them back. Chloe really hoped he hadn’t backtracked to hunting down the mysterious Sinnerman he was so obsessed with. He had a daughter to worry about now.

The stack was indeed a list of names printed out on computer paper, but each name had a date recorded beside it.

“What are the dates for?” she asked.

“It’s when I last saw them,” Lucifer explained. “It’s probably a fruitless endeavor.”

All of the dates were from 2014. Three years ago and some change. Now, Chloe understood what this list was.

“You’re looking for Rory’s mother.”

Lucifer pulled away the stack of papers. “Like I said, it’s probably a waste of time. She might not even have a mother.”

The denial wasn’t as strong as he wanted it to be. He did realize Rory being his daughter was the only explanation that fit. He just wasn’t ready to accept it yet.

“It’s a pretty big list,” Chloe said.

“My printer can’t print on both sides,” Lucifer replied.

Chloe wasn’t commenting on the length of the list specifically. She remembered all too well just how many people he managed to sleep with in [a week? Two weeks?]. Multiply that out to an entire year since they didn’t know Rory’s birthday, and Chloe almost expected the list to be longer. Then again, not all of his sexual partners could’ve given birth, so that would’ve narrowed down the list.

“Give me half.”

“What?”

“That’s a long list to go through on your own,” Chloe said. “I can help, so give me half.”

Lucifer shook his head. “You have a murder to solve. At least one of us should get to investigate something fun.”

“That murder investigation is stalled until we can either analyze those hairs we found or someone comes forward with information. There’s nothing ‘fun’ to do on the case right now.” Chloe held out her hand for the list. “I bet I can get through my half first.”

“Really?” Lucifer said. “You think turning this into a competition will get me to hand the list over?”

Chloe shrugged. “I mean, it’s not really a competition when I have every California and federal database to work from and you’re just crawling through social media.”

“I am very adept at finding information on social media,” Lucifer argued.

Chloe smirked, already knowing she’d won. She leaned in again to split the stack of papers up. “Here, I will take the bottom half so you can continue where you left off in the beginning of the list.”

“You don’t know that I’ve already started investigating,” Lucifer said, but it was nothing more than his game night protests as he searched for a loophole in the rules that allowed him to not actually lose. He was an extremely sore loser.

“Uh oh!” Rory left her castle-sized blanket fort to run over. “Fringe stopped, Daddy. Look.” She pointed back to the TV where the current episode had ended and the question of whether they wanted to continue watching had interrupted the end credits.

“That’s because the episode’s over,” Lucifer said.

“Fix it.”

Chloe answered, “Hey monkey, how about we get lunch first? Are you hungry?”

“I want more Fringe,” Rory said, glancing back to the paused TV.

“We can watch more Fringe, but let’s get food first, okay?”

It took a little more coaxing and challenging her to a race to the kitchen before Rory pulled her attention away from the television. But then she grinned and ran off down the hallway with Chloe while Lucifer yelled after them about falling. His list of names hovered in the back of Chloe’s mind all through lunch. She didn’t know which of them would ultimately find Rory’s mother, but if she found them first, that mother was getting such an ass chewing for giving the girl up. Chloe didn’t understand how anyone could look at Rory and decide she wasn’t worth fighting for. She’d been away from the girl for just a few hours and had still missed her desperately. How could Rory’s mother not be frantic after days apart? It was infuriating.

---------------

My Thoughts:

Yes, I do use the square brackets for notes to myself. :P I told y'all this was the first draft version!

So I went with Chloe’s POV originally for several reasons. First, I just kind of default to her POV? I tend to default to women characters in general in my fandoms (maybe because I’m a woman, maybe because I’m queer, maybe both). But also Chloe’s POV is a little more clear-headed and therefore easier to show the reader what’s going on. I do step out of her POV when she becomes super emotional like in Chapter 3 when she learned Lucifer is the Devil. (If a character is too emotional, it can be hard to portray their POV so I like to swing outside of them in those scenes.) But if Chloe’s present in a scene, she tends to be my default POV.

But there’s also a downside with being more clear-headed and not as emotionally invested in the plot (yet): sometimes it means you have less interesting things to say. Which is exactly the problem here. Chloe has nothing real to add in this scene.

Well, she has exactly one thing to add and that thing is the other reason I chose her POV initially: she missed Rory while she was at work and I desperately wanted to show her relief at getting to see her again. I’m more than a little obsessed with all the parental feelings in this story, and Chloe definitely has the stronger parental feelings in this moment since Lucifer is still in conflict over Rory being his daughter.

Except Lucifer’s conflict is exactly what we need to see at this point.

In addition to showing Chloe had missed Rory as if she was the girl’s mother (the dramatic irony, of course, being that she is the girl’s mother), I also wanted this scene to end with the decision to search for Rory’s birth mother. Which it does! Technically. But it doesn’t do it very well, and I always knew I’d have to smooth that out during editing. And while it wasn’t the primary focus here, I always want more Rory cuteness (the family domestics is kind of the whole point of this fic) and I wanted some glimpses into how Lucifer and Rory’s morning alone together went. This version of the scene covers both of those things, but again, not very well. And if I want to show how Lucifer and Rory’s morning went, then why wouldn’t I use Lucifer’s POV to show that more directly?

I realized pretty quickly when I went to edit this scene, that I should switch POVs. So go check out my second post over here to see what changed when I used Lucifer’s POV. Or if you’ve already read it because you’re reading “Can We Keep Her”, then just scroll down to the bottom and check out my thoughts on the changes.

[journeysofpatrickandarchana]

Grenada

Original blog post on - 14th April 2013

The last of the West Indies.

It was only 45 nautical miles from Tobago Cays to Grenada and with the favourable wind behind us for most of the way we once again had to slow down sailing with reefed headsail only to ensure we reached there at the break of dawn rather than having to anchor in the dark if we had travelled there with full sails.

Once again it was a reasonably flat and non rolly bay for our anchorage that was amongst a few other yachts just outside the main commercial harbour in 5 metres of water. Facing the bow was a huge volcanic rock and a beach that looked like it had volcanic sand (almost black) gone was the beautiful white sand from the beaches on Tobago Cays.

We could see the working harbour about one kilometre away on the left hand side and we knew about the Port Louis Marina on the right hand side that existed beyond the rock formation based on the guide books and the navigational program we were using. This is where a few super yachts as well as many other cruising yachts similar to ours were berthed.

After breakfast six of us got into the dinghy to head to Port Louis Marina. Colin stayed on the boat to catch up on some much needed sleep having done the graveyard shift from 12am to 2pm.

Despite some confusing and wrong information given to us, once at the marina we were easily able to locate the customs and immigration office to complete our entry requirements into Grenada. Once again in a cricket loving country, the immigration officer, young Sheldon was eager to talk about cricket. As the skipper Patrick was required for signing the documents but as per previous ports I completed the forms seeing I had made myself his personal assistant attending to all ship paperwork. (Just to inform you Hestia is not officially a yacht or a vessel or even a boat but a "ship" registered with the Australian registrar of ships via our international registration of the yacht and not just a NSW registration since it has now been transferred off the French registry of marine vessels). With both Patrick & I present there, Sheldon started his conversation with a loaded question "so you are from India and he is from Australia, so how did the household cope when India beat Australia 4-Nil in the recent test series?" Neither of us knew about this test series but we played along anyway. Patrick pleaded that he did not understand cricket (tongue in cheek) and I laughed. Sheldon launched on his cricket expertise about how the young Indian team with the likes of Kohli and Avinaash was much better than the old Australian team that needed some new blood and revamp. This while there were 4 other skippers waiting outside the office in the heat to get their clearance!

After a pleasurable conversation and a lot of time in this 2 person sized office we departed as now having officially arrived in Grenada.

It was our first day there but as always Patrick and I had a list of tasks to achieve including buying some more groceries and fresh fruit. One of the main reasons for coming to Grenada was in a slim hope that we may be able to find another LPG gas bottle for the galley that we had not been able to secure in St Maarten or elsewhere along the way.

Mind you this was on a Thursday (day) before Good Friday. The shops would be closed the next day and although we might be able to get things on Saturday we were planning on leaving Saturday evening latest.

It was a day of mixed success, we managed to walk from Port Louis Marina to the town. On the way there we found a decent supermarket, no luck with the gas bottles and a market where we bought lots of fresh fruit and vegetables including some local fruit for the crew to taste.

After a quick break for some young coconut water, the Indian way, we headed back and managed to get a ride in the local transport buses at $1 (Eastern Caribbean) per person. This was a 17 person mini-bus that had about 25 passengers and two crew (driver and ticket seller) cramped in it like a can of sardines....including the smell. Patrick was sitting in the single passenger seat in the front of the bus when a very oversized lady put her arm out to get a lift. I looked in the back and it was crammed already and wondered where this person was going to fit. The bus conductor opened Patrick's door and in moved this giant of a lady pushing Patrick almost onto the lap of the driver and hindering him from using the gears. It was an interesting experience to say the least.

We then got off at the Supermarket and did a big shop, the tough bit was carrying it back to the marina where we had the other crew waiting for us with the dinghy.

We then found a local baker in the Marina complex, an elderly couple from South Africa that reminded you of elderly couples that you read in a fairy tales, hardworking people, proud of their product leading a simple but complete life spreading joy where they can.

We ordered 24 Hot Cross Buns to be picked up in the late afternoon that we could enjoy on Good Friday and hopefully over the Easter Weekend.

Back on the boat, Colin caught trevally was devoured for lunch and we headed back to the marina to get the laundry done and pick up the hot cross buns. Unfortunately there was no coin laundry at this marina and so a decision was made to go by dinghy to the yacht club across the pier after picking up the buns to source options for both laundry and wifi facilities.

The yacht club (RGYC) reminded me of the CYC back in Mumbai a colonial style building with traces of bygone glory and fabulous location and views. Dusty flags from other yacht clubs around the world hung in lines from the ceiling. Unfortunately we were too late for laundry but we were assured that there would be someone there first thing tomorrow if we returned in the morning. While Georges accessed internet he bought me a gin & tonic. Phil, Sibylle and Colin went looking for some tourist information in the meanwhile.

I noticed an interesting and reasonably priced menu here and a mental decision was made to bring the crew back for an Easter treat for dinner that night.

Although the menu for dinner did not match the menu on the board seen earlier in the day, it turned out to be a pleasant evening for all a we sat on the yacht club terrace and enjoyed the Caribbean meal with either fish or chicken options. We had a few drinks and finishing it all with some local ice cream.

Good Friday was a day for seeing the island with almost all official business closed. We had booked a taxi for 5 of us for a 6 hour tour from 10am. The taxi and the rate had been confirmed the previous night via email at US$20 person, total $100 for a 6 hour job. The fellow had been happy to accept our business but seemed disgruntled when he picked us up in the morning, partly because we were late and partly because he had realised that a cruise liner with its wealthy passengers had arrived in the morning and he could have made 50% more money on the same tour. Sadly this set the tone of the tour and although we saw some interesting areas on the day and managed a beautiful walk to Concord falls as a guide he provided us with no commentary on the area and all the conversation revolved around money and time. Not enjoyable at all.

Our most interesting visit for the day was a moderate grade bush walk to the Seven Sisters Falls of which we only saw the Concord Falls. The water fall was amazing or so Patrick tells me but I refused to jump in the water with over 50 local teenagers hosting a barbecue and a day of get-together to meet the local girls. the kids were brave to say the least as they climbed the slippery rocks and got to the top of the falls about 18 meters high and jumped into it.

I found it a bit intimidating to strip to my bathers with all the local boys scanning the foreigners. Just as we were leaving a group of American teenagers arrived with their local tour guides and jumped onto the pool. They were about 10 of them and I wished they had arrived earlier.

Also being a Good Friday we missed out on the rum distillery and nutmeg factory which were both closed due to public holiday.

We viewed a lake created by a meteoroid that had unique eco-system.

We finally managed to buy a second hand 10 pound fibreglass gas bottle from one of the local convenience stores at the marina that was almost full of gas and they accepted our offer that represented a good discount off the new price. So whilst not the size we originally wanted it was at least enough gas to get us to Panama where hopefully we will be able to purchase a larger gas container especially for the big passage from Galapagos to the Marquesas in French Polenesia some 6,000 kilometres away that we plan to sail in under 3 weeks. This is one of, if not the longest passage in world cruising.

Back at the boat Patrick swam 400 metres to the beach with the black sand and volcanic rocks jutting out from the sea floor. Colin was kind enough to ferry me in the dinghy to the shore to meet up with the others. This beach was full of local kids playing cricket, football and practicing karate or some sort of martial arts. Nick and Georges swam there as well. It was a lovely evening with a beautiful sunset.

Dinner was pasta (ghackets und hoerndli mit oephelmues) i.e. minced beef with horn shaped pasta and apple sauce by the Swiss couple. The crew rating was "delicious!". I had the vegetarian version and it very good too. We finished off the meal with some Swiss chocolate.

It was a pleasant break in Grenada and we had an early night in preparation of the early start for one of the tough legs anticipated. We were heading for Bonaire around 420 nm away the next day with anticipated 20-25 knots wind conditions according to the grid file Patrick downloaded from his Maxsea navigation software.

[complhexspace]

I feel like this account got off to a rough start,

I get off to a rough start with a lot of things.

I’m growing and healing from a lot of rough stuff and I’m always looking for a safe place to document that process for myself….as something I can look back on one day.

I do still like talking about mental health, lessons I’ve learned growing up, etc…I am so much more than that. And I’m going to show you guys. Here.

One of the biggest changes that’s going to be made here is making it a point to include you guys in the projects that I'm working on. Including photography, video, any edits I make to the website (both on here and the mobile link page), any paintings I’m working on, and anything else I might cook up.

Photography and art in general have been one of the very few constants in my life. One of the only things I’ve ever wanted out of my life was to live off of my art and to show my world through my photography. And maybe one day I’ll get there. And I can't believe that this isn't something that I haven't talked about more here on this account.

And all of that is going to change!

Currently, The biggest project that I’ve been working on is Partly Cloudy. Just a beautiful collection of different cloud formations really. This collection has been made into a zine, and you will be able to check out Vol. 2 here soon.

I really love everything about this project for so many reasons. One of them is that sometimes photographers can get really complicated with their steps (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and when you don’t really have much…..that’s not an option. Staring up at the clouds is something that’s constantly been something that can instantly sooth me or just simply put me in a better head space than where I originally was. This is an idea I want to carry with me in this project; with this zine.

Creating videos and just getting comfortable in front of a camera is something else that I want to do here and eventually take with me to other platforms one day (obviously, YouTube). But this is where you will be able to find vlogs and just a place where I can just catch up with whoever wants to watch, without any pressure.

So be ready to see more of me, and hear more of my perspective on different subjects, and about my life in general. I’ve been wanting to do something more to put myself out there, put my art out there, and just stop isolating myself in general. And admittedly, it’s very hard….and really scary……But truly the number one reason for doing this is to show off work that I am proud of in a space that I can make all mine.

This is a big step. And I’m happy to have you here.

[amberduan-ual]

Project Agreement Tutorials (20/4/23)

By the time of this class, I'd completed a third of the paintings in my Project A PleinAirpril challenge which is what I brought in to show. I decided at the beginning that all 30 paintings would be the same size and shape, to emulate the experience of drawing in a real sketchbook and so if I ever wanted to print the paintings as part of a book, I'd be able to format them relatively easily.

I chose to bevel the corners of the paintings because I liked the softer effect it gave, rather than the sharp 90 degree turns. I set the paintings slightly inside the square of the canvas rather than directly on the edges because I wanted there to be a bit of a frame to each painting, and also because I wanted room to date each piece underneath. It also had an added benefit of creating more continuity to my Instagram feed, where I was posting the pieces.

The first two paintings I did for PleinAirpril were plein airs done from real life observation. I constructed a little window out of cardboard for my first painting, which I did at night time from my room.

I used a lot of brushes with color mixing for these two because I'd seen other digital artists create really gorgeous effects with the color variation. I focused a lot on trying to capture the colors and lighting I saw relatively accurately at this stage.

For the third painting, I followed along to the first Warrior Painter's demo with Angela Sung, one of the hosts of the Warrior Painter community! For this demo, I was trying to follow the same painting techniques as Angela. She uses the lasso tool a lot to select certain parts of the painting, and then fills that area with a solid color. I think it was a valuable experience to try and work that way, but I found that it definitely doesn't work for me very well. I didn't really feel like I had a lot of control over what I wanted to do, and it really slowed my process down a lot as well.

For the next two paintings, I tried to push my colors a bit beyond just what I saw, but in hindsight they were pretty close to the original. I experimented a bit with linework in the chicken painting, which I liked but ultimately gave up on in favor of lineless painting instead.

Also at this point, I started using reference photos instead of drawing from real life, since it cost a lot of time to scout out and visit specific locations, which I discovered for Day #2 since I did that at Holland Park near Kennington Palace. Almost all the rest of the paintings I did were of photos I took from spring break, which I wanted to do since it was like a way of documenting the places I traveled to :)

For Day 6, I painted while watching Marco Bucci's YouTube video series on tips for better painting. It was really helpful to take in his tips and I found myself actively incorporating his tips into my painting as I worked on it.

I merged my shapes into defined sections and was conscious of making sure colors from certain dominant areas were also present in less prominent areas, to a lesser degree.

For the next four paintings, I tried to keep those lessons in mind and experiment with my painting techniques to see what worked the best for me.

[caelum-in-the-avatarverse]

Okay, I think I’ve finally found my groove for fic archival. Of course I only figured out what settings and storage style I wanted after I’d already downloaded a few hundred fics, but downloading a few hundred fics was part of my brain’s figuring-it-out process, so it can’t be helped. Currently I’m re-downloading everything I’d already downloaded, this time using the parameters I’ve decided upon. Once that’s done...I’ll just keep downloading more.

I’m really liking FicLab - all the settings options left me paralyzed with indecision at first, but after some pondering and reading the advice in the notes of this post, I’ve settled on settings that prioritize preservation.

Save Reviews: Check. Obviously, the reviews are half the fic experience and I’m so glad to have finally found a tool that lets me download them.

Enable Cover: No. It’s a cool feature, but not necessary, and lots of fics on FFdotnet don’t have covers anyway. I’d rather save the filespace.

Paragraph Style: Space Only. Neither FFdotnet nor AO3 use indents as default, and frankly I get a little weirded out when I see indents used in a fic’s format cuz it’s just so unusual.

Font Style: Sans-Serif. There’s some back-and-forth on whether serif or sans-serif fonts are more readable, but sans-serif seems to be better for people with dyslexia, and both FFdotnet and AO3 use sans-serif by default.

Punctuation: Original. FicLab is geared more towards creating a pleasant reading experience than it is to archival, so to that end it’ll clean up basic punctuation issues. I don’t care about that; I’d rather have these fics saved as they were posted, punctuation mistakes and all.

Scene Breaks: Unchecked. FicLab will try to detect where authors left things like ~oOo~ and insert a proper plain-line scene break there instead; I’m more interested in archiving the fics as-is and saving these whimsical scene breaks authors came up with for posterity.

-

I then save at least two copies of each fic I download - one as PDF, one as EPUB. In some cases I also save additional copies without reviews if 1) The fic has more than 200 reviews, 2) The fic has more reviews than words, or 3) I just feel like it.

FicLab names files as “Author Name - Fic Name” and I’m sticking with that, with the addition of “ - with reviews” for any fic I’ve downloaded the reviews of, which is most of them. Figure it’s good to have that info right in the title. Sorting fics by author first seems to be a good approach as well - I went on a fic-downloading spree back in 2017 and was saving things title-first and that was just...a mess.

So my current setup is Fandom Folder > Author Folder > Fics. Not perfect, but it’ll do. Organizing fics by author gives me the added bonus of being able to index things better, too - once I’ve downloaded all an author’s fics, I create a rich text document in their folder and copy/paste all their fic titles and summaries in alphabetical order. So at least I have some idea at a glance of what kind of stories that folder contains. For good measure I’m taking a screenshot of the author’s profile too. Y’know, for posterity.

Can you believe before FicLab I was manually going in and saving every page of reviews as a webpage? Ugh that was so labor-intensive and inefficient space-wise, it made the folders look all cluttered...I’m so glad I found FicLab. I’ve been procrastinating on downloading fics because I didn’t want to download them without also saving their reviews; I’m so glad I no longer have that excuse. It’s so much easier this way!

I’m still glad I went on that fic-saving spree back in 2017 though, because...several of the fics I saved back then are gone now. Looks like the authors just deleted their FFN accounts or something. These were old fics too - I would’ve thought they’d be safe, but it just goes to show that you never know when someone will just delete everything and disappear. I’m glad I’ve got copies of those fics in some form, even if not with my new efficient system.

As an aside, lo-fi on youtube apparently does wonders for my concentration on this project. This is tedious work but I feel nice and calm. Funny; normally I can’t stand music while I’m working, or doing anything in general.

Looks like I’ve re-downloaded everything to my liking now, so I’m gonna start spelunking through the depths of FFdotnet to find other fics to save. Idk what I’m gonna do with them, exactly. No grand plans. But FFdotnet will go down someday, and when it does, I want to be able to say that I saved everything I loved from it. An archive of my own, lol. It’ll be a drop in the ocean compared to what we’ll inevitably lose, but every little bit of fandom history counts.

[thelittlewitchofeverything]

"Do your own research"

“Do your own research”

Okay, cool, guess I’ll die.

It’s alright, take a deep breath. Trust me, I understand. As someone with ADHD, I have a hard time with researching, and just reading in general is difficult for me. But I HAVE SOME TIPS.

Where do I start?

I’m gonna say something a bit controversial here, but start by finding some good quality YouTube channels. You will not be able to build a full-on practice from YouTube channels, but a lot of great witchcraft channels on there have resources, talk about things they wish they knew at the beginning, and there’s ongoing conversations about relevant, current topics within the community. If you look at witchcraft books, you’re much more likely to find old, outdated information, misinformation, appropriated practices, or just waste your money on books you might not find relevant.

Youtube is free. And you can quickly cross reference what multiple people are saying.

Is it perfect? No. There is still going to be bad information on YouTube, which is why I advise looking at several different kinds of channels.

Some channels I recommend for beginners - these folks won’t steer you wrong: Witchofwonderlust (secular witchcraft) Warriorwitchnike (folk magic/astrology) Ocean Keltoi (Norse paganism) Aliakai (Hellenism) The Oak Witch (Tradition British folk magic) The Green Witch (green witchcraft)

I believe every single one of these channels have book recommendations, tips for beginners videos, and many of them discuss more tips for researching.

Where I would recommend you avoid getting information when you’re just starting out (or just in general): Tiktok. I love tiktok, I’m on it too much. But I don’t recommend using it to learn about witchcraft. At all. Firstly, 60 seconds isn’t enough time to give any kind of information accurately or with the nuance and respect it requires. Secondly, it is so full in misinformation and people looking to build a following saying anything, even things that are harmful and untrue. There have been full-on cults springing up on TikTok in the Witchtok space, so I’d avoid it until you have your basics firmly. Witchtok can be fun for community, but it’s not a resource.

Low-cost resources:

Scribd - I did their free month trial back in September when I was on a sick leave and… it’s the best. Access to a large library of all sorts of books including a ton of witchcraft books. There are amazing books on there, BUT THERE’S ALSO A LOT OF SHIT so just careful :) I use text-to-speech to help me read as well, but there’s also a fair amount of audio books!

Podcasts - A free resource that’s really great for people like me with ADHD or who have a hard time with reading. It’s a good place for members in our community to discuss topics on a long-form format, meaning you can get more in-depth information and conversations there. Again, some are much better than others. Some I recommend are: -BS-Free Witchcraft by @traegorn (also go follow them here, they’re hilarious and lovely and so smart) -Magnolias and Magic - Hosted by WarriorwitchNike and Georgina Rose of Da’at Darling with Anthony Wolfe -Test Tubes and Cauldrons - Astra, Fel, and Han discussing Magic’s place in a material world. -The Witch Daily Show - a cute little monday-friday podcast discussing lots of different topics and headlines, hosted by Witch Way Magazine. -New World Witchery - by Cory and Laine, they discuss practices of North America, great for people on this side of the pond who are more conscious of their local environment.

There are some other websites with free public-domain documents and books, but I honestly wouldn’t recommend them for new practitioners. They’re a little difficult to navigate sometimes and I think they’re a bit more advanced.

Topics I recommend getting a solid understanding of: -History and origin of modern witchcraft/magic traditions (Wicca, neopaganism, new age) -What is a correspondence and why do they work? -Protection magic -Types of magical paradigms (spirit model vs. Psych model) -Cultural appropriation, common trespasses (I’m gonna give you one for free - stay away from white sage), what is a closed practice, and cultural appreciation

You can get a pretty good foundation of the lay of our community when starting with these topics and it’ll give you a head start on figuring out what you believe and how your practice will unfold. I think these topics are some of the most important ones to get right at the beginning. Everything else will come in time. You can look up how to cast a job spell, but if you don’t understand why it works, it’ll be less effective. It’ll also give you the ability to analyze a spell and make substitutions as necessary. It’ll also keep you safer from some of the more unsavoury parts of our community because there are people who want to hurt you or recruit you.

Lastly, I want to just address one thing: people will tell you that you shouldn’t do xyz for some amount of time when you start. You don’t have to listen to them. Usually people say this about spells or deities because those are considered to be “dangerous.” This isn’t necessarily true. You don’t actually have to listen to anyone. You can ignore everything I’ve said here and start your research with a book on astrology.

My main advice here is to use critical thinking skills with everything.

What is being said?

Who’s saying it?

Why are they saying it?

Who benefits from it?

Who is harmed by it?

When was this written?

What influenced it?

These are some basic questions to ask when researching any topic, but especially witchcraft and magic. There’s a lot more questions you can ask when using critical thinking, but that should be enough to get you started.

Have fun friends, and enjoy the journey. It takes a long time to get anywhere, but the work is well worth it.

[whotaughtyougrammar]

For the writer asks! 1, 3, 18, 20

I’m sending good vibes for 1, that it flows smoothly soon based on the writer memes.

Thank you for the good vibes 🙏🏼🙏🏼 And thank you so much for the ask!

1) Tell us about your current project(s) – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?

OH BOY WHERE TO START LMAO

I’m working on a few things right now, which is funny because I used to be a one project at a time sort of person, back when I didn’t write as often but putting pen to paper was paradoxically easier.

The “first” (technically second, you’ll see what I mean) big thing is:

A “multiverse” story. This sounds like something that I came up with after watching Everything Everywhere All At Once, but I’ve been working in this since before the movie came out 🤣 Of course, Daniels had thought of the concept for this movie long before this was even a blip in my mind, but I digress.

I think I mentioned this before, but I kind of like the idea that out of all the families, the Close/Streeps/Freemans are just… utterly mundane and non-magical (not really the case anymore eyeroll ¯\_(ツ)_/¯), but I still wrote a ficlet where Morgan basically implies she knows the gender of her child through a dream. I took that and spun it off into, “Morgan visits her alternate selves through her dreams and is comforted and finds closure in the choices she’s made in her life,” (or something like that, I don’t usually like to deal too seriously in themes and prefer writing vignettes or scenes) I mostly just wanted to write down some of the AU ideas I’ve come up with without committing to several fics at a time because as much as I love my AUs, and as much as I like writing fics, there’s only so much time and energy I can put into them without ignoring basic necessities 😅

I have a basic “prologue” done but not much else. What I want to do next is figure out which AU I want “featured.” As big as this idea sounds, I really do want this to on the shorter side (if it exceeds Heart’s wordcount and is not considered done by then I may cry lol) and I’m not including the completely outlandish universes like the bodyguard AU or the figure skating AU. I definitely want to include Morgan Foster-Freeman, and mercenary Morgan from my Monsters and Mommies AU, but other than those two I’m still in the planning stages.

The “second” big thing I’m working on is:

A Glenn and Morgan love/origin story that I’ve been working on on-and-off since fucking 2020 (!!) I have a few scenes fully written out and even an old outline of what I wanted to happen (it’s so old I was still calling Morgan “Michel” or “Mysterious Significant Other”).

I have a lot of problems with this one lmao.

One is it takes place over a pretty long period of time—I specified they’ve been dating around 5, almost six years in “Everyday Words Seem to Turn into Love Songs”, and they didn’t immediately like each other when they first met (I’ve always been pretty firm with this bit of headcanon), so the timeline for this one, tentatively titled “You’ve Got a Pulse and You Are Breathing” would have to span at least 7 years, and maybe even longer.

Another problem I had was formatting. I was having trouble deciding if I wanted this to be one long document/short story (my preferred format) or if it should be split up into chapters. As I went on, I was even starting to doubt whether I even wanted to do such a comprehensive “origin” story that went from point A to point Married to point Canon, and considered doing it in semi-related short ficlets like “In A Sentimental Mood,” or as a 5+1 format, specifically something like “5 times Glenn had a shitty date, and 1 time Glenn still had a shitty date but it led to something infinitely better” (a lot of “Pulse” involves Glenn’s dating troubles, not only from being a pan/bi Asian man in the 90s and 00s having to deal with biphobia and racism, but also being aspec and not being able to put into words why certain parts of dating don’t appeal to him without sounding like he’s stuck-up or a “freak” or like there’s something wrong with him.)

But I think the biggest problem I am having right now is simply the fact that I think I psyched myself out 🤣 I wrote “Everyday Words” in… a day? Maybe two days? It was simple and cute and so easy to do, one of the few times I just wrote first and edited later, that I figured I could write up a “But how did they meet,” story in maybe a week, and now it’s two years later, the campaign is over and it’s on to the next one for a majority of people, so many scenes written that may not even make it into the final product and the only thing I’m sure on is the title, and even that might be changed for the final product 🤣

I still have so much love for this fic, it feels like my baby basically lmao, that I feel nothing less than perfection will do it justice. It would be very funny but also poetic if the first meeting of Glenn and Morgan ends up being my last fic written for the fandom, but I don’t see that happening—I still have plenty of ideas left to write!

Smaller things I am also working on (that I have actually started and are not just ideas I want to write eventually) are: A Carol and Morgan bonding thing that will hopefully segue into some sort of Carol/Mercedes thing, and a social media fic of fans speculating on Glenn’s love life (Single? Straight? Dating? Bi?? Secretly married??? Something else?????), Morgan’s general cryptidness (Dancer? Actor? Pianist? All of the above? None of the above? No really, how does one woman hold so many jobs at one single time?), and generally being weird and parasocial. So you know, just your average day on social media.

3) What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway)

There is a scene that I’ve never written but has always stuck out in my head in my abandoned Glenn in mourning fic, where after the funeral, Glenn is accosted not only by Bill, (obviously thinking that now that the ol’ ball and chain is in the ground Glenn is suddenly OK with having his father around again), but also by Morgan’s side of the family, either by her sibling (who I think was her sister and not her brother at the time I was thinking of writing this) or her actual parents, who are basically threatening to take Nick away from him.

Bill is handled fairly quickly and easily, but a legal matter is something else entirely, and in a panic, Glenn goes to see his mother and basically starts verbally whaling on her once the shock of what happened wears off and lets her have it, demanding/screaming that she help him because, according to Glenn, she owes him for never being an adequate mother and treating him like an inconvenience until it was too late, but eventually his rage subsides and his grief takes over and he begs her, much more plaintively, to help make the problem go away, swearing that he’ll forgive her for all her past transgressions and never bring them up again if she helps him with the custody problem. She agrees, and he never hears from Morgan’s side of the family again. (which sounds ominous written like that, but everything was dealt with legally I swear lmao)

18) Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them.

I recently reread “Everyday Words” and though I consider is part of Musicverse canon, a part of me feels like it’s a completely different ‘verse, simply from the amount of (implied) boning that happens 😂 I came up with the idea of Ace Glenn very early in the series run (my series and canon series) but it wasn’t in my head when I wrote this evidently (it was probably while I was writing “Pulse” did the idea firmly plant itself in my head, which was basically immediately after I finished this). Chalk it up to being away from each other for extended periods of time, Glenn being (generally) sex-favorable and sex being an easy way of establishing intimacy.

A lot of the story beats in “Heart” were originally going to be part of other things (Glenn mentioning that his mother taught him guitar was originally going to be part of “Pulse”) or were going to be smaller ficlets. The bit where Morgan gets sick in Heart was originally going to be its own short ficlet, and so was the scene of Glenn talking about his failed “date”/realizing something was “up” with him irt sexual attraction (it was originally a morning after scene), so I’d consider all those plotlines I’ve abandoned, or more accurately, merged into one.

My friend also made a throwaway joke about an AU where the meet-cute is both of them dumping bodies into the Gowanus and their eyes meet, which isn’t an AU of my adult store AU per se but it is a joke I can see Morgan making as she’s trying to puzzle out how much she wants to say about her occupation .(“So how are you going to introduce me to your friend’s kids?” “I don’t know, I’ll just tell ‘em we met when we were dumping bodies into the Canal. They’ll get a kick out of that.”)

20) Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

I have a few, but the one that sticks out for me is probably the headbutt. The scene of Glenn headbutting Bill in “You Send it All Back to Me” is a call-back (call-forward?) to a scene in “Pulse,” where Glenn attempts to punch somebody and gets punched back for his troubles. Morgan fixes him up while criticizing his technique and advises him to go for a headbutt next time instead for a variety of sensible reasons. Glenn is skeptical and is in the process of “Well, Actually”-ing her when she surprises him with a headbutt to demonstrate—not hard, just a sudden forehead touch that stops him in his tracks and forces him to reconsider his talking points and also realize that Morgan’s eyes are not black like he originally thought but brown, and that this close he can see how they sparkle when she’s amused and how deep and dark and mesmerizing and beautiful they actually are and—oh no.

[scribbleboxfox]

Definitely not the friend of the person who sent the artwork with the chair–

Can confirm, she's been rambling on and on about your fic for weeks. Months. I decided I had to read it for myself, since she spoke so highly of it, so I started today. Somewhere around the seventh chapter now. I'm always cracking up at the notes at the end. For the record, you nailed Caboose. I could hear his voice more clearly than anyone else's.

That aside, I did have a real question. Figured I'd ask since apparently you're a super easy to talk to/contact (if my excited friend's notes about sharing the artwork have been any indication). I do not know how tumblr works, though. Fingers crossed I figure it out quick.

The actual questions:

How did you come up with the idea for your story?

How did you make it work? As in, how did you make a plot, stick to it, and then keep going–

How are you able to impersonate fandom characters so accurately and not fear being incorrect??? (I struggle with this, hence my not having written fanfiction in, like, ever haha)

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk.

AHHHH YES HELLO HI I'M SO GLAD YOU STARTED READING AND I HOPE YOU LIKE IT!!

I'm going to put my answers under a cut so it doesn't clog up people's dashboards. (Click on the "Keep Reading" link/button thing to see them!)

Gonna try to answer your first two questions together, since they pair up nicely.

Honestly, and this is going to sound silly, the idea for The Long Road Home sprung from a goofy one-liner that I thought up for Fox to say. More specifically; I'd come up with Fox as a way to give Locus a goofy sidekick that annoyed him but ultimately became his best friend. She was originally just a silly OC that I did some doodles of, and I wasn't planning on getting attached to her or Red vs. Blue. But then I imagined the stupidest, funniest one-liner I have ever come up with.

Unfortunately, said one-liner needed context. Over a million words of context, apparently LOL. So I started brainstorming, came up with a plot, and planned it out. It's hard to explain the exact technical work that went into building this thing, but I'll try;

Initially, I started by asking myself "where do I want these characters to end up, and how are they going to get there?" Then I determined the load-bearing plot points from there;

The characters meet Fox

She convinces them to work together with Locus

Locus earns some of Kimball's trust; enough for Kimball to let him help Fox on her crusade to find evidence against Hargrove that the UNSC will have to pay attention to

They go to Earth and Locus discovers the power of friendship

At the same time, Hargrove decides to continue his campaign to wipe out Chorus

[Insert other spoilery plot points here]

From there, I came up with a document that holds all the super important plot points and the order in which they happen, along with all the necessary sub-plots that help move the story along.

The way I format it is "Chapter Name: Plot point 1 - Plot point 2 - plot point 3" so I know what needs to happen in each chapter. I've included an image below that hopefully helps illustrate this a little better;

This was the first thing I did when planning my fic. It took me a while to finalize it; I didn't manage to get it close to the finalized version that exists now until around Chapter 14. Since then I've tidied it up even further as I've tightened up my overall story direction, and continue to do so every few chapters I write to make sure that everything that happens in future chapters makes sense with what's happened in previous ones.

TL;DR: this document exists for me to know where the fic is going and how to get there, and serves as a framework for the overall story as a whole.

The next step; which is more of a housekeeping thing on my part, is the chapter outlines. These basically serve as a rough draft and help me get all the "filler" down so I can use it to connect the stuff that happens in each chapter. To further explain; I outline the chapter scene-by-scene and include some of the more minute details that happen. I like to write these like they're a FandomWiki article about an episode of a TV show so I don't get too descriptive with them (they're rough drafts after all,) though I'll usually include pieces of dialogue that I think could actually work in the chapter, or serve as a means of getting an idea across.

Here's an image of what it looks like;

Since these are basically rough drafts, I like to use them to just throw down whatever ideas I can come up with, and then in the final draft (AKA the actual chapter) I iron out all the stuff that either won't work or isn't as good as it could be.

Both of these documents help me stay on track and keep me motivated. I find that the timeline document keeps me super excited about what's going to happen in future chapters, because I can just scroll down and see it. And the outline document allows me to throw out whatever ideas think will work on a chapter-by-chapter basis without my perfectionism kicking me in the head.

TL;DR #2: to actually answer your question about how I make it work; I found a technical method that works best for me (which I've outlined above.) Basically, I found a way to get down all the basic ideas for what I wanted to happen in my story. Then, before each chapter, I wrote outlines that define the exact execution of each idea that happens in that specific chapter. Utilizing both in tandem have helped keep me on track, and kept me motivated for what comes next in the story.

Hopefully that makes sense! :'D

As for how I handle character-voice... I've re-watched Red vs. Blue a few dozen times now, so I have some idea of the general cadence of the main characters (what they would say and how they would say it.) But honestly, the way I nail it down in my fic is I just...read their dialogue aloud. Or failing that, I'll read it in my head using the voice of the character I'm trying to emulate.

It usually takes me a few tries to be successful, and I'm honestly super happy that you think I nailed Caboose since I always struggle the most with him.

When all else fails though, I'll either re-watch the Chorus Trilogy or pull up the (incomplete) WikiQuote page for it. Since The Long Road Home takes place immediately after that part of the show, the dialogue from the Chorus Trilogy is the best reference for characterizing the main cast.

TL;DR #3: Research and references are your best friends when writing dialogue. I find that if I can't imagine a character saying a certain thing, then they either wouldn't say it the way I'm trying to write them saying it, or they wouldn't say it at all. Reading dialogue aloud can help A LOT with figuring out if something sounds right.

(But also don't worry about dialogue being perfect. In the more recent chapters, my characterization for some of the Reds and Blues has definitely slipped lol. I think, if you are going to try to write a fic at some point, the most important thing is that you love the characters and the media they came from, and that you're having fun overall!)

Thanks so much for all the questions! It always puts a huge smile on my face whenever anyone asks about my fic! :D

Have a great day! <3

[tlbodine]

Reverse-Outlining Revision Method with Plottr

So in my editing guide, I give a step-by-step method for structural editing that I find really useful, and I wanted to do a visual follow-up to kind of show what that process looks like. I’m using Plottr for this, because I was gifted a copy of the software in exchange for them using my horror-writing beat-sheet as one of the templates, but you could just as easily do this with Scrivener, scrap paper, or any other organizational system you like. 

Whether you’re a fellow pantser who struggles with story structure (hi!) or you’re an outliner who needs to make sure your draft matches up to your vision (or the second draft has a good structure), this will work for you! 

Step One: Write a one-sentence log-line of the story + jot down the major themes 

There’s space for this in Plottr. I’m doing Neverest.

Premise: A woman’s search for her missing husband’s body on Mount Everest sends her into the grip of ancient forces that don’t want her to leave. 

Themes: Putting your name on something doesn't make it yours; colonialism and the urge to conquer and codify; relationships as a form of control and change vs understanding

You’ll also want to write a one-page overview summary of the story, similar to what you’d put in a query letter. Here’s mine: 

One year ago, Sean Miller -- journalist and mountain climbing enthusiast -- reached the summit of Mt. Everest, and was never seen again. Unable to move on without knowing the truth of what happened, his wife Carrie flies to Nepal to meet with Sean’s best friend and former climbing partner, Tom. They assemble a small crew and begin an expedition up the peak in search of Sean’s body and a better understanding of what might have happened in his final days.

Guided by a travel journal left behind from her husband's expedition, Carrie ventures into the frozen, open-air graveyard of the world's tallest peak. But as Sean’s diary and Carrie’s experiences reveal, climbing the mountain is more than a test of endurance; it’s a battle of wills with an ancient and hostile force protecting the mountain — and the dead do not rest easy at the summit.

Doing this helps you to identify the core elements of your story -- the characters, the conflict, and the stakes. You should be able to answer the questions: who is the main character, what do they want, what’s stopping them, what happens if they succeed/fail. 

In this case: 

The main character is Carrie, the wife of a journalist who disappeared while summiting Mt. Everest (character) 

She wants to find his body and get closure about his death/understand how and why he died (what does she want)

But there are supernatural forces at work that led to his death and now have the same in store for her (conflict/stakes) 

Step Two: List out every scene in the book 

Plottr is an outlining software, so it makes this step really easy (and conveniently color-codes things for me at the same time!). There are multiple views this can take, but this one screenshots well so I used this one for the example. 

Basically what you want to do is write down everything that happens, scene by scene. You can color-code them however you want -- in my case, I have three narrative threads, so I made a timeline for each one. Then I just mapped out all the scenes -- across 24 chapters, each dot is a scene, and you can see that some chapters have multiple scenes and also that the primary and secondary plot alternate chapters. 

When you look at it this way, you can tell really clearly that the tertiary plot needs some work -- it’s only there for four scenes in the first third of the story. I either need to cut it completely and incorporate any essential information into the other plots, or I need to expand it. 

In this particular case, I decided to expand because 1.) my word count is low, and I’d like to fill in more story and 2.) a big theme I want to explore in the story is what it’s like to love someone who’s deeply passionate about something you don’t understand -- so this tertiary plot is a great place to explore that and fill in more characterization that should add some depth to the primary and secondary stories. 

I can also see at a glance that I have a variable number of scenes in each chapter. Sometimes that makes sense (the green ones are diary entries, so it’s logical that one chapter = one entry) but sometimes it hints that those chapters could be a little thin and need more content. If I’m looking to add additional conflict, I should do it in those blue chapters that only have one dot as opposed to the ones with multiple dots! 

Step Three: Look at the overall shape and adjust for pacing and genre

Plottr has a bunch of templates pre-loaded into it that make this easy, but you can also just google various different story structures and beat sheets such as Save the Cat or the 3 Act Structure etc. But just look at the overall map of story beats and see how they line up with the outline you’ve made: 

This is just a small snapshot view, but you get the idea -- when you look at the scenes side-by-side with the beat sheet, you can see some things. For example, it sure would make more sense if the flashback scene where Carrie decides to embark on this journey got its own chapter and lined up better with the “putting the players in action” plot point rather than being smooshed into the first chapter with the introduction to the world! The fact that I’ve got it smashed into that first chapter is probably a sign that my opening scenes/chapter itself is a bit thin and needs to be fleshed out a little more. 

Step Four: Figure out what you need to adjust and make the changes accordingly 

So after looking at everything mapped out this way, I’ve got a little list of things I need to do: 

Come up with more scenes for that red plotline

Rearrange some things a little bit to better fit the structure I want

Figure out some more blue scenes to fill in the gaps caused by rearranging things and smooth over the pacing/amp up the conflict/alleviate some areas where critique partners hae expressed confusion

I also moved around the categories in Plottr (you can drag-and-drop storylines and chapters) to make it a bit easier to see everything all at once. Basically you can edit the story’s outline first, to save you the confusion of manually moving around whole paragraphs/chapters in your actual story document. 

Now, I haven’t finished that step yet for this particular project (there’s a lot of brainstorming to do re: filling in those gaps!) BUT I did want to skip ahead to show you the next step (let’s pretend this is a TV cooking show where the finished pie is pulled right out of the oven). 

Step Five: Re-Type everything based on your new scene list

This is a really neat thing about Plottr. If you swap from the “Timeline” view to the “Outline” view, you get these editable text windows where you can type whatever you want, and it’ll keep it organized into chapters and scenes. 

So, just pull up your original in one window, and the Plottr screen (or other outlining/drafting device) in another. Dual monitors are great for this but we make due. Now, retype the original document into the new document, making changes as you go to fit the new outline and also cleaning up language and so forth as you go. For example, this time around I’ll be changing Carrie’s blue timeline scenes to present-tense instead of past, so I’ll rewrite them in present tense in the new window. 

Once all that is said and done, in Plottr you can export the file directly into Scrivener or Word. (If you’re not using Plottr, you’ll have to figure out for your own self how to transfer the final product into a final document -- I trust you can sort through that). From there you’ve got a fresh clean copy of a second draft all ready to go for the final copy-edit/proofread/polish/formatting and then you’re off to the races! 

I hope this was helpful for you! I talk more about editing in my Gumroad guide here: https://tlbodine.gumroad.com/l/jkLpr

If you’d like to receive all of my existing + future guides and support me in making more content like this, consider subscribing to my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tlbodine

And you can pick up a copy of Plottr here: https://plottr.com/

This post isn’t sponsored or anything, but I did get a free copy of the software from the developer and I think it’s pretty neat. It’s still in beta so new features keep getting added, and the team that makes it are very nice and responsive to feedback. 

[incorrect-quotes-from-she-ra]

Morning! I hope you don't mind if i give you yet another She-Ra thought I'm too damn lazy to post on my own. Also, it's long again. I WILL find that character limit some day.

So, we know the way Shadow Weaver raised Adora resulted, among other issues, in her being selfless to the point of self-sacrifice, which came to a climax in the Heart's failsafe business.

And it's been suggested that this was basically intentional on Shadow Weaver's part. Basically, selflessness is a very beneficial quality for others to have. My theory is that <b>her plan for Adora had always been specifically for her to someday use the failsafe and release all magic</b>.

(i will admit i am also curious how formatting works in this app. thank you for your help with these experiments)

So, evidence. Let's start with her name. I know this is a remake and they were stuck with the existing names, but there's a scene where Scorpia complains about it ("yeah i GET it, everyone LOVES you"), which constitutes the writers acknowledging its meaning, which makes me think it's fair game to analyze.

First, I'm obviously assuming Shadow Weaver choose it, as part of her ongoing parenting plan. It's also possible it was her original First One-given name, we don't know. Neither quite works because either she or Light Hope should have had some issues knowing what the name was and they clearly knew automatically. Really the entire series is weird in that everyone communicates with everyone else way too easily, and i will definitely rant about that someday.

For now let it stand that Shadow Weaver is the parent figure, it makes the most sense for her to pick the name, both in-universe and narratively, so i shall assume so by default. I have two things to say about that choice.

First, as we all have noticed, most of the princesses have names ending in -a. All of them, if you count "Glimma". It's never said to be intentional, but it would make sense. And then IF such a tradition exists among Etheria's royalty, it's not unreasonable for Shadow Weaver, a notable and moderately respected member of the land of knowledge, to know about it.

And then if she knew, of course she would take it into consideration when looking for names. Admittedly it's a little weird with the anti-Princess propaganda that the Horde has, but she doesn't really need to explain or justify this. Hordak has a very [i]laissez-faire[/i] attitude, and everyone else she clearly doesn't care about.

And if she knew or suspected that the princesses' powers were related to the Heart of Etheria, which i will argue for later, then giving her a princessy name is also adequately ironic.

The second name bit is that Scorpia clearly knows some Latin, but not enough. True, <em>adorare</em> means to worship and/or to love, but Latin verbs are more complex than that. _Adora_ specifically is 3rd person singular present indicative active. The translation would be "she loves".

Names aside, i want to talk about how they (we) learned about the Heart of Etheria. Castaspella doesn't know what to do, Shadow Weaver suggests they take a road trip to research, which she's reticent about but concedes is probably the best use of her time, and they find success. We don't know how long it took them, but i had the distinct impression that it wasn't very long.

Naturally, I'm suggesting Shadow Weaver knew all along, and led Castaspella on the trip to have an excuse for the inevitable "how do you know?". Also tricked her into thinking it was /her/ discovery, and maybe even that she was succeeding where Shadow Weaver had failed before, if necessary.

That's why she's so excited to share their results with everybody, and Shadow Weaver cuts her off, apparently just to antagonize her for fun, but I'm suggesting it was also because for her this is the culmination of a decades-long plan, and she wants to Get On With It.

It's also interesting that there was a mural depicting the Spell of Obtainment in the hallway leading to the failsafe. It was a reminder of Shadow Weaver's past, and an opportunity for her to show she regrets her results but doesn't repent from her choices, which i quite like actually. But I'm also saying that, meta-textually, it was a signal that she'd been there before, literally.

And then there is the potential in-universe connection, since we don't know what exactly the spell was meant to be obtaining. Power, for sure, and from what happened we're probably meant to assume it's tapping into some sort of demonic entity or dimension.

Fair enough, except that it never comes up again. And it's kind of a big plot point that Etheria is isolated from the rest of the cosmos, which may or may not conflict with it having a contactable "hell". Meanwhile there's the Heart of Etheria Project collecting all that magic, which Mara's allies (and their descendants) would know something about, have access to at least one backdoor to, and may well have tried to tap into its power at some point.

And then what went wrong may well be one of the defense mechanisms of the Project, though I'm admittedly veering into unfounded speculation.

So, a rough timeline. Light Spinner was always motivated to excel and craved power. She was probably always envied the princesses, who command greater magic than most sorcerers with apparently none of the study and practice.

She took to researching everything she could that might lead to power, eventually discovering the chamber with the failsafe, and presumably other information left by Mara's Friends, either in other chambers or in documents she's since removed. She would have learned a lot of things from this.

As i suggested, i believe she knew there's some connection between the princesses at large and the Heart of Etheria. Incidentally, i don't know exactly what that connection is, and in particular whether princesses were created by the Project or an existing phenomenon that the First Ones co-opted. But it doesn't matter, exactly.

What's important is that there's clearly a connection, more specifically a control system for the princesses and their magic, which is presumably related to how Shadow Weaver was able to tap into the Black Garnet's power. With Hordak's help, obviously, since she clearly believed it when he claimed he could cut her off at will, but he's later shown to have basically no understanding of First Ones' tech, so the knowledge must have come from her.

For the record, i would guess she thinks princesses are artificial, empowered both magically and politically to keep the planet in check, and that they would be depowered once the failsafe was fired. I also think that may be true, actually, since it almost happened when Entrapta was messing with the system, and if i recall none of them were shown to use any magic after Adora did fire it, while she clearly used Perfuma's power. But anyways!

Back to what Shadow Weaver learned, she would know some of what the failsafe does, namely disrupt the system that's hoarding most of the planet's magic, thereby spreading magic to all (most notably her), and some of how to use it, and the fact that she couldn't do so and hope to live, and some of the criteria for who can. That part is important.

But first, she also learned the Spell of Obtainment, deemed it more likely but didn't think she could do it herself, despaired of getting help until she thought Hordak's rise to fame would give her #casus belli#, lost her patience when the Mystacor leadership disagreed, etc etc etc. Pretty uncontroversial in this part, i think.

After she'd joined the Horde, when Hordak showed up with baby Adora and wanted to lump her with the rest of the orphans they have, Shadow Weaver pleaded to have her get special treatment. She even said that she's special, and it couldn't have been her leadership skills or good heart, since she didn't have either yet. It's heavily implied she could recognize her as a First One, but it's not clear why she would care, since they were known for leaving behind advanced technology, which a baby also doesn't have. Unless, of course, she knew there are devices only a First One could use, and maybe has plans related to that.

So I'm pretty sure she learned the criteria that the failsafe requires, devised some spell or technique to check people for them that she pretty much used all the time, just in case, and was very surprised when a newborn tested positive. She was also surprised when Hordak made her personally responsible for the raising of the kid, but her reaction is pretty much "ok, that could work, i guess".

Also also, i suspect she can read First One script. Not perfectly like Adora, but better than Bow's parents probably. Mostly because when she puts Adora's hand on the crystal and says "i think you know the password", that seems like a very transparent attempt to pretend she knows it too when she doesn't. But that seems irresponsible at such a crucial moment, she and Castaspella should really have researched it earlier. Or at least her line there should have been "you can read this, right?" or somesuch.

So I'm thinking it's a double bluff, hoping everybody assumes she doesn't know so she doesn't have to reveal how and why she knows, again.

And that's all i have, i think? This is not nearly as well laid out as i would like. But then, nothing ever is, right?

Also it's not even close to morning anymore. Thank you if you even got this far, and have a good evening!

hi!!! this took me a while to answer, i'm so sorry about that <3

i'm very low on energy today so i cannot summon up the brain energy to respond properly to this, as much as i want to, i'm really sorry for that as well

i love this theory!! it actually fits in really well with canon and makes, like, a LOT of sense now that i think about it. i definitely wouldn't have thought of this on my own, so thank you for sharing this with me!! :D

[op-sheepy]

ok so I'm particularly interested in

Bellamy Law

Law and Bible stuff

Law is a substitute kindergarten teacher

shichibukai applications

reverse hanahaki disease (?? do u spit out flowers when your nemesis walks by?)

if you feel like elaborating on any of these!

This is gonna get long and I actually contemplated posting them separately but would that have been more work? Yeah, that felt like more work so for anyone interested, check under the cut. :D

---------------------------------o

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Bellamy Law

Hm… This would be an attempt to explore the parallels and contrasts between Bellamy and Law. I've always found it fascinating that the former was a foil to the latter.

They both come from well-off  towns in the North Blue.

Bellamy left because of boredom. Law had no choice because Flevance.

Both ended up seeking Doflamingo  because of  his notoriety as a pirate. Both admired him initially

Doffy favored one over the other though. Bellamy always sought his approval but was never really part of the inner circle Doflamingo cared about.

Law got the dubious privilege of being part of the family despite being absent for so long. Even offered one of the highest seats by Doffy's side for seemingly nothing.

Law had no trouble turning his back on Doffy once he realized the man's nature. Bellamy tried to stick to his principles until the end despite admitting that he new he was wrong.

Bellamy can (and did) quit piracy after his ordeal with Doflamingo. Having the option to live peacefully, perhaps a return to his previous life (the one he considered boring). Law can't do that quite as easily what with his Devil fruit and his reputation.

I thought it would be interesting trying to explore what Bellamy was thinking. Did he hear the Donquixote Pirates talk about their missing 'family'? Did he get to see Doffy be amused at Law's rise as a Supernova while he kept being reminded of his own status? Did Law save Bellamy partially because he also saw what he could have been had Corazon not saved him?

On principle, Bellamy should have hated Trafalgar Law. Does. Bastard even saved him without him wanting it. But there was something about the shadows haunting those eyes and Bellamy started to wonder.

He had heard the family talk about Law before. The child personally taught by Doflamingo, chosen to be his right hand. Never was he compared to the man because Law was just obviously better. Smarter. Stronger. Bellamy was ever just an uncouth thug.

He was allowed to 'borrow' Doflamingo's symbol while Law had an empty seat waiting for his return–a seat Bellamy had wanted enough to risk everything for.

Maybe he had resented, Trafalgar Law for carelessly rejecting the things he had that Bellamy had always desired. In the end too, Trafalgar Law did prove to be better. He'd done as a child what Bellamy had trouble doing even as he was now.

But having been given the chance to observe the other man as they all recovered, he wondered, perhaps for the first time, whether despite Law being better than Bellamy, Bellamy had had it better–barring the poor life choices.

---------------------------------o

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Law and Bible stuff

This is just me wanting to know how many biblical parallels and themes I can draw from Law, the Donquixote brothers, the characters associated with them, and his backstory. Honestly not sure whether this would become a fic and in what style or I'm gonna give up and just make it a post.

Not gonna elaborate on them much but here are the ideas in more bullet points (yay):

Law gets familiar with all four horsemen of the apocalypse: conquest, war, famine, and death. He even survives them.

Law is like the son in the parable of the prodigal son to the Donquixote pirates. Except the themes are inverted.

Doflamingo and Rocinante -> Cain and Abel

Ope Ope no Mi -> Granting eternal life by sacrificing one's own life

Gods descending or living among humans. Also, Homing and his family being prosecuted for other people's sins.

That scene where they were hanged by their arms outstretched looks like a crucifixion. Also, Rocinante was on the right while Doflamingo was on the left. Similar to how the penitent thief was on the right and the unrepentant one to the left.

Flevance being considered a paradise with walls/fences/gates and somewhere Law cannot return to.

In the panel where the Donquixote pirates are seated at the table, there were thirteen of them with Doffy at the center. Same as The Last Supper

There are a lot more of these (David and Goliath, Solomon, Jonah, Job, etc.) but I kinda lost the notes and some are more visual so I can't really explain it too well. This would is a drabble series to emphasize or highlight the parallels so no proper snippet for this one.

---------------------------------o

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Law is a substitute kindergarten teacher

Originally an idea to get around most of the Heart Pirates being nameless but evolved to include other characters as kids. Chopper is a kindergarten teacher and he convinces Law to take over his class for a week because somehow Law has the qualifications to and free time. Naturally, he wasn't able to say no.

Unfortunately, despite not being terrible at handling children, Chopper's class is filled with menaces. Also, despite not being terrible, Law can still be awkward so...

"Mr. Trofao–fargar—"

"Trafalgar."

The kid—which one was this one again? Shit, he should really get them name plates or something—scrunched up his face and tried harder, "Tar-pal—"

"Law. Just call me Law."

"Mr. Low"—eh, close enough—"can I go to the bathroom?" Wide imploring eyes stared up at him.

"Sure, go ahead." Law gestured towards the exit of the classroom with his head.

The kid just stared expectantly at him and he tried to suppress the need to narrow his eyes.

"Is there… anything else?"

"Mr. Chopper always comes with me to hold my hand."

Really?

"Mr. Chopper isn't here. You should practice doing it on your own now." He said after a deep inhale.

"But the monsters might get me…"

"No, they won't."

"You don't know that."

"I do." Before the kid could open his mouth again to argue, he added, "Besides, children taste terrible so you're safe."

The kid looked stricken and took a step back from him. Uh oh. Glistening eyes, wobbling lower lip… "Alright! I'll go with you." The kid did not look reassured. In fact he looked like going alone with Law was the last thing he wanted to do. Guess, he kinda implied that he ate children didn't he? Oops.

Well, the kid needs to go and he's not going to be cleaning up after him if he wets himself.

Law glanced at the rest of the children. It was Arts and Craft time and they seemed preoccupied enough. Still, Law doubted Chopper ever left these kids alone–already he could see some of them glancing up at him, waiting for him to leave no doubt to cause trouble. That Monkey kid in particular looked extremely suspicious.

He stood up from his crouch and clapped twice to get everyone's attention.

"Alright. Fall in line. Single file."

There was some grumbling and questioning directed at him. "What's going on?"

Law shrugged. "You're all going to the bathroom."

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Shichibukai Application Forms

Crackfic where the World Government and relevant parties review various Shichbukai Applications. Most submitted by the pirates applying themselves, some produced by their own staff. They discuss and debate. As well as judge pirate resumes.

She scanned the document. Terrible format, really. If you fail to impress within the first page, you've failed entirely. There just wasn't anyone promising enough in this batch of applications or any of the other ones before. The last one had been that clown. "Apprentice to the Pirate King," was a pretty hefty credential.

"Oh, how about this one? Three years experience pillaging, and they even listed all the towns they looted." One of the newly transferred administrative staff said.

"None of these are worth considering at all. You know, when Mihawk was asked to submit his application, he hadn't bothered with all of this. He just sent us a card with his name on it and the title "World's Strongest Swordsman," underneath."

The staff perked up. "Oh, there was an application like that." There was scramble and some shuffling before a plain white card was produced. "Here."

"'From Trafalgar Law'. What does this even mean?"

"Well, it did come with a big box..."

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Reverse Hanahaki Disease

(?? do u spit out flowers when your nemesis walks by?)

Haha. At first it was going to be that way (because it is hilarious) but the inflicted would probably choke to death too soon. Or if both enemies had it, they'd end up just coughing flowers at each other until they stopped being enemies.

The version I ended up going with was that this variant of Hanahaki, instead of afflicting those with unrequited love, affected those in denial instead. The reverse part comes from the original idea that this would usually happen if you somehow fell in love with your nemesis (someone you originally hated). So it's not the thought that the other person can't love you, it's that you can't accept that you love that other person. You get cured by confessing to the person sincerely.

This is actually another KidLaw (surprise!). And the flower coughed up directly represents the person they're in love with (I went with Oda's flower representation for them because I found it funny for plot)

So the idea is that, you get sick but you don't automatically know (maybe) who it is because that's part of being in denial. Kid and Law have many enemies after all. In this story they both get it though not exactly at the same time and not known to the other.

He survived Amber Lead Syndrome only to be killed off by a stupid flower disease that apparently knows more about his own feelings than he does.

He glared at the petals. Tulips. Red.

An image of a cocky grin and a shock of red hair flashed through his mind and—nope. That's not right.

He coughed harder, tears stinging his eyes with the effort. More flowers. Now he has enough for a bouquet.

Alright, he was a doctor. He could do this. Differential time.

First, which variant does he have. He doesn't particularly feel unloved or hopeless. There wasn't anyone he wanted in particular to love him. Ok, nothing. It was maybe safe to say he had that other variant.

Which was stupid because Law had many enemies and he hated all of them.

And cue the racking coughs. More red. He was very familiar with that particular shade.

New theory. This was a new variant that somehow makes you sick when you think of the person you hated the most.

Yes, that had to be it. He thought as he all but collapsed on the floor from the sudden paroxysm.

I knew this was gonna get long. :) Oh well...

Thank you for playing. :D

[deardragonbook]

How I use Trello for Book Series Management (a Free alternative to so many of those overpriced world building programs!)

I constantly see posts about how these world building programs changed the way you write, help you write faster and accomplish more. And then you go in and they’re super expensive and you read comments are people are like, well, I’m too poor for this, shame. 

And I’m just like, okay but... there are alternatives, ya’ll know that right? Right? 

So, today I’m going to talk about my alternative and how I use it. 

This might not be the best tool for everybody, it works really well for me but I do compliment it with a timeline and a map that I keep separate (will eventually get round to an couple of posts about how I do them). 

I use Trello, for this tutorial, I’m specifically going to use this board, I’ve made it editable (I think, I don’t usually work with other people) so you can play around and get a feel for it, please don’t mess it up too much so others can mess with it later. 

I had to make a separate board for this tutorial to my usual book board because spoilers! Like, big spoilers. Like, the entire series outline is up there, but I’ve copied pretty much the same lists: 

Progress: Here I keep track of what I’m up to and more importantly I will store outlines and drafts through attachments. Basically just another backup (you can never have too many). 

Scenes Book 1: Here I write down anything and everything I would like to include in the first book. This can be important things, plot points or silly bits of dialogue. 

Done Book 1: Once I’ve written something into the draft I will move the content from “Scenes Book 1″ here. 

Future Book Scenes: Here I write scenes I plan to include later on in the series but don’t have a specific book for yet. 

Cut Content / Just Writing: If something that was previously in “Futre Book Scenes” or “Scenes Book 1″ gets cut, due to plot changes, fluidity or any other reason, I will move it straight here. This is also a place I use when I get the urge to write something random. 

Locations: a quick list of important locations for me to reference (usually because I forget names or spelling). 

Characters: a quick list of character’s full names and sometimes pictures for me to reference (usually because I forget surnames). 

The second and third I have several off (for each book) and I will drag them to the very end of the screen once I’m done with them. Right now in my original board all the book 1 content is at the very back (where Characters is on this example board). 

Each little white square with text is called a card. As you can see, you can add attachments to cards (the little paperclip), these can be images that show up on the main board, perfect for characters or locations: 

Or they can also be documents (pdfs, word documents...) perfect for saving drafts. (I uploaded a social media planner just to show you can upload PDFs because it’s what I had on my ipad, don’t pay it much notice). 

As you can see below, in each card you have the option to write a description. I don’t think there’s a limit to how long this can be (I’ve never found it), and if you have the time and motivation Trello has several formatting options you can use to make it look more appealing. I don’t tend to use them but it’s nice that they’re there. (This shows up on your card on your board as couple of lines underneath the title, so you can easily see which cards have content in them and which don’t).

If after writing a nice little description you want to add something but don’t want to add it to the description, Trello allows you to add comments, I use this for clarifications or quick added info. (This shows up on your Trello board as the little speech bubble with a number referring to how many comments). 

This is an example of a character sheet with a photo and description I made to give you an idea of how to do this! 

(Yes, there are two characters in the photo as a pose to one, it’s the last picture I saved on my ipad, just roll with it). 

Now that you’ve seen a quick walk through how I use Trello, you’re probably wondering why Trello? Why not posts its or normal lists? Well, Trello has a simple yet powerful feature that makes managing my storm of ideas far easier! The easy drag and drop feature. As well as how quick it is! 

Check out this quick video of me moving cards around like I would when editing my main series, creating a new list for book 2 scenes and adding a card. 

Are there better apps out there? 

Probably. 

But trello had served me extremely well for years now! I love it’s functionality, and none of the features locked behind premium seem particularly important to my personal experience. 

Another thing to keep in mind is it’s online, which means I have Trello on my phone, ipad and computer and use it in all three locations. A lot of programs are not available on all of these systems which can make for a slower experience. Especially when I wake up at 3 in the morning and need to add a card somewhere, being able to just reach out for my phone and throw it in is a huge advantage! 

They also allow you to add Check lists. My current WIP Oppida Institute for Reformation is actually fully outlines in Trello, I use the comments to write out scenes that are important and hide ticked of boxes for a cleaner look. 

I use a different Check List for each Act of the story and so far it’s been a very good experience! 

If you have any questions about specific aspects of Trello, feel free to ask because I’ve been using it for a long time and feel like I have a pretty good idea about most stuff. 

And if you use a different program for managing series, why not tell us about it? You thinking of trying out a new program? 

As always, feel free to:

Buy my book here. (Or read it on amazon unlimited!)

Check out my website 

Check out my wattpad 

Check out my Instagram (you can see some of my art! Plus real time updates on what I’m up to)