#adding context in the tags because I know vague posting is scary

[hibiscera]

Messaged received, anon, thanks for the heads up 👍

[robinswise]

okayyyy unpopular opinion that will more then likely turn into a rant!

EDDIE 'THE FREAK' MUNSON IS THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE

AAAAAA

ok.

I. Do. Not. Like. Eddie. Munson.

Just to get this out of the way, I don't hate Joseph Quinn at all, he's a great actor, but I hate Eddie.

OKAY I NEED TO ACTUALLY GET TO THE POINT-

Eddie is an asshole

Why couldn't he push the dnd campaign to a different day? Is there a reason? I don't think there was, I don't remember there being one and when I googled it, sure enough, there doesn't seem to be a reason.

Really couldn't his role have been given to pretty much any of the characters?

Mike.

Lucas.

Dustin.

Jonathan would've made the most sense (to me) if he wasn't in Cali (in season 1 we know some people thought Jonathan might've k!lled Will, so they could've thought he did the same to Chrissy)

Even Steve.

Honestly, even Max could've been given the role

Also, I don't dislike most people who like Eddie, alot of them are just really obsessed (like a scary level of obsession)

ALSO STEDDIE-

I posted about them positively one time a while ago but no I do not ship them.

The context for that post was that I didn't hate Steddie - at the time I even vaguely liked them (or more specifically, I liked the way that certain people wrote them) but I didn't ship them, they just made the most sense for that specific idea and I didn't hate them at the time.

I was reading something that was part of a longer series of posts and the person had hinted that Stonathan would be in it but then suddenly Eddie appeared and Steddie was heavily implied - which normally wouldn't be an issue but they didn't tag it with Eddie or Steddie.

Anyways, Argyle is in my opinion the better character added in season 4.

Another thing, it didn't bother me initially but Eddie stans acting like Eddie and Dustin's friendship is so unique is really annoying to me-

Because- no- like sure, he's close with Eddie, but the friendship is not unique whatsoever, in terms of older brother like friends he had Steve, in terms of outcast nerds who like dnd he had the party, and in terms of friends with attitude problems he had Mike and Max

Also, was his death really all that shocking? It fit the st formula perfectly! Introduce a new character just to k!ll them off

Benny

Barb

Bob

Billy

Even in search 4 we got Chrissy Fred and Patrick

About his crazy fans - not all are like this, I've met some genuinely nice Eddie fans who've written genuinely good Steddie ficlets - but was sending death threats necessary? Because I just don't get why that whole thing happened.

I think Eddie coming back in any form other then a flashback or Vecna vision would just maks me upset tbh, like actually, what would be the point? They already pulled "look he's actually alive!" Trick with Hopper (and to an extent, Will) so doing it a third time (even for such a fan favorite) would just feel lazy to me

Also, in my opinion, Will would dislike Eddie, so many people say that Will would love him but to me, I feel like it would be very out of character for him to like Eddie (knowing that Will doesn't like extra attention - at least not from people who might judge and/or ridicule him - and Eddie actively draws it)

I feel like the fact we only got a reaction to Eddie's death from Dustin and Wayne is really telling as to how little importance he actually had, because even Mike who was friends with Eddie didn't know about his death - or at least his reaction wasn't important enough to show.

I found Eddie's guitar solo to be very pointless and even rather boring.

Also, there are people who ship Eddie with Billy?? Ew.

Even as someone who does not like Eddie at all I can confidently say that he deserves better and would probably not fall for that walking piece of dog shit (once again, I don't hate Dacre Montgomery I just hate Billy)

Anyways, in short, I don't mind Joseph Quinn or Eddie's fans, I know there's definitely worse characters in the show, and at the end of the day I'm just a nerd on the internet who's been fixated on the same subject for probably way to long so it's fine to have a different opinion then me

[karliesbuzzcut]

Kaylor´s Throwback Thursday: October 18th, 2018

Hello and welcome to the our second edition of KTBT. Because many of you asked for it, today we are putting on our fanciest gowns and travelling back to Karlie Kloss’ wedding.

To understand everything that’s been going on, we need a bit of historical context. Taylor Swift has just arrived in Perth, Australia, for her Reputation Tour and therefore, didn’t attend the wedding. The wedding per se seems to have been kept secret, although there were rumours about something going on. 

Also happening around this time: Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist, was assassinated at the Saudi consulate in Istambul. What does something so horrible have to do with Karlie Kloss’ wedding? I’m not sure but TTB brought it up. 

TTB’s confidence in herself is almost admirable. Not only to @ Karlie, Taylor, Tree, Penni and Karlie’s sister on her thoughts but also to use “stunt” as an adjective. Stunty... nice. By the way, that super official document she links also states that Josh was born on the 00 of June. Just thought you’d like to know that.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m sorry, I’m just too excited. Let me set the scene for you. It’s October 18th, 2018. Apparently Karlie had been “stunting” hard for a few days now... when the bomb drops. TTB receives a buttload of messages and do you want to know something? The messages aren’t even that exciting. I think the most interesting thing of going through those messages was noticing how Kaylors have clung to the same mantras they use today. You know what I mean, the “Karlie looks miserable!” “I have a second cousin who had a wedding and her wedding didn’t look like Karlie’s wedding so...” “You can tell it’s just a business deal from the way Karlie smiles”.

Anyway, what do you think happened the very next day? Spade stopped by, of course. TTB Spade can smell weakness on Kaylors and knows that nothing fixes the problem quite as well as some vague sentence. This time it was an answer to the question “When do you think we will receive the first Taylor Swift and Karlie Kloss friendship candid?” Which they simply answered with a direct quote from Call It What You Want “I recall late November, holdin’ my breath / Slowly I said ‘You don’t need to save me / But would you run away with me?’” Because why come up with your own shit, amiright. Either way, the legend says that if you’re very quiet at the end of every November, you can hear a disappointed Kaylor cry.

Soon after, TTB followed up. You can read the message yourself, I will post it here, but I can also summarise it for you in the form of a Haiku.

It did not happen.

My sources told me it’s false.

Hollywood PR.

If you pay attention, you can notice TTB’s very own stages of grief. First, she “threatened” Karlie’s parents (“All eyes on you Kurt and Tracy”). Then there’s denial (to be fair, there’s alway denial). And then, she resorted to guilting her subjects.

I mean, I just love that she keeps tagging Kimby here. “Kimby, your sister’s marriage is forcing people back into the closet. You better do something, Kimby... NOW KIMBY👏!”

And then TTB made a little test? I’m adding this post here, not because of it’s quality but because I’m a little bit confused by it. She listed a bunch of facts like the dress’ designer, the bridesmaids’ dresses, the cake’s brand and Jewish symbolisms. And I guess all of that is supposed to lead us somehow to the wedding not being real but to me it reads as “I watched a wedding once on TV, what is this?”

But let’s take a break from TTB and move on to thabrokegirl. She was definitely working through some feelings. I tried taking a picture of her entire manifesto but it didn’t fit my screen. I did select the best parts though.

The first one was mostly for my own amusement, not gonna lie. TBG goes on about how weird it is that it took 6 years for Karlie and Josh to get married. And here I am, older than Karlie, with a boyfriend I’ve been dating for almost 9 years... finding out today of all days, that I have problems... like commitment issues, this was never in the stars for us because it would’ve happened already. 😳

I don’t know how many Gilmore Girls’ fans I have in the audience tonight. But there’s an episode in season 7 where Lorelai is struggling to write a very important letter. She’s advised to write whatever comes into her head, to which she responds that it’s a bad idea and I cite:

Because my brain is a wild jungle full of scary gibberish. "I'm writing a letter. I can't write a letter. "Why can't I write a letter? I'm wearing a green dress. "I wish I was wearing my blue dress. "My blue dress is at the cleaners. "'The Germans wore gray. You wore blue. ''Casablanca'. "'Casablanca' is such a good movie. "'Casablanca.' The white house. Bush. "Why don't I drive a hybrid car? I should drive a hybrid car. "I should really take my bicycle to work. "Bicycle. Unicycle. Unitard. Hockey puck. Rattlesnake. Monkey, monkey, underpants."

And it is that stream of consciousness that thabrokegirl perfectly depicted on her piece.

Meanwhile, FemmeTay is surprisingly very chill about this.

Finally, there’s TallCurlyGirl, who made me regret the fact that I wasn’t around during her prime. After all, she wasn’t a shipper - she was just a regular tall curly girl burdened with the superpower of reading Taylor’s and Karlie’s minds and who -therefore- had the responsability of sharing her findings with the whole world... up until she got bored Karlie and Taylor broke up.

Please enjoy a vintage selection of ‘I Have Sources™’ which -as most things Kaylor- have aged hilariously bad:

My favourite part is PR people shitting their pants and calling Tree for help 🌝...

What was your favourite part?

*5 second silence while I look at your with dead eyes*

I like that part too!

[poipoi1912]

As a fan of your writing (I’ve read all your barisi fics several times over), I’m always reading your fic update posts and tags. If you don’t mind me asking (and apologies if you’ve asked this before) but what is your fic writing process like?

First ofall, thank you so much! I appreciate your message, and I’m happy you enjoy myfics. I have to say, as a latecomer to writing, it’s still so heartwarming tosee others having this reaction to my stories, because I spent so many years beinga reader and having these exact reactions to other people’s stories. It’s just…lovely. So thank you.

As for mywriting process, well, it could use some improvement, clearly D:

I wouldbreak it down into two distinct categories:

When I’m Struggling

If I’mfeeling uninspired of blocked, I do one of two things:

Open up arandom document and start writing nonsense, usually dialogue-only, until a linejumps at me and I think “this is worth building a story around,” if that makessense. Lines of dialogue are the driving force of my stories, more than plot. Atleast when it comes to my standalone stories/episode tags.

Or,

Stopwriting. Take a break, go outside, see friends, binge a random show, watch amovie, read a book or a fic from another fandom. Any one of those things cangive me inspiration, because Barisi is always in the back of my mind. It mighttake a while, but it’ll come. I actually find that I’m particularly energizedafter a break, so I’ve mostly stopped feeling guilty and now I simply embrace these periodsof inactivity. Instead of blaming myself and thinking I’m letting you all down,I focus on the fact I’ll feel refreshed and more creative when I return.

When I’m On A Roll

Oh boy. Wheredo I start?

Episode Tags

When itcomes to my episode tags, or even my shorter standalone stories, I do what Idescribed above, even when I’m not blocked. I just write dialogue, and I tryto come up with a vague setting (Barba’s office, the precinct, a bar, Sonny’splace, etc). That’s all I start with. Words and a place. I write whatever comesto mind, even skipping scenes and moving to the next setting, and writing evenmore dialogue. That’s always the skeleton of my shorter stories.

As I write,as the lines just pop in my head, I tend to find the “purpose” of the story,and that’s also when I pick the POV, depending on that purpose. Maybe it’s Barbarealizing his feelings, maybe it’s Sonny expressing his feelings, maybe they’realready together but they take the next step, maybe one of them needs toprocess a painful experience related to a case, maybe they both need toexplain. Whatever it is, it stems from the dialogue, and I never have it when Istart writing. It eventually manifests itself, lol.

After I’mdone with my long long dialogue bits,I go back and fill in the blanks. I fuss over the opening, every time, and Itry to keep it dynamic (it’s usually a line, in fact). I want it to beeye-catching and to immediately grab you and transport you into the story, evenas you’re missing vital pieces of information (like the setting, which I tendto reveal later on). Speaking of the setting, at this stage I also sketch outthe physical details, like what they’re wearing (coats if they’re outdoors,just shirts and vests if they’re indoors, rolled up sleeves if they’re at abar, etc), or what they’re doing (are they sitting? Standing? Walkingtogether?), so I can make the story more illustrative.

Then, I goover what I have but this time I focus on describing Sonny and Rafael’sfeelings and expressions, in-between all that dialogue. Their smiles, theirfrowns, their sighs. I expand on the feelings (or inner thoughts) of the POVcharacter, and I describe the facial expressions of the other character, as thePOV character perceives them (which could lead to misunderstandings, or lovely realizations).I find that makes the dialogue a little more vibrant. I don’t want you to justhear their voices, I want you to see their faces as they speak.

Then, I goover the whole thing again and add context. Backstory. Feels. Angst. Dependingon the scenario (an established relationship, a first time, pre-slash, etc), Ialter the tone of the expository paragraphs to better match the overall purposeof the story, and the vibe between Sonny and Rafael in that particular moment in time.Sometimes I’ll add fictional flashbacks, sometimes I’ll add canon references whichbring out new feelings, sometimes I’ll let my POV character go off on atangent. I find that enriches the story, having a better grip on the maincharacter and their state of mind, as well as having a better handle on the connectionbetween the main pairing.

Then, I goover the story again, and I try tofind key phrases to repeat/sprinkle throughout. I love overusing repetition tohighlight emotion. Either because the POV character is stuck on a particular thought,or because they’re single-minded about a particular goal (like love). I try touse repetition to draw out an emotional response from you as well, so you canall feel the exact same thing the POV character does. To them, it’s a randomthought they can’t get out of their heads, and to you it’s a literary device tobetter describe their obsession.

Then, about2 minutes before I post a story, I come up with the ending. I never even botheranymore, I just use a placeholder ending because I know I’ll change it when I’mdone. My endings tend to be a little more, for lack of a better word, poetic (ifnot pretentious lol, which kinda is a better word). I just start typing and letit happen. Whatever comes out, structure and proper syntax be damned. That said, I do always try to leave my stories withan ending-slash-beginning. Not exactly open-ended, but open. Opening a door tothe future, if you will, so you can all imagine what happens next.

Tosummarize: I write the dialogue first, then I find the angle and pick a POV,then I fill in the blanks with descriptions of emotions and expressions andplaces, then I fill in the backstory, and then I write a random emotionalending using repetition, my favorite trope :D

Longer Stories

Oooooh boy.

This iswhere the trouble starts.

I writenotes. Notes upon notes upon notes. Usually on my phone, because inspirationtends to strike when I’m on the go. I tell myself “for the next 2 weeks, I’ll justwrite down anything that comes to mind about this particular story.” It doesn’thave to be connected or even coherent. Anything goes. Sometimes I’ll write acrisp 3K in one sitting, sometimes I’ll come up with a single line of dialogue,sometimes I’ll come up with a rough draft for a scene, sometimes I’ll come upwith the actual ending, sometimes I’ll just write dialogue for 3 days straight,sometimes I’ll come up with a plot idea.

See, thelonger stories need to have a plot. And plot twists. The purpose can’t just bean emotion. It needs to be something bigger, a change in the characters’ lives,or careers, or relationships. It needs to have multiple settings, and (sort of)equal parts dialogue and prose, and it needs to be more intricate and interesting throughout,so it doesn’t drag. And, if it’s part of a series, it needs to reference theprevious parts and feel like a natural continuation, both in terms of thecharacterization and the plot. All of that means that longer stories are harderto write.

But it alsomeans that I have more leeway to come up with different and new ideas, andincorporate more of my favorite tropes, and go deeper into characterization ina way only a longer story would allow, and build an actual world, a smalluniverse with its own rules, a universe in which I have to be just as loyal toSVU canon as I have to be loyal to my own versions of these characters, so Ithink the good outweighs the bad :D

Aaaanyway,after I have my notes (which are usually around 20/30K, no lie), I take a fewdays to copy-paste them into one huge document. Then, I arrange themchronologically. Roughly, at first, I try to put them in order, as they would logicallyoccur (for instance, if I’m writing, say, a wedding fic, I put the announcementfirst, and the rehearsal dinner later, and the honeymoon even later, etc, andthis is all hypothetical of course). That gives me a basic outline of thestory.

Using thatoutline, I again fill in the blanks. I separate the notes intosections-slash-scenes, and I find the setting for each scene. I find ways toconnect these scenes, either with a fun segue or just with a fade to black lol,so the entire story is coherent. I might have to rearrange something, or even chuck it to the “Unsorted” section in the end, if I can’t figure it out right then. At this point,I also re-read the entirety of my notes and do little edits/touch-ups, by adding moredialogue, or putting a new character in a previously written scene, etc etc.

Once I’mdone, I have a very detailed and specific outline.

And then Istare at that outline for like 2 months without writing a single thing :D

That’s thescary part. Actually writing the story. A story for which I have thousands uponthousands of notes. A story whose ending I’ve already written. And it is not easy,lol.

Again, I tend to fuss over the opening, to the point of debilitating uncertainty. After that, I might get going and write several thousands of words, butI also might get stuck and write nothing for weeks. At that point, I’ll usuallyskip a part/scene, and write the next thing that comes easily to me, just toget the ball rolling. Then, after I feel a little more inspired, I might goback and complete what I missed.

I have aterrible habit of re-reading and editing what I already wrote about a million times,which unnecessarily lengthens the entire process (and sometimes even preventsme from writing anything new), but I lie to myself and pretend that’s okay,because when I’m done with a story I am DONE. I don’t have to do an intensere-read/edit of the whole thing because I’ve already done it, in smallerincrements. I just do a final read-through and change a word or three. So that’sgood (no it’s not).

To summarize: NOTESSSSSSS

Seriously though, at best, I’llsit down and give in and let my inspiration guide me. I’ll just write and writeand write, mostly dialogue (because the rest can be added later), until I havesomething real I can use. Or, I’ll come up with a smaller outline for a scene,hitting specific “marks” until I get it where I want it. That’s also useful,because the next day I can just add more details and lines and make it work.

At worst(at worst when I’m still inspired, I mean, because the literal worst is “nowriting at all”), I’ll re-read the last 5K I wrote, and I’ll keep tweaking it,and I’ll get stuck on a particular paragraph for like 2 hours, and then I’llhave no more time to write and I’ll be left with nothing more than a needless rewrite ofthe work I did in the previous 4 days :D

Eventually(no but eventuallyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, like 2 years later) I tend to get really caughtup in the story and it begins to consume me and I feel compelled to finish it.For you all, but also for my own sanity. So I sit down and devote myself to itand do nothing else until it’s done.

And then Ipost the story and sleep for 3 days.

So yeah.

In Conclusion

It can be astruggle. And that’s without taking real life into account. There are wholeweeks when I’m not sleeping well, and I’m too busy, and writing gives me aheadache. And then there are weeks when I’m totally stressed and the only thingthat brings me joy is writing. There’s no explanation or reason. Some days I’ll wake up and start typing ideas on my phone before I’ve even really opened my eyes, and some days I’ll procrastinate and leave a word document open for 2 hours with nothing to show for it.

Generally I try to go with the flow, and only push myself when a breakthrough is in sight, if that makes sense, otherwise my writing can feel forced. I’m also not afraid to totally discard some stories, because I don’t want to write for the sake of writing. I want each little story to have a reason to exist, at least in my head. I also tend to allow myself some periods ofinactivity no shit lol, and I use them to recharge (creatively but also physically).

But Ialways come back