#after this im gonna figure out what their features would translate to in my style… since..

[valfeathers]

rewatching and redrawing

[norestwithoutlove]

hello I just wanna say that your writing is so fucking gorgeous, dude. I’ve read tbah and many the lost (last night) and I’m getting to restless wanderer when I can dedicate the time it deserves. every line is killer, and your words ride the line between devastating and heartwarming with such ease. any tips + advice for how to develop such a kick-ass style of writing would be forever appreciated, as I cannot get past how beautifully crafted your stories are! much love x

hi! thank you so much, this was lovely to receive. and i'm glad you liked them both. many the lost honestly feels like a big accomplishment and although always retrospectively with a fic i'll think 'fuck why didn't i go down this angle?!' i am definitely really proud of that one and how it turned out <3

sorry for the delay replying to this, too, i was trying to gather thoughts on writing and if i actually do have any concrete advice for people beyond "practice loads :D" which is what i always say. also developing a personal style of writing is a (wonderfully) specific question in comparison to "how can you write well?" which i never know the answer to.

okay sorry. VERY long winded answer up ahead.

i guess the first point for developing a personal style (and one that you like) would be to figure out what you like. so yeah my first tip for writing is read widely, and unfortunately im gonna circle back to this one haha because i think it's often true. some writers who were big for me in finding what style i liked were Toni Morrison who i think has an incredible writing voice which is generally just so pleasurable to read (linked is the first book of hers i ever read) R S Thomas who i think is a master of metaphor and made me realise i love writing about things through images of other things, and James Baldwin, who i want to write more like, for his ability to be brief and understated and still gut you completely. Others who i discovered and found I wanted to emulate more recently (as in, the past 3 years) were Alexis Wright, Tim Winton and Hanif Abdurraqib. read across time, form, and genre. write what you like about your wide reading, and find what aspects of it suit your own voice, or could be made part of your style.

so read widely, find what you like, and find what you don't like. underline phrases you love. flag up pages that stay with you. and pay attention to why you like something, why something else falls short. then emulate it. practice writing in different styles and for different genres until you find your voice, and refine it. read over your work after leaving it for a few days, or a week, or longer, and ask yourself where it's weak. this one's hard and i don't do it as much as i should but i do think it's important! the distance that time gap has created will help you see your writing more clearly.

also i love listening to music while i write, and if i didnt have it, i think i would be a shit shit writer. i make a long playlist for every piece of work i write, and while i write i play music that matches the mood of each scene. movie scores, folk songs, whatever mirrors the tone the scene has in my head. nine times out of ten you'll know the vibe of what you want to write in your head, and if you can get music to write to that matches that tone, you'll have an easier time translating it into writing. this is what i find, at least, lol. for this reason though, spotify's radio function is definitely your friend ! you can get songs that are similar or related to the song you're listening to using the song radio feature. also, once you have a song that say, matches the mood of nostalgia, or familial warmth, or longing, or regret, you can potentially listen to this when you're writing with that mood for other things. i would listen to this song when i was writing tbah, during the scenes dean was hurting over family, or longing for it. and i went on to listen to it a BUNCH while writing restless wanderer. this method helps me nail the mood of any scene, and the playlist aspect lets me think about what vibe i want the whole story to have. it also helps guide you on how you want the tone of your story to change, over the course of the narrative, because moods evolve and shift. and the mood of each fic will impact the style you write in. im not so good at changing style, but hopefully the style of restless wanderer is distinct from the style of many the lost, etc, to indicate that they're different stories from different people, untangling different things.

also, and i cannot emphasise this enough, just get into and have fun because writing is basically a giant imaginary sandbox and why the fuck shouldnt you have a blast?!

also, this thread has some great advice, but it starts here and i think this is the most important stuff:

ummm to give an example of this. for restless wanderer (if you want to go into it not knowing anything about it then skip this part, but it's not a spoiler, more a premise thing) i knew i wanted to write a victorian shepherding au, and i knew i wanted dean to arrive somewhere alien where the vibe was eccentric and a little uncanny. i wasnt exactly sure how i would create this mood, and only knew it was something i wanted to evoke. initially i was going to have the farmhouse be nicknamed 'the chapel' by everyone in the village, but i went on a walk and cleared my head and jumped on and off some tree stumps and the idea arrived that bobby should nurse dozens and dozens of birds back to health in his home, and that consequently everyone in the village should call the house 'the eyrie', punning on eeriness and the obvious fact of hundreds of birds living in the house. that became such a beloved aspect of the story to me, and vital to its structuring, (as in, i cannot imagine the story having legs WITHOUT this detail, and it definitely wouldn't be as thematically sound) that the reality that i arrived at it simply because i went on a walk, that if i hadnt gone on that walk, the fic would be completely different is terrifying and a little miraculous. goes to show the good a walk can do.

another example of this is obviously tbah. it took me four years to write, so ideas had plenty of time to percolate. the biggest scenes in it, and the scenes that generally seem to have stuck with readers most, were the ones that i would rehearse in my head for months and sometimes years before ever getting the chance to write them down. i'll like, rehearse stories in my head before i fall asleep, and this gives a chance to see what works and what doesn't in a given scene or narrative arc.

and again with many the lost - i planned on writing it for like, a year, before i finally shared it, which is a long time for just 30,000 words. but if i hadnt given it that time, i wouldnt have included any of the stuff about les miserables, which was a really necessary structuring device in the story, and a great way of showing jimmy and sam's relationship, which also demonstrated why sam was in such a bad place after jimmy died.

so yeah, sorry for the rambling essay, hopefully some of that was useful though! loads of love. thanks so much for this question :) <3

to build a home

many the lost

restless wanderer

[uiruu]

Okay so here’s a confession lmao... I kind of got into Loona because of Hunter x Hunter. 

I got caught up in the HxH manga, and there are apparently a lot of references to a jpop idol group called Keyakizaka46. There’s a nen ability called “Silent Majority”, which is like a doll thing with the exact same haircut as the main member of that group, who has a song called Silent Majority. Also Halkenburg’s bow and arrow nen ability has him make a pose from the song Fukyouwaon. So I saw that and was like “WHAT THE HELL TOGASHI”, and I checked out those songs. They’re okay. Nothing to write home about. I mean like, they’re fun I guess, I like Fukyouwaon better of those two (which are the only ones I heard), but idk. I listened to it a lot for a couple days, it was like a guilty pleasure thing haha. And then like I must have seen posts from some of my HxH mutuals (who probably aren’t mutuals anymore after... uh... the drama in late february lmao...) post about Loona, and I was like okay, if I’m listening to this idol group that I can kinda tell isn’t like the highest quality thing in the world, let’s see what a Real group is like. 

I wasn’t really attuned to the differences between jpop and kpop, though I think I have a better understanding of the prevailing trends and styles that differentiate them (not just language. theyre as different as hiphop from LA and UK grime rap. that’s pretty different). But yeah, I was interested to see what a really Quality group sounded like. I wasn’t really expecting much, I was expecting something very catchy but kinda bland, like a lot of American pop is. I was also expecting something a little exploitative because of just the nature of having a group of “idols”, and I’d heard stuff about the kpop industry that wasn’t pleasant. 

And like, I listened to Hi High (which was the top result at the time. i got into them about a week before Butterfly), and I liked it at first. I wasn’t ready to let myself love it, though. In the back of my mind there was that voice saying “lol what are you doing, you are not the target audience for this, i should keep this to myself cause it’s embarrassing. if i admit that i’m listening to kpop right now i’ll be laughed at haha”. But still, it was catchy as hell and I liked that. The video production was sooooo good too, that video looks like a movie.

I watched Egoist too cause I guess it was the top related video, and I thought that song was pretty good, but idk I guess a lot of it just didn’t like sink in or something? I don’t really know. I listened to some others but didn’t find anything that stood out, I think there was a point just before Butterfly released where I liked Hi High, Egoist, and Love Cherry Motion (though I was kinda iffy on that one). I remember talking to my friend Jaci about them cause I know Jaci’s a kpop fan, and they said that they were kinda into Loona but not especially, though Heart Attack is one of the best kpop songs ever made. After hearing that, I listened to Heart Attack, but I didn’t really like it, it was a bit too bubblegummy for me, I guess.

Then Butterfly came out, and by then I knew most of the members by name (not all), and I had watched videos from people like formoftherapy about the songs I had heard and so I felt better about liking kpop cause the illusion of it being completely shallow was shattered. Butterfly didnt wow me at first... I liked the video a lot but the song was kinda eh. The “wings, wings” in the chorus stuck out to me in a bad way lol, I didn’t like that. 

So anyway, by then I was like huh, I’m gonna check out some more stuff. So I listened to groups like Momoland and Blackpink and Red Velvet. And by listened to, I mean really just kinda one song from each of those. I listened to other Momoland songs after Bboom Bboom and they didnt really do anything for me. I listened to Red Velvet songs besides Peekaboo and they were okay, Russian Roulette was pretty good but not something that really wowed me, but I was super super super into Blackpink for about a week there haha. I don’t know, I really liked Ddu-Du Ddu-Du, and I liked the members a lot. They’re only four members, so it was really easy to get into them. I listened to more of their songs though and at first I liked them, but the more I listened, the more I realized how bad they are lol. The members themselves are fine but god, some of the other Blackpink songs besides that one are just really bad. To me, anyway. And I think that’s when I realized... oh... Loona’s really something unique, huh?

Like, listening to other groups made me like Loona more hahaha. That’s when everything started to click with me. Songs that didnt impress me at first, like Girl Front and Favorite and especially Heart Attack started REALLY clicking with me. Suddenly every song I listened to from them I liked. And I was noticing things in their songs that I didn’t notice at first. And like, that’s also when it hit me... oh, it’s not just that Grimes did a feature in the intro to one of their songs, they actually take a lot of inspiration from Grimes musically. Aaaaaand that was the nail in the coffin. See, I was one of the biggest Grimes fans alive before we all collectively realized she’s kind of a shitty person. So, to see the good aspects of her music translated and adapted and iterated on by another group is cool. It also kinda made me facepalm because like god fucking damn it, I thought I was free of Grimes, turns out even when I get into something I thought was totally separate, nope... I can’t escape haha. Then though I started noticing interesting and experimental-ish production EVERYWHERE in their songs. 

And that’s when I’m like okay... I gotta finally go through and watch all their videos in order. I knew bits and pieces about the Loonaverse already, so I was ready to sink my teeth in and see it all for myself. It takes about 2 hours to watch all their music videos but it’s really worth it, that was a cool experience haha. The next day, I watched some of formoftherapy’s reactions to doing that same marathon too, and that helped me notice and appreciate even more things, especially about the music video production, since that’s what they specialize in talking about. 

And then you know, two or so weeks later, here we are, and I’m all in, haha. It’s wild to think that I thought Egoist was pretty good and Heart Attack was not really my cup of tea at first haha. Egoist now blows me away EVERY time I watch that video... the song is sooooooo good and the video is maybe their best and most cohesive video aesthetically and thematically speaking. Heart Attack is also in my top 5 songs now.. so is Butterfly haha, that song grew on me a lot too. It helps for Butterfly that the choreo and video are so artistic and masterful. 

Oh, also, one last thing, in the part where I mention other groups... I don’t wanna knock Red Velvet at all. I love Red Velvet. I could write a separate post about my journey with their music too, and how there was a moment when their songs also started clicking for me, and I think they’re just as adventurous and eccentric as Loona. I like Loona more cause I’m more personally invested, and I think Loona covers a broader range of styles and themes and stuff, but Red Velvet are really, really good. I cannot overstate that lol. Also, there are other groups and songs I’ve gotten into since then too, I’m not just a fan of two groups lol. Though to be honest, if I had to pick the ones that I think are doing something really interesting and stand out from the crowd, I think there’s only three groups I would call myself a die hard fan of, and that’s Loona, Red Velvet, and Fromis_9 (who have sooo much potential, im excited to see where they go). 

That’s all! I don’t expect anyone will reblog this (cause its so specific to me lol) or even read this, it’s pretty long after all, but if you did, thanks <3 I just wanted to write about my journey with this. Cause like, it’s cool how this type of thing can happen. It was cool to watch myself start to allow myself to really get into it. I could feel myself getting more and more into it but I was embarrassed about that and I thought it was really lame of me haha. I don’t mean that I was sad or scared or whatever, again, I just thought it was really lame haha. But I mean, deep down I thought it was cool, and the more I got into it, the more that became the only way I thought of it. And now I just think it’s really worth checking out and like not all that lame at all. There are lame groups, yeah. It’s just cool that Loona isn’t one of those. I didn’t expect that the one I heard the most about was 1. not even close to the most popular, and 2. really deeply musically interesting and risktaking, and that’s something that’s always appealed to me about the music I like. Who knew that Loona of all groups would be like that lol. You know... Loona. From the “Stan Loona” memes. Huh. 

Go figure. 

[annieoftheshitposts]

this post used to be a link to the old canons page but i’m turning it into a text dump of the revised one for people on mobile [or who have bad wifi/computers that the fancy schmancy script on the canons page wouldn’t play well with.] theres a lot sorry not sorry. here we go.

Canon Info

 Much more is said about Annie in external sources than the game itself, here's copypastes of all I know of and go by.

From the 3rd DLC Character Voting page:

As popular figures in nationwide folktales, a children’s television adaptation of Annie and Sagan’s adventures was inevitable. The show’s success lies in its pair of live action hosts, who are as convincing as their cartoon counterparts. Though what the public learns about the real Annie might surprise them. Annie is a seasoned fighter who has been around for a long time, acquiring many skills and powers along the way. Her sword is forged from a meteorite and can channel the power of the stars in its sweeping cleaves. Her right eye bonds her to her Remote Parasite and partner, Sagan, who grants her powers of a galactic motif. While some of her abilities carry more of a sparkly magical girl motif, Annie tries to execute them with the same sternness.

From "The canon info thread" on Skullheart Encore forums:

-Annie is several-century-old. Her immortality was gained when her parents wished on the Skull Heart so that Annie would never have to experience the hardship of adulthood, thereby making her forever a child. -She has had many different weapons and abilities throughout her life. - Sagan, her remote parasite. keeps her right eye in his mouth. - She’s physically not able to swear due to her condition - She is familiar with Double due to her experience fighting Skullgirls - Annie has encountered a lot of Skullgirls and has killed a lot, but not the same a lot. She’s seen the cycle multiple times and seen how they become stronger each time and is looking for the underlying source now. - The Annie of the Stars show is very similar to the Super Mario Bros. Super Show with live action segments with cartoons and PSAs and commercials in between. - Sagan can talk. Somehow. - Annie hides her immortality by getting a new hairstyle every few years. The show tells the audience that they have simply changed the actress. Eliza also pulls a similar trick

and finally some other misc. scraps that weren't covered above:

-annie has some kind of "super" or "powered up" form, in which she seems to fuse with sagan. it can be seen on her

move concept sheet, in the end of robo-fortune's story mode, and as a very tiny feature on one of robo-fortune's merch posters, but to my knowlege it's never really been talked about.

-she's been depicted with an "incognito outfit", presumably for going out in public and not being recognized by fans.

-sagan is named after renowned astrophysicist carl sagan. this isnt really relevant to anything but it's not on the wiki so i figured i'd share :b

-and this random pic of annie in the past with a different look, plus gun and minus eyepatch, apparently official art from the "digital art compendium". i haven't seen the source for this one myself though, and count this one more as speculative canon since that ingame image up there with her eye uncovered doesn't show a scar or any kind of damage from this.

-another canon fact about annie is she is strong and brave and i love her.

Headcanon (Annie)

this is pretty disorganized bc i come up with and revise random shit on a fairly regular basis, but the very least it should be all here and up-to-date. [though on this text post version i may forget to keep it updated oops.

she can still only normally see from the one eye in her head [and likewise probably has terrible depth perception lmao], but she can “project” her vision into the one sagan has if need be, during which time both he and her main eye are blind.

even though sagan’s vision is his own and she doesn’t actively “see” through that eye most of the time, the stuff he sees still becomes part of her memory and she can recall it if need be, though it’s far less tangible and kind of a surreal experience trying to do so.

the space where her other eye was is now just...space. like empty starry void stuff. yes, TECHNICALLY, you could put stuff in it but why would you. sagan can feel when something interacts with it and it’s really just weird and uncomfortable for both of them.as sagan is the source of their powers, the strength of her abilities is slightly dependent on her distance from him. something like long sustained flight is really only capable if they’re touching, but she still has ample firepower and ability to zip around for a pretty good range otherwise.

Not interested in anime

absolutely hates being called her full name; hasn't gone by anything other than "Annie" for longer than anyone that should be alive today should know.

part of her curse of eternal youth is remembering everything up until the point it kicked in and she stopped aging [i.e. when she was Actually a kid] exactly as well as if she hadn’t aged.

from that point however, a lot of it is hazy as shit aside from more recent times [as you’d expect from someone who’s been around hundreds of years]. this one's gonna be angsty as shit when i address it and you can thank @sandstriker for that. fucker.

also hates being restrained. by the concept sheet and beo's story, her fighting style is very kinetic and relies heavily on mobility; take that away and you get one very uncomfortable and very angry starchild. [this one's 'cause of y'all with the handcuffs asks. this is part of why she's so agitated rn.]

what's in the pouch? whatever is alternatively convenient. is it snacks? is it a quick incognito disguise? is it her whole entire sword? who knows. i think it might be infinite hammerspace in there.

i haven't put much though into this side of her story yet, but i've decided part of the mythos of the "annie of the stars" character as a figure of legend is that she literally lives, among the stars.

if there's enough folktales about her to base an entire show off of, i'm willing to bet she used to be less elusive when she was just about fighting skullgirls before dedicating herself to the whole "looking for the underlying source" thing.

Headcanon (Sagan)

tl;dr: as far as things go here, he's essentially a cat and/or younger sibling.

Sagan's canon information and characterization is basically nonexistant, so i got to do pretty much whatever i wanted with him lmao.

simply put, he's a little gremlin of a partner, but he is genuinely good-natured and a happy-go-luckly little dude. mischevious, loves to get up to Shenanigans, go off and hide/disappear to fuck knows where for several hours, climb and sit on tall things[or failing that, annie's head], etc. @sawkinator has described him, regrettably accurately, as "the Token Disney Animal Sidekick". he has a lot of mannerisms like an animal, but is still very much a being of at least average human intelligence. he's also surprisingly indestructible. far from invincible of course, but in canon he's been shown to be quite stretchy and...possibly have minor shapeshifting capabilities?? he's pretty much immune to being squashed and feels very little [if any] pain from most things. really, as far as i can tell he's pretty much a weird sentient plushie. like, if it's not going to damage a plushie, it's not going to hurt him; examples being: getting knocked back really hard or falling a long way? not a problem. fire? problem.

Sagan tends to be somewhat nonverbal and generally only uses a few words or short phrase at a time when he does speak, which sounds something like the voice clip below. that being how it is, he can be kind of inscrutable and more than a bit jarring to most people--though at this point annie's been with him more than long enough to be completely desensitized to it and doesnt quite get why anyone would be perturbed. fortunately, with that familiarity also comes understanding, and she can easily "translate" and articulate more from his expressions. this understanding is a two-way street, and on its other side is sagan's sensitivity to her moods. annie's not particularly...communicative of her emotions, but sagan can always tell when she's having an off day or something's bothering her, and is far better than anyone at helping her feel better. all things said and quirky antics aside, he and annie are exceptionally close and fiercely protective of eachother the moment it comes to it. they don't make a big deal of showing it outwardly, but they know they've always got eachother's backs.

he's taken quite a liking to beowulf as well, and beo defintiely shamelessly enables sagan's shenanigans.

as i see it, annie may be the passion and power of their operation, but sagan is the heart and soul. beowulf is like....comic releif and emotional support. not entirely necessary, but certainly welcomed to have around. yeah. listen im a big sap i just want them all to be good friends ok. i love them.

also sagan does like and watch a lot of anime.

Blog Canon

miscellaneous happenings that either have continued relevance/significance, or y'all just won't let die. there's not a overarching plot to this thing at all, but geez we’ve kinda gathered some history here huh?

taught sagan to say fuck [and other swears, in her stead]. he used to have to do it on command but he's gotten really good at filling in for her.has a

stoat fursona that beo helped her make. she thinks it's neat/cute but has no real attachment to it.

attempted to sue the crystal gems for ripping off her entire shtick [it didn't go well]

beowulf also taught her how to dab.

@sparkeletran is a nuisance and must be stopped

the 70$ pile of high school musical merch. sagan and beo both wear the t-shirts sometimes. she hates it. don't let her attitude fool you though this is actually the best and most important ongoing joke in this whole damn thing.

the first handcuffs stint. they’re gone now but they had a good ~30-post run, and she did take to learning lockpicking because of it.

this.

hey. guess fucking what lads. handcuffs ROUND TWO 'cause y'all just don't fuckin' quit. the first mini story arc sorta thing, in which she visits the cirque des cartes and has an aggravting encounter with taliesin. [currently ongoing][hopefully soon ending]

[[redacted for ""spoilers""]] due to said encounter with taliesin

sparkeletran is a nuisance,

"the official annie of the stars instagram is just cat memes but with sagan" it's canon but i haven't decided whether it's something she would have had already or a recent thing. [either way, hasn't been touched on yet due to the arc taking so long]

badart annie is sorta like her own thing at this point but nothing that happens with her is canon; she p much just shows up for exceptionally dumb posts. we did give her noclip though which is terrifying. on that note i may as well include the things that are Not canon but y'all won't let me forget

beo's animated belt thing. look. it doesnt talk.

spray-on boots.

the lawnmower weapon

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh homestuck