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princeescaluswords · 3 years ago

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Disappointed but not surprised by Shadow and Bone white fandom churning out ice cold takes of "Actually, the centuries old white man with great magical and political power and wealth including having a literal army is just misunderstood uwu even as he uses classic manipulation tactics against Alina and Mal, and Actually Mal the teenage boy of color is The Worst because *insert ridiculous reasons, including calling him an ~abuser~"

My thing is....... white women just keep proving that they DON'T actually ~love~ villains, they love white men and women doing atrocious things sure, but they will keep making excuses and claiming "They Were Right" while clutching their pearls over characters of color being ~rude~ (if they even were)

People missing the point of the narrative and applauding The Darkling demeaning Mal as a "child" who will grow old and die while Alina stays young and will basically have no choice but to be with him out of lack of options. Like..... first of all, he admits himself that Mal is a child yet is pursuing Alina who's the same age 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔 It's reminding me of the discourse on Twitter where white women were foaming at the mouth over John Boyega and saying they prefer Rey with Kylo because "At least he's openly bad, I'd prefer that over a wolf in sheep's clothing" referring to Finn aka tapping into centuries old "Black men are predatory beasts and a danger to white women" stereotypes

I mean, damn. If Mal is ~bad~ cuz he got upset at Alina, then what does that make the Darkling who literally enslaved her and mutilated her and took her power for his own?

I need to preface this with the admission that I've only seen the television show. I've never read the books, so take my observations with a grain of salt.

The hostility toward Mal's and Alina's relationship is the same hostility every lead protagonist or character of color or lead protagonist of color in a relationship (romantic or otherwise) with the audience self-insert receives from fandom nowadays. They are immediately placed in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation.

If they are seen by the audience to never step out of line, to never have breakdowns, to never make unreasonable demands, and to always strive to do the right thing, they are boring. It doesn't matter if that is what actually happens on the screen or not.

If, on the other hand, if they are seen to make a single mistake, if the narrative gives their suffering validity, if they are written to have moments where their emotions overwhelm their morality, if they any express doubt in others at all, then they're not actually the lead protagonist.

See how that works?

This isn't a coincidence. This is not an accident. This is the end result of decades of Hollywood behavior focusing the audience on the emotions of white men. I'm an older person, I'll admit, but I've noticed something over the years: ever since Hollywood has started to bow to pressure to be more diverse, to give lead protagonists positions to characters of color, the amount of attention paid to white villains has increased significantly.

I guarantee that we wouldn't be having this conversation if The Darkling had been played by Daveed Diggs rather than Ben Barnes.

Mal spends most of the show finding a way to be with Alina, to get back to Alina, to protect Alina. He literally has no other motive through the entire story. Why? Because as far as I can tell, she's the most important person in his life since the time he was a child. He knows her, he loves her, he values her. He reacts badly when he thinks that she's moved on without him. He is scared of what her nature as a grisha and a saint might mean for their relationship, and he expresses that to his childhood friend without artifice or restraint.

Their conclusion -- this young man has the nerve to express emotions that are important to him. The gall! /sarcasm

Now, the Darkling is a centuries-old sorcerer who has been looking for the prophesied saint for most of that time, because it will enable him to complete his plans for world domination. He has devastated the land in his actions, manipulated high officials, built up a cadre of minions answering only to him. He doesn't need Alina; he needs her power.

Now, does the Darkling develop feelings for Alina? I think so. But I can also tell by the actions he takes on the screen, that it doesn't matter. His feelings, whatever they are, are immaterial compared to his plans. How do I know this? Because, as you say, he manipulates her, he mutilates her, and if she won't do as he wants after all that, he'll attempt to directly control her.

As I said, I haven't read the books, but I don't think that the Darkling has summoned his demon army from the rift because he wants to use it to win back Alina's heart.

I can see the appeal of dark romance between two powerful and ruthless individuals. But Alina is not Lady MacBeth. Once it became clear that the Darkling had been lying to her from the start, when the Darkling's own mother warned her of what type of person he was, and she saw it for herself, she tried to run away.

And yes, Mal got angry with her. He had the audacity to think that, as a human being, he was allowed to believe his emotions mattered.

It's the same thing I've seen repeated in my fandom, Teen Wolf, in Star Wars, in other television shows -- it's a form of white privilege. Media has conditioned us to respond to the needs of white characters, first and foremost. When a property goes against this, as they do, there's resistance, and part of that resistance is a hostility toward characters of color acting as if their needs are on equal footing. If a white male isn't the lead protagonist of the show, don't worry, the fandom will find the nearest white male antagonist and transform them into the protagonist.

#shadow and bone #fandom problems #fandom racism

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betweentheheavesofstorm · 4 years ago

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i keep thinking i’m done beating this dead horse but no, because i’ve now read an interview with Kester Grant that explains, Well, a Lot.

I’m also pissing myself because on her Agent’s site bio, she’s listed as being born on December 5, “alongside notorious British rebel Guy Fawkes” which strongly suggests that SOMEONE involved thought Guy Fawkes was born on November 5.

I then looked at her About page on her own website, where the note is “Death-day of notorious British rebel Guy Fawkes celebrated annually in the UK by giant morbidly ironic bonfire's & firework displays” which is ALSO wrong because he wasn’t even brought to trial till the following January ?? the fireworks commemorate the gunpowder plot aka the actual thing that happened on the 5th of november ohh my god kester grant use wikipedia challenge

Anyway, this is gonna be a Long Post, so I’m gonna put the quotes + commentary under the cut:

Firstly, Marius DID appear in an initial draft, only to be deleted later:

He was present in the first draft of the book when I sold it to the publishing house and I just struggled every time I had to write a scene with him. All the scenes with Marius and Enjolras St. Juste (it was Marius originally as well as St. Juste, and St. Juste was just a secondary character) and I was saying to my husband ‘if only I could write this scene with just St. Juste it would be 3 million times better’ [...] So I said to my editor, “listen, could I cut Marius?” and she said “absolutely!” and everything was just three million times better and now we just have St. Juste who became the amazing star that he is and I love him.

so we did get Marjolas, just the other way round than we normally do.

On her writing process:

I had the idea for The Court Of Miracles and I wrote it in six weeks to apply for a competition called Pitch Wars where you get mentored by two published authors and then at the end of the mentorship of two months they help you edit it.

Really? Written in six weeks? you certainly couldn’t tell...

Then, when asked about research:

I started to do research on a 48 hour flight from the States to where I live now in Mauritius [...] So I had this raging fever and I had a million tabs open on my computer and I was just eating the history of Paris, from this origin all the way through to Napoleon’s fall. And taking notes and getting ideas.

honestly her having a fever while doing the research suddenly means EVERYTHING makes sense

On how she came up with the Guilds:

Then I went online to see what kinds of crimes there are and I looked up laws. I had a whole list of different crimes and said ‘okay, we can split these into guilds’ and then I thought if you’re two young girls living in a criminal world, who is the most terrifying criminal?’ and obviously it would be the human trafficker. So automatically I was like ‘okay that’s your big bad guy. That’s your Shere Khan’.

what kind of crimes there are

Being in the first person is interesting because I don’t normally write in the first person. Being of a certain age, I’m 35, everything I’ve ever read in England was written in the third person, but I knew I was writing a young adult book, or at least one bordering on young adult, so I had been advised to write in the first person, which I hated. It was completely unnatural to me but I think it’s worked very well for Nina. [bolding mine]

once again, you definitely can’t tell that she hates the first person !! not at all!! also that’s definitely not the sort of thing you should say in an interview?!

I have since been told, from my best friend and all of my siblings, that Nina is actually like me and of course it was easy to write her because she does what I would do.

ohoho it’s self-insert o’clock! and, as Briar pointed out, it’s just a wild coincidence that her self-insert is also universally beloved by the Hot Young Men of the novel. (Not that in fic I’m against self-inserts - but once again, this is published !)

There’s going to be two sequels [to The Court Of Miracles] so there might *hint hint*, be a bit of jealousy or triangles or things between [Ettie and Nina]

personally i’m delighted by this! we already have a love square, what is it gonna become? a tetrahedron? is the dauphin gonna suddenly fall for Cosette? or Montparnasse, or Enjolras St. Juste????

Nina, if pushed a certain way, if she allowed herself to go a certain way, could easily become very similar to [Kaplan, the villain]. I’m not saying she would become a human trafficker but Nina is basically a walking PTSD case. She’s like Batman! She’s like Samuel Vimes in Ankh-Morpork [in Discworld]!

nina is like batman. right, got it.

Originally the book had the history of Paris by the Dead Lord in between every single chapter and I think it was a bit too weighty and a bit boring in places. So my editor said ‘let’s scrap that’ and I said ‘okay but then I’m going to put the short stories in’.

you know, her editor dropped the ball in a lot of places, but at least they got rid of that, because I was skim reading the folk story bits as it was

I have another book coming out next year, it’s basically like The Jungle Book but on speed.

this is the bit that made me almost spit peppermint tea everywhere because who the fuck describes their own work like that

and finally, last but not at all least, here’s her overview of the French Revolution:

I mean the nobles [in The Court Of Miracles] were always monstrous in a way but they have become 100 times worse because they saw what the people of France were about to do to them. Which historically, the people of France, the revolutionaries, led the terror – they murdered everyone right left and centre! Then of course the revolutionaries famously turned on their own.

There was terrible suffering that led to the revolution but the revolutionaries were all mental. They literally murdered each other because they were so paranoid! Robespierre got rid of the Roman Catholic Religion entirely and then invented his own religion! Look it up its called the Cult Of The Supreme Being!

Then there were three guys who had joint power who were supposed to form an equal government. One of them rose to power and his name was Napoleon and he became a dictator. Although he was a dictator who took over almost all of the world, the people of France loved him. [Then] the people of France themselves in a strange turn of events turned on him in the end and betrayed him. Otherwise, he might still have been in power for years and years. And Napoleon is a big feature in Books Two and Three… just saying…

napoleon!! we’re getting NAPOLEON in the next two i am so genuinely excited because I have no fucking idea what she’s gonna do

#CoM Salt #i have spent a lot of this evening reading different interviews and looking at her twitter feed #she's bizarrely self-obsessed AND self-deprecating #remember remember the 5th of november #it's guy's birthday and we forgot to get him anything

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loonylein · 4 years ago

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Sorry to bug! I love your art so much! How many OC's do you have and what universe do they belong in?☺

Oof that’S a though question... I had way to many, and most of them are inactive. I try to get them all together AND give you an pic too. And hopyfully to bring them all in some kind of order...

First I have the not-fandom related ones, that maybe were put into a AU one day but never really belonged there:

Aran, my first RP character

Maco and Jemes, two characters from Arans origin story.

Cedrey a tattoo artist and Arans best friend.

Lux, Cedreys sister.

Finnegan, I character I hated, then loved and then forgot about.

Morgan, I think in one AU she was Finns sister? Idk

But then again I also called her “Payton” and she had a trans twin brother named “Calen” (I think?)

A desert god from Arans origin story.

Scada, my first OC ever created. (He appears in Teresa Sporrers “Dragon Princess”)

Willow, a girl from Scadas origin story.

Evolet, the only RP char, from an RP that I actually finished with my partner.

I guess I once gave her a brother in a different AU? Dunno. She doesn’t look like Evolet.

Couryn, who was from a story I tried to write but never finished.

The Iron Prince, a character from Couryns origin story.

Lyra, a fairy from Couryns origin story.

Asdis a viking OC I created (and now that I think about it, she is the foundation of Kiris!!! OMg.... never noticed this before.)

Imir, her love interest

Idris - Imirs sister

Skull Queen, the stepmother of Asdis

Mona, my Luna Lovegood copy

This might be seen as Monas replacement or recovery?

Radish girl... because I thought I could keep a mascott. lol

Aiden 1 (because I later had another one named Aiden)

Linden aka “Blue” I guess she was a Cloe copy? I actually don’t remember ._.

Aiden 2 and James

Rosanne, a girl that once was part of a story I put Aiden in. It didn’t rest long.

Nik, another viking-ish OC (also a self insert)

Hermes and Pandora. Loved them when I created them, now they are pretty boring to me.

But they got an upgrade one day.

Erik and Tamnes, my Xt time trying to write a story.

A nameless elf girl with no origin story at all.

And I guess this one is the same? But I don’t remember ._.

They are new to the game and they don’t have a story yet lmao. Probably won’t get one.

In a Wolf!AU @thecrimsoncursed Noatak and my Lora (mentioned again if you scroll down) have children.

This is Loras Wolf!AU version tho.

I boy I don’t remember why I made him... I think he is called Jorek? Or Iorek? But I think he was also a werwolf.

Another werewolf without any purpose.

A bit arkward but I own two anthros too. Antonin and Virona.

And I found these. But I don’t know their story anymore.

NOW MY GUARDIANS (Eldayra Sona)

Loonys first version (yes there once was an OC named after my own alias)

Loonys second version

Alazka, my fox girl

After her Kiris became my guardian. I didn’t stick to one design tho...

Until I took her out of the world of Eldarya, gave a an origin story, a brother who can turn into a dragon... Now she is one of my favorite OCs and connects most of my characters with each other (for example Scada, my very first OC ever)

My last guardian with a name and story is Elean. I stopped using her when I stopped playing Eldarya.

MY CANDIES (my candy love sona)

My candy when I started drawing, “Shayia” just like my username.

My candy when I started making stories about her with friends, called her “Shailene”

A short time I made her indian, but that was... only about a few months or so?

Then @siguun and I decided to make our candies twinsies, and that’s how it stayed till now. Sticked with the name “Stacie” since then.

Changed her hair to black tho. Making them like yin and yang c:

She also has a gender bend version.

When university came out I gave her this look.

And she kept it till today.

During some months I used Lake, Eleans sister as my candy. But I turned back to Stacie.

Stacie isn’t that much of a candy anymore tho. She isn’t romancing anyone from the game. Canonly, she is married to @thecrimsoncursed Lucifer and they have 3 kids. One of them is actually the protagonist of a german teen novel written by Teresa Sporrer. Stacie and Lucifer have some “screentime” too, talking to their daughter on the phone. I couldn’t be more proud of how far my OC got <3 MY FANDOM OCs

Joyce - a treasure planet OC and Wolke - a mericcup lovechild

Lora, my star wars OC, created around 2015 during a RP

Felirass is her sister

This edge lord is her master

This angry woman is her masters master

Ami’zaya - another star wars OC. Created for an rp guild I left shortly after it. But I reused James as her brother.

And of course she got a whole family.

I don’t even remember these two.

She has no story and no name but I really like this species.

Louk a very pour LoK OC

I had a pokemon go OC too

And technically I used my candy as a harry potter OC very often?

Idris also was part of a httyd!AU once.

Ella, former shadowhunter OC, now just a girl, parttime elf. Has no proper origin story anymore.

She is a witcher OC.

Felirass (Loras sister) also once was a teso char I used for RP.

Colliope is my teso main RP char.

@sihari-art and I made the children of Colliope and her Madravas. But that’s not canon yet.

Eyljór is my third one. The one that came after Felirass and kinda replaced her.

During one RP storyline she actually adopted a girl and then got pregnant, got her own child. But the storyline is gone now, since I un-werwolfed her and this was pretty much what this story was based on.

And here I have her family, mother Alva, Father Aegis, and older sisters Agnes and Toril.

Random orc dude. Also no story.

Eiren, my first dnd char. She was a half elf rogue.

Kari is my DND Kitsune Monk girl.I love her with all my heart and even if I stop playing her, I will still keep her at least as an OC.

Then I have Asura, my third DND char. Haven’t played her yet tho.

This is what she actually looks like....

Dragon Age char I : Noredien

Dragon Age char II: Noralyn (or was it Nolaryn?)

I also had an Aion OC

I own a spidersona.

Leikný, a char for a b.e.a.r.d.s. pen and paper. Didn’t played her tho.

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grayisholi · 6 years ago

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@ the DND ask game: ALL OF THOSE QUESTIONS, I CAN'T CHOOSE!! XD (or if not that, the ones you rlly wanna do!!

BOY OH BOY OH BOYIve been answering these throughout the day and I’m too lazy to reread the full document so sorry if I’ve left gaps or whatever but here it is! All 35 questions about dnd! Matt you unstoppable Madman.

1. A favorite character you have played.

You can’t just make me pick between my children!!! I think I might have to say Atticus Sallow, my faeborn bloodhunter, partially because he’s like 100% homebrew content which I LIVE for, but also because he’s probably the most kinda self-insert character I’ve ever played? Almost became the kinda angsty, brooding asshole character before he was like “get your shit together” and learned that loving people isn’t so bad.

2. Your favorite character that someone else has played.

I almost, ALMOST had the pleasure of DMing for @no-more-good-omens and their character was gonna be SO RAD and I’m a little heartbroken he never came to be. A half-drow paladin of Vecna, pretending to be your typical good and wholesome paladin? Dude, I love that kinda two faced backstabbing in a player. It’s such a shame it never came to anything (although if yall still wanna play hmu ;))

3. Your favorite side quest.

Ooh, there’s been so many good ones. Probably when i was playing as Adrian Smirks and went off on a tangent to rescue his brother ? That was the first time I ever got to see Adrian’s more raw and emotional side beneath the suave mask he wears and it was fun to explore his character in that way ^.^

4. Your current campaign.

That I’m DMing? It started inspired by Guy Fawkes and was gonna be “your party blows up parliament” but I got bored of following historical accuracy so it ended up being “blow up the palace in a magical city that just happens to be called London”. I accidentally wrote myself into a hole with this campaign tho, so once they’ve finished this arc I’m handing over the DM hat to my sister @philosophical-wanton because she seems to love it and I kinda miss being a player lmao. I can’t wait for it.

5. Favorite NPC.That I’ve written? Probably Hai Shen, the youngest son of a group of circus performers who were killed and the party got blamed for their murder. He had such a great attitude and his dynamics with the party kicked ass. And the twist that he was actually dead the whole time and it was his soul that had stayed behind to help solve his family’s murder? ICONIC.

6. Favorite death (monster, player character, NPC, etc).

NPC death would probably be Hai Shen, actually. After the party had brought the real killers (A cult to the demon Prince Orcus) to justice, Hai’s time on earth had come to an end. He had really beautiful moment with the party before being reunited with his family. Alternatively, the time I broke my entire party’s hearts? “Artagan’s staff comes cracking into Ellios’ chest, forcing him onto the ground. Artagan raises his sceptre in hand, pointing it menacingly at the young prince. And for the first time, you see him. Like, REALLY see him. He’s not the strong and powerful leader you’ve all come to know him as, he’s not Prince Ellios of the Four Realms. He’s just a boy. A boy who is much too young to be involved in such a grand scheme. And the fear in his eyes. You see the fear he’s managed to keep buried for so long, finally coming to the surface. And then? You don’t see anything, aside from his cold body hitting the ground.” I got punched three times for that moment, but GOD was it worth it.

7. Your favorite downtime activity.

Like in game? A healthy lil bit of vandalising the local law enforcement buildings is always a good time.

8. Your favorite fight/encounter.

Aw man, how can I pick ? I gotta say, that one time we, a level 6 party, managed to take down two earth elementals was pretty rad. The DM kind of expected it to be one of those encounters that we saw and immediately tried to run from, but what she didn’t take into account was that ALL of us had chaotic alignments so we just went crazy. The DM was rolling really badly (thank God) and we were getting really creative (“I use the produce flame centripetal to light my bottle of ale on fire and create a molotov cocktail” “you do WHAT”) and after like an HOUR we won and it was amazing. The rush I got from that victory was better than any drug my dood.

9. Your favorite thing about D&D.

I know I say it a lot, but I legit can’t choose. There’s so many great things about ttrpgs that a lot of people don’t really think of. The creative fulfilment I get from a session is incomparable, the friendships you can build that you couldn’t form in any other way. And like, not to get too real for a sec here, but I grew up with undiagnosed autism and didn’t understand how a lot of social situations worked, and DnD was such a good mechanic for me to try communicating with people without many real world consequences, and I appreciate that experience so much. It’s just such a great thing my dood.

10. Your favorite enemy and the enemy you hate the most.

Can they be the same thing lmao? I mean, I’m obviously partial to Count Cassius, the vampire lord that Adrian slept with lmao. I also always appreciate a good beholder, until I get hit with three disintegration rays IN A ROW.

11. How often do you play and how often would you ideally like to play?

We’ve got kind of a monthly schedule with my main campaign, and I manage to get a couple online games in-between them, but honestly I’d kill to be the kind of group that got together every weekend.

12. Your in game inside jokes/memes/catchphrases and where they came from.

Oh MAN. “I say we do this.” “Yeah, but that’s coming from the guy who decided to tie 3 50ft ropes together to escape the palace.” “iT wOrKeD dIdN’t iT ???” i.e that time I forgot I gave the gnome rogue flying boots so when I planned for them to get arrested at the palace, they managed to escape by tying their ropes together, sending the gnome with it to the top and climbing the wall. I had to improvise the rest of the session. Also “FLINTON BELINDA SKINTON” bc as a role-play exercise I got my party to come up with rumours about their characters and the gnome rogue called Flint AKA Flinton B Skinton decided that one of their rumours was that the B stood for Belinda, and it was GLORIOUS.

13. Introduce your current party.

My current group consists of Flinton B Skinton, gnome rogue. He’s a quick-fingered, silver-tongued gay disaster who can sell anything to anyone. He’s a charming flirt, and a veritable genius in his own right. Kava Daardendrian, dragonborn ranger who loves nothing in life more than her animal companion - her pig Snortin Norton. She’s fun and sassy and shameless, she’s great. There’s Sparks, the fire Genasi Monk, and full embodiment of a disaster lesbian. She drinks, fights, and gets laid, and doesn’t deal with her problems in healthy ways. An icon. And finally Milo, the halfling Bard who falls in love at the drop of a hat and just wants everyone to get along. I call them “The Shenanigang” and I love them.

14. Introduce any other parties you have played in or DM-ed.

A party I joined late? We had Sylvia Moondrop, the half elf sorcerer who was just trying to get along with everyone despite what the world seemed to want. Orland the half orc bard who was just trying to shake off the Barbarian stereotype his family left him with. Rose Morleen, air Genasi fighter who was literally born to kick ass and take names. I joined as Mason Terrai, the Earth Genasi Alchemist with a perchance for explosives. The very definition of chaotic neutral.

15. Do you have snacks during game times?

Of COURSE. What manic wouldn’t ?

16. Do you play online or in person? Which do you prefer?

I used to play online a LOT back before I had friends who were into dnd, but I VASTLY prefer playing in person. The chemistry that’s built not only amongst the players, but also the actual characters themselves is unparalleled. It’s just such a great experience.

17. What are some house rules that your group has?

Anyone can attempt anything, the only restriction is the dice. Don’t question the DM unless it’s out of session, then bully the dm on the groupchat until he’s so pissed off he gives you inspiration just to get you to shut up. And also canon lore and canon rules are bullshit when it’s convenient. That’s about it

18. Does your party keep any pets?

Our ranger, God bless her, has her pack pig Snortin Norton, sold to her by one Flinton B Skinton. And Flint really wants a monkey, he’s been trying to find one for ages.

19. Do you or your party have any dice superstitions?

Not really ? I’m the kind guy that if my dice rolls a 1 I will bench it for a bit, but tbh all my dice are cursed af and I’ve kinda just learned to roll with it by making my characters canonically terrible at everything lmao.

20. How did you get into D&D? How long have you been playing?

Aw man I can’t remember when or how, it’s been so long. I had a couple friends who were kinda into it, but all the games they tried to run were complete disasters. I only really started playing I’m the past year or so? Maybe a little more ? Adrian was my first character, and he was a very RP heavy character in a party of tanks and they all hated him but MAN was it fun.

21. Have you ever regretted something your character has done?

Oh all the time. One time my character was careless and didn’t check for traps on a legendary artefact and it lead to the death of a party member. One time my character got angry at his party and walked out. My characters don’t make good decisions, but that’s part of the fun.

22. What color was your first dragon?

White! I thought it was silver at first and went to go say hi, and it clawed me within half my HP straight away lmao.

23. Do you use premade modules or original campaigns?

Oh dude, original all the way. I live for that shit.

24. How much planning/preparation do you do for a game?

Depends on the session, but usually a good few hours, couple of days if I’m DMing.

25. What have your players done that you never could have planned for?

“You wake up in a mysterious forest. The strained autumn sun shines through the trees. The only thing you can see it each other, the trees, and an old sign post leading to a path that says "Myrrill” on it. What do you do?“ "We walk in the opposite direction of the sign deeper into the forest.” “…of course you do.”

26. What was your favorite scene to write and show your characters.

I wrote a full carnival show one time for them to watch, and then it got derailed when a horrific monster attacked. But writing all the characters and their acts, and watching my players get entranced as I described it ? Magical, my dood.

27. Do you allow homebrew content?

I live and breathe homebrew content. I don’t know what my games would be without it. I LOVE homebrew.

28. How often do you use NPCs in a party?

I make some pretty sick characters if I do say so myself, so I throw them in a LOT.

29. Do you prefer RP heavy sessions or combat sessions?

Oh dude, role play all the way. Fighting and killing stuff is great, but role-play is just so good. We can go from laughing with a bartender to crying over a backstory reveal and it’s just beautiful.

30. Are your players diplomatic or murder hobos?

Depends on the party, but i find the best players are a little bit of both XD

31. What is your favorite class? Favorite race?

Official ? I’m a fan of the hexblade warlock? Bards are always a good call, and to be real playing monks make me feel like an absolute badass. Race wise, there are just so many. If we’re only talking players handbook stuff, half elf is always rad. Outside of that? I’ve been researching the Shadar-Kai lately and I’m LIVING. They’re so rad.

32. What role do you like to play the most? (Tank/healer/etc?)

What would you call the disaster gay? I don’t really gear my characters towards usefulness in combat, so it’s just whatever the class happens to lend itself to.

33. How do you write your backstory, or do you even write a backstory?

I usually write my character, personality, backstory, alignment etc, before I even pick a class or even a race. I basically just make OCs and apply them to dnd rules, and it’s SO much fun. 10/10, would recommend.34. Do you tend pick weapons/spells for being useful or for flavor?

FLAVOUR. My party usually hates me, but what I lack in combat utility I more than make up for in creative out of combat skill checks XD.

35. How much roleplay do you like to do?

Boi, I even RP my combat, and the great thing is it rubs off on my party too. I’ll have a really low initiative and everyone else will be like “I attack and do 10 points of damage” but then on my round I’m like “I use my staff to leap across the battlefield towards the opponent and launch out with a spinning kick to their jaw” and everyone else is like “oh, okay, that’s what we’re doing.” and the battle becomes so much more dynamic and cinematic, it’s amazing !

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boyfriem-moved · 6 years ago

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Tell me about your ocs!!

oh boy WILL I EVER (below the cut bc im probably gonna ramble forever sjhdlhfsjd sorry)

so the ocs i was shitposting abt in that last post are my dumbass 12 year old ocs who were inspired by seraph of the end and the mortal instruments so it was uh,,,,,,,, a whole ass trainwreck but i love them and every time i tried to make them interesting i ended up changing everything about them so like last year i decided i would keep as much the same as i wanted about them and just fully embrace the mary sue dumbness of it and go absolutely wild

so! the state of the world at this point is that most of humanity is dead and the world is overun with demons and seraphim and some Whole Ass Biblical Angels and also vampires i guess bc Fuck You Vampires Are Cool. most living humans travel around in packs, general apocalypse bullshit yknow anyways all that’s boring onto the characters

rowan is my twelve year old self’s self insert and their main personality trait is that they have an eyepatch and own a scythe and i love them to death. they’re self sufficient and perpetually annoyed and super gay and pretend to have no feelings but are actually super high strung and constantly worried about their friends. also they have an edgy cloak and bright red hair and did i mention the eyepatch and the scythe they’re the world’s edgiest bitch and i love them

picture (sry for the old art it’s from like last december oof)

mal was pretty much nothing except rowan’s comphet boyfriend when i was younger so naturally i gave him the world’s most undeserved makeover and now he’s just a whole entire rowdy boy. imagine if the kid at your middle school who was obsessed with yugioh, instead of switching to magic the gathering when they got to high school, switched to kinning god and fistfighting demons. HIS dumbass origin story is that he was so scared of death that he made a deal with a demon named malachi (not its real name, the demons and seraphim are so terribly inhuman that human ears can’t hear their names, so they pick their own names somewhere within the range of “jeff” to “ylllmar the destroyer”) and then decided “hey as long as i have your power i basically AM you”, and now refuses to be called by his human name (james) because he’s so Dedicated To The Kin. (he’s such an asshole that he once told someone not to deadname him when they used his proper name. that someone being rowan. who is actually trans. they were not amused)

picture (again: old (from november 2017 i think)) (also don’t worry he’s fine)

jem is probably my favorite (not 2 pick favorites but it’s her). she has all the confidence of mal, who’s so strong that he’s All But Immortal, except she’s 15 and 5 feet tall and couldn’t fight someone if her life depended on it. rowan considers her their mortal enemy, but they’re really something closer to girlfriends (although really it’s not that far of a leap from one to the other). she’s nosy and fearless and when she was like 13 she pretended to be a vampire to survive, joined a vampire girl gang, became the leader of said girl gang, then revealed that she was a human, but they all loved her so much that they just kinda said “fuck it” and now she has a horde of vampires to protect her wherever she goes. she’s The Ultimate Femme. wants immortality but doesn’t want it now because she doesn’t want to live in the body of a 16 year old for the rest of her life, so she’s waiting until her twenties to let one of the vampires turn her. in the meantime, she wears red contact lenses (vampires don’t have red eyes. it’s just a Her Thing) and every one of her outfits has enough frills and ruffles to smother her in lace.

i dont have a readily available drawing of her but uh? yknow that girl from kill la kill (not to bring up kill la kill in the year of our lord 2019 i am SO SORRY)

this one. that’s what she looks like kinda

i can’t tell if this ask if ungodly long or if it’s just the pictures or both (probably both) but aNYWAYS

my favorite beside jem is angel, aka the world’s dumbest bitch. his deal is that he’s a seraphim who was beaten up by his brothers for being a little bitch so he decided he’d go find a human to hang out with instead. so he put on the world’s most unconvincing human disguise (when i say seraphim i AM imagining glowing wheels of fire and eyes but they can shapeshift in this story bc uh. my world my rules) and went to find a human. and human. and he found little 12 year old rowan, said “this’ll do”, handed them a scythe, and they’ve been a dream team ever since. he’s fascinated with humans in the way that people are fascinated with their pets, which is kinda weird bc rowan is 100% the babysitter in this situation. he likes killing things, learning about human culture, rowan, and...that’s pretty much it. he and jem get along well because he’s like an overenthusiastic person and she’s the only one with the boundless energy to endulge him.

again, no picture i’ve made myself, but i DID find the picture i ripped off google images a million years ago and used as his face (i promise you he looks nothing like that now...also i didn’t remember it looking like it had been deep fried jesus)

other noteworthy characters include:

- mal’s pet demon who’s usually either a cat or a bird, both with WAY too many eyes, but sometimes takes the form of a little girl. her name is sara and her hobbies include mocking mal and biting people

- one random nameless demon who masqueraded as a middle school math teacher before the apocalypse which doesn’t matter one fucking bit except for the fact that when i was 12 i named him after my real middle school math teacher (i guess just bc i didn’t have name ideas?). which was all fine and good until my mom emailed him the story and i had to talk to him about how i’d written a short story where i inserted him as a demon

- mika, the second in command of jem’s (almost) all vampire girl gang, her ex girlfriend and the butch to her femme

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scifiwithswords · 6 years ago

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34 things i adore about the novel i wrote for nanowrimo when i was 16

for context, i’m currently 23.

i learned that national novel writing month existed when i was in 8th grade, decided to try it for the first time in 9th. i needed a novel premise that was so self-indulgent that i knew i’d be able to keep my attention on it for 30 days and 50,000 words. the premise i picked can best be described as “jumanji, but with fanfiction.” basically, it’s about teens waking up in their favorite fictional universes and using them as the best playgrounds ever.

...for a year. the first book, written when i was 14, was about my self-insert Hazel and her best friend Drew getting ripped away from their tragically boring ordinary lives, being dropped in the Doctor Who universe, joining Torchwood, falling in love, and then being catastrophically separated and having to cope with figuring out new universes without each other’s aid. They go on solo adventures, grow as people, and then find their way back to each other.

Fast forward about eleven months. I’d enjoyed the nanowrimo experience and didn’t feel like i was done with Hazel and Drew. but a story with just them, i felt, would get boring fast. so i added in two new ‘travelers’, auby and daniel, who were originally going to be a beta couple because i was 15 and hadn’t figured out that i was gay and could write gay characters yet. the second book has more self-indulgent fandom shenanigans, but there’s an increasing tension throughout it related to why this whole being-flung-between-universes is happening to them, and whether or not some higher power is responsible. this all culminates in hazel and drew having a climactic argument, daniel leaving the apartment they share on the naruto universe to give them some space and getting stabbed and dying, and then the three remaining travelers being taken to a blank white dimension where they are offered a choice: the lives they’re living now, or almost-perfect ones in the normal world. all three of them choose to continue on as travelers. (this is the book where the relationships get really deliciously complicated--Drew and Hazel are constantly disagreeing over whether there’s a deity responsible for what’s happening to them, Auby is paired with Hazel on her first universe ever and her reaction is massively different than Hazel’s was--her only goal, at the beginning, is to go home. she hurts people on purpose in service of this goal, which Hazel is angry about for a long, long time after.)

That still wasn’t enough. there were still loose ends that i hadn’t sealed, the possibility of a story in the snippets of everyone’s old life that Evelyn (the ‘deity’) in book 2, had appeared in. so there was one more book, written my junior year of high school, to resolve it all. Evelyn turned out to be a traveler who had died. Her partner, Tobias, created his own world to work on getting her back. he brought back Daniel instead, by mistake, and then eventually succeeds. We learn, in the middle of the book, that Evelyn wasn’t the real reason all of this was happening: the true puppet master was her sister Rennie, who had been writing a story where terrible things happened to the people who had wronged her over the years. auby, when she got a little older, had abandoned Rennie as a friend. Daniel had never become her friend. Drew and Hazel had said some stupid shit to her online. But when Rennie feels the story getting really out of control (when Tobias takes things into his own hands to rescue Evelyn), she decides to try writing herself into it. And into the story she goes. At the end Evelyn is able to leverage her in-universe powers to give the travelers (who call themselves wanderers now, thanks to Tobias) another, less cruel choice: be wanderers with control over their own destinies and destinations, or stay on a nearly-utopian world she’s created for them. Drew and Hazel go, everyone else stays, Evelyn fades away.

I hadn’t reread these books in many many years. I reread the 8th grade one last summer, looking for clues about what i was like in 9th grade (i’d thrown out all my journals from when i was younger years before, a decision that i bitterly regret.). i decided to reread wanderers (aka book 3) on a whim, and found that it depended so heavily on book 2 that i had to reread the latter half of that as well.

my major reaction is that the premise, the plot, the relationships, everything--it’s all so quintissentially teenage, in a way that i genuinely didn’t understand it was at the time. the prospect of being pulled from one universe to another, with no control over where you’ll go and no knowledge of when it will happen, was always an allegory for the lack of control you have as a teenager, living under rules and expectations that you had no say in choosing. the fact that being thrown around between fictional universes goes from something the characters love, to something they question, to something they resent. the ways that they grow and change within and between the books, and the way those changes reflect changes that most people go through between fourteen and sixteen.

so, without firther ado, the list, compiled during my 2018 Wanderers reread:

1. Hazel being like “I was braver back then”

2. Drew being like “we used to like testing our limits, now we were afraid of what we might be capable of”

3. The complicated relationship between Auby and Hazel and why they dislike each other. Hazel being like “Drew and I worked well with Daniel because he was independent and unique, but Auby was clingy and needed to lean on people. I didn’t like being anyone’s people.”

4. The general sense of them having no control over the course their lives are taking, and coping with it by leaning hard into their relationships. It’s so teenage and at 16 when I was writing this I didn’t even realize that.

5. The pacing in Wanderers! The Rennie stuff at the beginning! The stories of everyone hanging out independently or in little groups before they’re all brought to the same location by Tobias’s success! The way we leave off Tobias and Daniel’s story, after their relationship and quest have been explored a little, and immediately when we come back to it, the rest of the kiddos are involved.

6. The characters unique preferences and thought patterns that resolve themselves so well in first person, why tf did I stop writing this way?

7. The sweetness and gentleness between Hazel and Drew; how much they love each other. Hazel letting Drew hug her for longer because she’s concerned about how wiped out he looks, the two of them laughing together the first morning in the Forest, Hazel’s (kinda irrational kinda founded) jealousy of Auby

8. Auby’s very confusing feelings about Daniel, who doesn’t remember the life they could have had together and isn’t the same person as he was when they would have started it.

9. “It wasn’t fair, and I know life isn’t fair, but this thing was the reason my life wasn’t fair”

10. The downsides of the AU. Drew felt like the alternate him was a bad person. Hazel didn’t love Drew as strongly. Auby getting almost everything she wants but still pining for the only thing she has now. And being unable to mourn this Daniel, g-d.

11. “On the nights when I was just getting to bed after not sleeping for a few days, before Daniel, was the only time that I ever allowed myself to think about Evelyn actually being back.”

12. I haven’t done character work this intense since uh. Since this.

13. Rennie feeling like a bystander to her own (magical) story. The whole concept of there being a place where her characters are that she can’t describe because she can’t make herself see it. Her seizing back control in the end.

14. Rennie didn’t realize she was being cruel, she thought she was coping

15. Fuck did I pour myself into Auby and Rennie’s relationship. As both of them at the same time somehow.

16. TOO BAD THE LOCKDOWN HAD A PURPOSE also really good pacing. When did I get so bad at pacing

17. The fucking metaphors. Tobias turning his mind into a ‘drill’ instead of a ‘net’ when he’s mentally linked with Evelyn

18. “Her voice was like bells, like wind chimes, like laughter. It was larger than life, and there was no problem with that.”

19. G-d Tobias’s last conversation with the ‘real’ Evelyn

20. “I hate you, you know,” Rennie said mildly, as though she was informing me that my shoe was untied.

21. I grasped at threads, responded to what I could understand with the words that I could find. “Rennie, you know that I would never-“ -- “Yeah, Auby, I do,” she said. “Because I wrote you that way. You’re not actually Auby Harris. You’re my Auby Harris.”

22. The concept of Tobias and Evelyn flying too close to the sun together, and Evelyn paying for it materially, and Tobias paying for it in heartbreak. The sense that they really love each other.

23. Auby blaming herself for the things Rennie did because Rennie was betrayed by (a different) Auby

24. Rennie makes room for Auby on the couch and Auby goes to sit on a different couch

25. That good good serial narrative shit! Hazel’s main internal struggle in the second book being reconciling what had happened in the first book! The ending of the second book hanging like a specter over all of them for the entirety of the third book!

26. This was the end of the line. This was our happily ever after. But the stories had never left off with the character in his happily ever after jumpy and frustrated, almost craving the intensity of the harsh journey behind him? […] we had always thought of our lives as us against the world, and now there was just…us.

27. Tobias’s profound sense of loss after Evelyn dies, then him finding a piece of nature that he believes carries her essence, about which he thinks “Calm, and yet bold, breathtakingly beautiful. Yes, Evelyn was here.”

28. EVERYONE BUT RENNIE HAS BEEN LIVING THIS LIFE SINCE THEY WERE 14 SO ONLY RENNIE KNOWS HOW TO DRIVE

29. PAGES LONG argument between Hazel and Rennie about whether Marvel or DC makes better comics, interrupted by other happenings on the universe, involving all the major relationships between the characters, they eventually put it to a group vote because everyone else is getting annoyed, it turns out to be a tie because there are only six of them left and everybody loses because Evelyn is dead. Just the way the realization of the results of the vote cuts all of the tension.

30. Everyone gradually transitioning from calling themselves Travelers to calling themselves Wanderers, and Auby not finding out that’s what they call themselves now until page 120/123

31. Hazel letting Drew choose whether to stay or keep wandering at the end. Drew’s justification: I need her. She needs it. The fact that that’s softened by his restlessness in utopia like fifteen pages before.

32. Hazel forgiving Auby, in their last ever conversation, for something that she had done ninety fucking thousand words ago.

33. Daniel being sure that even though he’ll be okay, Rennie and Tobias will never be over Evelyn’s death. The fact that he starts talking and starts a little memorial service for her—Daniel, who tried his best not to need people, who usually barely speaks.

34. The fact that the last line is (Hazel asking Drew) “Where do you want to start?”

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ebp-brain · 7 years ago

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Year in Review Meme

Tagged by @ruinsplume. Thank you! (posting on my fandom/personal sideblog)

1. List of works published this year (2017):

When The Wolf Comes Home (Remus Lupin/Sirius Black, 2.5k, Teen)

Spent Q (Q/007, 3k, Explicit)

Pull Together Men (Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes, 2k, Mature)

Split Q (Q/007, 2k, Explicit)

Brighton and Venice (Albus Dumbledore/Elphias Doge, 3k, Gen)

As if the World Should Roll Itself Out Like a Cloak (ACD Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, 4.5k, Gen)

The Weather Inside (Remus Lupin/Sirius Black, 43k, Explicit)

Ghost of Winter (Remus Lupin/Sirius Black, 3k, Teen)

Night Travels (Remus Lupin/Sirius Black, 6k, Teen)

2. Work you are most proud of (and why):

“The Weather Inside.” Hands down. It felt like a bit of a breakthrough for me, both in terms of prose style and what I was trying to do with it. I’d been thinking a lot about the experience of constructing a sense of self by keeping one’s thoughts and feelings tightly locked up, and both wanting and not wanting to let them out--about my own experience of doing this. And when I started writing I began to pour all that into the fic in a way I hadn’t done before. It’s both very personal and very theoretical (like, more or less inspired by a grad seminar about Eve Sedgwick) and that mix is just about where I’d like to be right now. I tried to stick really really close to Remus’ pov in order to investigate his internal experiences, and I feel like it mostly worked. And in trying to describe his intense inner life my language got sharper and more vivid.

3. Work you are least proud of (and why):

I feel like the longer it’s been since I wrote something the more likely I am to give it the side-eye, so these relatively young fics still seem okay to me. (: The fics I’m least attached to are probably the Q/007 ones, which I’m not displeased with but which, as installments in the only true PWP series I’ve ever written, have the lowest “sex-to-thinking about sex” ratio of all my fics and are therefore are the most low-impact for me.

4. A favourite excerpt of your writing:

From “The Weather Inside”: But to let go of the way he feels about Sirius is to give up a part of himself and Remus isn’t sure he’s capable anymore of discerning how big that part is or even where its boundaries lie. Keeping his desire locked tight inside him for so long has given it precisely the power Remus wanted to withhold; with no outlet, no place to go, it has woven itself like a creeper vine into all the darkest recesses of himself, into all his hollows and chambers, his tiniest cracks and crannies; unfurling itself in the only way it knows how, insidious, climbing, it has woven itself into the very fabric of Remus. There is ivy at Hogwarts, Professor Sprout told his class once, that can never be removed, because it has become so entangled with the castle that the stones themselves would crumble without the plant to support them.

5. Share or describe a favourite review you received:

One comment on “The Weather Inside” articulated the dynamics between Remus and Sirius so clearly that I’ve been thinking about it ever since: that Remus says and believes he is opening up when he’s actually doing so very much on his own terms and is consequently still withholding a lot. I’ve thought about it in terms of the story and also, you know, my life.

Also, I have to share this one because it’s the most delightful way of describing the experience of reading a fic I’ve ever encountered in my comments: I'm shattered, really, I feel like I have been emptyed (emptied? Damn, I'm sorry, I'm Italian and I'm still learning) with a spoon, but oddly satisfied, as if the person who ate me said "Oh well, you were delicious, thanks!"

6. A time when writing was really, really hard:

You know, the actual putting of words on paper for “When the Wolf Comes Home” wasn’t so difficult, but I wrote it after a serious breakup as a way to sort of get at the situation sideways (neither the feelings nor the events much resemble the real-life thing but the general angst needed to come out) and I listened to the Mountain Goats and felt intense grief the whole time I was writing, which is its own kind of “really hard.”

7. A scene or character you wrote that surprised you:

This is also not quite answering the question as intended, but I was surprised when I was working on “As if the World Should Roll Itself Out Like a Cloak” how much Watson’s voice still felt right, despite the fact that I was picking up a fic I’d written 9/10ths of four years earlier, in a fandom I’m still fond of but no longer frequent regularly. Although my thoughts about coming out and queer self-revelations have shifted pretty significantly since then, it was a little surprising to realize that Watson’s sudden life-changing epiphany in that fic actually does still resonate with me.

8. How did you grow as a writer this year:

1. I realized just how much I could articulate my own issues and perceptions through fic, and that that’s the stuff people actually end up liking most, and 2. I started this fandom/personal sideblog and actually worked up the confidence to start talking to people, and 7 years after first getting involved in transformative works-based fandom I finally understand what a rewarding social space it can be. And that has affected the way I write and think about writing in such joyful ways.

9. How do you hope to grow next year:

More friends! More self-analysis turned into self-insert fic! A continued ruthlessness towards my own prose until all cliches and boring sentences are burned to ashes!

10. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta or cheerleader or muse etc etc):

I’ve had some incredible conversations with @bigblckdog about writing and thinking and feeling in the last few months that have been seeping into the recent writing I’ve been doing. And everyone who has said hi on Tumblr has warmed my socially anxious heart and made me feel encouraged and excited to keep working.

11. Anything from your real life show up in your writing this year:

Haha see #2 and #6. I don’t think any specific events or people showed up in a direct way in fic but the frustration and pain and relief and excitement and pleasure and self-scrutiny of the past year are all there in “The Weather Inside” and my other Remus/Sirius stuff. Also, Remus’ overwrought emotional response to rain in “Night Travels” is mine.

12. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers:

WISDOM seems like such a big word. Write the stuff that’s closest to home, whatever that means, and it’s likely it’ll hit someone else right there too.

13. Any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year:

I keep mentioning this non-chronological Remus/Sirius fic about “thinking,” and I’m really truly working on it! I’m on chapter 4 of what will likely be 10 and because I’ve got my qualifying exam for my PhD program in the spring I’ve decided not to start posting until I’m at least halfway through, but it’s coming along. If “The Weather Inside” was about what I’d call interiority--the experience of a significant inner life--this one is about Remus’ relationship to thinking, broadly understood: the way that feeling and thinking don’t seem separate to him, and the way his erotic experiences are propelled by thought or some sort of headspace, and the struggle to be compatible with someone who is all about Doing Things, aka Sirius Black. It’s got too many references to Muggle literature and a lot of fraught conversations and I’m really excited about it. You know, also, I have a weird confusing relationship to femslash that I’d sure like to deal with at some point, so maybe some queer Ginny will come out of that.

14. Tag three writers whose answers you’d like to read.

Can I tag my Tumblr social anxiety? jk do these if you want no pressure you’re great sorry to bother you lol: @bigblckdog @toyhto @montpahrnah

*All answers should be about works published in 2017. Also, you can skip any questions you hate or don’t want to answer, but please leave them on the list so that others can do them if they want.

#year in reveiw #personal #I'm so into thinking about writing and tbh myself so I live for this shit #and honestly just to reiterate I am so amazed by how KIND everyone is #I've been on tumblr since 2010 and I feel like a baby just discovering the wonders of internet socializing #but a baby who knows about The Discourse #a baby with some self-defense abilities

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cowboylikedean · 7 years ago

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Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda is the most offensive book I’ve ever read.

I wrote this review for goodreads, but I’m also posting it here. Bare with me, it’s long.. much of it is under a cut.

This is honest to god one of the most offensive books I've ever read.

My reading goal I set with myself this year was to read all the LGBT YA fiction I could find. Even though I'm 26 years old, YA fiction remains my favorite genre, especially YA romance. It's something about the nature of adolescence being all about change and everything being for the first time and brand new... Writing about/for teenagers, authors can give the endlessly magical feeling of being on the precipice of something great without even trying. That said, some of it reads really young for me and I lose suspension of belief within the story because I am an adult and the intended audience is 14... Though, in my experience, in a really good book, that difference will be noticeable, but unimportant. In this book, however, it was instantly A Big Deal. I had to remind myself so many times in the first few chapters to forgive its terrible sentence structure and awkward wording. It was meant for someone much younger than me, and while it *was* using terrible sentence fragments almost every sentence, the author did that to set the age of the narrating character. I wish she hadn't. It's one thing to have Simon's emails and quoted speech read with every other sentence being a fragment... but for every page of narration to have that many fragments, it's hard to read... One of my goals in reading all the LGBT YA fiction I can find is so that I can better recommend books to the LGBT teens I know who need to read more/find more relevant reading to their lives/learn that reading doesn't just have to be the boring books they're assigned in school *and* use that reading to benefit their writing. When every sentence is either a fragment or a run-on, it kind of defeats that purpose...

But aside from that, I have to agree with other reviewers about how much it shows the author's straightness. I took notes. So buckle up folks... Here's some of the worst offenses and my thoughts. This is by no means a comprehensive list as I have a character limit.

Okay, let's start simple.. Throughout the book, starting on page 21 with its latest reference being 179-180, Leah's objectification of gay boys in the form of yaoi and "slash" fanfic is written to indicate her support and allyship. Its first reference on page 21 comes right after Simon's declared that lesbian and bi women have an easier time of things because straight men like to objectify them. Is it 2018/2017 and we're really still going to praise something that passes straight objectification of LGBT people off as support??? Really??? And these reference to Harry/Draco are SO bad! The last one, I think is the worst. Simon tells Leah he knew she would be supportive because she's the one who introduced him to Harry and Draco, so it was never a question. The first one where we read Simon's exploration into masturbation wasn't fun either.

And that's something to talk about... Sex. I have nothing against sex in teen fiction. Teens have sex and when authors do it right, reading about a teenager explore sex in various forms can add to the story tenfold. However, here it comes off almost like Fifty Shades Of Grey level awkward. Multiple times it's written in the narration Simon tell the reader "I'm hard." Not "I have a boner," not "I'm turned on," "I'm hard." It's something that's just uncomfortable to read... And I don't even think it's just that Simon's a teenage character because I don't think it would have been so uncomfortable to read "I'm turned on" or "I have a boner," but the specific wording of "I'm hard" is very uncomfortable. And then the moment where Simon and Bram "each spend time in the bathroom" prior to Simon's parents coming home after Simon says "I'm hard and I can tell he is too" is just.. "I feel something *down there*" level awkward.

But it's more than that... The emphasis on the word "sex" and phrasing like "I'm hard" give the effect that The Secret Life of the American Teenager had with how many times they said "had/have sex." It feels almost... clinical. It was actually during the first sex-centric email chain I went and read the author bio because I guessed she was a clinician. That's not a good thing. Throughout the book, I see moments of a straight person attempting gay humor... And it's just painful, because she'll get there... and then miss it. Like the passage the book gets its title from. "Blue" takes a shot at gay humor saying that all people coming out is "the homosexual agenda." A classic gay joke in a very safe form. Then Simon comes and runs straight past the joke and "all lives matter"s the joke by saying "I don't know about the homosexual agenda, the homo sapiens agenda. Isn't that the point?" But no, Simon. No it is not the point. If that was the agenda of the whole species, that's how it would work. Furthermore, the joke is a reference to gay hate replaced with gay love. I have to wonder how Becky Albertalli wrote that line without realizing it was the same general premise of "all lives matter." We are not equal in that fight. LGBT people are marginalized. That is the whole freaking point, as Simon would put it. Which brings me to... The cursing. If you're going to write a teenage character who is conscious of their language and doesn't curse, then do it. Don't be inconsistent about it, just do it. Simon will say "fuck" sometimes, and sometimes, he'll be very careful to say "freaking." He also assumes Blue is uncomfortable with cursing... I'm sorry, either a lot's changed since I was 16 ten years ago (which I doubt because, as mentioned, I interact with a lot of teenagers frequently in mentoring and tutoring), or Ms. Becky Albertalli is imposing some odd morals in this book real hard. At any rate, it's incredibly awkward. I want to talk about characters. A review quote from Publishers Weekly says "Readers will fall madly in love with Simon" and I'd just like to ask one simple question: What readers? Okay, maybe two... Why? Now again, let me preface this by repeating, I am a regular tutor and mentor to many teenagers and I interact with them regularly. They text me, facebook message me, snap me, instagram DM me, etc all throughout the day I am in constant communication with my little ones. These are all (for the most part) LGBT kids, most of whom struggle with mental illness issues that are giving them school trouble. Simon is insufferable. He's not just a complex character with insufferable traits, no. I love those characters, they tend to be my favorites. Quite the contrary... He has no substance. Simon was given almost no characterization throughout the entire 303 pages of the original version of the book. I mean I know he loves Elliott Smith and oreos and not much else. He doesn't like things being made into a Big Deal. He's in a play and we're told he liked being the center of attention as a child, but he doesn't seem to like it now and/or we get no description on it. We get a lot of narration about what other people are doing and how other people are thinking and feeling and it leaves very little space to explore Simon. Sometimes, the book feels narrated in 3rd person limited rather than 1st person because of how much exposition there is on others. Simon feels like an empty character that is supposed to be a self insert to the reader.. which again, makes those awkwardly worded sex scenes even more uncomfortable. But with that, there's very little character *development*. Simon doesn't grow or change too much from beginning to end. Things in Simon's life change, but as a reader, I didn't feel Simon himself changing. I think the biggest factor here is that once again, we have a coming out story written by a straight person in which the main character was outed without permission and in a publicly humiliating way before he was ready. If there is one thing I wish straight people would write down, crumple up and throw away/burn/dispose of in any given way to make sure it never comes back... it's this trope. Martin committed an act of violence. Outing someone against their will, especially as a form of public punishment by harassment, is an act of anti-gay violence. For Simon's character development to happen so that this ends up being the nudge he needs because he doesn't really deal with the trauma of it. I mean, it's mentioned... I'll give Ms. Albertalli that, but it's not *explored.* The book I read prior to this was The Symptoms of Being Human, which is a great book (with a few pacing problems) about a genderfluid teenager named Riley. To save spoilers, I'll just say there's also violence in that book... But unlike in this book, in Symptoms, Riley has time at home where we see and hear their pain and coping. The topic of coming out is hugely important in Symptoms too, but there, we get incredibly intimate with Riley's internal debate on the topic. In this book, Simon's internal debate happens completely away from the reader outside of his debate to tell Nick and Leah that one time in the basement after he told Abby. How am I supposed to feel the development of this character in a story of coming out in which I was kept away from the internal debate of the character in question? It's just bad writing. I want to talk about the other characters for a second too... Who are such annoying stereotypes. So first Leah. The straight girl obsessed with gay boys who spends her time objectifying them and feels ownership over her male best friend. The central point of her character throughout the book seems to be her jealousy and blind hatred of the other biggest female character. Yikes. Then there's Nick who is obsessed with Assassin's Creed (great series) and is That Guy who has to pick up a guitar everywhere he goes (AKA The "Anyway, here's Wonderwall" guy). Then there's Abby who, as far as I can tell is one of the two actual compelling characters. There's Bram/Blue, the other compelling character who loses all characterization once we find out he's Bram. It's like Blue is super interesting. Bram is a blank sheet like Simon devoid of any characterization. Martin who is a straight man who violently outs a gay man after blackmailing him because he feels ownership over a woman he doesn't know... And the worst part about Martin is in his final "apology" email, he says if he could go back, he'd blackmail Simon into friendship with him and then stop. DIRECT QUOTE bottom of p 289. Earlier in the book when Simon, Martin, and Abby are running lines at the Waffle House and Simon starts to feel like Martin's friend, it's passed off as a good thing??? What? I also want to mention Simon's stereotypes. Does he really have to mention Every Single Time Nick is playing video games (particularly Assassin's Creed) that he doesn't care? Really? Also... He seems to understand sports fine... and then all of the sudden after he comes out he slips up and calls soccer try-outs "auditions"???? Something I've literally only ever seen done on the TV show The Middle by its main gay character Brad? Really? Something else I want to point out... I'll go back to the Harry Potter Harry/Draco thing for a second... That's an abusive relationship that's literally mostly shipped and romanticized by straight girls. Okay, I just had to point that out explicitly. Abusive gay relationship. Okay... So I've saved the most offensive two bits for last. One: "Cross-dressing." Now I don't know know if Becky Albertalli had a trans person read this before publishing but Simon's disgust that he used to enjoy wearing dresses was so incredibly painful. As a transgender person myself, I am so deeply saddened that a book that has had so much praise as being incredible representation would include such hostility. Reading the passage of gender-bender day felt like a punch in the gut. To feel the vitriol disgust in Simon's words "A lot of the time, I can't believe that was even me" and "I never crossed that line," "there's something so mortifying to me about the intensity of those feelings." I get it Simon, you hate trans people. Probably you too Becky Albertalli... As a transgender person, a book with such a passage will never be okay. Two: The entire scene in Webster's with Peter. At first, Peter is an age inappropriate gay man who gets Simon drunk knowing nothing about him, including his age without any conversation. Within a few minutes of meeting him, he puts three drinks in Simon's system, then almost as if Ms. Albertalli was aware she was crossing the line into the "older gay male predator" trope, she magically reveals Simon's age to these college kids who send him on his way. He's so disgustingly happy being sloppy drunk. The whole thing is embarrassing and honestly seems to serve 0 point other than to give justification for Simon's parents to ground him. Simon is taken advantage of by a group of older gay men and then punished by his parents. What in the actual hell is that? Okay... so that's my list of most offensive things of this book. Honorable mention: Simon's parents saying they need to find "ground rules" for when Nick sleeps over. Straight people are so obsessed with the idea that people cannot be "just friends" (I hate that term, but you get it) with people of the gender they're attracted to and honestly, it baffles me. Do straight people not have friends? At any rate, between the writing style and bad sentence structure, the poor characterization, the anti-gay tropes, the fake allyship, the praise of straight objectification of gay people, the forgiveness of anti-gay violence, the anti-feminist aspects of the tension between the two main female characters, the poor narrative structure... I see very little to like, let alone love, about this book. It is one of the most offensive books I've ever read

#simon vs the homo sapiens agenda #book review #lgbt book review #this was so bad y'all

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amorremanet · 8 years ago

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top 5 movies? and why? no no TOP FIVE BOOKS

oh gosh, both of these are hard and my answers for them are probably so boring (they also come with the, “this is just how I feel right now because ugh, I am the worst at picking any all-time faves for broad categories”) — but!!

top “five” movies:

The Prince of Egypt — has some of the most beautiful art that I’ve ever seen, anywhere, and music that sticks with you, and it really shows the human drama and human stakes of such a classic story in ways that a lot of adaptations of Biblical mythology are afraid to do

Deadpool — because I’m garbage, the characters are great, the script is pretty good, and the movie makes me laugh. It’s not really a deconstruction (in the way that some people make it out to be, by way of justifying why they like it), and it’s not super-intellectual, and in a lot of ways, it’s like a giant #SorryNotSorry that makes fun of superhero movie tropes while continuing to use them (and there are some subtle ways it plays with some of said tropes and twists them around, but it largely doesn’t) — but it’s fun

But I’m A Cheerleader — is far from perfect, and I maintain that it’s actually much more depressing than the ending leads us to believe (I mean, Meghan/Graham and Dolph/Clayton get together and escape from True Directions and homophobic parents, and Meghan’s Mom and Dad at least try to do better by their daughter, but things don’t work out that well for anybody else), but it’ll always have a special place in my heart because it was one of the only lesbian movies that I had access to as a little gay baby

Female Trouble — I wouldn’t say that it’s the best thing that John Waters has ever done, just the one that I personally like the best, and I’ll admit that it’s probably an acquired taste…… but I love how it takes on celebrity culture in the story Dawn Davenport, and it gave us great lines like, “The world of heterosexual is a sick and boring life” and, “I wouldn’t suck your lousy dick if I was suffocating and there was oxygen in your balls!” It also has a special place in my heart as one of my favorite, “gay AND weird” movies

—which probably makes sense, given that it was written and directed by the trash king of being gay and weird

……like, seriously. My (best friend who I call my) brother once asked me, “So is John Waters gay or is he just really weird?” and the only thing I could think of to say to that was, “Yes, both.”

the “Three Flavours Cornetto” trilogy — which is totally cheating, to put three in here, but I couldn’t pick between them. I do think that Hot Fuzz and The World’s End are more fully actualized than Shaun of the Dead, but I love all of them, and the reason is pretty much just, “Because they’re good mixes of being hilarious and making me FEEL things” (……less so in The World’s End, for several reasons; it’s a lot heavier on the feels, to the point that you sometimes feel bad for laughing at the jokes, but still)

and books:

Good Omens (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman) — This book was my introduction to both PTerry and GNeil, after I found a cheap copy in an airport bookstore when I was about twelve and immediately fell in love. It’s funny, the characters are vibrant and engaging, and it played right into my love of screwing around with Biblical mythology.

I’m periodically tempted to list different books for both of those men (with PTerry’s probably being one of the Granny Weatherwax books, or Faust Eric, and GNeil’s being either American Gods or one of his Sandman books — because yeah, he’s done other good stuff, but I’m more sentimentally attached to AG and Sandman. Also, Preludes and Nocturnes has some of the only non-movie or TV horror that has genuinely terrified me, so)

—buuuut then I never do, because Good Omens was my first book from either of them, and remains my sentimental fave, even though I admit that they’ve both written other books that are, “better” or, “stronger,” or whatever

Dry (Augusten Burroughs) — There’s a lot of fair criticism to be made of Augusten Burroughs, and he’s been one of the writers at the center of the debates about truthfulness or lack thereof in popular memoirs (like, how much an author is allowed to condense things before it stops counting as a, “real story,” and how an author remembers things happening vs. how other people remember them), but Dry nevertheless means a lot to me.

Like, I enjoyed Running with Scissors and his novel, Sellevision (which were the other Big Deals in his collected works, at the time I originally read Dry), but Dry fucked me up a LOT when I first read it. It has continued to fuck me up ever since.

There are passages in this book that I can’t even be jealous of, as another writer, because they’re so good that they skip right the fuck past, “I’m angry and jealous that I didn’t write this myself” and into, “Holy shit, THIS is why I write, the ability to do THIS KIND OF THING EXACTLY with words, I need to go write something right now”

Also, it means a lot to me for sentimental, “I read this book for the first time when I was in high school, and it made me feel less lonely and sad and scared” reasons

Dynamic Characters (Nancy Kress) — This is by no means the be-all and end-all of, “how to writer better” books, but it’s a personal favorite of mine, for two reasons: 1. there are some things that Kress doesn’t cover about creating characters and doing better by them in your writing, but she’s still pretty comprehensive and offers some solid illustrative examples, multiple perspectives on this part of writing (not as many as she could, but to be fair, she only has so many pages to work with), and a good mix of “tough love” advice and gentler, more reassuring advice;

and 2. …it was the first, “how to writer better” book that I ever got my hands on. I picked it out specifically because I’d posted a completely ridiculous crack fic that was a crossover between Harry Potter and Sailor Moon, with a first-person protagonist narrator who was a hot nonsense self-insert power fantasy Mary Sue with no flaws and no nuance because, hey, I was 11.

And someone actually commented to go, “Hey, look, you have talent, but you could do better and one place to start is maybe with learning to build better realized characters” — so I picked out the Nancy Kress book and it seems like a really silly thing to call a turning point? But it was big a turning point for me

Death, Disability, and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond (José Alaniz) — okay, time for me to be a loser and cite an academic book. I’m also probably a cheating loser, since I just read this book for the first time recently…… but with that said? I’ve read a LOT of critical treatments of the superhero genre, some pretty good, others pretty bad (for example, I remain Perpetually Tired of Slavoj Žižek’s heavy metal Communist, Bane in Leather Pants bullshit reading of The Dark Knight Returns), and most of it somewhere in the middle

—but there’s this trend among people who write critically about superhero junk, whether they’re academics of not, wherein we act like we have to act like superhero comics are The Most Progressive Ever and oversell their sociopolitical impact in order to make them look like ~*True Art*~ That Must Be Taken Seriously (—and like, I’m not saying that they have NO impact on people at all, because that’s objectively false. But you also can’t try to claim that Superman, Wonder Woman, and Captain America comics are why the Allies won World War II)

(this is a pointless aside to note that I deliberately left the Goddamn Batman off that list, because while Supes, Diana, and Steve were all off punching Nazis, Golden Age Bruce and white boy!Dick were running around on the home-front, rounding up Japanese Americans and putting them in internment camps. So… y’know. There’s that.)

……or we have to take legitimate criticisms of problems in the superhero genre, both historical and current, and use them to go, “Therefore, the entire genre is pointless garbage that has no redeeming qualities at all and could never ever EVER be used to tell any stories that are worth telling, and frankly, you are all terrible, horrible people for enjoying it, how very dare you enjoy that X-Men movie or that Red Hood And The Outlaws comic, you’re basically a fascist now”

—which is hilarious, to me, because the people who write that sort of criticism almost always cite Fredric Wertham’s book, The Seduction of the Innocent (aka: the book that led to so much moral outrage over the allegedly very gay and fascistic, child-corrupting content of comicbooks that the Comics Code Authority was created), and they always go, “Well, obviously Wertham was OTT and totally full of shit, buuuut…… *argument that would not have been out of place in his book*”

So, one of the big reasons I loved Professor Alaniz’s book is that is does neither of these things. It offers some incisive, and occasionally kinda damning, critique of the superhero genre and its handling of disability and mortality, but he does so from a place of love and enjoyment, and never pretends to hate the genre, nor argues for throwing the whole thing out because it has problems.

Like, his underlying mindset is very much, “Yes, the superhero genre has a LOT of problems, but people could, in theory, fix them and try to get closer to realizing the full potential of what these characters and stories can do” — while never skimping on a detailed analysis of the trends and case studies that he presents.

Sometimes, I think he’s kinda reaching (and I, personally, never want to hear anything about Doctor Doom’s Oedipus complex ever again so long as I live, though it was validating to hear that my theatre kids AU version of him — who is a ridiculous mess, obsessed with taking selfies, and perpetually acting like he totally gets everything while missing some crucial detail, which is how he ends up thinking that Loki is dating Tony Stank [a suggestion that makes both of them want to puke] — is actually a valid interpretation of his character, based on some parts of canon)

Overall, though, my biggest problem with Professor Alaniz’s book is that he can be kind of a hipster and it can get a little bit annoying. Not enough to ruin the whole book, but enough that it does stand out.

Like, his chapter on Daredevil specifically analyzes an infamous Silver Age story that basically everyone hated — the one where Matt Murdock tells Karen and Foggy that he isn’t the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, but he has some heretofore unknown identical twin brother named Mike, who is not blind but *IS* actually that aforementioned costumed hero, and carries on a charade of pretending to be his nonexistent twin brother — and okay, we get some pretty neat discussion of how passing can work or might not with disabled people

…but you can still walk away feeling like his biggest reason for analyzing that story arc was less about its value to any part of his discussion, and more about going, “Other Daredevil stories are too mainstream, I care most about this one that was so infamously ridiculous that people have said even soap operas wouldn’t have done this plot”

Likewise, I’m not saying that there aren’t very fair criticisms to be made of the X-Men and how their stories handle disability in particular… but at some points in his chapter on the Silver Age Doom Patrol comics, Professor Alaniz seems to be less, “using the pre-Claremont Silver Age X-Men stories as an illustrative foil to the Doom Patrol, especially with regard to how Charles’s paraplegia is treated vs. how The Chief’s paraplegia is treated” and more, “using this discussion as a free excuse to bash on the X-Men for being popular”

To his credit, Professor Alaniz does kinda discuss some of the ways that the X-Men’s popularity might have been affected by the fact that things like their ableist handling of Charles make them feel, “safer” and, “less sociopolitically threatening” than he makes the Doom Patrol out to be (with a pretty convincing argument, actually)

He just doesn’t do it enough for me to feel like his “criticism” of the X-Men isn’t at least partially grounded in going, “Well, it’s popular, therefore it sucks” (—as opposed to my approach to them, which is, “It’s popular, and has a mixed bag of things that it does well vs. things it does that suck, but it does not suck BECAUSE it is popular”)

Anyway, good book, and it’s written in a refreshingly accessible way (it’s still an academic book and harder to get into than, say, Good Omens, but Professor Alaniz doesn’t make a lot of the more common mistakes that leave a lot of academic writing effectively incomprehensible)

and last but not least…… Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire (we all know who wrote this, okay, come on) — because I’d be lying if I didn’t include at least one HP book on this list, considering how important those books and that fandom have been to the course of my life and to my development as a writer, and it was either gonna be this one or POA, but this one won over the other because I’m garbage

#coeur gris #memes for ts #ask box tag #mine: asks #opinions for ts #top fives meme #longish post//#coeur-gris

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aroberuka · 8 years ago

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Evens for writers ask meme?

2. Where is yourfavourite place to write?

Either the kitchen table, which is the perfect height for my laptop & the only place in the house that gets sunlight in the morning, or my bed tbh.

4. Do you have anywriting habits/rituals?

Not writing habits so to speak but I do have a getting ready to write ritual that mostly consists of dragging myself out of bed and going for a walk.

6. Favourite characteryou’ve written?

Mouse!Surana, hands down. I kinda just made her on the spot for that one oneshot and as a result she ended up radically different from my usual OCs (they’re not usually this… driven xD), which made her such a blast to write.

8. Do you have anywriting buddies or critique partners?

@coppercaravan has been both for a little bit over a year and they’re such a pleasure to work with tbh.

10. Pick an author (orwriting friend) to co-write a book with

1) @coppercaravan we should stick our OCs together and see what happens, y/y?

2) That being said it’s super easy to get me to write with you literally all you have to do is drop into my inbox like “hey we should write a thing” and be very patient with my spoonie ass.

12. Which story ofyours do you like best? why?

Honestly it’s the quasiplatonic solavellan fic. I love Tathas, I put a lot of work and also a lot of me into it, I have a lot of thoughts about what’s coming next and I really wish I could finish it already esp since it wouldn’t be that long (like. 8-10 chapters tops, not counting a potential Trespasser sequel) but I haven’t been able to get in a DAI mood for forever x_x

14. What does it takefor you to be ready to write a book? (i.e. do you research? outline? make a playlist or pinterest board? wing it?)

Ideally I’d need the stars to align perfectly on a week with two Mondays, but more realistically what I need is:

-a playlist, or at least a couple artists that’ll put me in the right mood

-character sheets with some basic info + relationship charts + their stake in the plot

-a rough chapter by chapter plan that will inevitably fly out the window by the time I finish chapter 1.

16. Cover love/dreamcovers?

Not really, no.

18. Tell us about thatone book you’ll never let anyone read

So back in January there was that self-insert month thing, and I figured why the hell not, but b/c I’m apparently unable to write self-indulgent fluff and also I was in a Mood it turned into a writing as therapy thing and now I don’t know what to do with it b/c on the one hand I do want to write it & I think it would help me deal with some stuff but on the other idk that I would ever be able to let anyone read it, let alone post it online.

20. Any advice foryoung writers/advice you wish someone would have given you early on?

Length is overrated, short chapters are fine and the only good piece of writing advice is that there is no such thing as universal writing advice.

22. Tell us about thebooks on your “to write” list

… I’m not gonna give you a full list b/c it would be ridiculous but the ones that are on my brain atm are:

-- Présages aka The Novel aka that one story about ghosts that turned into a story about the importance of healthy communication & a good support system.

-- A novella about an aromantic protag that was supposed to be a subplot of the previous but is now its own thing so I can give it the attention it deserves.

-- A fantasy novel that started with me listening to too much critical role and is basically a thinly disguised metaphor for fighting against depression.

(All of them are depression books tbh and I’m not even a little bit sorry.)

And then there’s the fics:

-- A post Akuze longshot feat. Leo, grief and politics.

-- A Leverage/HP crossover feat. pre-canon Eliot, wizards and poor attempts at dragon smuggling.

-- A CCS/Naruto crossover that I’ll probably never write tbh b/c the sheer size of it is terrifying to me, but I like to dust it off every other month anyway b/c I put a lot of thought into it.

24. Do you remember themoment you decided to become a writer/author?

I don’t remember the moment I started to write – that was a long long time ago – but the moment I decided to become a writer I’m pretty sure was when I read The Princess Bride, b/c I very distinctly remember closing the book and going “I wish I’d written that”.

26. What’s the mostresearch you’ve ever put into a book?

It’s kinda hard to tell tbh b/c my research, like everything else, tends to be scattered in short bursts over months/years, but my most recent research-heavy project has been the Leverage/HP crossover, which has led me to a lot of reading on poaching/smuggling as I tried to figure out how one would go about smuggling a dragon.

Turns out there’s no actual book on dragon smuggling but I ended up learning a lot about butterfly smuggling, which as it turns out is

1)a thing

2)very serious business.

28. How do you stayfocused on your own work and how do you deal with comparison?

I don’t. I don’t stay focused on anything, ever. I also deal very poorly with comparison even tho the only one doing the comparing is my own self.

30. Do you like to readbooks similar to your project while you’re drafting or do you stick to non-fiction/un-similar works?

I do! I find it very helpful esp. when I’m writing in a genre/style I’m not used to. I try to avoid it with fanfiction tho so as to avoid accidentally absorbing other people’s headcanons into my own work.

32. On average how muchdo you write in a day? do you have trouble staying focused/gettingthe word count in?

Tbh I usually count in ‘pages’ (quote/unquote b/c I’m using my own format which is considerably shorter than what you probably think of when you hear ‘page’), and I’m trying to get myself to two pages a day for The Novel but I’m considerably slower when I’m not writing in French b/c language is hard.

34. Unpopular writingthoughts/opinions?

-- Character death is overrated.

-- The idea that conflict is necessary to tell a good story is highly subjective and even if it wasn’t a good conflict shouldn’t just boil down to ‘characters being horrible (or downright abusive) to each other’/‘characters being forced to commit or witness atrocities’ over and over again.

-- Romance is boring and so is smut.

-- Young/aspiring writers need positive feedback way, way more than criticism, constructive or not; constructive criticism overall is overrated (which isn’t to say that it’s never useful but like it’s not The One True Way For A Writer To Improve that a lot of ppl try to sell it as).

36. Post a snippet

She’s always been lucky is the thing.

Lucky to find the Reds when she needed them, lucky to lose them when she no longer did, lucky to get caught by the right people at the right time, lucky to be offered military service instead of prison, lucky that Anderson had seen something in her no-one else ever had.

Lucky to survive doesn’t feel so special.

38. How do you nailvoice in your books?

Honestly that is one thing that comes p much naturally to me? Like whenever I write in a character’s voice I can usually ‘hear’ what I’m writing so to speak, which makes things considerably easier tbh.

40. Do you look up toany of your writer buddies?

What kind of question is that I look up to all of y'all??? I’m not even kidding here y’all are amazing and talented and I’m so thrilled I got to meet all of you?

42. How many drafts doyou usually write before you feel satisfied?

I’d say 2-3 though it’s kinda hard to tell b/c I don’t strictly speaking work in full drafts, I tend to go back and forth between paragraphs instead.

44. Why (and when) didyou decide to become a writer?

I must have been like 16 or something. Hell if I remember why except I love stories and it seemed like a good idea at the time?

46. Past or presenttense?

I actually prefer past tense despite my current inability to write it (idk why all my fic end up being present tense but I suspect English).

48. Do you prefer towrite skimpy drafts and flesh them out later, or write too much and cut it back?

I mean most of my fics are already under 500 words long can you imagine if I actually cut stuff from them? :p

50. Do you share yourrough drafts or do you wait until everything is all polished?

I tend to wait until everything is polished but also, again, it’s super easy to get me to share rough drafts or even outlines with you b/c I am weak and crave validation.

52. Who do you writefor?

Me. Always.

Like listen the fact is actually talking openly & honestly about personal stuff even to people who have been there for me in the past is literally the hardest thing for me to do and I got so damn good at avoiding it I don’t even have to think before I do it anymore, and sometimes it feels like writing is the only way I can actually properly communicate anymore. So yeah I’d be lying if I said I didn’t care about ppl loving what I write but it will always be first and foremost something I do for myself.

54. Favourite firstline/opening you’ve written?

already answered here

#ghouliissh #marti #marti why i thought we were friends #i didn't even reread this i'm just kinda assuming i didn't leave any answer unfinished

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raitrolling · 8 years ago

Text

i fucked up and answered the wrong symbol but fuckit im still doing this

☾ - What was the first idea that inspired the creation of each of your trolls, and do they still embody that idea now?

listed in order of creation, and some of these answers are gonna get really fuckin long so prepare yourself for masses of textwalls

charon: ive gone over his history in this ask here, so tl;dr version: i wanted to make a light greenblood who was creepy and loved blood and fighting. thats it. why people like this guy even though his origin is literally being Edgy(tm) is beyond me. while blood and fighting are still his main interests, his creepiness is no longer being creepy for the sake of being ‘ooh hes so evil and InSaNe xD xD xD’ to actually having motivations and becoming a legitimate threat to others.

skathi: I DONT THINK IVE EVER ACTUALLY TALKED ABOUT OLD!SKATHI BEFORE SO ONLY FORMER MSPAF MEMBERS REMEMBER THAT DUMPSTER FIRE LMAO. but basically skathi’s original concept was vaguely inspired by The Importance of Being Earnest since i was studying that play at the time, but rather than being a british gentleman who invents an alternate identity as an excuse to fuck off to the country or invents a sick relative as an excuse to avoid boring social events, she was a lowblood posing as a highblood because people she fucked over burned down her hive. however that idea didnt work at all because she was complete shit at hiding her blood so that got scrapped, and shes been completely remade twice. now the only concepts that have stayed through the revamps is that she’s an axe-wielding Flarper who uses poisons and got her hive burned down.

cvetka: cvetka’s another character who’s been completely revamped and reset, but her concept hasnt really changed as much. originally she had chlorokinesis that went awry all the fuckin time because whatever man im 16 i can write whatever bullshit i want (aka no reason at all). also she was inspired by the Victorian Era + the language of flowers because i was studying that at the time (you will see this becomes a common thing). then i cant remember if it got confirmed in the comic or if it just because a commonly accepted headcanon on mspaf that highbloods didnt have psiionics at all (whats a vriska) so that got scrapped. then in her revamp she became a complete recluse because pacifism is a no-go on alternia, and while i find that shes become a much better written / well-thought out character as a result, my chances to rp her have become severely limited.

katrin: was my self-insert. originally she was painfully shy and couldnt really talk to anyone without get super embarrassed, and also she was an artist instead of a writer. then everything changed when the fire nation attacked she got a boyfriend. its kinda funny tho because she had no interest in working or getting rich until she met gerrel, yet she ended up on the complete opposite path to him by becoming a thief and running scams with her moirail at the time. then a shitload of events occurred (most of them retconned out of her backstory but their effects on her character still remain. also we dont talk about 90% of those events because i was a Bad Writer at the time and im embarrassed by everything and nearly anxiety-vomit whenever people go ‘hey remember this’ BYE) and we got the piece of shit raccoon thief we all know and love. also ive mentioned this heaps of times before but at one point she had robolimbs cuz both her arms got shot off but i retconned that to having the bullets graze her because i hated drawing her cybernetics lmao. the only things that’ve really stayed with her is that she’s still really awkward and a little shy, as well as still retaining a lot of my negative traits from her self-insert days.

viltau: ive also talked about vil’s history in another ask, but tl;dr wanted a Gatsby troll cuz i was studying the book at the time, ended up making an Edgelord. he’s still pretty gatsby-esque, being a rich guy who worked his way up to the top (tho nowhere near as drastically since he’s already a highblood) and throws a lot of parties, but since he’s a huge literature nerd now he’s a lot more self-aware and aims to purposely embody tropes from his favourite novels. i still like the idea of yellowblood!viltau (and his old sprites are adorable i mean look at him), but i have a lot more fun writing him as he is now. he’s almost a parody of himself, yet simultaneously played completely straight.

somerl: he was originally inspired from me going through my photo albums from times ive been to Hamilton Island on holiday, and in particular the one night i went on a cruise on The Banjo Paterson. i liked the idea of a cute sailor troll, and that was all he got characterwise. then, like katrin, he developed as a result of a bunch of events occurring to him and that’s how he gained a personality. he’s still a cute sailor troll, but now he’s a paranoid insomniac sailor troll with an obsession for superstitions and hatred for seadwellers and women. seadweller women are his worst nightmare.

dismas: his origin is actually kinda funny cuz i was watching this amv, and around about the time that Birthday Massacre song starts playing there’s this white-haired kid who appears and i thought he was the coolest thing ever. to this day i still have no clue who he is or what anime he’s from. also because it’s still 2011 and I Was A Teenage Edgelord i had an embarrassing obsession with Izaya from Durarara so of course dismas had to be an informant who fucks with everyone. originally he was yellow!viltau’s assistant who carried out all the shady jobs and was my go-to troll for killing off ocs i got bored of but they had history with other people’s trolls so i couldnt just get rid of them. then his original concept got combined with vil when i retconned vil into being an indigoblood. when i brought him back i kept the informant stuff and the Edgyness, but now he’s edgy to make fun of the fact he was a legitimate edgelord played 100% straight back in the day. also his roboarm switched sides because i forgot which arm he lost lmao.

aegiel: did a complete 180 in terms of character concept, and went through a bunch a revamps before i even started rping her. originally she was inspired by Hollywood Undead (particularly the song city), and was actually a super hemorebel who managed to escape capture and culling by having probability manipulating psiionics that ensured luck was always on her side. then i scrapped that entirely because at the time i was studying the Chinese revolution and the topic of the cultural revolution came up. so then her concept switched to being based on the Chinese Red Guards, as well as partially the Russian Cheka since i studied the Russian revolution the semester prior. I thought the concept of a super hemoloyal lowblood with a fanatical dedication to the Empire would be interesting, since most hemoloyalists tended to be highbloods. the only things thatve stayed from her original concept are her name and symbol, as well as her laughing quirk being a remnant of how her lusus was originally a cheshire cat.

aiolos: i dont really remember where his original concept came from, apart from i remember seeing a fanart of a 1920s style Scout from TF2 and liking the idea of a courier troll. i know i drew his original design in history class while watching Doctor Zhivago but i dont remember anything about that movie to know if that had any bearing on his character lmao. originally he was pretty rude and kinda sleazy, which ended up morphing into the sass you see today. he hasnt really changed much from his original concept, but its more that his character has grown over time.

kalpan: ok i have a confession to make. the reason why i made kal was because there were a shitload of anonbloods on mspaf that were either A. really bad at hiding their anonblood status, or B. were all almost always tyrianbloods in disguise who would pull rank every time someone gave them shit for being anon. and me, being the egotistical piece of shit i am, decided that i wanted to make a good anonblood. so kal’s blood was kept secret and she stayed out of trouble so that itd never get revealed, and her reasoning for being anonymous was just that she didnt really care my dude. she hasnt really strayed too far from her original concept, but rather expanded on the reason why shes so casually apathetic and gave her more of a backstory.

leithe: leithe’s original concept was something i dreamed up, no joke. from what i remember from the dream, i went to like a superhero school or something, and there was this one kid whose power was to cancel out other people’s powers so he’d be the one to save other kids when they lost control of their powers. his power also looked like a bubble that’d envelop himself and the other person whose powers he was cancelling out, so when i made him a fantroll that turned into an invisible field in which his psiionics were constantly active. and instead of being a hero, leithe was just an average dude who’d take up odd jobs here and there so he could have the skills to get a good job in the fleet. conceptwise he hasnt changed much, although hes become less tolerate of other lowbloods over time and he grew 500% more eyebrow.

pratap: was the first new troll i made after starting this blog. his first idea was a cute little seadweller who didnt really understand why other trolls were suspicious of him and his innocent offers to take them to his cafe for coffee. then shortly after making him, I studied Great Expectations in my uni literature class, and loved the idea of pratap getting a mentor who turns him from an innocent little kid to a typical shithead member of high society. that plot was going pretty well but fell through because of Reasons (read: i no longer associate with the other rper), so now he’s stuck in limbo characterwise but id love to pick it up again sometime.

errett: i say this every time i bring up errett’s history but haha remember when this guy was supposed to be cute. so errett was supposed to be in a group of trolls inspired by the four main elements from the game OFF., but pwo and i never got anyone to fill the spots for the elements of metal and plastic so it was just errett and his troll karnvr. and yeah, errett was supposed to be cute and his rudeness was meant to just be cutesy ‘ill puff up my cheeks and get angry and everyones gonna think im adorable’ but that got thrown out the window the moment i started rping him and he became a complete cunt. then we started thinking up a backstory for him and he became even more of a Bitter Angry Baby, so now the only elements that’ve really retained are his design and references to the game OFF..

sigrun: was inspired by those gifs of penguins falling over and the fact that i fucking love penguins and cry whenever i see cute penguin-related things. apart from being a bit more aggressive in their first draft, they havent changed much at all (probably because i never use them ever oops).

kisert: i have another confession to make. the reason why i made kisert was because i thought the whole ‘creepy little kid who talks to ghosts’ troll was overdone to hell and back so i wanted to make a parody of it by making a troll who pretends to be creepy and talks to ghosts to con people. he’s always been a massive childish brat, but his brattiness and childishness has gotten even more apparent over the years. tho at the same time, because those tendencies have been played up, he’s become a lot more emotionally stunted and stuck in the past as a result, which i think is more interesting than his original concept.

raesul: also hasn’t really changed from her original concept. i had the Danger Days album on repeat and really liked the idea of a hemorebel radio host, and so rae was born. she’s also partially inspired by Motorcity which i was watching at the time (and never finished oops), hence her radio station being called radio BRNR, after the Burners group. while rae was always supposed to be completely different from her miss summertime identity, the differences have become a lot more pronounced now that rae is super awkward and insecure while miss summertime is loud, proud, and always in control. also miss summertime’s wardrobe went from being super girly to more punk and rock-and-rock inspired, originally i wanted to avoid that because i thought itd be too cliche but then somewhere along the line i decided ‘lol fuck it’.

shirei: is based off the pokemon pangoro, cuz one of it’s pokedex entries states how its tough and aggressive but doesnt tolerate bullies, so i thought the idea of a tough but almost motherly gang leader would be neat. i was also watching Kill La Kill and Revolutionary Girl Utena at the time, so she gained some tomboyish but also princely/fairytale-esque qualities as a result. she hasnt changed much in terms of concept and ideas, but she kinda retroactively got inspired by quite a few of the Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure protagonists (particularly Jolyne and Giorno, but also a bit of Josuke) because they were kind of similar in concept.

redeti: was made as being a part of a group for trolls based on santa’s reindeer that i was doing with pwo. red is a combination of the ideas i had for Dasher and Vixen, and when i first designed him we joked that he looked like a lovechild between viltau and kitaer, so his interests became snowcones and murder to reference that. while he’s still a part of the Northern Lights crew with all the other reindeer inspired trolls we made, he’s become more detached from everyone else as a result of making friends with people outside the community. but in terms of original concept and ideas, he hasn’t really changed apart from probably becoming a lot more naive and dense over time.

fannar: is another troll from the Northern Lights crew, although they were made about a month after. they were kind of based off my idea for Donner, but also a mix between one of my older trolls i got rid of and my old Hetalia oc Antarctica. since they werent going to be a reindeer troll, i wanted them to be an outsider to the group, hence their polar bear lusus and their sickly constitution making it difficult for them to live in their current environment. originally they legitimately hated redeti’s guts and wanted him dead, but over time it’s become more of just a simple blackcrush that’s made them very protective of him.

nancor: ive mentioned this before, but his original concept came about because of this video and me deciding i really liked xatu. i had also seen The Book Thief recently, and loved the character of Death (i havent read the book yet tho dont judge me), so that’s where nan’s whole ‘pleasant but morbid angel of death’ came from. he’s also somewhat based on a couple characters from Hamatora (which is an alright series but the 2nd season is a complete dumpster fire and you should only watch if you want to watch a show fly so far off the rails it becomes hilarious), such as Ratio’s power requiring him to cover up his eye, and Moral’s design (as well as Izuru Kamukura from Danga Ronpa being another design insp). he’s always been kind of a silly character with his dumb puns and the fact that he walks around wearing a blindfold and fights with semaphore flags, but the more serious aspects of his personality didnt come in until much later.

eichio: another troll that started out as a huge fuckin joke, i saw this vine and wanted to make a troll who used noisemakers as their strife weapon. his mimicry and talent with musical instruments was just random brainstorming, and his whole ‘mimicking other trolls so he can learn how to act properly and pick up their behaviours to become likeable’ became a thing because i didnt know what personality or interests to give him. then i really started to explore the concept of a troll who has been raised to be nothing but the perfect people pleaser and even more perfect servant, and the effects that would have on someone’s mentality. he also developed an anxiety disorder cuz i got diagnosed with GAD and realised how much of myself id unintentionally put in him. its kinda amusing how a character who was originally supposed to just be a blank slate ended up so complex, but i really like how much hes grown as a concept.

davitt: dav was made for that meme that went around where you and a friend had to come up w. 2 ocs in secret and not reveal them until they were both done, and then you had to figure out how to ship them together, so i came up with him while pwo made walker. i was watching How To Get Away With Murder at the time, so i really liked the idea of a corrupt lawyer who used loopholes to get all his clients out of being found guilty, and was only in the job field for money and the fact it was really easy for a tealblood to become a Legislacerator. but, since im incapable of making trolls that arent also huge fuckin dorks, he was also a huge lazy piece of shit cat who hoarded random garbage and came up with dumb ways to be efficiently lazy. over time his corrupt and greedy ways have fallen to the wayside in favour of the more comically serious side to his personality, though they’re still slightly there since he is primarily a defense lawyer and we all know those types of lawyers are the devil.

ananta: ana is based off the game OneShot, which i played and fell in love with instantly. a lot of their concept stems from the game, ranging from superficial stuff such as their appearance resembling Niko and how their strife weapon is a lightbulb, but also the technical aspects of the game such as their unforgiving personality being a reference to how you only get one shot at the game, and their hobby as a hacker referencing how the game does shit to your computer as part of a puzzle. the resemblance was apparently so close that the creator of the game reblogged my concept art for ana, which im both still flattered and embarrassed about. like a lot of my recent characters, their core concept hasnt really changed, but rather ive focused a lot more on aspects of their personality like their extreme bitterness to hide their vulnerablity, and their loneliness as a result of the events in their life and the facade they put up.

soroll: is a literal meme. hes based off the ‘scream at own ass’ opossum meme, and is part of a group of meme animal trolls owned by pwo, who is also a huge memer. again his concept hasnt really changed since hes always been kinda dumb but with a huge heart, but over time hes become more of a mother hen type since he ended up unintentionally gravitating towards trolls who never took care of themselves so hed fuss over them. also i have no clue what happened to his quirk over time or even what accent its meant to resemble now lmao.

benrii: is based off Sanetoshi Watase from one of my favourite anime of all time, Mawaru Penguindrum. like ana, he’s not so much a direct rip of the character (apart from appearance) but more of an amalgamation of references to the series, so you have things like his obsession with fate mirroring the theme of the show, his apple bombs referencing the symbolism of apples that appears constantly, and the fact that he’s 9.5 sweeps refers to the 95 arc number in the show. also at one point i fell into a huge rabbit hole and ended up reading up about cults and biblical shit so that’s where his god complex came from. the whole ‘being addicted to praise and acting out for attention’ aspect of his personality didnt come about until much later, and thats now the dominant part of his character as a whole.

rosato: is another troll based on memes and joke posts on tumblr rifp, but this time its those posts on modern vampires and people not recognising they’re actually vampires and seeing things like their sudden aversion to the sun and garlic to just be weird coincidences. so then i came up with the idea of a forgetful rainbowdrinker who refused to believe theyre actually dead because they forgot how they got killed and assumes all the associated Weird Vampire Shit are just coincidences. he’s also got a shitload of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure references in him because this was around about the time i got into the series. after errett failed, rosato was my second attempt at making a shy and cute but kinda mean troll, but once again he ended up becoming a full-blown rude asshole.

zotick: i was reading Vento Aureo and thought ‘you know Gold Experience is a fuckin cool power, what if I tried to make it less OP and turn it into a fantroll’. thus, zot was born. like rosato, his design and personality are a bunch of references to Giorno, and his love of bugs/scorpions/lizards/etc came from the fact that whenever Gold Experience turned something into an animal, its always something gross and dangerous. like eichio, i couldnt decide on any interests so i took the cheater’s way out and made it that he got bored easily so he doesnt stick to any main hobbies apart from bugs and pranks. Over time, he became more obnoxious and annoying, which was mostly because every single bug-related post on this site i could find was a fuckin meme.

Indi and Kaiman: im putting these two together because i came up with their concepts at the same time. firstly, i wanted to make trolls who were interested in the paranormal and aliens and shit, and secondly, i wanted them to be not quite siblings but grew up so closely they could basically be considered the Alternian equivalent of brothers. They were supposed to look similar in appearance and clothing too, but when i drew my first concept of indi i really liked what i came up with but it didnt suit how i envisioned kai so they ended up becoming completely different. i also wanted indi to be the quiet one and kai to be the loud one, but then i liked the idea of them being completely conflicting in terms of first impressions and ‘real’ personality. while their concepts never strayed away from their original idea, they definitely became a lot more developed and evolved once i started talking about them to ez, who was designing mauban at the time. from their interactions with mau, indi became a lot more extroverted but also trusting and optimistic, whereas kai became more judgmental and standoffish than i had initially intended, which i thought was a neat contrast.

mikiel: he’s Ghiaccio from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. that’s it. character analysis over. ok i lied, but a lot of his character concept came from the fact that i really loved Ghiaccio’s design, personality, and powers, and really wanted to make a troll like that. funnily enough his gang affiliation is not a reference to Passione / La Squadra, but rather because i wanted to add more characters to the red scarves. the whole mutant thing is because i really wanted him to have psiionics but also wanted him to be a blueblood, and the fact that his powers are nigh uncontrollable is me reusing original!cve’s chlorokinesis idea, this time the reason being because his body cant handle an ability that supposed to be only seen in lowbloods rather than just Because Shut Up. he was actually supposed to be aggressive and Angry(tm) all the fuckin time, but after a while i considered that his life is actually really fuckin depressing so he gained ‘depression’ as his second emotion. now i try to focus more on his defeatist nature as opposed to anything else because otherwise he feels just kinda one-note.

aislin: is based on Alphys from Undertale, because i really like making characters based on my fav indie rpgs apparently. i got to that part in the game when you realise that alphys has been watching you from the very beginning, and thought a troll with surveillance-based psiionics would be a really neat concept over making Yet Another Geeky Scientist (although ais is interested in science to reference alphys, she just doesnt practice it). in terms of personality, she’s katrin 2.0, because as much as i love kat how she is right now, i really missed her adorably yet painfully shy personality that she used to have. i am also v. protective of ais and the types of trolls she interacts with because i refuse to have another Incident. so its more of a return to original concepts that earlier characters once embodied.

lanthi: came about because A. I was watching Owarimonogatari and i fuckin love Ougi and B. it was finally time for me to make a subjug. her chucklevoodoos are a play on the fact that Ougi is scarily good at prompting people into figuring out the exact answers they’re looking for, and especially in the Sodachi arcs how she was able to make Araragi remember everything about his past that he’d blocked out of his mind just by asking the right questions and the right time. for lanthi, i interpreted that as fabricating memories through suggestion, so her targets become more receptive to listening to her since they suddenly recall her as a familiar face they can trust. i havent really done much with her so i dont rly have anything to say, other than i still have no clue what the fuck she is.

velour: oh boy, velour. i had so many concepts for this fucker that it was hard for me to settle on one. along with being a celebrity fashion designer and vlogger who happens to be a lowkey con artist, other concepts i had in mind were a matchmaker, and a borderline yandere who uses his celebrity status to lure in targets to fall in love with him. i scrapped the latter two ideas (tho now the yandere thing gets referenced by the fact he gets fans paying him to act out their own weird celebrity stalker fantasies LMAO), and somehow managed to mash together all my concepts into an actual troll. he took the longest for me to figure out, and it wasnt until after i made liiore and gave him a past with him + mikiel where everything started to click, but now everything works and im super happy w. him.

liiore: was somewhat of an offshoot of my many velour concepts, since along with the celebrity idea i was also thinking of an ex-celebrity concept as well. also one night i was reading the PokeSpe page on Bulbapedia and it mentioned one of the main characters being an ex-celebrity who became a shut-in after he got too overwhelmed by the lifestyle, and i really liked that concept. so then liiore was born. he was also my 3rd attempt at making a cute shy boy character, except this time i nixed the ‘but also grumpy in a cute way’ so i wouldnt end up with Yet Another Errett or Rosato. now hes a huge dopey ball of adorable shyness.

daimon: so when i first played Awakening i made a Fire Emblem-inspired troll who didnt really click with me so i scrapped them almost immediately. then Fates came around and I fell in love with every single archer but especially Niles and Takumi, so i was like ‘yknow what lets try round 2 for an FE troll’. so dai is a mishmash of all the Fates archers (but Niles remained the main inspiration so that’s why his appearance and personality is closest to him), as well as kinda more Arthur than Setsuna simply because i thought a troll with impossibly bad lukc would be hilarious. and also hilariously tragic, hence his backstory. since i havent really rped him that much he hasnt really changed in concept, but he also became inspired by Jake Peralta from Brooklyn Nine-Nine after i started watching that and now i cannot unsee dai in jake help me.

callan: is based on a combination of ‘The Phantom Thief’ trope, Bungou Stray Dogs (particularly Dazai and Chuuya in terms of design), and the fact i was talking about my faceblindness issues with my parents and thought ‘hey a character who no one can remember what they look like would make a great thief’. and i was thinking about rosato’s backstory and really wanted to make an npc to fill in the gaps re: how he died but whoops i got attached to the concept and now ive got a legit troll on my hands. i was also thinking about how i have way too many pretty + well-dressed + cultured male trolls so i kinda made callan a different spin on my own predicability by making him look smart and cultured but really not giving a shit about anything of the sort. he loves the theatre but only if theyre musicals with a lot of comedy, he steals art and knows his art history but only so that he can definitely steal something of worth that isnt going to end up a forgery, he’s sharp dressed because it attracts attention given his caste, and he drinks beer because he looks like a guy who’d prefer wine.

#headcanon #EVERYONE #jesus christ its finally done #im going to bed now its 5am and my parents are already awake RIFP

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