#also can i just say i'm sorry to all kotallo fans

[dany36]

I'M SORRY WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST WITNESS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE "HIS AMUSEMENT" QUEST HELLO???

HELLO HELLO HELLO?????? GAYLOY IS REAL????????? ALOY GETTING FLUSTERED?? HOLDING HER HAND OUT TO SEYKA AND THE WAY SHE LOOKED AT HER AFTERWARDS???? I'M SORRY WHATWHATWHATWHATWHATWHATWHATWHATWHATWHATWHATWHAT!!!! "SEYKA SEEMS BETTER. GOOD. WE'RE GOOD. OKAY. CAN'T GET DISTRACTED FROM THE TASK AT HAND"!?!?!?! THE WOMAN CAN'T STOP SMILING!!!!!!

i apologize for all this yelling but HOLY SHIT!!!!! are they really doing it?!?!

[pikapeppa]

Hi pikapeppa ! 👋😊

I'm a huge fan of your work, so I wanted to ask you something, if it's okay, of course...! ❤️

I know that most people, when they're writing, often have a global idea of what they are going to do but ...

Before you write, do you imagine a scene completely unfold in your head first, then write it down ( with, I guess, a few modifications, of course )

Or you just go with the flow and write with only a vague idea of where you're going, the moment you sit down behind your desk ?

I ask this because, I do the latter and it really is killing my focus. I keep going back and forth between being in the zone and being distracted when I do that. But I'm also afraid that doing the former will kill my creativity in the long-term, I don't know why ...😐😢

It's very abstract, so I hope I managed to express myself clearly ...!😅

Take care ! 😘

You're a great writer ❤️❤️❤️

Hiiiii sweet friend!! 🥰 I’m so sorry it took so long to reply to this!! The reply is a bit long, so I'll put it behind a cut!

This is a great question — and my answer is that it depends! Sometimes there will be a very specific scene that I’ve imagined in detail, e.g. how a first kiss/first sex scene happens, or sometimes I have a very specific dialogue in mind that I want the scene to revolve around. When this is the case, the writing does involve fleshing out that imagined scene/dialogue and turning it into words. For example, I recently wrote a scene of Aloy and Kotallo slow-dancing, and I had a very specific mood in mind: this scene from Love Actually (but more horny LOL). So for the writing of that moment, I had that movie scene in my head, and I was trying to translate it from visuals and into words. To be honest, this is some of the writing that I find most challenging — how to turn something that’s so visually effective into something that’s just as effective in words!

But there are other times when I do sit down with only a vague idea of how I’m going to get to a certain point in the fic. For example, for Chapter 2 of Coming In On A Western Wind (Aloy/Avad), this is literally what I had in my outline for the second half of the chapter:

The night she leaves Varl behind, Aloy sneaks into Avad’s room and they have sex. He wants her to stay the night; she says she can’t, but she’ll stay until he falls asleep. He make a gentle joke that he’ll stay up all night, then. But inevitably, he falls asleep, and when he wakes up, she’s gone.

That’s really not much detail, which means I had to fill this in a lot without anything clear in mind. I had to figure out how Avad gets back to his room after dinner with the fam, then what he’s doing at the time that she sneaks in, then how they transition from her sneaking in to actually having sex — e.g. are they going to chat first? Would they just jump right in? And then the actual sex scene: I didn’t have anything specific in mind for what positions or sex acts they would engage in, so that was more flying by the seat of my pants. So for this chapter, I was kind of just going with the flow and going with the mood of the characters while letting them lead the conversation, rather than trying to transform a specific scene in my head into words. This kind of writing can be challenging, too, especially figuring out how to deal with transition moments, e.g. what Avad would be doing in his room before Aloy came. When I’m having trouble figuring out how to make those transitions happen, what I usually do is get up from my desk and go clean something in my apartment BAHAHA. For some reason, the getting-up and moving-around helps me find the solution more easily than when I’m staring at my screen! 😂

Most of my chapters involve both of these kinds of writing. There’s usually a specific significant moment/scene/dialogue that I want to hit in each chapter, but I don’t always (or even often!) have it clearly fleshed out how I’m going to get there. I’m more of a plotter than a pantser, though, so the way I deal with this is by point-form plotting out how I think I might get to that scene — nothing special, nothing fancy, just basically scribbling down ideas. Then, once I have those ideas written down, they form more of a “skeleton” for the flesh of the chapter that I can build up on. Each chapter often involves many cycles of jotting down point-form messy ideas, then fleshing them out, then repeating the cycle as the chapter progresses. 

In terms of worrying that visualizing-then-writing will kill your creativity: hmm, it’s hard for me to comment on this, because everyone has different styles of writing, and what works for one person won’t work for someone else. Both styles of writing work for me, as I mentioned above, and I’m also admittedly a very “plotty” writer.  But I have some friends who just know that if they were to plan too much, they’ll get overwhelmed or lose interest in the project, so flying by the seat of their pants or jumping around between scenes in their fic is what keeps their creative juices and motivation going. 

Since you're finding that the "vague idea" route is killing your focus, I wonder if you might try the idea I mentioned earlier, about point-forming your ideas to flesh them out a little more before jumping in? It’s something of a compromise between plotting too much and being too vague, so it might give you just enough structure to help stay focused! 

I’ve elaborated more on my process of writing a longfic here, though I think you might have already read that 😂🧡 but it explains in more detail about how I use outlines as a memory aid and to guide myself, and how I keep myself motivated while writing a really long project!

I hope this is helpful, lovely friend!! Happy writing!! 😘

-- love from your friendly neighbourhood Pika! xo

[foibles-fables]

talanah: the case of the omitted hfw companion

soooo @meg-noel-art and I have finally connected the dots we haven't connected shit re: Talanah's conspicuously short and choppy quest line, along with her overall unsatisfying departure from the game (in lieu of joining the base team). We now hold with 99.9999% confidence that Talanah was fully intended to be included a member of the base, either with a different ending to her quest line, or a different quest line altogether.

As we all know, the early (earliest!!!) promo--the GG Instagram splash posted in tandem with the 2020 HFW Announcement trailer--featured her in exclusivity as a returning character. While this official promo art has since been retconned, it still appears on the inside of the steelbook case with the special preorder additions, as well as on a bunch of GG's official ad material (the Twitch stream header, for example). Her comic was also being released at the same time as all of these dealings, culminating in one final confirmatory line: Talanah's story will continue in Horizon Forbidden West.

Now. I won't get into how I do or do not view any of the returning characters' stories as...real or satisfying continuations in HFW. But it's pretty objective to say that Talanah's was decidedly Not. Without even diving once again into the characterization issues (of which there are plentymorethanseveral), both of her quests give us nothing more than a recap of the comic. Seriously, every dialogue wheel we get with her and with Amadis provides a summary of what happened in The Sunhawk. Nothing new learned, no growth made. Story Not Continued, Same Story Rehashed. It's conspicuously not what we were promised, and not what (IMO) GG knew the fans wanted. I think that's pretty clear, regardless of your view on anything related to her character.

So, what the hell happened? Why was this the product were were given?

Easy: it wasn't at all the product that was intended in early baseline development.

There's a pretty glaring complication re: Talanah's integration into HFW--Freya Parker (her hilarious and lovely VA, seriously go check her out) began shooting Jurassic World: Dominion in February/March 2020. And uhhh we all know what was going on right around then, lmao. So not only does this become a scheduling issue, but a quarantine issue as well. Actor travel during projects was likely a huge ordeal, and Freya's actual studio time was probably vastly limited. Combine these challenges with an already-bloated cast load, and...it becomes pretty obvious which character needed to have their role diminished by degrees. Freya can't get to the studio and dedicate much time--we don't get a Carja base member.

One can pick up hints of this around the base. How almost every character (even new bloods Zo and Kotallo) bring her up at length in the "Companions" speech option, even if they're never mocapped in the same room. The item left at the base, when no other non-members get that treatment. How every single thing about her quest's epilogue and beyond reads like a huge "sorry sorry sorry we're sorry" from the devs ("until next time," "I wish she could have stayed," etc.). It's a consolation for what they had intended--fuller tribal representation, balance among the new and old cast members, a true continuation of Talanah's story.

So what does this mean? Well, yeah, it means that I'm still disappointed and that it's still okay to be disappointed. But having a more rational explanation beyond "this was probably the plan the whole time :))))) she's really not THAT important after all just accept your dinner :)))) oh look the writers forgot about her :))))) i ordered you a new clown nose :)))))" makes me feel a whole lot more optimistic for her potentially having a bigger comeback role in HZ3. We must stay focused, brothers. Shoutout Freya Parker.