#and an entire rewrite & restructure of the work would take time that I Don't have right now 😔

[taniushka12]

Still thinking about that stupid poll and it results, the arrogance of the average english native speaker has pisses me off so much like not only its obvious the question was written that way to generate a negative and superficial reading but also, a fic is not a physical book, you're on the internet, if you see something in another language you translate it, why wouldn't fic be the same? is it such an otherworldly idea? are you too good for google translate? I hope for whatever reason ao3 suddenly bans english and people get forced to read stuff in another language if they're so desperate as they always are when the site is down. Pick up a translator and engage with things in another language or kill yourself

[witchkillr]

CANON DIVERGENCE MASTERPOST, OR: aaa if it actually cared about the narrative integrity of its title character.

this rewrite is primarily concerned with giving agatha back the agency that she did not have in her own show, and secondarily concerned with recharacterising her early behaviour into something more consistent with wv!agatha, whom my portrayal is based most strongly on. it's also long, so feel free to take what you need and leave the rest.

i assume a fairly canonical rio here. i am open to restructuring that relationship with individual writers. in this reimagining, it is every bit as toxic as was presented to us.

so to begin with - agatha's superobjective, her goal beyond simply regaining her power, is to use that power to craft a new darkhold. she is interested in reconstructing her protection from death as quickly and efficiently as she possibly can. she has researched this extensively in the past as a backup plan, just in case something like wanda maximoff should come along, and now she's ready to go to work.

now, episode by episode:

1. AGNES OF WESTVIEW is a modernised noir detective flick, not a cop show. think, like, a significantly less cool jessica jones. agnes o'connor is a private eye with a dark past, and rio is her client, bringing to her attention a murder that slowly but surely unravels her world. [this is her perception of events. however individual partners approach characterising rio within that framing is, of course, up to them.]

otherwise the episode is perfect as is, no notes. i also have no issues with e2 - in fact i think it's excellent. agatha the master manipulator, setting up her con perfectly, the way she always does, only for it to take a sharp left turn and for her to immediately adapt? brill. so, then, we pick up with jen's trial.

3. i find agatha's behaviour in this trial to be completely absurd and out of character - or at least lacking a necessary level of nuance. her panic makes perfect sense to me: she feels trapped in a situation that is entirely new to her and should not exist, but also by the same token reminds her deeply of her time in westview. the outfit she's in is one neighbour!agnes would wear. it completely tracks that she's having a Moment, but she needs to suck it up and put the mask on like we've seen her do countless times. the whining/clawing at the door/refusing to drink the wine... no lol. none of that. it's happening internally, but on the outside, she's playing at control. she's "walked the road before"; time to work the problem.

this parlays into my issues with her handling of sharon's death etc, which is my main problem spot before we get to the end.

4. episode three begins with agatha coaxing her misbegotten coven into following her into the first trial. she is positioning herself in a leadership role, rallying the troops, making herself out to be this invaluable expert. why, then, is she so callous and selfish at the top of episode four, if she sees their trust as a resource? we know why: because rio is coming, and she is attempting to make a swift escape. i don't care, though. there needs to be a balance struck here. agatha painting herself as this uncaring and cruel is essentially shooting herself in the foot. sure, she's planning to kill them all, but she is currently forced to sleep with her back to these witches - and meat shields are useful while she's still figuring out the rules of this conjured road. or, realistically, at all. there is no "mrs. hart was a bad draft pick, okay?"; she plays at remorse, but with urgency. "it's terrible and tragic but we need to go." equally, her exaggerated anger at rio doesn't serve her, and she should be aware of that. lilia and jen have made no secret of the fact that an enemy of agatha is likely to be a friend of theirs. accordingly, she plays it less furious/physically violent(? agatha what the FUCK) and more heartbroken. she's "distraught", not outraged. "don't touch me, you don't get to touch me anymore," soap opera levels of dramatic ex behaviour leaving the coven to wonder what on earth their history is, because holy shit Agatha Harkness Is Experiencing An Emotion, what did rio do to her? these changes also heighten the "betrayal" in the soundbooth, when rio forces the issue. agatha was behaving like a person with feelings, who had normal reactions to things like covenmates dying and Whatever her past with rio is - to have the rug pulled out from under that perception hits hard specifically because she cultivated it intentionally and successfully. that also creates more tension between her and rio; she had to sacrifice her own long con for the sake of exposing rio's nature, and she did it anyway.

i take negligible issue with characterisation from e4-e7. don't feel the need to change anything there, except - and this is just wildly self-indulgent - she's in the no good deed dress in e7 instead of the wicked witch fit.

into the real meat of it now.

8. agatha always intended to sacrifice billy to save her own skin, and she does not change her mind at the last minute. she drove him to murder, among other reasons (getting him off the road, creating a concrete resolution to the scarlet witch's lingering power so that all the pieces are on the board, and in some twisted way, delivering what she owes before she lets him die) to further justify it to herself. this is however complicated by several factors - more on those later. she did not bind jen. that removes agency from both of them unnecessarily - agatha "didn't know", rendering arguably the most important event of jen's life narratively meaningless. [again, it's up to individual jen players how this is written around. if you'd like, we can plot something where agatha did bind her, but i can't see it with things being what they currently are - specifically, her comments re: jen's work being important.] re: the fight. i take significant issue with the unbalanced power dynamic here, not because i think agatha should be powerful enough to actually stand a chance against death when she's going all out, but because the way it's written and choreographed, agatha is death's victim. rio cackles from on high while torturing her and agatha, after her spells fail, does nothing to attempt to turn the tide. it's only by the grace of billy maximoff, yet again, that she escapes. they need to talk to each other in this scene at several points, and this is the first. agatha needs to attempt to manipulate rio into letting her go one last time. the issue from episode one is still not resolved: agatha still does not have her power. this is not by any stretch a fair fight. did you prefer me formidable mean nothing? having done all she could, which is significantly more than we saw, that's when billy shows up. i take everything as read until "we can't fight death", because what have you been doing for centuries then, bitch???? yeah you don't have the darkhold but the two of you together???? this is what i mean about the imbalance - she's resigned. it's not a give and take, it's rio's inevitability, her cruelty in the spotlight. i know she's saying it to set up the sacrifice - to manipulate billy into being the one to die - and i think it needs to stay like that, but i just wanted to point out that it's infuriating. now. "is this how nicky died?" i have a fresh answer to that question, and it's no*.

on this blog, agatha harkness killed her own son. she did it as a mercy, and as the only way she could think of to cheat death. this does not negate the fact that she also did it because she wanted power. he was the one thing she loved most in the world, and she killed him anyway.

nicholas was born sick. he was on borrowed time from the moment she held him in her arms the first time, and she knew that. she spent his first six years of life frantically searching for a way to fix it - to keep him, to defy death, her lover, who should have been her son's other parent. she found one, she thought, in the book of the damned: she'd been curious about the darkhold since a child, but she'd never felt she could attempt it. as nicky worsened, it became paramount that she try, no matter the cost.

as i've touched on, she had never practised necromancy before, out of respect for rio and her work... but traditional healing won't work, and she knows that. if he dies in a way other than the lady death had planned for him, and agatha returns him to life with the power she will be granted by the darkhold, then surely rio has no authority over them anymore. surely her spectre won't haunt nick anymore, then. surely agatha will be able to protect him if it does - she's heard rumours that the darkhold grants immortality. a cloak. a shield.

naturally, it doesn't work.

this sets up a far more interesting choice for her in e8, when billy asks her that damnable question - because it isn't how he died, not really, but it's more of a conflict in her. it's much murkier than a straight no. nevertheless, she does not sacrifice herself. she does not give into rio's manipulations, and she does not conflate this boy for her son. her son is dead, and agatha survives. it's all she's ever done. there is a moment of her looking devastated by the comparison before composing herself, putting her mask back on, and delivering her final words to rio: i held up my end. you'd better keep yours. so saying, she walks out of that garden in full witch kit, past the people of westview, into the woods.

i leave the ending open on this intentionally, so that respective rio and billy writers can decide how they think that scene plays out without agatha there. what happens from there is unique to each dynamic and portrayal.

for agatha, though, her next step is to start in on the goal she's had this whole time: to craft a new darkhold. and her first stop, with that in mind, is the ruins of wundagore.

[blysse-and-blunder]

in lieu of lawn care

10:30pm, sunday, may 26, 2024

cut the grass today, and then went and spent two hours lolling around outside, sitting on a blanket that even now smells perfectly of summer

reading just finished kj charles' the henchmen of zenda (thank you @yogurtforever for mentioning it to me! please overlook the fact that i'm about to go off) and i have to say, surprisingly, this was a rare kj charles miss, for me! i still finished it, i still think i'm glad i read it, but from an author who i've adored all of her other work, it's odd to realize i didn't have as much fun here as i would have liked. two reasons for this, possibly, one that i think it was an early work for her [edit: nope came out in 2018] and two that i actually had read the source material of which this is an au, and i found it continually grating that this book's whole tone and style is set up to be cynical about the original prisoner of zenda novel. if you want the critique to really, actually matter, don't change so much! don't make your case by actually rewriting the entire personalities of the king and player-king, who in this turn into strawmen because they've literally been restructured to prove monarchy is awful. the other option, b), would be to step further away from the source material, in which case you need to stop quoting the original book and integrating so much of the original language. bah. this leaves us open for one of my most irritating little meaningless quibbles, which is that a character gets very self-righteous about what the original novel's narrator meant by using the term 'well-bred', to the point that i think ends up actually being ahistorical and weakening the overall critique we're trying to produce here.

charles is also trying to introduce more time and personality for the female characters (moderate success) and insert some revolutionary, 'hey wait a minute the best answer here is not a continuation of the monarchical system where everyone sucks' sentiment (middling to poor success). i just...found i really hated the idea that every character was Worse, Actually than in the original novel, although in fairness it is believable that the pov character here would think that, i guess. you chose a narrator who's going to take a cynical view of everything, and are trying to show how he allows himself to trust and/or like certain very few people, and it didn't make for a great reading experience.

the same, however, can't be said for the other two books here, although arguably they are also dealing with a narrator who is a) damaged and grieving b) gay. katherine addison's the goblin emperor was a christmas/birthday gift for me in...2022 and was such a gem, a gift in multiple senses, and this spring i have finally indulged in the two companion (?) novels, which i read voraciously on Eclipse Day and the weeks following, and then have turned around and listened to in audiobook almost immediately. the world of amalo is no less full of horror, death and injustice and corrupt or infuriating structures of power are a big part of the inciting action, but the time we spend seeing the people who are kind makes these so much more. pleasurable to read. plus the details of the city, the public transit, the tea houses, the opera, the belle epoque prague vibes. there's comparatively more death, more 'true crime' style mystery solving, more small vignettes of crime (reminding me that she does like writing cases like this, and making her her sherlock holmes au angel of the crows, pictured in ilcb 05/12/24 but not discussed, fit into place in a new way), but the lack of cynicism matters.

listening a lot of podcasts lately. had reason to try and sum up my podcast habit recently, and realized that i am really almost constantly listening to one, of some variety. i go through different moods and will switch between shows to find the right vibe rather than try to finish one all the way through. that being said, the list i tell people when asked 'oh what do you listen to?' is, like, 99% invisible (genuinely really enjoying the robert caro the power broker read-along, despite not reading the book-- it's fascinating) and articles of interest and ologies, whereas this week i think it was primarily no such thing as a fish, followed by normal gossip, followed by i hate it but i love it followed by some npr and crooked media pods (god help me, i do still check in on their election takes and will probably continue to do so out of morbid curiosity). the maxfun shows i listen to? are like family to me, and may be just as overlooked-- but you can bet that's where i'm turning first when stuck on a long subway ride.

watching had reason, last week, to sit down and watch the entire new season of gamechanger start to finish. y'all heard about this shit? gamechanger? anyone? yes? i bought dropout for myself and a few friends last year, and it has been the best possible investment. i love feeling the, like, increase in energy and stakes and creative chaotic potential in each new episode, each new show that gets added to the roster, but i love gamechanger til death do us part. hard to pick a favorite bit for cast psychic damage and resulting peak performances (second place?? bingo?? the timeloop??? sam says????) so let me here give a shout-out to the lesser memed episodes this season, the drawfee collab and the newlyweb game (scream) and beat the buzzer, all of which were so fun while featuring people i knew less or not at all. the little sam reich matryoshkas absolutely killed me. can we hear it for the motherfucking ART DEPARTMENT.

playing having beaten one of the colosseum of fools tournaments in hollow knight, i've gone back for round two and am now emotionally trapped until i can win this second one. since i need the pale ore from it in order to upgrade and do anything more challenging. so it goes. this has also meant that i turned back to other games, after not wanting to continue to die so very much. chants of sennaar was there waiting for me so politely, and i got through the third language and felt pretty accomplished after puzzling slash brute-forcing it i had to do to make things work. was not expecting the uh. the jumpscare, as it were, at the end of the bards' level. but look how gorgeous.

making made a pretty passable banana bread today. the ratio of banana to other ingredients was a little off, so it's largely just 'bread' and isn't too sweet, but it's more than edible.

working on ignoring my email inbox, ignoring my article revisions, ignoring my chapter edits--forgot to send out the email with discussion questions for our panel discussion which we meant to send out this friday, fuck! trying to make progress on paid tasks and stay on top of those hours before i leave, trying to also organize my trip which has meant, like it or not, getting back to some of those emails. also i found an article in welsh which i had been unaware of which will be Extremely Good to have read, even if it doesn't tell me anything too new, just so that i can prove i did. my footnotes always feel so anemic. hopefully this helps, and hopefully i speed up--currently reading about two pages an hour if i'm lucky.

[james-stark-the-writer]

i have been writing a paper for a class for coming up on a continuous 10 hours now and i've only just reached the minimum page limit and only analyzed one of the two texts i was supposed to be analyzing, and i still have obviously not gotten to a conclusive argument so,,,,,,, i'm so fucking tired. and this paper is fucking due noon tomorrow so i have to finish it before i go to sleep tonight bc ik i'm not going to wake up early to finish it so like my life is a nightmare. thankfully, the second text is way shorter and easier to talk about, but i have only managed to write 9 pages in 10 hours, it is genuinely so exhausting writing this, and it's not even because i don't know what to write, it's that there's just so much shit to fucking write about like i could make this a 30-page paper but my professor knows me and she has given me a max limit of 15 pages so i'm trying to keep it contained, and figure out which like the most important pieces to my arguments are but also i'm writing about like entire novels so it is hard to fully get all of my thoughts and arguments across because so many of them are built like a scaffolding on top of each other so it is very difficult to know where to even begin and what to cut out and like if i make this a full 30 page paper i can't then cut it down to a 15 page paper because the structure of the arguments won't work and i would have to end up rewriting the whole thing anyway so i'm trying to get it right the first time so it requires minimal editing and it is really annoying but i am at least at my minimum page limit so whatever the fuck i write now just has to be good enough to get an A on this assignment which should be easy bc i do really like everything i have so far (even if it needs a little restructuring) so i just literally have to like analyze the other text in a few pages and really condense it and write a conclusion (these are herculean tasks) and then i'll be done but that's going to take like another three fucking hours and i have no coffee and i am starting to feel the effects of sleep on my brain so genuinely just i hate everything. i even have to write another paper tomorrow which i haven't even started but thankfully that's due at midnight and it's only like four pages so i can do that pretty easily but this one is fucking killing me.

[covfefeships]

Weekly Writing update

Because I decided I'm gonna do these now every week to keep myself accountable and on track.

The writer's block is over hallelujah!!!!

Specific updates for each fic below the cut:

I should have the next chapter of Penned to You out by tomorrow morning. Decided it's going to be longer chapters than my usual stuff, but a much shorter fic, only 7 chapters total. Looking at about right under 50k total words completed for this fic.

The Once Great King Ch 2. is in the works. I'm taking my time with this one. I really want it to live up to how good I thought the first chapter was. (Which is very difficult because I was in the height of my college days and writing ALL the time when I wrote that one) Expecting this chapter by 4/29.

... I'm really, really frustrated with The Emergence Day Parade right now. I don't have good feelings surrounding this fic right now so I've been distancing myself from it a bit until I can look at it a bit more objectively because half of me just wants to just delete it and the other half is like "well hang on there cowboy, that's a little impulsive". I haven't started the outline for the second half yet, not for lack of ideas, I am just very disappointed in the first half and want to do major restructuring before I move forward. I'll have decided how I would like to proceed or what needs to be corrected on this one by the end of the month.

These Masks We Wear... I really didn't like the last chapter and it's been tearing me up. I feel like I changed the tone way too quick, and put too much emphasis on keeping the fic lighthearted. The character experienced a manic episode, albeit an unrealistic one, (expect maybe the scene in the pantry) I originally had it more realistic and the entire chapter mainly took place in the reader's head but I pussied out because I wanted this story to keep a more lighthearted tone. I'm really debating deleting that chapter and rewriting it fully as the more realisitc chapter that I initially wanted, just because I think I would be happier with that outcome.

Ghost of You - My little Dust/ Reader one shot. I've got a little written on this one, but it is very low on the totem poll, still, I will try to get this one out by 5/4/24

[dxppercxdxver]

tagged by @chiropteracupola a rather long while ago for this ao3 tag game (we are ignoring my play analysis teacher right now so might as well look at my fic writin' stats!)

ao3 name: mxpauling (tho this changes rather frequently!)

fandoms: in terms of fandoms Published On AO3, the greatest number are for detroit: become human and subsequent fan film detroit: evolution, due to my feverish participation in the deartfest fan event summer of 2020 (in which i wrote well over a novel's worth of words in. approximately a month.), but others represented include: team fortress 2 (specifically of the flintlock fortress variety), mystery science theater 3000, spies are forever, hadestown, the true lives of the fabulous killjoys, and some smaller one off fandoms (deathtrap, the moors, goncharov, the wolf and the watchman, and where or when)

number of works: 28! which is. a Lot higher than i remembered it being

work I spent the most time on: fairly certain it's 'leave your body at the door' as it was written over the course of about four months, which for me (guy with formerly wildly unmedicated adhd) was Insane

works I spent the least time on: oof uhhhh i mean i've written Several in the course of just a few hours, like 'cut something, kill something, eat something', 'i can't stand to see you bleed', 'don't give it a hand, offer it a soul', and 'old churchyard', amongst MANY OTHERS THAT ARE OLDER (and i didn't feel like copying)

longest fic: first place goes again to 'leave your body at the door' but coming as a close runner-up is 'Potentially Lovely, Perpetually Human', from way back in the de days

shortest fic: '(i feel) an overwhelming need', my recent the moors character study

most hits: this would be 'Out Of The Blue', due to its featuring in the octopunk monthly roundup at the end of deartfest. turns out, a built in Massive Stream Audience will bring people to your fic

most kudos: once again, 'Out Of The Blue', for much the same reasons

total word count: 144,556???????? (sorry this is NEWS TO ME)

favorite work of my own: a lot of them have already been featured in this list, so i will take this space to spotlight both 'Try Again, Die Again' (i am so proud of the premise) and 'Where the Sun Can't Find Me' (i really liked the prose in this one and am genuinely super pleased rereading it)

fic you want to rewrite / expand on: oof there are Several: i had a halfway plotted third installment of the killjoys: dead zone series about the girl and show pony settling into a new life in batt city that i'd really want to revisit someday; i'd love to restructure and rewrite 'Potentially Lovely, Perpetually Human' to make the pacing a bit more consistent; i have an incomplete fourth fic in the spytown logs series i want to come back to; and for the sake of space and time i want to redo the end of 'Out Of The Blue' because my God it's rushed

share a bit of a wip or story idea you are planning on: changing tacks Entirely. behold my bill & ted fanfiction you cowards

Everything is perfectly, totally sublime, another freakin’ awesome day in San Dimas. And Ted has a seriously heinous problem. “Dude,” he says before his brain really tells him to, turning to Bill, “this day is freakin’ awesome.” Bill nods, smiling most radiantly, pushing his sunglasses up his nose. “Totally awesome.” It is. Today is totally, absolutely, one hundred percent awesome, but… Ted doesn’t feel awesome at all.

this is a fic about ted getting wild depression post excellent adventure and not knowing how to deal with it because uhhhh he does not know what depression Is (and also they kiss a little)

tagging: @natdrinkstea, @nico-demons, @wilhelmina-murray-harker, and @fix-fax-fuckyou :3

[aohendo]

Hallo there and happy STS, my friend!

Today I'm asking a question about editing: Once you're done with a first draft, what's your editing process (timeline, software, other writer/reader feedback, etc.)?

Happy STS, @aschlindartroom!

I love editing. There. I've said it. I love editing. Getting the content down is nice, yeah, but making it work is something special.

Answer's long so it's below the cut. I'm happy to share pics or examples or explain anything in more depth, if anyone would like!

Throughout my first drafts I leave notes for myself in <<triangle brackets>> because they're easy to search. My first task after completing that first draft? Searching for the triangles and sorting out whatever I was complaining about/flagging for later. This normally takes a hot minute.

But yay, let's say I finally got through the triangles! Now it's onto the "to do" list in the project's Onenote. These are things which would have been in-text triangles, but I realized would need to be fairly major changes (as in, outside of that particular page or chapter). Accomplishing these to-dos takes even longer than dealing with the triangles, often requiring rewrites, restructuring, and continuity searches.

Finally I've completed those to-dos! This is where I take a pause to scribble out the plot and put it on some sort of structure. For Attenuate/Reverberate, it was an 8-step hero's journey. For Prince for Hire, it'll probably be Save the Cat. Usually my plots don't exactly hit the main beats, so that's something I flag to work on during draft two.

Okay, we've got out plot scribble out, our notes and to-dos fixed, and we're ready to go. Time to reread and make more triangle notes, and more to-dos. I'll re-read the entire draft in its entirety, pausing occasionally to throw in comments of things to fix, emotions I'm missing, areas to clarify, etc. IE, it's death by triangle note again. This is the moment where if a scene or section is just absolutely not working/accomplishing what I need, I'll open up a new word document and rewrite it. I'll keep the OG version open on one half of my screen (to save the good parts), but then I will make the scene accomplish what it needs. This serves to tighten the pacing and ensures I hit my plots and subplots, as well as my worldbuilding.

Draft two has been thoroughly noted-up and rewritten (as required). Time to go back through and fix those triangle notes. Again, this takes a hot minute, and may result in more rewriting.

Let's say I've finally finished with that. Now comes the fun part! I tend to be very wordy when I write, which jacks up my pacing. This next edit is the "destroy it with a chainsaw" edit. I change the font to something easily readable (like Open Dyslexic or Comic Sans), I set that spacing to 1.5 or 1.75, I pop by the local office supply store and buy a three ring binder, and... I print it. The entire thing. All 600ish pages.

From there it's a classic hack-and-slash edit. I like using pink pens because I think it's funny to use something not red, and green is far too serious. I look for redundancies. I look for sentences which are just too long and winding. I look for unnecessary descriptions (or descriptions which are simply stage directions). I look for overly verbose dialogue. I look for anything confusing. I slash through them.

This is mostly a subtractive edit. That said, it'll happen that I end up hand-writing entire pages to fill random gaps, or to clarify things, or whathaveyou.

Okay, we're finally done this "destroy it" edit. The next bit is fairly logical: I take those handwritten edits and I apply them to the digital manuscript. This is then what I term draft three.

In draft three, my primary focus is clarity. Does the plot work, does it make sense, and are the characters' actions logical? Are there any areas I still have mentally flagged as "not what it should be, and I will be able to fix it on my own"? Draft three is for ensuring I have the manuscript where I want it to be.

If I've got the manuscript to the point where I can't fix it any further without outside input, I set it aside for a week and use that time to search out a critique partner. We'll arrange a manuscript swap (usually via Google Docs), let each other know our harshness tolerances and things specifically we're looking for, and then we'll go for it. Treat their manuscript like your own. It needs care, and it needs love, and it probably needs some help, too. If it didn't, they'd be querying/readying for self-pub rather than working with a critique partner.

In my mind, critique partners are more like an editing buddy than a beta reader. Beta readers read from a reader perspective and share their reactions, while critique partners read from a writer perspective and share their techniques. I've learned so much from previous critique partners, it's absolutely astounding how talented they are.

After draft three's been thoroughly torn apart, and if I agree with what my critique partner suggests, I'll go in and try again. Fix it. This becomes draft four. Usually, there's so many significant changes after editing the digital version of draft four it's worth printing again for another subtractive edit. This print and destroy edit is the same as the original one, and once it's all tapped up again, it becomes draft five.

Draft five is usually where I feel confident in the manuscript, and this is where I'll look for beta readers. Basically, I want it ready to publish before I send it out to sample readers.

Anywho, that was long! Like I said up top, I actually love editing, and would be happy to go more in-depth/share examples/pictures if anyone would like me to :)