#author dream life

[realm-of-tas]

Love turns a man fragile to the utmost level of vulnerability.

[thepersonalwords]

Travel is costly yes, but it pays dividends too.

Aaron Lauritsen, 100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.

[erytherion]

Reading the webtoon and…

Does this imply that Kim Dokja also tried to write a questionnaire for her to fill in since she wouldn’t speak to him, that either he 1) never gave her in the end (especially if he couldn’t find her after she was released) or 2) gave it to her and she STILL refused to answer?

Because that is so so so so awful. It was already bad but if he tried so many ways to get her to speak and she still gave him no response, regardless of her reasoning… isn’t that still directly choosing to cut herself fully out of his life? Why in the hell did she lie for his sake and allow him to visit her if she wanted to never speak to him again?

I know everyone claims Kim Dokja is just like her in sacrificing himself for loved ones, but at least he tries his best to stay with them and to keep them in his life. He still chooses sacrifice, but it’s not because he intends to never return. He always returns (even if much later than planned).

The only time this differs is with 51%, when he STILL tried his best to stay with them - at least as much as he could.

I sometimes like Lee Sookyung, but I am mostly still SO mad at her for completely ignoring her child since he was 8 years old. Especially when he must have looked like shit any number of times from being mistreated and bullied by family, friends, army, employers.

But maybe that’s just the fragment in me being eternally pissed with her. She DOES love him, but like he says in the webtoon in this chapter - maybe such truths are painful enough to be false anyways, because they’re just SUCH bullshit. That’s not how affection should work, if you actually care about someone and want them to be happy.

[veryrealauthorthings]

[sweethoneyrose83]

Weirdcore Writing Prompts:

The Out-of-Bounds Library You find an abandoned library filled with strange books. None of them have titles, just pages filled with images from memories you don’t recognize but somehow feel are yours. As you reach for a book, it whispers your name.

The Forgotten Toy Shop A toy shop appears at the edge of town overnight. It’s filled with rows of bizarre dolls with mismatched features and faintly glowing eyes. When you turn away, you swear you hear faint, overlapping giggles that go silent as soon as you look back.

Endless Parking Garage You step into a parking garage late at night, only to realize you can’t find the exit. Each level looks identical, with the same half-broken fluorescent lights flickering overhead. Every time you call for help, you hear your own voice echoing back from somewhere far below.

The Digital Mirage While scrolling through old photos on your phone, you notice new images appearing. They’re taken in places you’ve never been and feature people who look almost like you—but not quite. The photos keep changing every time you look away.

Mirrored Rooms You walk into what you think is a mirror maze, but none of the reflections match your movements. They’re all copies of you, staring back with blank expressions, until one of them blinks and walks toward you.

The Silent Playground A playground in the middle of a field beckons with its rusted swings and silent slides. The air feels thick, and you realize there are no birds, no insects—just the faint sound of children’s laughter echoing from far away, though no one is around.

The Haunted Vending Machine A vending machine appears in your basement one night, stocked with items you lost long ago. When you press a button, instead of dropping an item, a faint, recorded whisper says, “Remember me?”

Telephone to Nowhere You find an old landline phone that rings at exactly 2:47 a.m. every night. When you answer, it’s your voice on the other end, but it’s coming from some distant place. You can only catch fragments of what you’re saying: “Don't forget. You’re almost there.”

The Shadowed Funhouse In an old, forgotten fairground, a dilapidated funhouse catches your eye. The hallways are lined with faded photos of strangers, yet some faces look oddly familiar. As you venture deeper, the hallways seem to get narrower and colder, and the faces in the photos start to change.

The Backroom’s Echo You find a door in your house that wasn’t there before. It leads to a long, empty corridor with doors that don’t seem to open. Every step you take echoes louder, as if someone is following you just a few steps behind, mimicking your every move.

[shannonsketches]

he's so important to me

[gncrezan]

IFs (especially IFs on tumblr!) are very fun because there's a lot of creator-fan interaction possible because of tumblr's ask function. you get to ask questions about your favorites, suggest ideas and sometimes those ideas are even taken on board. fans get much more content because the writers and creators are so accessible. and i feel like asking questions and leaving comments in this way has become so common and standard with IFs that people are forgetting that's a real person writing these stories. just because you can send the ask doesn't mean you should. DON'T BE RUDE ON ANONYMOUS!!!!! DON'T BE WEIRD ON ANONYMOUS!!!!! my jaw drops reading some of these asks so i can't imagine how it's like for the authors

[gigireece16]

sometimes a girl just desires a cozy cottage in the middle of nowhere, where she can write her lesbian literature, her dogs gathered around her desk, while she gazes outside to see her goats in the backyard

[defiledtomb]

DREAD WOLF!!!! my life is yours !!!!

[quotelr]

True beauty happens when two worlds collide and become one.

Imania Margria

[thepersonalwords]

Your attitudes towards others affect what you think about yourself.

Stephen Richards

[hashtagartistlife]

odd little comic that’s been in the drafts for a while

[bones-ivy-breath]

wolf dream moon by Gaia Thomas, from The Scores, Issue 10.

[stevieschrodinger]

Do you know if you'll be updating dream life I would love to know what happened next:) btw loving fish guy fic

I fully intend to update dream life, the next installment is partly written, however it's quite delicate and emotional so I will not put it out until I feel it's ready. Thank you for reading ☺️

I also love fish guy. 💜🧡💚

[oliolioxenfreewrites]

by golly, she's done it

I finally found a publishing method for Novaxiom, A Healer's Vow, and Tenebraethia. Now that AHV has been thoroughly written, I will upload it to my brand-spanking/ ... Official AO3!!

Weekly, until all 10 chapters are up. Of course, you, my quirkiest writer pals, will be the first to know. (Honestly, it is the only social media I primarily use for my writing that receives and allows me to provide excellent camaraderie. X, threads, and Instagram all reek of inflated egos.)

words are the most important, i appreciate the tiny writer's corner we have here! impromptu writeblr spilled ink!

Tell me your favorite interaction on your writblr since creating your account here?

@leahpardo-pa-potato @slenders1ckn3ss @drchenquill @the-golden-comet @wyked-ao3 just to tag a few of my fav writers ♥