#but they don't focus on it enough tbh

[rainedroptalks]

It sucks that teen titans vol 3 annoys me so much cuz there are some cool concepts and all but I physically cannot read too much of it in one sitting lest the demons get me

[kumakuma-circus]

hanamura bros save me... hanamura bros... save me hanamura bros...

[pekoeboo]

ugh. some thoughts.

really been trying to find the joy in drawing/writing again and honestly it's been such a challenge. friends have told me it's most likely depression that's making it hard to feel motivated and tbh they're probably right.

hoping to get back into being creative in the way I Want to be at some point tho. I miss it. there's still so much with my stories and characters that I haven't been able to share or explain and I wish I knew how without it feeling like this daunting, impossible task.

I don't know when I'll get around to actually sharing art again (or writing, if ever). was hoping that I'd manage to get some of my mental and physical issues in check recently for just long enough to get back into the swing of being creative, but that hasn't seemed to work. everything feels bad, both artistically and physically. I'm struggling to keep up with the frantic pace at which my brain comes up with story concepts and intriguing character interactions, even tho everything in me wishes I could turn it into tangible artistic expression so I can get it out of my head and share it. it used to be easy. I don't know why it's not now.

I'm just . tired, I guess.

[cowboywithacunt]

browsing through your blog makes my denim fetish go wild, keep it up cowboy ;)

I don't know if I have a denim fetish necessarily, but that seam between the legs on jeans does hit just right sometimes, if you know what I mean...

[pastafossa]

Hey I just wanted to ask a writer question. I really admire your writing and the amount of work and dedication you put into your stories and characters. You are one of my favourite authors ever. I have been wanting to get into writing and I was wondering how you flesh out your characters? For example you have a character that you’ve thought out, do you have a template that you fill in? Or just write a whole bunch of points about the character in a Google doc? I know that question might not make the most sense but I have a few characters that I’ve given quirks and backstories in my mind but I have no idea how to transfer them onto paper? Like Jane from TRT, is there just a big template or doc where you randomly put points into or some other type of organization? I know it’s not an easy thing to answer on text or even something you might not want to answer but even one sentence of advice is much appreciated :) Thank you so much for everything! I appreciate you. I will also put this into the ask thingy if you want to answer on there instead of PM 😁

I've managed to hammer this out in bits and pieces over the moments I've been more coherent so I think I'll make sense. First, thank you so, so, so much! I honestly love these characters so I'm always happy to hear someone likes it, even if I enjoy the work! 😭

Second - I do in fact have a template in doc form that I use to keep things organized! It's one I've been using since I took a novel writing course years ago by a published author, and in one particular class we went over character development, which is where I learned the template. The way I was taught (and the way I develop major characters) - first, even before filling in the template, I figure out their archetype(s). What story role are they filling? Who will they be a foil for? I like to think of those as your foundation, because every character is an archetype of some kind, and you can use that to build them up. To use Jane as an example, she's an antihero archetype, yes, but I've also pulled elements from: the Unscrupulous Hero, the Sympathetic Murderer, the Combat Pragmatist, and the Ineffectual Loner. Compared to Matt's hero archetype, she's the Lancer. Archetypes can help you if you're struggling to build up from the bottom.

Once I have the archetype, I start filling in the Major Character/Hero template, which roughly looks like this (if you don't fill it all right away, that's fine, because there's a step after this to fill it in the rest of the way). I like this one because I feel like it covers VERY important things that a lot of online character profiles skip, and has much less of a focus on looks (which I find way less important from a writing perspective):

Name: Age: Family History: Career: Physical Description: (include things like scars, notable or unusual features) Preferred Style of Clothing: (instead of listing brands, try to instead describe their style of clothing as it relates to their character - ex: Jane wears upper-end pantsuits in muted colors when meeting clients, because they carry a strong emphasis on professionalism; when hunting things down, she wears what is practical over anything to do with aesthetic) Goal: (every character should have one; what are they trying to do?) Motivation: (WHY do they want that goal?) Big Secret: (if it were Jane, it'd be what happened in Los Angeles; so what are they hiding? Keeping to themselves?) Self-image: (How do they see themselves? Are they confident and secure? Insecure and depressed?) Internal Conflict: (what are they struggling with?) Game: (What's some little game they enjoy?) Pet: (if applicable) Temptation: (what's aaaalways going to lure them in?) Vehicle: (if applicable; alternatively, how do they prefer to get around?) What makes them unique: (our fake post-apocalyptic character we made as a class had his teeth sharpened into points to scare people; Jane is often fidgeting with threads; just anything that stands out) How do they speak: (do they speak very precisely? Use lots of slang? Do they have an accent?) Quote: (What quote sums them up, or what quote do they relate to most? I have an entire folder of these for Jane tbh, and some for Ciro as well) Lesson Learned: (All characters should grow in some way, rather than stagnating. So how do they grow? What do they learn through the story?)

Now, this is something I was encouraged to do after the template, and also something I was already doing on my own. Once you have the template as finished as you feel comfortable with, you might feel like you need to develop the character a little further to fill in the rest, or solidify what you already have. The way you can do that? Write something short with this character. It doesn't have to be anything you need to post; it can be based on a short scene, based on a prompt, things like that. I like dumping them into: humorous scenarios, angsty scenarios, and Action Oriented (TM) scenes. Those really help you get into the meat of the character (aka: how they react to teasing/flirting/jokes; how they react to strong emotion; how they react in situations that might cause panic). Basically, it's your way of introducing yourself to them and becoming more comfortable writing them, because often a character might act a certain way in a cold, rigid template, but behave entirely differently once you drop them into a scene. Alternatively, you might get to writing and realize you need to make an adjustment so that they have better chemistry with the other characters. Writing a new character's a dance, and you're both going to step on each other's toes in the beginning, but once you learn how they move, it gets easier. And it helps them develop and grow as you learn about them!

[quietlyblooms]

i'll admit that the people pleaser in me always wants to give y'all every single option that gets a vote. it's a problem :' )

[things-methinks]

Talking to [leftist/socialist/progressive/whatever] white people as a brown girl is always an experience

[potatoesandsunshine]

sometimes the unhappy marriage of the rulers of ferelden.... is something that can be so personal

[chemicalarospec]

The funniest thing I wholeheartedly believe is that I have a neurodivergency not catergorizable or diagnosable as any currently recognized disorder. (disorder emphaized because heavily impairing functioning is generally a requirement of the clinical definition and a condition of diagnosis, and although i'm vexed i still Get By Just Fine)

because like yes those probably exist; there's no way psychiatry is in its final form now and there are definitely levels of neuro-difference that don't qualify as disorders, but like. that's so random and it's kinda pretentious to make such a bold claim about yourself. like oh u wanna be special, huh? 🙄 just be AuDHD like everyone else (<- joking)

[mintacle]

A trend in whump fanfiction that has been bothering me for a while actually is the conflating of morality messages with whump stories. 

As a great fan of the catharsis through Whump (Whump is like “Angst with a happy ending” or “extreme Hurt/Comfort”) I’ve been noticing that it greatly irritates me when the character being saved out of the bad situation of the premise has to either prove their moral worth before or after being rescued. 

The two characters who get the most whump attention are Tim and Jason, and I want to talk about each of their cases and why implying the need for moral goodness is problematic.

Tim is commonly going to “deserve” his salvation through silently suffering prior to his rescue. These stories enforce the mentality that it is good to not speak up about one’s suffering, that other people will notice if they really love you and that your best hope to be saved is to comply as far as possible with the expectations placed on you, to the point of self-neglect or self-harm.

Jason will commonly “deserve” his rescue through punishment or repentance after the fact. Often he is portrayed to be ashamed of his actions, asking for forgiveness and promising to change his ways. Along the lines of Tim, if silence is rewarded, then Jason’s willingness to speak up about his trauma must be punished. Often the defense for this is to say that Jason has killed people though, and surely we all agree that is just wrong. And indeed, in the real world, we do. But Jason is a fictional character, and his killing is more of a symbolic action for the demand of extreme justice in reaction to one’s trauma than meant to be understood purely literally. 

If we suspend our disbelief for the dressing up in a Batcostume and child-soldier-indoctrination of Bruce to be part of the medium, then we ought to understand Jason’s character with the same degree of abstraction. In the real world context Bruce suffers from severe delusions and Jason commits arbitrary murder. Suffice to say, this is not the story these comics are purporting to convey.

However a lot of fandom whump works choose to include an overt or covert moral message within their work. While it is understandable to cathartically want to feel that one deserves to be relieved of one’s suffering, it is troublesome that the implication arises that one ought to deserve it. The truth is that everyone deserves help and support, regardless of whether they in turn act in the ways we think would be best for them. After receiving help, a former victim should be entitled to the same freedom of self-determination as anyone else. There is no moral debt created by the act of having been saved by someone else.

Where Tim is usually the “good” victim and Jason typically the “bad” victim, they both get measured according to the same insidious metric that pervades the western cultural ideal of victimhood. Silence in suffering is expected and rewarded, complying to the demands set by the abuser is seen as more deserving of outside intervention than standing up for oneself and the narrative that being understood and having people agree with you, means that you are right and that you are loved. I find these implied moral conflations to the whump element of the story upsetting as a former victim of abuse. 

Because, look, the fact is that you aren’t more likely to be saved irl no matter how good you are. Victims don’t have to deserve help, everyone inherently deserves to be helped out of respect for them as a human being. No strings attached. 

[selfinflictedgunshotwound]

imo everyone on earth should be talking about Him (don't want this showing up in the tag even though it's not a diss) but everytime i go to the tag and there's only like 3 new posts i'm like. oh yeah almost no one cares except me and like 5 other ppl on here

i ran out of tags KFHSJENNXN i don't think that's literally ever happened to me before anyways don't read them because it's just me being insane as per usual

[la-cocotte-de-paris]

OKAY i managed to write out the general outline of this other play i'm gonna have start working on soon

[bonestrouslingbones]

suddenly realizing that for the reboot one of the things that i think i Have to hammer in a bit more is the concept of LV as like. just a straight up addiction

[izzy-b-hands]

edible bby u gotta Do More than this general vague relaxed thing rn. i dont wanna press u and also don't wanna use more of u rn so. cmon. pls. blease

[sxcret-garden-archive]

,

[mostlikelytofangirl]

Sharing an au bc i like chatting with you and probably won't ever actually write this. It is...sad.

Okay, you know how most modern AUs have wx with adopted a-Yuan?

Imagine A-Yuan losing his family due to some great engineering failure that affected a lot of people. He ends up with his grandparents until they can't take care of him anymore and he ends up in foster care.

Scenario 1: He ends up with the Lan family. He is never taught about his past family. He has a good relationship with both LXC and LWJ. One day, LWJ shows up with a new boyfriend. A-Yuan likes him! Until he finds out WWX was responsible for the incident that killed his parents.

Scenario 2: His uncle, Wen Ning, tracks him down and takes him in. A-Yuan grows up hearing about his family and knows who he is. Eventually, he gets an internship at the Lan family's company. Training gets split between LWJ and an outside consultant called WWX (who was hyped the moment he heard about LWJ's little protege). A-Yuan comes to regard WWX as someone to look up to... until he finds out about WWX's greatest mess.

-regular anon

Awww anon, thank you! I appreciate our little exchanges too ^^. You give me a lot of great food for thought, and also hit me with such interesting ideas, like this one!

Damn, yeah! The whole concept of A-Yuan dealing with the fact that a person he likes and looks up to could be responsible for the death of his parents is definitely worth exploring!

As mentioned some days ago, the fandom is really missing on the chance to go further into one of the many gray and complicated situations in canon: that A-Yuan is a Wen, and as such, his parents could have very well been casualties of demonic cultivation. And tbh it would be such a fascinating thing thematically and narratively that the same man was the reason A-Yuan survived.

But ANYWAYS. Ooh boy, you really out there, not holding your punches with the feels :'D. I honestly don't know which one would hurt more lol: on one hand, you'd think that there would be more of an emotional connection in the first scenario for the discovery to hurt more, but there's the fact that his life until that point was one of blissful ignorance, so it could be argued that he was happy.

On the other hand, while it would suck to know that someone you ended up respecting and liking was the culprit of your parents' deaths, it is just an intership. However, if he was raised fully knowing what happened, it could be assumed that he was perpetually conscious of the family he got robbed of (regardless of how much uncle WN would love and do his best for him).

Either scenario can get messy as all fucks, and there's also the fact that we know that A-Yuan turns into a mature and kind young man, so it'd be interesting to see how he handles this. Especially since this is modern AU and you don't have the whole "they were at war, WWX did what he had to, it was natural that there'd be casualties" argument that could make the discovery a bit easier to process since his parents would be completely innocent civilians here.

... then again, it was an accident, so is WWX really to blame??? Damn, there is no way to make this any less complicated lol.