#despite being a writer with no illustrative skills I love this kind of stuff

[holyrunawaychild]

Wolf King Character design details I love (pt 2):

Broghan is explicitly designed to be a visual foil of Whitley.

Every piece of clothing on Whitley is directly opposed on Broghan with armor. Shirt? Breastplate. Jacket? Pauldrons. Baggy pants? Trousers covered in armor. Multiple Sash belts? Single wooden belt. Ornate arm bands? Leather bracers.

(Scene lighting non withstanding) Whitley consistently has more color in her design than her brother. Though they both share the Brakenholme green, he lacks the bright oranges Whitley wears. Instead seemingly having a deep burgundy. Part of me wonders if these two colors are meant to partially be both woodsy autumn colors as well as a nod to their mother Duchess Rainer. Who is a foxlady.

Gretchen does wear a paler shade of orange, and Rainer is her aunt. Could be a connection, could be nothing.

Both of Whitley and Broghan’s weapons of choice are pole arms. One a blunt quarterstaff, the other a sharp axe.

Even their hair. Whitley’s being loose and falling over her face. While Broghan’s is braided and stands up.

Both designs serve to accentuate the differences between the siblings and their personalities.

But do you want to know the best part?

Combine them…

And you get their father.

Bergan has Whitley’s jacket, Broghan’s wooden armor, Whitley’s ornate arm bands, and Broghan’s hair braids (albeit just in his beard).

Just a great visual connection between a father and his children.

In a similar vein.

Hector and Vankaskan have very similar garbs, as is befitting master magister and apprentice.

Both wear a very East Asian inspired outfits (if anyone can help identify what they wear resembles the closest please tell me). While Hector’s has sleeves, Vankaskan’s is sleeveless over a long sleeved undershirt. Though both have a sort of archer’s glove.

The most distinctive difference are all in the details.

Vankaskan doesn’t have any form of pouches or materials belt like Hector does. A visual indication of the difference in their level of skill as magisters.

Hector’s hair is tied up in a bun while Vankaskan’s is loose over his face. For Hector is emphasizes his full magister-in-training look, while for Vankaskan it enhances his already rat-like visage and age.

Their colors also illustrate their differing characters. Where the red and gold of Vankaskan’s robes connects him to the Lionlords, Hector’s all black places him closer to the greys that mark the Wolves.

But black is also the only color they share, symbolizing their practices of dark magik. And where Vankaskan wears it sparingly, Hector is cloaked in it.

If you know, you know. If you don’t…

Wait till season two and beyond.

[bluegekk0]

I see that in Brettas bio she is a writer but does she get any of her stuff published or printed? If so, would she write?

Oh oh oh, thought of something! She writes a book and Holly could illustrate parts of it!

For the longest time she didn't, both because, with Hallownest being in the state it was, there was simply no way for her to publish it, and because she wasn't confident enough to self-publish - besides, the state of the population meant that it just wasn't worth the effort.

But after The Radiance was defeated and Hallownest slowly gained more inhabitants, the thought has definitely crossed her mind. The city was an option, perhaps she got in contact with some kind of scribe that could help her produce many copies of her work. But what then? I think she tried to sell her poems and stories in the city, but with the still low population, there wasn't much demand.

I really like the idea of Grimm offering to help her out, if she ever wanted to become a known writer. He loves literature, he'd definitely love to read her work, and he undoubtedly knows some people from other lands who could help her distribute her work and make a profit and gain fame. He does open himself more to the Dirtmouth folk over the months and years, so something like this would be a really nice way to show that development. Plus it would emphasize the sense of community between Dirtmouth residents that I really want to highlight in the AU. They're a relatively small town, everyone would know each other, and that brings them all closer.

So if she does decide to accept his offer, perhaps she could travel with the Troupe to the other kingdoms and try to distribute her work there, or entrust it to Grimm and his Troupe, since they clearly know what they're doing. She's not exactly the most confident about her work, so I could see her opting for the second scenario, at least at first. Though I'm sure the prospect of traveling to other lands with the Troupe would be very attractive to her, there's a ton of inspiration to be found there.

As for what she writes, I like to think they're either poems, short stories, or novels. Romantic novels would be something she particularly likes, but I think she would be pretty good at writing something more horror-themed, especially since she sees Grimm and the Troupe as a big source of inspiration, particularly Grimm and his seductive vampiric aura. She would absolutely be the pioneer in Hallownest's vampire romance literature hahaha. But generally I think she would try to tackle multiple genres, whatever inspiration brings. Maybe even some stories for children? I imagine those would be quite popular among the Dirtmouth youth. I mentioned in a previous ask that I'd love for there to be a small school for the young in Dirtmouth, since more and more bugs move in and start families, and that perhaps Quirrel could become the teacher in this school. If that's the case, then Bretta's writing skills would be very welcome there.

And yes, Holly would absolutely love to illustrate her books, they're very talented so their joined effort would without a doubt result in something great. Despite their eyesight issues, they are very good at drawing from reference, so maybe together they could travel around Hallownest in search for inspiration. I'm sure Hornet would know some really nice spots they could visit. It's fun to imagine them all (plus Zote, naturally) traveling like that together, like friends. Hornet definitely needs those.

[felassan]

Dragon Age development insights and highlights from Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

Some really tasty factoids here.

Cut for length.

Dragon Age: Origins

The continent of Thedas was at one point going to be named Pelledia, a name initially floated by James Ohlen

“Qunari” was a temporary name that ended up unintentionally sticking, much like “Thedas”

Mary Kirby wrote the Landsmeet. To this day, nobody understands how it works, except possibly her. If she’s “really really drunk” she can explain how it works. There’s as many words in it as Sten’s entire conversations put together

Concept art for Thedosian art - as in in-world art - draws heavily on Renaissance-era portraiture, the Art Nouveau movement, religious styles and media like stained glass, and favorite pieces from the golden age of illustrations in the early 20th century

Andrastianism in-world (art-wise) is depicted in wildly different methods depending on who in-world made the art in question. “One religion, 3 different lenses”. There’s the Chantry take, the Orlesian take and the Fereldan take; each with its own different interpretations, different mediums and different stories

The stained glass images were drawn by Nick Thornborrow for DAI, to decorate religious spaces in that game “and beyond”

irl Viking art influenced Ferelden

Greek and Italian art influenced Orlais

The book also had other insights into and anecdotes from the development of DAO, but I’ve transcribed them recently as they’re essentially the stories DG has recently been relating on the awesome Summerfall Studios DAO playthrough Twitch streams. (On those streams he provides dev commentary while Liam Esler plays through DA. The ones with DG are currently once every two weeks. Check them out! Here’s a calendar where you can check when the next one is) Instead of repeating myself I’ll just provide the link to the first transcript. From there you can navigate to the subsequent parts. Note these streams are ongoing. At this point I will also point you to a related post which is cliff notes of the Dragon Age chapter in Jason Schreier’s book Blood Sweat and Pixels.

Dragon Age II

DAO had the longest development period in BioWare history. In contrast DA2 had the shortest

Initially DA2 was going to be an expansion to DAO. A few months in EA said “Yeah, expansions like these don’t sell very well, so let’s make it a sequel.” So it suddenly became DA2 and they had to make it even bigger, although they still only had 1.5 years of time in which to do this

Production of DA2 officially lasted only 9 months, and at the time the team was still supporting live content for DAO! They finished development that January after the design team crunched all the way through the holiday period that year. Then it went to cert 9 times

The limited time they had is why the story takes place mostly in and around 1 city, and over 7 years (so it was temporal, rather than over physical distance, because a more expansive world would have taken more irl time to make)

They had no time to review even the main plot. Mike Laidlaw pitched the idea of 3 stories taking place at different points in the PC’s life, tied together by Varric’s recollections of events. DG rolled with this and made 1 presentation on the idea. This presentation was then approved and off they went

As they were writing DG realized that there was going to be no oversight and that everything was going to be a ‘first draft’. “Because nobody had time.” He sat down with the writers and said “Look, here’s the conditions we’re working under. A lot of what we’re putting out is gonna be raw. We’re not going to get the editing we need. We’re not going to get the kind of iteration we need. So I’m going to trust you all to do your best work.”

Looking back, DG has mixed feelings on DA2. “A lot of corners were cut. The public perception was that it was smaller than DAO. That’s a sin on its own.”

Despite this he thinks DA2 has some of the best writing in the series, especially character-wise. The DA2 chars are his favorite

The pace with which production progressed may in some ways have helped. “When we do a lot of revision, we often file away [as in buff off] some of the good writing as well. Somehow DA2′s whirlwind process resulted in some really good writing”

The pace meant chars landed on the writers in various stages of completion. For example Isabela was fairly defined due to appearing in DAO. In contrast Varric at the start was just that single piece of widely-shown concept art

Varric was conceived as a storyteller not a fighter. His skills are talking and bullshitting. Hence the question became, so what does this guy do in combat? The direction was to make him as different as possible to Oghren, so not a warrior. He couldn’t be a dual-wielding rogue in order to differentiate him from Bela. But you can’t really picture this guy with a bow. “For a dwarf, it would probably be a crossbow. We didn’t have crossbows, or we only had crossbows for the darkspawn. And they were part of the models. We didn’t have a separate crossbow that was equip-able by the chars. They had to like, crop one off a darkspawn and remodel it. And that became Bianca” (quote: Mary Kirby)

“Dwarven mages are exceedingly rare.” [???]

If DAO was a classic fantasy painting, DA2 was a screenshot from a Kurosawa film or a northern Renaissance painting. (Here Matt Rhodes was commenting on art style)

John Epler: “In any one of our games, there’s a 95% chance that if you turn the camera away from what it’s looking at, you’ll see all kinds of janky stuff. The moment we know the camera is no longer facing someone, we no longer care what happens to them. We will teleport people around. We will jump people around. We will literally have someone walk off screen and then we will shift them 1000 meters down, because we’re fixing some bug.” John also talked about this camera stuff in a recent charity Twitch stream for Gamers For Groceries. There’s a writeup of that stream here

Designing Kirkwall pushed concept artists to the limits of visual storytelling, because it has a long history that they wanted to be present. It was once the hub of Tevinter’s slave empire, so it needed to look brutal and harsh, but it also then needed to feel reclaimed, evolved, and with elements of contemporary Free Marches culture

The initial plan was for DA titles to be distinguished by subtitles not numbers, so that each experience could stand on its own rather than feel like a sequel or continuation. (My note: New PCs in each entry make sense then when you consider this and other factoids we know like how DA is the story of the world not of any one PC). Later, DA2′s name was made DA2 in a bid to more clearly connect the game to its predecessor. For DAI they returned to the original naming convention. (My note: so I’d reckon they’d be continuing the subtitle naming convention for DA4)

DA2 was initially code-named “Nug Storm”, strictly internally

The Cancelled DA2 Expansion - Exalted March

This was a precursor to DAI

It was meant to bridge the gap between DA2 and DAI

It focused on the fallout from Kirkwall’s explosion, with Cory serving as the villain

Meredith’s red lyrium statue was basically going to infest Kirkwall and it would end up [with what would end up] the red templars taking over Kirkwall and essentially being Cory’s army

To stop him Hawke would have recruited various factions, including Bela’s Felicisima Armada and the Qunari at Estwatch, forcing Hawke to split loyalties and risk relationships in the process

It was meant to bring DA2′s story to an end and end in Varric’s death. DG was very happy with this because all of DA2 is Varric’s tale. The expansion was supposed to start at the moment Cassandra’s interrogation of him ended in the present. “And we finished off the story with Varric having this heroic death.” It tied things up and would have broken many fan hearts, something BioWare writers notoriously enjoy. But between a transition to the new Frostbite engine and the scope of DAI, the decision was made to cancel EM, work any hard-to-lose concepts into DAI, and in the process save Varric’s life. DG has talked about the Varric dying thing before

Concept art for EM explored new areas previously not depicted in the DA universe, with costumes that reflected next steps for familiar chars. Varric was going to war, what would he have worn? With Anders, if he survived DA2, the plan was to present a redeemed Warden

A char that vaguely resembled Sera in DAI was first concepted for EM. This fact was mentioned near this concept art (see the female elf) and this concept art of Bethany with the blond bob

The writers sketched out plans to end it with Hawke having the option to marry their LI. This included alternate ceremonies for party members like Bethany and Sebastian if the player opted not to wed. There was even a wedding dress made for Hawke. This asset made it into DAI (Sera and Cullen’s weddings in Trespasser). The dress can also be seen in DAI during an ambient NPC wedding after completing a chain of war table missions

The destruction of a Chantry was explored in concept art as it might have happened in EM. This idea ended up carrying over to the beginning of DAI. (My note: Lol, the idea that DA2 could have had 2 Chantries being destroyed in it 😆)

World of Thedas

Sheryl Chee and Mary Kirby started with “a disgusting little dish called fluffy mackerel pudding”. In the middle of DAO’s busy dev period one of them (they can’t remember who) found a recipe online for this, scanned in from a 70s cookbook. “I don’t understand why it was fluffy. Why would you want fluffy mackerel pudding?” MK says. “We loved it so much we included it in a DAO codex.”

This led them to create more food for Thedas, full recipes included, like a Fereldan turnip and barley stew from MK and SC’s Starkhaven fish and egg pie. The fish pie became Sebastian’s favorite. “To me it made sense for it to be fish pie because a lot of the Free Marches are on the coast”, SC says, “It was something that was popular in medieval times, so I thought, let’s make a fish pie! I looked at medieval recipes and I concocted a fish pie which I fed to my partner, and he was like ‘This is not terrible’”

For WoT the whole studio was asked to contribute family recipes which might have a place in Thedas. SC adapted these to fit in one Thedosian culture or another, including a beloved banana bread that localization producer Melanie Fleming would regularly bake to keep the DA team motivated. “Melanie’s banana bread got us through Inquisition”

DAI

It says part of DAI takes place in or near the border with Nevarra [???]

This game was aimed to be bigger than DA2 and even DAO in every conceivable way

The first hour had to do a lot of heavy lifting, tying together the events of DAO and DA2 while introducing a new PC, new followers etc in the aftermath of the big attack. DG rewrote it 7 times then Lukas Kristjanson did 2 more passes

DG: “Our problem is always that our endings are so important, but we leave them to last, when we have no time. I kept pushing on DAI: ‘Can we work on the ending now? Can we work on the ending now? Can we do it early on?’ Because I knew exactly what it was going to be. But despite the fact that it kept getting scheduled, whenever the schedule started falling behind, it kept getting pushed back... so, of course, it got left til last again.”

“The reveal of the story’s real antagonist, Solas, a follower until the end, when he betrayed the player”. “Solas’ story remains a main thread in Inquisition’s long-awaited follow-up” [these aren’t DG quotes, just bits of general text]

Over the course of development they had 8 full-time writers and 4 editors working on it. Other writers joined later to help wrangle what ended up being close to 1 million words of dialogue and unspoken text. While many teams moved to a more open concept style of work for DAI, the writers remained tucked away in their own room, a choice DG says was necessary, given how much they talked. All the talking had a purpose ofc as if someone hit a bump or wall in their writing they would open the problem up to the room

As writing on a project like DAI progresses, the writers grow punchier and weirder things make it into the game. This is especially the case towards the end of a project (they get tired, burned out)

Banter and codexes require less ‘buy-in’ (DG has talked about this concept a few times on the Twitch streams) from other designers. DG liked to leave banter for last as a reward because it was fun. Banter begins as lists of topics for 2 followers to discuss. These may progress over time or be one off exchanges. One banter script can balloon to well over 10k words. “The banter was always huge because we were always like, laughing, and really at that point, our fields of fucks were rather barren, so we would just do whatever”

The bog unicorn happened pretty much by accident. It was designed by Matt Rhodes and was one of his fav things to design. They needed horse variations and he had already designed an undead variant which was a bog mummy [bog body]. irl these are preserved in a much different way to traditional mummies. When someone dies in a bog their skin turns black and raisin-like. The examples we know of tend to have bright red hair for whatever reason. It’s a very striking look and MR wanted to do a horse version of this as he thought it’d be neat. 5 mins before the review meeting for it he had a big ‘Aha!’ moment, quickly looked up a rusty old Viking sword, and photoshopped it through its skull like that was how it died. “And I was like, ‘I just made a unicorn. Alright, in it goes!’” It got approved. “So we built the thing. It fit. It told a little story”

With the irl Inquisition longsword, one of the objects they tested its cleaving ability on was a plush version of Leliana’s nug Schmooples

The concept art team explored a wide variety of visuals for the Inquisitor’s signature mark. It needed to look powerful and raw but couldn’t look like a horrific wound. In some cases, as cool as the idea looked on paper, they just weren’t technically feasible, especially as they had to be able to fit on any number of different bodies

Bug report: “Endlessly spawning mounts! At one point during development, Inquisitors could summon a new horse every time they whistled, allowing them to amass a near infinite number of eager steeds that faithfully followed them across Thedas. “You could go charging across levels and they’d all gallop behind you,” Jen Cheverie says, “It was beautiful.” Trotting into town became an epic horse siege as a tidal wave of mounts enveloped the streets. Jen called it her Army of Ponies”

The giants came from DA Week, an internal period when devs can pursue different individual creative projects that in some way benefit DA. They also had a board game from one of these that they were going to put in but they didn’t have time. It’s referenced though. It was dwarven chess

Josie’s outfit is made of gold silk and patterned velvet, with leather at her waist. She carries “an ornate ledger” and she has “an ornamented collar sitting around her neck, finished by a brilliant red ruby, like a drop of Antivan wine in a sunbeam”

Iron Bull’s armor is leather. His loose pantaloons and leather boots give him agility to charge

On DAI in particular, concept artists took special care to make sure costumes would be realistic, at least in a practical ‘this obeys the laws of physics and textiles’ sense. “While on Inquisition, we thought about cosplay from a concept art perspective. Given how incredible a lot of [cosplays] are, I now am not worried about them. In fact in some cases in the future I want to throw them curveballs like, ‘All right, you clever bastards. Let’s see if you can do this!’”

2 geese that nested on the office building and had chicks were named Ganders and Arishonk (it wasn’t known who was the mom or the dad). Other possible names were Carver Honke, Bethany Honke, Urdnot Pecks, Quackwall, Cassandra Pentagoose, the Iron Bill, Shepbird, Garroose, Admiral Quackett, Scout Honking, HChick-47 and Darth Malgoose

Bug report: “The surprising adventures of Ser Noodles!” DAI was the first time the series had a mount feature, meaning this had a lot of bugs. A lot of the teams’ favorite bugs were to do with the mounts. There was a period of time where the Inquisitor’s horse seemed to lose all bone and muscle in its legs. They had a week or so where all quadruped legs were broken. It was a bit noticeable in things like nugs and other small beasties but the horse was insanely obvious. “The first time we summoned the horse [for this] and started running around, the entire QA exploration room just exploded with laughter.” Its legs flapped around like cooked fettucine, leading testers to lovingly nickname it Ser Noodles. At galloping speeds the legs almost looked like helicopter blades, especially when footage was set to classic pieces such as Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries

For DAI the artists were asked questions like “What would Morrigan wear to a formal ball? Can Cassandra pull off a jaunty hat?”

On DAI storyboarding became the norm. John Epler: “Cinematic design for the longest time was the Wild West. It was ‘here’s a bunch of content, now do it however you want’, which resulted in some successes and some failures.” Storyboarding gave designers a consistent visual blueprint based on ideas from designers, writers and concept artists

Quote from a storyboard by Nick Thornborrow (the Inquisitor going into the party at the end of basegame sequence): “Until Corypheus revealed himself they could not see the single hand behind the chaos. A magister and a darkspawn combined. The ultimate evil. So evil. Eviler than puppy-killers and egg farts combined.”

A general note on concept art:

In the early stages of any project, before the concept artists are aware of any writing, they like to just draw what they think cool story moments could be. It’s not unusual for the team to then be inspired by these and fold them into the game as the project progresses

– From Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

[letswritestories101]

Heya im currently working on a book, it contains an arranged marriage, forbidden relationship and theyre royals.

however, ive no idea what to include in said book, like do i add a political element like a war? whos the villain? does the crown die and suddenly the main character is the king/queen! i just dont know and now im stuck.

any thoughts or advice for me?

Hey, anon! Hello and welcome!

Your story sounds cool, with classic and amazing tropes. A lot of good things can come out of that, for sure.

You seem to be in the brainstorming stage, right at the stage where you're deciding what you want before you start writing the thing itself. So keep in mind that it's okay not to have a very good idea of ​​everything yet.

Here are some tips that might work, IMO:

Think about the theme and/or message. It doesn't have to be something deep. It doesn't need to revolutionize the world or induce a paradigm shift. It doesn't even have to be new. But it has to be something that helps you focus, see the point of your story and what you want to tell. Even the good old 'love conquers all' helps to put a focal point. For example, showing the two royals loving each other despite being a forbidden romance illustrates this well. So the challenges will have to try to break them and not get it permanently, reinforcing the theme. Hence, from these limits now placed, you can think what kinds of challenges would best illustrate. Studying your elements that you want to put in and why you like them will help you find your theme. Adventure and friendship in the face of challenges can hide a theme from the power of friendship, not losing faith that something will work hides a theme about hope. It's about what you want to go through.

Discover the genre of your story. From what you've told me, she has a lot of romance so you can already trace some things like you already did. Ask yourself, is my book all about romance or fantasy or another element also has prominence. For example, if it's a fantasy novel with a romance, the fantasy will also need problems and resolutions. Look up the conventions of the genre and try to work from them. It will help to assemble the previous stitch, inclusive.

Think about what you like. We tell stories about our points of view. Our opinions appear in our art because they are part of us. So, find what you like and put that in the book. Helps a lot.

Go berserker with your inspiration! Make music playlist, moodboard, jot down all ideas including weird sleep deprived ones at 3am! Look for things that remind you of your book and save it!

Search, Search, Search! Know how a plot works, what are character arcs. Writing is a skill, so we have to improve it.

Only share when you are ready. The pressure for validation is high, but showing it to the public ahead of time can ruin your motivation. I've been through that. Give yourself time to think.

And remember, you and only you are the author. Neither I nor anyone else can talk about what you are going to write. The story is yours and that is our greatest blessing and pleasure as authors. We can create worlds and plots as we want and no one else. Enjoy it. And don't worry if someone else will like it. The answer is yes. There is always. Someone already likes. You already like it. And I can tell you from experience, your love for your book will reflect and beautify your stories for others like no other method of outreach could. Nothing shows how amazing a book can be like the faith and love that we writers have for our stories.

I hope my advice can be useful. Writing is a strange but wonderful hobby. You'll do fine :)

Some useful blogs:

@writingwithcolor

@wordsnstuff

@pens-swords-stuffswords-stuff

@hyba

@writing-is-a-martial-art

[script-a-world]

Clearly there are some settings which make no sense scientifically. But how do I decide when to intentionally ignore reality, can't bother to do research, don't understand research, and thus create scientifically impossible places? When are such things considered be offensive or overused cliche or have a reader point out the impossibility and can't get into the story? I'm guessing some of this might be structural issues instead of world building?

Tex: One of the perils of attempting to write about highly technical subjects is that you run into the issue of not understanding your writing. I do raise a nominal objection as your first sentence, because sensibility is a sliding scale based on one’s familiarity with a given subject. I don’t know crap about, say, textile art (however much I might have bluffed readers in the past - no, no, this is just good googling skills on my end), but that doesn’t mean the textile arts are an inherently incomprehensible subject.

Scientifically, automobiles were once thought to be insensible. Scientifically, phones were thought to be a flight of fancy. Scientifically, 3D printing was improbable. Scientifically, quantum computing was the stuff of sci-fi nerds who just wanted to slap the “quantum” label on everything.

And yet we are now on the verge of robotic vehicles, mostly functional smartwatches, laser printing cells (PDF), and quantum computers (VentureBeat, IBM).

So I would argue that the insensibility of a setting would be due mostly to, yes, a structural issue - on the part of the author. No matter what you put into your world, internal consistency is key; nothing, no matter how ostensibly outlandish, will make sense if you contradict yourself.

I’ll volley a few questions back to you:

“[...] when to intentionally ignore reality” - Are you ignoring reality entirely, or just parts of it? Why? How does that decision benefit your world? How does it detract from your world?

“Can’t bother to do research” - Is it because you are discouraged by the breadth of your comprehension of a subject, compared to the subject’s depth? Or is it because of something else?

“Don’t understand research” - Is this because you don’t understand the academic papers that turn up in your search results, or because you have a fundamental lack of or misunderstanding of the given subject? Or is it because of something else?

“When are such things considered to be offensive or overused cliche” - As someone who intentionally arranges their studying around the plausibilities of the future, I would quite frankly be delighted to see more conceptual stretches of the imagination in this regard, as do many others on this blog, and beyond it. Why have you already passed judgement on the offensiveness or clichéd-ness of incorporating scientific things? Is this related to your other comments?

“[...] or have a reader point out the impossibility and can’t get into the story?” - If you are writing to please a specific individual or demographic, you are inevitably always going to fall short, because it’s genuinely impossible to meet every single item on a group’s wishlist without devoting your life to it (not an entirely worthy pursuit, in my opinion, but alas). What made you decide to be so concerned over the potential reaction to your stories that you worry about it before the story is even written?

I think I will put the majority of my curiosity’s weight on the last bullet point, as I’m seeing similar themes with the other portions of your question. It’s a fruitless endeavour to tie yourself into knots over a possible (not necessarily probable!) reaction - and quite likely from a stranger, to boot. Education is a relatively easy situation to fix, so long as you’re patient with yourself; dealing with anxieties over readers is… not so easy.

I can really only recommend that you take a close look at the goals of your worldbuilding, and see where you contradict yourself - once you have that in hand, it’s a relatively simple yes/no process of what concepts you want to keep. If the issue of decision comes from a lack of understanding, then make a note to yourself to seek out either the million wikis we Pylons utilize ourselves like any other worldbuilder, or to chalk it up as a genuine lack of context.

Please understand that even someone who’s dedicated their life to a certain aspect of science won’t know everything about it - that’s the point of research! We’re constantly asking ourselves questions, and pushing the envelope of known boundaries. Star Wars has lightsabers, but we don’t need to know how they work; likewise with holodecks in Star Trek. So long as an audience is reasonably entertained with the least amount of head-scratching, you can get away with handwaving quite a lot.

Lockea: On a scale between Star Trek and Star Wars, how “hard” is your science fiction?

I mention that mostly to illustrate that science fiction exists on a continuum, wherein science fiction with more “science” than “fiction” drives a story towards the harder end rather than the softer end. Also, a story’s place on the continuum will change based on what we know and understand about science.

I feel like everyone always beats me to saying all the important stuff about questions, so I’ll just give a few thoughts from my personal experience as a science fiction fan with two engineering degrees and a thesis about robots on the moon (yes really, I wrote my thesis on AI for moon robots). I really, really, love the creativity of science fiction writers. I think so often in defending the genre, we can get caught up in saying things like “science fiction predicted XYZ!” Well, sure, I may have studied Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics in my introduction to engineering ethics course, but I was also greedily reading my way through “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins at the same time. The fact that I sincerely doubt Panem will ever happen didn’t dampen my enjoyment of Katniss’s story. It was a fun read and it gave my friends and I something to talk about that wasn’t “feasibility of Battlestar Galactica” during our daily lunches.

The thing about writing science fiction is that, without a doubt, there will be someone who knows more than you about a topic who reads your story. Most of the time, I end up being that someone since everyone likes to talk about Skynet and robots taking over the world to a roboticist who sincerely refers to artificial intelligence as artificial stupidity. Y'all are seriously overestimating the field, my friends. Nonetheless, I still enjoyed “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” even as I thought how impossible Project Insight would be. Honestly, something every READER of science fiction needs to make peace with is the fact that writers will get something wrong. Writers, despite their best efforts, are not always going to understand that a facial recognition algorithm will fail if you introduce tiny amounts of random noise and are thus going to treat The Algorithm™ as infallible in your crime drama novel.

It’s not the writer’s fault, though.

That deserves to be on its own line. It is not YOUR fault if you get something wrong. Would it be nice if science literacy was just better all around? Of course! But it’s not your fault if your science literacy isn’t up to snuff enough to parse the article I cited above. It’s also not your job. Your job as the writer is to tell the most interesting story you can and to maintain your own internal rules and logic such that the reader never breaks the willing suspension of disbelief.

I watch Star Wars and get really into the light saber fight scenes and forget that light sabers are basically impossible to make. Star Wars has the Force, which is basically magic, and that’s okay. Really. I KNOW it’s not possible, but I still have a lot of fun watching it!

So yeah, write that story about how the robots are going to take over the world. I’ll probably enjoy reading it even as I laugh off my friends telling me that I will be the first to die in the robot apocalypse (of course I will -- I have five robots in my living room alone).

Constablewrites: Tone and consistency are the biggest pieces of this for me. If it’s the kind of story where the answer to “How does this work?” is usually a detailed and plausible explanation, then getting an answer later that is implausible or slapdash will stand out more. But if it’s the kind of story where the answer to “How does this work?” is “You push that button and it goes whoosh” from the start, my expectations adjust accordingly. (It’s possible to have the latter version in a story that is mostly the former, frequently when it’s played for last. Again, tone is key.)

So yeah, a lot of this is execution and the way the story sticks to the rules it sets for itself, and also how central the implausibility is to the story. A realistic thriller that relies on cartoon logic for a background bit might be a little jarring, but not nearly as much as a realistic thriller that relies on cartoon logic to set up its main showdown. The more central it is to the story, the more consistency and accuracy matters. Learning how to balance this can take some practice and some insight from beta readers.

[muthaz-rapapa]

Precure in the Arts (Civilian only)

Creative arts, to be specific. Therefore, this post encompasses a variety of subjects and is also not exclusive to the traditional kind.

I included as much as I could think of but it’s probably still incomplete, either because I don’t remember well enough or do not know certain characters well enough (like I said before, I haven’t watched the first three seasons) or whatever so if anyone wants to point out what I missed, please do.

Comments below the cut.

Note: This will be continually updated as new additions come along.

Music:

Singing

Musical Instruments (Classical)

- Violin: Karen, Haruka, Minami, Towa - Piano: Karen, Hibiki, Alice, Madoka

Musical Instruments (Guitar)

Performing Arts:

Acting

Dancing

Visual Arts:

Painting

Illustration

Literature:

**Generally speaking, this list was created with the idea (and hope) that these activities aren’t just hobbies or past times for the girls. In other words, their interests or specialties are part of who they are. A trait that makes up an important fraction of them as a character and a person.

Ya get what I mean? Well, you will as we go along.

Singing - A lot of girls sing in series but these are the ones who are known to perform for the public. With the exception of Aoi, who’s a rock star, all of them are idols, unsurprisingly.

Anyways, not only do they like what they do but they also enjoy performing for a crowd and sharing their music with others. This is why Ako, who despite the fact that she likes singing, is not listed because for her, singing is a more private matter to be done around those she’s close to.

As for Ellen, I was see-sawing between whether to include her in this list or not since Siren spent most of her time singing as a villain. In the end, I decided that she qualifies since she was one of the top contenders to perform for Major Land. In a way, that’s sort of like being an idol and had Hummy not been chosen, she probably would’ve been the one to sing the Melody of Happiness instead. Also, I believe I’ve seen clips of her doing street performances so that counts, too.

Musical Instruments (Classical) - In defense against the fact that we only ever got short moments of seeing the girls play music, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that most of them will continue to carry their talents with them as they grow older. Especially for those who spent a lot of time training and polishing their skills so it’d be a waste for them to stop, y’know? Not to mention, I’m pretty sure all of them like playing their respective instruments as well so that was also taken into consideration.

Which is my reasoning on not including Emiru even though she’s proficient in violin and piano. I’m choosing to believe she never forgets what she learned with the classical instruments but since she ultimately prefers the guitar over anything else, there’s little point in keeping her here.

A question mark for Karen, though. We all saw her with a violin in the first OP of Yes!5 (and some other promo art) but I could’ve sworn I’ve seen her play piano at least once sometime in the series. I’d go back and check but it’s such a minor detail and Yes!5 is so long that I don’t feel like searching for it so can someone confirm with me on this if she does know how to play the piano?? It has been confirmed that Karen does indeed play the piano. Thank you, @darkis4everinlight​!!

Musical Instruments (Guitar) - Nothing much to say here that isn’t already obvious.

**Performing Arts - Yea, yea, I know music is a type of performing arts but it’s big enough to deserve its own separate section so don’t argue with me on that.

As for why dancing is not listed has so little people despite there being a whole group of Cures (Fresh) who did perform in that area...well, like I said above, this is more of an individual sorting. I believe the Fresh group partook in dancing because they wanted to do it together. But when it’s not together, they have other stuff they’d rather focus on like Miki with her modeling and Inori learning to become a vet and Setsuna helping rebuild Labyrinth. I don’t know about Love, though, so...

EDIT: Looked back on the wiki and Love apparently does continue with dancing even after the group split up so she’s listed now.

...come to think of it, Minami fits in the dance section too because she did ballet but in the end that wasn’t her passion so...I dunno, should I list her? :/ Nevermind, it’s up.

Acting - I feel like we need more Cures in this field. I mean, there are so many types of acting out there so it’d be great if we can see more actors among our main cast members.

About Saaya, though. Yea, she chose to drop acting to pursue a medical career but it was partially through acting that she discovered her true calling in the first place. In that sense, the acting portion of her life is an irreplaceable part of her.

Dancing - Ok true, while Minami’s most noticeable attribute as a character is her connection and love for the sea, it’s also undeniable that she was a total Ojou-sama for most of Go!Pri’s story. And as Ojou-sama qualities go, they are like masters of almost anything.

Frankly, if I wanted to be very honest with this list, I would’ve completely scraped her (and Karen and Alice, for that matter) from musical instruments because the violin didn’t mean as much to her as it did for Haruka and Towa story-wise and the same extends to ballet as well. Like Saaya with acting, she put these activities, along with her heiress duties, aside to pursue her real dream. 

But also like Saaya with being an actress, being an Ojou-sama and everything that came with it (aka the “grooming package”) was a huge part of who Minami was before that realization.

By the logic, I can’t leave it out. So the same applies to the other Oujos, too.

**Visual Arts - Again, it might be because I’m forgetting some things and whatnot but seriously? This is all we have for Cures gifted in visual arts? What about film making, photography, crafts, sculpture, computer graphics??

Also, I’m wondering if I should include design under this but I feel that Fashion needs to be its own category so nah, probably not.

Painting - Haven’t watched Splash Star so I’m just basing this off of what I’ve seen in the All Stars movies.

Illustration - I don’t know what is or is not considered part of the arts these days but as I said above, this isn’t limited to the traditional kind so I believe I can put illustration under here. It doesn’t fit anywhere else, otherwise.

**Literature - Yeap, I need more Cures who aspire to become writers as well. Not just novelists. Screenwriters, playwrights, poets, etc!

So many areas of interests so why are you not using everything the world has to offer, TOEEEEEIIIIIII?!?!?!?!??

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Update log:

4/2/20 - Post published.

4/3/20 - Edited; updated Karen’s info and added Love to Dancing category.

[cerastes]

I dedicate to this to everyone who has let their dreams of writing die.

This is pretentious, or maybe vain, and I apologize if it comes across that way, I do not intend for this to be like that at all, as aside from narcissism in jest, I really think people should retain humility while still accepting and acknowledging their own good points, but when I log into my writing blog, sometimes I see a message like this and it’s wholly disarming. I know it seems like I am making a big deal out of what is basically a compliment, but hear me, I decided to not share my writing online again after some really bad stuff happened, on a personal level and on an artistic level. You may perhaps not believe me due to the way I carry myself, but I am very, very meek about my writing. Literature is something I have an eye and a passion for, and since I know good literature when I see it, it makes it terrifying when I finish writing something, because I know the flaws. It’s kinda like how graphical artists see their awesome finished products and say “this sucks” because they know real good illustrations, that, too, happens with writers, and oh man, it’s terrifying. To add to that, my previous relationship more or less began and crashed down in flames because of writing. My quality as an artist took a dive because I grew complacent, and because I focused on producing just one thing, and one thing only, something that satisfied my partner, and then I realized that despite my popularity in that community and the praise, it all felt hollow. I had not taken a step up, I took a step down. What used to be a mere exercise for my own amusement, that is, purple prosing, which is objectively terrible but it’s oh so fun to do, like eating a greasy hamburger, became more or less my modus operandi. That’s not good. It was all stagnant, it was fun, it was a cheap thrill, but part of me knew I was really just wasting away when I could be improving. That was a big part of my overhauling the blog in that RP community to just become user-drive stories: People would send asks with quite literally whatever content in the message and I would turn them into hopefully fun and neat reads, usually based on humor, and a bit later, it was time to close up shop, because the community had all really gone to shit and, sans a couple of exceptions, everyone whose skills I respected were already gone or just not into it anymore, plus, I had been writing in the Gensokyo setting for far too long. I needed a break, both from it and the bad memories that writing for the character in itself brought (because the character is intricately involved with another character, the source of my problems, and I will never, ever write a character in a vacuum or extirpate an essential part of them for personal reasons).

After that, I kind of just put the pen down. I felt afraid, honestly, because I knew anyone with writing chops could see past the hot air and the purple. I kept my daily writing exercises up for a few days and then I just gave up. In part, I was focusing fully on truly getting better from my depression, on which I was making really good progress, especially after a rather harsh and spectacular break up threatened to push me back in, thus needing my full attention, but another part was, really, that I was just so furious with myself that I couldn’t bring myself to write. A part of why I had made another “identity” when making that blog, aside from a joke aimed at some people, was so that I could start from zero, so it wouldn’t be me just being like “hey guys go follow my new blog give it attention please!”. I really disliked that attitude. You have to earn your reader base, not guilt trip for it. There was a period in that community which consisted of people making blog after blog for whatever fucking character or version of a character they could make, putting “HEY THIS IS MY NEW BLOG” on the main Skype, enjoying 2 days of attention, and then proceeding to whine forever because they ran out of inauguration-slash-pity asks. That’s no way to improve. I wanted to start from zero. Big fat irony that then I grew insecure because, damn it, I could put out drabbles and what not but I’d probably be, I don’t know, pity likes or “I know you” likes. A mess. I didn’t want that. That, coupled with my immense dislike of my own writing quality, put me off writing for a long time.

Just last year, at the end of the year, I decided, hey, it’d be cute if I put up some stuff. I mean, I made the ‘ideablog’ and I hadn’t used it at all (an attempt at trying to share my stuff again that failed initially as I was too afraid), might as fucking well, because if I have a redeeming quality, that’s just going through with whatever comes to mind at any given point. Reception has been surprisingly... Existent. It’s been good, and the praise and opinions I’ve received both publicly and behind closed doors has been both empowering and enlightening, but, I just think it being there at all has been out of my calculations. Aside from this message, I’ve also been asked if I have my stuff organized in a Dropbox for quick downloading so it could be loaded as an e-book and, if not, if I gave my authorization to do it. Another message I received was if I accepted commissions. What the hell do I say to that? It’s wholly disarming and moving, I couldn’t be happier. No one is more critical of my writing than I am, and next thing I know, someone says they’d pay for it. I’m not trying to blow my horn here, it’s just, fucking hell, I am so happy that I didn’t give up entirely, that I came back for the pen, and that the pen waited for me. I want that to reach you, I want you to know that not giving up has been the correct decision. I am lowkey shedding tears right now because, fuck, I love writing, what the fuck, I really was gonna let this go, but I am so fucking happy I didn’t, and on top of that, other people enjoy what I have to show? It’s paid off both personally and artistically to keep at it? Holy hell.

Just, please, don’t give up writing. It’s hard, it’s not immediate like seeing a drawing is (which means no disrespect to graphic artists at all), it’s no walk in the park or a cake in the walk or a piece of the cake, but it’s worth it. Rather, “don’t give up writing” is not fundamentally my message here as much as “don’t give up your art”. If it’s drawing, writing, composing, sculpting, whatever, don’t give it up. It pays off. You really have to go in it and give it the hardest try you can, whatever it is, your utmost effort, and it’s not easy, but look, all that aside? It’s about you enjoying it.

You’ll never reach perfection, but that doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t try, and you should shoot for the moon anyways, because if you land it, you kill the moon and you do us all a favor, but if you miss, hell, you still land among the stars. People really don’t want perfection, they want a good read. That’s easy to understand as a reader, but difficult to get as a writer. I think getting it as a writer, however, only pushes you to become a better writer than striving and inevitably failing to reach perfection does. At least, it’s what I’ve learned.

And for those of you who have become discouraged because you saw others do something close or similar to what you wanted to do, and in some cases, an almost identical concept? Do it anyways. Take it from me: Ideas and concepts are a dime a dozen. It’s the execution that really matters. The world has not seen what YOU do with that idea. You have not seen what you do with that idea. Maybe you have in your brain, but haha, let me tell you, what ends on paper tends to be wholly different than what initially was in your head. It tends to be better. You’ve not seen that. Everyone can imagine the perfect Olympic pirouette, but doing it is what matters. Everyone can imagine the perfect football kick, the perfect boxing straight, the perfect baseball pitch, but what does that matter if we don’t bring that imagination into a tangible form? That’s what writing is, after all, it’s our ability to show others what goes in our brains and hearts, what it is that inspires us. You don’t want to write because you got inspired, you want to write because you got inspired and want to give it shape.

So get writing.

So get making art.

Do it for yourself, and others will love it, I promise.

I’m not saying it’s as easy as just doing, but doing is the first step. You need to work hard to improve, and you need to both be confident enough to know you did a good job, yet humble enough to know you’ve got room for improvement (and hopefully, where it is you’ve got room for improvement). You can worry about improving after you get to the “doing” stage, however.

And if you gave up, please, consider giving it another try.

You never know who is out there waiting for your product. Only one way to find out.

[eizneckam]

7-14 for the writer asks

WARNING: I am very long-winded. Prepare for a very long post.

7. biggest weakness in writing?

Plot - the setting version. What I mean is, why the characters are even interacting. I can do character interactions, character arcs, how the characters interacting advances the plot, etc.; but determining the reason for the story to actually have happened in the first place is harder for me.

8. biggest strength in writing?

Character design, all facets of it. My characters are very much designed visually at the same time their personalities emerge, and changes in one can affect the other. Ironically for someone who is very good at visual character design, I am just awful at drawing, but I can clearly see what my characters look like in my head. (And I have made some breakthroughs in my drawing skills recently, so illustrations may actually occur in the future.) Designing characters' personalities and other little details about them comes naturally to me as well, as the right pieces just seem to fall into place. For example, when I was designing Sakura, one of the main characters in one of my stories, it became clear to me that she was not a very nice person, despite her original one-sentence design of "a pretty, nice young woman wearing a sundress". It just sort of emerged as a main facet of her character, like she was asserting herself. It was also apparent to me that she had a very hoarse and scratchy voice, which is just a minute detail that fell into place. All of these things just sort of came together without effort, along with other things, to create a more well-rounded character. So overall, I'd say that I am very good at creating characters.

9. favorite trope?

Oh, this is a difficult one. I'd have to say that any trope that reaffirms the goodness of the world, despite its flaws, would be my favorite, so let's go with "Knight in Sour Armor": the jaded, cynical warrior who can't help but believe that there are things worth protecting in this world.

On a less serious note, "something funny happens + two people exchange money in the background" will never fail to crack me up.

10. least favorite trope?

Obviously, my least favorite trope would be the opposite of the one mentioned above; any situation where goodness is ridiculed or virtue decried as "weak" or "unrealistic" is a sure way to get me to stop reading/watching/etc.

11. author you look up to?

J.R.R. Tolkein. Duh.

...OK, but leaving the good professor aside (who would take up an entire post by himself), probably either Jonathan Stroud (author of The Bartimaeus Trilogy) or Frances Harding (author of Fly by Night). Both were able to create intricate worlds that felt real yet totally different from our own, filled with extremely compelling characters who made you want to explore more with them. That's the kind of feeling I'd like to create when people read my stories.

12. favorite book/piece you've written?

Well, I haven't actually finished any stories, per se, but out of all my current projects, my favorite would have to be a work that was titled Morningstar (which was titled before I remembered that "Morningstar" is one of Lucifer's names; it actually kind of works with the story's villain, thematically, but I feel like I should change it), which I just PEPPERED with all of my favorite tropes, such as "Knight in Sour Armor", "sassy lost child", "nice guy finds happiness because being kind is good", and "girl with sword", as well as some of my own takes on certain tropes (one of the main characters is a sort of deconstruction/long hard look at the "rebellious/adventurous princess" trope). Overall, this is definitely the story that I would most want published, which, of course, means that it is doomed to be the least well-known of anything I ever do.

13. favorite line you've written?

"She looked at me. 'No', she lied, and left the room."

14. fanfiction or original work?

Original work. Sorry, fanfiction.

I actually don't hate fanfiction. But I can count on maybe two hands the number of fanfictions I have read for more than like 6 seconds before stopping. I think the problem is that all writers have a style and way of telling stories, and I have a very keen eye for that kind of detail, so it immediately distracts me when a fanfiction doesn't try to emulate that style. Which is most of the time.

Besides, I love learning about people's new characters and stories and stuff like that. I already have enough content for things that already exist (well, most of the time), so I want to hear more about new content!

Wow!!! That was a long post (and I had to cut it down to size, too; specifically the entire paragraph about naming characters)! But hey! My very first ask!!! Thank you very much! Hope you enjoyed!

[aion-rsa]

Margaret Stohl, Mark Waid Talk Black Widow, Diversity & More

At Wondercon, writers Mark Waid and Margaret Stohl climbed on to the dais to speak to fans about the character Natasha Romanov and more. Waid settled in and introduced himself as someone who’s written a million comic books, and “our star, Margaret Stohl, who’s written six.”

“You’ve got math — a million versus six,” Stohl said. “You figure out who the star is.”

“I’m up here because she’s too cowardly to be up here on her own, so she asked for support,” Waid said. “We’re here to interview her today about ‘Black Widow’ and other things she might want to talk about.”

“No, I was here to interview you,” Stohl protested.

“What?” Waid exclaimed. “We’ll go back and forth.”

“I lost my questions,” Stohl said. “I had them on a little folded card, even. Somewhere around this hall, there’s a series of murderous looking questions for Mark Waid. If you find them, enjoy.”

Waid asked her if she was a comics reader growing up, to which Stohl responded, “So, Mark, were you a comics reader growing up?” She stopped to say that she felt she had “the most ridiculous panel face,” and illustrated how she felt she looked by looming over Waid with her mouth and eyes wide open. She stopped to pose for photos so no one would take bad photographs of her.

Stohl explained that her formative years were during the Catwoman catsuit era and that she had nightmares of Cesar Romero’s Joker as Satan.

“That’s ridiculous — Satan doesn’t have a mustache,” Waid said. “Everybody knows that.”

Growing up in a strict Mormon household, Stohl saw black and white cartoons and stole comic books from her two brothers. “I wanted things I wasn’t supposed to have access to, which led to questions. Where is the girl Gandalf? Why is Yoda a boy? I’ve been looking for a girl guru from fantasy worlds for most of my life.”

Waid said that no one was there to hear from him. She responded that on Twitter, someone asked her to ask him a question, and she tweeted that the fan could just do it themselves as they were all on Twitter. Waid explained that Adam West came on the television playing Batman when he was three and his dad brought home comics, later adding that he attended twelve schools in ten years, moving around with his “blue collar gulf oil” family, and “those characters were the only constant in my life.”

Stohl asked, “Why do we do this? I’m thinking a lot about heroes and stories. I write YA novels. I’ve written pilots, and I started in screenplays because I lived in LA where everyone in my English class had a parent who had an agent. I’m wondering why you do this. I’ve worked in video games and comics. I’ve had a book become a movie. I’ve gone back and forth between a lot of formats, so I’m wondering, why do we do this? You get hassled the most, you don’t become rich … or maybe you do, I don’t become rich …”

Waid said, “I was gonna hit you up for twenty bucks at the end of the panel …”

“I don’t know if any of you guys are following,” she continued, “but women and diversity got a little hassled on the Internet yesterday, as they sometimes do. Why bother at some point? Why do we work in comics, and why work in a comic with a woman [character] if you don’t have to?”

“For me,” Waid said, “I enjoy the toys. These toys — Batman, Superman, Spider-Man — they were there for me when I was a kid. Because of that, especially being attached to them at such a young age, they became part of my DNA. When I write comics now, I do a lot of creator-owned stuff, in some ways it’s not as fulfilling to me as writing stories about the characters that I loved growing up because I feel like it’s a way of getting back to that.”

“Does it feel the same?” Stohl asked.

“Creator-owned? No,” Waid said. “It’s a whole different animal. That’s both the good part, and the bad part. The good part is you get to world build from scratch, the bad part is you have to think of everything, you can’t just fall back on The Daily Planet being there. There’s no existing mythology.”

“I have a queer child, so that’s always on my mind,” Stohl said. “I grew up in a super-conventional household with a culture that had the kind of signs that said, and I quote, ‘Bloom where you’re planted.’ I have never been particularly good at blooming where I was planted. It’s not a skill that I have. If you tell me to bloom where I’m planted, I will bloom everywhere except where I’m planted. I’m a contrarian by nature.

“For me, I look at it as ground zero in the culture wars,” she continued. “If people get mad and say ‘comics are wrecked by inclusivity,’ that’s fine. If you wanna be mad, that’s fine, because I am here, my kid is queer, that was a rhyme. I’m here to have that conversation with you. I view it as a vote. I’m here to be here. I’ve always been the only girl in the room. I worked in video games, where I was the lead designer on a project. I walked into the room for a meeting that I was in charge of, and a programmer looked up and said, ‘oh look, the stripper is here.’ That’s the culture I come out of. I accept that any time you’re in a community space, people are gonna fight you for it.”

Stohl asked Waid what her goal was in making such a bloody “Black Widow” comic. Waid started to praise Chris Samnee, the series’ co-plotter and artist, and Stohl stopped him to say, “I believe artists sell comics,” again taking aim at comments made by Marvel’s David Gabriel during a retailer summit over the weekend.

“Don’t believe anything you read,” Waid said.

“I don’t,” Stohl said. “And I love David.”

Waid said that Samnee was the impetus for the story’s direction, saying that the artist had more of a desire to do the book “because she’s a gray area … I’m more of a white hat guy.”

“I like the gray areas,” Stohl said.

“It’s a more interesting place to write from,” Waid admitted. “Chris took point, and we would talk out the plots, and I would go back and do the dialogue. The first rule that I put down was that with ‘Daredevil,’ we did a lot of first person narration, and I wanted to go exactly the opposite [with Black Widow’]. I don’t want to know what’s in her head. From the story we told, it would have been damaging to be inside her head.”

Waid said he was leery of writing a female character for twelve issues, feeling more comfortable outside of Natasha’s head. Stohl said that going to a hair salon, a female space that might have a “chick movie” playing, was intimidating as her favorites included “Band of Brothers.”

She said Marvel creative couldn’t have been more welcoming, despite her and editor Sana Amanat being the only women in a room of 40-plus people at creative summits. She described the characters there, with Brian Michael Bendis presiding over it like a “gnome king,” Amanat reining in the madness, Axel Alonso trying to “train the kittens” and visits from Gabriel and people from animation and sales. She also said everyone stops and listens whenever Ta-Nehisi Coates says anything.

Stohl answered a cosplaying woman’s question, saying she made Natasha a role model because it was an uncomfortable role for her. She told another audience member that fans can make things better by buying a book from a diverse creator, downloading their work, or saying something positive, which she described as “extreme empathy.”

The post Margaret Stohl, Mark Waid Talk Black Widow, Diversity & More appeared first on CBR.

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