#for example in another fandom i write for its more unusual to respond to fics directly in the reblog unless youre writing a whole essay

[cosmickaz]

it's still so funny to me how different proper etiquette is in between fandoms

[salt-and-a-dash-of-pepper]

Writing Advice - On Wump Done Wrong

I’ll start by saying that I like my fair share of whump. It’s an exciting way to explore areas of a character that you had only seen flashes of, or perhaps none at all, in how they deal with copious amounts of stress. Not to be boorishly conventional, but the rise and popularity of Edgar Allan Poe suggest a growing interest in how characters--or humans--respond to unusually stressful situations, and how they might crack in some sense. Now popularized, whump has become a genre in of itself in the fanfiction community and often highly appraised for its exploration of characters and general “I want to see this character to get hurt and that character to watch” candy.

But. I think the fandom does it too much. This interest, I think, has morphed into a sort of fascination as the decades have piled on each other and each concept of “stressful situation” becomes more and more extreme as it gets more popular.

For those who don’t understand the term “whump,” it is a word used primarily--if not solely--in fan communities to describe a character’s response, subconscious and/or conscious, to intense, often severe, situations that often have lasting effects on their mental, emotional, and/or physical well-being. This can include:

torture,

starvation,

prolonged abuse,

prolonged injuries,

and other extreme situations

Whump is not usually short-lived, not in terms of “time,” but rather length of text. Whump usually drags on for several chapters and often occupies more than 30% of the story, especially in reference to fanfiction. For traditional books, “whump” often does not appear, for whump is a genre in of itself more than a piece of a story. However, I also think because whump is handled so poorly in so many instances, it is filtered out during the editing process.

Why?

Because so many do too much.

Whump is designed for the most extreme moments within a character, to explore and watch and experiment. But the issue is, in most cases, the writer doesn’t know when to stop. They keep seeking out the extreme. And as they pursue more and more severe circumstances, the cases eventually become unrealistic, comical, and no longer does the reader care about the character. The climax has already been reached and instead of seeking out the final falling action, the writer keeps on trying to one-up the climax.

The Technical Issues

Anyone who has passed their first year in high school is aware of Freytag’s Pyramid, though perhaps not by that term. It is also known as the plot diagram:

I won’t go into depth, but the three main points of composition for the pyramid itself--rising action, climax, and falling action--are what often gets skewed in whump fanfictions. Rising action, naturally is the build-up (and often has an “inciting incident that leads to the rising action or stands within it; but that’s a discussion for another time). The climax is the point of no return, where an action cannot be taken back and is the main driving point for the rest of the plot. The climax is the axel that pivots the story in a certain way and how the rest of the story is carried out. The falling action is the time when characters then deal with the conflict. That certainly doesn’t mean that new conflicts don’t arise, but they must always be smaller than the main climax. Hence the pyramid shape.

For good whump stories, the rising action is the capture, the first days of captivity, or the battle where the hero will be shot. Depending on the style of the fanfiction, the actual torture, the shot in the chest, the abuse, can occur in the rising action as well, as the writer’s main focus is not how the character was hurt, but the aftermath, where their emotional breakdowns are instead the climax. Small conflicts might occur during this, building up to the climax. On a chart, it would look a lot like this:

Notice that the building conflicts never reach higher than the climax itself. What most whump writers get wrong, however, is that they treat the building conflicts as grand as the climax itself. Or, they haven’t pre-planned what the climax is, so they introduce several climaxes so they don’t have to compromise and re-evaluate how they would organize the story.

For example, I’ve read many Marvel fics where the character has already experienced their “extreme” moment, usually a kidnapping, but as they are resting, their friends fall under a hypnotic spell and they are the only ones to stop it. Them, sitting in the hospital, nursing wounds and incapable of standing. The reader sets their teeth on edge. You’ve introduced another climax on top of the primary climax. If organized properly, their kidnapping moment wouldn’t have been the climax. Instead, the hypnotic spell and its aftermath would have been the climax. But the writer often treats them as equal climaxes, and this what I like to call “stacking” the extremes.

Another example I will use is when writers set extra climaxes at the falling action. Just as the rising action, it is certainly possible to add conflicts in the falling action. But, as in the previous example, these “conflicts” are overblown into climaxes once again. The character is recovering from torture. Their immune systems are failing, and they begin to grow sick. Panic sets in, as they struggle to breathe. During this point, their torturer reappears as well. They are thrown back into the torturer’s hands and given even worse treatment. At this point, the reader has had no time to breathe and they wonder, just for a moment, if the character really just is that pathetic.

Character Responses

Climaxes require certain reactions from the characters, which will impact the reader’s reaction. Character reactions hint on the severity of certain situations. Overreactions, therefore, cause a misinterpretation of the situation and suggest that a conflict within the rising or falling action is the climax. Characters’ emotions build up much like the Freytag Pyramid. Characters will have neutral, oftentimes natural emotions, and once the point of action occurs, every emotion afterwards will be their response until they reach the climax. Then, every emotion after is a response to the climax, that ultimately leads to their resolution.

This is approached differently for different characters. For the character experiencing the whump, they will respond first to the severe circumstances they are under, and the climax will act as their most intense emotion during or after the event. The falling action is their falling emotions, and how they respond to the climax, until they finally reach a resolution. However…

Most writers write their characters like this. At almost every instance, they respond in panic, terror, or hysterical sobbing. Because these responses are intense, and because the “whump” genre demands extreme circumstances, writers will make the mistake of making these extreme responses, such as hysteria, more frequent. What they don’t recognize is that the build-up to these emotions is what makes them extreme and enticing.  If writers make them frequent occurrences, the build-up is lost, and the character seems weak, unnecessarily hysterical, and so uncomfortably not human that readers will exit out of the story.

Again, the stacking. Writers assume that stacking extreme circumstances on top of one another invokes sympathy and properly portrays the “whump.” But it is because of this stacking, whump is given a bad name. Stacking extreme circumstances with extreme reactions causes the reader to withdraw.

This also involves the side characters who interact with the one who experienced the same circumstances. They will not respond in the same way that the main character does. They will not weep with the same intensity or feel the same fear. Sympathy is expected, but intense sympathy is too much.

Balance

Balance is key. Every moment of pain requires a similar moment of respite. The severity of the pain also affects the intensity of the respite. They need to reach equal levels on the scale for the reader to be satisfied. Extreme circumstances do not require extreme respite. They require normalcy, and that normalcy properly balances the extreme circumstances that occurred.

Write wisely. Pre-plan. And stop, for the love of God, making these characters unnatural.

[punkascas]

Fic Author Interview

tagged by: the wonderfully talented and incredibly sweet @amirosebooks  ❤

tagging: @iggyw @tenoko1 @casolantern @schmerzerling @amazinmango @serricoj @rainbofiction @coffeeandcas @topaz-eyes @angelofthemoor @culumacilinte @coplins

im going to do this from the slightly broader perspective of creative writing in general (since i write fic but i also write scripts and things for my job). also this is v long. sorry.

What inspires your work most? (The show it is based on, the actor who portrays a certain character, maybe the character itself…? It could even be an experience.) so generally my inspiration is (in order): (a) my own life experiences, (b) some kind of commentary i want to make about the source material or about fiction or fandom in general, and (c) the characters themselves and the aspects i love in them, especially trying to find ways to play with the duality of their personalities, the good aspects and the negative ones.  i’ve known for a long time that what drives me to create is that i want to make other people feel less alone. you know those times to read something or there’s a line someone says, and you’re like, yes, yes, that’s me; no one’s ever gotten that before or at least never put it so perfectly into words, whatever that experience/feeling might be. i want to give people that moment with anything i create. there’s also a lot of things that i’ve experienced in my life that come up relatively often in fiction, or at least in fic, and a lot of it usually is off-putting to me. it never resonates. it’s melodramatic or simply inaccurate, and i think is often written by someone who doesn’t have the lived experience to pull from. so i always want to add my voice to the pile and benefit from my own experiences to make those kinds of tropes and situations more realistic and relatable -- to me, but hopefully also to others.  like generally every character backstory or character arc i write in fic is something pulled from my own life. like it’s probably twisted or adapted somewhat, because i’m not into being autobiographical. but as an example, in faith healer, this bit: Memory degrades with time. Maybe as a child he knew that somehow. He knew that there would be a second, slower death across time, as she became more of idea than person, and so he clung onto specific moments as a talisman for Mom: I had a mom once; this was my mommy. He remembers her hands best. The way her skin was thin and dry, but her fingers strong, and the way they'd close around his hands. The way she would press in love and good luck and humility when he misbehaved with a squeeze to his chubby, too small hands. Second best he remembers her laugh, the way her mouth moved around a smile, the warmth in it, tinged with embarrassment whenever someone startled it out from her. The rest of the memories are vague, more like facts he can read out of a mental police blotter than lived experience. She used to wear some kind of fleece robe in the winter, thick and pilled, creating a soft cushion between her breasts for his head to rest when he sat in her lap for a story. He thinks the robe was red. She used to bake things from scratch and used to let him pretend to help. On Sundays she did laundry, down in the basement. He followed her once, asking when Dad would come back, and she paused on the landing, basket of clothes cocked on her hip, and wouldn't go any further until he went back upstairs. The basement, she said, was too dangerous for him, dark and damp. She wanted him to be safe. She always cut the crust off his sandwiches. that is my experience of my grandmother’s death. when she died i knew i would forget over time the specific details of her, so i picked a couple to remind myself of daily so i’d never forget them. and that was her hands and her laugh. and i do have that memory of her doing the laundry and standing on the landing to the basement asking her where my dad was and when he’d be back (he was on an 18 month voyage to africa - my dad is a sailor). and she did always cut the crusts off my sandwiches for me.  (and btw i can’t ever re-read that passage with crying.)

What is your favorite fandom to write for? i mean, usually whatever my main fandom is at the time? which right now is spn. i did also enjoy writing potc fic and RDJ films sherlock holmes. i like writing characters who have a very strong but also very biased or unusual perspective on the world. they make for good unreliable narrators, which is something i love doing.

Which perspective do you prefer writing in? (First-person, third-person) always, always, always third-person limited is my go-to. i only write in first-person if the original source material is written that way (like ACD Sherlock Holmes) and i want to do a pastiche of that style. 

Do you prefer writing reader fics or OCs? no. full stop. (okay, one caveat: i do like kidfic, but i am also SUPER PICKY about reading it bc im always looking for some accurate representations of parenthood and what it’s like to have a child. like kids are hard??? they’re hard and they make you worry and they drive you crazy and they have their own, weird, stubborn, fascinating views on life and the world. they’re not perfect angel children who exist only to be cute or ridiculously amazing mary sue geniuses. so yeah a well done kidfic where the kid is an OC i will read.)

Do you prefer writing longer works or one shots? given that every single WIP i have right now are fucking, horrible, lengthy novels,i want to say i prefer writing one-shots. i want TO BE ABLE to write one-shots. i used to do???? but yeah, i guess i really do enjoy plotting and world-building, which lends itself to creating monster plot bunnies instead of short stories or quick scenes. 

Do you take requests? i do! do i ever actually get around to writing those requests is another question. but absolutely. send me prompts. ask for timestamps. if it speaks to me, and especially if it’s something i think i can write in less than 1000 words, i’ll most likely give it a go. 

Do you enjoy getting random Asks? yes! always! i try to respond at least with in 72 hours. but yes please COME TALK TO ME ANYTIME.

What inspires the names for OCs (or extra character names) in your works? Do you pick them from real life or just select them at random? A mix? so with fic, i never really write OCs, or if i do, they’re p much a red shirt or like extra #243 or smth and therefore don’t have names. if a character has spoken dialogue or no on-screen dialogue but some impact on the plot, i’ll try to “cast” that part with a character from the source material. for example, in the family business (which i realise isn’t posted yet), there’s some issues with a rival gang that need resolving. i cast the head of the rival gang as a well-known character from spn that has generally served a rival or an enemy to the boys on the show. i like doing that bc i like the parallels it draws, especially when working with an AU, and the ability to explore characters and dynamics from a slightly (or not slightly at all but in fact completely divergent) angle. i follow the philosophy that part of the real cathartic nature of AUs and part of why we write them is the ability to offer commentary on the source material. that a good AU should offer commentary on the source material. they're both metatexts and paratexts simultaneously. the one caveat to this, again, is kidfic, because i like and i do write it (i’ve just never finished any of those fics enough to publish them). and then i try to name kids in the way i think their parents would name them. i try to put myself in the character’s headspace and try to figure out what name(s) would appeal to them. and if we talk about work, and the scripts i write, i mean all of that is basically OCs. so far every script i’ve written while employed by my current firm, i always stick in at least one instance of one of my dogs’ names. i also will make subtle film or tv references. like the script i just wrote, there were three characters, and the first character had already been named harold by our content lead. so i named the other two perry and harmony as a reference to kiss kiss bang bang. i’ve done all the clones from orphan black as OC names. i’ve done members of radiohead.  if one of the scripts im writing already has a theme built into it for a specific pop culture reference (like yesterday one of the scripts i wrote was using yoda speech and star wars analogies as part of its marketing and engagement strategies) so i’ll name characters in line with that pop culture motif (so the star wars themed script has luke and ben and daisy and carrie as characters). 

If your story(ies) have OCs, are their appearances based on real people or celebrities? If so, who? as mentioned above, i rarely include OCs and if i do, they’re unimportant stand-ins. so i never give much thought to how they look. offspring in kidfic i do think about how they look. if the actors who play the main characters have children, i’ll start there. like for dean and cas, i always look at jj and west and maison and try to figure out what a kid with some of those combined physical features might look like. i’ll also look at photos of the actors from when they were kids or teenagers and try to decide if these two people had a kid, what features would that kid inherit.  for work, casting people depends on client expectations and design direction and budget, so it’s a different ballgame. 

How long have you been writing fanfiction? i think the first fic i published was in 2002 or 2003. so 15 years i guess??? how has it been 15 years dude. 

[allurascastle]

i didnt understand like half of that im apparently having a stupid day. or week. wait so people dont switch between languages usually? my stepmum who is chinese, i dont think she does this anymore, i havent heard her do it since she came to australia, but when i was in china with her, one time she accidentally started speaking chinese to me and english to the store clerk we were talking to. is that sorta what you mean??

Yeah! But let me add onto that, because I want to make sure that, like, I’m clear. Though somehow I think I may just end up more confusing.

Like, if my Spanish teacher said something in Spanish, I’d respond in Spanish (or try to; words I didn’t know or remember, it was fair to substitute bc it was a beginners class - but only at first. She wanted us speaking in ONLY Spanish, even if it was bad Spanish, eventually). If a classmate spoke to me directly after in English, it was natural to respond in English, like it was my reaction to speak in Spanish (though, speaking in Spanish took more effort bc I wasn’t fluent).

So, using them both is often, but - and here’s what I’m trying to say - Lance and other characters who are fluent in multiple languages wouldn’t have problems switching between languages the way a lot of White Writers (and I’ve been guilty of this in the past) like to portray it. (The word here is portray. We’ll get more to that.)

And the whole littering of dialogue (any English fanfic that still uses Japanese suffixes is a fair example of this, given they never explain why Japanese suffixes are being used in the place of English prefixes (like the dubs do; Mr. and Ms./Mrs. instead of -sensei/-san, Lord/Prince and Lady/Princess instead of -sama, and there’s not really a suffix equivalent of -kun or -chan. For someone younger “Little [name]” would be the equivalent, but otherwise - nicknames - Soul Eater fanfic is the most prominent culprit of Japanese suffix abuse in awkward places that I’ve ever seen bc it’s not even consistent on whether or not they’re using the suffixes or prefixes) even though the characters may not even know Japanese and are fluent in English, but that’s a convo for another time. Back to Spanish and dual-languages)…

Littering of sentences randomly with Spanish when speaking English doesn’t happen unless you a) forget a bunch of words and are speaking w another person who speaks Spanish/English (more likely, you’re stopping your sentence to ask “wait, what was the word for example?”), b) there’s no equivalent (the Korean concept of kibun comes to mind, our closest equivalents in English being “pride, dignity, honor” -  if you hurt someone’s kibun, you hurt their pride, damage their dignity. Also, mistranslations caused by improper localization - Japanese express “I love you” with the (translated) phrase “the moon is beautiful” (with the implication that it is beautiful bc you are there with them), or c) you’re trolling or making a pun (which is very common, but mostly done w someone who can truly appreciate it), d) those are the actual names of stuff and not, in fact, random words at all (implication that they have no name in English. Quesadillas, for example).

So, there’s context for switching languages.

Like, me speaking Spanish with my Spanish teacher, practicing Spanish with classmates - but speaking English with my family. Like, Lance would use English (fluently, mind you) with the Paladins, because English was what they all spoke, and have very little reason to use Spanish unless he was teaching them Spanish or they knew it.

He wouldn’t just slip into Spanish talking w people he usually talks to in English anymore than I’d have used English talking to my Spanish teacher (noob exceptions aside).

Which is where I get back to the portrayal bit.

It is so painfully common in Voltron fics for Lance to just slip into Spanish for no discernible reason, whether it be phrases (90% of the time google translated), random words (and I do mean random), or just, you know, the author wanting to throw in more (google-translated) Spanish bc…? fuck if I know??

When writing a character who’s bilingual, it’s good to know the context in which they’d use a different language (Lance is Cuban, so if you told me he speaks to his mom in all Spanish, I’d believe you, but if you told me he just starts slipping into Spanish with, say, Pidge who doesn’t (for our purposes) know Spanish at all with only the excuse “sorry, it’s hard to switch (to English)” and no context as to why he’d suddenly start doing so when he never has before…? No event or special train of thought?? Just opens his mouth in middle of conversation that was all-English and starts using Spanish (I’m going to once more emphasize google translate Spanish because this has been such a common phenomena of White Writers being completely fuck-all with Lance and Language, L&L, and this isn’t even getting into Lance talking dirty in Spanish, but I will mention the phrase “pass the queso” which was an official “add some dirty Spanish to vocab” thing from forever ago, I don’t even remember if it was on a book, magazine, or an add anymore - ‘queso’ meaning cheese, so, fail there) for literally no discernible reason than the author felt like it and had no understanding of the kind of context that’d prompt someone fluent in two languages to switch languages.

(Another note: I do, personally, say no bueno when something really bad or cringey happens. I picked up the habit from a friend from Arizona - but there is the context, huh? No bueno as a response to something cringey.)

Shockingly, I haven’t seen as much of the (well, if I got into the attempts about Lance’s dirty talking, I wouldn’t hesitate to call it fetishizing, because that also happens a lot and the same writers who throw in random bits of other language, google translated 90% of the time (because the people who ask for an actual speaker of the language to help them usually don’t do this randomly and then the use of the second language feels, you know, like the person actually cares about the language and isn’t using it as a throwaway in an awkward spot - but I’m not getting into the dirty talk bc that means getting into a ship that I’d rather not bc it’s since been ruined for me by it’s fandom, so we’ll go with a gentle) misuse of language with Shiro or Keith? Eh, I’ve probably just missed it.

I forgot my original point here, so,

tl;dr I think I was trying to say people do use multiple languages, but not randomly. There’s usually a reason they use one language over another. A native Spanish speaker might speak Spanish with their family and English at the work place and French with a friend who’s learning French and German with someone else in private (or not), and they might mix up the rules (understandable and not unusual) or forget a word and substitute OR get mixed up when Spanish Mom and French Friend both talk to them (,, it can be HARD to keep conversations straight I send people the wrong message all the time when it was meant for someone else, so, like, UNDERSTANDABLE) if that makes sense

edit: and that there are Voltron writers who should probably do a little more research and ask themselves if there’s an actual reason for inserting Spanish (or Japanese, or Korean), or if it’s just there so they can say they have Spanish in their fic even if its use doesn’t make a lot of sense at all.

edit 2: but it’s almost 2am so anything else that makes me feel like I need a more in-depth answer (even if partially for my own sanity and not bc I think the other person actually *needs* it, fine line there - what I do for myself and what I do for others/based on my opinion of others) will have to wait until tomorrow. Maybe even after I get off work in the evening

[snowdropsandtigers]

2,17, 23 for fandom valentines meme

oh man I clicked on answer before writing anything, hold on-okay, thank you for your patience @swordsandparasols

2. Is there a ship you didn’t like at first but ultimately started shipping?

Is there ever. While watching season two of Once Upon a Time I despised the idea of Emma and Hook. I had never been too attached to any of her potential love interests, but found season two’s offerings in Hook and Neal to be on another level of “ew nope.“ Then came the finale and I was intrigued. And season three! Oh god. The personal conversations that didn’t even have to do with love much of the time. The banter, the tension, the cute little moments like coconut-sharing, the emotional support he offered Emma. THE KISS THAT WAS LEAKED TWO WEEKS EARLY SO WE WERE IN A FRENZY. (Anytime I go back and look at posts from the time, there’s such energy.) Sealed by a season finale that gave a perfect Emma Swan fairytale, mining her heritage and the beginning of the show to tell her story about feeling at home. It was a love letter to Emma. With Killian in a supporting role. And the most romantic kiss on the show. I felt so pure and elevated. How did this ship do “enemies to lovers” and “friends to lovers” at the same time? I’m not even doing meta here, just squeeing a lot.  CAPTAIN SWAN

17. Is there a type of ship you always go for?

Yes. I have a long history, dating back to childhood and probably the first Sailor Moon arc in particular, of shipping hero/villain pairings. Sometimes it can be a mild variant, such as hero/antagonist or hero/rival–as long as there’s some antagonistic tension at some point in the story. Usually it’s heroine/villain too; I know there’ve been hero/villainess exceptions, but I can’t think of any at the moment. The only het OTP I remember that doesn’t follow this rule is Harry/Luna in Harry Potter fandom.

Where it’s gotten me curious is that pattern holds much better for het pairings. When it comes to f/f, I’ve enjoyed more variety, with perhaps an inclination to more friendly, supportive pairings. I have a long-lasting soft spot for Buffy/Tara and Emma Swan with OUAT’s rendition of Elsa, more than pretty much any other femslash pairing from those fandoms. Except maybe Emma/Ruby and Buffy/Kendra? Or Buffy/Satsu and Buffy/Cordelia. Though Buffy/Kendra and Buffy/Cordelia do have that antagonistic tension I almost need in het pairings. Also, during one of my return journeys to the Inuyasha fandom I ended up shipping Kagome with Kikyo, her own past life who hates her and is an undead priestess. Maybe my real pattern with femslash is that I almost always prefer ships that end up with small fandoms dwarfed by both the f/f and the het juggernauts. Regardless, Buffy/Tara and Emma/Elsa are my favorites. They’re the ones I’ve tried hardest to find fics for and they’re really comforting to me.

Emma and Hook are unusual in that, as I noted above, they feel like “enemies to lovers” and “friends to lovers” at the same time. Which also had the effect of making me feel…safe? I love “enemies to lovers” but they don’t tend to feel warm and sweet to me. Emma/Killian did, for years. Sometimes they still do. I enjoy looking back on that time. This pairing has a lot of emotional range, like it could inhabit any kind of mood. (So did Buffy/Angel, one of my early OTPs I still care about, but in retrospect it had a lot wrong with it from the beginning in a way that Captain Swan didn’t. That takes away from my whole-hearted reveling in the feeling of safety Buffy experienced in season two right before the change, even if I’m still there with her when I revisit.) 

Now, friends to enemies to ???? That’s an extra yes. I watched what Hulu has of Yona of the Dawn a few weeks ago and damn the obvious OT3 there. Damn them.

23. Have you ever started shipping a ship because of the fans?

Not that I recall…oh, wait. One of my first, if not the first hero/villain ships–since Usagi/Mamoru from Sailor Moon was close in the first story arc but not quite–was Kagome/Sesshomaru from Inuyasha. There was zero basis for them even liking each other–the closest it gets is maybe a grudging respect on his part and her calling him “brother“ after she marries Inuyasha, and that came in a finale years after I had left fandom–but I went for this hard.  I can’t remember the exact catalyst, but I’m almost sure it’s because I found something on FF.Net. I scoured that website and every possible archive I could find for this pairing. I still go back to that fandom on occasion every few years. (Though, oddly, I have never read one of the more beloved fics for it: Tales from the House of the Moon by Resmiranda. I need to!) It was definitely my first noncanon ship. Looking back, it’s not a surprise; it filled my need for the aloof/cold one with the warm/fiery one trope along with having the hero/villain thing going for it, and both are elements I can now see myself as having responded to in earlier experiences with the afore-mentioned Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura.

A smaller possible example is Buffy/Faith in Buffy. I’m not sure because I had mixed feelings when I first watched. There was some negativity, but I really enjoyed most of their interactions through “Bad Girls” and the understanding they came to in season seven, so I think I came to like it even apart from the fans. I got into the fandom as I watched, though, so its hard to say. But fandom has definitely helped me appreciate Fuffy a lot over the years, and now I like more of the late season three stuff too.

Thank you for the asks! This was so much fun. Sorry for the initial fumbling!