#gotta make a story outline for this universe

[stxrsniolo]

⠀⠀ ⠀✦ ⠀ :⠀⠀somnium⠀ ⠀💭 ⠀ . . .

𝐀𝐄𝐆★𝐍'𝐒 notes : dear reader, this story will unfold over approximately 15 chapters, all of which have been meticulously outlined by yours truly (aka me, yes). it’s a slow burn between the characters, filled with a little bit of everything—from scenes not suitable for sensitive audiences to purely comedic moments, and even the classic teenage drama you’d expect from characters navigating this stage of life.

𝐀𝐄𝐆★𝐍'𝐒 pairing : dreambound!matt x lucid dream!reader

Chapter 01: The Dream That Changed Everything

matt was cranky as hell these days, his sleep schedule more like a roller coaster than anything resembling normal. living in LA with his brothers, nick and chris, in a fancy three-story crib, you'd think life was all sunshine, right? wrong. especially when you're one of the sturniolo triplets, where every day's gotta be content for their youtube channel, which had more followers than some small countries.

"hey, matt, you look like you got hit by a truck," nick said, his voice dripping with that LA cheer, as he watched matt drag himself into the kitchen like a zombie.

"yeah, well, i feel like one," matt grumbled, his Boston accent thick, "can't sleep fah nothin'."

chris, now hustling with his fresh love clothing line, was busy sketching new threads but still threw in, "maybe you need some new pajamas, bro. cotton or silk?"

matt just rolled his eyes, pouring himself coffee strong enough to wake the dead. he hated coffee, but he needed this boost for real. "i need more than pajamas, i need like, a new brain or somethin'."

the day dragged on with matt filming bits for their vlog, his heart not in it. he was trying to keep up appearances, but his mind was racing, lost in the haze of sleepless nights. they talked about random crap, from the latest video game drop to chris's newest hoodie design, but matt's responses were half-assed at best.

"matt, you okay?" nick asked during a break, concern piercing through matt's fog.

"yeah, yeah, i'm good. just tired, ya know?" matt forced a smile, but even to him, it felt fake.

the sun set, painting sky in hues of orange and pink, but all matt saw was the dread of another night of tossing and turning. he went through his night routine, hoping tonight would be different.

and... finally, after what felt like an eternity of staring at the ceiling, sleep came, pulling him into a dream so vivid, it was like stepping into another universe. he found himself in a surreal landscape, part urban, part wilderness, with skyscrapers touching the clouds but rooted in a forest floor.

and then he saw her. a girl, with eyes like emeralds and hair that seemed to move with a life of its own. she was there, walking around with an edge of caution to it. she looked at him, her gaze wary, as if she was deciding whether he was friend or foe.

"hey, you lost or somethin'?" matt asked, his accent even more pronounced, making his words sound thick with caution.

"nah, just enjoying the view," she replied, her accent sharp, her tone guarded. "i'm heist, you look like you could use some fun though. but, you know, if you're not up to no good..."

heist... what a weird name. but he brushed it off.

"me? nah, i'm just... tryin' to figure out where i am," matt said, his eyes scanning the dreamscape, half-expecting it to dissolve or change into something less welcoming.

there was a moment of silence, both of them sizing each other up, the air thick with unspoken questions. and without a word, heist turned and ran, her voice echoing in her quick, "gotta go!" her movements were fluid, almost ethereal, as she darted through the dreamscape, blending into the shadows and light.

"hey, wait!" matt called out, his voice a mix of confusion and intrigue.

he chased after her, not out of malice but driven by an inexplicable pull towards this mysterious figure. the chase was like a dance, with heist always one step ahead, her laughter a taunt, a challenge, a melody in the wind.

they weaved through the dream city, up staircases that led nowhere, down alleys that twisted into themselves. every time matt thought he had her, she'd disappear, only to reappear in his peripheral vision, her laughter both a beacon and a warning.

finally, in a moment of stillness, with heist cornered against a dream wall that shimmered like water, they stood there, breathing heavily, their eyes locked in a silent conversation of wariness and curiosity.

"why you runnin'?" matt asked, his voice softer now, the chase having burned away some of his caution.

"why you chasin'?" heist shot back, her tone sharp but her eyes softening just a bit.

but before any answer could be given, the dream world began to dissolve, and matt woke up with a start, his heart racing.

the room was dark, silent, the quiet of Los Angeles outside his window. yet, in his mind, heist's laughter lingered, a reminder of a chase so vivid, it changed everything.

©𝗦𝗧𝗫𝗥𝗦𝗡𝗜𝗢𝗟𝗢 | my little stars: @courta13 @chrislilcumslvt @marrykisskilled @chrislova @sturnshood @inspiredangel @strnilolover @emely9274 @sturns-mermaid

[tyrantisterror]

At Sea Without a Map Post-Script

After two months of so, my little writing experiment At Sea Without a Map has come to an end. And because I'm vain, I not only felt compelled to share it, but to talk about it in depth after the fact, so here we are. This is going to be long, though, so I'm not only going to break it into sections, but put it all under the cut for the sake of your dashboard. So go ahead and dive into the depths of the Sea of Monsters with me one more time!

Part 1: Never Stop Blowing Up

The writing process of Wizard School Mysteries Book 3 was really strained - not because of the book itself, mind you. When I was actually able to work on it, Book 3 came together really well - I think it required the least substantial rewrites of any my novels thus far. It's just that real life was kind of beating the shit out of me while I was trying to get it done - or maybe the better metaphor was that it was just slowly but steadily draining me of energy all the time. I'm honestly surprised I got the book out in roughly the same amount of time as the first two - by the way life had been treating me, it should have taken longer.

But when I got done with it I was accutely aware of how tired I was. I still had the creative drive, but fuck I needed something simple as a palette cleanser - something easy, and more importantly, something that was allowed to be bad. I needed something creative to do that was surplus to requirements and fully within its rights to suck ass so long as I had fun making it.

Around this time, I decided to rewatch Dimension 20's Never Stop Blowing Up. Brief explanation of what that is: Dimension 20 is an actual play show, i.e. a recording of people playing D&D and other TTRPGs. I'd say its reputation is built on the contrast of its main DM, Brennan Lee Mulligan, who makes these meticulously crafted campaign plans, and his chaotic band of improv comedian players who promptly derail those plans spectacularly. Like, a good deal of the show's humor comes from Emily Ashford or Ally Beardsly doing something so off-the-wall that it shatters whatever the scene was going to be and creates a far more absurd and zany spectacle in its place. Which is why Never Stop Blowing Up is pretty notable, because it's the one campaign where Brennan himself is the agent of chaos, fully unleashing his own brand of madness that the players struggle to keep up with. And fuck does he seem to have fun with it.

Of course, all of the analysis above is purely from the outside looking in - it's likely that a lot of the "chaos" is played up for the audience. But still... there is something to the idea of a person who's been working on meticulously structured stories letting loose and just doing something extremely stupid.

So I decided to give myself a Never Stop Blowing Up moment - a short story that would be simple by design, with no standards to live up to or goal beyond "have fun telling a silly little story." I then came up with a few key criteria:

It can't be set in the Midgaheim/ATOM universe. I don't want the burden of figuring out where this story would fit among others.

It's gotta be a romance. People who've read my books might have picked up on the fact that I like to write about people falling in love, for the same reason I like to write about fire-breathing reptiles and friendly monsters (i.e. I use writing to indulge in things I'll never experience in real life). I've only used romance as subplots in my fiction before, and tend to feel a bit guilty if I focus on it too long - like I'm being self indulgent. Well, this is all about self indulgence, so the romance should be front and center.

It's gotta be SIMPLE, episodic even. Not complex plotting required.

I almost chose my xenomorph romance for this, but I had developed its outline to the point where it would be too complex to fit. I then considered a sort of superhero story that could be pitched as "what if Bringing Up Baby but Katherine Hepburn's character is a Harley Quinn-esque supervillain and Cary Grant's character gets turned into some sort of horrifying genetic mutant in the first ten minutes." That one hit a weird roadblock when I got to the character brainstorming phase (the first phase of any writing project I do) - I was trying to figure out what the mad scientist who turns out Cary Grant-figure into a mutant would be named, came up with the name "Dr. Skullfuck," immediately realized that having a character named "Dr. Skullfuck" is a Mark Millar-ass writing move that I could not allow myself to do, but then couldn't stop thinking of the name "Dr. Skullfuck" and giggling, which just brought all thinking to a grinding halt on that project.

(I'll still probably do it someday, though - just, you know, without Dr. Skullfuck)

Inspiration struck again, though. I'd been getting into Epic: The Musical, a musical retelling of The Odyssey, and it put me in the mood for a sea monster story. But, more than that, it got me thinking about one particular archetype from sea monster stories - but that brings us to the next part of this Post Script...

Part 2: It Was Always About Calibani

Ok, so, one of the big changes Epic: The Musical made involved Odysseus's encounter with the sirens, and before you read more of my rambling, I'd like you to watch two animatics for the two songs in question here:

A summary: one of the sirens takes the form of Odysseus's wife to try and tempt him into getting in the water, Odysseus tricks her into giving him directions, captures her and the rest of her kind, and proceeds to have his men slaughter them horribly. In the OG story the sirens don't die - nor does their song involve imitating a man's wife, for that matter, it's just a really pretty song.

This is done for an important narrative purpose - Epic: The Musical is focused on analyzing the moral ambiguity of Odysseus, and how it is constantly challenged by the impossible choices he is forced to make in his attempt to get home. At this point in the musical, Odysseus has decided to stop trying to be a compassionate man, shirking all mercy in favor of utter ruthless pursuit of his goals. These two songs are meant to be unsettling as hell - this is the beginning of a series of heartless choices by both Odysseus and his men that will culminate in the mutiny and complete annihilation of Odysseus's crew, as well as Odysseus himself being so hopelessly stranded that nothing short of divine intervention will save him.

I bring this up because when I first heard these two songs - specifically while watching these two animatics - it, like... it devastated me. I was so horrified and sad, so shaken by it. And part of it was for the reasons outlined above, but admittedly that wasn't the gut reaction I had. No, my immediate reaction was, and I quoute my own broken brain verbatim here: "You can't kill the sirens! They're not for killing, they're for loving!"

...now, those of you who know me are probably not surprised by this very stupid sentiment coming from me. One of my more popular posts is just me talking about how down bad I would be for various folkloric monsters whose whole shtick is "looks like a pretty lady but Watch Out." But as a person filled with immense self loathing and doubt, my brain immediately looked at that very stupid sentiment I expressed and said, "Wait, no, that's fucking dumb, I'm fucking dumb. The sirens are remorseless murderers. These sirens in particular preyed upon a man's love for his wife, who he has not seen in twelve years, to convince him to let them kill him. They are, by all standards of morality, Very Fucking Evil, and if they were not women you would not feel bad about them getting killed."

And as my brain argued with itself over this topic, I got to thinking about the various monstrous/othered sea women of The Odyssey - not just the sirens, but the witch Circe, the nymph Calypso, the monsters Scylla and Charybdis. And I thought about the others of their kind in other myths and folktales - selkies, mermaids, etc.

There's an archetype of sea monster that focuses entirely on one specific anxiety sailors are prone to, namely the fact that (for a good deal of human history) being on a boat meant spending a lot of time away from women. The horror of this monster is how it uses that desire for female company to tempt people into danger - like a mirage, it leads you to expose yourself to danger in pursuit of an illusory comfort.

But, unlike real world mirages, these monstrous sea women DO exist in their stories. More than that, they're often, like, sad and lonely. Their narrative purpose is just to be a temptation, but that doesn't change the fact that they do have lives of their own in these worlds. And, softie that I am, I can't help feeling sad for them, especially the ones who actually seem to want the same companionship the sailors they tempt want. Sailors don't stay with their Circes, they don't marry their Calypsos. The sirens live on a barren rock, alone, Scylla is left to wallow in misery at her monstrous form, and the selkie always has to leave for fear of being trapped by a person who won't love her on her terms.

I realized I had my hook for this simple, easy, silly little sea monster romance story: I was going to give a sea woman the happy ending she'd never get from anyone else.

Sailor may be the protagonist, but make no mistake: At Sea Without a Map was always, always, ALWAYS about Calibani.

The goal with Calibani was simple: I was going to set up a fairly standard Monstrous Sea Woman, but where other stories would let her be in one episode of the travel narrative and move on, this one would stick around. She'd be an unambiguous predator of human beings - an open and admitted maneater - but she would have no true malice to her. She, like all predators, eats what she can get to survive, and it just so happens that she's adapted to eat humans. And the story would pose the same question to the reader that my brain posed to me during Different Beast: is there any way you could make a siren-style sea monster sympathetic? Can you make a normal person who doesn't have my particular brain rot look at a maneating siren and think, "You're not supposed to kill her, you're supposed to love her!"

One of the few unavoidable plot points of At Sea Without a Map was that Calibani and Sailor's relationship would become romantic. What kind of romance it was could have varied substantially - it could have been one-sided, it could have been toxic, it could have been far more tragic OR far more comedic. But it was always, always going to be a romance of some sort - the goal of this experiment was to make you, the reader, love Calibani. All else was icing on the cake.

I decided to base Calibani's personality on Miranda from The Tempest - i.e. a sweet girl who is both wordly and naive, who understands the strange setting of our "lost at sea" story far better than the audience viewpoint character does, but views the mundane world of the audience viewpoint character with wonder and naiveté. In fact I almost named her Miranda outright... except I already had a character in the setting I chose for this story who had that name, and as an allusion to the same Shakespearean character no less. So I settled on naming her after Miranda's adoptive sibling (of sorts), Caliban - more fitting in some ways, as Caliban is a fish-human hybrid who is arguable more native to the magic island in The Tempest than Miranda herself.

(Calibani isn't the only Tempest name homage, either - her mother, Sycorax, takes her name directly from Caliban's unseen but oft-spoken of witch mother. Dr. Antonia Warefore takes her first name from Antonio, one of the human villains in The Tempest who hopes to use being lost at sea as a way to perform a coup. And the mothman Iriel takes her name from Ariel, the wind spirit in The Tempest who aids the wizard Prospero in controlling the magic island. If Sailor has a "real" name, it's probably either Ferdinand or Miranda, the two lovers who manage to blend civilization and the wilderness together with their romance.)

Visually, I wanted Calibani to not be any common archetype of sea monster woman, but rather something that evokes the popular images while still being her own thing. She's not a mermaid or a siren or a selkie - she's basically "what if a sea serpent was also a girl." In-universe, she's chubby because she, like all marine megafauna, needs blubber to survive. Out-of-universe, she's chubby because I've found that routinely drawing cute chubby girls is good for my mental health.

Part 3: CYOA

Now, while we live in a post-Muncher society where shame and cringe are emotions only the cowardly should experience, I am nonetheless Very Catholic about expressing my own feelings of, like, liking girls and shit. I cannot help feeling guilty when publicly expressing adoration of women without, like, an excuse - it's gotta be a joke or something, you know? I can't be genuine about it, or else Jesus will beat me with a cane for disrespecting women with my lecherous gaze.

But luckily I've cultivated a loyal audience of fellow monsterfuckers, which meant I had an excuse lined up: if I made this a choose your own adventure type deal, a story with audience participation, then you all would be my accomplices. And Jesus can't cane all of us! He doesn't have enough hands! I found a loophole bigger than his stigmata!

Plus I love collaborative story-telling - there's a thrill in not having total control of where the narrative is going. As Brennan Lee Mulligan must know, there's a joy in having to deal with the chaos thrown your way by letting others grab the figurative ball, even if just for a moment.

Part 4: Offbeat Melody

Since I did not want to set this story in Midgaheim, I decided to steer myself away from a vaguely medieval setting altogether. But I also didn't want to limit myself with the need for "realism" that putting it in a normal sea would require, and making a new setting whole cloth would start pushing this project into "not easy" territory.

Luckily, I had a setting lying around that I hadn't played with in a while, which just so happened to have a location that was PERFECT for the sort of Never Stop Blowing Up style madness I was aiming for. For a few years I ran a Monster of the Week TTRPG campaign called Offbeat Melody, and one of its core setting elements was taking the goblin universe hypothesis in paranormal science (yeah it's a real hypothesis) to an illogical extreme. We had specifically seen glimpses of the Sea of Monsters in Offbeat Melody, i.e. the parallel universe where monsters like Nessie, Ogopogo, Champ, and the like all hail from. Well, why not have a whole story set there? It's literally a universe devoted solely to creating sea monsters - what better place to strand our modern Odysseus?

Offbeat Melody was always sort of a Never Stop Blowing Up project, or at least NSBU adjacent. Some of my most unhinged story-telling moments are in that campaign - you could make a supercut of just the "commercial breaks" in the various sessions and it'd basically be an I Think You Should Leave episode. Taking one obscure corner of its multiversal world and exploring it in detail was perfect for this project.

Part 5: Monster by Monster

With our main romance as sorted out as could be for a CYOA story, it was time to figure out the "episodes" of this sea voyage. I settled on there being ten to roughly align with The Odyssey - just in terms of number, mind you, not in a one-to-one comparison. The first was, obviously, Calibani herself, which left nine more slots for me to fill with monsters. Let's go through them together in brief:

Tree Storks - any lost at sea story eventually has to get its protagonist into an island at some point, but this immediately begs the question, "Why don't they just stay on the island where it's safe?" The answer to that question has to be, "it's not safe there, actually." The Odyssey does this quickly and cleverly with a one two punch: the first island seems safe until you realize the food on it brainwashes you into forgetting everything except your desire to eat it, and the second island is full of delicious sheep but also giants who will eat you just as easily as they eat the sheep. When other islands show up in the story later, you immediately regard them with suspicion, because you don't know HOW they're going to be fucked up, but they definitely will be. My goal with the second episode was to establish the same sort of danger - that land is NOT safe, that islands WILL be fucked up and dangerous in ways you might not expect.

I also wanted to establish that this is not just a sea of monsters, but a very WEIRD sea of WEIRD monsters. It couldn't be any old monster on this island - it had to be one that was unique, unexpected, and maybe just a bit silly while still being menacing.

I've always felt that there's a lot of un-mined horror potential in storks, cranes, and herons - any bird with a long neck and spear-like beak it uses to stab smaller creatures from above. Just imagine yourself in a frog's place in the world - tiny, going about your business, when suddenly something shoots down at you from above and impales you before you even feel the shadow fall over your face. Or perhaps you did see the shadow - some of these birds spread their wings to create shade specifically to attract fish, and then spear the poor little bastards.

Well, what do people often look to islands for when out at sea? Shade - the shade of a palm tree. And palm fronds kinda resemble feathers, don't they? Wouldn't it be both ludicrous and terrifying is there was a stork big enough to mimic a palm tree - and wouldn't that be a DEVIOUS trap for a sun-drenched sailor to fall for? So the Tree Storks were born.

The Globster - I made a list of sea monster archetypes in the early planning for this project, and one I wanted to include was a kraken, i.e. some sort of tentacled sea beast. But I didn't want to do JUST a big squid or octopus, or even a riff on them. I wanted to take the idea of "big sea monster with lots of tentacles" into a stranger direction.

Since the Sea of Monsters is explicitly the home universe of lake and sea monster cryptids, I thought it might be fun if ASWaM's kraken equivalent was a globster - just a big ball of rotten meat. I love drawing monstrous faces, so I decided it'd just be, like, MADE of hideous rotten faces, all melting and congealing together, with its tentacles doubling as the tongues of its many mouths. A perfectly wretched image that, like the Tree Storks, would do well to establish how Fucked things could get in this setting. Plus similar monsters had appeared in Offbeat Melody, which would make for a fun sense of familiarity for the, like, five or so readers of mine who had listened to that campaign before.

Captain Peter & the Dolphin - Another thing I did in the early planning stages of this project was make a list of the different sea voyage stories I know and love, the most contentious of which is The Life of Pi. That's a story that I love on a literal level but kind of hate on a figurative level - its whole theme/message is that doubt is the worst thing you can have, that if you don't commit to believing something with zealous conviction you are a coward. As a person who thinks doubt is valid, that "I don't know" is sometimes the ONLY truly valid answer to a question, I have issues with that message.

But I can't help loving the beautifully ludicrous idea of a non-anthropomorphic tiger sailing the ocean on a big Odyssey of its own. Like, if that story didn't actively hate me for being agnostic, it would be one of my favorites.

So I decided to, you know, just steal the idea of a tiger Odysseus. The tiger in The Life of Pi is named Richard Parker. Richard Parker also happens to be the name of Peter Parker's dad. Hence we get Captain Peter - the figurative son of Richard Parker, if you will. And to ratchet up the absurdity of a tiger Odysseus, I made him a pirate and the sole sailor of his voyage. Somehow, this tiger has manned a boat on his own.

Captain Peter was intended to be the hero of another story - a sign for the readers that it IS possible for a stranded person (or, in this case, tiger) to survive out here. To that end, he had to rescue our heroes from another threat, but not one that would be interesting enough to take the focus off of the tiger pirate. Originally I planned for that threat to just be a big shark, but I ended up liking my shark design too much to put it in a role that small, so I quickly designed a nasty dolphin for the role instead. I think that worked out well, honestly.

Dr. Neptune - Episodes 5 and 6 were the mid-point of this journey, so I wanted the two monsters of those to escalate things significantly. I figured episode 5 was probably a good place to FINALLY give some meaningful exposition on what was going on, and there are a lot of stories about mad scientists doing weird shit on islands in my big list of sea voyage stories I love. So we get Dr. Neptune, a classical brain-in-a-jar mad scientist who's affable enough to give more-or-less accurate exposition but loony enough to be a problem. This also felt like a good spot to remind the reader that Calibani is not just a girl with a tail but rather a Sea Monster herself, and one that we'd been making stronger by allying with.

With his human-but-not-quite nature and cyclops eye, Dr. Neptune could sort of be seen as the Polyphemus of this story, couldn't he?

The Crocodisle - One of the sea monster archetypes on my list was "the island that's actually a sleeping monster," of which there are many in mythology and folklore. My favorite is the Jasconius from the voyage of St. Brendan, mainly because it's more or less benign and actually comes back to help St. Brendan and his crew at the end of the story. I always love when I can find an old story with a friendly monster in it.

When thinking of my own spin on the island monster concept, I remembered the only Magic the Gathering card I had as a kid, which I still have and love to this day: The Sandbar Crocodile. This card already inspired Crocogon's color scheme in The Atomic time of Monsters, but I felt I could go to that well again one more time, and so made a crocodile that wasn't just a sandbar, but a whole damn island to itself. And, like Jasconius, it turns out he's pretty chill.

I did not think of the pun name "Crocodisle" until I was actually writing the chapter in question.

The Femdom Mermaids - These three were a late addition to the roster. When I had Calibani bring up mermaids early in the story, I realized as soon as I wrote her rant about them that we'd HAVE to meet some later on in the story.

The readers had significantly shaped Calibani and Sailor's romance by this point, and I decided that it could be useful to have a chapter that was devoted to showing definitively how these two were good for each other. I thought the mermaids could provide a good contrast: have them act out a seemingly more benign take on the monstrous sea women trope (they abduct our hero to protect and care for them!) only for it to quickly feel MORE deranged than Calibani's comparatively simple desire just to eat him.

The spirit of Calibani's rant about mermaids was taken from weird* girls I knew in high school complaining about cheerleaders, so I wanted the mermaids to look like the sea monster equivalent of popular kids to Calibani's chubby weird girl. Two of them got the names of famous beauties - Helyne = Helen of Troy, Clio = Cleopatra.

(*when I say "weird" I mean it in a complimentary and affectionate sense)

Bob, meanwhile, kinda... rebelled, I guess? Before I had names for them, I listed "bob" by her as just, like, a descriptor for her hair cut, but then I liked it as her name, and once she was named Bob she became more than just a mean popular girl. She was a weirdo too, the little punching bag of the two mean popular girls who did their dirty work and smiled through their abuse because hey, at least they included her. It gave the trio an easily defined dynamic, helped make two of the three more visibly nasty, and gave us comic relief in an arc that could very well have gotten too uncomfortable otherwise.

And I guess it worked - readers REALLY loved Bob, and were very vocal about it, and I realized mid-arc that I had accidentally made her too likable to just leave in this arc. So Bob got to be rescued from her awful friend group thanks to readers like YOU.

Lord Ironteeth - yeah, this was the shark that was too cool to be a minor threat. When I drew his noggin, I realized he would need a chapter of his own, one with gravitas. I decided he'd specifically be the threshold guardian -once we beat him, we'd know for sure how to get home, even if there were a few more threats in store.

Spindle Inc and Sycorax - when I was a kid I used to have this recurring nightmare about being on some sort of underwater sea station that had this huge sea serpent trapped inside it. I'd look at the sea serpent from a window within the station and see it coiling in its tank, only for it to look at me with fury. In that glance I would suddenly realize two things with absolute clarity: first, it was going to break free and kill everyone, and second, we deserved that destruction for what we had done to it. The terror of the dream was less that the sea serpent was going to break free, and more the guilt of knowing that all the mayhem that was about to unfold was our fault to begin with.

I thought that would be fun to homage with the penultimate chapter of this story. OBVIOUSLY the sea serpent was Calibani's mom, obviously the trauma of its capture was why Calibani grew into a predator that specializes in hunting humans, obviously we would have to free the sea serpent despite that running counter to Sailor's goal of getting home. Easy, easy, easy plot point to include.

Spindle, Inc. is the primary antagonistic force in Offbeat Melody, so they easily slotted into the role of the arrogant humans who captured this monster for nefarious and selfish motives. They could tie a lot of other plot threads together too - Dr. Neptune was a scientist who worked for them as a contractor only to get screwed over (i.e. they stranded him in the Sea of Monsters, expecting him to die, and then used his research to make their own base of operations in it), we'd learn of him through a spindle briefcase left behind by some unfortunate rogue agent who got eaten by the Globster while he was trying to escape, hell they could even be one of the possible origins of Sailor themself (more on that later). Very useful villains, Spindle.

The Abyssal Mother - I knew the last sea monster would need a lot of punch to it. I briefly considered just a big whale - the Moby Dick to Spindle's corporate Ahab - but it felt underwhelming after all that came before. So I went for arguably the most dramatic possible sea monster, a full on Cthulhu-style elder god. If you're a frequent follower of this blog, you might know I have particularly high standards for Eldritch Abominations, so I realized this was going to be a pretty big challenge for me to live up to, and decided to keep the cthulhu in question reserved to the last few entries as a result - the less it appears, the less it has to live up to.

I realized I had a good angle when my experiments with the Cthulhu "squid for a head" concept ended up having a face framed in shadow - you know, the same visual that our protagonist has in most appearances. That provided some very juicy parallels between the two that made this final monster feel particularly noteworthy to me, ones that I'll leave you to ponder, since they tie into...

Part 6: Themes

I did not set out to have a theme in this story. I just wanted to make a sailor and a sea monster kiss. That was my only goal.

But I really don't begin with theme in ANY of my writing. I figure out topics I want to address, but for all my novels I feel like the themes didn't start coming together until about halfway through the first draft, when enough of the elements of the story had been set down and interacted with each other enough for me to realize what I was saying with them. A huge part of my second and third drafts for my novels have focused on making the themes of my stories more concrete and unified.

Well, ASWaM is very much a first draft of a story, but it's a simple enough story that I think the theme found itself pretty well despite lacking subsequent drafts to refine it.

ASWaM is about doubt and direction. It's about being adrift in a world that is in many ways hostile by nature, about not feeling like you're where you're supposed to be or even WHO you're supposed to be, and about setting off aimlessly in the hope that maybe you'll find your way to that mythical land of "what my life is supposed to be."

When I began the story, Sailor had amnesia and wore clothes that obscured their identity as a way to make it easier for anyone to step into Sailor's role. Sailor had to feel like You, the Reader, and so we don't know their name, their gender, their eye color, their hair color, even their skin color (note that their hands are always wearing gloves, and their face is always in shadow).

But it also meant Sailor is, well, undefined, at least at the start of the story. Sailor doesn't know who they are, what they are, how they came to be. Sailor feels distinctly that they should be Something Else, should be Somewhere Else, should be Someone Else, should not be who/what/where they are. Sailor is plagued by doubt, by a need to go in a different direction, by a need to be other than they are.

This initially contrasts with Calibani, who begins the story very confident that she is doing exactly what she was designed to be doing and acting exactly like she should be. As they interact, they begin to shift each other in opposite directions - Calibani questions her existence and nature, sometimes to a self destructive degree, and Sailor begins to find something about who and where they are that they like. They find a healthy middle ground together - doubtful enough to want to be better people, but with love for themselves that allows them to not feel the need to up-heave their lives entirely.

I knew at the start that I would build an expectation for there to be some answer to the question of who Sailor is and where they came from, because those are the questions that begin the whole narrative. I brainstormed a number of answers to those questions, but once I got a few chapters into writing the story and saw this theme of doubt developing, I realized I couldn't answer them. From a thematic standpoint, the doubt HAD to remain. So I gave hints to possible answers, bits of evidence to support the possibility of them being true, but never planted a smoking gun that answered it for sure.

Sailor can't know the answer because NONE of us know the answer. Outside of blind Life of Pi style faith, you cannot know for sure that you are living the life you're supposed to live. All you can do is figure out whether you're happy with the life you've got, or if you need a change. Sailor will never know who they are supposed to be, but they did learn who they are, and they love that person now.

For those curious, the possible Sailor origins are:

Occam's Razor: they're exactly what Dr. Neptune theorized, i.e. a human who got stranded in the Bermuda Triangle (or the Devil's Triangle or any other number of paranormal triangles) and fell into the Sea of Monsters. The trauma of that experience gave them amnesia. It's just brain damage and bad luck.

A Spindle Experiment: Dr. Warefore mentions that Spindle has been trying to find a way to make a human who can evolve like the denizens of the Sea of Monsters. Sailor may well be an attempt to do just that, perhaps one they wrote off as a failure and abandoned (they do that a lot)

A Deep One: Sailor is the offspring of one of the denizens of the Sea of Monsters (most likely the Abyssal Mother herself) who has somehow been tricked into believing they are human, to the point where they seem to be human to everyone else, even other monsters. Maybe a human summoned a sea monster to breed with on earth, and Sailor ended up being subconsciously drawn back to the Sea by their blood. Maybe Sailor never actually lived on earth at all, but was only made to THINK they had as part of the transformation into a human.

The Platonic Ideal of a Sailor: the Sea of Monsters is full of archetypal concepts, and arguably a sailor trying to find their way home is just as archetypal as any sea serpent, mermaid, or kraken. Our only proof that humans aren't native to the Sea of Monsters is Dr. Neptune, and he's not as reliable an expert as he claims to be.

This theme of doubt and direction also made the compass more important to the narrative than a simply mechanic for audience participation - a compass, after all, gives direction, and the feeling that Sailor is not where they're supposed to be, that they need to head in a different direction, is ultimately the catalyst of the plot. The compass is, in many ways, the antagonist of the story - the force that keeps Sailor from accepting themself. I realized this a little after I started making the different directions have personalities - initially they just represented broad concepts (North = follow conventional wisdom ala the North Star, South = preserve your short-term self interest at all costs, East = act with curiosity and be willing to take calculated risks, and West = throw caution to the wind and do anything that seems novel and exciting), but over time they became little characters themselves.

Since it was our thematic antagonist, I decided to pepper in some ideas about what the compass might be in-universe - and, in a move that would no doubt frustrate the compass, we also don't know for sure which of those is "correct." Is the compass a poltergeist, some amalgamation of dead sailors who try to steer other lost souls home? Is it a malign entity that leeches off of those desperate enough to seek its aid, living through them while pretending to aid them? Is it a device Spindle made to lure sailors to their clutches, OR to guide their experiments in human/monster hybrids? Was it a cursed item that forced a sea monster to assume a human shape? Who can say - the compass sure can't, it can only tell you a direction to go in.

Part 7: Q&A

Since this was an interactive story, I felt it was only fitting to add one last interactive element to this post-script write up, and some of your happily obliged me by sending in questions.

When I noticed how fast readers were falling for Calibani, I figured there was a good chance we'd end up staying in the Sea of Monsters. By chapter 7, I figured it was more or less a given, and by the end of the Lord Ironteeth encounter I was almost 100% sure Sailor would remain at sea. There was always a chance, though - while a look at the polls shows that the audience got more and more on the same page towards the end, there were always dissenting voices, and the desire to get an answer to the question of Who Sailor Was remained strong, as a number of people kept trying to find angles where they could get that AND stay with Calibani.

I was surprised early on by how easily the audience fell in love with Calibani, to the point where I made a few posts commenting on it. I mean, I shouldn't have been - as I said earlier, I have cultivated an audience of fellow monsterfuckers on here, and I know at least a few of them saw my bait and knew they could get me to be freaky in a way we found mutually agreeable (thank you all again for helping me escape being caned by Jesus for being horny).

Like, we REPEATEDLY ignored developing the plot in the Tree Storks chapter for several days just to spend more time with Calibani - something that I enjoyed immensely (this whole thing was an excuse for me to write and draw a cute chubby sea monster girl as much as possible aftter all) but also knew as a storyteller was not what most would consider a good story call. I like how it turned out, but it defied conventional narrative wisdom, you know? I was surprised.

On the other side of the coin, I was also surprised by how the audience NEVER chose an option that was humorously disastrous. I gave plenty of them, and, like, generally in collaborative storytelling there will be at least one moment where your collaborators decide to do the really, REALLY stupid thing that makes everything spiral out of control really quickly. I figured at least once the audience would choose the troll response, but no, you guys worked hard to keep Sailor and Calibani alive. You refused to let them hurt each other, refused to let them throw themselves into danger, refused to imperil them for your own chuckles. It was very sweet and unexpected.

I say "you refused" but to be fair it's not like NO ONE voted for the troll options - they generally got a handful of votes, just one that was beaten by a landslide of more reasonable options. Hopefully those of you who voted for the troll options enjoyed Bob throwing you a bone by disintegrating Dr. Warefore - that was my consolation prize to you.

Yes. I knew at the beginning that there would be two endings for this story: either Sailor leaves the Sea and goes home, or Sailor stays there forever. Or, you know, Sailor dies as a result of you guys choosing several stupid options in a row, but as stated above you guys avoided those scenarios pretty decisively.

Had Sailor gone home, the following would have occurred: first, they would forget everything that happened in the Sea of Monsters. Second, they would wake up in a hospital, having been found in the Atlantic Ocean by a human-recovery charity run by... oh, isn't that funny, some tech company named Spindle Inc! Spindle would foot the medical bills and even offer Sailor a job, but Sailor would decline because even now they're still not sure what Spindle even does. Sailor would go back to their life and find it familiar and utterly mundane, but not particularly happy. Their father died when they were 18, their mother was never in the picture, they have no siblings. They worked an office job and were sort of a nonentity - that position has long since been filled, but Sailor gets a new job and lives out much the same life: simple, mundane, dreary. Every now and then they get a pang of desire to leave, to go to sea, but they push it out of mind. They never even see the ocean again as long as they live.

Sailor would have gotten the normal life they thought they were supposed to have, the normal memories and name and identity, the mundane life of a normal person. And they just had to trade everything they found in the Sea of Monsters to get it. A question is answered, a direction is followed, but is it the right answer, the right direction?

Well, I think doubt would have remained.

I had a very vague idea for there to be some sort of man-eating giant in, like, a crystal castle. He got cut to make way for the mermaids.

I wanted to fit in a big whale and a giant crustacean, but there wasn't room or an interesting angle for me to want to make room for them. Saved for a possible sequel, I suppose.

I also wanted to have a scene with, like, DOZENS of sea monsters, including some of the ones from Offbeat Melody, but the goal of "this should be EASY you dumbass" made me kill that idea pretty quick.

Thank you!

The primary inspirations were:

The Odyssey and Epic: the Musical

The voyage of St. Brendan

The many "weird shit happens on an island" movies in Toho's filmography, i.e. Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster, Son of Godzilla, Yog Monster of the Deep, Matango, etc.

The Island of Dr. Moreau

The Boy and the Heron

Ponyo (specifically Ponyo's parents - I wanted Sailor to have the same desperate energy as that wizard who fucks the giant sea goddess)

The Life of Pi

Slay the Princess (perhaps most obvious in the use of second person narration, multiple voices in the protagonist's head, and falling in love with a creature that has tried to kill you at least once)

I'm going to use this to springboard to a related point in a second, but first a genuine yet humorous answer: Yes, absolutely yes, I am enough of a big romantic sap that I would give everything about my life away to be with a person who loves me and explore a world of monsters in a heartbeat. Hell, I would have jumped in the water the minute Calibani asked and died with her fangs in my neck and a smile on my face. I am dumb this way. Do not follow my example.

On that related point, though... Most stories like this, I daresay ALL stories like this that I know of, end with the hero abandoning the fantasy world in favor of reality, never to return. And that seems like the proper choice and lesson on the surface - we don't want to tell audiences to give up their real life in favor of a fantasy, after all. That's encouraging escapism, and that's not healthy!

But, like... textually speaking, the fantastical world IS real to the characters in these stories. And it's often not really an escape - was Sailor's life devoid of conflict and suffering in the Sea of Monsters? Fuck no! It's just that they figured out how to deal with that conflict and suffering - they built skills and a support system, they adapted, they learned how to overcome what was there.

I think it can be argued that sometimes the return to a "normal" world is, in itself, an escape - the idea that your life can spiral into chaos but that's ok, you can just reset everything and go back to The Way It Was and Should Be is just as unrealistic and unhealthy an idea as You Should Escape to A Better World. Sometimes your plans for your life fall apart, sometimes you're thrown into a place you never intended to go, sometimes you have to learn skills you never anticipated needing and ally with people you never thought you'd befriend to deal with problems you never dreamed you'd have to overcome. And sometimes it's ok to look at your derailed life, your Not Where You Should Be life, and say, "Well, I've learned how to live here... maybe I can stay."

Especially if there's a cute chubby sea monster girl who loves you.

Bob was never supposed to appear past chapter 7, but about halfway through that chapter I realized the audience and I myself would be heartbroken if we didn't rescue her. Definitely for the best - she provided some well-needed comic relief in the final chapters.

This is gonna sound snarky, but, yeah - there were 58 choices with four options a piece, and we only chose one of the four. While some of the options would have similar results, almost none would have had identical outcomes. And some would have been VERY different.

Like, to go back to the beginning: when Calibani attacked, we could either throw a net on her, harpoon her, try to drive around her, or hide below deck. We picked the net, but for the other three options:

Harpooning would result in us hitting her in the thigh, causing her enough pain that she collapses on our deck and we, horrified at the violence we committed, just sort of push on. Calibani would be wounded for at least the next chapter, perhaps longer, and significantly weaker (and probably harboring a great deal of hidden resentment while also being genuinely scared of Sailor). She would be vulnerable during the stork attack, forcing Sailor to take a more active role in that chapter.

Trying to steer around her would result in us essentially fighting her with our boat, resulting in the boat capsizing and Calibani getting tangled up in it. We'd wake up alone on Stork Island and have to travel in search of our boat, alone and vulnerable among man-eating trees. We'd run into Calibani again, also beached and in trouble, end up recruiting her to help us get our boat out of the sand.

Hiding below deck would end in a sea storm that leaves us inside our boat as it's beached on Stork Island. We'd fend off the storks alone, and run into Calibani once we get our boat out to sea, as she got away more or less unscathed.

All of these would have majorly changed the trajectory of our relationship with Calibani and our identity as Sailor, despite seeming to have the same component parts on the surface. Now account for how similarly slight changes in the other options could have gone, and we could have had a very different story indeed.

Part 8: Our Girl

I just think she's neat!

[unknown-ends]

Bottle of melodies

Okaaay, I'm making a list of projects to see if it'll get me into finishing and posting them. The order doesn't matter here, I'm adding them as I remember.

(You'll find them at @sometimeslwish hopefully, if I ever do post them)

Color guide:

Original text has no color

March 12th edit

March 22nd edit

April 5th edit

April 10th edit

April 14th edit

April 17th edit: scratched over the wips dropped

1. A Dance 'Round The Memory Tree series: Xavier's, Zayne's & Rafayel's

No Caleb because I started this before he was released and currently he doesn't have a past life myth. His myth got released and I don't know if I want to make a version for him or not, I have to think about it.

2. Pegging series: Xavier's, Zayne's, Sylus's & Caleb's

I already started Rafayel's. I have ideas for the other 4, I just gotta write them down. I started writing Xavier's, so now we got two, I just gotta figure out the rest.

3. Full cat series: Caleb excluded.

I have all of the beginnings for the other four. Caleb won't get one unless they do a rerun or a special or something where they show what cat breed he'd be. I might drop this, Imma be honest.

4. Kintsugi: Zayne essentially getting pussy drunk as mc rides him into oblivion. (Not really dropped but repurposed for a different fic)

I have the beginning, some descriptions of the middle along with some dialogue, and the way the sex is going to end.

5. Magic Shop Au: Polyamory with all 5 included.

I have a written outline and a bit of a mental outline. I know the order they are going to meet in and how the meetings will go, I know how some of the sex scenes are gonna go, I just gotta write it. It's pretty much about being!mc who owns a literal magic shop filled with magic items. Don't ask me no logistics, I'll start rambling.

6. Hijo de la Luna: Xavier x male oc

I posted the outline, however, I'd like to actually write it and go into details 'cause I have the beginning scene.

7. Skyfall: All Things End

I haven't forgotten about this, I still think about it. I'm in the theorizing stage because I gotta make sense of everything before I can even start writing the rest of it.

8. Let It Happen: Xavier x Rafayel.

They're in the middle of sex, I just gotta carry on with the writing and actually fucking finish it on paper. (Ps. It's in the same universe as "It Happened Quiet")

9. Dark In My Imagination pt. 2 & Sumber Party

Both are headcannons, DIMI is separate headcannons while Slumber Party is polyamory thriad combination headcannons. Both are sex related, although I'm trying to make SP both sfw and nsfw. Edited the Slumber Party headcannons to add Caleb and made some progress with certain pairings.

11. Pirate Sylus x Village mc

It's an enemies to lovers. This one came while I was trying to find music that would inspire me to write for SCRC and failed at getting inspiration for it but succeeded in getting inspiration for a new idea.

12. A Xavier smexy morning sex one shot where he's still cursed with the whole cat thing.

I started this last year (along with Kintsugi), and I've been slowly making progress. God dammit do I want it to end.

13. The subby Raf awakening I mentioned here.

I don't have much to say about this one, unfortunately. I have the beginning, not the rest.

14. Glimpse of us idea?

The explanation is pretty much on this post, go check out the story that inspired me.

15. God's & Monsters

A chaptered (!!!) crowfish x mc fic that was inspired by this fic and then kickstarted by this one. I gotta stop writing (not really)

16. Mutual masturbation fic with Caleb (also repurposed)

I don't remember if I mentioned it before or not, but there's also a male!mc version of that on the works.

17. More headcannons

These one's are about how cock warming would work with them and their reactions to you calling them daddy.

18. Male!mc x Caleb

This one leans heavy on the whole brother Caleb, and it's kind of one confident gay (Caleb) and one slightly in denial gay (mc) having sex with each other.

19. Rafayel x male!mc

It's essentially a worship Raffie fic because self indulgence. I'll probably make more male!mc stuff as I progress and get comfortable.

20. Succubus!mc x poly!lads college au

This one came in a dream and I've been slowly writing it (like with the rest of my stuff) I had to look up floor plans last time, cause I'm jackshit at visualizing houses.

21. Hybrids!lads au

We have: Bun Hybrid!Xav, German shepherd hybrid! Caleb and cat hybrid!mc. Raf is still a lemurian and Sylus still has his dragonic tendencies and, much like in the game, Zayne is the only normal one of all of them.

22. Royal au with gender bent royal knight Caleb (her name would be Caela)

I've been thinking about it, spoke with Bunbun 'bout it, created a vague outline that keeps changing the more I think about it. It's from Caela's pov and we get to see how mc gets courted by the other four while they pine for each other but do nothing about it.

23. Another Xavier oneshot

It's an au, idk if I dreamt about it or only daydreamed but it don't matter cause I couldn't stop thinking about calling him "baby boy" while he called me "angel" so... yeah

24. A role reversal au with Rafayel

It spawned from nowhere, Imma be honest, and I don't know how to continue it.

25. Caleb got my attention again

And I ended up writing about another one of my dreams, it's this one, I've been writing it along with Xav's and Raf's

26. Jenny (I Wanna Ruin Our Friendship) – a mess of a fic

It started as a reader x mc fic, and then I got a little too carried away with the self indulgence and turned it into an isekai/get thrown into the future type fic and.... *sigh* can you tell I have a thing for complicating things for myself? I've gone so far in that, at this point, it could read as a self insert.

28. Five Guys

This post explains what happened. I may or may not write it, I might make it a headcannon post, it may or may not be in the same va!lads universe. I haven't thought about it enough to guarantee anything, I'm merely mentioning it here. If I don't write it, I might make a prompt inspired on it. Let's see what happens after I'm done with the va headcannons.

Slight success??

10. Second Child, Restless Child

Posted the first chapter on Monday, April 7th, I'm figuring out the schedule while writing the rest of the chapters and figuring out the story line.

Great success

— The Caleb fic I've been writing – T'is done as of Wednesday, January 29th

— Santa little drabble – Sunday, February 9th

— save your breath – Officially completed (and ready to be posted) as of Tuesday, March 25th.

27. Va!lads headcannons – I think I'm done, they are ready to be posted as of Tuesday, April 22nd.

[steddieunderdogfics]

This week’s writer spotlight feature is: Wormdebut! Wormdebut has published 18 fics on AO3 all in the steddie tag!

@thefreakandthehair recommends the following works by @wormdebut:

Tell Eddie He Looks Sexy With His Hair Pushed Back

Kiss Your Knuckles (Before You Punch Me In The Face)

Hell Bent For Leather

All You Have Is Your Fire

It Feels Like Fourteen Carats But No Clarity (When I Look At The Man Who Would Be King)

Worm is incredible! For a humble worm, they sure know how to write fanfiction. ;) But seriously, Worm has a way of exploring different dynamics in such depth with an immense amount of care that's so obvious in the finish products! -- @thefreakandthehair

Below the cut, Wormdebut answered some questions about their writing process and some of their recommended work!

Why do you write Steddie?

These two idiots inspire me. I mean look at them. I think the thing I love about Steve and Eddie is that to me they are destined to be together. Post-Canon, Alternate Universe. It doesn’t matter. They are meant to be together in any scenario. I could and will write about these two forever.

What’s your favorite trope to READ?

Rockstar Eddie, baby. I love some good sex, drugs and rock and roll.

What’s your favorite trope to WRITE?

Is safe (mostly)sane and consensual BDSM a trope? I like to write that. 😂

What’s your favorite Steddie fic?

Tuesday’s Gone With The Wind - Thisapplepielife there is nothing quite like reading this for the first time. I truly thought I was going to explode as it was being updated.

Is there a trope you’re excited to explore in a future work but haven’t yet?

Omegaverse! I have a fic in the worm vault that will come out eventually. Wormegaverse. It’s coming. I’m fucking stoked for it.

What is your writing process like?

Hoooboy. It’s a mess. I cannot write an outline to save my life. (I’m looking at you King of Hell Eddie fic. I know you need an outline okay?) I tend to write in order, but if I get stuck I will skip a scene or two ahead so I can figure out how to squish two pieces of a story together OR I will write little notes about my intentions and skip it and come back. (My favorite note of all time is when I wrote “spit kink shit.” So I could remember my very pure intentions)

Do you have any writing quirks?

Boy do I! I tend to go into like writing fugue states where I will just bust out thousands of words in a sitting and if I am not doing that I am thinking and over thinking about when im gonna fugue out again. I also get really stressed when it actually comes time to write a sex scene? Weird, I know. But every single one is super important to me and I want to make sure they read well. My friends can attest that I am an absolute basket case when it comes to me writing Steve and Eddie getting down and dirty.

Do you prefer posting when you’ve finished writing or on a schedule?

God when I’m done. I am NOT great at posting chaptered fics but I am trying to get better with it? I prefer writing larger pieces though. I am an over-thinker to a fault and for some reason I stress less with one-shots.

Which fic are you most proud of?

It’s gotta be Kiss Your Knuckles. That fic is everything to me. But my Boys Who Kiss series is also so fucking important to me. Those two have so much more to tell y’all and I can’t wait to share their lives with you. I’m a musician so any of my fics that are heavily laced with performance and song are very special.

How did you get the idea for Kiss Your Knuckles (Before You Punch Me In The Face)?

I remember listening to Twin Size Mattress one day and I was like—Holy Shit, this is so Steddie-Coded it hurts. And it’s post-canon AND Rockstar Eddie? Incredible. The words just screamed Eddie Behavior and I knew Steve had to write a one-hit wonder about how he felt.

When writing Kiss Your Knuckles (Before You Punch Me In The Face), what was something you didn’t expect?

Oh I sobbed when I finished it. I couldn’t believe that I had actually finished it. It truly means the world to me and I wanted to share it with you all so badly. I cried for like an hour.

What inspired It Feels Like Fourteen Carats But No Clarity (When I Look At The Man Who Would Be King)?

Honestly? Tumblr user @ghosttotheparty had made a post about the scenario that Fourteen Carats is about and I messaged them and was like hey listen I want to take a shot at this, if that’s okay. Fourteen Carats is the first fully formed fic that I have ever posted aside from tumblr Drabbles and while I personally don’t love it I keep it up just in case someone somewhere does. 😂

What was your favorite part to write from All You Have Is Your Fire?

OH. Absolutely just eluding to Tattoo Legend and Icon, Jim Hopper. God he so fucking hot neat.

How do/did you feel writing Tell Eddie He Looks Sexy With His Hair Pushed Back?

I felt some type of a way, clearly. I think this is my favorite Eddie that I have ever written (My favorite Steve is Kiss Your Knuckles Steve) and he just kept getting more and more interesting. Like who the hell fucks you and speaks French while they do it? Tell Eddie Eddie does. And thank god for that guy.

What was the most difficult part of writing Hellbent For Leather?

Writing sub/bottom Eddie! I did this fic as a gift for tumblr user @gorgeousgreymatter-x (love you bitch) and it was hard because I don’t often write that dynamic, but god damn I loved these two Steddies.

Do you have a favorite scene and/or line from any of your fics?

Ah— “It is, and I do.” Something about French chef Eddie, really—yeah. I am proud of everything I have written but if I can be honest with you I rarely remember what I have done. I often joke that it’s simply Steve and Eddie in my brain just writing what they want, because people will quote my work or talk to me about a scene and I’m like—‘I wrote that?? Nice.’

Do you have any upcoming projects or fics you’d like to share/promote?

WELL. Once I can break myself out of this accidental hiatus I am so excited to share more of For Your Entertainment with yall. I am also so fucking excited to share King Of Hell Eddie with the world. I can’t fucking wait. I am working on a ‘Came Back Wrong’ fic that is less scary and more comedic and I am stoked for that. I have quite a few things that are happening and I am just so fucking excited to share them all with you. 

Outside of these questions, Is there anything YOU would like to add?

Just thank you. Thank you for reading and thanks for letting me be a part of all of this. I have not felt this inspired and loved in a long fucking time and I’m not going anywhere so I hope yall will stick around for the wild ride. Fucking love you.

Thank you to our author, Wormdebut, and our nominator, @thefreakandthehair! See more of Wormdebut's works featured on our page throughout the day!

Writer’s Spotlight is every Wednesday! Want to nominate an author? You can nominate them here!

[aleielle-of-roshar]

Wip Whenever

Ayy thanks for the tag @sulphuricgrin! Currently working on a world map for my wof au since my app just added the ability to change canvas sizes and I wanted to test that (its max size rn lol)- buuut I cannot confirm nor deny if I’m almost done with the outline for my elder scrolls au fanfics 👀

Gonna resize the continents to fill the map more when I’m done, just wanted to get them slapped on there first before I do so lol (got like three left to do the lining of)

I really gotta stop making more mature stories / com in the universes of books I read when I was a kid and actually focus on my own universes ngl💀✌️

tagging @neptuniadoesstuff and @bookworm-driven-insane >:D I wanna see what y’all are working on hehe

[moltenwrites]

Thanks @nczaversnick for the tag!

I got tagged for a character name origins tag, but I did that very recently, and the post also mentioned talking about the characters origins, which I’ll gladly yap about!

The Artist

Gotta be honest, it feels odd that Ive BARELY talked about the artist here considering how important they are to How Our World Ended. The Artist is a God who can create universes, and observes them

The artist is a literal outline of a person, with a white line covering their eyes. They exist within a black void, as a result of destroying their own universe. The origin for this character is odd, and many years old, but I’ll try to get a good timeline.

Initially, they were just a character for me to project negative thoughts onto. Then, the idea of them being a creator of universes came into my mind. They were first put into a story during a OLD assignment which I unfortunately do not have access to anymore. While it was bad, it solidified the character in my mind. And they always stayed in the back of my mind, untill I came up with How Our World Ended. And considering how important they are to the ending, and hell, the universe of Souls Collide, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about them ( random note, but I feel like the watcher from What If was a big inspiration of the concept )

RES

Ugh, so this one is a littttle embarrassing. A lot of my older ideas have evolved a lot, and that includes the early stages where they were inspired by some…. Odd stuff ( you don’t wanna know how souls collide itself started )

Anyways, if I remember right, I always liked the idea of doing a more medieval fantasy story. Souls Collide takes place in current times, so that line of thought was always an interesting thought experiment. Anyways, in 2021 I was watching the game awards because I had nothing better to do. I was kinda zoning out, untill the live performance of the song enemy started playing. And as it played, the premise of How our World Ended, or at least a rough outline, hit me. And as time went on, more music inspired more about the story. Hells coming with me by Poor Man’s Poison gave me an idea for a second half of the story that was, admittedly, terrible. But the ending, that was cool, and it stayed. That song also gave me the rough outline of what I wanted Res to be. A revenge fueled fire soul was how he initially was gonna be. But as time went on, a lot changed. I changed him to be an ice soul, as the protagonist of souls collide is already a fire soul, and I didn’t want to overlap that. Then, Res became more fueled by grief. Now, Res is cold and calculated. He works as a vigilante of sorts, and is far more caring once he gets to know someone.

Oof- that was long, I’ll do a quick lighting round of origins that are WAY shorter.

Salazar

Two big inspos for this guy. Firstly, I always wanted to do something similar to the organization 13 from kingdom hearts. Salazar, and his past in the council of fate, was initially gonna fill that role. Over time, the council shrunk and that role more fell to the gods. Then, for his explicit personality, it was heavily inspired by moon waltz by cojum dip. Something about it just fit the guy, and me misinterpreting the wrestling mask of the album cover as a masquerade mask 100% shaped both his chilling personality and his design

Nelios

Okay I think this one is just funny. So, I didn’t plan this book well. At all. I kinda just went “ fuck it “ and let it happen. That’s why the first draft is VERY rough atm. Anyways, Nelios wasn’t originally in the story at all. I was just gonna name drop him, and maybe give him a scene or two, but when I wrote a full chapter of him, I loved him so much, he became VITAL to the story. His personality came from a mix of “ how can I make an arrogant asshole likable? “ and “ how can one make this guy a fun ass character to write “

Okay I rambled for WAYYY to long there, but I have a lot to say haha. Anyways, tag list time.

Tagging @aintgonnatakethis @ddgraywrites @jjoneswriting @revenantlore @noxxytocin @yourpenpaldee @illarian-rambling @theverumproject @autism-purgatory @gioiaalbanoart @the-letterbox-archives

@mk-writes-stuff

+ OPEN TAG

[dragonfoxstardesigns]

Where do you like to start when drawing characters? Inner details going out? Pinning down the covers to suss out the baddy beneath? Where did you pick up your preference?

Me, I misunderstood Deviantart body bases. Tracing is frowned upon so of course evry1 just references these, right guys? - me circa 2013. I gotta draw the entire silhouette of the anatomy first, even if it’ll all get covered up later. Makes you feel closer to your art, and a nap, lol. Nah but it’s a trap, save your time and energy.

Parting question, has muse or discipline played a bigger motivator in your work?

Good question and thank you for the ask, Parsio!

When I start drawing characters, it depends really based on what the criteria is. For character design, I look up elements of the character that I like and outfits (if any) that I feel that would work. Adding scars sometimes or tattered ears for example like I did with Koh Ta to tell a story without having to say what happened to them. If its a headshot or bust, I'll start with the face - planning out where their features go especially if its a character design that I have to create from my own observations like the commission of a trandoshan/barabel hybrid of Nat. From there, I use the rule of thumb for proportions to get the shape of their face right along with making sure the proportions of their other features to balance.

As for full body characters in a standing pose, I mostly draw them based on what I learned proportion wise from head to toe though if its a difficult or dynamic pose I will use references to help guide me (multiple refs). It's not wrong to use references or trace so long as you aren't outright tracing the entire piece. You can outline the shapes and where the line of motion is especially if it is foreshortened. A lot of illustrators take that approach in order to meet deadlines.

I unfortunately make my life harder as an artist with drawing the anatomy first before adding clothing/armor on top though I try my best not to be too critical with it because it doesn't need to be accurate/exact to get the vision across. Mostly it helps me with making sure nothing feels 'off' in the piece.

Lastly, for muse/discipline its a bit of both I would think? My drive comes from my passion of making characters especially when it comes to character design, but also discipline from my many years of learning art fundamentals in high school (2 years), community college (2 years), and university (4 years) along with years that I drew art for fun ranging all the way back to when I was little drawing characters from my favorite shows/comics/games like Pokemon, Digimon, Naruto, Neopets, and Zoids just to name a few.

Discipline and muse go hand in hand. You can't have one without the other at least from my own personal experience. It's what keeps the drive to create while growing as an artist. I hope that makes sense!

[op-sys-chaos]

Excerpts from Sunny and I’s DMs about The Drakes Spoiled Brat, in no particular order

Sunny = @batfambrainrotbeloved

Bryn = me

Sunny: “Yes pretty!! And Deadly-“

Sunny: “Quick opinion question-“

*About 30 messages of me talking about interior design follow*

Sunny: “Because I need the VIBE-“

Sunny: “I keep trying to find reference images of "giant ass creepy painting on a wall" BUT Pinterest keeps giving me live laugh love style shit”

Bryn: “JUSTICE FOR ALFRED’S PIS

*PUE

*PIE

😂 apparently I can’t spell today lmao”

Sunny: "The pie deserved better"

Sunny: “And I shall, after I finish this fucking pie chapter”

Bryn: “Okay but odds on on the Wayne’s actually looking out a window in the right direction in that massive ass house”

Sunny: “Plot convinence odds”

Bryn: “Fair, fair”

Sunny: “True- I underestimated Tims utter need to throw hands”

Sunny: “ALSO ALSO- another debate scne

sene

jesus okay 

s c e n e”

Sunny: “Okay ignore the fact its mlp- BUT this vibe basically

WAIT NO WRONG SONG

...Its still mlp”

Bryn: “Oh noooooooooo”

Sunny: “I can see the memes already <333”

Bryn: “[redacted] not doing his fuckin research: this is fine”

Sunny: “it just fucking DIED- thats not important”

Bryn: “[redacted]: I wish I could be happy 

The universe: you won’t be happy unless you’re dead bitch”

Sunny: “NOT THAT H E KNOWS THAT”

Sunny: “huh... so THATS what happened”

Bryn: “[redacted]: “I wish to be remembered as great” Tim: “yeah a great PAIN IN THE ASS-“”

Bryn: “I can and will contribute ideas”

Sunny: “IM COPY PASTA INTO THE OUTLINE DOC DONT WORRY”

Bryn: “D O  I T”

Bryn: “Some much needed humor before you break Tim again”

Sunny: “HUMOR TIME BABYYY”

Bryn: “DAMNIT IM MAKING MYSLEF CRY”

Sunny: “GOD IM MAKING MYSELF SAD”

Bryn: “TIM WOULD SO BE SPIRALING, THE POOR BOY 😭”

Sunny: “BECAUSE AGAIN- HES AN IDIOT”

Bryn: “YES YES YES ABSOLUTELY”

Sunny: “AHHHHHHH”

Bryn: “OH NO TRAGIC IDEA”

Sunny: “DO TELL???”

Bryn: “Oh noooooo I’m too good at angst ideas sometimes…”

Sunny: “No no you gotta share now”

Bryn: *shares an idea, idea redacted for your sanity*

Sunny: “FUCKO 

OH MY GOD

Shock factor is THERE”

Sunny: “If not that's totally fine- I'll just do some FBI flagged list worthy research”

Bryn: “I love that, I hope we can see the instant regret in the actual story :)”

Bonus: a comment from the Google doc for Chapter 11!

Bryn: “Jason, having found one of Tim's broken birds, running into the batcave with it in his hand: THE BIRDS WORK FOR THE BOURGEOISIE GUYS”

An unredacted version will be posted when we eventually get to the point in the story where the redacted stuff no longer spoils anything!

[erose-this-name]

Hey, I really like your whole universe and how you set up your lore, and kinda want some tips.

I want to finally work on a story I have been fleshing out in my head for over half a decade, but I don't know where to start, or what information is needed, or even which character to follow.

Do I start at the basics of the multiverse, a multi paragraph info dump that is basically integral to understanding the system, do I start with the character, the setting, the themes?

I can't even choose which plotline to do because I have such a backlog of cool story ideas that I basically am stuck in decision paralysis. Same exact problem with characters too. Turns out, having around a hundred characters, each mostly fleshed out and with unique personalities, causes problems when you gotta focus on one

The first step is to not be worried or intimidated. Anyone can write. It's not a task of innate talent or current experience, but of passion and willpower. If you don't have those then idk, advice givers usually just assume you do. But they're the main thing.

Writing is as easy as bleeding.

You start with world building, but you probably already have enough to get started. World building is easy, just write shit down when you think of it and keep doing that. When you can't think of something, just plagiarize Tolkien or Dune. Everyone does it.

Btw, the world building is the least important part. Never exposit on it unless it's relevant to the story, and try to do so with show don't tell. Readers are only interested in relatable characters going through relatable character development. Not even hyperfixating autistic people will read your multi paragraph lore dumps without those relatable character arcs to draw them into the world.

This is very unfortunate if you are autistic like me and care most about world building.

Where you start depends on your writing style.

If you do an episodic shonen/journey to the west style format it's a lot easier to just do all the stories, but that's a lot harder and time consuming and might not be as impactful. (I do that because shorter plotlines helps with ADD, but it has it's downsides).

You can just write individual short stories for them all and never really have any central plot. This is a lot more difficult than writing a long story, though.

If you do want a single main plot, you might have to accept most of the characters and plotlines won't get any attention.

KILL YOUR DARLINGS.

Just look at Arcane. There are 168 champions in League of Legends lore, all with varying degrees of having their own character arcs, plotlines, and fleshed out-ness. Only like 9 or 10 of them appeared in season 1 of Arcane, and I imagine season 2 isn't going to introduce nearly as many new ones in addition to that cast.

Would Arcane have been better if there were 168 deuteroganists? Hekatonhexekontoktoganists? Of course not!

Don't worry about getting all the OCS. Just pick the one or two or five you like the best. Those are your primary cast. Then picking the rest is easy because you only need the ones that would best support that story line. If they come up, you can give a few others passing mentions to give the world a feeling of being big a fleshed out, but most you can just forget as they will serve no purpose.

Cut out the fat.

Think about identifying characters that would make good narrative foils to the main cast, or could logically be involved in the main plotline. Then give some of those guys their own character arcs / b plots. Then you're done!

Well, you still need to actually write the story. Some people just start writing without really planning it out, which is valid and lots of famous authors do this. These authors are cowards.

What I do is start with a rough plot outline. Decide on the basic narrative arc, what happens at the beginning, the climax, and the end. The consequences and how/if this furthers any character arcs.

Make a checklist of all the events that have to happen between those points (don't waste time on complete sentences here, no one but you and maybe a coauthor will see this). Then think of all the other stuff that will happen between those to make sure its actually a logically possible chain of events (you will really regret it if it isn't).

Now delete it and start again because you realize it will have poor pacing or have irresolvable plot holes or just isn't very clever. Do this several times until you're happy.

Perfection is when there is nothing more that can be removed.

The whole process should only take an hour or two at maximum. (For me, one page of plot list roughly translates to 5-10 pages of short story, unless there's combat or dialogue. Then idk, it just takes longer.)

Oh, and don't forget to kill your darlings! Like, literally kill them. You're not really writing unless it's physically and emotionally painful. Painful for who? Yes.

Then you just keep fleshing that list out until it becomes your book's first draft. (You will need lots of complete sentences for this step) (it will also take quite a bit longer than an hour or two) (it's very satisfying to mark off each point on the list)

Now delete your first draft because it's terrible and painful to look at. Restart this entire process several times until you become good at writing. This will take several years, so don't put it off!

NO PAIN, NO GAIN!

So now you've finally written a story you can say your proud of? Great! The last step is figuring out how to publish it. SURPRISE! That should have been your first step.

You now realize it's virtually impossible for you to ever publish because publishing agencies hate you as a person, and also they only publish romance and mystery authors who are already famous so they don't have to spend money on marketing. Realize this is why new authors suck this past decade.

Congratulations! You are now depressed and aimless in life. Just like every great author! Use this pain to fuel yet another book!

This will be your best work yet, as it is genuine and made for no one but yourself. You will never find such happiness anywhere else. 👍

(btw, this post is an example of how important character arcs are to maintaining interest. It has a story of me slowly losing my mind for EDUTAINMENT PURPOSES. Do this when world building ❤️‍🩹)

[agent-troi]

I gotta know what Borrowed Time is. :DDDD

ok soooooooo this behemoth will never see the light of day bc it is simply too elaborate and complex for me to give the attention it deserves in the limited free time i have, and the potential audience for it is maybe like three people including myself, so it’s doomed to remain a wip forever but anyway this was my reaction to the star trek coda trilogy:

for some stupid reason the powers that be decided that, due to the recent revival of on-screen star trek and associated tie-in novels, the beta canon novelverse couldn’t continue to exist (i.e. pump out new novels in that timeline). simply concluding the storyline and writing no new novels would’ve been bad enough, but they also decided to rub salt in the wound by retroactively undoing the entire novelverse timeline, making it so that in canon none of those events ever even happened.

they created this whole spin-off universe, created new characters, let us get attached to them, and then pulled the rug out from under us by decided they just weren’t as important as the new shows (some of which i actually like, but that’s not the point). to my mind, there was absolutely no reason the tv and novel universes couldn’t coexist, or at least the novelverse characters could simply just ‘sail off into the sunset’ as it were, and just not write any new stories about them but let people imagine that they’re still out there having crazy space adventures.

anyway i was so pissed in the immediate aftermath of reading that that i started outlining this massive story that entails one of my most beloved minor characters from the novelverse (pun intended- she’s the daughter of my otp) getting transplanted from her dying universe to the prime timeline, and initially she doesn’t remember anything from her home timeline but eventually the memories start to come back, and she works on a way to bring her timeline back into existence.

i wrote a few ficlets that lead up to what this story would've been, but as i said this behemoth will probably never be finished lol

[huntingteeth]

Hi!!! Any polyvessels snippets you’re willing to share?

well not anything so specific but i am working on outlining the expanded universe for this fic, and that certainly will be more directly shippy and polyvessels.

i hit a snag in ghost brawl 2k25 where i wrote a significant portion of the second chapter as ii/iv (i think the original tags and original plan was for polyvessels to come later) so i’m trying to decide if i want to retcon the tags or rewrite the chapter to make it fit the original idea but here’s a snippet of that that may or may not make it into the actual story:

“C’mon,” IV laughs, like an asshole, “wake up. We gotta go.”

“Why are you so terrible?” II slurs into his pillow.

IV bounces on the bed next to him and pokes his finger into II’s side. II hisses at the ticklish sensation it produces, and IV laughs at him again.

“What time is it?” II complains. “How are you so chipper? You stayed up just as late as I did.”

“I’m just built different,” IV says.

“Yeah, wrong,” II sneers.

“Rude!” IV says. “C’mon, c’mon. It’s, like, noon.”

II reaches up and grips IV’s shirt collar and pulls him until he’s laying down on the bed next to him.

“Oof,” IV says, but he tucks his hands under his jaw and stares at II.

II stares back at him. “Good morning,” he says.

“Good afternoon,” IV says back. “I took a look at the footage we got last night. I think we’re gonna get some good evidence.”

II leans forward and kisses the side of his mouth. IV’s grin grows.

“You sleep okay?” II asks.

He admires IV for his enthusiasm, if not for the fact that he really, truly believes in ghosts. Everyone’s gotta have a fault, he guesses.

IV shrugs but his smile doesn’t falter.

“You freak yourself out?” II continues.

“I don’t understand how it doesn’t freak you out!” IV bursts out. “Objectively, it was a scary place.”

“Sure,” II says gently. “I was worried we were going to get asbestos poisoning.”

[the-fallen-blue]

Apropos of nothing in particular and also several annoying things that always seem to come back,

absolutely nothing ever needs to happen in a story.

This isn't even about Watsonian justifications for Doylist bullshit, like she's gotta be naked because she's solar-powered, or whatever. Or not entirely. That's a part of it. But it's a broader category. It's "maybe that woman just wasn't gay in that writer's mind, it would damage the integrity of the character to just ~change~ her for ~woke~" It's "maybe the black guy died because that was the natural end of his story" It's "it wouldn't make sense to have disability in this world because they have healing magic"

It's this idea that a story has some kind of intrinsic, inviolable integrity of its own, that it can make choices for itself outside the minds of the people writing it and those choices are worthy of respect and of more importance than the impact of that story on the very real people involved in creating or reading/watching/playing it.

It should be self-evident that this is not true in a collaborative medium. Maybe the integrity of the character means this is a childfree action hero but now your actor is pregnant. Maybe the natural conclusion of the arc was a huge party setpiece but there was a budget issue and a fire on the lot and now you can only afford a bottle episode. Maybe it wouldn't make sense for the warrior to survive his wounds, but the player might have no other tank in the party and so he has to be available for the final fight.

And so suddenly, magically, what was intended is easily compromised. The warrior gets unexpected help from an old ally, making the injury survivable. The characters never make it to the party and spend the whole episode trying to fix their car at a gas station. The hero somehow gets in-universe knocked-up! And the story is totally derailed, and everyone involved just deals with it and makes the new path as believable and honest as possible because that is the most basic level of competence required from a professional writer.

What is less evident but no less irrefutable is that this applies just as much to a true, one-creative auteur project. There was an outline but the hard drive got bricked. There was an essential character-building plot point but the author foolishly did enough research to realize it wouldn't work. The author has experienced a Lifechanging Perspective-Altering Event and decided they can no longer conscience redeeming the villain, even though it would be out of character for the hero not to try. And now they must work around it. The narrative must adapt to the new goal, the new resources, the new context in which it is created.

Shit happens. Stories change. If you are genuinely incapable of writing a story of just as much quality and honesty when you are presented with an unexpected "you can't do this" or "you must do that," if you genuinely cannot create a work of art that has value and power when you do not have absolute freedom, I am afraid the problem is not the limits, it is that you simply suck at writing.

In fact, the true argument being made with "maybe the story just ~had~ to go that way" is not that an author cannot work around limits; it is that the particular limit being objected to is not one that an author ever should be asked to work around. EG, the boobplate is out of character, but it has a financial reason, "sex sells," and that is acceptable. Making the deuteragonist bi even though the devs originally designed him as straight doesn't actually change anything about the story, but that has a woke reason, "letting queer gamers experience the same story as straight ones," and that is not acceptable. It is not genuinely a discussion of the requirements or integrity of the storytelling process; it is the exact same tired old conflict about whose benefit and whose harm should be centered, in storytelling as in everything else.

[buthowboutno]

buthowboutno's Unsolicited Writing Advice

Howdy fam!!

This is a post that i’ve been wanting to make for a while so!!! Finally fucking sat down and did it lmao

Considering we’re past the halfway point of ATWLP and over 125k words written for the universe, I thought I would share some writing advice and tidbits I’ve picked up along the way!! (especially for you baby writers out there) (we’re ignoring the fact that I only broke my five year writing hiatus like seven months ago)

ANYWAYS, ramble under the cut <3

--

Don’t force yourself to write linearly

If you’re dragging your feet along writing sections just to get to a certain scene in your head and losing motivation, just… write the scene you wanna write. This might be specific adhd oriented advice, but you gotta use your juices when you have them. 

I’ve recently posted a chapter that I wrote all the way back in November. Did I have to edit some parts in light of changes I made to the outline and the way my blorbos have developed? Yes, but that’s way easier than starting it from scratch and losing all of my ideas when the scene was first bouncing around my head.

Outline outline outline… but don’t be a slave to it

Sometimes all I can manage the energy for is a long series of bullet points outlining a chapter, but it makes it SO much easier to sit down and type everything out properly later.

I also find that having a main outline for my entire story helps me from falling into plotlines that I don't know how to get out of or losing motivation for a fic because I haven't figured out the end goal for my characters. It's easy to sit down and work on a chapter because, for the most part, I already know how it's going to end up.

Having said that, sometimes your characters are stinkasses and decide to completely break away from what you had planned, and that’s okay! Understanding how you can and cannot shove your blorbos around for the sake of plot is a part of learning how to be a better writer.

Don’t delete your writing!

Chances are if you hate a section, it’ll read a million times better after you set it down for a few hours. Us writers can be so incredibly critical of ourselves, but resist the urge to select all and backspace!!! If anything, leaving a section you hate allows you to come back and edit it into something way better instead of starting from scratch again.

If you have to delete a section that just doesn’t fit in the story anymore, still save it!! I have a bits and pieces doc that houses all my deleted scenes that have been revived in later chapters. You never know how deleted scenes might help you pad out future parts of your story.

If you’re a literature snob (like me) and want to just flat out improve your craft… you gotta do your homework

You will always become a better writer the more you write and for those just looking to get out some emotions or have fun, that is perfectly fine! Ignore me! You’re already doing fantastic, look at you go!

But if you’re the type of person to read a fic and be like… “wow, that was better quality than most published books. how do i get to that level??” this is for you

When you’re reading, regardless of what it is, make a mental (or physical!) note of the things you like and dislike.

 Ex: How does the author portray a certain emotion? How do they lay out the scene? What different aspects of characterization stick out to you? What’s the word choice like?

Never gonna bash on anyone who just wants to read for enjoyment, but when you start to exercise that muscle I /promise/ you that your writing will improve that much faster. (It really is annoying how the fucking rhetorical analysis skills they teach you in highschool help, but they do.)

Ages ago I went to this conference for young writers and in one of the seminars I went to, this pair of authors talked about this spreadsheet they set up to better lay out the aspects of writing they really loved or wanted to avoid in their genre. I think this is vv important when you’re planning out longer pieces of writing; you don’t want to get stuck in a trope you hate!

Watch critiques of books!

Booktube is super fucking great for this. I’m personally a video essay bitch, so I’ll sit and watch a three hour long video of someone dissecting a novel and giving a review. That shit will help you with everything from learning how to construct longer and cohesive plots to avoiding certain pitfalls that may turn an audience away from your work. 

Rachel Oates is one of my forever faves and Alizee is a youtuber that I’ve just recently stumbled upon but love all the same.

 I WILL SING THE PRAISES OF OVERLYSARCASTICPRODUCTIONS ALL DAY EVERY DAY.

They have really excellent videos that go into the different tropes and all the ways they can present in stories, whether it be good or bad. This helps you get familiar with the building blocks of a narrative and decide things like wanting to subvert a trope, build upon the popular ones, or even reject them all together. Fic is basically built on fandom-wide tropes, so I think it’s good to be familiar with them.

Just like artists, we gotta do our studies, too

Back when I was a infant writer (i.e. in eighth grade) me and my friends would find different writing prompts on pinterest and spend a few hours working on them before sharing what we wrote. Even if it's not for a larger work, it is /really/ good practice to describe scenery in a picture or come up with a character on the fly and explore how they interact in a situation.

It’s is the literary equivalent of drawing a hand instead of putting it in a pocket so you didn’t have to deal with it

Write messy! Write fast! Write garbage that you’re going to delete in five minutes! You’ll be surprised about the gems that come out of doing this. Literally some of my favourite lines have come out of a frenzied 10 minute keyboard mashing session.

Don’t be afraid of critique but know the difference between that and simply being hard on yourself.

 I think this is probably the biggest thing I’ve struggled with as I’ve gotten back into writing. Before I started posting, I had about five chapters saved up ‘cause I was agonising over making everything perfect. Do I see, six months later, things I know I could have done better? Yes, but! I wouldn’t have been able to grow or develop as an author if I didn’t take that first step of posting and moving on to other parts of the story.

There is a time and place for critiquing and editing your own work and seeing where you can improve, but you also gotta meet yourself where you’re at. We’re not going to be Shakespeare overnight. Getting better is a process, baby! Embrace the fact that if you’re embarrassed about your work years or even months down the line, that means you’re growing as a writer.

And remember stinkies, any creation is good creation. Don’t go comparing hits or kudos or likes and being down on yourself, the act of creation is an important part of the human experience!!! Even if the only thing you ever put out is a 100 word drabble about lightning mcqueen making love to bowser, i’ll be proud of you. 

Happy writing and get yourself some water <3<3

[trickster-shi]

It has taken (checks watch) a…year and a half, but I finally had a breakthrough on the next Home Across the Universe one shot and kinda feel like shouting it from the rooftops. Like, I’ve been fighting this one shot for FOREVER it feels like and it did not want to be pinned down and written.

But I now have a solid outline for the next four scenes. There is joy and some angst and some cuteness and some self discovery that Derek has been avoiding.

And Kate. She’s there and she has an evil plan and I cannot wait to get in there and let her set it up because it will make her eventual defeat so very sweet.

But I’m still at work so I have to wait until I can settle in at home to actually do any of this. I know where the story is going, though, plus I have a title and summary, so I’ve made it through the hardest parts. Now I just gotta finish writing it.

[fuckrealityfictionisbetter]

Here’s how my season 4 went

It was set a year or two after s3 (they still have powers because fuck that shit)

Luther’s still a stripper, he’s dedicated his every spare moment to looking for Sloan, got a massive child drawn looking investigation board about her right next to 5’s mess of cult board

Diego works as a chef because top notch cutting skills, he and Lila have a baby she looks after at home, they love eachother but they can hardly scrape by, she wants to take on a couple hit man jobs but they agree no killing, that they’d make a normal life for their kid so she wouldn’t grow up like them…

Alison got her s1 perfect life back, she’s trying to suppress everything that happened but it’s slowly leaking into her career, making her seem a deva and a mess (ur traumatised babe go to therapy)

Klaus went off to find him in this universe (assuming everyone else would do the same but he was the only one who thought of it) he finds his Irish self who’s also immortal (he moved to Vegas in his early 20’s has a kid and is definitely not called Nathan) it’s assumed Klaus and Irish klaus have been hanging out and working on trauma and their powers for the last year

5 has tried going under cover in every cult he finds, tried finding mysterious and investigating but honestly there’s not much going on, Ben keeps bullying him about it but he’s TRYING OK! You wouldn’t understand this is serious work! The fbi won’t have him because he’s a kid apparently!

Ben has been stuck living with Luther and 5 (every time he tries to leave Luther drags him back and 5 kept getting reported to child services when he tried living on his own) he keeps getting in bar fights but has slowly become more attached to his definitely not brothers

Viktor still has his bar and failed dates with everyone in town because lol

——

Rough outline

Irish klaus gets kidnapped by people who think he’s American klaus, leading to a very confused family and Ben telling him there’s no point trying to leave the fam he’s tried with no avail (leading to a very annoyed Ben when he is allowed to go back to his wife and kid)

Klaus has healed a lot, turns out running from himself all these years didn’t help and he needed to actually sit down and have a conversation with himself instead, he’s got dope powers and there’s gotta be a fight in a grave yard (he also gets a ghost bf enemies to lovers because I think them arguing and making out in public would be funny)

Turns out 5’s cult is the big mean guys and he is THRILLED, Ben will never hear the end of this, the cult wants the fam to end the world again because of weird cult reasons

Idk the middle

At the end the fbi is impressed with 5 and even after lying about being 19 they won’t have him till he’s older, Alison ‘convinces’ the agent to take on 5, Diego and Lila

Viktor opens a new bar right where everyone lives, Luther works behind the bar (badly) Diego decides to be a chef there instead of the fbi but Lila and 5 love their jobs, klaus is happy with his ghost bf and bumming on bens sofa, Ben decided to stay after a heartfelt leaving scene sometime in the show, Alison is trying writing, the big screen isn’t for her anymore but she has some interesting stories on other timelines and assassinations to tell, Luther still hasn’t found his love again, but because the fam were on the news British Luther shows up?! At the bar and they really hit it off!??

[appleboxdog]

I would like to show some process or writing my comic story thingy that I’ve been working on for almost four years now!

So my main story, not Out of Bounds, is called SELINA, that’s about it.. it’s about a multiversal being going on a rampage and destroying a bunch of worlds/universes. Now a group of fools gotta stop her, basically it.

I made a first version of a comic in early April 2021 (plus some paper outlines the year before). There were a lot of things wrong with this but I’m going to focus on one aspect, the main character.

The main character was a man named Edd, who had a deep, deep past with the villain Selina. He was basically her best friend in every reality and world, almost like her sidekick. My first comic version already had a problem right from the beginning. I started it with “I don’t know how long it’s been, possibly two or three years… the day all the worlds were doomed..”

BOOOORING!!

Where’s the interest in that!!! Where’s the flavor!!! World info dumps at the beginning of a story? Worst move you can make!! And I did it.

See, the problem is that Edd has SO MUCH background with Selina and literally just in general that it’s hard for someone to connect! He goes on all like “we moved on… here’s a reference no one is gonna get….. I’m gonna kill her!”

So after 3 long boring chapters of a poor fast paced comic, I made half of a chapter with some improvement. This time Edd had no inner dialogue in the beginning and there was a HOOK!!

No story infodump, plus points for Apple. Anyways I ran into other problems with this version too. Although I fixed plot holes with the villain, there was no motive still. Edd still knew too much and the other characters kept talking about him which was more difficult, he’s such a fleshed out character with so much lore, how is it possible for someone to connect with that with zero knowledge? This is a multiverse story, Edd has lived thousands of lives, there would be too much for even flashbacks to show as a main character.

Now as a side character or second main character? I could work with that. Instead of the reader struggling to understand what this dude was on and what his deal was, he was just the mysterious character who he lore. It’s like if you started a show with the antagonists point of view. If my hero academia started with Todoroki or whatever his name is. Instead it’s Izuku, pretty much a blank slate!! Name one thing cool about him before he got his power. Nothing! That’s the point!!

For me, I needed a main character who was aware of Selina but didn’t have a deep past with her, someone who would be asking questions the reader might have, someone who is easy to see yourself as while still having a complex character backstory and design!

Behold.

Venus is a space traveler who travels the galaxy with her best friend Apollo in a space plane during a space zombie apocalypse. She’s immune and is going around the universe AND the multiverse/realities to help heal people with a cure made from her blood. She barely knows about Selina, she has questions, and the reader will still have questions about her!!!

When I talk about needing a “blank slate main character” I don’t mean just an insert, or that your main character should ALWAYS have questions. This is all only how I do it, and maybe it will change! I won’t know, but currently it’s easier for me to figure out a story with a character who has no clue what’s happening!

This story is a BIG work in progress, characters are still being made, storyline, plot, backgrounds, all of it. But I will be posting here about it, including Out of Bounds stuff!! If you see an OC of mine and are confused on which story they’re in, look for tags! You may ask anything (I’ll try to not spoil too much). I hope to see you there once I’ve made progress on this creation.