#i actually don't write in first person POV all that often but for this piece it fits | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

oh-koenig-my-koenig · 11 months ago

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(to the tune of Avril Lavigne's sk8terboi)

He was a human battering ram.

She was a recon sniper.

Can I make it any more obvious?

Headcannons - Fit for a King - König x fem!OC fanfic

Instead of making a y/n fic, I decided to create an original female character because I ususally write all of my stuff in POVs. Due to posting the chapters often right after I've written them some of the context and the characterization might not be explicit in every single piece, some of the information is only gonna get revealed down the road.

(TW: alcoholism, death, violence)

Karina Müller is almost 30 years old, she served in the Norwegian military from right after school until the death of her brother who was KIA on a mission together. She fell off the wagon after that, feeling responsible for his death and effectively being shunned by her family after that. Her pick of poison was alcohol and it got so bad that she more than once was drunk on the job which led to her getting kicked out.

The years after that she spent getting help, trying to get clean and going back to a civilian life, but the military was what she knew, so the civilian jobs didn't stick and she started to work as a mercenary, now a dry alcoholic. Which might be an issue for some contractors, but KorTac doesn't really bat an eye.

She's a compassionate person who loves to laugh, she's seen enough shit not to take any from her teammates and can stand her ground when faced with any challenge thrown her way. She's still working through some stuff, coming to terms with her past, but she has an optimistic spirit and a strong will.

Even though the Colonel seems scary at first, she learns pretty quickly that he is to be respected in training and on the battlefield, but on a personal level he's really not that bad. The 6'10'' killing machine, Austrian war criminal (insert "what murdeeer?!"-meme here) is quite an anxious person when it comes to basic human interaction.

Shouting orders at his team, stomping his enemies into the ground is more comfortable to him than just talking about mundane stuff with other people, he mostly keeps to himself (except for Horangi because that little shit would never leave him alone). And for the first time in a long time, Müller makes him wish that he could just go up to people and strike up a normal conversation like a normal person (don't we all).

König is 38 years old (we don't know his full name) and has the biggest metalhead dad vibes without actually having any children himself (his favourite band is Death, although he listens to a bunch of different ones, it's also their merch shirt Müller steals in "Are you wearing my t-shirt?").

When he started out in the military, he shaved his long metalhead hair off because that was the way to go back then, but he let it grow back when he was older and already Colonel. He has gauged ears and a plethora of tattoos all over his body because the soft pain of body modifications and working out until he almost passes out are his ways of dealing with his anxiety and stress. His body is a testament to that.

He has a huge scar on the right side of his face from when he got beaten to a pulp by his bullies at school, something he never let happen again after that (five on one was really unfair). His nose has been broken two times and sometimes his tattoos get destroyed by battle injuries, but he doesn't really care about that - or his looks in general. He's a soldier and not a model.

So the reason why he's always wearing the selfmade hood is not the scar. He prefers not to show his feelings to others, staying hidden underneath the mask for his own comfort, even if it makes him scarier also in situations where he doesn't want to be.

(CW: some nsfw headcannons ahead, talk about not wanting to have children) They're both switches, though König is leaning more on the Dom-side while Müller is a sub who likes to brat a little too much, just to see her man falter (for example when she calls him a good boy in random scene #1).

Müller is bisexual, something she discovered when serving in an all-women-taskforce of the Norwegian military (we don't really know about König's sexuality though). She decided a long time ago that she doesn't want to have children (she doesn't see herself leaving service again anytime soon and given her past, she doesn't see herself fit to become a mother), so she got her tubes tied. Which also comes in handy when a certain Colonel's favourite pasttime (well, actually second favourite) is leaving creampies inside her (no 'unexpected pregnancy' trope in this household).

König definitely eats pussy for his own pleasure, begging Müller to let him eat her out in "Sit" or losing a little friendly competition for a sexual favour in "But no funny business" (oh and he definitely steals her panties at any chance he gets). She's totally not opposed to servicing him as well, but the size of his dick makes this a whole endeavour (like seen in "Open wide, Prinzessin").

They match each other's energy pretty well, just going at it like rabbits at every chance they get, which sometimes proves to be difficult as they're sneaking around in secret.

Their arrangement is kind of a fuckbuddy/fwb-situation, they fuck hard and rough, without ever really kissing (the mask stays on), but after a while feelings start to get in the way... After all they do belong together <3

Read more at the Fit for a King - Masterlist or keep an eye out for the AO3 link - coming soon.

#könig #könig cod #könig mw2 #konig #konig cod #konig mw2 #könig x fmc #könig fanfiction #cod mw2 smut #könig smut #konig smut #cod smut #female oc

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justporo · 1 year ago

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Senseless

Astarion, Staeve and the others barely survived their last big fight. Staeve can barely take the exhaustion which might or might not be amplified by how his local vampire has been regularly feeding on him. He desperately tries to push through... And Astarion has a few things to say about that.

MASTERLIST | AO3

Author's Note: This will be quite long, so... sorry! But I have a few things to add about this. First of all, I dedicate this piece of writing to the lovely @velnna - creator of the legendary Staeve and incredible artist! (Check him out if you don't know him already, I will say it again) This story is a continuation to "Bloodless". Back during writing that I already imagined Staeve being the Tav in that story (but didn't officially make it so). Back then I was waaay to too scared to tag velnna - but: I recently found out (well, he told me himself- and very kindly), that he indeed found it, read it - and liked it! (I was in shock...) And so I immediately thought that I would have to write an actual Staeve x Astarion piece for him. So here we are! @velnna, thank you so much for your kind words - I will be thinking of this and be motivated by it for a long time! And thank you also for all the amazing art you provide this community with! It's written from the usual second person POV - but it's STAEVE!

Pairing: Astarion/Staeve (You, male reader) Warnings: none, but major Act 2 spoilers so it will fully remain below the cut Wordcount: 3,5k ~~~

Barely, just barely had you all made it out of this godsdamned mausoleum alive. And after slaying a demon, oh, some other folks too, completing the Gauntlet of Shar, and a trip to the Shadowfell, you felt positively exhausted. And you felt that it was rightfully earned. Especially knowing that you wouldn’t get much rest before you were taking on an even bigger threat.

No rest for the wicked, it seemed – even though you weren’t entirely sure if that meant you or your foes.

You’d been pretty much exhausted even before you had entered the mausoleum and then what lay beneath (and before a certain devil had made it even worse). All because a certain vampire had to be kept fed and happy. Not that you were complaining about it though.

The two of you had your disagreements about it. Especially since you had already ended up in the dirt once because you might’ve been just a tad too eager about offering your neck to the vampire. You had both agreed to take it a bit slower after that - at least with the whole feeding thing.

Although you had still felt like it hadn’t been that much of a deal, the vampire had kept hissing at you to not be so desperate, as he called it. You would have called it: being way too stubborn to accept some godsdamned help.

And that is what had become of you both: two idiots, not really being able to admit to each other how deeply you actually cared for the other. Until just recently.

But even with that - it still meant you were both very much on uncharted territory. And putting feelings into words after such a long time of just trying to suppress them was by far not an easy feat to achieve.

And then, when you had entered the Shadowlands with barely anything alive in it – what else could you have done but to offer yourself up again? Astarion’s survival instincts had kicked in once more and so had your urge to provide – for as long as you were able to be there for him.

On top of that, the moments of tenderness that always followed, holding each other, kissing each other, deeply, – and before a certain night not long ago, often more – had done their fair share of consoling you about just a little blood loss. Barely anything couldn’t be forgotten as long as you were laying in the arms of someone you wanted to just keep holding onto – right?

But as much as you tried to ignore it: you still felt it. Felt how the generous donations to your local vampire tended to make you a little sluggish. Maybe it was even a bit more than just a little. More than once causing you to only make a critical dodge or lift your blade to parry in the last possible moment. Your A game definitely looked different.

But then again: did you want to be responsible for Astarion’s waning strength when it was so easy to just saunter over to him in the evening? Talk to him, get him to throw some of his sultry lines at you, cheesing your way to the same moment almost every night where you deliberately offered the vampire to feed on you. And he always accepted in the end.

It had become a well practised dance between the two of you over the past time spent in these godsforsaken lands. And so it had been in like about you trying to hide the effects all of this had on your constitution

So, when you had come out of the damned crypt – alive, even if only by a hair – your first order had been to lie down. Just right in front of the stone arch. Right in the dirt.

“Gods above and below”, you whispered, letting out a sigh and spreading out all of your limbs.

As soon as you made contact with the ground you knew it would be next to impossible to get up again in the near future. So, you settled for getting cosy with what you got. Which meant wiggling around until you found a somewhat comfortable position where the sword on your back wouldn’t press too much into your back.

“Gods, Staeve, you couldn’t wait ten seconds?”, Shadowheart scoffed and made a big step over one of your stretched out limbs – too stubborn to actually find a way around you. Incredible, how she still had the energy to be sassy after everything that must be weighing on her mind now. But then again, you really couldn’t blame her for deflecting with a generous amount of sarcasm.

“Ten seconds? What difference would that have made, eh?”, you answered her.

You lifted your head up a little. “I’d just be lying over there then”, you continued and weakly pointed down the path a bit.

The cleric just rolled her eyes at you and groaned at you again as the rest of the companions left the dusty old place as well. All of you blood covered and feeling exhaustion down to your bones.

You closed your eyes as you felt the fatigue grab almost complete hold of you. Meanwhile you heard how some of the others settled down around you. Halsin, who’d been lightly injured in the fight, winced as he sat down.

Your eyes flew open at the sound of it and lifting your head up again, you looked at him. But the druid just smiled and waved you off - no big deal, thankfully. So you let your head sink to the ground again, eyes shutting with a sigh. You barely had it in you to stay awake right this moment.

Your limbs felt heavy as lead, and you felt the drag on your eyelids. Meanwhile your pulse was still thrumming in your chest and your ears. A nervous rhythm that threatened to become the only thing baring you from drifting off to blissful and much needed sleep.

You were well aware that this kind of exhaustion wasn’t normal - even with everything you and the others had gone through. It had slowly become more and more - up to where you were now lying in the dirt, not sure if you would make it to camp tonight. Might be you were kind of in a pickle - but best not to dwell on it.

Next time you opened your eyes was when you heard some rustling quite near to you. It was Astarion, kneeling next to you. He was giving you one of his judgemental glances with a raised eyebrow, red eyes piercing as ever.

“Oh, hi love”, you said and grinned, tiredly wiggling your eyebrows at him. The vampire didn’t even acknowledge you - except for his eyebrow rising still a bit higher.

“So”, he drawled, an edge to his voice you couldn’t fully place, “are we getting up or do we have to carry you, love.” He made a little dramatic pause before he sarcastically spat out the last word.

You slapped your hand to your armoured chest with some effort and made a face that hopefully conveyed how hurt you felt by his implied accusation.

Astarion didn’t give a shit about your histrionics.

So you decided for a comeback.

“My friend, you aren’t carrying anyone, anywhere at any time in the near future”, you replied dryly. You heard Karlach snicker somewhere behind you. At least you’d gotten someone’s approval. The vampire gave the tiefling a death glare, then his ruby gaze wandered back to you.

And then it kept lingering on you. Something in the vampire’s eyes had changed and it was beginning to startle you.

And well - usually by now he should have taken up the banter with you again. Could it be, he was actually worried? Like really, actually worried?

“Look”, you said and used some of the little power you had left in your body to push up to a position that was at least somewhat close to sitting up. Immediately you started to feel dizzy.

“I’m fine. Just a little tired, that’s all. We all are, aren’t we?”, you continued as you desperately tried to not let it be known how much your surroundings were spinning around you at the moment.

Quite obviously you were doing a terrible job at that because there was now open worry on Astarion’s face. Even the usual sharp edge of teasing in his voice had been dulled down by now: “And you want to take on Ketheric Thorm tomorrow? And all his thugs? Like this?”

You were definitely getting a little annoyed at him now. The others had gone dead silent. They must’ve been feeling too that this situation might be about to go sideways. You didn’t care.

And as much as you felt him tug on your heartstrings with the sad round puppy eyes he offered you now - did he have to make it so public? You were just not having it.

Using every last ounce of energy that you still had within you, you made to stand up. Astarion’s eyes widened some more and he cautiously stood up as well. His brows were furrowed now.

You gathered your legs beneath you with quite some effort. The world around you was really rushing past you now, but you were determined to bite through it. Then you pushed up to a standing position - straightening your back for extra effect and pointing a very passive-aggressive finger at your vampire.

“I’ll have you know tha-”, you began in a sassy tone.

But then no one would ever find out what you would have wanted to let them know. Because your vision blackened rapidly, closing in from the edges and you already felt the strange sensation of toppling over. Gravity inevitably pulling you back to the ground you had just stood up from.

The last thing you felt were arms that caught you under the armpits, with quite some effort. You heard strained groans and a hissed “idiot” very close to your ear. Then you passed out completely.

~~~

You woke up in dire confusion about where you were and how you’d gotten there. You lifted up your torso and blinked profusely to try and clear your vision. You also immediately reached for a dagger that would have usually been at your side. But you were also out of your armour it seemed. Oh, and laying on some pillows? A blanket draped over you?

You closed your eyes again and pressed the balls of your hands to your eyes. And you groaned as you felt a headache creep up on you now that you had woken up.

Since there seemed to be no imminent dangers around you sunk back onto the pillows. You realised that your shirt had been taken off as well. Pain thrummed through your skull.

Your hands dropped from your face, your vision cleared more and more and you realised that you were laying in someone else’s tent. And as you took a closer look at the ceiling of the tent, your brows furrowed. Because you very well knew which tent it was you were laying in. You’ve had your fair share of staring up at this very particular fabric from this very particular spot.

Your head popped up again from the pillows. And you found Astarion sitting at your feet, in his camp clothes. Legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles, arms folded over his chest and very much glowering at you. His red eyes were basically boring into you.

“Oh, are we awake again? Back from the land of the dead, hm? Rise and shine then, my love, since you seemed so eager to do so earlier!”, the vampire immediately went into a tirade.

“You’re not even going to give me a few more moments to just really wake up?”, you replied flatly. But you could already feel his words evoking shame within you. You rubbed one of your eyes once more, trying to look innocent.

The vampire kept fuming: “Were you planning on telling me how much the blood loss affected you again?”

“No.”

Astarion obviously could barely believe your audacity as well as your honesty by the way his eyes first widened and then narrowed even more at you. But he kept silent.

“Were you planning on stopping to take my offered blood?”, you posed in return when there was no further reaction coming from Astarion.

You regretted the words as soon as they had left your tongue. Knowing it was a cheap shot because this was still very much you insisting on being the one to take care of his needs. And also hiding the negative side effects.

You immediately felt the twinge of guilt as you saw how Astarion’s eyes couldn’t help but stray from yours as he registered your words. Your headache accordingly sent a bolt of pain through your skull, making you groan.

You closed your eyes in desperation for a second, trying to swallow down the thought that you had just put this guilt onto him. Blaming him for his basic needs of survival even if you hadn’t meant it like that at all.

As you compulsively tried to think of something to say, you heard the vampire speak again: “Well, as much as I enjoy you falling for me. Maybe you could try and… avoid it next time.”

Your throat closed up. Immediately, the double meaning very much wasn’t lost on you.

And not only did you instantly recognise the tone of him deflecting with something harsh and sarcastic but you could also almost see how his old and very much practised mask slipped back in its place.

You felt how the whole situation was slipping from your fingers. Desperate to do something about it, you got up from the still half-lying position you were in and crawled over to where the vampire was now looking at you with trained indifference.

Your chest ached, just having to look at it. Especially since you had only recently made such a leap with him finally allowing you in more. Astarion finally allowing for some of the carefully put up fortress walls to crumble under your soft touch.

Back, when his somewhat cautious confession had made you swear to yourself that you wouldn’t stop until all of the wretched, cascading layers of armour the vampire had put up around his core would have been disassembled.

Now you felt you might be responsible for some of those layers being put back into place. Even if it had just been a very short moment, a dumb slip of the tongue. You hoped it wasn’t too late yet to undo the damage.

You drew your arms around your lover - slowly, cautiously. Posing the question if you were still allowed to do that.

The vampire let it happen.

A tiny fraction of your tension eased at the thought that there might still be hope to rectify the delicate thing you had basically just stepped on. That he would allow you to make it right.

“I’m sorry, Astarion”, you whispered silently. Almost too quiet to form actual words. But the pale elf in your arms heard you anyway. He didn’t look up at you but he did sink into your arms a little more.

“I’m sorry for what I said and for how I acted. I didn’t mean to blame you for anything.”, you said again, this time more confidently.

There was no further acknowledgement of your apology other than the vampire slowly leaning his head against your naked chest. His soft hair brushed lightly over your bare skin. Even the lightest touches of him in your arms sent jolts through your entire body.

But the knot between you was not yet unravelled.

Fear threatened to close up your throat again as your mind raced, feverishly trying to think of a way to make him understand that it was just… he meant everything to you. That you’d rather crawl in the dirt yourself instead of having to watch him do it.

That you so desperately cared about him. Why couldn’t he see that?

And then another thought crossed your mind. Concerning the battle you would have to take on tomorrow.

What if this was the last chance you would ever get to convey this to him? The last shot at convincing him that he was very much loved and cared for and had a place in this world as long as you walked this planet.

Carefully you raised your hand to under Astarion’s chin and nudged softly to see if he would allow you to lift up his head to make him meet your gaze. Again, he let it happen.

The vampire’s eyes found yours. Instantly, something in his gaze changed as he must’ve seen something particular in them. You tenderly and cautiously cupped his cheek as your lips parted. But it still took another moment before you managed to find the words.

“Astarion, if tomorrow… would be the end. I-”, you broke off. Then took another breath before you continued.

“I would hate myself if this is how I left things. I wouldn’t want to have caused you to think that I was just brushing you off for caring for me. Or that I put any blame on you when I was being a reckless idiot. But I still would want you to understand that I just… I’m doing this because I want you to be safe and happy and careless and free and… with me, if you want that.”

Astarion’s eyes ever so slightly widened and opened up as you spoke. A nearly inaudible gasp left his throat.

After you had ended your little speech, the moment of the two of you looking into each other’s eyes just went on. But the mood had changed now. The way Astarion looked at you as you softly let your thumb wander over his cheekbone was no longer distant. He was still allowing you in, if cautiously so.

Your gaze dropped to his lips as your thumb kept wandering over the vampire’s delicate skin.

Then you leaned in just a little - letting him decide if he wanted to bridge the gap between you. And he did so without hesitation.

Astarion met your parted lips with his. You gladly accepted his open-mouthed kiss.

The rest of the words that yet remained unspoken between you were resolved this way. By kissing deeply and assuring the other of what you could not yet put into words.

The vampire’s hand grabbed onto your upper arm, fingertips lightly grazing your biceps. You let your hand wander from his cheek into his soft white curls, your fingertips softly tugging and teasing them.

And you were still doing that when you slowly withdrew from him - if only enough to speak.

“I was a dick, Astarion, I’m sorry.”

“Yes, you were. Now, I thought we had just established that. Don’t try and draw it out to make me sappy, Staeve darling, or I might actually take back what I said the other night”, Astarion replied with an edge of sarcasm entering his voice again.

But you knew that it was the good-humoured kind once more. The one he used when you two bickered like an old married couple.

“Don’t promise what you can’t keep”, you offered back with a smug grin. The vampire rolled his eyes at you. Your grin just grew.

“Come, just lie down with me, please”, you proposed to your vampire. Now that adrenaline and stress were slowly leaving your body you felt exhaustion creep up on you again. The headache you had completely forgotten to acknowledge somewhere in between also letting itself be known again.

Astarion immediately took you up on it and you laid down on the bedroll, snuggling up to each other until your limbs were fully tangled, bodies fully wrapped around each other. You gazed upon the vampire in your arms - how much his pale skin contrasted against yours.

You slowly felt how the tension left both your bodies, shoulders dropping, jaws unclenching. Revelling in relief and joy you closed your eyes and focused solely on how it felt to hold Astarion. Just silently laying there, enjoying this moment of peace.

Until you broke the silence once more because a random thought had just crossed your mind.

“Wait, who actually carried me all the way back to camp?”

Astarion scrambled to push himself up once more and gave you a glare. “Really? That’s what’s on your mind right now?”

You shrugged: “I guess.”

The vampire’s glare became even more intense. Then it snapped to mischievous glint really quickly. He let one of his hands drag through his hair dramatically and sensually and said: “Oh, darling, couldn’t you believe that I valiantly carried you here like the knight in shiny armour that I am?” You wouldn’t even have believed him being able to pull you here with your face dragging through the dirt.

“It was Halsin, wasn’t it?”

You received another death glare. Then Astarion just sighed in defeat and wrapped himself in your arms again.

“Yes it was. I was the one who undressed you though.”

“Of course you were”, you replied with a wolfish grin although Astarion couldn’t see it. The vampire groaned in annoyance

“Now, if you please, let me enjoy this moment in peace, you idiot.”

And so you did. Holding onto Astarion as he held onto you. Both silently smiling and not even that afraid anymore of what tomorrow might bring.

Tag list: @spacebarbarianweird @sunfire-ancunin @tragedybunny @dependsonthedream @tallymonster @magazzne @micropoe10 @aoirohi @my-bunny-prince @lumienyx @fayeriess

#astarion #astarion x tav #baldurs gate #baldurs gate 3 #baldur's gate 3 #baldur's gate iii #astarion x reader #astarion x mc #baldurs gate astarion #astarion x oc #astarion x you #fanfic #fanfiction #astarion ancunin #bg3 spoilers #bg3 #bg3 companions #staeve #astarion x staeve

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shoccolatine · 9 months ago

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purple.

⚘pairing: rafayel x gn!reader ⚘summary: for the first time, rafayel asks for your help with his latest painting. ⚘tags: sfw, oneshot, 2nd person POV, gender-neutral reader, fluff, mutual understanding, a lot of metaphors, blushy rafayel bc boy can BLUSH ⚘word count: 943 ⚘a/n: hi!! i started playing l&ds two weeks ago and i am HOOKED. rafayel is my favourite, and so i was inspired to try writing his voice! this is my first l&ds writing so thank you for reading and i hope you enjoy~!

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

As usual, the door to Rafayel's home studio is unlocked. You push it open and slip inside, removing your shoes. The heat of your bare feet sticks against the surprisingly cool hardwood floor as you move into the room.

Rafayel is actually where you expect him to be for once, headfirst in a painting you haven't seen before. You sigh and get ready to settle in for a while, knowing how absorbed he gets when inspiration hits. He probably didn't even hear you come in. So it catches you off guard when he actually speaks first.

"Hey. Come over here," he says as he slides a thick, wet stroke of paint onto the canvas, never looking away.

You oblige without fuss, mainly because his tone is so airy and earnest that you feel being mischievous right now would go over his head. You stop next to him.

"What do you think?" He asks, still gazing at his work.

You puff air out your nose. "You're asking for my thoughts? That's a new one."

He finally looks at you then, his expression just as light and floaty as his voice had been. It's not a side of Rafayel that you're used to, but it's one you find most interesting—the one where he's so deep in artistic expression that he himself has become one with his canvas. An abstract impression of its own creator. A secluded forest monk reaching a state of nirvana like sunlight's warmth on his face.

You don't see it often, since he paints in solitude and you get him out of the house more than he bargained for, but it's the rare intrigue of it that makes this Rafayel all the more special.

"Just tell me," he says simply.

You finally take a good look at the artwork perched on the easel.

It's gorgeous and colourful, his trademark thick strokes, playful yet meticulous and reminiscent of sea foam, present a scene that is at once novel and familiar. It's significantly warmer than most of his other paintings, liberally using more reds and purples alongside his usual blues, as if plucked directly from a sunset.

Knowing Rafayel, if he could do just that, he would.

And yet, as lovely as it is, you can't help but feel like something's... off. The canvas is nicely underpainted, but the centre is dreadfully blank. The painting has no focal point.

"It's missing something," you point out. He hums a thoughtful "mhm" in reply, as if those were the exact words he was waiting to hear.

Suddenly, he turns the paintbrush on you. You realize, a bit delayed, that he's holding it out as an offering.

"I want you to add something to it."

"Huh? Me?" He doesn't respond right away, so you continue. "What would you want me to do?"

Rafayel shakes his head, but there's a gentle smile on his lips. "If I told you what to do, then I might as well just do it myself."

His smile remains as silence grows between the two of you, a silent invitation beckoning a leap of faith. You break his gaze to turn back to the canvas, the gaping void in the centre like an eye of the storm, pulling you in and yet blowing you in every direction. What could you possibly add to this piece that Rafayel couldn't?

"I thought you hated people messing with your work. This is a trick, isn't it?"

He shakes his head again, his soft messy purple curls tickling his lashes. "Kinda a lame trick. And annoying. I put a lot of hard work into this already, only for it to go to waste like that..." he says, and the pouty Rafayel you're more accustomed to is back. "Besides, you're not 'people'. You're you."

"And what exactly does that mean?"

"It means you know what this painting needs. You'll treat it well. You know my vision for it more than anyone else because, well... my vision is you." His voice trails down to a whisper.

You look at the painting once more, with new eyes. This painting... is you?

"Rafayel..." you say, unable to say much else.

He takes your hesitation gently, holding it like a hand and guiding it along, taking the reins and allowing you to find your footing again. "It looks different from my other pieces, right? I'm sure you noticed. That's because you make me different. Not like I've changed for you or anything, but more like... I've changed because of you. You know?"

"Um...? Not really," you reply sincerely.

He taps his chin thoughtfully. "You're red where I'm blue. And together, we make purple." He breathes out a laugh. "It sounds so simple when I put it like that. It's not that simple at all. Nothing about you is simple. You're annoying and loud and strong and everything I'm not, and yet somehow we blend together so well that I don't know how I was able to be content with being blue for so long. I want to be blue, and red, and purple. But only your shade of red will do."

He pauses, his ears a dark shade of the exact colour he speaks of. His eyes are pleading, as if saying 'understand me as I understand you', and before he can open his mouth to spout more abstract nonsense, you dip the brush in red—a perfect match to the hue blooming in his face. You are in this colour as much as he is.

"I think I know what to do now," you say, and your red splatters over his blue, mingling purple like summer plums, sweet and sour and bursting.

#love and deepspace rafayel #love and deepspace #rafayel #rafayel x reader #fics #i love him soso much......

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iiwaijime · 3 months ago

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introductions

masterlist

tooru oikawa

without them, i am nothing. so i pick up the pieces they've left behind and try to put them back together just to feel like myself again.

tooru oikawa is... weird. in a time and place where staying in solitude is the worst possible thing you can do to yourself, he does just that. no companions, no allies. all he has is an ever-growing collection of things that don't belong to him, and the faces that come back to haunt him every night. and somehow, despite all that, he's probably the most outwardly amiable person you'll meet on this side of the earth.

exhibit a: dog tags. he and his best friend bought matching ones from a fair. they got their names engraved and everything. the ones that he wears around his neck now aren't even his.

exhibit b: photographs. he has a fairly large collection of them, and he treasures every single one. a life that he can't go back to plays out within.

exhibit c: comic books. a childish part of him is still seventeen, poring over old superhero comics in his best friend's bedroom. he probably knows every single line by heart now.

y/n l/n

if the music is loud enough, and i close my eyes, just for one second, everything is okay again.

y/n l/n's life is gray — an endless cycle of sleep if you can, eat if you can, repeat. like tooru, she's alone. unlike him, she has no set base. music is her escape; yet she doesn't get to listen as often as she likes. but when she does, she goes places. sometimes she's doing maths in her friend's basement. sometimes she's fighting with her parents — she misses that, too. and sometimes, tooru oikawa, six years old, shoves a volleyball into her hands and makes her play.

exhibit a: digital camera. it's out of power, and does not function with what minimal energy is still available. but she takes it along with her anyways, in the hopes that it'll be able to turn on again one day, and unlock all the memories inside.

exhibit b: notebook, pressed flowers. she writes in the notebook every now and then, but she'd rather not waste the ink and lead she has. instead, she picks out the prettiest flowers she sees, and tucks them in between the pages. one day, she wants to show them to someone she loves.

exhibit c: walkman music player. the one she has is quite old, and thankfully works with her scavenged energy sources. she'd probably be lost without it. it's her most prized possession, an emergency exit from reality when she needs it the most.

author's note

🎵 y/n, tooru and hajime were pretty close until middle school, when she moved away. they lost contact afterwards.

🎵 the earth is super desolate rn: no laws, no electricity, no actual civilization — but there are small groups of people here and there, and parts of old machinery are sometimes just okay enough to be modified to produce a little bit of something.

🎵 "one day, she will show them to someone she loves" isn't about a specific person. she just hopes that after all this, after losing everyone and everything, she will be able to achieve some semblance of a normal life where she does not have to be alone.

🎵 tooru has really bad nightmares almost every night. he's scared of forgetting, so he tries to keep as much physical evidence of everything that ever happened in his life as possible.

🎵 there are some things like zombies in this universe; known as the infected? they go around and act feral and bite people and shit. the first few were infected by a freak explosion and then it spread like wildfire. the two main dangers are the infected, and then "pirate" groups who go around attacking people.

🎵 tooru and hajime pooled together all the money that they had to get y/n that notebook. she uses it way too sparingly, because she feels like if she finishes it, she'll lose the last connection she has with them.

🎵 tooru usually has a stable amount of supplies because he can store the excess, but y/n is always running out.

🎵 i made a friend beta read the tooru pov of the first chapter and she said it's good :3 she wanted the next bit and it was so embarrassing to tell her it's fanfic. she don't judge tho <3

🎵 inspired the stand by stephen king icl. it made such an impression on me omfg

taglist — 7/50, add yourself please — form

@akaakeis @mikauraurr @dawnisatotalqueen @smellysluna @akaashislovee @lulumi1u @anqelkoz

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kings-highway · 2 months ago

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Hi! So I'm a like a fan of your work, especially your ongoing long fic "This Is Not The End", and was just wondering, do you have any advice on writing? Anything you apply to your writing that helps you along the way? Especially about setting descriptions. YOU ARE SO GOOD AT THEM I CAN'T-

Btw, I was just about to re-read the chapters of TINTE but ao3 is down. and so is my sanity.

AaaAAAAAAAAAaaAAAAAAAA first of all thank you so much for being so nice, i have no idea what I've done to deserve any attention at all. And thank you for reading! It really means the world <3 and I am so sorry ao3 is down. it is for me too. we're all in this together.

As for advice... truthfully I could probably talk for HOURS about every little thing, but you've gone ahead and done me a favour and specified scene setting, so I'll try and keep my yapping to a minimum and just hit the highlights of things that I actually (try to) apply to my own writing.

One piece of advice that I often end up giving (that applies mostly to if you're in a limited omniscence 3rd person, or a 1st person POV - ie, one set of eyes) is to describe scenes ONLY as your perspective character would see them. So, envision where your character is standing, and the movements they're making, and describe the scene as their eyes would process details. This helps prevent static point-form style descriptions, as it mixes up when and how certain things get described, and also helps prevent massive blocks of description as you will naturally find places to describe your characters walking, looking around or moving in their environment as you "follow their eyes." [For a more practical example I apply this really heavily in the first chapter of TINTE, as Daichi is gathering his "lists" - this is why you get descriptions of Kags and Hinata and the scavenging trip being prepared before you ever get descriptions of the library. Despite the library ultimately being a main feature of the story, I don't set it into the description of the world until Daichi is looking at it. So instead of just setting the scene by describing how the town looks, we have to follow a character as they see it.] - this keeps the reader in the character's head, focused on the story. The environment (and the scene) is only relevent as perceived by your perspective character (this also makes the environments feel more authentic because there reader can't "see behind" the perspective character so to speak.)

The other thing I keep in mind, more generally for setting descriptions, is to not get bogged down by what I "want" the reader to "see." When you're writing a story, there's a 98% chance you're going to have these big, beautiful visuals in your head. There is a 6% chance of your reader ever being able to see that same vision. You will never be able to translate 1:1 the vision in your head - but you CAN translate the feeling you get thinking about that vision. So if you have a scene, with a gorgeous, beautiful stunning skyscape and mountains and animals and light and shadows - the more detail in your brain, the less you put on the page. These scenes are when you need to focus more on the feelings of the character, and the abstract descriptions of the world. "The sky stretching endlessly in it's vast expanse of pastels, dotted with birds flitting lightly between trees on rolling hills of lush flora. His breath caught in his throat, and it felt like he was seeing the planet for the first time." No colours are used, no animals decribed, there is vague "flora" and "birds" and "trees" - it's short and snappy and you may think you're not doing your beautiful planet justice, but it is infinitely more efficient at capturing that breathtaking aura you want your reader to understand than if you tried to describe the shape of the leaves and every species of bird and every single colour in the sky. A classic case of less is more. Sometimes not describing something is far better than describing it. You gotta let go a little bit of that control and let your readers paint their own pictures (they'll do a better job than the writer can every single time.) This applies for little things too! Even if you want your character to have an iconic necklace, sometimes it's better to just call it a "ruby studded pendant" rather than try and describe exactly the shape it's in and how many stones it has.

And the last tidbit I can offer is to just... write. Write so much and so often. The more you do, the better you get. I am honoured that you think I have the writing skills to warrant asking for advice, truly, it makes me feel so incredibly special, but if you're looking at me and saying "man I'll never be able to write like them!" then I need to give you my credentials. I have written 6 full personal novels, the first when I was 13 (it wasn't good, don't worry), and over a million words on ao3 for fanfiction - when I was in grades 3-5, I used to skip lunch recess and go down to the computer lab to write my "book" during that time. I am NOT a case of "oh they're just so naturally talented" I simply have a lot of practice under my belt. So if you write, and if you write a lot, you will learn and get better and there is nothing that I, or any other writer you like or admire, can do that you cannot learn to do as well. if you just write.

once again thank you SO much, and I hope this is helpful at all or answers your questions or was the kind of answer you were looking for. Please let me know if something doesn't make sense or if you have any other questions, and I am ALWAYS open to receiving asks like this, though my advice is only ever going to be the ramblings of one person, so take it with a grain of salt and if you don't like any of the suggestions, ignore 'em. Except for that one about writing. Unfortunately you have to do that one. Otherwise. Y'know. Nothing gets written.

#idk what to do with the tags here #fanfiction writer

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rowanwritestoomuch · 2 months ago

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An Introduction to Small World Theory

aka my favorite theory to write with

I don't see this one talked about often, and I don't even know if its a real theory for literature or just something my mentor shared with us, but I am going to introduce you to it now if you have not considered it before.

Many books begin with two characters meeting for the first time. Often plot points, especially in romance, include meeting each other's extended social groups, friends and relatives, all of whom do not know the other party to any extent so they are forming opinons of each other for the first time.

But there are lots of pieces of media that work *because* the characters all know one another from the start, in a variety of ways. Consider the primarily comedic How I Met Your Mother or Friends. Often when a new character is introduced, the conflict or rising action of their introduction is pointing out their connection to another character where in the introducer did not know that the introducee knew an adjacent member of the party. This is a very direct way to use Small World Theory and is the most common.

But my mentor taught us a more subtle way, and it is my absolute favorite--- the indirect method. Consider this; in the place you live, you are only ever 3 people away from someone you know, whether its a friend or your doctor or a worker at the gas station you frequent. When you travel to a place you don't live (within your country/state of origin), you are generally still only about 7-10 people away from someone you know, potentially even less. Often these connections are not something we think about or even know about one another; a mutual friend who is important to one party but simple an acquaintance to the other can still make for compelling conflict if one is wronged by the other and the middle person has to consider which relationship is more important to them-- or they find out that this conflict exists, and it changes their perspective on one party.

The connection can be even more subtle than that. You can reveal a lie by indicating that one party seems familiar or alluring to another party, and then later explain to the reader that the liar seemed familiar because the pov character caught them in the lie BEFORE they knew who they were, witness-of-the-crime style, but this can be used for anything not just real crime. See, we observe other people's lives every day and barely notice, until something sticks out to us when we gain information we didn't have before. Perhaps the liar suggests they had a good relationship with an ex lover, but the MC witnessed the liar and their ex in an altercation outside a restraunt weeks before, only now realizing these two situations are connected.

Even further than that, you can give your characters a mutual motivation or development. Have one be taught by an influential teacher who later moves after the character has graduated and is again an influential figure for another character, giving them an intertwined sense of morality, or perhaps an inverse form because they were influenced by this character at different points in their lives. More options; you could make two characters familiar with one another in a way that the other characters don't immediately understand, to the point where it becomes almost bothersome, and they have to confront their nagging interest with a conversation, only to find out these characters they thought were just friends are actually blood relatives or co-workers, or even dating without anyone realizing.

These are all ways we can realistically create connections through individual characters in subtle ways, which is the meat of our theory, but what is the meal? What is the big picture? Make them all connected.

If Character A is connected to Character B then Character B must be connected to Character C who is connected to Character D and Character D connects back around to Character A. That is the 3-person adjancy we see in our real world. For maximum effect, rather than making these connections unique between each individual pair, instead have them all connected in different ways to a fifth Character E. If Character E is the ex lover of Character A, but also the co-worker of Character B, the acquaintance of Character C and the current lover of Character D, then you have motivational connections between all of these people around the same topic. If the conflict is that Character D and Character A are at odds, then Character B might be on the side of Character D due to their bond with their coworker, or they could be on Character A's side because they can't stand their co-worker. Character C might be annoyed that they're dragged into a situation about someone they barely know, or they could be a drama-hound who loves to eat up the details of other people's lives. Character B could be a gossip, Character D could be in an unwittingly abusive relationship, Character A could be an empowered victim, Character C could be an unbiased observer. All dancing around the same central point; how did Character E affect us?

Small World Theory explores the intimate connections that we have with other humans, even when we don't realize it. It helps us craft backstories for our characters that take place moment by moment, instead of years or decades at a time of doing the same thing. It begs the question; who do they know that's off screen and how would knowing that person affect the story? How can we make characters have rich, intriguing and complex lives without showing the reader every moment, every acquaintance, and without beating them in the head with exposition? Through connection. You don't even have to fully explain any of these connections, but knowing they're there can really change how you view your plot, your character's motivations and their personalities.

Always remember, write because it hurts if you don't.

til next time

#creative writing #rowanwrites #writeblr #on writing #writing tips #writers on tumblr #writing #writing advice #how to write #rowanteaches #ao3 writer #fanfic tips #novel writing #book writing

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kaylinalexanderbooks · 4 months ago

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OC questionnaire

Thanks to @illarian-rambling here, @saltysupercomputer here, @the-golden-comet here and here, @drchenquill here, @cwritesfiction here,

@elsie-writes here, and @mk-writes-stuff here!

I've actually been tagged in this a lot more (I love you guys and I love this game but oh my God), but I'll put those in a different post otherwise it would be twice as long. Let's cap it off at eight like I did last time.

Rules: answer the given questions in the POV of an OC!

Past questionnaires:

Round one masterpost

Round two Tyler, Gwen, Liam, Noelle, Akash, Robbie, Sam, Ewan

Keep reading for Jazlyn, Carla, Wade, Rose, Maddie, Xitlali, Jedi, and Lexi!

#1- Jazlyn

What is one job you'd never take, no matter how good the pay is?

“Ughhh anything that involves sitting at a desk all day! Something with so much structure and rules it drives me insane. I have to be active, y'know? Something challenging. If I had a job that was too easy, I'd just about die.”

Did you have a favorite childhood toy?

“Aw, now you're having me remember my Monster High collection. I thought I was so edgy, too. I was too young when they first came out, but when I was... I dunno, seven-ish I found the web series and became obsessed.”

Would you rather be too hot or too cold?

“Too hot. I can keep myself warm, but then my powers are weakened when I do that. Hot I can handle with no side effects.”

Other Jazlyn: questionnaire one, interview

#2- Carla

Do you like caffinated beverages? If so, which ones?

“Oh, Alium has multiple caffeinated beverages that I love! I am quite fond of many kinds of tea, like chammomint or lemonder. Tyler recently introduced me to a Ceteri energy beverage called Red Bull. It was certainly interesting, and unlike anything we have here.”

What is a piece of media that you hold very dear and/or that is very important to you?

“Oh, that's easy, The Storm Riders! It's my favorite book of all time. It got me through the times George was gone to work.”

Do you hold grudges? How long?

“I try not to remain in the past. I try to look forward. It's hard sometimes... I don't know how long I hold grudges... I'm not even sure if I have a 'grudge' against those who caused me pain, and I... I don't know. Sorry if this was a rambling answer.”

Other Carla: OC in three, two truths and a lie, bingo, questionnaire one

#3- Wade

Are you a dog person or a cat person?

“Dog person. I have a lovely girl named K'Ehleyr. She is the sweetest thing you'll ever see. Wanna see some pictures?? I have so many pictures, come look. Here she is with me. Here she is with Teo. Here she is with me and Teo. Here she is with Parker...”

How far do you think you can throw a hand-sized rock?

“Further than most. I play football, which isn't the same thing, but I'm in decent shape and have a good throwing arm. I've chucked some of Gabriel's rocks before, so I have practice. Am curious to see the results, though.”

Who is the one person who you can trust to keep a secret?

“I could trust both Teo and Parker. Some may not understand the latter, but he's actually very respectful of others' secrets even if he doesn't understand them.”

Other Wade: two truths and a lie, interview, questionnaire one, kiss Picrew

#4- Rose

Are you an extrovert or an introvert?

“Introvert. But if Lexi isn't there, I seem to do the group introductions.”

As a gift, do you prefer flowers or jewelry?

“Jewelry. I can pair them with clothes, and I like doing that.”

If you could swich life with someone, who and why?

“... I wanted to switch lives with Lexi for a while. It seemed like she had everything. Now I'm unsure.”

Other Rose: questionnaire one, OC in three

#5- Maddie

Is life going the way that you hoped it would?

“Hm. I'm not sure. I don't think ahead often to hope for things. I guess life is fine. I like my powers, I like being in the robotics club. Yeah, it's good.”

What is in your pocket right now? Why?

“Wilfredo. Kelsey made him for me.”

If you could relive a single minute of your past, what minute would you pick?

“I dunno. Hm. Maybe... The trip to Six Flags was fun.”

Other Maddie: OC in three, OC in fifteen, two truths and a lie, questionnaire one, bingo, Picrew, interview, bag, origin

#6- Xitlali

What type of music do you like to listen to?

“Nothing you'd be familiar with. I listen exclusively to Alii music, especially stuff by Inutilia artists that advocate for our rights. Cheung An's stuff is really good.”

What's an unpopular opinion you have?

“*scoffs* That Inutilia should have rights is one that shouldn't be unpopular but apparently is. But even amongst people like me, here's a hard pill to swallow: Atsila McLain SUCKED. You think she actually legitimately cared about us? She had no idea what we went through, what we STILL go through. Raissa Kamanzi may have ruined our reputation, but Atsila McLain just made it easier for bigots to hate us. McLain did nothing to help us. She had no reform ideas. She was a power-hungry bitch, and the amount of Inutilia that fell for her lies is disgusting.”

What are your thoughts on cheese?

“Cowyote cheese is overrated. Llamybara cheese is underrated. I'd argue more about it, but that last question pissed me off, so I don't feel like it.”

Other Xitlali: questionnaire one

#7- Jedi

What’s the worst insult you’ve ever been given?

“I do not wish to repeat it, but it is the slur targeting Inutilia such as myself.”

How would you react if someone catcalled you?

“Forgive me if I do not understand the term - it is not something we have in Alium - but if I am correct in its definition, I do not know how I would react. It has not happened to me, although I suppose I would not like it. I frankly do not understand why it happens in the first place.”

If you suddenly appeared in an unknown city, what would you do/look for first?

“I would first try to figure out where I am. A quick study of the architecture may tell me exactly where I am. However, I am sure I could ask someone. Unlike in Ceteri, here it is normal to randomly appear in an unknown city due to teleportation. So no one would question why I am asking. I believe I would like to look around and observe, but if I tire, I would locate a library. I do love spending time there.”

Other Jedi: OC in three, questionnaire one, Picrew, smash or pass (acearo version)

#8- Lexi

What is your favorite dessert?

“Oh, this is so hard! I dunno, cake? That might be too generic, but I love cake! All kinds of cake! I'm not picky at all about that. Maybe it's my love of parties and I just associate cake with that. But come on, why do we only have to have cake at parties!”

Would you rather take a vacation in a hot climate or a cold climate?

“Ugh, both sound awful depending on how hot and how cold. I guess I'm more used to a warm, humid climate. So let's go with that.”

Do you exercise? What does your regime look like?

“Well, I do training like everyone else in the Aequales. I do ride my bike, does that count? I like going on my bike through the neighborhood. It's nice being outside and I get to see a lot of my classmates!”

Other Lexi: OC in three, OC in fifteen, interview, Picrew, two truths and a lie, questionnaire one, bag, origin, bingo

Woo! Let's tag @sarahlizziewrites @reininginthefirewriting @cherrybombfangirlwrites @mysticstarlightduck @chauceryfairytales

+ ANYONE ELSE

Your questions: 1) What is your stance on lying? 2) Do you enjoy people watching? 3) What is the best decision you ever made?

TSP intro

TSP tag list (ask to be +/-): @thepeculiarbird @illarian-rambling @televisionjester @finchwrites

@nebula--nix @literarynecromancy @honeybewrites @the-golden-comet

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bettsfic · 1 year ago

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Hi Betts! <3 Can you tell us more about your craft process on how you pick a voice for a piece? I usually start plotting a story when I see or read something that makes me think, "That. That's what I want." But often I struggle to translate that feeling into a particular narration style, especially something that feels doable for more than 20k.

ah, you've touched on the most important and most difficult-to-articulate part of my writing process.

so first i want to say that you never *have* to change your voice or style. i would say most writers basically only use one voice, theirs, and they stick to it. if you're happy with the way you're writing, don't feel obligated to switch it up because you think you have to have major variation in that regard.

however, voice is pretty integral to my writing. if i can grasp the voice of a character, i know everything about them. there's minimal conscious invention in my characters. they have a voice and therefore they exist more or less fully formed, and could become the protagonist or narrator of their own story. in fact this sometimes bites me in the ass, because when i find a new character, i always want to switch into their POV. and that makes whatever i'm working on longer and more complicated, when i'm trying to keep it short and simple.

when i say "voice" i don't mean it as some fancy craft term. i mean i can actually hear their voice in my head. that's something they don't put in the welcome packet when you get diagnosed with a psychotic disorder. a lot of people assume "hearing voices" means audio hallucinations, but it can actually just mean harboring the inner monologue of other people in your head, knowing it's nothing more than cognitive ventriloquism. if you have this capability, congratulations. you have a mild positive psychotic symptom extremely conducive to creativity. if you don't, a lot of what i'm saying probably doesn't make any sense.

there's a lot of overlap between high creative output and what i call diet coke psychosis. as in, you may have all the flavor of a psychotic disorder (creativity!) and none of the calories (the agonies).

so how do i find new voices? actors.

when i binge the filmography of an actor, it's to appease an obsession, yes, but there's also a creative practicality to it, in that they can often serve as the foundation of a new voice. it usually begins with simple facecasting (which is another thing not everyone does), but often morphs a step beyond that, where you have the actor's real voice playing a character you've created. and then that, after months or years or tens of thousands of words, eventually develops into a whole-ass new person. and once you have that, you can add that voice to your roster and toss them into other stories.

in addition to filmographies, i also binge actor interviews. seasoned actors have developed a persona, so they have an ample filmography but their interviews are less useful. but actors who are fairly new and don't have many titles under their belt yet have no idea how to be famous, and that's where the gold is.

i also owe a lot to gimmick interviews like when actors have to answer questions while being attacked by puppies. no one can maintain a persona when puppies are crawling all over them.

you know how when you're around someone long enough you can pick up their mannerisms? and you know how sometimes you can daydream about being interviewed for no apparent reason? my process of finding a voice is a combination of those things. maybe i'm making it more complicated than it is. maybe it's more common than i'm giving it credit for. but it's very difficult to consciously describe unconscious processes.

a lot of writers base characters off of people they know. i actively try not to do that, not because i think it's wrong but because it's going to happen anyway, and if i push that instinct away, what bleeds in is what i can't keep out, and what i can't keep out is what needs to be there. so every voice is an actor playing the character of someone who was once very dear to me. (i almost never create characters based on people actively in my life.)

and, of course, i have to put a piece of myself in each character too. i have to find some personal connection, usually a question i have about myself and my life that i think only they can answer through the course of their journey. i have to be curious about them. what do we have in common? what don't we have in common?

as to your question about sustainability over 20k, one challenge i've given myself these past couple years is the way a character changes and develops over decades or maybe their entire life. a voice doesn't always have to be consistent, especially if your story takes place over a long time. in some cases whatever a voice turns into over the course of a story is just the way it needs to be, but sometimes you have to pull a "he wouldn't fucking say that" and go back to shuffle sentences around a bit.

i also think a lot of what i'm saying applies mostly to dialogue and first person. i consider first person basically a very long monologue, whereas i think third person i think has a lot more elasticity, and you can move around more easily in the closeness and distance of narration. i think that elasticity is what makes third person more comfortable for a lot of writers.

voice is a big thing deployed in a little way. it's the difference between "don't have" and "haven't got." it's whether they're more conducive to ending thoughts with a hard stop or connecting them with "and." but it's also in the lies they tell themselves to get by, and what they think the conflict is versus what the conflict really is, and maybe what they're trying to persuade us of. a voice is inherently rhetorical.

i hope some of this makes sense. and because this has gotten long, i've provided some examples from my novel in progress, rabbit's blood, under the cut!

i open the novel in third omniscient, which i absolutely hated because it's antithetical to everything i've described here, but it got the job done. whether i'll keep it through to later drafts remains to be seen.

On November 9, 1951, Mary Mills goes into labor. Her husband Duke is not present. She hasn’t seen him since she announced to him that she was pregnant with twins. In Duke’s stead, her oldest son Wyatt, four years old, waits at her bedside to meet his brothers. Wise beyond his years, he understood immediately that his father had abandoned them. After these past several months watching his mother’s grief and fear and anger rise as she slowly came to accept the truth, he vows now to dedicate his life to doing the right thing.

after this, the twins are born, skip and birdie. in subsequent chapters, we move into first person.

here's birdie at 60ish years old in the present. he's spent the past 10 years driving around the country robbing banks with his daughter mel.

It took us a long time to realize robbing tellers was a stupid idea. Tellers only ever have a couple thousand in their drawers. Not even worth it to go in guns blazing, get all the money from all the drawers and hold everybody hostage until the vault opens. One, that’s mean. Two, the vault might not have much either. On a bad day, you’ll walk away with ten, twenty grand, meanwhile half a dozen people are going to be traumatized for life, and if you get caught, your ass is in jail for a minimum of seven years. The government doesn’t give a fuck about banks losing money, but they get real angry when you put a gun in somebody’s face. That is, unless they’re the ones who gave it to you.

here's birdie reflecting on the past and falling in love with mel's mother, anita.

I’d gotten good at following her orders, so when she said, “Kiss me,” I said, “Yes, ma’am,” and I did. It was sweet at first, which made me think she was shy, that maybe this was her first kiss, but that didn’t last long. Passion wasn’t something I’d ever associated with myself and definitely didn’t associate with her, but we brought it out in each other alongside all the other dark and wild things.

this is birdie's son johnny reflecting on how much he hates his father. he's 30ish in the present timeline.

For my entire life my father had a goatee like the devil and blond hair that had turned mostly white by the time he was forty. He was thin, wiry, had the defensive posture of a surly teenager smoking outside of school. Mom, Mel, and I all looked alike, but Birdie looked like some guy who’d just wandered into our house.

and here's mel, also 30s, in the present. birdie has decided to part ways with her and this is the aftermath, where mel hooks up with a showgirl and takes her to breakfast the next morning.

Sara and I have breakfast at the Denny’s on the Strip which is maybe my favorite Denny’s in the country, and that’s saying something. I ask her lots of questions about microbiology, and to be polite she asks me some questions too, about my occupation and where I’m from and all that, but I evade them because she’s not really interested in my answers and I’m not interested in giving them. She’s twenty or twenty-two or something like that and that means she just wants to be the center of somebody’s attention, somebody she thinks is bigger than her, and that’s something I can offer.

some things to note:

in the first excerpt, you'll notice a lack of contractions. that's because it's just my voice and i don't use a lot of contractions. because neurodivergence i guess, i don't know. there's also a higher register here, which you can tell by the variation of the sentences and the position of the clauses.

i based birdie off my father but birdie's voice isn't my dad's voice. that said, my dad was a habitual lecturer and so birdie is prone to Explaining Things. he also lobs off subjects of sentences sometimes and because he's spent his life running from the law, he's somewhat defensive and that comes out in a kind of aura of persuasion.

he's much more forthright when reflecting, and i think that can be found in the facts he's putting down over the opinions he offers in the present. when reflecting, he's much more vulnerable.

as far as johnny goes, i'm still working on him. i dragged him over from a different project and i'm reworking him. in the other project, he was extremely jaded and cold, and his narration style was direct and somewhat distant. some of that will carry over, but i also want to make him slightly more pathetic and immature.

mel is very reluctant to end sentences, so i try to keep them going for as long as i can. she also rambles, has a good sense of humor, and is extremely intelligent.

okay i've worked way way way too long on this, so i'm just going to hit post and hope it offers a little insight. also, happy to talk more about rabbit's blood and my process of writing it if anyone is interested.

#writing advice #voice #character #style

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kingsmoot · 4 months ago

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i'm stealing the asoiaf ask meme from here and only answering the ones i wanna do

1. Favorite Great House

BOLTON ❤️🩷⚔️

2. Favorite sigil/house words

Bolton flayed man / Greyjoy kraken of the main greathouses but House Horpe fucks the hardest

i don't like the house but Baratheon's "Ours is the Fury" FUCKS. also partial to Targaryen "Fire and Blood" for the mad max association. Stark "Winter is Coming" i have a permanent affection for bc i so clearly remember the feeling as a kid of reading it for the first time and thinking "that makes no sense??" and then reading the rest of the book and coming to understand those words very well.

3. Which book or character did you not like at first but eventually grew on you?

i straight up hated Jaime when i first read the series could not STAND his ass. hated him and Brienne getting together. hated him with Cersei. he is now one of my fav characters and these are teo of my fav relationships.

4. A quote so good it makes you crazy

5. Favorite bastard

WAMS

6. Who are you traveling the ravaged Riverlands with?

BRIENNE, PLEASE!!!

7. Favorite sibling dynamic

theon + asha but because i want them to have sex. i've been bothering my friend wormy for a week with my asha's rehabilitatibe rape kink pitch.

favorite siblings who i don't want to have sex are jon and arya.

8. Favorite theme

hard to pick but if i had to pick one i love how often beautiful characters who base their sense of self on their beauty and were known for it recognized for it and defined by it often get gruesomely mauled in ways that leave them visibly physically disabled and then they have to pick up the pieces and start figuring out who they are WITHOUT youth and beauty and vigor. i love this theme bc real life is also like this in basically all cases... it's just less of an all at once due to catastrophic intervention thing and more of a time taking its course thing as we all age into disability and out of beauty.

9. A mystery you need solved NOW

who is the mystery assassin haunting winterfell bc it can't be any of the named characters who we have established as already there so. like. lyanna rising from the crypts????

10. A theory you’ve adopted as canon

this is not a theory it is just my own personal head canon that is disproved very easily by canon but idc: that the miller's wife of acorn waters and the miller's wife of weeping waters are the same person. she moved to a nicer neighborhood with a better school district after she got remarried idk. these are my beliefs.

11. A theory you pray never comes true

i have accepted that jon/dany will become canon and i am so fucking mad dude about it, dude i'm lighting candles every day to ward it off

12. A moment that made you cry

"Sister. See? I knew you this time." rips me to shreds every single time without fail also cersei purposefully hurting taena when they have sex and thinking "this doesn't feel good. why would men do this to me if it doesn't feel good?" also jeyne crying that she'll do whatever ramsay wants even with the dog also theon telling us that helicent is a good dog that it was hard to remember sometimes but that they were all good dogs

13. A character so queer-coded you’d argue it to GRRM’s face

THEON AND ASHA. SORRY. THE FACT THAT HE HAS SAID THAT THEY ARE BOTH COMPLETELY STRAIGHT IS INSANE. LIKE THIS IS THE MAN WHO "DIDN'T KNOW" THAT THE RAINBOW CLOAKS OF RENLY'S GUARD COULD REFERENCE THE PRIDE FLAG. HEAD IN HANDS. THESE ARE GAY PEOPLE.

14. A ship that gives you the absolute ick

sansan i will defeat you if it's the last thing i do

15. Favorite “problematic” ship

thramsay, theonasha, and throose

16. Favorite canon ship

thramsay and jaime/brienne

17. If you write fic, is there a ship or au you would like to write for, but haven’t yet?

my two little asoiaf ficlets are both wip rn but soon i hope they will be published. they're throose + thramsay. i should write a theonasha one too actually. adds to list.

18. A POV character you wish wasn’t

QUENTYN AND DAVOS. ENOOOOUUUUGGGHHHHHH. I'VE HAD ENOOOOOUUUUGGGHHH.

19. Who would you elevate to a POV character?

she knows too much i think for it to work but my kingdom for a Barbrey chapter

20. A fancast you absolutely can’t stand

every little blue eyed elven 5'8" twink you guys keep digging up for your ramsay fancasts i saw someone suggest BARRY KEOGHAN?????????????????? LET'S BE SERIOUS

21. A fancast that just IS a character

https://.kingmoot tumblr.com/tagged/fancast tag

also i must say li'l jakey from hotd IS lich rally jon snow... a li'l too pretty but like SUCH a strong vibe.... i agree w the general consensus that he would be a gr8 lord commander

22. What’s something you wish GRRM handled better? (a character/theme/world building etc)

george has a lot of flaws that people project onto him which are not actual problems in his books. such as women lacking depth or him not understanding math. these have become memes at this point but they are both untrue.

he is, however, embarrassingly racist in his portrayal of the dothraki, of all the people of the free cities and slaver's bay, and of summer islanders

his characters of color are often if not always silent, under or undeveloped, and hypersexualized. his response to criticism of dany as a white savior being "well slavery in the free cities is like it was in the roman empire, which was not based on race" is hard to take seriously when all of the unsullied are ambiguously brown.

i think the racism in the main series is underdiscussed in favor of people talking about glaring problems in the HBOGOT show that are not present at all in the books.

23. An event/era in TWOIAF that you would love to see a film/tv adaptation of

I WANT A FULL BOLTON FAMILY TREE BACK TO THE AGE OF HEROS AND I WANT A HOTD SHOW ABOUT THE OLD KINGS IN THE NORTH FROM WHEN THE RED KING OF HOUSE BOLTON BENT THE KNEE TO HOUSE STARK RAUGH

24. Is there a house would you fit in with based off your own looks? A house you would fit in with based off your personality/ideals/vibes etc?

DIS IS SUCH A CUTE QUESTION I LOVE IT. i had jet black hair until recently and blue eyes so i would be a baratheon. w my current mousy brown i guess i'm somewhere between a stark and a tully? my hair is not auburn but it is a warm brown. but spiritually it will be bottle black forever so. ours is the fury!!

25. Your Drunk History topic (a character/theory/event/etc)

my poor dear beloved friend alex has been listening to me talk incesantly about roose ramsay and theon for like two years now. and i've been dead sober the whole time and I'm still finding more to say.

26. Be honest, are you still waiting for TWOW

SUMMER 2024 BABY IT WILL HAPPEN. IT WILL. I STILL BELIEVE!!! I STILL BELIEEEEEEVE!!!

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inquisimer · 7 months ago

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dragon age fluff fic recs

Part two of my fic rec list series comes bearing the sweetest, most tooth-rotting fluff! It turns out that I....don't actually read a lot of pure fluff, but it was a joy to go spelunking through the tag and all of these pieces made me smile and laugh when I read them.

Check them out! and leave a comment or kudos to let the authors know that you did 💜

Remember to post your fanfic and fanart recs for this week's fan work friday! And if this inspires you to make a fic rec list of your own, tag me in it so that I can read and promote your awesome recs (:

floriography by ritualist

Lace Harding/Josephine Montilyet | G | 3001 words | No Archive Warnings Apply Author's Summary: When the Inquisitor asks how Skyhold is treating her, Harding can't help the smile on her face when she says, "Ambassador Montilyet sent me a basket of flowers." Mer's Rec: This one caught me up in Lace's sweet and fluffy personality from the start, and the author's grasp of Lace's voice and POV was so well done that I never saw the cute little twist coming at the end. The story captures many tiny details of Harding's position as the Inquisition's lead scout and beautifully contrasts her earnestness with Josephine's practiced poise. Their interactions make sense and flow seamlessly as the story progresses; it had me smiling and laughing like a dork the whole way through.

Girls Like Braids by Katuary

Female Cousland & Fergus Cousland | G | 1375 words | No Archive Warnings Apply Author's Summary: Elissa goes to her brother for help fixing the disaster she's wrought of her hair. He insists on hearing how the disaster happened in the first place Mer's Rec: Sibling Bias™️and bisexual panic - what more do I need to say? I'm such a sucker for genfic, and sibling fic in particular melts my heart. The relationship between Elissa and Fergus in this piece is beautifully crafted - from their teasing banter to the fact that Elissa ultimately trusts Fergus to help her when she needs it. The other thing that really struck me is how Katuary wrote Elissa's voice. Even though she's young, and her inner monologue reflects that, she never feels dumb or stupid or naive - she reads authentically as a young child and since I know how difficult that can be to capture in writing, I really loved seeing that portrayal in this story.

Desk by faithlessone

Cassandra Pentaghast/Male Trevelyan | T | 3443 words | No Archive Warnings Apply Author's Summary: The armory is unbearably loud and Cassandra goes off in search of somewhere else to work. Mer's Rec: This is a sweet moment in-between the canon for Cass/Trev and I loved how much is showed them as people beyond their jobs. That's something I often find omitted from stories about Cass, but it was really highlighted here to great success. The author also writes an established relationship incredibly well - the affection between Trevelyan and Cassandra is natural and (without giving too much away), the actions they take in the story feel authentic to a real romantic relationship.

if I had you and I could give you your dreams by calypsid

Hira/Miriam | G | 520 words | No Archive Warnings Apply Author's Summary: Miriam and Hira, at the end of it all. Or, how they kept their promise to each other, once and for always. Mer's Rec: what could have been in Absolution, if Dragon Age wasn't the series of Apostates Who Betray You ;-; This fic gives our cheese-farm gays their happy ending, and it also offers a brief but interesting perspective on the apocalyptic events of DAI from the common farmer they buy the land from! Happiness abounds, Hira and Miriam are just so in love, and we're all pretending the finale of Absolution never happened.

known by name by ophryetrash

Female Inquisitor & Inquisition Scouts | G | 2914 words | No Archive Warnings Apply Author's Summary: The Herald is different, but that's a good thing. Members of the Inquisition interact with her and they feel seen. Mer's Rec: Told from the perspective of the Inquisition's scouts, this is a lovely look at what it's like to be in the rank-and-file of the organization, and how it feels to interact with the people at the head of it all. I loved how the awe and wonder in each interaction grew into feelings of personhood, both for the scouts and about the Inquisitor herself. The banter between the scouts and their personalities makes this story shine and (if you're like me) you'll have a good laugh at the surprise cameo toward the end!

#fic rec #dragon age #dragon age fanfic #dragon age fanfiction #dragon age inquisition #dragon age origins #dragon age absolution #dai #dao #josephine montilyet #lace harding #cassandra pentaghast #trevelyan #hira dragon age #miriam dragon age #genfic #long post #y'all don't even know how hard I looked to find fics that were JUST fluff no hurt no hurt/comfort nothing but tooth rotting fluff

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checkoutmybookshelf · 3 months ago

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Rolin Rising

So, I'm not gonna lie here. I bogged right the hell down in what I am told is something of a rite of passage with the Throne of Glass (TOG) series: I read the first witches chapter and couldn't have cared LESS. After getting permission to skip a couple of them though, I got moving again and actually thoroughly enjoyed this book and it's climactic conclusion. Let's talk Heir of Fire.

As is par for the course for this blog, there are SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT. Be warned and proceed at your own risk.

Ok, SJM structures her books in such a way that it's easier to jut take her books by POV character(s), ships, and geographic groups, so that's what we are gonna do here.

Rolin (I have no idea if this is the official ship name, but its better than Aelan)

*Stares in baffled confusion between Rolin and Feysand*

I swear, this section is going to be about more than comparing key ships, but I read ACOTAR before TOG, and I am fucking baffled as to how you write a couple like Aelin and Rowan only to follow it up with Feyre and Rhsand. The former is made of interesting characters who complement and contrast each other and who are deeply interesting to watch because despite their differences, they dont feel toxic. The latter is...Feyre making Rhysand and painting (sometimes. Usually off-page or in her head more than in reality) her entire personality at age 20. I don't understand the progression is what I'm saying, and I am so much less interested in Feysand after reading Heir of Fire.

Ok, I'm done bashing Feysand. Rowan and Aelin's relationship in this book did not start as something I thought I'd enjoy. Aelin was sad and self-destructive in ways that felt narratively draggy after the first two books, and Rowan was just a dick. But as they were forced to exist in each others' space and train and survive skinwalkers (put a pin in that, we'll get there*) and Valg Princes, their dynamic developed in a way that felt earned and organic, and I ended up deeply invested in their relationship.

Possibly my favorite overall piece of their relationship is that neither quite gets the other until HELLA late in the game; it might even be fair to say that they don't fully get each other by the end of this book. Rowan was floored when Aelin yote herself into a death battle (low-key I think he should have seen that coming, but I guess soldiers don't imagine people flouting orders and lying to a commander's face), and Aelin really had to come to terms with herself before she really could get into understanding Rowan.

I also like that they are allowed to fuck up. Notably Rowan's early threat to take a whip to Aelin. She genuinely would have murdered him for that. That's also not entirely his fault, because Maeve withheld information, but once they like each other enough to communicate civilly, they work that stuff out.

The other really good thing about Rowan and Aelin's relationship is that their dynamic is two people who stand together but make their own choices. That can often get overlooked or trampled in romantic relationships, but Aelin is extremely herself, and I love that.

I also cannot wait to see how Aedion reacts to Rowan having sworn a blood oath to HIS queen...

Manon, Abraxos, and the Witches

Ok, so for all that not loving the witches in this book is a canon reader experience (I am told by the memes and my sister), I really only skipped a couple of chapters before the witches caught me too. I just incidentally thought I'd skim a chapter, and it turned out to be the one where Abraxos murders the crap out of Titus (I think was his name? He's dead though, nobody carea). And y'all? It wasn't Manon who grabbed my heart; it was Abraxos. Abraxos, who wanted to live so badly, who chose Manon so hard the entire culture felt it, and who likes wildflowers stole my heart right out of my chest and cuddled with it like a cat with a ball of yarn.

If anything happens to Abraxos, we riot.

Now, while Abraxos had my heart immediately, Manon grew on me more slowly. The fact that the witches are literally raised as little sociopaths and the cracks are starting to show is interesting, and I'm definitely interested in seeing how this develops. Also, I cannot WAIT for Manon to put her grandmother down, because that woman is VICIOUS.

Chaol and Aedion's Excellent Adventure

Ok, so Chaol and Aedion are kind of...on deck...this entire book. They're just kind of biding time and making sure the resistance stays alive and playing politics while they're waiting for Celaena/Aelin to make her next move. Their dynamic is more or less two soldiers who are strange bedfellows out of necessity and don't REALLY trust each other, but they have enough in common that they sort of grow on each other. Reluctantly. It's actually very cute.

Also, Aedion pulling that final self-sacrifice play to try to save everyone at the end and to get Chaol out because he meant something to Aelin bumped him up SEVERAL significant notches in my estimation.

Chaol took Fleetfoot with him when he bailed on Adarlan, so he gets pupper protection points.

Dorian Needs a Hug

Dorian Havillard is having a terrible time this book. He's terrified of his own magic, down bad for a pretty healer, and sans his childhood best friend and murder Barbie BFF. He's also ingesting iron to try to keep his magic from being outed, hiding his healer from his father (who already murdered her parents and would murder her without a second thought), and feeling hella betrayed because Chaol thinks he's evil and scary for his magic. This man needs a hug SO BADLY at the beginning of the book.

That's nothing compared to how badly he needs a hug after his girlfriend is revealed to be a spy and beheaded in front of him, is *probably* captured by his Dad after his magic being explicitly outed, and everyone who could help him either already in chains or fleeing for their lives.

SJM and Cutlrual Appropriation*

Ok, let's get back to that skinwalker pin for a sec here. Red from OSP has a great little mini talk in the Urban Fantasy Trope Talk on why appropriating the term "skinwalker" from Navajo lore is...IFFY AT BEST, so I'm not going to reiterate why using the term here is perhaps not the best choice and should probably have been run through a sensitivity reader and axed in the drafts. But I do want to just...highlight that SJM is still very, very comfortable with wholesale nabbing stuff from global mythologies and folklore, stripping it of its context, and dropping it into her books without really doing any REcontextualizing. Because SJM's baddies in this more are more magical Freddie Kreuger than anything else, and to use a specifically Navajo term for that low-key gives me the ick. I'm not a fan of this in SJM's work as a whole. It feels appropriative, and the fact that a lot of the bad guys are from colonized (or attempted genocided, in the case of Indigenous American mythologies) people just intensifies the ick. Part of seeing all of a story you love is not ignoring the problems, and this is VERY MUCH an ongoing problem with SJM books.

So overall, I had fun with this book. The pacing at the beginning is a little rough, but the character and relationship dynamics are well handled, and I enjoyed a lot of this book. Abraxos is also just awesome, and I will die on this hill.

#throne of glass #heir of fire #sjm #books and reading #books #books and novels #books & libraries #book recommendations #aelin galathynius #rowan whitethorn #chaol westfall #dorian havilliard #abraxos

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hopeymchope · 1 year ago

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Danganronpa Kirigiri: Post-Halftime Report

So you probably remember that I recently discovered the entire Danganronpa Kirigiri series is now available in some form of an English translation. I jumped on reading them immediately, and I started to write this post when I was at the halfway point of reading Danganronpa Kirigiri Vol. 4. Because that's roughly the halfway point of the series a whole, right? But then I went and finished Vol. 4, so now I'm like... idk, 57% through? Though that doesn't actually account for unique page counts in each volume, so maybe I should reconsider that percentage. Er. ......... The point is that I feel like I should probably say something to mark the "roughly halfway" point. Y'know — just write some notes on my thoughts and feelings where things stand so far.

MINOR WARNING: I'm obviously a huge Danganronpa fan. Since late 2016, I've absorbed every possible piece of DR media I could get. So I've basically been waiting seven years to be able to read past Volume 1 of these light novels. (There's been a translation of Vol. 3 out for some time, but ofc I had no desire to skip from 1 to 3, so I passed on reading it before this.) Combine that with the Japanese-reading side of Tumblr HEAVILY hyping these books as one of the best things in the franchise + this being my first "new" DR content in two years, and there are some serious expectations weighing down the DRK light novels. I think that's why I've often felt so critical of them as I've gone through them.

A few different people have warned that these are partially machine translations. In actuality, they're a mix of machine translation + already-existing translations + A.I.-supported cleanup of the text + a human read-through to clean up major dangling errors — albeit by someone who is not a native English OR Japanese speaker. Even Chinese fan translations were used as part of the source, which is NOT IDEAL. With that in mind: How's the result? Honestly, it's DAMNED impressive! Extremely readable and easy to get engaged with! ...... but of course, it's not without issues. Errors in syntax/grammer are pretty common, some concepts forego more natural/accurate translations in favor of slightly awkward explanations, and there's at least one Japanese word that is regularly repeated yet left weirdly untranslated. And yet? Despite those sporadic issues, the story is NEVER difficult to follow. These books are full of complex mysteries with tons of little details building upon one another, and all the necessary information to enjoy them comes through clearly. So: Although a thorough, proper translation and localization by parties fully versed in both languages would still be the ideal scenario, I find that these translations make for a satisfying experience right now.

Given that most of the overall narrative is told via Yui Samidare's first-person POV, I thought we'd learn a lot about Kirigiri's onee-sama. To my surprise, however, Samidare is one of the — perhaps even the — most thinly drawn protagonist(s) I've encountered in any Danganronpa story. Halfway through the light novels, and I've learned very little of her history, absolutely nothing about her home life, and her inner thoughts come in just two forms: 1) Feelings of inferiority/low self-esteem (Of course! It is, after all, a tradition), and 2) Deep adoration of Kirigiri.

I've always adored how Kazuataka gives his characters (even relatively minor ones) numerous traits that make them feel realistically complex, sometimes almost self-contradictory. Basically, that whole GDC presentation he gave on how he develops characters and stories? I LIVE for that shit. By comparison, author Takekuni Kitayama has introduced us to many characters, but the vast majority lack that same complexity. They don't even hint at that kind of complexity. Though perhaps that's because...

I think it's safe to say that the best aspect of Kitayama's writing is his complicated, fascinating mysteries. Reading these, it's no wonder he was asked to come up with the murder scenarios for "Master Detective Archives: Rain Code"! DRK Vol. 2 in particular really engrossed me with its gothic atmosphere and strange setup. Which isn't to say that he's flawless at this stuff, mind you; the main mystery of Volume 3 required Samidare to be pretty thick-headed to not even consider some of the details behind the truth, and it ultimately featured a pretty ridiculous answer to how the murder was executed. But even if that one felt a bit botched, Volume 4 has already made up for it rapidly with numerous twisty mysteries all being juggled by different detectives, each one coming off well-plotted and well-reasoned so far. (Though at least one is not yet fully explained.)

To that previous point: Kirigiri is already solving far more elaborate, complicated mysteries in these light novels than anything she's forced to deal with in DR1. I guess that's fine when you consider that she figures out the truth behind DR1 Chapters 1-4 well ahead of their trials. But now it kinda feels like 13-year-old Kyoko would've resolved every mystery in DR3 much faster than 20-ish Kyoko did in that series. :P I'm only sort-of joking, lol. But hey, maybe she got a little rusty between DR1 and DR3.... ? Or we can justify her more deliberate pace in DR3 by pointing out the ways her efforts were hindered, the fact she was being routinely drugged, and/or noting just how wild the circumstances she had to "solve" truly were. (I mean... the culprit's already dead? The entire primary base has been duplicated in a now-underwater environment? The Savage She-Hulk created a possible Death Cure before dying herself? There's a lot of crazy shit to unpack there :P)

Volume 3 ends with a serious case of "Jin Ex Machina". It's...NOT well-justified by the story, to say the least, but on the plus side? It's executed via a classic trope from action/suspense tales, so I'm inclined to let it slide. :) The end of Volume 3 and the opening of Volume 4 are also when the "grandfather twist" is revealed. I was spoiled about this particular turn of events YEARS ago, but I still believe it's an effective and clever misdirect. The answer is so obvious in retrospect, but Kitayama manages to distract his readers very effectively until the moment he hands both us and Samidare the solution.

RE: Jin, since even the first game I've liked the fact that Kyoko held this resentment towards her father for abandoning her because it feels so real. In a world full of outlandish "psychopop" elements, dealing with a father who abandoned their child is something incredibly grounding bc I know so many fucking people who have this same backstory in their lives. The reveal that he kept a photo of his daughter (in DR1) and wanted Kizakura to help watch out for her (in DR3) then added elements of wish-fulfillment to that backstory; it's pretty typical for a child abandoned by a parent to want to believe that their absentee parent still loved and cared for them in some way, even from afar. DRK takes that "love from afar" much further by having Jin secretly watching over Kyoko all the time while simultaneously never seeing or speaking to her directly... and that's a step too far for my taste. It's hard to swallow that he has such time and/or ability. Thankfully, Kitayama doesn't go so far as to absolve Jin of his sins, which was where I was worried this may be headed. See, we learn that the board of Hope's Peak all but demands that Jin stay away from the Kirigiri family if he's going to continue to advance within the school's hierarchy (and no, this is never explained or justified — even if it's pretty easy to believe Hope's Peak Just Be Like That). This helps keep Jin a somewhat ambiguous figure; sure, he's obviously very concerned about his daughter, but his decision to totally dedicate himself to an organization that keeps him away from her raises doubts for both Samidare and us readers. Which I appreciate.

.......Tohachiro Uzuchi sounds like a fascinatingly weird dude, doesn't he? His total dedication to the Kirgiri Family's legacy despite how it impacted his daughter is something else, yo.

Starting with Volume 4 (and evidently continuing into Volume 5), we're starting to get lengthy chapters where we aren't focused on Samidare OR Kirigiri for the very first time. Instead, these chapters center us on other, different detectives. We don't get to know these characters much at all before we're thrust into focusing on them, PLUS this comes after the series has already made both us and Samidare severely doubt anyone who's registered with the Detective Library. So my first reaction to starting a chapter with one of these newbies is consistently a bored, irritated feeling of "Why should I care about y'all?" Happily, it didn't take me long to quite like Salvador Yadorigi Fukurō — the first of our focal detectives outside of our lead duo. That makes me optimistic for how I'll react to the others' stories.

I've often seen the question "Did DRK really need to take seven volumes?" over the years. And while that may sound a bit, idk, presumptuous? maybe entitled? to many fans (bc ofc an author can take however long they want/need in order to tell the story they want to tell), I admit that I understand and empathize with this questioning mindset. I think this way about movies all the time! "This movie would've been better without these scenes" or "This movie needed X and Y scenes to fully come together/help the pacing." So: Do I think DRK could've benefitted from some kind of edit or even expansion? I'll need to wait until I'm completely finished to feel confident, but right now: I think we could've easily cut out one of the first two volumes, sure. But that'd also lose us some precious time developing the already-rushed Samidare/Kirigiri relationship, so maybe it wouldn't be that smart.

#danganronpa kirigiri #drk #danganronpa #halftime #danganronpa light novels #Takekuni Kitayama

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 4 months ago

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The Loudest Pundits Don't Talk to Voters. I do...

Jess Piper

Jul 6

Tysons, Virginia.

I was invited to speak at a summit just outside of DC, and just got back a week ago. The Women’s Summit is a large annual conference hosted in part by Network Nova. I have to tell you something: the message from rural America never fails to captivate an audience. Especially an audience filled with activists in a solidly Democratic city and region.

But I am not writing to tell you what I spoke about. I am writing to tell you what I heard when I listened to the voters and activists in the room.

What you’ll hear me say is not at all what the pundits are saying about Biden after the disastrous debate. It is the opposite of the narrative being furiously flung at us each day by everyone from MSNBC to CNN to the New York Times to the nightly news to opinion pieces across the country.

I speak to actual people…the pundits feed off each other. I work with grassroots organizers to spread Democratic messaging…the pundits write clickbait headlines and stoke fear.

The debate.

First of all, I did not watch but a few minutes of the debate live. I chose to watch it in clips and videos afterward. I was horrified. I felt like I was watching a trainwreck in slow motion. Biden performed terribly and Trump lied continuously.

Honestly, I wish Biden had never accepted the debate premise because it’s pointless to debate a liar. It just gives Trump the runway to lie even more, and without pushback from the moderators, the debate went nowhere.

The voters and activists I listened to in Virginia weren’t wondering if Biden should step aside and none of them were kidding themselves about what they witnessed during the debate. They are solidly behind the Biden administration. Solidly.

The summit in Virginia was diverse. Hundreds of women gathered and many were Black women. I like to hear the viewpoints of folks who are neither rural nor white — I am not in enough diverse rooms. I get a different POV and that’s important. What I heard was real and heartfelt. They are behind Biden.

I listened as several Black women spoke about their admiration for Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer, but how pundits holding them up as replacements for Joe Biden is condescending and irritating. Joe Biden has a Vice President. A Black woman — Kamala Harris. The women wondered aloud if there would be such a push to replace Biden on the ballot if his VP were not Black.

Same.

They wondered why journalists and politicos demand that Biden step down, but not Trump. They wondered why so many articles are being written about Biden’s age and fitness, but not the same about Trump. They wondered why Democratic strategists are making voters fearful instead of leading with a steady hand. They wondered why Biden is taking all the hits while a felon with a rape conviction, his opponent, is not even addressed.

Same.

The biggest takeaway from the folks outside DC is they are angry that the “same shit” that happened in 2016 is rearing its head again. Several stated they are tired of the line “The DNC chose Biden.” They reminded me that primary voters picked him…Black voters picked him. They are sick of repeating it.

These voters and activists did not waver when they repeated over and over again that they have no hesitation in voting for Biden in November.

From that group of over 600 suburban folks to a group of about 20 rural Dems…

You know I am rural and I often speak in rural spaces. Most of these spaces are older and White. When I listen to voters in these spaces, they have zero doubt about who their candidate is…even after the debate. Do they doubt that it was an awful showing? They do not. They watched it with their own eyes. Do they wish Biden performed better? Seemed younger? Spoke more clearly and concisely? Yes. Will they still vote for him? Also yes.

Not one rural person I’ve spoken with wants to remove Biden from the ballot in favor of another candidate. They believe in the administration and they are fearful of another Trump presidency. They think Biden can beat Trump.

This is what rural voters have told me: Biden has been good for ordinary people. He’s worked for public schools and the LGBTQ community and student loan forgiveness and infrastructure and rural broadband. They’ve seen highway projects funded. They remember that Biden curbed COVID deaths and consistently pushes for union jobs. They know he will not sign away reproductive rights.

Listen, I am not paid by the DNC and I don’t earn a dime from my state party. I am a Democrat because the party aligns with most of my views, but I am not a party first person…I am a country first person. I can see with my own eyes what the Republicans are about and I already know what a Trump presidency will bring. We all know what it will mean.

I will never forget the maxim: Democrats fall in love. Republicans fall in line. I know many of us are not in love, but can we come together to beat a certain autocrat? To overcome the fascism and Christian nationalism creeping in?

I was as scared as any of us after the debate. I had a feeling of doom bearing down on me. After talking to so many voters since, even after reading so many terribly divisive pieces, I feel more calm. The voters I’ve listened to are not doing what the pundits claim they are doing. They have said that replacing Biden on the ticket will almost certainly divide the party. They have faith in the Biden administration. They have faith in his VP.

I am tired of pundits creating a narrative that I don’t see in real life. I don’t know why they do it? For clout? For clicks?

I hate that each of us is exposed to the fear every single day. I hate that many in the media are driving a wedge between Democrats with this incessant message of doom and gloom and the need for a new nominee.

I have no crystal ball, but I do have neighbors and friends and I know organizers across the country. I hope we can make it through this with a nominee intact and a win in November. I hope we can listen to our neighbors and mute the pundit-class.

Our country can’t manage another Trump presidency.

~Jess

#chin up democrats #political #election 2024 #Biden #Jess Piper

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sunsafewriting · 2 years ago

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Hey :). I was hoping that maybe you would have some nuggets of wisdom regarding story pacing and plot. Everything you published on ao3 is so well paced and worded in such a way that the reader can vividly picture every scene. Sooo.. question: how do you plan out the plot of a story? And when you don't necessarily have a plot, how do you make sure that the scenes you want to write are well-connected/paced within the bigger narrative?

Anyways, I hope you have a great day. And answer or not, I will keep enjoying your work just the same.

hey mate! thanks for thinking of me but you have actually come to a terrible place for pacing advice bc that is definitely the part of writing that i struggle with most lol . but i shall tell you how I cope and hopefully some of that helps you (?)

basically I cannot plan to save my life. fic or original writing --- if I set out to outline, I come up with bad ideas and stress myself out of even starting. all the stories I plan are MUCH worse than the ones I don't. for some writers planning works great and if that's you that's awesome!!! but I am doomed to walk another path

what I do instead of planning a story is think about what I (me, personally, bc I write fic from a place of indulgence) WANT out of it. like, what's the stuff I wanna see? to me, the essential aspect of pacing is making that stuff feel important and worth it and earned. it has to have emotional weight or it won't be what I'm after .

that's also how I try to make scenes are connected; they're all focused around a general Vibe or Feeling I want to construct.

for example, in Do A Flip, what I wanted was all of them getting to become a family. and so I worked backwards from that --- what are the steps within steps within steps that lead them there? what little aspects can we put together to create that kind of image?

for pacing it's also handy sometimes to ask what the best bit about NOT being where you're aiming for yet is. like, what is worth lingering on and enjoying that isn't the end goal? what fun thing can you only have at THIS moment of the story, rather than later? it makes each part more fun to write .

I started with a much shorter version of the fic (14k) where I wrote a shoddy draft of the whole thing from Diego's pov, and then I went back and added a ton more pieces.

that's also something I use to help myself out (and because personally I love to write this way) --- I write in pieces.

this improves my pacing, because then I'm not having to constantly consider the whole structure. instead, I'm thinking about what the point of an individual fragment is --- what am I showing in this scene, and what does it mean? often it's just something small (like I want to show that Beatrice is comfortable with Ava holding her hand, or that Lilith tries to be friendly to Diego) but I function much better with a hundred bite sized pieces than a massive whole.

in these piece-style stories, I rely on the reader drawing connections between different parts and inferring rather than a smooth flow. it's just something I enjoy as a narrative form --- I like gaps and spaces where you figure bits out yourself.

I also rearrange a ton. scenes get cut and pasted to be in a new spot all the time bc I realise as I go that they could be tweaked and fit better somewhere else. when I'm writing, I also often just leave a break and write SCENE, and then jump on to the next one --- like I don't know how I'm going to fill it in yet, but I know I need something to separate out two more similar bits, or a different POV, or to slow down before X Event happens. half the time I have no idea where a chapter is going until the first version is almost done.

the other thing about pacing for me is that devastatingly I rely heavily on rewriting, editing, and cutting beloved scenes that don't super gel. chapters take SO long to come out bc I rewrite them 2-4 times. a lot of better (and less highly strung) writers don't need to do that much so please don't feel like it's necessary but it's definitely necessary for me bc without it my work would be a total shambles lmao. I also find the promise of rewriting means I'm less likely to freeze up or stare at a blank page because I will go back and improve/tidy up later.

I also think paying attention when you feel pretty meh about something is helpful for pacing. for example, I wrote a 6k version of chapter 3 of Favourable Conditions where a lot more happened, but I didn't like it. I got my girlfriend to read it and she said "the whole first part feels like you're racing to get to the second part, and then it all settles down". and she was totally right --- I had a scene I was excited to get to so I gunned it, but the overall feeling of the chapter suffered as a result. I split the chapter in half and then rewrote the whole first half as a chapter in its own right, and decided to focus on what fun stuff I could do there, rather than just skipping through to get to the rest. I ended up adding scenes that were the ones people in the comments liked most. I also ultimately decided to change the next few plot beats afterwards, based on how that went.

I would also say that generally speaking, not a lot happens in my stories. like, I go for smaller stakes and smaller actions that slowly add up --- mostly bc I'm writing very chilled out stuff. but if you're trying to build a character to the point of doing something drastic, it's a different ballgame to escalating them to some minor change. both are super doable, you've just got to keep in mind what you're aiming for. I like minor stakes because I enjoy trying to make small things like washing dishes or going to the park matter. it's also just the vibe of where I'm at right now --- previously I've written things that were a LOT more dramatic.

if you're really struggling, I would also suggest starting with writing something short. your blog is blank so I couldn't tell what kind of writing you might be interested in, but it's much easier to tweak and change and judge these things if you're working in a smaller area --- like a 2-4k oneshot --- than if you sit down to write 80k. I literally never sit down to write 80k of fic I just accidentally end up doing it lmao.

I hope some of that is vaguely useful? I don't have a lot of wisdom to dispense bc as you can see most of my process is crutches for getting around having no natural sense of pacing. if you have any more specific questions about pacing a particular scene or idea I might be able to help more?

but good luck! 💛

#thanks for the ask!#hopefully some of this helps #hit me up if you have any other questions and i will do my best :D but yeah i struggle a bit with the broader questions

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shivasdarknight · 1 year ago

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Hi, sorry for this but you are a writer, so umm.. I was hoping you could give me some tips/advice on how to write?

tbh the way I got into writing is a bit insane, but I do have some advice that can help. gonna put it under a cut just because it got kinda long

honest to god, one of the best pieces of advice is something you're already doing because reading can genuinely help you with becoming a better writer. stepping outside of your usual genres or authors can help expand your viewpoint and introduce you to more narrative styles so you can play around and see what works for you. eg. if you mostly read first person, give second person a shot. or if you're an omniscient third person, try limited third person. or even retrospective first person, because i often see people complain about first person pov when it's married with a present tense story. if you have a first person narrator talking about events in the past as if talking to you, or a journal it often takes an entirely different angle and it's something I've played with in Homestuck fics because that fandom tends to be more open to narrative experimentation. Writing is honestly a lot of looking at stuff you like (much like art) and smooshing it all together. Personally, I've gotten a lot of my writing style from stuff like The Locked Tomb, admittedly Lovecraft was foundational (but this is a great example of why to always remain critical considering his bullshit), so was Homestuck and Rick Riordan's stuff. I'm never trying to copy them wholesale, but I am looking at aspects I like - such as Riordan's humor intertwining with the narrative and narration, or the deeply unreliable narrators that Muir writes, or even how Homestuck balances purple prose with gut wrenching conciseness when it counts. A lot of modern day fast food fiction takes out a lot of the stuff that actually builds a story - pacing, playing with narration and technical writing - so you need to be conscious of what you're looking for in things. Often more established authors get to do weirder stuff than new authors, but don't discredit new ones because that would be leaving out folks like Xiran Jay Zhao and their phenomenal prose.

Another thing that helps greatly is reading writing critique. Video essays on books or even more critical thought pieces on writing, tropes, etc. can help you learn more about why something works. Lots of different channels on YouTube dedicated to dissecting media, absolutely recommend stuff like Hello Future Me, Overly Sarcastic Productions (real world ties + mythology, great basis to build things on), Zoe Bee (writer + commentary), Nerdwriter1 (media analysis + commentary), Just Write, and Tale Foundry. For adjacent suggestions that can help build up alternate perspectives that aren't directly about writing but are about critical thinking with stories (which is frankly an important skill to have), I definitely recommend Princess Weekes, Accented Cinema, Now You See It, Dominic Noble, The Storyteller, and Pop Culture Detective. A lot of this is discussing film (save Dominic Noble, who also talks about books a Lot), but the core essence of storytelling is helpful regardless of what angle it comes in - be it video game, movie, tv, or book reviews and analyses.

Actual writing. Varies on the person on if they do outlines or not and how, but I still recommend trying to do an outline when you're first starting out. One habit to immediately knock yourself out of is writing things chronologically. If you're working on a big piece and have more energy to write something in the middle? Put that in a new doc and leave a placeholder for where you're at. Legitimately, getting words on the paper is more important than those words being good. Because you can always come back and edit things to make sense.

Always edit what you write. I hate the "no beta we die like real men" attitude because people will dunk on editing but then praise stories for having "firm and satisfying" connections which can only really be built through editing. Your first draft is your rough idea. Your second one is when you read through and have it make sense. Three is making that make sense, and maybe 4 is more just grammar and spelling errors. Edit as many times necessary to make sure you like it.

Always work in broad strokes, then move in finer like with anything. Do a general idea for a story, then your main story beats, then how you connect them together, and then the nitty gritty of each. Keep lots of notes - do not rely on your head solely for everything - and just also be willing to let things go if they change.

What I tend to do when I write is I want a good flow. I often get that from reading my writing out loud to hear how it sounds, but I'm looking for a good beat to read along. Because even if the sentence is grammatically correct and structurally sound, it may not be very interesting to read. Like you could say someone feigned a polite expression to not let the other person know that they didn't feel comfortable with a topic, or you could go the angle I went with recently of "she painted herself an interested expression to wear as dread began to gnaw at her gut." Sometimes the more colorful or out there the language is, the better it sounds when you read it. Like instead of saying "that's just how things go for them" you could say, "but Fate had a funny way of making her disdain known for (X character)". And this is where reading other peoples' work comes in real handy because you can get a lot of examples of how people write things.

I also try and reflect themes of the story into the writing itself, like this section of a draft:

Still nothing. Seemed he wasn’t going to bother with a glass, instead just ripping the top off of some bottle of gin and tipping it back with little regard for himself. Still that chronometer ticked on; still that taught tension like another arrow had been drawn. A million and more things flooded Ysayle’s mind, itching to loose them at Estinien, yet found herself stuck in indecision as she stared daggers into him - ever her opposite as he just seemed despondent. The gin bottle hit the extended shelf loudly; one hand a fist around the bottle, the other balled up on the surface - knuckles as white as bone. Still, Estinien said naught. Still, the chronometer ticked on. Still, Ysayle’s heart roared in her ears - poisonous words damming up her throat.

The theme of this story is avoiding the mistakes of the past. How things often can wind up cyclical, and the goal is to break from those cycles and repeats. So naturally, several points of the narration itself repeat itself. This isn't standard writing style, but it gets that point across by repeating "Still" as the scene crawls on. I also use a lot of alliteration in my writing because I personally find it fun? So "a maddening matter made most malign", for example.

It also helps to change up how you write or what descriptors you use based on the character whose head you're in, even if it's third person. Third person can have a voice and I often use it to speak aloud a character's thoughts instead of relying on italicized dialogue-thoughts. It makes the dialogue-thoughts appearing hit more when they do instead of just having to be subjected to internal ramblings constantly. Like in this fic I just published:

“...Can we talk about it on the morn?” “What for?” You don’t know what it is you ask of me. “Tired,” Estinien said with a shrug. “We’ve morning patrol, remember?”

Compared to this fic:

“Yes, confusingly.” Her tone was flat as she leaned once again on Surkukteni’s shoulder, thankfully on the uninjured side. “I fear I may have been wrong, though I truly doubt it. To deny me twice, then throw a fit? I wonder — why didn’t you go through with it?” Not even Surkukteni had that answer. For the umpteenth time during that conversation, she refused to look at Her Darkness. That desire — twisted and poisoned as it was — was one that still surfaced from time to time, yet like clockwork made her ill and was banished from her thoughts. Why was that? She felt scorned back then, wishing the universe would correct this error in sparing him but taking Ysayle — but was she not the one who helped save him? Who helped tear those eyes from his armor? She easily could — and had previously — bluffed that it was to destroy the eyes and be rid of the threat, but given her hesitancy now? Why?

All of Surkukteni's thoughts are condensed into the narration so that I can separate out her thought dialogue from idle musings since she - specifically - has a connection with something that can talk telepathically. This thing comments on the literal narration of the story, so when she's directly addressing this thing it's thought-dialogue. But her actual thoughts become narration to avoid spending too much time with that, as I find it's better used sparingly.

Motivation for writing is probably the hardest thing, and best I can advise is to get really into critiquing the stuff you like because you wind up finding a lot of material in fix-it stuff, or just wanting to see more of stuff like you. It's part of what drives my xiv stuff due to how they treat female characters, and I really just wanna see more sapphic bi4bi. So considering it's something I've been stuck in for a very long time now and really like the ambient lore and wish it would do better, it's fueling my desire to write. And from there, there are so many other angles to take - like building ocs, building lore. Finding a sandbox is genuinely one of the best ways to do it. Again, like. You'd be surprised at how much is there because of spite. LOTR has Eowyn because Tolkien didn't like that the "can be killed by no man" thing in Macbeth was resolved with a character born by c-section, so he instead wrote Eowyn, the woman who killed the Witch-King of Angmar. C.S. Lewis didn't like the fact that Tolkien believed that modern technology - or slightly less modern technology - didn't believe in fantasy and he explicitly cited lampposts. And this is why there's just a random light post in the middle of nowhere in the Narnia books.

Critique is good and healthy. I'm critical with the stuff I like and my own things so I can work on them and myself. It's fine to like something that you don't wholly agree with, especially if you're using it to inform how you build on it or build your own things. Like I dunno, I looked at Dante from Devil May Cry and went "what if he was trans" and now I've got Rhombi, a character who has stepped really far away from the OG Dante mould, but you can still see hints of it as I used what I wanted to see out of DMC to build this bisexual disaster of a guy. I was disappointed by Elsword not really committing to some of their character concepts, so I kinda just took Eve (and admittedly Add) and made them into Celes and Neilos and took them to their logical conclusions. All three of them were originally fantrolls at some point, so most of the heavy lifting was done when I was back in Homestuck and all I had to do was scrub the barcodes off of them to build them up in an original verse.

Chemistry is also crucial. If characters aren't vibing, move on. Do not force it. Good chemistry can save a bad story (eg. FFXV) and bad chemistry can ruin a good story. Often it's the characters that drive a story so you need to do a lot of plotting and planning. Most writing is honestly just planning before putting the words down.

And I'm very much so rambling by now but my main points are these (+ others I'm realizing while typing):

Plot a Lot and keep lots of notes, and also organize those notes. The contents don't have to be pretty, but you'll thank yourself in advance if you at least sort them by core idea

Getting words down is more important than getting them down correctly. You can always come back and edit it when you have an idea of how to make it work

You can always place a [insert scene here] tag so you can keep your flow and don't get caught on something.

You also don't have to write chronologically - you wanna write the big confession scene before the intro? do it! just jump right into it!

also don't be afraid to delete stuff or remove it from your draft. save things for later to see if they work elsewhere, because maybe it could be a better spinoff.

dont listen to the advice of "if it really matters, you'll remember it in the morning" that advice was given by neurotypicals who don't have memory issues. make notes of EVERYTHING and then delete the ones that don't work

sometimes writing by hand vs computer can really make a difference in how you think. handwriting is slower and makes you think about stuff, so you may want to keep journals for random snippets or ideas like how doodling is good for building up your habit of drawing

Outlines can help but how you outline is up to you. Try a few styles out and go with what works best.

I cannot stress enough that having something like a marker board to write out your broad stroke story ideas is really really nice

Broad strokes first, then narrow it further and further down. Don't get wrapped up in the nitty gritty details

Chemistry is crucial and can often save a piece you're not fully feeling.

Read your stuff out loud while editing because it can help point out stuff that's not jiving! I find it helps a lot with dialogue

Read a lot. Listen to critique. Be more critical. Also don't limit your idea of stories to just books - expand the media you consume and you'll find really interesting stories that can help with yours

Don't be afraid to use tropes, but also don't super rely on them to where you're just checking off boxes instead of coming up with natural scenarios built on chemistry (eg. having the nerdy goth girl is fine, but the way the trope ends in most media ("fixing" her or just having her be a quirky cynical critic) may not fit with your story and it may be better to see how the story plays out rather than forcing it into something it's not)

Iron Widow is a good example here: the relationship between Zetian and Yizhi is pre-established and comes off as sort of "boy next door" vibes, or at least the very dedicated childhood friend. It quickly becomes apparent that he's as much a co-conspirator in her plans as Shimin is. The guy can be ruthless when given the chance, and that's how Yizhi goes beyond the initial trope and defines himself outside of it. Same with the contextualization of Shimin's seeming "aggression" as the "bad boy" and figuring out where that problem/persona actually stems from, and then the shift of viewing it as less aggression and more retaliation and self preservation.

Find something you do really want to write about, like filling a void in a piece of media you like or doing a take on media that made you mad or disappointed. Jane Eyre is technically fanfiction because the author wanted to see more of Jane and didn't get that. The Divine Comedy is self insert fanfiction of Dante Alighieri as he does worldbuilding with Christian mythos regarding heaven and hell. The Riordan verse is his interest in mythology crossed with a desire to give his son a protag that was like him (specifically ADHD and dyslexic), which then became wanting to let kids see themselves in the different halfbloods in the series.

There's a lot of ways you can get started writing, but the best way is to just write goofy stuff for yourself. Get out stuff that may look bad at first, but you go back and read it and critique it. Just getting yourself into the habit of writing helps a lot, because again: it matters less about the quality, and more getting it on the page and actually having something. You can always fine-tune writing, after all.

My first FFXIV fic isn't actually even published. It was just me writing something rambly about my Warrior of Light when I was starting to figure her character out. It looks nothing like what I'm doing now in part because that fanfiction became a launching point for me to work on others. I've got a lot of drafts that will never see the light of day because these were proto-concepts that became the stuff I wound up publishing. It's fine to have drafts that remain drafts because you can take that as practice, and practice is good. Anything that you write has value because you can use it to let your technical writing skills mature.

Also, don't be afraid to look for help. There are beta services on tumblr (or at least used to be when I was a teenager), plenty of writing guides or places set up to ask questions, plenty of youtubers that give prompts for you to work with. The hardest part is always getting started. But once you get past the awkwardness of the start, everything just falls into place and gets easier the longer you go at it.

You definitely have the desire for it because I've seen your very deep love of literature through the Bi-Library, so you can definitely become a strong writer if you put your mind to it 🫶 Find something to fix or address, and that usually is what gets the ball rolling. Worldbuilding is fun and can lead to something, but you can't have a well built world without a story to explore it.

Characters drive story, story is how you explore themes and the world itself, and the world itself is built on your experiences and interests. Embrace the fact that this is coming from your lens and experiences, because no media is truly void of the author and its other creators. Embrace that fact and use it as an extension of yourself. But really, just write. Literally anything. Just get into the habit of writing, and it'll progress from there!

#original #asks #answered #bisexual-coala #writing tips #long post #this is very rambly but getting into writing isnt the most straightforward thing #a lot of the time it really is just finding something that clicks and not caring about what goes on the page for the first draft #ive been writing fanfiction for...over a decade now? + a lot of rp (also over a decade) and now some p serious original stuff #my fanfiction has also gotten way more involved than it used to be #genuinely i got started writing by keeping a lot of journals and writing every idea i had even if im now embarrassed by it #what matters is just getting into the habit first and then looking at your stuff more critically once the habit is formed #it's hard to build a habit if you're immediately critical #but it's hard to maintain a habit or hobby if you're not - especially if you feel you can build on something #if you do feel it you oughta pursue it and see where it takes you #perfectly fine to not be critical with hobbies but being Constructively critical is how you improve and mature #constructive is key here. because being down on your own writing or being self deprecating is how you lose a hobby #like let's say you don't like your dialogue #go read scripts or books of stuff you like the dialogue from. analyze why they work in contrast to why you feel like yours doesnt work #maybe someone else has a solution for why it feels off #sometimes it's just as simple as taking a step back and looking at it as a whole or even just sleeping on it and coming back w fresh eyes #always approach something you don't like about your work with the attitude of ''how can i improve so i do like it''#like ''i need to be better at fight scenes. ill be sure to include more in my next piece to focus on it and maybe read some action books''#lotta ways to do it!! theres no one right way just a way that fits best for you!!!#just absolutely ignore the ''if it's a good idea you'll remember it in the morning'' stuff.#it doesn't account for people w memory issues and will screw you over #you do not have to wait until you're good at writing to start working on something. you need something to work on to improve #you can always come back to an idea as many times as you need as you grow as a writer #so just write until you build a habit and base style then analyze and move from there #fanfic is honestly really good for practicing style and technique - the characters and world are already ther so why not use em?

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