#i cant explain it but literally one of THEE main characters of all time

[cherrymagik]

also i finally read the catcher in the rye and i have to say

[dateamonster]

hello tumblr user dateamonster!! do you have any recommendations for good zombie media? my gf rlly likes zombies but has burned through a lot of the good stuff to be easily found. movies shows anime games etc, anything goes. ty!

oof good question but one im not sure im totally qualified to answer since most of the zombie media i consume is on the campier, sillier side.

i do have some somewhat more Serious zombos i enjoy tho!

the girl with all the gifts is one of my alltime favs (and ive heard the book is good too tho i havent read it) it hits a lot of the beats zombie fans will probably already be familiar with but the main character being a sort of half-zombie (makes more sense in context trust me) as well as a child born into this apocalyptic setting creates a totally new perspective and to me is one of the strongest most thoughtful pieces of work to come out of this sorta subgenre in a long time

the resident evil game series is probably a given. on the off chance she hasnt played it or watched a playthrough, that shits mandatory.

z-nation i think kinda tippytoes the line between stuff fans of, for example, the walking dead will recognize and enjoy in terms of ya know a story focusing more on the interpersonal drama of a group of survivors living through an ongoing apocalypse, and the sillier doesnt-take-itself-too-seriously stuff i personally enjoy, like the ongoing bit where theres just a big ball of entangled zombies rolling across the scenery. its the delicious junk food of tv zombies (though granted ive only watched i think the first few seasons when it was playing nonstop on syfy)

and if you want to join me in enjoying only thee most quality campy schlock..

zombieland saga! literally one of my favorite anime ever! i consider it in this sort of less serious category because the concept of undead idol girls is obviously pretty ridiculous on paper and not gonna be everyones thing, but if the premise even remotely intrigues you, please give it a shot. the story is fun, the characters are loveable and surprisingly complex beneath the typical moe girl archtype exteriors, the humor is on point but doesnt undermine the actually pretty effective emotional moments, and the music fucks! we stan!

z-o-m-b-i-e-s is like c-tier early 2000s dcom realness with a 2018 budget, better choreography, worse songs, questionable moral messaging, all reeking with a dangerous level of green hair dye and party city greasepaint fumes. ive watched it like four times. i cant totally explain it but its got like nostalgic high school musical vibes except more paranormal and much much sillier. dares to ask the question: can cheerleading end all prejudice and bring about world peace? (the answer is yes but theyll be repeating that question for three movies)

zombie prom. very similar to the above in general vibe except the music is honestly kind of good? theres a stage play and a movie which is more or less just a slightly shortened version. in a lot of ways it honestly feels like the fully realized version of z-o-m-b-i-e-s. if you watch the movie ru paul is there, whether thats an incentive or disincentive.

and to wrap it up another game you probably already know about, lollipop chainsaw. yes its problematic but i am honoring my past teenage self who averted their gaze when they walked by it on the shelves in gamestop by saying tara strong sexy cheerleader zombie slayer game is fun and good.

anyway all this to say my taste is very questionable when it comes to this subgenre but i hope u get something out of it. a lot of zombie stories kinda flop for me because the horror element gets watered down into this more actiony survive the zombo apocalypse type thing but the concept of zombies is definitely something that interests me despite this and there are definitely some good pieces of zombie media out there.

oh! and i havent read it yet, but ive heard really promising things about the book manhunt by gretchen felker-martin. not explicitly a zombie story i dont think but draws from the same place for sure. would be worth checking out i think.

[heckolve]

hiii omg its been so long since ive sent an ask... ive loved seeing ur ocs and their universe evolve over time and i was wondering if u have any tips on developing stories and characters? i have this story idea in my head and i have the gist of it planned out but like. idk i need MORE u know

aww hi leo <3 hmm honestly my process is not super structured or straightforward lol. ive been working on them for years and years so its not streamlined at all... as far as working from scratch i'm not really sure since i havent made a New story in a longggg time. i'll put the rest under the cut since it got long <3

my best piece of advice might not be that helpful but what has been the most successful for me the past few years is to just let the story develop naturally.... it definitely helps once you've sort of established the general setting & characters & dynamics as well as genre/themes/what main points you want to hit in the story so that you have a defined area to play around in but ive found that after i've set all that up there is always a Next Logical Thought that comes along to develop the story.

with all good things, i wiped that story's slate almost completely clean a few years ago to start fresh and fix it and pretty much my only direction was "i want arrakis to have a more active role in the story" and the rest is history. i immediately was able to find a bunch of loose plot points that i could tie to her and i more closely examined and revised each character's relationship with her and played around with how that impacts them in the story both in their character development and actions. i'm not sure if this is the case with your story yet but for agt i also had a Ton of little things i wanted to happen in the story that needed explaining, like blaire's scars, the breakup, arrakis dying, etc etc. the whole Next Logical Thought process really came in for those points especially where literally all i asked is Why Did It Happen and then using the setting/story points/characters i already had established i was able to fill in those blanks pretty naturally.

why did arrakis die? someone killed her. why did someone kill her? because she knew something she shouldn't have. what did she know? did anyone else know? would anyone else even be able to know? how did knowing effect them? etc etc etc until i not only had one fully fleshed out plot point but suddenly had a way to connect multiple other plot points. anselm's development was the same way. i'd been playing around with a ton of ideas for years and years and had never found anything that worked Just Right and then literally in like the last few months of 2020 i had this one passing thought that ended up being THEE piece the story was missing and set the entire tone and structure of the narrative going forward. i'd definitely played with a Ton of ideas trying to fix the story but it was really just a matter of waiting for my brain to sit on it long enough to be "well obviously this happens" and well obviously yeah that was the right version of the story to tell 🤷‍♀️ its definitely helpful to actively work at a story to figure out exactly what you Want from it and narrow down the directions to go in but all i can really say is that eventually i always just get to a place where a story makes sense to me and theres always a next logical thought to go off of.

as far as character development goes its sort of the same process for me? but its a lot of thinking about like. what would happen if these two characters interacted. how do their worldviews and experiences influence how they interact with other people. what can they offer in a certain dynamic that other characters cant. and then especially in agt i'll sometimes just make a character to fix or fill a certain dynamic that seems lacking, like inez in the eliseyev family. like blaire and belladonna wouldnt necessarily be super close save for the fact that they have traumatic experiences revolving around the same subject that none of the other characters have. it makes them close but not in the same way that friends with similar dispositions and hobbies are; they have the same burden. ave is close with abel in a way he'd never be with most anyone else because abel's empathetic powers don't allow him to repress or hide his true emotions. it also helps to just think about silly things too-- not always huge life changing relationships and events LOL. delphi gets cat hair everywhere. belladonna can play peekaboo with the twins using her wings. memphis steals blaire's clothes 'cause his parents know to keep their closets on lockdown. thinking about how specific character attributes and dynamics makes them act in casual settings and circumstances just always makes them seem more fleshed out... but also i always try to explore dynamics that i may not have considered at first. like in the past arrakis' perception of the dovokov family didn't mean anything and so i never thought to consider it but now theres just SOOO much untapped potential to work with there. i also just tend to decide things at random and without precedent for my character's if it feel's Right 😭 like bell being a mechanic or jude an EMT. or that memphis & inez like winx club. or ila having an ex wife. i think any little specifics details and trivia regardless of how much or little they effect the story also help make characters feel more... human for lack of a better word.

i guess the last thing i'd say is to talk about it with someone else if you're comfortable with that and get the chance. or honestly it doesnt even have to be another person but just to have some way to verbalize or write down what you're thinking about. i don't usually have anyone to talk about my stories with but i can't tell you how helpful its been just Pretending that i do even... i do it all day every day where i'm like. "well what if someone wanted to know about X? what would be the answer?" and sometimes its big picture stuff and other times its just random character trivia but for some reason facilitating development that way helps me think about things i may not have thought about before or work through a tricky plot/character point 🤔

i hope any of that was helpful... like i said my process isn't exactly structured lol. and ive only just recently started moving past set up & big picture narrative development towards the specific start to finish story events which definitely takes a little more active development work over the Next Logical Thought process LOL. a lot of it still is just asking the question and figuring out which answer makes the most sense within the circumstances i've established though 🤷‍♀️

[erizee]

im still rewatching gotham bc its a great distraction from studying and if 17 year-old me was right about anything its that its Fun

but also. what the Fuck were the writers thinking sometimes lmaooo im not even going to list it all because thats too much work, these r just some Thoughts

please dont ask why im watching it if this bothers me this much, i dont have a good explanation. its just Fun to watch fucked up people do fucked up shit i guess. nothing makes sense ever and theres soo much shit to dissect & so many characters to follow. yea that probably explains it

also this embarassing. i do not want to have these many thoughts about this show again.

1. police brutality as a ~quirky feature of this whacky city~. im Pretty sure that never really stops but im only halfway through s1 rn and its a Very big thing there. im not even going to talk about this much more because im not nearly close to being an expert on it & i dont have as much of a clear analysis of it, its just fucked up tbh how they treat such a major issue in real life like a fictional thing that makes their fake city more ~spicy~

2. the way they talk about/use mental health & neurodivergency

Fuck lmao this bothers me so much more now than 4 years ago. in general its a whole mess & a lot of it is probably based on comic stuff eg arkham, but they really portray anyone in there as a child huh. its So disrespectful and gross

at some point they basically only have villains from arkham, which i know is also at least somewhat comic-based but that doesnt rly make it better? great villainization of neurodivergent people guys (& why tf did they send oswald to arkham??? theres literally no reason for that one)

dont even let me get started on ed. LITERALLY Thee worst portrayal of neurodivergency/mental illness ive EVER seen lmaoo. in s1 hes soo autistic coded its almost funny if it wasnt 90% based on bad stereotypes, he literally checks All the boxes. and then he randomly gets the fake fictional shock value version of DID?? i feel like that was the only thing the writers could think of that made sense why he'd ever kill people lol and its a) So lazy and b) Extremely bad for how DID is seen by people. i dont know how DID works exactly so i cant say anything abt if the way it started/his switching was at least somewhat accurate, but its just this typical "evil dangerous neurodivergent dude cant control himself/is just evil to his core because his ~mind is fucked up~" and its so frustrating. Yes hes one of my favourite characters still. Yes i still relate to him way too much. Yes the way hes written is Extremely harmful. those things can all be true

3. queerbaiting. only developed a ship because it was popular with the fans, then make them fight each other for the rest of the show, then have them be ~brothers~ at the end when ratings drop. typical And annoying.

4. this is less of a Real World Issue and more bad storytelling but plot & character consistency are practically nonexistant in this show lmao. this has been run to the ground years ago but its still so weird. the main thing is again ed for me since he was my favourite, but they really changed his entire personality whenever it was practical for the "plot". i could barely recognise him in s3 until i got used to it lmao he was sooo different. u Could make an argument for the riddler vs the ed personality but again thats bad rehashing of harmful stereotypes & Also doesnt fix anything tbh. the only thing that was actually consistent (if im not forgetting sth) was oswald's character i think? he became less gross over time but that was all as far as i can remember. sneaky, manipulative, too emotional, loses everything because of either his mom or ed aka what he loves. he became less smart somehow after s1 which is weird but i guess s1 him would have taken over the country if they hadnt nerfed him. i honestly cant remember anyone else because last time after ca the middle of s2 i stopped paying attention to anything that wasnt ed or oswald but yea it was a whole mess