#i could go on about how this applies to many more characters

[un-fwuit-un-fwog]

Falling Behind

Synopsis: The Prefect has ADHD and was medicated for it back in their old world, but when they go to Crowley for help getting a diagnosis here, he brushes them off. They proceed to struggle until finally breaking down. (+ Crewel basically steps up as a father figure)

TW: Pretty descriptive with the negative effects of The Prefect's ADHD, Talk of medication, The Prefect cries, Crowley says the usual things people who deny/downplay ADHD say, Crewel has the "Help me help you talk" with The Prefect, The Prefect cries and is overall just GOING THROUGH IT

NOTE: I went off of my experience as a person diagnosed with ADHD and medicated for it. My experience with it won't apply to everyone else with it, but rest assured this won't be a fic that portrays ADHD like a silly, goofy little quirk. (This is a pretty self-indulgent fic, tbh)

Many people who are diagnosed with ADHD and medicated accordingly have the thought cross their minds every once in a while of "Do I really need the medicine?" When you're on ADHD medication for long enough, you forget what it's like to not function at the level you do when taking it. The memories of the difficulty focusing can slip away with time and leave you doubting. You were no exception.

Key word is were.

When you got thrown into Twisted Wonderland you learned pretty quickly that the medicine in fact does help and that you in fact do need it.

But how would you even go about getting it here? You'd need a diagnosis and for that you'd need a psychiatrist and for that you'd need money (and an official identity which you did not have as an alien to this world).

You tried bringing it up to Crowley, but he brushed it off. He said the same lines you had heard 100 times before, many of which you found yourself thinking from time to time: "You just need to make yourself work. You're unmotivated." and, while he didn't say it out loud, you could clearly tell that what he was really saying was that you were lazy.

You suppose you should have expected as much. No headmage that gave two hoots about mental health would be running a school that has no student counselor.

After that interaction you had resigned yourself to the fact that you'd have to come to terms with being a student and doing schoolwork with no relief to your condition.

You tried your best, you really did. You sat at your desk for hours on end as you tried to finish a simple homework sheet, but hours passed with virtually no progress being made. You couldn't force yourself to focus. When you did your body protested. Your brain refused to allow a single proper thought to form and your eyes wouldn't focus. If you forced the issue further, it only got worse. Your brain and eyes felt somehow heavier than usual and sometimes you swore they were slowly liquifying to a goo in your skull.

You didn't bring it up to your friends. You felt weird talking about it with them. One too many times being told you were faking or doing it for attention you suppose.

Your grades began to slip. Deadlines popped up when you could have sworn you had more time. You made little mistakes you chastised yourself for. You knew the material. You knew you knew the material.

. . .so why were you messing up.

Assignments piled up and slipped through the cracks. It's not like your teachers could notice how out of character this was for you. They didn't know how well you typically functioned when medicated, and it's not like you told them about the disorder in the first place.

Each night you held back tears of frustration as you tried desperately to get any work done. You weren't one to cry easily. In fact, you hadn't cried since you got to Twisted Wonderland, and even before that it had been a while since you last allowed tears to drip from your eyes.

But everyone has a breaking point.

You had gotten so far behind on your assignments that it was decided you needed more than to simply stay in the classroom to work during lunch and you were put in after school tutoring (although it felt more like detention).

The first few weeks you managed to keep it together. You taped over the holes that chipped away into your composure and did your best to hold down the storm of emotions that thrashed violently inside of you.

Another day of after school tutoring came around. By now not even Grim was having to stay for these sessions. There were other students that were in them, but they were in a separate classroom. You knew what was happening even if nobody outright said it.

You sat in Crewel's empty classroom for the second week in a row. The clock on the wall ticked impossibly loud. Every sound around you was amplified tenfold and you could feel it wearing on you. Your arms shook in a sick combination of frustration and exhaustion as you tried in vain to get one question done.

You could feel the ugly jaws of your pent-up emotions gnashing away at your already tattered walls of composure.

Crewel sighed as you once again failed to answer the question: "Look, I really do want to help you, but in order for that to happen I need you to cooperate and listen to me. Right now, it feels like you aren't doing that."

You had had this conversation with him before; with all your teachers for that matter. You used to it. YOU WERE USED TO IT.

You chanted the phrase in your head over and over again.

"What do you not understand."

He didn't say it in a malicious way. He sounded genuine, just. . .exhausted.

He didn't know. He wasn't aware of the storm in your stomach slowly making its way to your eyes. He didn't know.

You don't blame him, but when he said those words you finally broke.

It wasn't anything grand or dramatic like you see in movies. A small catch of your breath in a short-lived attempt to hold it together and then tears. You choked on your sobs as you tried to quell them. The only thing worse than crying is crying in front of people.

Your knees curled up onto the bench, up to your chest, and you hugged them: trying to hide your face and muffle your sobs.

It was no use. Crewel already saw the tears.

He was momentarily stunned at how suddenly you seemed to break down and could only watch as your whole body shook with the sobs you were trying so desperately to hold in.

When he finally snapped out of it he was still unsure of what to do, so he did the only thing he could.

You felt his large, fluffy coat be draped over your shoulders before he somewhat awkwardly sat a comfortable distance away from you as he waited for you to calm down.

When your sobs finally quieted to small whimpers he apologized for making you cry.

You explained it wasn't his fault and, after a bit of silence, you explained to him what was wrong.

He sat with you and listened patiently as you told him about your ADHD, the trouble you'd been having since you got here, and finally recounted your interaction with Crowley.

He led you to the infirmary not far from his office, telling you he'd be back soon and to rest for the time being.

Luckily for Crewel, the headmage's office was just about as far away from the infirmary as it could be.

He could scream as loud as he wanted without disturbing you.

By the time he returned to the infirmary it was late. He was about to apologize for leaving you there so long but stopped himself.

There on the bed was your exhausted form curled up in his coat and sleeping peacefully.

The next day he asked you a few more questions, and the day after that, he accompanied you to the doctor's office. (you didn't bother asking how he managed to get you registered as an actual person)

You went through suspiciously less steps than you had back in your old world to get the diagnosis, but you just chalked it up to the fact that it was clear by your appearance that you had been going through it.

You got your medicine the same day. Wait. . .did Crewel just tell the pharmacist he was picking it up for his child?

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[dellamortethelesser]

#put that bitch in situations and frustrate yourself as you figure out how they would react in character#and be critical of how you’re doing so and second guess and wonder is this right#and then examine your blorbo’s behaviour to come to your own conclusion!#you can only say “they would NOT say that” if they say it first !!!!#this is not even necessarily about illario but its sort of about him#its really about a pacific rim character bc as i trawl through travisbeacham’s tumblr dot com#trying to read about lore its like ‘is chuck a good person’ WHO CARESSSS. WHAT DO YOU THINK#how have YOU reacted to him? and take yourself out of the equation— what makes his character unappealing in a meta way?#how do people in-universe think of him?#i think all these questions could of course also apply to illario#who suffers hard from ‘players take him at face value’ despite many pointers to more shit going on behind the scenes#of course this statement applies to the larger audience#bc everyone who fucking follows me here or is mutuals with me loves that freak too

adding ur tags op i want them

i have to be so real. sometimes you have to outright not give a shit what the author thinks. i’m not saying to disregard how a character is portrayed and give into fanon characterisations but sometimes i will see fans be like “(head writer) omggg do you think this character is a good person?” “how would this character react if xyz happened?” as though that’s not a question you can and have to answer for yourself.! any character can contain multitudes and if you keep limiting your perception of them solely on word of god its not fun for the writer or even yourself anymore. THINK FOR YOURSELF. INVENT NEW WAYS TO FUCK YOUR FAVORITE CHARACTERS OVER

[collectivephilosopher]

ARCANE WASTED POTENTIAL (PART 2)

Part 1

This one is still about Isha. Many people argue that Isha's introduction was unnatural, being she fell on top of Jinx and Jinx have no other choice than helping her. Other argument about Isha is that she was a pointless character and with how her arc resolved, I have to agree.

I'm not sure what Isha's character served as a purpose here but Jinx mentioned how Isha kinda reminds her of Powder. Now this can be a good plot point except for the fact that I cannot for the love of me see the resemblance. Appearance? Nope, from hair type to skin color they're completely different. Personality? Also nope. Powder was insecure, clumsy, low self esteemed, non confrontational. She ran away from fights, she's not confident in her muscle skill, clearly scared of getting hurt. while Isha is clearly more confident. She jumps onto rictus's face, straight into the battle with her fists. She's not scared of getting smacked into vander statue. Isha was always more confident and independent than Powder. If any, she's more of Jinx or Vi than Powder.

I feel like if they want to go with the idea that Isha is like powder, they should stick to it. Not just from one line from Jinx. Isha could've be like powder: low self esteem, clumsy, always messing up jinx's stuff when she wanted to help.

And THIS could be the reason why Jinx CHOOSES to save Isha, not just that Isha fell on top of her. It could be that Jinx saw Isha getting cornered and for a moment she thought she saw Powder (also playing into her psychosis) so Jinx saved Isha. Now because this random woman saved her by choice, Isha starts following Jinx. Jinx thought Isha was hallucination until Sevika confirmed otherwise. And then Jinx becomes Isha's mentor or some sort because she emphatize with Isha. The story could explore how Jinx healed her inner child, forgiving Powder for being such a mess by forgiving Isha when Isha did wrong. She can see for herself how well, kids are still young and learning. They're not wrong for making mistakes, Jinx just have to teach her how to be better.

In part one, I talked about how Isha's theme could've been about passing the torch and how she does not have to be the cute kid to be killed but if they actually make Isha paralleling Powder, this can even applied to the original ending. Jinx did not just pass down the good things she learned to Isha, she also passed down the bad habits and in the end Isha died from it and the impact of her death actually give Jinx something to reflect on.

[abstractslowburn]

Do you ever go about your day and then remember...

"Those feelings of jealousy"

"is there more to unpack about Buck's feelings there?"

"they're going to be kind of explored and looked at in a way that is more obvious than kind of has ever been done before on the show. To an extent where I was actually surprised by the extent to which it's going to be explored",

"an exploration of what the feelings are"

"That came to a head in that episode?"

"Yeah...",

"what happens when you kind of start to tug at a thread, and you know, it keeps on pulling and pulling, and you kind of watch a lot of things unravel as that goes",

"a fraught and intense atmosphere for a good healthy portion of it",

"There's a lot of tension in the upcoming episodes between characters that we don't often see tension between",

"I finished filming about 4 a.m. last night, outside in the rain",

"that will incur some massive changes",

"There are going to be some big changes in Eddie’s life. Big, big changes in Eddie’s life",

"I would tell him to trust himself because everything that he has been searching for, everything that he has been confused about is inside of him, and who he innately is, is more than enough",

"Is that still something you'd like to see? More of a slow burn development? It could apply to Eddie, but, really, just in general."

"I think the best relationships are ones that have a slow burn element. I want there to be some longing involved. I want there to be some will they/won't they. As the characters are experiencing that kind of longing for each other, I want the audience to be longing for it as well",

"It was him trying to not look at himself in the mirror, not see himself, kind of run away from who he is",

"he’s going to feel even more abandoned by the time we get into Episode 10",

"when we come back, I’m gonna blow the factory the f—k up",

"As soon as Eddie turns his back, Buck looks like he’s been hit in the head with a baseball bat, and that will figure in mightily when we come back",

"if Eddie is thinking about relocating and upending Buck’s life, Buck already has abandonment issues stretching back ages, so this is going to have an effect on him. It’s just a question of how he’s going to deal with it.",

"He could open up a bakery at this point",

"there are fire alarms going off in his head right now",

"during that hiatus — except for Buck feeling a certain kind of way — their 118 fire family is all back together and everything is right with the world",

"fears being left by another crucial person in his life",

"There’s just no way he’s not going to spiral about this",

"Buck is going to be spinning like a top by the time we come back",

"by the end of Episode 10, everybody’s life is changed",

"No one will be spared chaos",

"we're going to hit the ground running and we're going to hit the ground really hard",

"big movement for all the characters by the end of episode 10",

"is going to have so many reverberations in the 118 world",

"The chaos kind of writes itself…",

"now Buck has to take some steps on his own and really find out who he is and who he wants to be with",

"Friends are there for each other in the good times and the bad — even if one of them doesn't have pants on",

"And like true brothers, one doesn't even question why the other isn't wearing pants",

"it's time for him to figure out who the hell he is",

"when Eddie opens that door and he’s there with his collar popped and in his underpants, Buck looks him up and down, he takes that in, and it’s like, whatever",

"he has just not had the capacity to maybe process those feelings or understand those feelings for various different reasons that we could go into",

"there have been breadcrumbs to this for a long time",

"The story has been telling itself and even on a subconscious level, it has been leading here",

"the strength of their bond is that they don't have to speak",

"It's this safe space that they create for each other",

"Oh, you need me to be there for you. All right",

"there's a source of strength there that has been built up between them",

"I need somebody right now. And I trust you probably more than anyone in this moment, so thank you for being here.",

"I'm going to sit in my joy. I deserve this joy",

"with Buck becoming another parent to Eddie's son Christopher",

"The slow burn, in this case, has already been happening for several seasons" ?

Me neither. I'm completely normal and these quotes don't haunt my every waking moment, not at all.

[memento-morri-writes]

whump wednesday - part iii

tw / tags: concussion, blood, bleeding out, loss of consciousness character: Rook (who else?) status: canon (took place several irl months ago as part of Rook’s first “Horrible, Very Bad, No-Good Weekend”.) wordcount: 525

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Another continuation from earlier. The party has now made it back to the Winters' manor. Having lost a lot of blood since being revived (on top of his concussion), Rook is in pretty bad shape. His mentor, Sigmar, is attempting to get him to the Winters' healers.

Rook’s eyes drifted closed, the oblivion of sleep calling to him. A sharp prod at his side dragged them reluctantly back open.  “Rook, you need to stay awake. Just a little bit longer, until a healer can have a look at you.” Sigmar’s voice was serious as he half-dragged, half-carried Rook down the hall of the Winters’ manor.  Rook groaned in response. He was exhausted, and every inch of his body ached. He wanted nothing more than to close his eyes and fall headlong into unconsciousness. Sigmar prodded him again. “Tell me what happened to you. How you ended up in this state.”

Rook thought hard for a moment. How had he ended up like this? He remembered Celestia, and healing the party, and then- Oh, right. He started to explain, his words running together as he spoke. “This werewolf guy showed up. Deadringer?” Sigmar’s body tensed but he said nothing. “And he wanted Warren. Warren and Cherry, I think.” He paused, trying to remember what had happened after that. “He… he wanted to hurt them. So I told him he’d have to go through me first. And he said ‘Deal.’ and threw me across the room. I… I think one of his werebeasts killed me.” He felt rather than saw Sigmar shake his head. “I should never have left you. If I’d known she’d bring Deadringer into this… I shouldn’t have let you go off to fight someone like him without me.” Once again, Rook was surprised at the weight of the emotion in his mentor’s voice. He wanted to say It’s not your fault. Or maybe, I would have done it anyway, but his mouth wouldn’t cooperate. So instead he just rested his head on Sigmar’s shoulder. The damp chill that had come over him on the way here was getting stronger and he leaned into Sigmar’s warmth. “‘S cold,” he mumbled. Sigmar picked up the pace a bit, a worried edge creeping into his voice. “Come on, come on. Just a little further.” Rook’s eyes were heavy, and his awareness of the world was fading. He heard a door open, was vaguely aware of a brightly lit, white-painted room, of being laid down on a bed. He could hear people talking urgently, unfamiliar voices joining Sigmar’s. His muddled mind only caught fragments of their words. “Concussion… Severe… Significant blood loss… Not enough… ”  Sigmar’s raised voice cut through the fog. “Help him, damn you!” It sounded very far away, as though coming from another room. Multiple sets of hands touched his skin, and the familiar warmth of healing magic (when had being healed become familiar again?, he wondered dimly) flooded his body. The cold, clammy feeling faded away. The constant pain he had stopped registering some time ago subsided, leaving blissful neutrality in its wake. His head cleared slightly too, blurred reality coming back into focus for a brief moment. Distant voices reached his ears, borne by that momentary clarity. “It’s safe for him to sleep now. He’ll be fine after some rest.” As if his body needed no further reassurance, Rook’s mind relaxed, and within seconds he sank into a deep sleep.

[ask-codeearasure]

I understood the creation vs destruction concept a little bit back in the day, but only when it's under the pretense that both concepts have a lick of corruption to them that needs to be checked and balanced.

This would be under the context that the multiverse is, in fact, a limited space, that there should be a limit on how many universes can exist and that is why Error's genocides are necessary and can be justified, that Ink keeps creating to a point of excess and whoever else is in charge can't manage it all.

In short, I think that idea is either shit or needs to be thought through more (and not many people tend to do that regardless). The entire point of the Multiverse Theory is that there is no limit to what other dimensions, realities, timelines, and universes exist. So the idea that a given multiverse only has so much space could perhaps only fit in a multiverse that has been broken or created with errors in some way. I remember some extent of the whole FGOD ideas have to do with a complete lack of Creators, therefore Ink is made to replace that presence entirely. This could factor into why the multiverse is a limited space, because Ink's imagination is only coming from one person and one fucking person can only be creative in so many avenues. But that likely isn't what it's like in the basic FGOD, is it?

At least, that is the only way I can understand it with the limited information I know right now. The multiverse is Ink's canvas but that canvas can only hold so much, which demands Error's necessity to remove concepts that aren't as important anymore.

This in no way applies to Error or Ink's canon, and generally speaking if we're only going off of canon for them here, they don't know each other. They've never met. But say they did, and I don't recall if Comyet or CQ said this but whatever, they'd be friends. Weird ass friends, but friends nonetheless. There is no battle between creation and destruction between them, and while Error would take his "work" semi-seriously because he's genuinely convinced his genocides are necessary, Ink wouldn't take any part of it as a threat.

In so many words the "the multiverse lacks/needs balance to keep existing" makes no fucking sense, because if a multiverse where Nightmare wins can keep existing but with a complete lack of people cause everyone killed themselves out of unfiltered emotional agony, then Error doesn't truly have the means to make a multiverse crumble.

With every reality Error decimates, there will always be a timeline where that reality still exists. In this manner, Error's job never ends and the multiverse will never be "clear" of anomalies in his eyes, and he knows this and refuses to think about it further than that. In the most contradictory way, which is Error's entire concept of personality, he wants to keep himself relevant in the only way he likes. If he doesn't have that, say he realizes his work cannot be justified anymore, he'll kill himself. I'm pressed to say Ink knows this as well and that's the exact reason why Error's bullshit doesn't bother them in the slightest. It's still a story.

It would be more interesting if these characters learn to give no fucks about whatever kind of "balance" the multiverse has, because the multiverse and Creators themselves keep fucking contradicting their claims and there's no longer a reason to worry about the multiverse itself collapsing.

Dream in general gives more fucks about the quality of life of individual people, and without people, his purpose for existing doesn't have a reason to stick around. His goal is to mitigate the excess of negativity and have it so both negativity and positivity can exist in tandem, after all. The whole negativity vs positivity balance thing was never a competition for him because he understands the necessity of having both.

The other two endings for Dreamtale are ignored as fuck too, for the sake of Nightmare. And this is the part that actually ticks me off some, cause the endings where Nightmare is defeated, Dream's brother cannot be brought back, and Dream either becomes the guardian of ALL EMOTIONS or kills himself to make the next Tree of Feelings with his and what's left of Nightmare's soul, are NEVER explored or given any thought. All that matters is Nightmare Nightmare Nightmare, but never Dream and what this variation of him would do in the sudden complete absence of Nightmare throughout the multiverse.

Those are the two options Dream is left with when no one else can take up the mantle of holding negativity. Dreamtale could either be restarted in a manner of speaking, or he progresses as the guardian of both kinds of emotions like Nim was, because he is the only one left who can do either of these things.

Fuck, dude, there are so many complexities with these characters and how they truly affect the multiverse in their canons that are either written out of the next version or completely fucking ignored.

But perhaps I'm just biased and appear a bit threatening here, because acknowledging that one of my favorite AUs has been fucked over by this fandom makes me openly pissed off. Sue me for thinking critically I guess.

All of this ranting is to say the "destruction vs creation" and "positivity vs negativity" "wars" are fundamentally bullshit and that becomes even more obvious when you bother to think more about the backgrounds of Ink, Error, Dream, and Nightmare and how their shit actually does affect the multiverse (with Corrupted!Nightmare having the greatest power to fuck everyone else over), aside from taking the prior concepts at face-fucking-value.

The first version of FGOD was made by a fuckin kid and on a whim at that last I was told anyways, they can't exactly be faulted for it.

-- Sarco

can we all agree that both existing balances (positive/negative and creation/destruction) are kinda bs.

destruction isnt a necessity. and while negativity is needed somewhat, its not needed to a point where whole universes have to suffer. to where there needs to be a group that spreads it.

like yeahhhh i know im the forced god of destruction error guy but like. thats like. canon fgod is very heavy on the fact that necessary destruction is bullshit.

and the aus i make are like... they dont focus on the negativity part as much as the destruction, but i feel like at least @ask-fgod says that negativity isnt really that needed.

Context.

Tbh I can somewhat understand the balance between negativity and positivity, my thing is that the balance should already be in negativity’s—Nightmare’s—favor almost completely by the time Dream gets out of stone.

Like, Nightmare had anywhere from 400-500 years to do whatever he wanted, and people want me to believe he didn’t go around spreading negativity until the “balance” was more than likely in his favor? If not, then what the hell was he even doing all those years.

If the balance was truly leaning more towards Dream’s favor even after all those 400-500 years, to the point that Nightmare has to recruit murderers into his little cult and start enacting acts of terrorism across the Multiverse, then either he’s lying straight through his teeth, genuinely believes what he’s saying despite everything going against it, or he has no one but himself to blame for the state of the “balance.”

Not to mention, in Dreamtale’s canon, Dream is basically constantly on the move—on the run—from Nightmare, and in the case of the Bad Sanses, Nightmare and his goons. Because if Nightmare gets the last Golden Apple then the balance will well and truly slip into Nightmare’s favor, and plunge the Multiverse into negativity.

This means Nightmare and his goons would be actively hunting Dream down. This could happen either before the Star Sanses ever formed, if they never formed at all, or even after the Star Sanses disband.

Maybe Dream and the Stars did try to put up a fight against Nightmare and his gang, but infighting and negativity ironically won out, and they disbanded; leaving Dream on the run once again.

Having to keep moving from place to place, avoiding staying in one spot for too long, avoiding making new connections and straining any remaining ones he likely still has—such as with Swap or Ink.

Now the supposed balance between destruction and creativity isn’t one that really makes any sense to me, though. I know that this particular balance seems to somewhat exist in Dreamtale, or at least it used to, and that’s one reason why Dream was stated to be able to understand Error. Because in Dreamtale, Error at least seems to be viewed by some as simply doing his job or his purpose.

But I don’t recall this particular balance being a thing in either Error or Ink’s canon, just another fanon concept that got popular. Comyet has even stated that Ink isn’t some sort of God and doesn’t create AUs, he appointed himself as the Protector of AUs. He encourages artists and their creativity, he supports and protects their work, but they’re not creating AUs themself.

So for me personally, when it comes to the twins, I can understand the balance being a thing for possible motives; only people always portray it as if the balance isn’t already in Nightmare’s favor.

Acknowledging this means acknowledging that the only purpose Nightmare would have for a gang of murderers would be to spread further negativity for him, and help him hunt down and capture Dream.

Therefore he is not simply just “doing his job,” he’s going above and beyond and spreading too much negativity. He’s the one out of control, and either he doesn’t realize this, or he does and just doesn’t care—or maybe he’s even pleased, because the balance being in his favor leads him closer to whatever wider, Multiversal wide plans he has.

[idiaa-shroxd]

YOUR WRITING IS SO PRETTY I COULD EAT IT. YOU CHARACTERIZE THE CHARACTERS SO WELL TOO!!!

thank you so much!! ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ happy you think my writing is very pretty!! and also makes me happy you think my characterization was correct.

when writing for characters always take a bit of extra time to ensure they sound good? thinking about having an actual conversation with them for a minute and what they’d do! ♧ personally a big fan of viginettes since that reveals a lot of a character more than mainstory.

Σ('◉⌓◉’) mini (huge) rant within the tags of the way of my process to understand a character!!

[pyrrhiccomedy]

I feel like we need a refresher on Watsonian vs Doylist perspectives in media analysis. When you have a question about a piece of media - about a potential plot hole or error, about a dubious costuming decision, about a character suddenly acting out of character -

A Watsonian answer is one that positions itself within the fictional world.

A Doylist answer is one that positions itself within the real world.

Meaning: if Watson says something that isn't true, one explanation is that Watson made a mistake. Another explanation is that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made a mistake.

Watsonian explanations are implicitly charitable. You are implicitly buying into the notion that there is a good in-world reason for what you're seeing on screen or on the page. ("The bunny girls in Final Fantasy wear lingerie all the time because they're from a desert culture!")

Doylist explanations are pragmatic. You are acknowledging that the fiction is shaped by real-world forces, like the creators' personal taste, their biases, the pressures they might be under from managers or editors, or the limits of their expertise. ("The bunny girls in Final Fantasy wear lingerie because somebody thought they'd sell more units that way.")

Watsonian explanations tend to be imaginative but naive. Seeking a Watsonian explanation for a problem within a narrative is inherently pleasure-seeking: you don't want your suspension of disbelief to be broken, and you're willing to put in the leg work to prevent it. Looking for a Watsonian answer can make for a fun game! But it can quickly stray into making excuses for lazy or biased storytelling, or cynical and greedy executives.

Doylist explanations are very often accurate, but they're not much fun. They should supersede efforts to provide a Watsonian explanation where actual harm is being done: "This character is being depicted in a racist way because the creators have a racist bias.'" Or: "The lore changed because management fired all of the writers from last season because they didn't want to pay then residuals."

Doylism also runs the risk of becoming trite, when applied to lower stakes discrepancies. Yes, it's possible that this character acted strangely in this episode because this episode had a different writer, but that isn't interesting, and it terminates conversation.

I think a lot of conversations about media would go a lot more smoothly, and everyone would have a lot more fun, if people were just clearer about whether they are looking to engage in Watsonian or Doylist analysis. How many arguments could be prevented by just saying, "No, Doylist you're probably right, but it's more fun to imagine there's a Watsonian reason for this, so that's what I'm doing." Or, "From a Watsonian POV that explanation makes sense, but I'm going with the Doylist view here because the creator's intentions leave a bad taste in my mouth that I can't ignore."

Idk, just keep those terms in your pocket? And if you start to get mad at somebody for their analysis, take a second to see if what they're saying makes more sense from the other side of the Watsonian/Doylist divide.

[o-wild-west-wind]

While I’m still a bit bummed that they didn’t go with a more book-aligned POC Fiyero for the Wicked movie, I’ve been thinking (heheh) about how his being white highlights the really interesting foil relationship between him and Glinda (and, in many ways, the audience yourself).

At its core, Wicked is a cautionary tale about propaganda, (literal) scapegoating, and what it means to uphold the status quo. The audience is watching through Glinda’s eyes—it is through her, arguably the most beautifully tragic character of the show, that we learn how lonely life becomes when you forfeit your values in favor of systemic power and likability (“No One Mourns the Wicked” is, in many ways, about HER).

Now, this is where Fiyero’s whiteness can get interesting—if you consider him and Glinda to share roughly equal footing at the beginning in terms of privilege/how much they have to lose (applying our real-world lens of race and power here, where whiteness is the apex), his storyline essentially represents what could have happened if Glinda had made the brave (and arguably wise and loving, if you’re picking up what I’m putting down 👀) choice to go with Elphaba and fight the good fight (this is also why I feel like a queer reading of G&E’s relationship is almost implicit to the story, but I digress).

As the POC/marginalized allegory, Elphaba has much less of a real choice in her curtain-pulled-back turning point. But Fiyero and Glinda—both representing privilege—get to choose. So in Act II, we see the consequences of both the choice to stay (Glinda) and to go (Fiyero). In Fiyero’s case, his ultimate rejection of his own power, privilege, and even beauty leads to immense physical loss—including his own body—but that is then compared to the loss of love, community, and identity that we see Glinda left with by the end. And this brings us to the question that the audience is left grappling with: in an unjust system where loss is inevitable (a.k.a. our own world, as the Wizard himself represents), which of these things are YOU more willing to give up?

It’s important that Glinda is an empathetic character because, in reality, most people are going to be Glindas (obvi this is nuanced among us Elphabas of marginalized identities, but I’d still argue that there’s some level of Glinda in us all)—and it’s important to be rattled by the end of the show when you realize that she is the one who has the sad ending. But it’s also so important that Fiyero is empathetic (which I’m SO glad this movie leaned into)—because he’s ultimately who Glinda—and thus we, as the audience—should have been.

And especially given the state of US politics right now…this is just all more relevant than ever.

[cragsglu]

I think the reason the villains are often shown as children is not to excuse what they have done but to show WHY they are the way they are, that they were failed by society and never taught how to cope. And thus deep down they are still scared and confused children, their traumas have defined them and they are far too gone to ever live a normal life, it's a tragedy.

I think the manga is trying to say that we need to prevent these things from happening in the first place, to help the scared child and not abandon them. Tenko's entire backstory highlights this perfectly. the whole thing is fucked up to the core. And by abandoning those people, by not actually helping them, by claiming them to be bad at conception, what else do they have left but to be what everyone already told them they were? And thus the only thing left to do at that point for those people is to save them from themselves.

Toya's want for his father's love and attention became so twisted he would do anything for it, regardless of morals.

Himeko was called a monster and inherently wrong by everyone around her that she "became" the monster.

Shuichi was so mistreated by society that he doesn't even care about equality anymore and just wanted to not feel alone.

Jin was already someone struggling with mental health and made a single mistake that made his life spiral into madness.

And all of these things make up Tenko, who was taken in by the worst person possible at the worst possible moment because the "good," "normal" civilians abided by the cultural norms of Japanese society and left him alone.

I didn't bring up 2 other members of the league because well... Compress and Magne... that would take a lot of research and Compress also isn't all that applicable.

____________________________

Sorry, I wrote a whole thing here that idk if anyone would read but this story means a lot to me and while not perfectly executed has a lot to say about how we treat the mentally ill and those deemed different or "other". As someone with a lot of trauma-based (and some not) mental health problems, it's important to me.

Like I said before, the villains in mha can't be forgiven, but they are still people regardless. The whole story is about breaking the cycle of abuse (basically almost every arc is about this), I just wish the main character himself was more introspective on how he himself applies to this, as his backstory (as the fandom easily figured out) is perfect for a villain origin story, but was lucky enough to be freed from the cycle, but only due to privilege he gained from AM. It's almost as if Izuku was only THEN able to gain a better life after he became "normal," which is why characters like Ochako, Toshinori, Katsuki, etc are always saying how it's Izuku's character that makes him special, not OFA.

I just wanted to say that although Toga is an incredible written character and I love the conclusion of her arc so far that she has still done unforgivable things.

Yes she is still technically a minor but murder is murder and she is going to have to live with that for the rest of her life, Uraraka even says so herself that Toga's actions cannot be forgiven.

Pls stop trying to excuse the bad behaviour/actions of characters you like, I love Toga but I would never try to justify her actions, only explain. I see a lot of Dabi fans doing this too and I feel like you are missing the whole point of his arc being that a lot of the blame does lie on Enji, but not all of it. Especially since Toya IS an adult and blames his own crimes on his father as a tactic to take him down with him. Neither Dabi/Toya nor Enji can be forgiven, that's the point.

[justanotherbirdbrain-blog]

A Workshop for Creating Magical/ Fictional Crystals: A Guide from a Geologist

Hi folks, its me, here to talk about fictional writing again! Today I'm just tackling the idea of magical stones/mana stones by looking at existing minerals today and some neat properties that they have, and how you can apply these things to a fictional world. The goal is mainly to help you if you are stuck trying to come up with a unique magic system, or a unique identification/characteristic of your mineral.

First Things First: Mineral Shapes

I am exhausted, petered out, down-right fatigued by seeing every mineral depicted with having the crystal structure of calcite and quartz. There are soooooo many cooler, more interesting crystal structures, don't you think you would stop and take a look at a perfect cube in nature? It is completely unsettling.

Second: Color

Color within minerals can either be really important, or not important at all! It is your choice to decide if color is going to be something that means something to your mineral. But what are some times when the color is important? Well.... there are some elements that are called chromophores, this classification just indicates that these elements, when present, will determine the color of whatever they are in. So, if you wanted to treat mana like a chromophore, you could say, "Oh everything that contains mana turns green!" This could mean that regardless of the mineral, if that mineral is a specific color, it means it contains mana. This concept is exciting because you can just stop here and use minerals that already exist! You can also use it as an indicator for a magical ore! Chromophores are typically metals, so if you are making a new metal weapon, making the ore of that metal a unique color would make a lot of sense!

However, your mineral can also just be every color of the rainbow like quartz and perhaps that's what makes identifying your mana stones elusive and create an illusion of scarcity that your character can solve.

There are other things that can change the colors of minerals, like radiation damage, and electron exchange, but I think that is beyond what would be helpful! So lets talk about some unique color properties that happen in nature that seem magical in the first place! Maybe you don't need to design a mana stone, but you want a unique gemstone that only the royal family passes down or something (IDK).

The first one is the alexandrite effect! This is where a mineral can change color in natural light vs. incandescent light. (the mineral itself is not changing, but the lights contain different amounts of different colors that then get absorbed by the stone). Even if you don't use electricity in your fictional world, you could have the colors change in the presence of light magic. This could create fun misunderstandings about what the mineral is reacting to!

Pleochroism

Pleochroism is something that most minerals have, it is frequently used to help identify minerals in thin sections, however minerals are usually not pleochroic enough for it to be visible to the naked eye! Pleochroism is just a fancy name to describe the change in how light is absorbed based on the angle of the mineral! So if you scroll up to the first image where I showed a lot of crystal shapes, most of them have angles where they are longer and shorter! This will effect the way light travels in the crystal. Tanzanite is a popular mineral that does this.

Photochromism

This is when a mineral will change color (in a reversible way) when exposed to UV light (or sunlight), I am not going to go too into the details of why this is happening because it would require me to read some research papers and I just don't feel like it. The mineral that is best known for this is Hackmanite!

Alright! These are all the really cool color effects that might inspire you or maybe not, but now I am going to talk about how you might find your minerals within a rock!

When I see a lot of magical caves/mines, typically I see them with some variation of a geode honestly, but most minerals are not found like that! Now I am sure most of you guys have seen a geode, so I will not really talk about those, but I will talk briefly about porphyroblasts which is when the mineral grows larger than the minerals around it, this happens in metamorphic minerals!

sorry random stranger, but this is an image of garnets inside a finer-grained rock at gore mountain in New York!

Another way you might find minerals is in a pegmatite! This is when all minerals are really large! This is a formed from really slow crystalizing magma!

But something else to think about is that your mineral might just be massive, it doesn't have to have distinct crystals, it may be similar to jadeite where small grains grow together which leaves it looking smooth and seamless! A note about all of these is that you would have to mine into the rock to find these, there would not be any natural caves in these rocks! Caves are only ever really formed in limestones and maybe marbles (rocks that react with acid).

How can your characters identify these minerals?

Typically when you are out in the field you will look to see what type of rocks the minerals are found in (The overall texture of the rock will tell you how it formed). If you know how the rock formed, it will narrow down the amount of minerals you need to think about by quite a bit! Next, you are going to look closely at it and observe its crystal structure, does it have an obvious crystal? if so what is the general shape? If it is broken, how did it break? Did it fracture like glass or did it break along uniform planes. Some minerals have a thing called cleavage (breaks along planes of weakness). If a mineral exhibits this habit, it will again help narrow this down. Next we can look at color. Color can be misleading, because minerals like quartz can be any color imaginable, but minerals like olivine will always be green! The next thing your character can do is test for hardness, minerals all have a specific hardness that can help identify it as well.

After you go through all of this, your mineral might have some special property! This could be magnetism, fluorescence, reactions to acid, or any of the color changing effects I mentioned above! Other than that, your character can take it back to a lab and do a number of things to identify it, but the most typical thing would be for them to make a thin section (very thin piece of the rock) and observe it under a cross polarized microscope!

On that note folks! I hope this helped in some way in thinking of new magic mineral properties! I have other guides that explore some different fictional worldbuilding issues you might run into, but if you have any topics you would like me to cover please that I haven't mentioned already, let me know!

[airybcby]

If I Could Never Give You Peace

( bllk boys when your secret relationship is leaked by paparazzi)

a/n — wrote this on a whim after listening to peace by taylor swift

content — some nsfw but not explicit, fem! reader, cursing , all characters are 18 or 18+, slight ooc maybe?, some characters are repeated

synopsis — what happens when your relationship is leaked?

⋆.˚✮🎧✮˚.⋆ ' i'd give you my sunshine, give you my best ' ⋆.˚✮🎧✮˚.⋆

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ the... ' everyone thought you'd broken up '

listen, you knew dating a good soccer player in high school was a big deal, but you didn't realize how big of a deal it really was when he went pro.

this was the same boy ( now man) that you'd been dating since you were 14, so nothing really changed your views on him. if you could love him through his awkward phase, and he could love you through yours, there was no way you'd break up.

again, you didn't realize that your relationship was such a big deal. it wasn't that the two of you were a secret, it was more of a 'private not secret' situation.

so when the two of you woke up in your shared bed because of just how many notifications the both of you were getting, you knew something was up.

and low and behold, something was wrong. when you opened any social media the first thing you saw was a strangely amazing photo of you and your long-term boyfriend kissing. really, if it wasn't a paparazzi photo, it would be your lock screen.

"aren't we just the cutest?" he asked you, phone thrown back onto his bedside table as if he didn't have a care in the world. (and he really didn't, not in this case)

truly, the only thing that may make him angry in this whole situation is the fact that he got woken up far earlier than his usual routine by all the commotion.

but of course, as he was dozing back off, you were reading the comments, as any loyal significant other would.

soccerluvr45: omg is that is gf from high school? i thought they broke up

okay, yeah. he had a rather public instagram account in high school that his rabid fans had found that had pictures of the two of you, but you'd never broken up?

reading through the many comments, it was like everyone had collectively decided the two of you'd broken up.

"mhm...just ignore it. the pr lady will deal with it." he mumbled as he grabbed your phone from your hands, laying it beside his before wrapping his arms around you.

"go to bed, 's too early to deal with all this."

his fans were silly, if they could see you with this bed-head man right now, they'd see there was no way the two of you would ever break up.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ NAGI SEISHIRO, yo hiori, NIJIRO NANASE, hyoma chigiri

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ the... ' pr nightmare '

anyone who knew your boyfriend knew he was...a little extreme.

and unfortunately for you, this also applied when your relationship became public because of a slight slip of focus from the two of you. it wasn't that you were trying to keep your relationship a secret, you'd already been together a year now, but you also weren't trying to out yourselves.

yet, one singular minute when the two of you slipped away to the bathroom together at a soccer banquet...well lets just say a paparazzi was scarily ready to snap someone, anyone's, photo.

so here you were, sitting in a terrifyingly big office with your boyfriend and almost his entire management team.

"do you know what this could do to your reputation?" his manager asked. "it's just two adults doing adult things, they should've been in that bathroom! that would've gotten them—"

"okay, sir..."the pr woman cut him off, ever too enthusiastic to be talking about your private lives.

"you just need to ignore all of this until it goes away, alright? no press interviews after games anymore," she sighed as if this was basic comprehension. (your boyfriend wasn't the smartest but he also didn't need to be treated like an idiot.) "and no posting on any social medias for the time being. do you understand?"

"yeah, yeah. no talking to the grown men after games. and..."he grimaced at the thought of his next condition. " c'mon is posting on my socials that bad? i don't post about us anyways."

"at. all." and the room felt as icy as the pr woman's stare.

"yeah, no, okay i got it. no social media."

after another thirty minutes of this, with them saying basically the same stuff to you (even though you had no real social media presence anyways), you guys finally left.

"no fucking posting? what if i have to talk about a game coming up?" "i'm sure she knows how to do her job, love." you soothed your boyfriend as you got in the car the company arranged to have you two taken up with.

"yeah, well whatever. give me your hand," and who were you to say no to your boyfriend?

he took your hand and placed it on his neck, a place where you could see a few bites and hickeys if you really looked hard enough.

before you could protest he took a picture, posting it on his VERY public account with the caption...

' i love my woman ;) '

before turning off his phone completely.

"let's see them try to get ahold of me now."

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ RYUSEI SHIDO, tabito karasu, EITA OTOYA, oliver aiku

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ the... ' what picture ? '

how do two chronically offline people realize their relationship is now under scrutiny by the entire world?

the simple answer is...they don't!

you've never been interested in social media the way other girls your age had been. really, you'd rather just watch a video essay on every little topic that interests you than sit and watch six second videos then scroll all day.

to say the least, fast and forever changing social media just wasn't your thing.

and your boyfriend? he hardly even used his phone. unless it was for business or you, the thing was practically shoved away somewhere he couldn't care less about.

he would rather be reading or spending time with you out on a date...which is exactly the predicament the paparazzi put you in earlier this week.

the two of you were photographed having a little picnic and reading date at a small park that was pretty far out of town, assuming no one there knew, or even cared, enough to take a picture, but alas, someone did.

you and he had spent the rest of your week in pure, relaxed bliss. he had a game on saturday, so besides him going to practice and working out, the two of you stayed inside almost all week to prepare for the rather hectic weekend.

to say the game was a nail biter would be the understatement of the century. after two additional times, it was your boyfriend who scored the winning goal.

of course, you cheered the loudest, not noticing plenty of fans eyes on you unlike how many used to just chalk you up as an ecstatic fan.

as the post game interview came for him, you decided to stay closer to the door just incase it ran short. sometimes it was a one and done for him and others the questions went on for at least fifteen minutes, it just depended on his mood.

of course, the first question was about his game winning goal, but the second one threw him and you for a loop.

" what do you have to say about the photos of you and your reported girlfriend that have come out this past week? "

"...huh? what photos?"

eventually, the two of you did see the pictures, and all you could do was laugh because...how had you two not found out about this?

and you also made the picture your phone lock screen, but he didn't have to know that.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ RIN ITOSHI, reo mikage, SAE ITOSHI, chigiri hyoma

⋆.˚✮🎧✮˚.⋆ ' but the rain is always gonna come if you're standing with me ' ⋆.˚✮🎧✮˚.⋆

[ + your faves ! ]

i wrote this in about an hour, and i think it shows but i had to get it out of my brain :))

likes, comments, and reblogs are appreciated!

[insertdisc5]

TIMELOOP GAMES REAL!??!??!!

hi i made a timeloop game called In Stars and Time and this is a whole post about other timeloop games you can also play.

some i liked. some i loved. some i didnt like. all are worth playing and like also listen the second friends and family heard i was making a timeloop game, i got bombarded with timeloop media recs. so here is a sampler in no particular order! NOTE: knowing some of those games are timeloop games is a spoiler. but. you are here. for timeloop games. so timeloop games you shall have

Outer Wilds

If you need to play one timeloop game, it's this one. Please play it blind. I swear to god you won't regret it. it's timeloops in space!!! it makes you think!!! there are so many "HOLY SHIT WAIT I GET IT NOW" moments!!! please just go play it please please please. some of the best environmental storytelling in a game. so many hints in plain sight. JUST PLAY IT

[way more timeloop games under the cut]

Oxenfree

I didn't actually like Oxenfree very much. But also it stayed in my mind for weeks after I finished playing it. that's how you know it's a good game. I really enjoyed the dialogue system in this, and how much the loop affected the characters. and it got so spooky!!!

Hikeback

i'm in the credits for this one because i was one of the inspirations heehee <3 i loved playing it… short little game about trust, self-sabotage, and never-ending cycles. highly recommend it

The Stanley Parable

Listen babes it absolutely counts. I replayed it a bunch while making ISAT, and I got immensely inspired by the dialogue, and how it catches you off guard sometimes? You get SO SO used to the narrator's "All of his coworkers were gone. What could it mean?" at the start of every game, and then for no reason instead it says "A soft wind blew outside and perhaps rain started, and if it did it stopped shortly after. Stanley hoped that he would one day see weather." like WHAT THE FUUUUCK IM GETTING CHILLS JUST THINKING ABOUT IT

12 minutes

ok i know we all made fun of this game when it came out because the story is batshit insane HOWEVER!!!!!!!! i REALLY REALLY LOVED how doing the same actions multiple times would have slightly different outcomes. If you battle someone, the first time you get knocked out in one hit and the loop restarts. the second time you try, you evade the first hit, but get knocked out. the third time, you last a little bit longer, and a little bit longer, until you can pretty much hold your own against your enemy. And it applies to so many things in this. Retrying different things to see how they would change was a delight.

this game is also so bad its almost good, and if you're interested you HAVE to play it with friends so you can yell about how bad it is together.

Zero Escape

it's just a good series ok. escape rooms, and also time loops! the 3rd game in particular goes deep into The Math of how timeloops would work, which i think is interesting. sometimes timeloop games just go "yeah you can timeloop dont worry about it" and others go "OK HERE'S THE HOW AND WHY IT WORKS" and both are interesting!

START AGAIN: a prologue

this game has almost everything i could wish for in a timeloop game. depression. lines repeating. dying brings you back. you get new levels and skills because you're aware of the loops but your party members don't. so you get overpowered next to them and they Notice. just. party members who dont know about the loops still noticing something is wrong. you are acting differently than yesterday. you look sad. you are acting weird. you know too much. how did you know where the keys were? how did you know this would happen? what's wrong? talk to us. and oh my god this game has a sequel? which will probably have Actually Everything i could wish for in a timeloop game? i can't wait. who made this? (its me i made this)

Ghost Trick

ok its not really time loops and more time travel and only for 4 minutes HOWEVER!!!! you should play it. you know you should play it because everyone says so. so go play it

Elsinore

im sure its a great game but ive never seen/read hamlet. so thats a failing on my part. because. you absolutely need to know hamlet to understand this game lol i did like the whole "make sure to find out which events are Important and which ones aren't so you can have The Perfect Loop"! very fun. or it would be. if i. knew. hamlet

The Forgotten City

a friend kept recommending it to me and i didn't like it. its good! just not for me. but if you like to think a lot you should play it. another "make sure to find out which events are Important and which ones aren't so you can have The Perfect Loop" game

Gnosia

Gonna be real. I didn't like the story very much, in part because the game lets you choose your gender but still acts like youre a straight dude. HOWEVER the gameplay was very inspiring to me. Every loop is pretty much just an among us meeting, and you have to find out who the imposters are or everyone dies and you loop again. and sometimes you ARE the imposter, so you need to make sure no one finds out. or you loop again. rules get added as time goes on too. i REALLY loved how quickly the loops stacked up. seeing "loop 100" was such a nice moment. ive been here so long! i tried to recreate that somewhat for my own game…

Loop Hero

Technically not a timeloop game, but a loop game. It still absolutely counts because it's about loops and memories, and what are loops and memories together if not a timeloop. You have your little guy going through a closed loop, battling enemies, getting cards, and making the world whole again by using those cards to make forests, towns, lakes come to life. I am famously a Story First Gameplay Second kinda player, but I did play this 45h for the gameplay alone. I learned a lot about battle balancing and randomness by playing this!

You and Me and Her: A Love Story

you know doki doki litterature club? this came before. and one might say. it's. better. in some parts (and i say that as someone who LOVED ddlc!) i won't say much except it's a dating sim but with timeloops. with a lot of what it implies. why are you dating this girl a second time? a third time? a fourth time? choose another one already! it was such a fascinating game to play, and is incredibly meta in the way it talks about dating sims and visual novels. had a lot of very impactful moments however, i played the hentai version. some of the worst, most cringy sex ive ever read and heard. however, one might say the sex is an integral part of the game and its deconstruction of hentai/dating sims…? no. just play the steam version which doesnt have the horrible sex scenes and you will have a great time i think (or play the hentai version. if you like. to watch. horrible sex scenes???)

Higurashi

knowing this is a timeloop game is a massive spoiler. however, this game is more than a decade old, so,,, honestly if you havent played higurashi what are you doing. i know i just spoiled you on it but i was also spoiled on it and i can GUARANTEE YOU that you will still have an amazing time. one more thing. you gotta play with the original sprites or you're a fake fan

I Was a Teenage Exocolonist

starts as a visual novel/management sim/dating sim kinda thing, until you realize that every replay is a new timeline. so the main character can save people, because they remembered about them dying in a previous one. i wish the timeloop would affect the game/story more (let me find a certain character quicker once ive found them in a previous playthrough!!!), but timeloop aside, it's a very fun game to play!!!

that's it! hope you will find a nice timeloop game you like

[valeriehalla]

I have gotten a lot of messages saying that they really love the presentation of CURSE/KISS/CUTE. Often the commenter in question can’t say what exactly it is about the formatting that they appreciate, but that it just reads well and looks good. Well!!! Allow me to bare my wealth of secret knowledge for you once and for all:

I sorta just did some research into book typography...?

Here’s something you should know about web development, alright: typography on the web is really, really bad. The tools we have at our disposal—HTML and CSS—are incredibly powerful, but they are set up to fight you every step of the way towards Good Typography. When you know what you’re looking for, you can fix all the common issues quickly and easily. But it’s not easy to know what to look for, because

problematic typography is overwhelmingly the norm on the web, and

good typography is invisible.

Here’s a screenshot from CURSE/KISS/CUTE episode 0:

Now, I don’t want this post to come across as prescriptive. It is not my intention to tell you, “This is what good typography looks like, so follow my lead exactly.” I made a lot of choices with the typography of my web novel: many of those choices would not make sense in other contexts. What I want to convey to you is what those choices are, so that you will know they’re available to be made.

I mentioned that the web “fights you” when it comes to good typography. What do I mean by that? Well, check this out:

This is how that passage of text renders “by default.” In other words, this is how a web browser would render that text without any input from me about what styles to apply. It kind of sucks ass! But it also looks pretty familiar, right? This is not that far off from how a lot of websites—even websites full of prose (looking at you, AO3)—render text.

I think the most illustrative thing to do here would be to walk you through my thought process and show you, step by step, what decisions I made to turn this unstyled text into the styled version you see in the novel.

So, first things first:

1. We have got to shrink that text column.

Computer monitors... are wide. They are wider than they are tall. They are so wide, and they have so many pixels. This means you can fit a lot of characters on them. If you wanted, you could just have a wall of characters from the left side of the screen all the way to the right side. Talk about efficient!!

You should never, ever, ever do this.

This is one choice that I actually will make a prescriptive statement about, because it’s supported by quite a lot of research: fairly narrow text columns are more legible. Specifically, research seems to support the idea that a width in the range of 50 to 70 characters per line is the most comfortable for people to read*. Every font is different, so it takes a little doing to turn that “characters” figure into a pixel measurement; I went with 512 CSS pixels for the maximum width of my text column:

Isn’t that just so much nicer to read already?

*A commenter reminds me that I’d be remiss not to point out that the research on column width legibility isn’t completely conclusive. You do want to limit the width of your text columns, but going over the 70 character-per-line recommendation isn’t necessarily the end of the world, and you might have good reasons to do so. I did not: as mentioned, one of my goals was to mimic book-style typography, and books by nature have fairly restrained column widths, on account of they’re books.

2. Picking a font.

I’m not going to give you the blow-by-blow on how I decided what font to use. The short story is that I asked some designers, and one of the recommendations I got was the free font Crimson Pro, which I took a liking to immediately:

It’s just an all-around attractive serif font, but one thing I really like about it for use in a novel is its highly-visible quotation marks. They’re just kinda jumbo! They’re real big! Easy to see! In a novel, those things aren’t just ornamentation. It makes a great deal of practical sense for them to stand out just a bit. It also has a fairly large x-height, unlike a lot of the more traditional options, which is good for legibility on a computer screen.

3. Adjusting the line-height

Web browsers default to a line-height of about 1.2em, which, as you can probably tell, is quite cramped. If you go and Google “optimal line height for legibility”, you’ll get a number of results right off the bat suggesting 1.5em. Sounds good! Let’s do that:

Well... hmm. That’s definitely an improvement, but between you and me, it actually looks a bit too spacey to my eyes. I wonder why?

I’ll cut to the chase: the 1.5em recommendation makes some assumptions about the font you’re using. In Arial, the letter “A” is about 0.6em tall; in Crimson Pro, it’s about 0.5em. That means that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to spacing your lines, because different fonts have different amounts of empty space baked in. How annoying!

Let me tell you something about the kind of nerd I am. When I had this realization, I grabbed some books off my shelf and pulled out a literal micrometer. I started measuring the line-heights against various font features to see if there were any patterns I could spot in professional typesetting. Here’s what I found:

Almost every book on my shelf spaces lines such that the distance between one baseline and the next is about three times the x-height. How cool is that? I clapped my hands like a seal when I put this together.

Adjusting the line-height to match what I observed in the wild gives us this:

It’s a subtle difference, but to my eyes it feels just right. It’s almost like magic!

4. Paragraph spacing...

Let’s address the elephant in the room. Probably the most controversial choice I made with CURSE/KISS/CUTE’s typography was to opt for book-style paragraph indentation rather than web-style paragraph spacing—like so:

I did this for a few reasons:

It’s what I’m used to. I’ve read a lot of books, and this is just the way that books are formatted. I think for something aspiring to the title of “novel”, there’s value in making it look the way a reader probably expects a novel to look.

A novel has a lot of paragraph breaks in it. A paragraph in, say, an encyclopedia entry might go on for half a page or more; whereas it is unusual for a paragraph in a modern work of narrative prose to run for more than a handful of sentences, especially in any scene with dialogue. Because paragraph breaks are so common, spacing between paragraphs in a novel results in a lot of wasted space. Also, subjectively speaking, the additional space seems to me to lend an undue amount of weight to paragraph breaks. I’m just starting a new thought; there’s no need for a 21-gun salute, you know?

Having said that, here are some good reasons you might decide not to do paragraph indentation anyway:

Doing it right requires a bit of extra legwork. Notice how the very first paragraph in the image above has no indentation. That’s because it’s the start of a new section, and the first paragraph in a section traditionally goes unindented. This is an easy detail to miss, and it can be difficult to wrangle CSS into doing it for you automatically.

Web users don’t expect it. For the first decade of the web’s existence, there was no good way to do paragraph indentation; by the time CSS rolled around and made it easy, paragraph spacing had already become the norm. And while CURSE/KISS/CUTE may be a novel, it is also, specifically, a web novel!

But it’s my house and I get to make the rules, so I went with indentation. Incidentally, there seems to be a dire lack of research into the question of whether indentation or spacing is more legible for readers—but the data that does exist appears inconclusive at best. So, the choice really does come down to vibes.

5. The tragedy of justification.

You’ll note that one way in which I did not make my web novel look like a paper novel is the text alignment. It’s un-justified: the right margin is ripsaw-ragged.

This is because it is not possible to justify text on the web.

Oh, you can try. Look right here: there’s a CSS property for it and everything. Just turn on “text-align: justify” and...

Nightmare! The interword spacing on that first line is almost as wide as the indentation!

Reader, I’m afraid that your web browser is simply too dumb. That’s not the browser’s fault: robust algorithms for justifying text without creating these distractingly huge gaps between words have existed for many decades, and modern computers are powerful enough to run them in real time with little performance impact. It’s just, uh—nobody has ever bothered to implement them into web browsers. It is the damnedest thing.

I tried, I really did. You can mitigate this problem a bit if you enable automatic hyphenation, but browsers are unfortunately also kind of dumb at hyphenating. Firefox, for example, will refuse to hyphenate any word containing a capital letter, so any sentence with a lot of proper nouns in it is a lost cause. I tried manually inserting soft hyphens with a text preprocessor I wrote myself, but still these overjustified lines plagued me: when the text column narrows, for example on a phone, even hyphens can’t save you. The line-breaking algorithm is simply too naïve to optimize for well-justified text, and that’s not something you can fix as a web developer.

As a result, my heavy-hearted recommendation is to never use text justification. It’s just too distracting.

6. And then some extra stuff just for me

I added drop-caps because it looks neat and I made the ellipses spacier because I think it looks good when it, uh, when they are spacier. I think that looks pretty good that’s just my opinion though.

That’s all! Hope you learned something bye!!!

[ldknightshade]

morality: a character creation guide

creating and understanding your oc’s personal moral code! no, i cannot tell you whether they’re gonna come out good or bad or grey; that part is up to you.

anyway, let’s rock.

i. politics

politics are a good way to indicate things your character values, especially when it comes to large-scale concepts such as government, community, and humanity as a whole.

say what you will about either image; i’d argue for the unintiated, the right image is a good introduction to some lesser discussed ideologies… some of which your oc may or may not fall under.

either way, taking a good look at your character’s values on the economic + social side of things is a good place to start, as politics are something that, well… we all have ‘em, you can’t avoid ‘em.

clearly, this will have to be adjusted for settings that utilize other schools of thought (such as fantasy + historical fiction and the divine right of kings), but again, economic/social scale plotting will be a good start for most.

ii. religion + philosophy

is your oc religious? do they believe in a form of higher power? do they follow some sort of philosophy?

are they devout? yes, this applies to non-religious theist and atheist characters as well; in the former’s case… is their belief in a higher power something that guides many of their actions or is their belief in a higher power something that only informs a few of their actions? for the atheists; do they militant anti-theists who believe atheism is the only way and that religion is harmful? or do they not care about religion, so long as it’s thrust upon them?

for the religious: what is your oc’s relationship with the higher power in question? are they very progressive by their religion’s standards or more orthodox? how well informed of their own religion are they?

does your oc follow a particular school of philosophical thought? how does that interact with their religious identification?

iii. values

by taking their political stance and their religious + philosophical stance, you have a fairly good grasp on the things your character values.

is there anything they value - due to backstory, or what they do, or what they love - that isn’t explained by political stance and religious and/or philosophical identification? some big players here will likely be your oc’s culture and past.

of everything you’ve determined they value, what do they value the most?

iv. “the line”

everyone draws it somewhere. we all have a line we won’t cross, no matter the lengths we go for what we believe is a noble cause. where does your character draw it? how far will they go for something they truly believe is a noble cause? as discussed in part iii of my tips for morally grey characters,

would they lie? cheat? steal? manipulate? maim? what about commit acts of vandalism? arson? would they kill?

but even when we have a line, sometimes we make exceptions for a variety of reasons. additionally, there are limits to some of the lengths we’d go to.

find your character’s line, their limits and their exceptions.

v. objectivism/relativism

objectivism, as defined by the merriam-webster dictionary, is “an ethical theory that moral good is objectively real or that moral precepts are objectively valid.”

relativism, as defined by the merriam-webster dictionary, is “a view that ethical truths depend on the individuals and groups holding them.”

what take on morality, as a concept, does your character have? is morality objective? is morality subjective?

we could really delve deep into this one, but this post is long enough that i don’t think we need to get into philosophical rambling… so this is a good starting point.

either way, exploring morality as a concept and how your character views it will allow for better application of their personal moral code.

vi. application

so, now you know what they believe and have a deep understanding of your character’s moral code, all that’s left is to apply it and understand how it informs their actions while taking their personality into account.

and interesting thing to note is that we are all hypocrites; you don’t have to do this, but it might be fun to play around with the concept of their moral code and add a little bit of hypocrisy to their actions as a treat.

either way, how do your character’s various beliefs interact? how does it make them interact with the world? with others? with their friends, family, and community? with their government? with their employment? with their studies? with the earth and environment itself?

in conclusion:

there’s a lot of things that inform one’s moral compass and i will never be able to touch on them all; however, this should hopefully serve as at least a basic guide.

[fefern]

✧˖° their ways of showing affection. | aalto, calcharo, lingyang headcanons.

⋆ ˚☁️ ⁀➴ synopsis: you're in love and happily with these wonderful men! but just how do they show their affection for you?

⋆ ˚☁️ ⁀➴ characters involved (separate): aalto, calcharo, lingyang and a gender neutral reader.

⋆ ˚☁️ ⁀➴ warnings: none!

⋆ ˚☁️ ⁀➴ notes: another one! i love thinking about the little ways people show love , it makes me so happy ;v;! enjoy these little blurbs about how they'd love you! also, requests are currently open, so send them my way! also, i could not find a calcharo chibi drawing... ;;

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅ aalto ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

knowledge is power! the more he knows about you, the more he utilizes it in showing his affection for you.

a big, BIG sweet talker. loves to flirt!

also big on compliments, find it cute when you don’t know what to say back.

a big spender in my opinion. oh, you liked that necklace but thought it was too expensive? surprise, it’s on the counter for you when you wake up the next day! you tried to win that plushie at the fair but it just didn’t work out? now you have 20 on the couch!

adores kisses, especially when you pepper them all over his face. (bonus points if you’re wearing lipstick, man is enamored to look at himself and see visually everywhere you smooched him.)

follows the sidewalk rule all the time. does not matter if it’s a safe area, he always is a bit protective in that way.

learns more about your hobbies and likes and begins to learn more about them in his free time. that way, when he sees you again, he’ll be able to engage in conversation with you about it. 

loves the way that your eyes light up when you talk about something you’re passionate about, and stares at you a lot as a result. 

likes to playfully scare you. he seems to have the ability to disappear and reappear as he pleases due to the mist, so he uses it sometimes to suddenly appear behind you and wrap his arms around your waist.

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅ calcharo ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

not much of a talker, and kind of new to showing affection entirely due to his past, so be patient. 

will wake up early and remind you to bring a jacket if it’s cold.

the type of person to also remind you that you forgot something, but by the time you turn around, he has the missing item in his hand.

will protect you if you’re scared of something. loud thunder? his hands are around your ears. scary part of a show? he’s using his arm to pull you closer to his chest to hide in. 

will quietly work in the same room as you, enjoying your presence entirely as you and him work. 

will sometimes ask those he knows around him for some advice about love, which is sort of strange considering who it’s coming from, but he wants to improve himself to be a better partner for you.

tries to apply the advice after, it’s a hit or miss sometimes, but always coming from a good place. 

iffy on physical touch, but he will slowly come to enjoy the feeling of holding your hand.

he also does the thumb thing where you rub the back of a person’s hand with your thumb while holding hands. his favorite.

will let you play with his hair sometimes in the morning if he’s in the mood for it. even if you do something goofy like braid his hair or put it into a random hairdo, he’ll enjoy the feeling of your hands in his hair as he slowly stirs awake. 

ruthless and cold in many other aspects of his life, he’s a gentle giant when it comes to you, and it’s endearing to see him try.

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅ lingyang ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

will always love to eat with you, whether it’s going out or cooking with you. 

^ always lets you have the last bite of the meal.

immediately looks for your reaction after he tells a joke with you, wanting to make sure that you enjoy his playfulness.

during the summer heatwaves, will use his glacio powers to help keep the both of you cool.

will sit in your lap and let you play with his ears as he rambles about his day.

loves yapping, and yapping in your presence as the two of you either bounce back and forth or you just listen, he likes both options. 

loves hugs, hugs tight and for a long time, will not let go of you until you let go of him first.

will compliment your scent and comment on it if you change something up like your shampoo or perfume, usually the first to notice those small changes.

shares a blanket with you on cold days and cuddles with you for warmth.

will sometimes, after waking up, just admire your features because wow he got lucky because you’re his.

even if you wake up and your eyes are looking back at him, he does it without shame.

whenever someone talks about you, if they say something wrong, he’ll immediately interject. (ex. “they like strawberries the most.” “no no, they like peaches more!”)

does practice runs of new tricks and dance moves he learns for his lion dances, asking you about your opinion on them because it means the world to him to know you like the dance he’s so passionate about. 

gets matching lucky charms with you and carries his around everywhere. “maybe we’ll win the lottery with this!” he tells you.

(he already did. after all, you’re his partner.)