#i have a vague notion of where the plot is going

[inc0mple]

🗝️ ”Keys Are People, Too” 100 Chapter Q&A ⭐️ (ongoing!)

(Last edit: 12/20 10:40 CST)

Hi! :) If y’all don’t know me my name is Inco (it’s not but shh) and I write a fanfiction for Cinderella Boy called Keys Are People, Too. It’s not finished, it’s ongoing and rapidly approaching 100 chapters XD (yes we are like four chapters away but shh rounding) (I PROMISE WE’RE ALMOST TO THE LAST ACT). So because of an ask from @isitamia and, we’ll say the 100 chapter milestone… tada Q&A??

I don’t know how many people are going to engage with this but that’s totally okay :) I love ranting about stuff and I’ve put a lot of thought into this story, so it would be cool to have an outlet to answer some questions where they don’t get forgotten in AO3 comments. And if you guys also have general questions about writing advice/things like that, I am not an expert but I do also like talking about stories.

So please ask! I’m not planning to close this at any specific time—I was thinking y’all could comment questions under this post or via reblogs (I might miss them in reblogs though) and I will edit this post to answer them, and also reply to you so you know your question is answered. This might get like 10 notes and that’s fine haha (I have zero idea how many people regularly read my story beyond the ones who leave comments), but if there are a lot of questions I’ll try to categorize them. Really just a place to drop info for fun :)

Q&A below ⬇️

I tried to make it organized. It's... kind of organized. Kind of.

Plot/Characters

"What key archetype isn't one of the siblings? Do we get to know their archetypes soon?" asked by @spookieee28 12/20

I'm not gonna say the archetypes at this point in time because it risks spoilers. You will find out by the end of the story and hopefully by that points all of the archetypes should be relatively clear. Some have already been mentioned like the chapter "Heralds and Thieves" for Jade and Cooper, I think (?) Cora has been mentioned as the Innocent archetype, etcetera.

"Which character do you struggle writing the most and which feels easier for you, if you have preferences?" asked by @isitamia 12/20

"Do you ever struggle with keeping Cinderella Boy's canon characters in character?" asked by @isitamia 12/20

I'll answer both of these together. Chase is pretty easy for me because I just channel chaotic gremlin energy and it seems to work. Buddy is OKAY although I am struggling right now making him vulnerable while still retaining him Buddy-ish-ness if that makes sense? Deacon is just Deacon... I am sorry, I feel like I don't really do anything to characterize him, he's just there as a sounding board XD I will say- I daydream situations for CB ALL THE TIME which gives me a lot of comfortability with the canon characters and considering what they would do and say and how they would react. I do have a little bit of difficulty characterizing the human keys so I just kinda went like "oh WELL that's because, UUHHHH, the key siblings don't match the keys exactly! That's it that's the answer!" because I felt like Silver wasn't quite Silver-ish and stuff. As for struggling writing the most I have two main answers.

BRONTE. For those who maybe haven't read this but are scrolling through it anyway, or aren't there yet, Bronte is the "human" version of Bronze and I kinda accidentally eliminated him from the story until like... the 80th chapte ror something like that. I had a lot of trouble actually writing his dialogue and scenes with Chase. It just did not have Bronze's snarky energy. So that was tough and I feel bad because I really feel like I did not do him justice :c

DUKE RAVENELL!!!!!! Ravenell hates me. He gives me so much trouble primarily because I just plunked him in at the beginning and didn't give him a real personality beyond a few vague notions. I've really had to sculpt his character as I went and it's especially difficult because Ravenell is intended to do a lot of plot device-ing. He perpetuates a lot of themes in the story and he is a HUGE character foil to Chase, because he often reflects the opposite of Chase's (and Idonea's) values and intentions. I want him to be morally grey and I am constantly fighting a BATTLE with this man to make sure he isn't too likeable or too hateable. I posted on Tumblr like a week ago really just asking for a diagnostic and the response made my day because people are all OVER the place about this man, some people love him, some will never forgive him, some are like "he's alright but there's something off about him and I can't help but distrust him" and others are like "I know he keeps making mistakes but I can't help but trust him" and I LOVE IT. Fortunately I think he's finally in a place perception-wise where I want him. I want the confusion. So badly. Only now I have to continue to fight this stupid tug-o'-war to keep him properly dividing until the end of the story XD

Behind the scenes

"How did you come up with the plot for KAPT? Was it just a little thought that popped up in your head one day, or did you have like inspiration or something?" asked by @xcitrix 12/20

"Did you have an idea for how you wanted the story to end when you first started writing or did you come up with more ideas while working on it?" asked by @lapileaf 12/20

I'mma answer both of these (and any others if they are asked) in kinda the same go if that's alright. In August I was wanting to write some fanfiction for CB, and one idea rotating in my head was, what if Chase went into a nonfiction book? Like he thought it the most effective way to study for a history project, or he saw a mention of Ex Libris, or something. So, completely directionless, I drabbled out the first chapter of KAPT where they find the book in the museum and... adopt it. And then it sat there in my Google Docs for like two weeks while I worked on a different fanfiction, Violets and Chains. I tried to return to it a little bit and got through the first anthology chapter where they're in the Chartesia battle, but that too did not have a plot behind it, I was like "myeh... trebuchets... uh... and now there's a guy... oh maybe they're PRISONERS..." And then brain did not work and I gave up. Eventually got myself together, BS-ed the rest of the scene, and then sat down and essentially ranted to myself about potential ideas until I figured out the plot.

More ideas have kept cropping up as I've worked on it. There are certain puzzle pieces that are foreshadowed in even teh first ten chapters that I didn't even mean to foreshadow because I hadn't thought of the yet - the plot was generally mapped out but has defintely been refined and added to as time goes on. Eventually you get into the flow of a story and everything just starts clicking into place, like you yourself are theorizing about an external work. Keep in mind that because I am publishing it as I write each chapter, KAPT is a first draft, and I have to hatch out plot points and main parts of the story as I write and make my best effort to recover any loose threads or things like that. It's a fun exercise!

"Do you plan to stick to the story you have already till the end or is there a possiblity you'll have to change some things if we get to know more about canon Ex Libris/Buddy lore while it's still ongoing?" asked by @iwikpines 12/20

There are some new bits of information that are kinda iffy for KAPT, but ultimately because KAPT takes place inside a book most of the Buddy/Ex Libris lore is not applicable. Regarding Buddy's situation I am going to go ahead like I was planning to originally, and I'll add a disclaimer when time permits. I don't think either way throws a wrench in the plans too much but I would rather be confident in the themes I've already set up as opposed to trying to hastily recover new lore in the last third of the story, if that makes sense.

"How did you come up with your ocs? I know some, like Jaime, come from another original story of yours ... but what about characters like Ravenell, Galeus, and Rose? What inspired you? How did you decide their personaltiy, their struggles? Did you take inspiration from yourself for anyone, similar to how Punko took inspiration from herself for Chase? Do you follow any specific process to come up with ocs, like follow a list, scheme, or coming up with hypothetical scneraios?" asked by @isitamia 12/20

A lot of the characters are cameos from a passion project I've been working on for years called IFI (no I will not tell you what it stands for) - Jaime and emma are from there, as well as several others including Alexei, Nishan, Mattheo, Kelitia, Indie (the Marchioness), King Aarius, and King Olivyn. So those are just plunked in and then Jaime decided to become part of the plot. As for the other original characters made specifically for KAPT, they just kinda got plopped in for one reason or another (I wanted Rose to connect to the Chartesia lore, Ravenell to have a foil for Chase, and Galeus because, well, there had to be a king) and then I slowly worked to build connections, themes, and character. Often times I don't specifically sit down and think "this character will be this way", it just emerges naturally from their dialogue, like I'm chiseling something out that was already in the stone like an archeologist, as opposed to carving my own new sculpture. I've always written that way and it makes it difficult when I am required to add structure to my writing or explain why I do things the way I do. I will say it is all VERY inspired from my own life and beliefs; Rose exists as a confidante in the story, and many of her more preachy dialogue pieces are things I'm getting out of my system. So yeah, not really a lot of structure to it, they just appear... and I figure them out as I go... most of my characters are in some way facets of myself or the way I percieve life. As I get more experienced with writing I'm sure I'll be more intentional with them, but for now, they are Athena and I am Zeus.

"How do you post daily" (kind of) asked by @isitamia 12/20

To give an actual answer for this because I know it's a lot to post a 2-4k chapter PER DAY - I am a student and have a LOT of downtime in class where I can't really do anything but write. That is how. Also, I have taught myself to be a prolific writer because that is the thing in my life I can always rely on when other things are unstable.

"How did you extend the story so far? I love the plot and it's kinda insane how you were able to develop it so much, at this point it's a full novel and I kinda live for it LOL. Also how long would you consider one act?" asked by @shyve3 12/20

Two parts to this question, I will answer them both;

I didn't mean to. I am really bad about being concise; I can't. When I write and get passionate about a story there's so much I want to stay and I can rarely fit it into what most people consider a pallatable length. I just get going and... idk... unstoppable force or something lol. And yes KAPT is at least the length of a typical trilogy XD ITS BEEN FIVE MONTHS

Regarding the act question, I ORIGINALLY said KAPT would be three acts, with the first ending when Chase goes down into Rose's "tomb" for the first time, the second ending with the Bronte part, and the third being the final one. It is actually more like four now, with the "second" act split into two at the masquerade ball. We are so close to being onto the actual final act, which should be a 4th of the total fic, so we have maybe 30 chapters left (?) (we'll see lol)

I don't have a specific length, it's just the way the story tends to ebb and flow if that makes sense?

General stuff

"Do you have any advice as a writer?" asked by @iwikpines 12/20

I AM SO BAD ABOUT THIS because I really do just go type type type and words appear. I know there's more to it than that but I've spent a lot of time writing and not a lot of time learning how to write so I have the experience without the actual education behind it. Write what you care about :) I mean NO DUH but like - your best stories will come from the heart. You will find prolificness (is that a word?) in PASSION. If I didn't care about Cinderella Boy or the themes I'm trying to communicate in KAPT would I spent my days writing a chapter a day ABSOLUTELY FRIGGIN NOT I'd be writing a different story. So yeah - write what you love and your audience will find you. What the world needs is a buncha people doing what they love really well because it's what they care about. Also, I didn't include your full comment here, but I am excited to read your fanfiction! <3 Please post it on Tumblr when you also post it elsewhere!

[balioc]

Thoughts on the Barbie Movie

Hoo boy. Here we go.

This is long. Spoilers abound.

I

The movie is not, in any normal sense, a Barbie movie (like this or this or this or whatever). It is not a story of Barbie doing the kinds of things that Barbie does in stories. It is an endlessly postmodern and self-referential movie about Barbie, which is to say, about the Barbie franchise and its role in culture. Which is, at least plausibly, an interesting thing for a movie to be.

You probably knew all that already. But it does give us a baseline of "this movie kind of had to be political and discourse-y, one way or another." Or even, to be more specific: "to some large extent this movie had to be about feminism, explicitly, if it was going to exist at all." How could you talk meaningfully about Barbie's role in culture without touching on that stuff?

II

The evaluative TLDR:

Barbie is very ambitious, and in many places very fun. It is also deeply confused, and fragmented, about what it's trying to say and do. Often it raises genuinely interested problems/scenarios and then totally fails to address them, or else addresses them in ways that are incoherent. The text knows that it's doing this, and on several occasions kind of apologizes for it; a couple of times it more or less looks into the camera and says "sorry, we're not going to deal with this properly;" but, well, that's not a substitute for dealing with things properly.

There is also a streak of genuine political nastiness running through the film, in a place where the story really cannot afford it. It...doesn't match up, tonally or thematically, with some of the surrounding material. I have no background at all in cinematic stratigraphy, but I would be fascinated to learn about Barbie's editorial history, because I have the vague sense that a more-cogent (and more-interesting) story got hacked apart and then Frankensteined together into something much cheaper and worse.

III

The opening sequence of the movie is wild. You've seen most of it -- or you can, if you haven't, and you want to -- because it is the film's first teaser trailer. Girls are playing listlessly with baby dolls; a giant Barbie appears like the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey; and then the girls enter a frenzy of destruction, bashing their baby dolls' heads against the ground.

I don't know whether I would have found it as disturbing as I did, if I didn't actually have a baby of my own. But speaking from the standpoint of a parent...yeah, wow, it's more viscerally horrific than most actual horror I've seen recently. The narration says some stuff about Barbie providing a new and more rewarding set of imagination games to play, but the visuals by themselves tell a message loud and clear, which is: Barbie will turn your daughters into infanticidal maenads. It wouldn't need any editing at all to be part of a shock-you-silly Reefer-Madness-y moral panic film.

Which is really good! And really interesting! It starts us off on an undeniable thematic note: there is something primal and powerful and very dangerous about Barbie.

IV

The very best part of the movie is probably the part that comes right after the opening, when we explore the movie's depiction of "Barbieland" by going through Barbie's Typical Day, before we get into any of the notional plot or metaphysics. It's joyful and charming in a consistent way. The gags are (mostly) great. The movie is in love with its base premise, and that love is palpable.

This sequence makes one thing very clear:

Barbie treats Ken like absolute dogshit. She is a bad girlfriend.

And it's taken seriously. I mean, it's played for laughs, almost everything in this movie is played for laughs, but...it's not mean-spirited, not here. It's not, like, "ha ha, Ken, what a contemptible loser." He's Pierrot, asking for very basic forms of affection and attention and respect, and getting the door slammed in his face over and over. It's honestly kind of heartbreaking.

That colors everything that comes later.

The movie doesn't forget this, or fail to acknowledge it. At the end, after everything, Barbie does apologize to Ken for her treatment of him. It's a halfhearted and supremely unsatisfying kind of apology, especially in context, but...it's there, in so many words! I'm not making it up! This thematic foundation was laid down, not-very-subtly, right at the beginning!

V

This movie, which is at least trying to be ambitious, is juggling a million themes. Many of them are dumb at their core, and have no real promise; many of them lack any kind of narrative synergy with the others. But there are at least two which, I believe, (a) are genuinely worthwhile individually and (b) work well together in a story.

One is: What does it mean to be a symbol rather than a person? To exist, not for your own sake, but for the sake of influencing the dreams and culture of entities that you don't know and can't really understand?

The other is: What is the proper ordering of the relationship between Barbie and Ken?

I've seen a number of Takes in which people say, essentially: Couldn't this have ended with the Barbies and the Kens just being decent to each other and treating each other like humans? Couldn't there have been equality and mutual respect, instead of the weird uncomfortable girlboss-supremacist stuff that we got? And I sympathize with that impulse tremendously, but the honest answer has to be: No. We cannot have simple equality and esteem between Barbie and Ken, not in a movie like this. That would be a lie. Because this is a movie about Barbie-as-symbol, and when you're looking at Barbie through that lens, it is true and unavoidable that Ken is an appendage and an afterthought. You can have toys for boys; you can have dolls for boys (even if you call them "action figures" or whatever); for that matter, you can have dolls of boys for girls, so that girls can tell stories centering on male characters; but that's not what Ken is, and never has been. There are no Ken stories, and no one particularly wants them. Ken exists to be Barbie's boyfriend.

(One of the most painful moments of the movie comes during the resolution wrapup. Ken wails to Barbie that he has no identity outside her. She says, basically, "you have to find one, because I'm leaving you." And he...acts like he's had an epiphany, and does a little silly celebration. But his "insight" is just literally "I'm Ken," there's absolutely nothing there, and of course it's the most hollow and awful thing in the world because he really does have no identity outside her.)

VI

The movie's metaphysics are not even slightly consistent. The nature of Barbieland, and the ways that it affects and is affected by the real world, are completely different in every scene. In large part because the film can't ever pass up a gag, whether or not it's funny, no matter how much damage it does to the narrative and the theming overall.

The worst part is that the movie is not capable of saying anything remotely coherent about the real world, because its version of the "real world" is as weird and fake as its Barbieland. Will Ferrell's CEO of Mattel character is more of an absurd cartoon than any of the Barbies or Kens. Mattel HQ is some kind of surreal labyrinth tower out of The Matrix. A random receptionist can handle herself like James Bond in a car chase, for reasons that are [handwaved in a gag].

VII

So. Yes. There is the sequence in the third act where Ken takes over Barbieland with the power of patriarchy. This is pretty much as bad as it can be. And I say this as someone who thinks that the movie probably did actually need a plot thread doing roughly that kind of thing.

Almost as bad as it can be. The wannabe-patriarch Kens are gleefully goofy in a way that you can't help but love, or at least, I couldn't help but love it. Which has something to do with the writing and something to do with the charisma of all the Ken actors. The main Ken, Ryan Gosling's Ken, really seems to believe that being a successful patriarch has a lot to do with riding majestic horses and wearing a giant fur coat without a shirt, and when he takes over Barbie's Dream House he names it Ken's Mojo Dojo Casa House -- that kind of thing.

But. Apart from that, it's real unfortunate. The justification for Ken's ability to conquer Barbieland with patriarchy, instantly and effortlessly, is -- in almost so many words -- they had no defenses against it, it was like the American Indians encountering smallpox. I...don't think I need to spell out the problems with that.

Worse yet, the whole sequence is soaked in, uh, let's call it "2014-era upper-middle-class social-status-oriented feminism." The real bad behavior on the part of the Kens, the stuff they do when they're not being adorably weird, is: mansplaining their extensive opinions about cars and movies, and wanting to show off how helpful and knowledgeable they are to "damsels" who are having trouble using machines or computers. Apparently that's the real problem at hand, the causus belli of the gender wars. The way that you deprogram a patriarchy-brainwashed Barbie is by...ranting to her about the stereotypical social irritations of upper-middle-class women (e.g. "you have to keep yourself thin but not act like you care about being thin," "you have to be a confident leader but also be nurturing and supportive," etc.) [note that the Barbies of Barbieland have never encountered these irritations, at least not at the hands of men]. And the girlboss victory montage consists of having the Barbies put on deceptive manipulative bimbo acts to stroke the Kens' egos, which sure is one way to depict girlboss feminist victory.

But the most unforgivable thing of all is the depiction of the patriarchy-brainwashed Barbies. They're lad-magazine caricatures, endlessly offering their Kens "brewski beers," dressing up as French maids, gazing on in cow-eyed adoration as their Kens mansplain stuff to them.

Barbie does, in fact, have a problematic history with the patriarchy. And it does not look like that.

VIII

@brazenautomaton:

Barbie isn’t someone who had to fight through the patriarchy to be seen as good enough to be an astronaut even though she’s a woman. Barbie’s a fucking astronaut because she’s fucking Barbie of course she’s good enough to be an astronaut.

That is...one aspect of the deep Barbie lore. It is the Barbie-nature that Mattel was trying to push, as far back as my own childhood; it's certainly the Barbie-nature that Mattel is trying to push in this movie. But there is another side to Barbie, even older and even more fundamental than Senator Astronaut Veterinarian Barbie, and you can't make a postmodern movie-about-Barbie without addressing it.

This is Barbie the fashion doll. The Barbie who is an icon of ultra-consumerist teenage girlhood, whose life is defined by her fancy clothes and her fancy car. The Barbie whose most salient traits are her hourglass figure and her long blonde hair and her feet that are always posed to fit into high heels. The Barbie of "math class is tough!" The Barbie who is kinda vapid and shallow and, yes, boy-crazy.

How can you tell a story about Barbie wrestling with the culture of patriarchy, and not talk about that? How can you depict Barbie falling victim to the patriarchy and have it look nothing like that?

...the movie does bring up the specter of Vapid Consumerist Barbie, briefly. When Margot Robbie's Barbie first comes to the real world and meets with the sullen teenage daughter character, she has a litany of That Thing thrown in her face, and it makes her sad. But nothing is ever done with it, and it goes nowhere.

IX

And it could all have fit together so well. That's the hell of it.

You can imagine the version of the story in which Ken conquers Barbieland with patriarchy, because the Barbies are actually vulnerable to patriarchal narratives, because Vapid Consumerist Barbie is the chthonic serpent that gnaws at the foundations of Senator Astronaut Veterinarian Barbie civilization. He successfully makes them all forget that they're senators and astronauts and veterinarians, and turns them into airheaded teenage fashionistas who think that math class is tough.

And this avails him, and the other Kens, nothing. Even within the "patriarchal" version of Barbieland, Ken is still an afterthought and an appendage. He still gets treated like dogshit, just in a different idiom.

Because the thing that has always been true of Barbie, though every age and every phase of her mythos, is: she is the main character of her own story.

This is what the movie was telling us all the way back in the horrific 2001-pastiche prologue, right? Even when Barbie was just a swimsuit model, the point was that she let girls tell stories about themselves (or idealized/aspirational versions of themselves), not about boys or babies. That is a truer, and more powerful, feminist message about the meaning of Barbie than any message the movie actually bothers conveying.

The gag scene practically writes itself: the brainwashed Barbies are sitting around in a giggly slumber-party huddle talking about how dreamy Ken is, and actual Ken cannot get a word in edgewise, he can't even get them to notice he's there, because even Vapid Consumerist Barbie is fundamentally centered in her own life. Her narrative is not about a boy, it's about the experience of being a girl (mostly engaging with other girls) who likes thinking and talking about boys. Which is very much beside the point, if you started out with the complaint that your girlfriend never paid any attention to you.

Patriarchy hurts men too, indeed.

X

The movie ends, as I've intimated, in a disappointing squidge of thematic confusion. Barbie announces that she never really loved Ken, and leaves him, because...well, because these days the smart-set target audience is allergic to romantic narratives that Produce the Couple, as far as I can tell. Then she goes to the real world and becomes a real girl, a move that means nothing and is nonsensical even by the standards of the Barbie metaphysics, because the storytellers don't know how to end her arc and Becoming a Real Girl is the sort of thing that feels like a meaningful conclusion.

The Kens...sigh...the Kens ask for equal rights in Barbieland, more or less, and get told, "nah, but we'll throw you some bones." And they're happy with this, more or less, because they're dumb and don't really care. The narrator says, approximately, "maybe someday they'll make as much progress as women have in the real world." Haw haw.

It's probably too much to hope for a movie like this to be willing to say something substantive about responsibility and kindness in relationships. It's almost certainly too much to hope for a movie like this to be willing to say something about the nature of love symbols and love narratives. But all the pieces really were there, laid out very conspicuously. The movie could have wrapped up with: Ken doesn't need to be more important than Barbie, he doesn't even need to be as important as Barbie, he just needs to be treated with human decency. And if little girls are going to play with Barbies, and fantasize about having cute guys hanging all over them -- maybe they should have functional models of romance and human connection in which to root their fantasies, and not terrible ones.

[bomberqueen17]

the gay dolphins are too powerful

yesterday i was facing the facts that i do need to actually work out the technical mcguffins in this novel. like, i have some vague notion that there's a problem with the radio network because of solar flares and our heroes are going to... somehow... fix it. idk.

plot and worldbuilding wittering behind the cut

this was the main plot in the solarpunk mammoths novel too, and i had a vague notion that a problem on such a global scale as that would need to like. it would need to be solved by more than one person. and so my nebulous notion is that possibly several sets of characters could work on it in these loosely-connected novels where really i'm just exploring different ecosystems.

idk i just-- y'all know about the Turkey City Lexicon right? I got it as a hand-out in college creative writing class and of course it reshaped my brain, but. one of the Tropes To Beware they've got is the Cozy Catastrophe, which is startlingly prevalent and once you see it you can't unsee-- "the world is ending! all of humanity will die! unless... Jeff and Suzy, you're our only hope!" and our two everyman protagonists somehow are the only resources the entire world can muster and honestly the entire world seems to consist of one American city block with about three hundred people in it at most. Hm.

so i was like yah this catastrophe is way too cozy.

meanwhile i forget how it came up but @sonnetsandsinging, helpfully spitballing, said something about space whales and i was like

OMG in a world with genetically-engineered mammoths with radio collars that translate their brain waves to allow them to speak in human language it is ABSURD that they are the only species of animal that has been given this treatment

so like. what other animals do we try to talk to all the time besides elephants?

DOLPHINS

so now this world has genetically-engineered dolphins with brainwaves-to-speech dorsal fin attachments. like duh of course it does. i can't believe I hadn't thought of that.

there should be other animals too but i can't decide which ones, currently taking submissions. What Else Should Slightly-Disconcertingly Speak.

(My criteria: should be an animal intelligent enough to have successful communication with humans already, something relatively long-lived, something that couldn't use sign language or other methods already. My concept, which is not scientific really, is that it's been well-studied that while many animals have complex communication systems, humans are the only ones whose brains are structured specifically for language, so the Magic Fictional Science here is that they've had that ability genetically-engineered in, but of course the physical production of human-intelligible language is beyond the physical structure of most animals, hence the brainwave-interface collars. which btw could also be used on profoundly disabled humans, and that might be a plot point at some point; i do have some disabled characters in this story. I know I researched those like, communication board things that nonverbal humans can use and I settled on Magical Radio-Networked Interfaces that speak out loud instead for the simple expedient of streamlining things because like how is a mammoth going to carry a communication board around that it can like get out and point at. how is a dolphin going to carry anything. so, this is just where I ended up.)

(I was thinking parrots but then parrots wouldn't need the collar because they can actually make human-speech noises on their own. so that's a fun variation. maybe in this world african grey parrots actually just talk.)

Anyway back when I first started the solarpunk mammoths novel I researched Asian elephants a lot and studied their social structures and read up on their physical abilities etc., so in between trying to find out how radio waves and semiconductors work (i get the radio waves thing & think i have my mcguffin sorted out but semiconductors made my eyes glaze over and then begin weeping so i gave up) (also supercapacitors i don't understand u sorry bye) (do i know any electronics engineers who want to explain this in normal languages? shit i do know a chemical engineer maybe she knows. heck) ... ok i wandered away from this post to text her and then forgot i was making it. i did not get a lot of sleep last night the amphetamines are not being kind this go-round but i must continue the experiment. uhhhhh where was i

GAY DOLPHINS

too powerful

Yeah so I started researching dolphins, because if I'm going to have named-and-speaking dolphin characters, I need to know a little bit about how they work.

Now I have a slight head-start on this, just as I did on mammoths. Mammoths, I've been obsessed with since I was a toddler. But dolphins. For a while I used to go to SCA camping events and there was this guy who used to be a Navy diver and then worked for Sea World and he. well he was really good at telling stories, was his deal. And he had Seen Some Shit, and some of that shit was about interacting with dolphins. And the thing about dolphins is that. Well, they're violent little chaos gremlins, and just in the course of going about their normal lives, one of the things they do to interact with the world is, well. they have sex with things.

when they do this to people it is generally not a positive experience for the person. but. so i knew that going in. and most of the information on the internet about dolphins is really like. earnest and loving and whatever, which is great. but the thing is that dolphins are chaos gremlins who will fuck anything they can't eat, eat anything they can't fuck, or sometimes do both to the same unfortunate object if it proves to be possible.

what i'm saying is, these are going to be really entertaining characters to work with. because elephants, conversely, do not have recreational sex. they do a lot of things, but they just don't really do that. so dolphins are like. inverse-elephants, culturally.

Elephants also tend to have a strong matriarch, strong bonds between females, and then the males tend to be largely solitary, but will congregate more loosely, often around an older male who will teach them manners. (A well-mannered bull is MUCH more likely to be allowed to mate with desirable females, who have little patience with male foibles.)

Dolphins have looser gender roles; on the whole, the females tend to loosely congregate, and pregnant females usually go back to their mother's pod to birth and raise young, not dissimilar to elephants, but the males--

male dolphins very, very frequently will pair-bond. Two males of similar age-- adult males have very little to do with juveniles of either sex, generally-- will pair-bond and will be inseparable for the rest of their lives. If one of them dies, the other will mourn-- mourning behavior is well-documented in dolphins-- and then will seek to pair off with another adult male, because male dolphins prefer to work in pairs, for survival and companionship. (Dolphin "pods" are also more loosely-organized than elephant herds; dolphins will have a couple of core companions, but then will freely associate and disassociate with other individuals and groups over short periods of time without much fuss, depending on the situation.)

The pair-bonded males are the ones who in the wild do the behavior you see in shows, where they do like synchronized jumps and very-close fast-precise swimming and such, which in the wild are apparently courtship or threat displays-- i.e. "look how tight we are, you can't fight us" or, alternately, "isn't that hot" because

yes that's often how they court females. The pair will corral a desirable female and herd her away from other dolphins so they can both mate with her, and keep her from mating with anybody else.

(other females have been observed collaborating to free a corralled female who did not want this to happen, so it's not quite as rapey as it sounds. though, i mean. dolphins. what can you do.)

anyway dolphin threesomes are canon. but that derailed the rest of my night and i was unable to concentrate on anything else because the gay-- I should say really bisexual dolphins are too powerful.

so anyway i wrote a test scene with a dolphin character, and i had my main character take his wife and baby down to the jetty to introduce them to his dolphin pals, and a bonded male pair he'd known for years showed up and immediately tried to steal the wife, and then expressed shock that he didn't have his male best friend with him, because in their experience breeding was THEE most important time to have your buddy with you. He explains that his buddy is off on a long-term work assignment, and they're like hmph next time you breed you MUST include him, it is so much easier trust us. and the wife is like hmmmmm!

henceforth i will refer to m/m/f threesomes as "dolphin style" you're welcome

[mrghostrat]

I remember you posting a blurred gif of the outline of atws, so if you don't mind me asking, how do you do that? Like, get the outline onto paper and not just scenes in your head. That's something I've always struggled with, because it's hard to write without an outline, but hard to do the outline when I don't have a first draft? I'm not sure how to explain it so I hope this makes any sense at all lmao

ahh so fair! some people just don't operate that way and you gotta do what's best for your brain. no point exhausting all your energy trying to squeeze into a "standard writing process" that'll make writing even more difficult for yourself.

under the cut, i'm going to explain my writing process every step of the way, using scenes of ATWS. i hope it helps in some way? i don't think it's anything special, but this is just how i write to appease my adhd.

first, this might help: i once used storyplanner.com when i didn't know how to even start a story and i loved it. it's a great tool that can hold your hand every step of the way, or just prompt you to think on your own. there's over 20 planners that ask different questions like "what's your character's major flaw?" "what's the inciting incident?" "what outside elements hinder the character?" etc that will present you with a complete story structure when you're done with it.

ok, now, how i write:

as for the post in reference, that's the 2nd stage of my writing process. i get carried away with tangents and hone in on details, so i plan in dot points to try and force myself to keep it simple and stay zoomed out.

i just write what happens in chronological order, and if i have an idea for a later scene (or something that i just want to happen, but don't know when/where/how), i note that in a separate document that i can refer to while i plan. this also allows me to gloss over vague sections to keep my writing flow going.

stage 1:

i've started using Notion's "toggle list" feature to minimise the less important parts of a scene and keep myself focused on the overarching plot during this stage. this is what the first point looks like:

i go beat by beat, essentially amounting to an elevator pitch for each stage of my story. "crowley and aziraphale are streamer roommates" + "people start to notice they each live with someone and the speculation starts" + "crowley and aziraphale interact on twitch" + "they attend the edinburgh meetup" etc.

i finish a story before i move on from this stage. i won't start writing something in earnest until i know how it ends.

stage 2:

this is what you saw in my gif, and why that page was so long. that's every scene i'm going to write in the story.

sometimes i jump straight from stage 1 to writing, but ATWS required a lot more figuring out before i started any kind of prose. here i'm basically noting down the details of what each scene is, the brunt of what's happening. this is when i have to figure out those "vague sections" i glossed over earlier.

it's still just intended to be a rough outline so i know where the characters are and what's moving their relationship along. most of these dot points are short because i've already thought about them a thousand times, and may have more details noted down in a different document.

meanwhile some of them i'm planning out the scene as i'm dotting it, making not of dialogue that i want to include.

stage 3: my bracket method

i only use this stage when i'm struggling to write and need to baby step into it. this is my "bracket method" in which i write the scene without, like... caring? some people may consider this "double handling" which may drive you mad, but it's the most helpful thing i've ever done for my process.

i switch tenses, i write how i chat (no capitals etc) and just word vomit the scene without focusing on prose. ATWS came quite easily at first, and i didn't need to use stage 3 until i got to chapter 4 and hadn't written in a few days.

stage 4:

this is writing the actual prose, but i wanted to include it so you can see the differences, to help better understand my notes/planning/outlining stages:

and this is what a scene looks like with stage three bridging the gap:

[tcfactory]

Maybe because I got such a kick out of playing a deceptive little shit in BG3, but when I was playing through Veilguard there were several points where I desperately wished that Rook was allowed to lie. Or at least not spring the entire wild "Solas tried to tear down the Veil, but we stopped him, but two ancient blighted super powerful elven mages got out and oh btw they are all old elven gods" story on anyone we try to ally with right away, because good god that's such an insane story it genuinely broke my immersion that most parties were on board with it, no questions asked.

The one exception is the First Warden and he's so hostile and unpleasant ("this story is so wild I think you are blighted or insane; put your hands here so we can handcuff you, interrogate you and when we are done with you quietly execute you") that you can't help but feel like he's being unreasonable for not believing you.

Also it immediately opened Rook up to being judged for disrupting the ritual and making a choice based on what we knew at the time.

As a side tangent, I have seen people liken it to a trolley problem because Neve told us that "there will likely be consequences" for stopping the ritual, but if you approach the choice with what Rook could logically know and expect at that point, then we have the choice between 1. allowing something to happen that is already, demonstrably causing demons to freely rampage through the areas the ritual reaches, killing and endangering people in at least one city and 2. stopping it, with unknown consequences. If I was Rook and I had reasonable expectations as to what would happen... I would guess a few bigger demons coming through. Like, "elven gods who can control a new kind of mega-blight" is not something you can reasonably account for even when you are trying to think of the worst case scenario, because we didn't have the foggiest idea before that it was even an option. Solas's formerly and loudly stated goal before this game had nothing to do with the Evanuris. So if this is a trolley problem, then our choice is between dozens of people tied to the rails who are guaranteed to die on one side and just the vague notion that there is something on the rails on the other side. Is it an empty box? A dog? A person, a handful of people?? The trolley problem is a thought experiment about ethics, it fundamentally doesn't work if you obfuscate one of the choices.

So I really wished that Rook would shut up about how it was Solas's ritual, but then we happened and it's kinda our fault. Either withhold that information until we know how it would be received or claim ignorance/lie about it being Solas's fault. Let Rook just shrug and go "idk, I'm not a mage/not a Fade magic expert, how should I know what went wrong?" or say "hey, Solas is so insistent that the horde of demons was unintended so he clearly didn't know the ramifications of this ritual as well as he claimed". Is it true? Not really, no. But it would make me feel less like my Rook is a bright eyed idiot who immediately overshares when he meets a new person, for a start, because it doesn't matter how the gods got out, they have to be dealt with and claiming responsibility for the debacle just makes it less likely that reasonable people will cooperate with us.

If the game wanted to do a hardcore "lying bad" or "lying/obfuscating the truth makes you as bad as Solas" stance (bleh) then make the Evanuris publicly say "hey, thanks for fucking the ritual up, we couldn't have gotten out without you" or something along those lines later so our allies would question our sincerity or something. Hey, consequences to our actions! A little bit of roleplaying in the allegedly roleplaying game! What a novel idea.

So much of this game functions only because the characters don't have any sensible character, consistency or internal motivation, so they discard all sense and logic to believe Rook when the plot has to move along and bring up "but it's kinda your fault tho" whenever we need a little bit of Drama or want to gesture vaguely towards something something Guilt and it's such amateurish, stilted writing that even thinking about it gives me a headache.

[infiniteetcetera]

My thoughts on the next ACOTAR books before we potentially learn more today (not sure if that rumor is true but hoping🤞)

1) I feel like next book is probably Elain/Azriel’s. I have nothing against Elain/Lucien and I’m actually quite fond of Gwyn/Az, but I don’t see gwyn ever getting a POV/book before characters like Elain and Mor. Could I see a world where the book is Elain/Azriel’s POV but they don’t wind up with each other? Absolutely! I even think that could be a fun twist, but overall I think most likely next book is an Elriel one, and even if they aren’t endgame it will AT LEAST have both their POVs (maybe Lucien’s too)

2) My dream for the next NEXT ACOTAR book/novella is a TOD style “separate from the main plot line” book for Lucien. I LOVE Lucien and have since book 1 and I think he’s a perfect character to explore the other courts with (autumn, day, spring) which a LOT of people have been wanting. Especially if Elain breaks their bond, I think Lucien getting a side quest book with his own personal journey like Chaol in TOD would be SO good. I’ve seen people bring up this notion for Azriel (that Elain/Lucien will be next book, then Az gets his own) but I don’t see a point in that (ie above) Azriel’s story is very wrapped up with Elain and the rest of the IC/main plot line, but there’s SO much depth to Lucien’s storylines, other characters to explore with him (band of exiles, eris, tamlin, helion, etc) and more than enough plot lines for his own book that vaguely touches the main koeshi plot (like tower of dawn) but has its own focuses as well.

3) The last book (or at least the last one she’s contracted for 👀) a multi-POV KOA style huge AF entertaining book. Ideally this would have all the ACOFAS POV’s as well as others (Elain & Az obv, Lucien, the Valkeryies??) I think this would be perfect, especially for fans who miss characters like Feyre being narrator. I can’t see the last book going any other way honestly, it’d feel wrong to end one person/couples story.

THOUGHTS???

[8bitsupervillain]

Higurashi When They Cry Hou Ch. 5 Meakashi pt. 5

The voice acting: "pachi pachi pachi pachi pachi." Anyway, hell yeah baseball. (he said in the tone of voice that implies immeasurable suffering) It turns out our lad Satoshi isn't the best at sports, and suffers from a type of performance anxiety and can't just completely dominate the field.

I want you to just sort of tuck that "you need to let your demon out" line into the back of your mind. We'll get back to it, in a few.

Personal question there doc, and not one I think you should be asking a minor.

"Goodbye doctor Freeman! Be adequate!" -Half-Life 2: Episode 2

Oh that rascal.

It is somewhat disconcerting the amount of anime tropes this series invokes only to pull the rug out from under you and be like "see, it's all mental disorders!" Tatarigoroshi tried to pass off the unreliable Satoshi idea as a joke, but here it's like no, it's mental disorders. Also, this is another idea I want you to just keep vaguely aware of for the future.

This line got me thinking, back in Watanagashi when "Mion" randomly decides to rant at Keiichi that Satoko is a cursed child, that was probably Shion disguised as Mion. Nothing, at any point in the preceding events of the chapter or the first chapter led to the idea that Mion had any belief in the notion of curses. Hell in Onikakushi she outright says to Keiichi that she doesn't believe in Oyashiro. Shion, meanwhile, has her belief in the curse, and there was that interaction in Tatarigoroshi when she interrogates Keiichi about the idea that Satoshi transferred away. Which makes me wonder, at what point did Shion knock out Mion to more or less take over her day to day life? There was the part where Ooishi mentions that Shion disappeared that day he saw Keiichi and her at the library together. Was that the time? Or was it earlier in the day? I want to remind you that during that part of Watanagashi Keiichi gets interrogated three times about his actions during Watanagashi, and who he was with. But prior to Mion asking him about it she mentions that she's leaving school early that day due to a hangover. Then, when he sees Shion she mentions she also has a bit of a hangover due to a family drinking party. This is all circumstantial, because at the time I doubt that plot idea of Shion having to live a secret hidden life from the rest of the Sonozaki family had occurred to Ryukishi. But what if, that night Shion took and imprisoned Mion in the torture shack and just left her there for the rest of the chapter until the end? And the Shion and Mion we keep seeing throughout the chapter is in fact just Shion, since she can dupe people into thinking she's her sister. It would go to further explain just why Satoko had to die shortly after dealing with Rika. There's the surface level reasoning of she's aware Rika went to the main Sonozaki house, but if this is Shion she can do away with the girl she feels drove Satoshi away.

Also, this is again circumstantial evidence, but I feel the line about letting the demon out proves that the Mion that confessed to the various crimes towards the end of Watanagashi was Shion. Sure, you could argue that Mion talking about releasing the inner demon might make sense since she in theory has that demon tattoo on her back. But she never really expresses any belief in the paranormal or spirituality. Basically what I'm saying is, I'm all-in on the idea that Shion put Mion out of action for the entire second half of chapter two: Watanagashi.

For no reason, here's Remake and Original Irie.

Shion is weirdly possessive of this guy she's only known for a month. I know romance can make you do some extremely questionable things, but in universe, they just had a conversation about how forcing a child to grow up too fast can cause mental issues. And here Shion wants to force Satoko grow up, and just endure the abuse. If anything, you'd think Shion would be more sympathetic to Satoko's situation because she's the unwanted twin of a crime syndicate. She probably wasn't treated especially well by the rest of the family. I know it's probably meant to be read that she's being harsh because she's trying to do the right thing for Satoshi, but that doesn't really hold up to scrutiny at all. She is wanting to lay all of the abuse at the feet of the victim of it, and wants to tell her to suck it up and just take the lumps. In addition to being an extremely callous way of looking at things, it also would not work at all.

I wonder if this little tirade of Shion's made Irie think about the Sonozaki family at all. He's interacted with them in the past, so it feels reasonable to assume he'd be aware that Mion has a twin sister (he interacted with baby Mion in Himatsubushi, I'll remind you). So I wonder if he listened to Shion go on about how when you really think about it all this is Satoko's fault, and go "hey wait, this doesn't seem like Mion at all. Wait a second! Her twin sister?" Cause I imagine it's going to come up that he's aware that Shion's Shion.

She's gonna offer to adopt Satoko! Take her to a nice farm upstate.

Linkin Park.mp3

[singswan-springswan]

Behold: a little plot bunny that's been bouncing around my head. Another Kanera mermaid AU because I'm obsessed with mermaids and Kanera is love Kanera is life. Kanan's trying desperately not to blow his cover on land but gaslighting his human partner Hera is harder than he thought, especially when he can't help but save her from drowning on the occasion.

words: 1174

~

Hera knew Kanan was a skeptic—and in all fairness, she’d been one too. But before all that, he was supposed to trust her. That’d been the first thing to connect them. Her wild ideas, and his fascinated willingness to go along with them. Of course, Hera knew that he had boundaries, but they’d been difficult to find in the two years he’d been her best friend, and the fact that they existed in the first place was something of a vague notion. In any case, she never thought he’d draw the line here.

“This isn’t me being radical, Kanan.” Hera huffed, smacking the meter stick into her other hand. These days, it felt like a necessary thing to have him take her side, even if there was no solid opposition to take sides against, and even if the argument didn’t involve him. Hera just liked when he supported her, if she was honest. Which was silly. As if he didn’t support her by default as it was, here she stood now, demanding he agree with the one assertion that made him dig his heels in. 

But really, wasn’t he used to her crazy ideas by now? Surely he couldn’t be putting this past her. He should have seen it coming. She should have seen it coming too. Kriff, maybe she really was crazy, but could he at least agree with her?

Kanan propped a handsome cheekbone on his fist, elbow slanted lazily atop the messy table. Hera could stand to tidy things up in here; the galley of her beloved ship was something that should be clean on the regular. But she’d been down here all night with her murder board, and there hadn’t been time before Kanan wandered in for breakfast. He looked bored, having finished his bagel by now. There was a closed-off tolerance behind his eyes: a look so rare it made Hera frantic to have him understand.

She pointed the stick to the whiteboard on her right, where she’d pinned up photographs and newspaper clippings and a flaky array of sticky notes—all very neatly organized from her point of view, though a small voice in her head said that Kanan and perhaps a Hera who wasn’t sleep deprived would not see it the same way.

“This is me being logical. Look, I have it all thought out.”

Kanan—bless him—didn’t patronize her with a pointed sweep of the room. Hera really ought to clean up.

“There’s nothing logical about what happened.” He said in a blunt tone. At least he was focused on her, not indulging the rant with presence alone. 

“Exactly! There’s no logical explanation. Which can only mean my survival was supernatural. We both know I should have died that night—there was no chance for me to make it through the storm on my own, even with all my skill and experience—so whoever rescued me must have been specially gifted and enhanced individuals like that simply don’t exist within the human understanding of the world. Besides, I saw—”

“You imagined.” Kanan interrupted, frowning a little now, to Hera’s immense frustration. “You were half drowned by the time you made it back to shore, and that much more exhausted. On top of that, your imagination is one of the more impressive ones out there.”

Hera glared at him. “I saw,” She insisted. “Things that can’t be explained by a human understanding of the world. And you know me. I’m adaptable.”

Kanan sighed heavily and rubbed a hand against his brow. He was certainly being firm about this line, and not crossing it and such. And that was maddening to Hera. It didn’t fit his pattern of behavior to be so adamant about not believing her. Sure, this might be her craziest idea to date, but a few of her past conspiracy theories came pretty darn close and as she recalled, he’d jumped on board without a second thought. So why was this any different?

Outside, a boat motor rumbled past the marina, and the Ghost creaked pleasantly while it rocked on the wake coming in. Hera could hear the bustle of other mariners on the docks too, mingled with seagull chatter and clanging equipment. This late in the morning, the first round of fishermen were coming to port already. And she still hadn’t convinced Kanan.

“Okay,” He dropped the hands from his face and held them pressed together, fingers pointed her direction. “This is what we know.”

Hera narrowed her eyes, but she let him talk.

“You were stupid enough to take the Phantom out without me when you knew the forecast was bad, and you were caught on the open ocean when a storm rolled in. The dinghy capsized, probably on the seabed by now, with all your equipment—and you were lucky enough to wash up on shore before you drowned completely. Does that sound about right?”

Hera swung the meter stick down to smack a pile of papers in front of Kanan, eliciting a sharp noise and no reaction but an unimpressed raise of the eyebrow. “What I know,” She snapped. “Is that I should be dead. And I have one very specific person to thank for that. I was rescued, Kanan. Someone saved me: someone not human. Someone from the sea.” 

She wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen it herself. And although the memories from that night were fuzzy around the edges, she distinctly recalled the moment on the beach, vomiting sea water in the pouring rain, tucked into a pair of strong arms. She remembered babbling in confusion, and she remembered her rescuer vanishing in a brilliant blur of green and gold, before she could properly register the feel of scales beneath her hand. These memories weren’t products of an exhausted brain or overstimulated imagination. She knew she sounded crazy otherwise, but she couldn’t betray herself. Maybe for that reason, she was so determined to convince Kanan. She didn’t want to be crazy and alone.

But he was unimpressed with her stubborn insistence. He wasn’t patronizing, or indulgent—which would have made his disbelief worse—so small miracles. At least he had the decency to be straight with her.

“Hera,” Kanan gave her a flat look. “You know mermaids aren’t real, right?”

There was no budging on that line of his. Hera wanted to pout, cross her arms, insist that no actually she didn’t know that, and neither did he really. But they’d been at this for hours already. She’d started her rant the moment he strolled in—hair still a beautiful mess from sleep—and she’d meticulously explained every node on her murder board with fine detail, so if that hadn’t convinced him even a smidge, then whining definitely wouldn’t.

Instead, Hera drew herself up and gave him her best calculating stare. “What would it take?” She asked slowly, carefully. “To make you believe?”

Kanan crossed his arms and leaned back: the foreign picture of closed off. His lips pinched. His eyes had a wall behind them. “You couldn’t convince me.” He said plainly. “Fairytales don’t exist.”

[bonefall]

would love to see how you end up plotting out DOTC eventually bc as someone who has never read DOTC & is only reading your Reactions to DOTC… i think it could be a very fun exercise for me as a writer to try and write out your version of DOTC without any pre-conceived notions or baggage from reading & being attached to the original version

Man it would be a dream come true to eventually collaborate with ghost writers to bring the outlines to life. I'd love if that came together someday

So far I have a couple fragments and thoughts for how I want to rework DOTC, but it's not totally pieced together yet.

Concepts and thoughts, vague goals:

First and foremost I want to fix the xenophobia. It is a problem that the mountain cats bring civilization to the uncivilized.

At the same time I don't want to reverse course so hard that the Tribe migrants are themselves a foreign, violent, invading force.

Ideally I want the Park Cat culture and the Tribe Cat culture to mix, and form the beginning of Clan cat culture. For all its strengths and weaknesses.

The politics of the five groups should be delightfully messy.

There should be more girls in important roles to make up for how badly Storm and Bright got fridged

More of these bloodlines need to survive to contribute to the gene pool

Budding ideas, fragments:

I'm splitting up the Gray/Clear/Thunder kittens and giving them to the families that went extinct.

The Clan rank-names stem from Park Cat culture, the two-part naming stems from Tribe Cat culture.

SkyClan and ShadowClan are going to be the first two to form.

Jagged Peak's death and Clear Sky's rejection of his son is the climax of the first book, and the moment the two Clans split.

ThunderClan is going to battle SkyClan for the right to live in the forest

Thunder is missing his back leg in the same spot where Jagged Peak lost his

Thunder's name is Thunder Storm. His mother was Bright Storm.

New Tribe name scheme; they have last names. Last names are chosen by the parents. His name was Thunder Sky before Clear Sky rejected him.

Quiet Rain's name is going to change to Quiet Wing. Clear/Gray and Jagged had different fathers, explaining the three different last names.

Political Sprouts; some thoughts on the history of each Clan and how it influences relations;

SkyClan and ShadowClan are the first to split and have very bad blood between them; but are open to uniting against a common enemy

WindClan is a Park cat response to SkyClan and ShadowClan; It was previously loosely associated families with individual territories

RiverClan WAS united, the cats who become WindClan later broke off from this group.

WindClan and RiverClan are willing to defend each other when applicable.

Thunder Storm is raised in ShadowClan. His group is initially an expansion of ShadowClan, like a satellite territory.

I'm thinking of making it so a big part of Thunder's development is seeing the poor treatment of people like Bumble and realizing that SkyClan and ShadowClan share a common disease.

Defying Tall Shadow's orders to purge people like Bumble is potentially what causes the Thunder/Shadow split.

ALL FIVE CLANS WILL BE PRESENT AT THE FIRST BATTLE.

And that's what I've got of the early conflict so far. The later conflict with One Eye is still brewing.

[liloinkoink]

Hi hi, I am so here about learning about yorr dnd AU. I am super super new here so please throw it all at me!!

i did a short summary of the premise for the last ask, so i’m just gonna tell you a bunch about my dude, Ellery

each of us basically brought one of to the table—they started out as our sonas, but they became kind of removed enough to be their own guys

Ellery i have. so many thoughts on. i gave him amnesia which is my guilty pleasure Favorite trope ever so im having a ball

Ellery is a death prophet, receiving visions from Myrkul about whatever Myrkul sees fit to share. Myrkul warns him of the upcoming apocalypse, but sharing this vision w the temple is what spurred the Cyric group to act and kill him, destroy myrkul, and bring on the end times. he felt terribly guilty in the days leading up to his death about his vision causing his own destruction and putting his friends in danger, and that’s had a lingering effect on him even with amnesia

after his revival he’s quieter. he doesn’t know why, but he has the vague notion he shouldn’t speak. he doesn’t share his visions as much unless Mar, who shares them now thru their soulbond, brings them up. his amnesia was probably partially caused by his own guilt, and learning about how his vision lead to the apocalypse and Mar’s death after his own has him very reluctant to gain his memories back (among other reasons. his amnesia fascinates me)

i asked everyone to give me notes about their characters so i could write fic better, and in those notes i asked everyone to tell me how their characters act 1) when calm or in shenanigans, 2) when stressed, under pressure, or in danger, and 3) how they generally speak

for an example, i gave a response for Ellery for all of that

if things are calm he’s probably just chillin quietly most of the time. i joke about elevator music playing in his head 24/7 but i think he’s been like. trying to watch everyone talk/interact to figure out what the people around him are actually like and get to know his friends (again). hes also trying to learn what he himself was like, based on how they approach/treat him, and letting the other four set the pace for their relationships to/with him

he also has a lingering feeling he shouldn’t talk bc of what explaining his vision did, even if he doesn’t rlly remember where that feeling came from, and is especially reluctant to speak up at the start

he’ll respond if spoken to directly and cut in occasionally, or bring smth up if he thinks it’s important, but mostly he’s just watching/listening. the longer they’re together the more he’s going to weigh in on convos unprompted + the more animated/expressive he’ll become

that said. in all points of the story you can also just. rope him into shenanigans or interactions and he’ll kind of just roll with it. if you sit down next to him and ask him “is water wet” he will just keep discussing it with you until you stop. literally you can walk up to him and press A indefinitely he Will just keep going

for what kinda stuff he says and how he talks. i’m giving him the fancy/pretentious end of my word bank. hes getting the fantasy end and PR manager/communications aspects of my speech.

that said, i do think the way he talks has changed since he died. pre ritual he was probably very aware of his position as leader and was careful he was staying like. a good religious leader ™. but now he has less of a filter and is more willing to make stupid jokes or be kind of mean/teasing (esp later in plot). while i do think he’d swear sometimes before his death behind closed doors it IS funny as hell to me if flint and syyrin hear him swear casually for the first time post revival (tho i don’t think, even post revival, that he swears as much as i do)

in high stress/danger situations he’s also relatively calm? at least when everyone else is around. he trusts his team will watch out for him. i like the image of him being relatively quiet in battle using spells and shit from the back, tho a few of his attack cantrips are touch-based iirc so he’s probably in and out. in battle i think he sticks around mar and iscariot bc he knows he and mar need to watch their health together and iscariot will Always help/protect him. i do think the quiet would probs lead to him getting injured and not thinking to mention it until the end of a fight. this Also contributes to him looking scarier on the battlefield. it’s unearned his stats suck ass but the ppl they’re fighting don’t need to know that

i think he sorta sits on his feelings until he literally can’t anymore, either by mar knowing them via shared visions, a physical injury becoming unmanageable, or him being unable to control his expressions abt them. like not saying anything about being afraid or overwhelmed until he ends up shaking or in tears

him being affectionate is the same way. he isn’t gonna say anything about it he’s just gonna go stand/sit near people until he gets what he wants

also i think he just says ominous shit sometimes. at the start it’s bc he’s just. weird. and later he starts saying it on purpose for a reaction while playing it completely straight bc he thinks it’s funny

[moviemunchies]

Some-BODY once told me that Shrek was a really good move. It was huge when it first came out; everyone, I mean, everyone I know loved it, and it was freaking everywhere you looked. I was never that into it, though. In the past few years, it’s experienced something of a revival–I’ve seen discussions of how it’s actually a really good movie, covering themes like acceptance and self-image. And Dreamworks has made a lot of really good movies! So I thought it was about time I re-watched the film since I found it on Netflix.

And during this re-watch, I discovered that…. I don’t like this movie.

Shrek adapts a picture book by William Steig that you’ve probably never heard of into a CGI animated feature about the titular ogre. Rejected by ordinary people, Shrek lives alone in his swamp, until he saves the life of Donkey, a talking donkey and would-be victim of Lord Farquaad’s attempts to purge his realm, Duloc, of fairy tale creatures. Farquaad is forcefully re-locating these creatures to Shrek’s swamp, much to the ogre’s chagrin. Walking straight into Duloc, Shrek and Farquaad make a deal: he’ll get his swamp back if he goes and saves Princess Fiona to be Farquaad’s bride in order to legitimize his kingship. Of course, saving Princess Fiona isn’t so easy, and she has her own secrets that she’d rather not let anyone find out; and even then, Shrek finds that handing her over to Farquaad isn’t what he really wants.

Alright, so you can’t really talk about this movie without mentioning that the entire thing is built from the ground up as a massive ‘F*** YOU’ to Disney. Jeffrey Katzenberg, one of the co-founders of Dreamworks Studios, was former chairman of Walt Disney Studios and had a falling out, to put it mildly, with both Roy Disney (Walt Disney’s nephew and member of the board) and Disney CEO Michael Eisner, to start his own company. It’s popularly speculated that the villain of Shrek was designed to resemble Michael Eisner, and also his name sounds like ‘F***wad’.

If you did not pick up that the movie hated Disney and everything about it, that information should give you enough to work with. Though it is blindingly obvious; the princess plot where things don’t go according to plan, the fairy tale characters acting mostly as pests, the dirty jokes, how Duloc’s entrance brings to mind Disney theme parks with even a parody of “It’s a Small World”, the bird exploding when Fiona’s singing with it… It’s pretty much all there.

And yes, Disney had sort of gotten a reputation for squeaky-clean princess stories, and their attempts to move past those haven’t made much money–in part because management didn’t know how to market and when to release those movies. Treasure Planet and Atlantis: The Lost Empire might have been hits if it weren’t for those factors, but the people in charge didn’t think they’d be money makers, and thus screwed them over and said, “Welp! Those movies don’t do well, I guess!” It’s understandable, then, that a guy who worked at Disney might have had some frustration about how he couldn’t break out of the mold, and hold some resentment for that mold and then make a movie about it.

It’s so… crude, though? Much of the humor in this movie just isn’t my thing. It doesn’t feel like a passionate or thoughtful deconstruction of Disney, most of the time, it feels like taking a hammer to it, except that hammer makes fart noises. There are so many jokes that aren’t aimed at kids, but they’re not really funny as much as ‘Tee-hee, look what we put in an animated movie vaguely aimed at families!’ Like, no, I did not need a bit that implies Lord Farquaad is jacking off to the image of Princess Fiona in the Magic Mirror.

Farquaad is also annoying and that he clearly has some sort of hang-up about fairy tale creatures, and wants them out, though it’s never really developed much. Why does he hate fairy tales so much? Again, as a stand-in for Disney’s management, the notion that the guy in charge wants a standardized feel to his kingdom, and will ship out anyone different/magical makes sense; however, this falls apart because the fairy tale creatures are again, clearly meant to be annoying/stupid! And the whole idea of not judging people based on how they look or who they’re born as is thrown out the window with all the jokes about how short Farquaad is!

Probably not helping is my past experience with this movie. Many years ago, when this was A Thing, and kids just watched all the time, we were at some dinner party or New Year’s party or something. It got late and we started three different movies (this one, Princess Bride, and Willow), so probably New Year’s. The kids at the party put on this movie, and dear Lord do you have any idea how annoying it is to watch a movie where your fellow audience members know all the jokes, and say it along with the movie? Except their timing is off, so they say it right before it’s said in the movie? Yeah, that was this viewing experience. It was the most annoying way to watch what’s supposed to be a comedic film.

A lot of the jokes just don’t make much sense to me, either. Why is Robin Hood French in this movie? At first I assumed that it’s a roundabout allusion to Kevin Costner having the wrong accent in Prince of Thieves, but I looked it up, and apparently, no! It’s just because the people making the movie thought it would be funny. That’s dumb and makes no sense.

There are some things in the animation that haven’t aged well, but they had no way of knowing it at the time, they were doing the best with what they had. And so ‘meh’ on that front.

And I can’t help but think that if it hadn’t been for Shrek that so many things would have been different–the dominance of CGI over other forms of animation, the over-reliance on pop culture references, celebrity voice actors, the big dance party at the end of the movie–Shrek wasn’t the origin of all of these ideas, but it definite catapulted them into popular consciousness. Oh, and putting Eddie Murphy in tons of things. That was A Thing That Used to be A Thing for years and we all hated it.

There are some things in this movie that I do like, to be clear! I like Shrek and Fiona’s relationship! I like their character development. I like their interactions. I like that their journey consists of both of them accepting themselves and not worrying about conventional attractiveness. I don’t generally like the, “The couple has a misunderstanding based on half of a conversation,” thing, but here it’s because it reflects both of their self-loathing and I think that’s actually really interesting!

[There’s a Tumblr post about it, too.]

And there are, I guess, some jokes I liked.

Overall, though, I don’t like this movie. I can’t like this movie. Shrek doesn’t feel like a movie made by people telling a story they love, it feels like a bunch of people rambling on about how much they hate the Walt Disney Company. And to be clear, there’s a lot to dislike about the Walt Disney Company and the movies it makes. That alone doesn’t make Shrek a good movie, though. I have heard that Shrek 2 is good; I haven’t seen any of it to my recollection, so I might give it a try? As it is, though, with all the other fantastic films Dreamworks has created, I’m struggling to see why people are so attached to this one.

[distortedmoondisc]

hiiai for the ask game thing 🥺👉👈

Hi!! Thank you so much for asking for my otp vi 🥹💖💖💖

So! I hope I don't get too rambly with it ahdhfj

1. What made you ship it?: oh boy, the first and second chapters of the !! Main Story made me become so obsessed with them it wasn't even normal. I went into ensemble stars without any idea or notion about the franchise or the writing beforehand and I was absolutely confused with the way the characters talked to each other (the enstars writing is definitely an acquired taste imo lmao). So you must imagine how insane I felt when I, who wasn't used to male characters having such blatant, shameless and obviously deliberately flirty/romantic/shippy intended dialogue with each other such as.... This:

This was!!!! On their first meeting!!! They have known each other for less than 5 minutes and Aira has already fondled Hiiro's bicep!!!! Are these two normal??? (If you've been into enstars long enough you'll know that the answer is !!! No !!!)

And what's funnier is that after Aira does the (rub, rub), the next dialogue is literally this:

so like.... Akira (writer of all of the !! Main story) here had to force a switch on the conversation so these two could focus again on the topic they were discussing before (about whether or not they're underachievers and about Ensemble Square) from that fondling muscles scene. This means Akira didn't have any need to write that scene between these two, it wasn't necessary for the plot. The madlad just added that scene in there out of nowhere. Just for the funsies. For a silly little laugh. Because there's nothing more fun than making your OCs flirt with each other this shamelessly in your own story. He really gets the assignment.

Listing a few honorable mentions for hiiai interactions from the first and second episodes of the !! MS that made me imprint on them so hard that they became my biggest otp since july of last year and has taken hold of my heart ever since 🫶

Hiiro fawning over Aira's beautiful name 🥺🥺🥺

Hiiro here was really like yeah you're my soulmate, my soulmate bestie (no but seriously do you ever think about how hiiro became so attached to aira so quickly and wanted to become his friend so bad, and how he also saw their meeting as fate....)

He is so dramatic, he didn't even get directly rejected here

This is a personal favorite. I can't stress how mentally ill I was when I read Hiiro saying "I'll do my best to destroy the future where you'll feel sad" DO YOU HEAR YOURSELF???? this should be added to the "is this Russian literature or enstars" online quiz

If you are observant enough you'll see that Hiiro is the one shamelessly flirting all the time AHDJF but Aira himself (mostly in later chapters) also says some questionable stuff about Hiiro in some parts that makes you go... Huh (Aira saying to Hiiro "Aira-kun's route is no longer available for you!" Aira why are you equating yourself and Hiiro as the protagonist and romantic interest of a dating sim game? Do you have anything to share with the class?)

But yeah... them (vaguely gestures with hand). They give a very strong first impression to say the least, so it's not hard to imagine how I came to ship them as quickly and as strongly as I did ahdjf

2. What are your favorite things about the ship?: God, there's so many things I like about hiiai I don't think I can ever list them or rank them, but I'll try ahdjf

For starters, I just really like their dynamic (very basic answer, I know). A thing I really love about their dynamic is how Hiiro is so openly affectionate with Aira, and I think it's cute how Aira is so tsun about his care and affection for hiro-kun, but he just can't leave him alone and thinks of him so often (he mentions him all the time in the game's home lines wwww).

Another thing I love is the way their relationship develops throughout the !! main story. How Aira stuck to him and to Alkaloid due to obligation (in order to survive as an idol in ES) but actually became attached to Hiiro and formed the unique dynamic with him where Aira feels like he can't leave Hiiro alone to prevent him from getting into trouble (and while there is truth to that, there's also the fact that just genuinely Aira loves Hiiro because the first friend he's had in a long time, and a very loyal and loving one at that). In Hiiro's case, he also got attached to Aira very quickly since he was also his very first friend on the city 🥺

In general, I love that hiiai are each other's first friends in ES when they were completely alone, and that by finding each other they found the solution to their chronic loneliness (because Aira and Hiiro both suffer a lot from severe loneliness ever since their childhoods. Aira has never been able to keep lasting friendships and Hiiro's only company in his hometown was Rinne. So them finding each other and hitting it off so quickly and easily means a lot for the both of them, and they both try their best to make the friendship work because they want to keep it and make it last, yk?)

Another facet of hiiai that I like... how Aira always teaches Hiiro new things and helps him understand the world around him. I like to think about how Aira is, literally and metaphorically, the reason Hiiro loves the city, and how that is what leads him to stay there instead of going back to his hometown with his brother (and I just sit here and wonder if the rinniki parallels were intentional from Akira's part?)

I mean literally because Aira is the one who taught Hiiro what idols are, and that was what made Hiiro realize that yes, this is something he likes and a thing he wants to do with his life. And metaphorically, because I believe that for Hiiro, Aira is a representation of the city. Aira is a city boy, he has an upbringing and worldview completely different from his. Aira grew up in a world that is completely unknown and new to Hiiro, a world in which Hiiro didn't plan on staying for long in the first place, a world that Hiiro didn't plan on getting attached to, but that he still came to like at the end — so Hiiro, by loving and accepting Aira, is metaphorically loving and embracing the city and coming to understand it*. And we know that Hiiro deciding to stay in the city and becoming an idol for real is one of the most important parts of his arc of independence and self discovery, so this gives Hiiro's relationship with Aira another layer of depth that makes their bond more important and essential for each of their characters and arcs.

*I almost forgot to clarify why I think that Hiiro coming to like the city is such a big deal (and note, this is a personal interpretation). Basically, because Hiiro was so dead set on bringing his brother back to their hometown so he could become the monarch, he was still close minded about the outside world and stuck with the old arbitrary rules taught by his hometown. But just as Rinne predicted and hoped, Hiiro ended up being marveled by the city and all the things it offers and so many things he's never seen before (and you can extrapolate that marvel he feels for the city as the marvel and interest he feels for Aira when they first meet). So just as Rinne left his hometown in favor of the city—which was a thing Hiiro didn't understand before because he didn't know what even made the city so good in the first place to make his brother want to leave—Hiiro ended up liking the city as well and choosing to stay there instead of going back home, therefore chosing his own path like Rinne.

But then again, this is just my personal interpretation of the text ahdjf

3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?: I probably do, but I can't really think of one at the moment ahdjfj I guess one unpopular opinion is that I think that Aira isn't as stereotypically tsundere as people tend to depict him as in fanworks.

Don't get me wrong, Aira def is very tsun (and he is deliberately written as a stereotypical tsundere sometimes for the comedy bits and/or to make his feelings about others obvious. It might seem paradoxical, but the more tsun the acts—the biggest reaction he gets out of one of Hiiro's actions, for example—the more obvious his true feelings come across), but I also think it is often overlooked his character development in the !! MS where he grows to become more honest about his feelings and doesn't reject Hiiro's displays of affection as much and is even openly happy about them (like when he was happy that Hiiro held his hand and said it made him feel reassured). But this characterization isn't the most consistent throughout stories (and that is a thing that bothers me a little but talking about enstars' lore inconsistency is a story for another day ahdjf), so this is something very personal 😅

And that's all... thank goodness it was only 3 questions AHDJF I was hoping I'd write a short post, but it seems I *did* end up rambling about hiiai after all 😔🤙 what bring prompted to talk about the otp does to a person.

[beatrice-otter]

🍓 and 🔪

🍓 ⇢ how did you get into writing fanfiction?

I had plot bunnies and worldbuilding and characterization stuff in middle school, I had a whole journal filled with stuff about my OC (who was Spock and Saavik's daughter named Amanda, she was a priestess and married to a Human Starfleet captain, they had several kids together, and she sometimes still shows up idly in my brain despite the fact that it's been 30 years). And then in the late 90s I started reading fanfiction online on various websites. (I was horrified when fanfix.com died!)

But I didn't actually write it until I was in my 20s, for two reasons. First, I had the vague notion I would become a SF/F writer, and so my writing was going into two novels (that I still have around, but I haven't read them since). Second, while I wanted to write fanfiction, I didn't know where to POST it. Because most fanfiction in those days was on mailing lists or personal web sites or USENET and I didn't have a website, didn't know how to build one, and didn't know how to get on usenet. What I really wanted was to know where all the fanfic writers hung out, but I couldn't find them. I knew there were communities out there, because they'd mention them in the authors' notes, but not with enough details for me to figure out how to join.

And then I found Livejournal (anyone can make a journal and post! very low technical skills needed, no money needed, AND the community is here!) and the rest is history.

🔪 ⇢ what’s the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

I dunno. The only thing that's coming to mind was trying to figure out how much would be a reasonable sum of money for a mobster to pay a hit man in the 1930s. (For A Purpose-Driven Life, my Agent Carter Dottie/Whitney AU.) To come up with a number I found an Australian article from the 2010s with how much it cost to hire a hitman, converted that to USD, and then plugged the number into an inflation calculator. Which, it's not going to be anywhere near accurate, but I needed SOMETHING to put in, and that was the best I could find. Turned out to be $500. (If anyone has better data on that, please let me know!)

From the Writers Truth & Dare Ask Game

[bomberqueen17]

character creation menu

like, when i'm in this mode of trying to make a thing and it's going sort of well i wind up sort of subsuming most of my attention to it

and i keep accidentally hijacking conversations IRL and god i am struggling not to do that but literally everything I encounter IRL Gives Me An Idea For That Book

(yes, i did send a message on instagram, the only platform i still have contact with him, to my friend the former Navy diver, to ask him for more dolphin insights. yeah. we'll see. it's been years and he got politically Weird [not that way!!! the other way actually don't worry] so i'm not sure how that'll go.)

but anyway, on Character Creation

one of the problems i have is that i have to kind of write things to find them. and so i was going along writing about a particular B-plot problem, and I had a character say something snippy that I then needed an uninvolved person to overhear and react to, for scene pacing reasons (idk, it just seemed right)

and i had needed an original character for another role in the A plot so i was like ah yes, Placeholder can do that and then we segue flawlessly back into the A plot, so I wrote a bunch of that but the character was such a bland placeholder (i devoted zero thought to their name, and was like i guess they'd call themself a consultant ok, and then my brain filled in "Rin" for their name, and I'm a thousand words in before I'm like. this person cannot be named Consultant Rin.) But I got the A plot sequence done and it holds up, and reading back over it, mm this person needs more personality.

I stepped away from the computer and was eating a meal with Dude and talking to him about something unrelated, and then I was musing on how various of his coworkers sound on Zoom calls, and the only one I can tell apart is the woman with a mild speech impediment, and he was telling me more about her and I suddenly in midsentence was like "oh I don't think I've ever written a character with a speech impediment" and like.

there's technical challenges to that, which was interesting to contemplate-- just like writing a character with an accent, where you don't want to descend into like, exotifying dialect but you do want to convey something of the uniqueness of this person's diction whenever they speak. so that's a fun and interesting constraint to put on a character, and can help with a real problem I have always had in my writing, where I love writing dialogue but everyone just talks like me unless I put a ton of attention into making sure they don't.

but this character immediately morphed in my mind, from Placeholder With Stolen Name to

Extremely Autistic Technician With Like, Absolutely No Rizz Who Within Five Minutes Becomes Everyone's Favorite Person

and is not based on anyone I know but I immediately knew and loved them and that is a much better standpoint from whence to create a character.

I also need to come up with names for everybody, and that's on the list, but I'm getting there. I'm just glad I have a mental image now. I don't do visual imagination stuff very well-- fanfiction is nice because I can usually find an image of a character and refer back to that, because I'm not exactly faceblind but I don't hold images well in my mind. With original characters it's so so so so hard, because I can't imagine that well, but it really helps me keep a voice distinctive if I can look at the person and think about them talking. So.

At least having some vague notion rather than like one of those blank wooden poseable artist figure model things helps.

[indignantlemur]

Writing process question: With a story as long and involved as Emigre, do you have a master plot plan with an idea of where things will go all the way till the end, or are you sort of making it up in sections as you go? Or somewhere in between?

Hello! I started out, some 12 years ago, with a nebulous plot idea and a bunch of characters with a broad idea for an actual story in the background. I knew where I wanted my characters to go, the big scenes I wanted to write, and I had only a vague notion about the ending.

That worked for me for the first little while, but then my computer died and I lost my vague guideline notes. After that I was completely lost and totally disheartened. Regrettably, this coincided with some very unpleasant happenings in my personal life, and ultimately I ended up stopping my writing entirely.

Since returning to writing, I've salvaged all of the plot points I can recall and I've actually sat down and written out a point-for-point roadmap. I've patched as many plot holes as I can with this roadmap, tried to account for all of the characters that have been mentioned even once, and have a very thorough accounting of what happens from now until the end of the story. This has actually been hugely helpful, and I find it a lot more productive than my old, off the cuff method of writing.

So, for example, I'll usually set up something like this:

Bulreeng Taal: Dagmar and Thelen go to the local festival. Mixed results. INCLUDE:

A. First Vrath-Thelen encounter, goes poorly ; "I just wanted to talk to her and walk her home -because I thought she was in danger- and I was an idiot. I forgot how words worked and came off like an ass." B. Differing reactions to Dagmar, nice positive feels and disappointing negative reaction C. Draw from [inspiration 1] and [inspiration 2] for the festival but keep it alien! Figure out colours/themes, traditions, lore! D. Themes of healing and moving on/letting go throughout E. Enemies-to-loves starting vibes? See if it fits. F. Dagmar and Thelen have a conversation about boundaries, Tha’an/Sannev politics, and making an effort. Establish bestie-dom! IMPORTANT SUBPLOT INFO: Plant seeds for Dagmar/Thelen, maybe Vrath/Thelen where applicable but don't break the chapter for it

2. Date with Shral! (NOTE: Same day as BULREENG TAAL.)

A. Shral and Dagmar chat; expand upon dynamic, emphasize themes of calming and settling each other. B. SHRAL LAUGHS. Great maple syrup heist, ridiculousness. C. Constellations and lore! Write up a draft of a creation story, figure out themes and tidbits. Contrast the Star Thief with the Great Maple Syrup heist? Skip if it breaks the flow. D. Dagmar's gear failure - look up details for hypothermia, cold shock, and reactions to sudden, extreme temperature drops. Make it realistic. Gear fails gradually, a little at a time, before abruptly cutting out. E. If it fits, revisit intimacy between Dagmar and Shral. Consider realistic hesitation and reasons for caution - for Dagmar especially. Work with limitations from that perspective. F. Character development point: Shral is more open during intimacy, versus closed off and stoic otherwise. Contrast important! G. Ruin an arbiter's day, drop hints about Shral, make Dagmar oblivious. INCLUDE: yellow flash, identification cards, autopilot. “What’s wrong, Esheth? You look like you’ve seen a sea spirit.” / “I think I pulled over an Am Tal operative for speeding today.” / “...Oh shit.” / “It gets worse.”

The important thing about setting up my notes this way is not to hold them up as hard and fast rules but as guidelines. Sometimes the dialogue I'd like to include doesn't quite work, or the scene progresses more organically if I skip a bit here or leave some exposition for later on.

Currently, I have the entire story mapped out until the end, with two story arcs to complete and a bunch of additional chapters as well for various bits of lead-up, lore, exposition, and development. I also have about a dozen side stories tentatively mapped out in a similar fashion, too!

Cheers, and thanks for the ask! <3

[sniffanimal]

vague tw that I'm talking about weird fears and triggers I have, I'm gonna try and not be detailed but listing them above the cut seems redundant so only read below if you want to read about weird upsetting things

notably death, pregnancy, and suicide are mentioned.

I have like 4 fears that are like to my core absolute terror fears and like 3 of them are the easiest things to never encounter and the last one is so unlikely but they're still like terrifying to me

one is freezing to death, specifically on a mountain. I hate hiking and rock climbing already, so I'm likely never going to climb a mountain in the first place, let alone an icy mountain. but I'm terrified of dying in the cold, especially from low oxygen/nitrogen poisoning.

similarly, I'm terrified of being far underwater, really more than a few feet underwater in general. I'm afraid of drowning, but also afraid of decompression and nitrogen poisoning. I don't like swimming in the first place so the odds of me like, scuba diving, are so slim. but I'm so scared

those two also combine to my fear of dying in the vacuum of space, which again is very easy to not do.

next, I'm VERY afraid of getting pregnant. this is relatively easy to avoid, using contraceptives and such, but stuff like the Handmaid's Tale is deep horror to me. the entire process of pregnancy makes me sick, I'm scared of not only like the social emotional repercussions of having a baby, that's also terrifying, but the medical biological process of developing a baby and giving live birth is skin crawlingly terrifying to me. I think it's similar to how most people feel about the idea of getting a parasite. part of the horror is the fact that my body is designed to do this, and that people all over love doing it and seek out doing it, and it's regarded as a general good. what if you woke up one day and everyone was telling you it's extremely good and normal to have tapeworms and that God will bless you with a tapeworm someday. horrifying.

the last one that I can think of is assisted suicide. my full opinion is just people have a right to make informed medical choices about their bodies and nothing further than that. but something very specific about assisted suicide like gives me the willies. idk what aspect of it is, maybe it's just my entire history of suicide prevention depression therapy repelling against the notion of it being the best option for someone, idk. hospice care also sorta freaks me out in general. I think I'm really just scared of death in its many forms, but that's anxiety, babe!

I find the fact that I'm watching Grey's anatomy, a show where death is probably the second biggest plot driving force behind sex, interesting. It's kind of like watching a horror movie you know will scare you, or looking at a picture of something fucked up out of morbid curiosity. it helps knowing it's a TV show and thus not real, so it's like a safe way to engage with this fear of death in a way.