#i have added this into my fanfic because i think it should be canon

[so-you-melted-22]

i'm obsessively checking my email in the hope that a fanfic i'm really obsessed with is finally updated and i think i'm slowly going insane

[gortashs-skidmark]

Tieflings DnD - variations for the fanfic writers and artists!! -

There’s a lot about tieflings on the internet. THESE ARE CANON, except for one thought i put in.

If you’re gonna do BG3 fanfics about Tieflings, please please please consider adding some spice with origin lore and CANON facts about their race :) it would be SO fun!

Pls I need more zevlor fanfic too.

PLS READ: I don’t believe in censorship or ignoring the subject of people who are oppressed, but be mindful of how you write and use oppression of dnd races on your tav pls.

- Orange; Canon Historical Events, Abilities, Bodily Facts, and Bloodlines. It means i think you should look into it.

Pink: I think it's cute. Red; Warning, Comment Purple; Headcanon (only one of them)

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- Tieflings are prone to bad luck, because of the Curse of Aasimar.

- Planar Proverb “don’t ever make a bet with a Tiefling” hey I already made one with Lakrissa.

- They’re arcanally gifted, most of them. Zariel Tieflings are much better melee fighters.

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- Tielfling Blood; is tainted from the hells so they could have human parents. Be descendants of demon, devils, evil deities, night hags, and succubus!

- i know y’all love aphrodisiac fanfics, succubus spittle is exactly what you need dawg. Someone make me a fanfic including succubus heritage.

- along with that, Tieflings are unable to breed with anyone except humans or other Tieflings. Literally. They can be Tiefling or human.

- Usually there is some tell to if they’re Zariel, Asmodeus, Mephistopheles by birth mark, or traits like cat eyes, or night hags bloodlines have red eyes without pupils or scelaras

EDIT: I thought the flaming pupils were cat-like slit eyes in the game, but Karlach does indeed have regular slits!

- Tieflings can be male, female, or without gender. It is a canon fact. A win for my gender struggling homies.

- They can have green, blue, purple, pink, yellow, red skin tones. With dark hair colors only like black, purple, dark red and blue. I don’t care for this, genes be gene-ing so have any color you want.

Mephestopheles is recorded as to having blue skin, pale blue whites and red eyes, soot black scales, with large wings in the 2nd Manual. BUT in a 3e version he is described having red skin, bat wings, being 9ft, with white eyes, and slick black hair. Both of these are present in Mephestophic Bloodlines in BG3. Raphael is the son, though cambion, is red.

Asmodeus rules the Nine Hells. Mephestopheles being his archduke, only rules the 8th layer. Asmodeus has a humanoid, and a scale-fiend version of himself. He's red, slim, 13ft tall, horned, vibrant red eyes, and a neatly trimmed beard. He is Lawful-Evil.

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The Blood War (where Karlach escaped) is described as a "philosophical war" and which kind of evil would rule. Asmodeus plays a part but didn't start it, it's rooted in ancient Hell conflicts. Asmodeus claimed it was a senselessly bloody conflict from a militia standpoint. He really hates it, he's not a fan of it. INFERNAL POLITICS ARE FUCKING COMPLICATED. look into it :)

Zevlor was a Hellrider or Rider of Elturel! a Cavalry unit for Elturel during the 14th and 15th century. They ride horseback, and use spears and bows. They're well reguarded!! Zevlor should have more pride in himself for his service, being a refugee isn't his fault, or The Descent.

In the late 1400's striving for Paladin Knighthood in the Order of Companion was a rank of Hell rider. Before and after the year 1494, you could be a Paladin and join freely.

The Order of Companions was an Elturel, of Western Heartland, theocratic realm of Paladin Knighthood. It's just a region of Paladins that are highly reguarded. They typically worship Tyr, Torm, Helm, and Aumanator.

They kept order in the high capital of Elturel, preserving local civilization from outer destruction. They're super Lawful Good.

Typically an Oath of Devotion or an Oath of the Crown.

"For a City Guard, they outmatched the armies of the Whole Realm" - Forgotten Wiki Realms

They guard general land, they aren't really police, and can escort as far as Waterdeep if privileged to. It is a job they hold for life. I FUYCKING LOVE HELLRIDERS.

Shortly after Elturel’s descent into Avernus, the Tieflings were blamed for the fall, and expelled from the city entirely. Zevlor and any tiefling hellrider’s title has been stripped from them. Any hellrider’s were arrested at The Gate. And the reputation of tieflings sunk even lower.

Badlurian’s are Elturian’s rivals but Duke Ravenguard was tricked into coming to Elturel for politics and ended up helping and sending in troops to help fight. He’s extra important! I might find Wyll, all though lovely, useless, his father is very brave and noble and amazing for what he does.

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- Tieflings can have feathers! Although rare. They can have fur, scales, or be bald like humans. They can be any variation of sorts!

- A more common portrayal of tieflings, is having solid colored eyes, whites and irises the same color. They can be black, red, silver, gold, or white.

- Tieflings are technically minorities and don’t live in the highest neighborhoods. It gives them an even worse reputation.

- Most of the Tieflings with famous status, also give bad reps. Climbing their way to the top in corruption.

- When Tieflings get nervous, experience anxiety, or are upset. They’re known to wrap their tails around their leg!! Super telling.

- They can use their tail like a monkey, very dexterous about it. It’s about 5-6ft long.

- Their ages, weight, height. All similar to humans. Idk how logical that is with 5 extra feet of meat behind them. Sometimes they can live longer, to about 120-150 years old.

- Tieflings can look just like humans. Though they can have their hellish features, those with strong hellish features are often killed at birth out of disgust.

- They can also have legs of a goat, tail akin to a horse or a lizard.

- Tieflings can be really good at thieving, hiding, and deceit.

- their diet consists of meat, marrow, gristle, fat, and bones. They’re highly carnivorous. They even eat roasted insects.

- Many worship Besheba, the goddess of bad luck, finding similarities in them and their goddess.

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- Tieflings are as sensitive as humans, same hearing. They usually have dark vision. And their body temperatures can be colder or warmer than humans depending on their type of tainted blood. --Mephistopheles blood lines are from the frozen layer of hell, maybe their blood is colder.

- They don’t purr, sorry girlies. They’re closer to humans than Tabaxis or Driders.

- Tieflings don’t regrow horns unless they’re still young, though they do tend to file them down.

- They have a natural unsettling aura about them. Even if their heritage is unknown to others, it makes people uncomfortable. They also can smell of sulphur.

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- There are so many Tieflings bloodlines. I love the Babau Tieflings bc they’re already known as uncanny creatures-- Babau Tieflings are gaunt and skinny, darker skin, and a small horn coming from the back of their head.

- Marilith Tieflings are known to be seductive- more than they already are, and have dark hair. They have snake-like half-bodies and have grey tongues.

- Succubus Tieflings! They’re like the ones you see in bg3, often have a small set of wings.

- Tieflings can have so many fucking variations it makes me dizzy.

- Tieflings can have bat-like wing shaped ears, that perk up and shit. I know yall think about ear movements. <zevlor has this>

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Edit: Ya'll loved this :) I can do another on Tiefling politics if ya'll want. Or more bloodlines and fun facts if you want.

I have built another list of Canon facts about Driders and Kar'niss Headcanons if you monster fuckers are interested!!

Currently in the works; He Who Was Headcanons and Shadar'Kai canon facts and events.

[cripplecharacters]

Do you have a general response to people writing fanfic and adding physical disabilities that aren't canon? Not within the fanfic itself (like an injury that the character then is shown processing and adjusting around) but something congenital that isn't canon for that character (like blindness).

Hello beautiful asker!

I personally love it and encourage it. A lot of disabled people use fanfic to cope and writing someone else going through your or similar to your situation is often therapeutic. Even non-disabled people benefit because they're writing about an experience different to their own, they end up researching and thus learning more about what we're all trying to be made heard.

Some people don't like fics where the character is given a disability and then they're miserable the whole fic until they're healed. But we're all strangers to each other, we should not go harassing people who do write these fics because we don't know each other. There's a lot of reasons to write a fic like that. Maybe the author themselves is disabled, they have a loved one who is disabled, maybe they're about to get a procedure that has an end result of them being disabled. Maybe it's someone just practicing writing disability fics, or they're entirely new to the fanfic world!

I consider fanfic an open, wobbly, sorta open zone when it comes to things like this simply because we're all so different, and fanfic is a gateway into a lot of things. I think the best thing to stick to is Don't Like, Don't Read. Bad tropes? Click out of it. Ableism in the fic? Go find a better fic, there's thousands! Ableism in the comments is a definite draw line though which unfortunately a lot of disabled, or people who write disabled fics receive. My advice is to report them, block them, delete their comment, then ignore them and move on.

But otherwise have fun with those head cannons, make your favorite characters disabled and give them mobility aids and ignore anyone else who says you can't.

~ Mod Virus 🌸

[thelargefrye]

FIRST MEETING MONTAGE … head canons

pairing : ateez x f!reader (separately)

genre : idol au, headcanons, each member has their own mini genres and tropes, future dad!ateez au

warnings : language, a nose bleed (jongho), some members are longer than others! sorry! also i’ve never been to a fansign so i’m only going by what i think happens 🥲

note : a remake and return of the mr. housedad series! been thinking about this for a while, so yep! here it is, enjoy… feedback is appreciated

how you and ateez met, setting your future in stone.

KIM HONGJOONG x ARTIST!F!READER ( fake dating, strangers to friends to lovers )

you felt stupid for some reason. like you should have never agreed to doing the blind date your friend insisted on setting up for you.

mainly because right now you are getting stood up, it’s been twenty minutes past the time you were suppose to meet your date and now you just feel silly. maybe you should just go home.

“um, excuse me, are you y/n?” a voice asks behind you and you turn to see probably one of the most handsomest men you have ever seen.

everything about him was just so put together. his split hair being eye catching and his outfit just being so stylish makes you feel underdressed if you’re being honest.

“yes! I’m y/n, are you hongjoong?”

“haha, yes i am, sorry i was late. i got caught up with work,” he says before he’s walking you towards the restaurant doors. “shall we go in and talk?”

you nod and can’t help the heat going to your cheeks as he opens the door for you before following close behind you into the restaurant.

“to be honest, i only agreed to this date because my friend has been pressuring me to try and date,” he says and you feel an odd twist in your stomach. he didn’t even want to be on this date.

so that’s why he was late, you think to yourself as you nod at his words. granted at first you weren’t that excited to be going on a blind date, but you really did want to get out there and start dating.

“my friend insisted i go on this date as well. she tells me that maybe going on a few dates here and there would help with my creative block that i’ve been in for the past few months,” you tell him with a laugh and he nods at your words.

“i hate creative blocks,” he says as he runs a hand through his split colored hair. “what do you do for a living?”

“i’m an artist. i do a lot of commission paintings and illustrations for children books. i also do paintings for myself and a few galleries here and there when they want me.”

“you’re an artist? that sounds amazing,” he says and you notice the immediate stars appearing in his eyes and you feel a sudden boost in your ego. “i think if i wasn’t so in love with music, i would definitely have become a painter.”

“hey, i suddenly just had an idea,” hongjoong says which quickly earns your attention as you look up from your food. “this might seem crazy, but what do you think about pretending to date?”

“pretending to date? what do you mean?”

“well it’s obvious that i’m not interested in actually dating and you’re in a creative block, so what if we help each other out. we pretend to date so i can get my friend off my back and when we do hangout, i help you try to get out of your creative block. a win-win if you ask me.”

god, what kind of fanfic are you living in right now. fake date an idol? that sounds like a recipe for disaster, but you can’t ignore how tempting it sounds. you really do need to get out of your creative block soon in time for the next exhibit and maybe doing painting based on love could be a good thing to try.

“okay, let’s do it.”

hongjoong smiles at your words before saying, “can’t wait to fake date you!”

PARK SEONGHWA x IDOL!F!READER ( strangers to lovers, nct added member )

you looked so pretty, sitting there along with the other hosts is what seonghwa thought as he watched you from where he was sitting with his members. he licked his lips, stars in his eyes as he still couldn’t wrap his head around seeing you.

his members would tease him later but he didn’t care. you’ve been his celebrity crush for a while now, even back when he was a trainee, he’s adored you.

and recently he found out that he was your ideal type. he felt like it was a huge ego boost. he wanted to talk to you, but at the same time he was nervous.

some of his members — i.e wooyoung and san — told him he should give you his number while they were in the show. he tried arguing with them, telling them no and that he honestly couldn’t because what if you rejected him. he couldn’t handle such a rejection from you.

“you should just try it, hyung, i’m sure she’ll say yes,” san said and once they all took a break in filming it was san who pushed seonghwa over towards you.

“hi, um, i’m ateez’s seonghwa,” he says and cringes at how he chose to introduce himself.

“oh, hi, it’s nice to you meet finally you seonghwa! i’m nct’s y/n,” you say as the two of you bow to each other.

“i just wanted to say that i’ve been a big fan of yours for a while and wanted to know if you would want to hangout sometime?”

you look surprised by his sudden question and seonghwa wonders if maybe he crossed a line, but your words are quick to make him think otherwise.

“o-of course! i would love to hangout sometime!” you say and seonghwa can’t help but find you extremely adorable in this moment.

“do you… maybe want to exchange numbers?”

“yes, sure, of course!” you say and seonghwa laughs at your response as he pulls his phone out while you do the same. you two are quick to exchange numbers before the producers are calling for everyone to return to the spots. “i guess we’ll talk later, right?”

“definitely.”

“great, good luck on your group’s performance!” the two of you wave before you walk off and seonghwa can’t help the lovestruck feeling that over takes him.

“soooo… how did it go?” san asks coming up to the eldest member with a sly smirk.

“shut up,” seonghwa says before shoving san slightly and walking back to join the rest of the members.

JEONG YUNHO x GAME DEVELOPER!F!READER ( strangers to lovers, dad!yunho )

you were use to being alone. especially since you started living abroad in korea away from your friends and family you had grown up with and cherished. you often relied on memories to keep you company, but recently one of your coworkers told you a solution to your loneliness.

“a dog?” you had only thought about getting a pet a few times, but concluded that maybe getting one while being abroad wasn’t the best idea. your job wasn’t always the most stable as any game you and your team were working on could get cancelled last minute. plus you were still slowly trying to figure out how to take care of yourself, let alone a dog.

“you should think about it! there’s an adoption center nearby, so maybe check it out sometime,” they told you and only agreed to think about it.

and think about it you did because the next thing you knew, you were making your way to the adoption center.

you were going to adopt a dog.

you decided that maybe it was for the best to adopt a dog, maybe having someone else to take care of would make you less lonely. and of course it would get you out of the house more…

and that’s exactly what is happening three weeks after you adopted a cute labrador retriever named lily who you just immediately connected with. she has a lot of energy, that’s for sure but you don’t mind.

that’s actually how you found yourself at the park, playing fetch with her. throwing the bright yellow ball and watching lily as she goes and retrieves it.

you watch as she runs back to you, ball in her mouth as she drops it in front of you. picking it up, you toss it and your surprised by how far it goes. watching the ball land in the ground and roll to a complete stranger, a black cap on his head and mask pulled up over his face. the stranger picks the ball up right as lily comes barreling towards him.

“wait, lily!” you shout as you watch her pounce the man and you immediately take off towards the two. “oh my gosh, i am so sorry!”

the man laughs as he shakes his head and gives lily the ball. lily turns to run back to you, but seems surprised and happy to see you right there next to her.

“no worries, i probably shouldn’t have picked the ball up,” he says and even if he’s wearing a mask, you can tell he’s smiling from how his eyes crinkle.

“still i am so sorry, i just adopted her and we’re still learning,” you say, feeling an embarrassed heat take over your face.

“really, don’t worry about, but if you still feel guilty how about you take me to get some coffee? i know a good dog friendly café that’s nearby,” he says as he bends down to pet lily.

wow, he’s smooth. “o-oh, uh, sure! um, i’m y/n and this is lily!” you say and cringe at how a little too excited you seemed.

“i’m yunho.”

KANG YEOSANG x FASHION STUDENT!F!READER ( idol and fan to friends to lovers )

you actually managed to get into a fansign. and one for your ult group nonetheless. you were so excited that you almost threw up, twice. but you didn’t! then as the day drew closer, you got more nervous. you were worried about what would happen if you accidentally made a fool of yourself in front of your favorite group.

oh god what if you tripped! no, don’t think like that because then you will definitely trip.

when the day finally came, you made sure to dress cutely. despite knowing that none of the members would probably remember you, you still wanted to look cute so that you could look back fondly on this memory.

however, what was suppose to be a good day with meeting your favorite group soon turned into probably the worst day you’ve had in a while.

first you had to chase after your cat after she managed to escape your apartment. then you miss your bus by a second — you literally watched it take off as you were running down the crowded street to make it. so in a hurry you grab a cab in order to take you to the fansign. thankfully you managed to grab a cab fairly easy and arriving there was also just as easy.

however, it started going down once again when you tried to enter the fansign and the guard stops you.

“sorry this is a fake ticket,” he says before handing you your paper back. you’re completely shocked as you look at him.

“w-what?” you are easily pushed aside by the other fans behind you and you let them as you are still in shock. you were scammed into believing you had actually won a fansign with ateez.

what kind of cruel world is this you think as you walk outside the building and onto the steps. you know you probably shouldn’t be sitting here, but your legs don’t allow you to go any further. even after the fansign started, you find yourself still sitting on the steps. you can only faintly hear ateez from inside along with all the lucky atiny who didn’t get scammed.

when the fansign is over and all the fans had seemingly left, you find yourself on a nearby bench. you can’t help but look at your ateez album and wondering how this day that was suppose to be a great one turned out to be so… disheartening.

“excuse me,” a deep voice startles you from your thought and you turn to see… yeosang standing next to you. “did you go to the fansign?” he asks, gesturing to your album.

“o-oh, no, i didn’t. i had a fake ticket,” you say before you quickly wonder why you are explaining it to him.

“oh, i’m sorry…” he says trailing off before you watch something click in his head as his whole face lights up, “do you mind if i take it for a moment?” he asks, again gesturing to your album and you willingly hand it over. “what’s your name?”

“y/n.”

once he has your album, he motions for you to say before he dashes off back into the building. it’s several minutes later when he returns and hands you back your… now signed album.

“thank you for supporting ateez,” he says with a small bow before a man — who you assume is his manager — calls for him and yeosang is soon disappearing back into the building with a small smile and wave as a quick goodbye.

what… just happened? you look at your album, quickly opening it and flipping through the pages to notice how each member had signed it. however you notice something different when you get to yeosang’s pages.

“sorry you got scammed, but hopefully this makes it better! btw you looked cute, so smile okay? xx-xxx-xxx”

did you just get kang yeosang’s number?

CHOI SAN x COLLEGE STUDENT!F!READER ( idol and fan to friends to lovers )

no way. no fucking way. this was not happening. there was no way THE choi san was standing right in front of you while you dressed like an elderly woman. not that there was anything wrong with dressing like an elderly woman, but meeting your bias while dressed as such was not ideal.

“oh? are you the exchange student my grandma was talking about?” oh shit, his grandmother talked about you to him.

“u-um, y-yeah, i’m y/n,” wow, smooth y/n, real smooth.

“ah, well if you need help with anything while i’m here let me know,” he says with a smile before turning and walking away leaving you a little dumbfounded.

you watch him walk back into the room that is only just down the hall from yours and felt your heart jump down to your stomach. holy crap, choi san is staying only a few rooms from you. what kind of fanfic trope is this?!

this had to be a dream, this had to be anything but real. you refuse to believe it. you slowly closed your bedroom door, walked over to your bed, and grabbed your pillow before screaming into it.

these next two weeks were going to be interesting, that’s for sure.

SONG MINGI x WEBTOON ARTIST!F!READER ( strangers to friends to lovers )

mingi felt weird. not weird in a bad way, but just felt… weird. actually he wasn’t really sure how to explain it. his mom had asked him to go greet their new neighbor who was his age.

was this her way of trying to get him to start dating? to have him meet her new neighbor and have them just… fall in love?

but even if it was weird, mingi didn’t argue or question his mom and so that’s how he found himself standing in front of your door ready to knock and introduce himself.

when he did knock, it took a few minutes before someone eventually came to the door. and mingi won’t lie, you looked like you hadn’t seen another human for a few days with how disheveled you looked.

he wasn’t trying to judge you or anything, but it was quite obvious.

“can i help you?” you ask after you both stood there in silence for a few moments.

“o-oh, um, i’m mingi. my mom lives next door and wanted me to give you this as a welcome present,” he says presenting the kimchi he almost forgot he had in his hands.

you glanced down at his hands and noticed the container of kimchi. he seen you hesitate for a moment before you took it with gentle hands and that was probably the softest thing he’d witnessed from you since meeting you less than five minutes ago.

“thank you,” you said before going back into your apartment and closing the door behind you.

“so how did it go?” his mom asked once he returned. mingi still felt like the interaction happened a little too fast for his liking.

“it was… okay. she’s seems… interesting.”

“good! maybe this could be the start of a new friendship!”

“yeah, a new friendship.”

JUNG WOOYOUNG x IDOL!F!READER ( strangers to friends )

“just talk to him, y/n, what could go wrong?” your group member insisted as you both stood near the vending machines at music show.

“a lot could go wrong and then i would just end up looking stupid in front of him and never be able to show my face in front of him again,” you told her and she gave you a pointed look as if to say really? but yes, really!

“come on, y/n, why don’t we go visit him and his group under the guise of giving them our album? maybe then you can get the chance to talk to him,” she suggests and you are about to deny it when she stops you and drags you back to your group’s dressing room.

which is how you all end up knocking on ateez’s dressing room door, your group’s album clutched tightly in your grip. when ateez’s manager opens the door, your leader bows and introduces you all and tells him how you wish to gift ateez a copy of your album.

“hello, we are visage,” you all say in unison before ateez is quick to also introduce themselves.

“we were just wanting to gift you all a copy of our album,” your leader says before gesturing to you who was still tightly holding onto the album.

your other group member gives you a light push which makes you step forward. your eyes flicker between wooyoung and the album before you’re quickly holding the album out for the dancer to take. could you have been any more obvious about your feelings? probably, but you didn’t want to think about it.

you really wish a giant hole would open up on the ground and swallow you up right now. wooyoung only smiles as he takes the album from you and you step back in your spot between your members.

your leader and hongjoong speak a little bit more before your group leaves and once back in the safety of your dressing room, you collapse onto the leather couch. again, can a giant hole just please swallow you up. you lay there for several minutes, just accepting that you probably made a fool of yourself in front of your crush.

ding! you look up and at your phone to see you got a text from an unknown number

‘hey this is wooyoung! love your dance covers let’s hangout sometime and film one together!!!’

CHOI JONGHO x PRODUCER!F!READER ( co-workers to lovers )

jongho felt his jaw dropped when he was told that you would be working for kq and especially with ateez. how the company managed that is beyond him, but he’s not complaining.

of course his first time meeting you could have gone better than him causing you a nose bleed, but alas not everything goes as plan.

jongho doesn’t even remember all of what happened. one minute he was waiting to record his lines when he had to use the bathroom. so when he opens the door, he opens it smacking you in the face and watching you fall to the floor. your bag falling and papers scattering around you and jongho feels like his soul should have left his body.

“oh fuck, i am so sorry, are you okay?” he asks quickly bending down to help you pick your stuff up when he looks over to notice some blood dripping down your nose. jongho feels even worse as he immediately tries to help you even quicker. “oh god, your nose is bleeding! again, i’m so sorry!”

“i-it’s okay! i wasn’t paying any attention. i should be the one apologizing,” you say as you take a tissue out and attempt to stop your nose bleed.

“i can’t believe i gave my favorite producer a nose bleed,” jongho mumbles as you can’t help but laugh at how cute he is acting. the pout on his face doing wonders to make him fit into the role of the maknae, that you are well aware that he doesn’t always fit into.

“i’m your favorite producer?” you ask, eyes shining and jongho realizes that you heard him.

“y-yes, i love a lot of your songs even your solo stuff. your first album has always been a personal favorite of mine,” he says as he helps you stand, your bag now in his hands as he gently opens the door for you.

“well i’m a fan of your voice,” you say as you take your bag from him, “and i can’t wait to work with you jongho,” you say before walking into the studio and leaving jongho by himself in the hallway.

“she likes my voice.”

tag list : @invuwrld @frankenstein852 @watamotee33 @kawennote09 @mixling-blog @marahleiwhen @kpopnightingale @harry-the-pottypus @rdiamond2727 @sanniesbum @marvelahsobx @khjcoo @mysticfire0435 @exfolitae @kryybebe @dementedaly @simonswhore @cvpitvno @kangskims @moonm1st

[ladyazurith]

Lorcana/Twisted Wonderland Part 3

Part One

Part Two

I've enjoyed this some I thought I'd share some more cards from Lorcana as related to Twist.

First off is the reminder of the fact that Rook should have a beard lol. But otherwise I'm glad to see he has some representation in Lorcana.

And while on Pomefiore, Dark Mirror anyone?

I figured I'd include this because of the up coming EN event. Stitch just out there living his best life. I'm really looking forward to it, especially cuz the SSRs are Lilia and Floyd.

Another Jafar, that I think I'd s very good reflection on Jamil.

And this is almost like an Overblot version for the Tweels. That's part of why it's easy for me to draw the parallels between Twist and Lorcana because some of the themes are close enough. Especially when it comes to Ink/Blot which is pretty much the same thing. Some of the characters become twisted in Lorcana, corrupted far beyond their Canon self.

While she doesn't have a Twist counterpart here would be Anna, as she is corrupted by the ink. (OC fuel maybe?)

And last I'm just adding this card because I find it hilarious.

Anyway there are a lot of fun parallels, like I said in my original post, it's easy to see Twisted as a world within Lorcana. Whether I ever write about it in a fanfic one day I don't know. But I still find it a fun HC

[physalian]

A Guide to Productive Filler

I was going to write this post about the wonders of fanfic and how it does not do the “forced miscommunication for cheap drama” trope, and it did not stay that post for long.

I’m sure it’s out there, but it’s not saturated in the most popular fics and I think I know why: Fanfic exists in contrast to the established canon, and the canon has forced miscommunication, thus fanfic looks at the perpetual failure of those plotlines and ignores it.

Nobody likes this trope, yet it keeps happening. In TV, at least in the old days when we had full seasons with appropriate and satisfying filler episodes and actual good stories and such (you know, before Disney +) TV shows were contracted to fill a minimum number of episodes and didn’t always have enough content to fill it, especially CW shows.

Enter filler episodes, which, when productive, still entertained the audience with off-beat side quests or gave more screen time to beloved side characters or explored more of the world and the lore. Filler plots meant that you could casually check in on your favorite show once a week, or miss an episode, and not feel completely lost because the plot wasn’t super tight and lean. Some of my favorite episodes of all my favorite TV shows are filler plots and just because they’re “filler,” as in, not a plot-heavy element to advance the narrative, doesn’t mean they were lacking in story.

That was good writing.

Bad filler elements were sh*t like forced miscommunication for cheap drama and it still exists even in the “mini series” that are really just long movies extended to keep people from canceling their subscriptions. TV shows may have one or two head writers, but they’re still written by committee and producers and production companies trying to milk as much from a profitable product as possible, which means they couldn’t write an efficient, epic romance that ended too quickly. They had to faff about for a few seasons before delivering to keep butts on couches tuning in to generate sweet, sweet ad revenue.

Forced miscommunication in TV shows have always made sense in that light. Yeah it’s a product of bad writing, but I can’t point at the head writer or even the staff writer alone and criticize their writing ability because it likely wasn’t their decision.

Forced miscommunication in books, however—that I have no excuse for. Books aren’t written by committee. In this case, I really can just blame the author for their bad choices, which, in turn, maybe came from their favorite TV shows and how they executed similar plot lines.

Fanfic does not do this, usually. It’s not written by committee and has no quota to fulfill to beef up the narrative with extra chapters.

—

So. You want your story to be longer, fanfic or otherwise, but you’re struggling because your plot is too thin and you don’t know where to go from here.

First, a disclaimer: Novellas exist and can be as short as they need to be.

“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter,” means that  just because it’s long doesn’t mean every word serves a purpose. With enough time, the writer can trim down their thoughts for conciseness and clarity, and say the same thing with better impact with less beating around the bush.

So just because it’s short doesn’t make it bad, just because it’s long doesn’t make it good. It’s about what you do with the words you’ve written.

However, if it really is a thin story lacking substance and oomph, here’s some suggestions that are not sh*t like “forced miscommunication”. These are not meant for generalized application and should be considered heavily before implementing, because any one of them can change your book for the worse by adding in unnecessary detail that distracts from the main story.

1. Consider multiple narrators

Now. I just read a rather bad book that could have lost about ⅔ of its story for a variety of reasons and told the same story in a fraction of the page count. One of those issues was giving the villain several POVs that ruined the suspense and the tension because the reader became privy to their grand plan long before the protagonist and instead of having all our questions dying to be answered with the protagonist, we were waiting around for them to stop fooling around and figure it out already.

With that said, if you have a character of second importance to the protagonist whose perspective would benefit and enrich the story, consider giving them POVs to explore either when the protagonist couldn’t be present, or in contrast to the main narrator’s thoughts on the story and conflict.

I’ve never written anything without multiple POVs and still get carried away sometimes just trying to fill in all the missing time that didn’t add enough to the story to make it worth it. I have deleted POVs from ENNS that were better left up to audience interpretation then all laid out on the table.

This technique very much necessitates restraint, but giving your foil character, your deuteragonist, even your villain some narration “screen time” might help you beef up your word count and tell more than just one biased side of the same story. Fanfic tends to be very efficient with this because, again, one writer working for free tends to want to be efficient and not give pages upon pages of useless prose.

2. Side-quests and character studies

My all time favorite filler episode of any TV show is LOST’s “The Constant”. It focuses entirely on the side character Desmond. He’s an unwilling time-traveler and throughout season 4, struggles to control his temporal displacement and risks dying if he can’t find a “constant” to anchor him to the correct timeline.

This episode is often praised as one of, if not the show’s finest hour. Desmond spends most of the runtime flipping erratically between the past and the present as his romantic relationship spirals for other plot reasons. He ends up making his “constant” his fraught relationship and is able to revert to the past with knowledge of the future to get his then-ex girlfriend’s new phone number so he can call her at an exact date in the future to prove he won’t have given up on them. When Des finally makes that call 8 years later, it’s so emotional, so full of catharsis, so exciting to see him finally reach her after struggling since we met him.

And it has absolutely nothing to do with the plot at large, only Desmond’s arc. It explores some of the world’s lore but doesn’t answer any of the main plot questions or progress any other major character, and Des is the only time traveler so all the risk surrounding time travel is only for him. Critically, it still adheres to the themes of the show and fulfills much of the promises of this character’s role in it.

The show’s worst episode, “Stranger in a Strange Land,” is also filler about protagonist Jack’s tattoos. He makes a relationship with a woman nobody cares about and spends the entirety of the episode’s flashbacks, which is most of the episode’s runtime, dicking around in Thailand. With this quasi-wise woman’s tattoo techniques. Nobody cares what they mean, they didn’t connect with the themes of the show, didn’t tell us anything substantial about Jack or the world, lore, or story, and just felt like a massive waste of time.

If you’re going to write side quests, be more like “The Constant” and less like “Stranger in a Strange Land”. 

3. “Slice of Life” moments

A repeat of referencing this scene and this movie but I don’t care: “Doc Racing” from Cars is just one example. Adding in scenes like these won’t give you tens of thousands of words, but maybe you only need a couple hundred to feel satisfied.

Slice of life moments slow the pacing down, so place them wisely, and just let your characters be people in their world. Small things, human things. In Cars, it’s an old man letting himself enjoy life again when he thinks nobody’s watching. I have a scene in my sci-fi WIP series where two brothers, plagued by their family’s social status, take a drive and pick up greasy drive-thru food to park on a mountain overlook and just watch the city while licking salt off their fingers. I think Across the Spiderverse is about 20 minutes too long, but that scene of Miles and Gwen upside down on the roof before the plot ramps up is another quiet, human moment.

It could be a character who needs a break from the breakneck speed of the plot and the stress to listen to music, walk away from the project and enjoy the sun, anything. Do try to not get overly pretentious trying to make it super metaphorical and poetic, let the audience do it for you. These quiet scenes could end up being the audience’s favorite.

—

If you’re trying to make your book longer, don’t be like Bilbo Baggins, okay? Don’t let your characters be spread thin, like butter scraped over too much bread. Add, don’t stretch. If the romance is on track to come together sooner, let it, or figure out a more meaningful way to delay it than throwing in a dumb argument that won’t mean anything in 20 pages anyway.

This wasn’t an exhaustive list, just what I think could be the most effective with the widest applications across genres.

[eerna]

Oh that ask you answered about how you would rewrite Callum and rayla's relationship in the show without changing major major details was really interesting and you liked of hooked me with the idea of trying to keep your rewrite within canon realm.

So I wanna ask what would your rewrite be for tdp in general outside of canon realm and do you ever plan on making a fic on it?

Ayy I'm glad, thanks~ I am totally up for some outside-of-canon idea throwing, sounds fun! However, keep in mind I am not saying my vision is what the show should have been like. I am not a professional writer. I can only give some ideas for how to fix the stuff I didn’t like and what would make the story engaging for me personally. And no, I would never write a fanfic based on this. I already have an unpublished 40k+ word TDP fanfic I can't complete because I lost my passion for the series, so going on an epic fantasy writing bender is definitely not in the cards for me. If any of my ideas sparkle anyone's fix-it wires, I give them my blessing to go forth and write it instead of me :) 

You asked for outside canon, but we gotta establish some rules first, because if I turned TDP into a story I PERSONALLY wanna tell, it wouldn’t resemble it at all, so we gotta keep it at least a little canon-consistent. In addition to that, this series’ refusal to disclose important worldbuilding info within the main storyline means my knowledge of its lore has enormous gaps shaped like tabletop guides and video game dialogue screens. I will rely on the wiki for this to the best of my abilities and if most of the lore is totally dropped, don’t blame me. In this rewrite I will establish THEMES, WORLDBUILDING, and CHARACTERS, and then even a bit of the PLOT. I will do my best to adhere to the existing themes and the worldbuilding. I’ll only use the characters already created for the show (while giving them a few new characteristics) and the plot will be only hinted at because dear lord I can’t map out 7 seasons of a TV show in a tumblr post. I am also gonna stay in the Y7 rating range because eff you people who think kids can’t handle interesting stories. There’s gonna be lots of ATLA comparisons because this show insists on trying to be ATLA and I can’t ignore that. Continuing under read more because this got LONG (I had to stop myself almost 8k words in. Someone save me). 

THEMES

TDP is trying to do way too much when it comes to themes - it wants to be complex and nuanced, but it doesn’t walk the walk. ATLA did it best, they kept it simple, but added a hint of complexity. We will do the opposite: we are concentrating on ONE big, nuanced concept that we will be writing around, and peppering in the other stuff as character garnish. The one big theme we will be concentrating on is THERE IS NO TRULY GOOD GUYS IN A WAR. We will be sacrificing the “How do we forgive and forget after the war?” theme because it would require starting the show after the war is officially done, as it is far too large of a concept to be used as a second-act theme (also, I was born first generation after a war, and my answer to that question is not the correct tone for an epic fantasy quest). Instead, we will make it a smaller scale character garnish of “how does this character put aside their hurt and work with the people who have hurt them?”. 

Secondary themes will be: You have to keep your mind open and learn from everyone you meet. Our planet deserves to be treated with respect. Everyone has a place in this world. Love can make people do vile things. Nature VS nurture. Divine right VS meritocracy. Plus other Truths that will be discussed in the following sections.

WORLDBUILDING

Again, ATLA made a very simple system of four (or three) different countries and then went ham with it. We can’t do that because I am not redoing the entire universe, but let’s try making it less overcomplicated while keeping the map sort of the same. The two nations at war are Xadia (as seen in the show) and the Neolandian Empire (includes all the human kingdoms). The areas are generally the same as they are in the currently available lore of the series, unless stated otherwise.

Magic

First, we gotta establish the magic system. The whole arcanum setup can stay the same. The world is made up of six primal sources: the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, the Earth, the Sky, and the Ocean. A deep connection to one of the primal sources is called the arcanum, and an arcanum means you understand what this primal source brings to the world, and the Ultimate Truth behind it. Once you understand this Truth, you can use the spells (in draconic language) connected to it to manipulate the world around you acting in accordance to this Truth, and this makes you a mage of primal magic. So it isn’t just controlling the elements, the Truths are applicable to a wide range of situations (for example, if you break a plate, you can put it back together by connecting to the Earth arcanum which understands that all things that are now broken used to be of one body and spell it back together). Creatures born to one of the primal sources understand this truth perfectly from the get-go, but they still have to learn the draconic incantations to effectively use spells, which is why not every primal source creature is also a mage. The more difficult the spell, the deeper your understanding must be - the most powerful mages live solely according to their arcanum’s Truth. But since the Truths can be contradictory or uncomfortable to tie to each other, the deeper you are connected to your Truth, the less chances you have of understanding other Truths. Creatures born to one of the primal sources don’t have the ability to fully commit to any other primal source - they can get it in theory, but can’t tap into its magic naturally. They all live in harmony with one another, balancing the world and its inhabitants. But there is one creature in the world born without a connection to any one primal source, but with the cognitive abilities to learn to understand them. That’s right, ALL humans have the potential to understand multiple arcanums, and are only limited by their philosophical abilities. This means our magic system is based on philosophical thought. Magical creatures are naturally predisposed to it, but it limits them, and are the equivalent to people who limit their worldview only to their personal lived experiences. Humans have the potential to gain limitless knowledge, but the difficulty of that path and the disadvantage with which they start out often discourages them from even trying. Magical creatures tend to view humans as inferior because they perceive them as incapable of living the same blessed balance as they do. They see their potential to learn multiple types of magic as a transgression against the ways of the world, and have outlawed any magic done by humans. This means humans were completely dependent on magical creatures for things such as shelter, physical defense, food, et cetera. And if you repeat to someone enough times that they are a parasite on the world and have no right to live in harmony with it, they are going to try and live as separate as possible in their own way.

And here we reach the dark magic. Dark magic can perform the same spells as primal magic - and yes, every single dark magic spell has its primal equivalent. They are simply different means of getting to the same end. However, dark magic skips the “needs a connection to the arcanum” part, and instead consumes the amount of primal magic energy proportional to whatever you need to do. To fix a broken plate with dark magic you need to say the spell, and provide the appropriate amount of primal Earth magic, through a plant or a creature connected to the Earth arcanum. Primal magic is lots of spellbooks, conversations and philosophy. Dark magic is necromancy, recipes, potions, way more scienc-y, as it requires a lot of experimentation and trial and error to determine how much magic needs to get used in spells to achieve the desired effect. Primal magic is borrowing, manipulating, and returning the magic around you to reach the desired effect. Dark magic is taking the magic and consuming it to reach the desired effect. Once you spend all the magic in one area, it takes centuries for it to get replenished again. The only effect it has on the user’s physical appearance is the black eyes for the duration of the spell, but none of that “gray white corpse” look (it looks cool but is way too on the nose). Dark magic use is strictly regulated and its secret closely guarded to ensure it is used only “in service of the Empire”. The humans use magical items in their everyday lives, which the show should showcase - we need to understand how much these people rely on the magic. I am trying to format it as the equivalent of plastic in our world, if you can’t tell - something helpful that’s not bad in small doses, but once you base your system on it, it totally ruins everything. 

History and geography

Xadia was once one land where humans and magical creatures lived together. The archdragons were never rulers - they were revered as gods by Xadians, seen as the embodiment of the primal sources on earth, but they stayed in their heavenly abodes, perfectly in-tune with their arcanums, above all squabbles of mortals. There were no countries, the nations organized in settlements according to their arcanum, but that doesn’t mean there were no conflicts. The primal tribes understood they had to live in harmony to keep the world balanced, but their opposing beliefs kept them at each other’s throats if they got too close to each other, so they all preferred to stay separated into societies that functioned according to the Truth of their primal source. Humans had no tool to deal with the dangers of survival in the dangerous magical wilds, so they too lived in these societies, protected by the primal magicians, but also seen as lesser beings in a magic-oriented world. Deviation from the laws and beliefs of society, including humans doing magic, was seen as a danger to the balance of the world, and some humans preferred to leave and start their own settlements. The settlements were small and fell quickly, but the largest of these was Eboreus, all the way to the inhospitable desert in the northwest of the continent, where dark magic was discovered. Empowered by this new power source, it grew into a kingdom named Neolandia, a safe haven where the humans despised by the magical creatures could find refuge. The dark magic ensured humans held resources for their own survival for the first time, and as their numbers grew, they needed more and more access to magical resources once they spent the ones already in their possession. At first expansion was easy, since the area was all wilderness, and Neolandia grew in strength. By the time they spread to the first Xadian settlement, they were powerful enough to take it on in battle once negotiations fell through, and thus the big war started. The territory ruled by humans split into kingdoms to make it easier to govern. The expansion was stalled over the past 500 years because their numbers stopped increasing, and also because the forces reached the Breach, the mountain range separating the continent in half, which is almost completely devoid of magical properties (aside from the Xadians guarding it). Conquering it would take a long time and a lot of resources that couldn’t be replenished until it is completely passed, so the Empire has to change its war tactics. Katolis, the youngest of the kingdoms, partially resides in the Breach and marks the frontier of the war. Katolians are soldiers, their culture devoted to defending and expanding the Empire. A year ago the king of Katolis and his High Mage did the unthinkable - they snuck into Xadia and slayed Avizandum, the sky archdragon who resided in the Breach. This sent the continent into an uproar, Neolandians empowered as god killers, Xadians angered at the defilement of their most sacred beliefs. Both await what magnificent magic will be unleashed upon the world now that Katolis has such a powerful resource in its hands.

MAIN CHARACTERS

Callum. The fourteen-year-old adopted son of Harrow, the king of Katolis, he doesn’t fit his country’s warrior ideals and feels rejected by both the society and his family. His mother, a Katolian general who famously perished in service of the Empire, married the king when Callum was very young. He is no good at fighting and is scared of war, so he prefers to spend his days hidden alone in some nook, reading poetry and drawing. He has an interest in magic from a lore standpoint, he doesn’t want to try it himself because it’s not something you just dabble in: if you decide to become a dark mage, you stay a dark mage until death. He is kind-hearted and emotionally mature, his mind open to any and all ideas, but this also makes him anxious and insecure - if anything is possible, the world feels unstable. Callum is going to be our protagonist, who we accompany as he learns lessons about the world and himself.

Ezran. We are rewriting the heck outta this little dude. He was supposed to begin his education as the crown prince of Katolis this spring, as he has just turned 10, but for some reason his father delayed it. Ez is very glad for this, as he quite enjoys being a carefree little kid with no responsibilities. He is everything Callum isn’t - social, silly, optimistic, and energetic. He loves the entire world and tells stories of the most basic things with the wonder of a fairy tale. This means that when he tells people he can talk to animals, they smile at him indulgently and marvel at the prince’s creativity. Ezran as a character is supposed to embody a child’s lack of awareness when it comes to differences between people - he sees everyone as his friend, and believes everyone is the same. The Earth arcanum follows the same principle, and here is where his ability to speak to animals stems from, even if he is totally unaware that he is doing magic. He is the kid in the zombie apocalypse - you don’t want him to be corrupted because he symbolizes the potential of future generations. However, at no point are we making him a monologuing mouthpiece or the best king who ever lived, since his story is in his potential to grow, and not his perfection as he is. I am writing Bait out because I honestly hate his role as an useless damsel in distress, and the role of the animal companion is already filled by the title character, and it’s not like I can write HIM out.

Harrow. The king of Katolis is meant to be Ezran 30 years into the future, an optimist who forgot how to believe in a better world because he was pressured to grow into the role expected of him. His wife, general Sarai, and his High Mage, Viren, supported (read: pressured lovingly) him and made him into the brave, fierce king he is today. A year ago he led a bold invasion into Xadia which was meant to turn the tides of the war - the plan was to kill Avizandum and harvest his body for magic for years to come, even subduing the Breach along the way. However, once the archdragon was slain, his body dissolved before it could be transported back to Katolis. Viren predicted the reason - archdragons were manifestation of primal sources on earth, so when all that magical energy was released from its physical form, it must have reformed somewhere. The answer awaited them in Avizandum’s nest, the Stormspire (now located within the Breach) - an egg of a newly reincarnated sky archdragon. Harrow and Viren took the egg and hid it from the world, buying time until Viren figures out what to do next. However, this close encounter with a god left Harrow’s faith in his life’s path shaken. Who is he to meddle in affairs he can’t even comprehend, such as the laws of the universe? Could it be that the survival of his people doesn’t have to be achieved by destroying the existing world? Did he choose wrong all those years ago? Looking at his small son, he can’t force himself to force the same choice upon him, not yet, so now Harrow is stuck in a limbo of his own feelings and re-examining his entire life with no one to confide in. 

Viren. I am totally stealing from The Kyoshi duology for his villain type, and I am not sorry. Viren is the High Mage of Katolis, the king’s closest advisor. He and Harrow have been the closest of friends since their youth, despite their wildly different origins. He was the son of an Evenere farmer family, and he got sent to a Katolian military academy, where he met young Harrow who had just begun his own education. The boys became fast friends, but soon Viren was recognized for his intelligence, work ethic, and high potential for dark magic. Dark magic is usually taught generationally within selected families which makes the study very elitist, but his drive and ambition led him to excel, so that by the time they finished education, Harrow took him back to his castle where he could become the High Mage’s apprentice. From the very beginning the drive behind Viren’s ambition was the knowledge that he is all that’s standing between those he loves and utter ruin - first it was the financial difficulties his family faced that were mitigated by his high paying position, and now it is the responsibilities of one of the most important men in the country. As mentioned before, Harrow faced many difficulties adjusting to the role expected from him as a king, and Viren saw himself as his compass, the one making the hard decisions that save the world until the king becomes strong enough to make them himself. And for a while, it seemed it worked and Harrow became the ruler that could defend humanity from Xadia, but ever since their return home Harrow has been growing more and more distant from Viren. For the past year Viren has been trying to figure out how best to harvest the archdragon egg. He knows he only has one chance to use its energy, because if he kills it, it will just respawn back at the Stormspire, and since Xadian forces have now been alerted and concentrated in that area, he won’t be able to get it back again. Dark magic relies on experiments, and he doesn’t have the right to experimentation. The dragon was supposed to power the Empire with magic for years, but now it turns out they get one single spell out of him. He knows that if word gets out, all of Xadia will descend upon Katolis, so he doesn’t even dare share his discovery with other High Mages. He’s been slowly breaking under the pressure, and the only other person who knows about the situation, Harrow, is of no help. Lately, he has even started saying their way of life is wrong, and they should have never stolen the egg. His strength is faltering. Viren is used to doing whatever is needed to save those he loves, but what happens when those loved ones are the ones preventing him from saving them? Harrow is a possible Ezran future, and Viren is a possible Callum future, a man who had to carve a place in the world for himself, who felt powerless until he discovered something that made him more powerful than anyone else, whose sense of right and wrong is so strong it might even overpower his love for his brother. 

Claudia and Soren. Soren is the himbo disappointment son, he inherited none of Viren’s intelligence, or magical talent. He is ambitious and a fantastic swordsman, a true Katolian, so he recently managed to score the position of the captain of the king’s guard at only 18 years old (his dad’s only comment was “Excellent, now you can report all of the king’s everyday life to me”). Claudia, on the other hand, is a magical prodigy - at only 16 years old she has almost reached the same level of skill as her father, which is something Viren is immensely proud of. However, Claudia is very chaotic and doesn’t take this entire “We’re the only thing standing between the Empire and total ruin” thing seriously, and likes to spend her days doing normal teen girl things such as inventing new potions and befriending the princes. Soren desperately wants his dad’s approval and is doing his best to get it at any price, making him a parallel to Harrow. Claudia doesn’t worry about what her dad or anyone else thinks, but she fully believes in “no price is too high to save someone you love”, making her a parallel to Viren. The siblings grew up with the princes, but Soren stays away from them (out of envy) while Claudia is friends with them. She taught little Ez the spell for speaking to animals when they were both kids, but she doesn’t know he still uses it on a daily basis in a totally non-dark way. She is the reason Callum knows as much as he does about magic, since she sees him as a cute little friend she can infodump to (as long as she doesn’t lay out the details of the ingredients needed for the spells, it doesn’t count as revealing big secrets of the dark arts. After all, what could a human boy do with draconic words??). He is of course massively crushing on her and remembering every word she’d ever uttered. 

Rayla. Our sole elven main character. The murder of Avizandum prompted Xadians to band together in a more organized manner than has ever been seen in history and retaliate against Neolandia with united forces. After a year of preparation, the first wave of attack is ready. The Moonshadow Assassins will send a pair of lethal killers to each of the five kingdoms, one to kill the ruler, the other to kill the heir, causing civil unrest and sowing fear. Rayla, the youngest of the band at 15, was sent to Katolis with the leader of the group and her adopted father, Runaan. She is everything that is expected of a Moonshadow Elf: a ruthless, fearless fighter bound by honor to serve her tribe. There is nothing more sacred to her than fulfilling the mission given to her by her elders. Any doubt or weakness is to be stamped out quickly and without a single thought. This mission marks the end of her initiation into her tribe - once she kills crown prince Ezran she will be considered a fully fledged member of the Moonshadow Assassins. Her character role is to serve as an opposite weight to every other child character, where she has already chosen her path and created a much more mature space for herself as a kid should have. She needs to learn that vulnerability is needed to live a fulfilling life, and showcase the effects of the golden child syndrome. In this, she is the foil to Callum.

Aaravos

He is gonna be the ultimate Big Bad, the god our characters deal with in the final decisive battle after all the smaller villains are done. The star arcanum doesn’t have much in canon lore as it’s meant to be a mystery, so I am about to invent a whole lot of crap. In this story it deals with the Truth of eternity, the existence of the universe as something so vast and limitless no mortal mind could ever comprehend it, and thus a “startouched mage” is an oxymoron. It also differs from other arcanums in that it’s not one single whole, but many separated ones that make up one bigger whole. Each star is a world upon itself. As mentioned, it is incomprehensible to everyone in Xadia - it is a rare thing to see a creature who comprehends even the basics of the star arcanum (which would be “I know I am less worthy than a speck of dust when compared to the infinity of the universe” - I don’t think many useful spells exist in that vein), and no elves exist of this race that are born to the knowledge. In that vein, instead of having only one archdragon, the star arcanum has as many as there are stars in the universe, and Aaravos is one of them. As opposed to the other archdragons, his interpretation of his arcanum makes him interested in mortal affairs. Sadly, this twisted interpretation also means he has interest in world domination, as he sees himself as the only creature capable of comprehending the ways of the universe, and thus that makes him the most logical choice for the emperor of the planet. As a character his role is to represent overstepping boundaries, the sin of pride, what happens when one has no limits - so the same flaw present in a lot of rulers, explorers, and desperate people, and it just so happens our main cast is filled with those. He is limited by not having a physical manifestation that can walk the earth, though, so he has to build one for himself. He infects mortal minds through star arcanum. There are no mages who are dedicated solely to star magic - the world is already filled with more secrets than one could fit in a lifetime, so why waste time searching the stars to an even more futile effect? Still, those who manage to figure out at least a little bit of the arcanum leave their minds open and vulnerable to Aaravos’ influence. He is NOT some puppetmaster who is to blame for every single bad thing that ever happened in history, though. In most cases his hosts are driven insane because they can’t comprehend the spells he is trying to teach them, so he has been searching for a suitable host for a long, long time. As there are no elves tied to this arcanum, this leaves humans as the only ones who can interact with it, be it through primal magic… or dark magic. Let me remind you, in this rewrite every primal spell has a dark equivalent, but where primal spells are fueled by mind’s ability to comprehend philosophical concepts, dark magic needs only a source of magic connected to the primal source tied to the spell. This is Aaravos’ connection to dark magic - he sees it as a possibility he’d never had before, a medium through which his hosts will no longer be driven insane before managing to build him a body. 

THE PLOT

I think the seven season, three-act structure first presented by the writers (before it went off the rails) was good, so I will stick to it! Each season will be dedicated to one of the types of magic (so 6 primal sources + dark) that teach the characters relevant lessons, be it positive or negative. However, I am switching it from a fully overarching single story to the ATLA-like episodic that builds up to a big story, simply because that is a much better format for TV in my opinion. I am gonna lay out only the basics here. You know the drill, they travel around the world and do side quests and help lots of nice people who help them in return. The fact that they are carrying around a god makes Xadians more willing to trust them, and the fact that they are missing Katolian princes makes humans feel the same. Also I am not calling the seasons “books” because this isn’t ATLA.

ARC 1 - lasts ~3 months

Season 1: Dark

Starting off with dark magic because this would be the kind most of our characters have lived their life knowing. The thesis of dark magic is “by any means necessary”. 

GENERAL OVERVIEW: The king of Katolis is assassinated by the Moonshadow Assassins in retaliation for the killing of Avizandum, the sky archdragon. The two Katolian princes and one of the assassins discover that the archdragon had been reborn as an egg, which the High Mage aims to kill once and for all. Knowing that the assassination is only the opening act of a horrifying war that could end both their countries, they steal the egg and escape the kingdom, planning on returning it to Xadians as proof that the damage Katolis has done isn’t irreversible. They reach the Stormspire, but the guardians there are unwilling to credit humans for the return of the egg, so the trio decides to keep going and find someone who shares their views.

CALLUM: He starts the season out unsure of his position within his family and his country, feeling like a reject from both. His father tells him “I used to think I would do anything to protect my kingdom, but I am not so sure that would be the right thing anymore”, which prompts Callum to think about his own position on the subject. He discovers he possesses the ability to perform dark magic. By the end of the season he concludes his little brother is what is most precious to him, and realizes that his country and empire were wrong in their approach to the Xadian issue. He swears not to do dark magic again.

RAYLA: She starts out as cold, focused and effective as possible, but the discovery of the egg and Ezran turning out to be a smart, optimistic little boy who feels no hatred towards her and could grow into a decent king makes her change her mind on the topic of bringing absolute war to the world. This enrages Runaan, who attempts to kill her for betraying her tribe. She manages to escape badly shaken by the experience, but she rationalizes it as “I am doing this for them, they will understand one day and be thankful for what I’ve done”. Her left hand is bound by a magic ribbon as a symbol of her oath, and every day that Ezran lives, the ribbon gets tighter until her hand will be severed. This too is, to her, proof of the sacrifice she is making for her people.

EZRAN: He is the only one capable of communicating with the infant dragon inside the egg, thanks to his ability to speak with any and all creatures in the world. This makes him feel responsible for something for the first time, as Callum and Rayla would have no other way to figure out if the dragon is doing ok. Other than that, his role is to be cute and optimistic while the teens are being emo.

VIREN: Viren could have saved Harrow’s life when Runaan got to him, but chose not to as the past year made him fear Harrow could no longer be a good ruler. He is well respected throughout the Neolandian Empire and has many resources, but he can’t trust them because the egg might be discovered and he might be declared a traitor. And so he sends Soren and Claudia after the princes, but gives them different jobs: he confides about the egg’s existence to Claudia, knowing he can trust her curiosity regarding magic and informs her to bring it back at any cost, while he tells Soren to kill the princes, banking on Soren’s obedience and the ability to do what is needed. In the meantime, he himself starts organizing defense against Xadia and buying time for the siblings to return. That’s his plot for the entirety of arc 1, he travels around the human kingdoms hanging out with people who respect him and grows more and more paranoid.

Season 2: Moon

The theme of the season is “Reality isn’t the only truth; you can only truly know the appearance itself, and you can never touch the so-called reality that lies beyond the reach of your own perception”.

GENERAL OVERVIEW: The first stop for the trio is the only crossing into Xadia, currently occupied by General Amaya, the boys’ aunt. The boys try to recruit her to help them, but she is unwilling to let her nephews risk their lives so they have to escape her too. The finale happens in Rayla’s home village, the assassin’s hideout Silvergrove, where she discovers she has been excommunicated and won’t get any help. They tell her it doesn’t matter that the dragon has been reincarnated, this battle has been a long time coming and there’s nothing that can stop it now.

CALLUM: After the disappointment of giving up on dark magic and being unable to trust even his own family, the discovery of his connection to the arcanum gives him a new sense of purpose. I feel like this arcanum is the best intro into mastering the rest because it involves keeping your mind open to possibilities and the knowledge that you do not yet know all there is to know, so that is his arc to learn this season. Rayla helps him understand it through her own arc, and he manages his first Moon arcanum spell in the season finale. 

RAYLA: She bonds with Callum because he is open and keeps trying to get her to open up. She still has her binding on when she meets Ethari, and he sees it as a mark of shame instead of what she has been convincing herself it is. She learns that Silverglove will never accept her back or understand why she has betrayed her mission, but that she has to stay true to her convictions. 

EZRAN: Having seen his aunt turn against him and the way Xadians fear Katolis, little boy needs to deal with the knowledge that his dad was a good dad, but a bad king. Just because he knew him as a gentle, happy man, it doesn’t mean that was the full truth of it. He resolves to be a good king one day in his stead.

CLAUDIA AND SOREN: Let them meet Terry here. Terry is an Earthbood elf who has done the unthinkable - he severed himself from his own arcanum, and has left his tribe behind. He offers to help the siblings after they save his life. 

Season 3: Sun

Theme of the season: “A thing can be warm and nurturing, but given the right situations, also destructive and cruel”.

GENERAL OVERVIEW: Next major stop for the trio is a community in the Sun territory where humans and elves secretly live together, and the humans practice primal magic. This is the season Soren and Claudia catch up to the trio, and this is where they find them. The season finale is Soren and Claudia’s troops VS the trio and the human/elf community. The trio wins and the siblings retreat. The egg is damaged in the process and has to be hatched. Welcome to the world baby Zym!

CALLUM: The only thing better than discovering he can do primal Moon magic is discovering he could also potentially do other types of magic as well. In his thriving era, slightly interrupted when Rayla confesses to him that she likes him and makes things awkward for an episode or so. They deal with it with care and love. Then Claudia and Soren show up and he has to defeat his friend to protect his mission, and this is what leads him to understand the Sun arcanum. All the good things he’d admired about Claudia are also destructive because she doesn’t know when to stop.

RAYLA: She has to learn how to deal with being untethered and unlimited by the rigid expectations of her society for the first time in her life. The rules of her upbringing, which once made her feel accomplished and safe, also left her scared to make her own decisions in fear of making the wrong choice. She needs to forgive her destructive, cruel side and find the warm, nurturing one, and no longer base her self worth on her family’s expectations.

CLAUDIA AND SOREN: Claudia refuses to learn the theme of the season and instead goes the other direction: “nothing done out of love can be wrong”. From her POV, the human mages of Xadia are delusional and sitting ducks, and would be better off joining Neolandia. She is heartbroken when Callum chooses them over her and his home, and declares him a traitor. She leads a small-scale attack against the village hiding the trio in one last attempt to get the princes and the egg.  I love the canon s2 plotline with her and Soren, so I wanna fit it in her, Soren gets very hurt in this battle, Claudia has to retreat to heal him, and the siblings switch places. Now Soren is the one no longer willing to follow orders, while Claudia finally develops the drive needed of a High Mage. 

VIREN: The guilt and fear of discovery (over letting Harrow die, but also the egg scheme they kept from the rest of Neolandia) drive his actions to become more and more erratic. The confident guy we’ve known since s1 is now running on fumes. At some point he IS discovered, but manages to defeat the person who knows it before word gets out. In his prideful desperation, he manages to establish connection with Aaravos for the first time.

ARC 2 - lasts ~3 months

Season 4: Sky

The theme of the season is “You are one with the world, air is all around you, but also inside you”. 

Timeskip so Claudia and Soren can make their way back to Katolis, the community ravaged in s3 can get rebuilt, and the trio can recuperate. Maybe 2-ish months? It’s been almost half a year since phase 1 of the Xadian counter-offensive has been released, and it’s time for phase 2.  

GENERAL OVERVIEW: The trio decide their best bet to prevent phase 2 of the Xadian counter-offensive, the full-scale attack on Duren (where the Empire gets most of its food reserves) would be to go tour the north showing off baby Zym and his connection to Ez, the next king of Katolis. The queen of Duren, Aanya, is a young girl only a couple of years older than Ez with a reputation for sympathizing with Xadians, and might be more willing to listen to them than the Katolians. Now that little baby god Zym is out of the egg and they can prove he likes and trusts them, Xadians should be more willing to listen, too. The point of the season is developing the trio’s will to fix the world. Meanwhile, Claudia and Soren (plus Terry) rejoin their dad and have their arc of “Soren wants out, Claudia is digging her feet deeper and deeper into the ground”. Terry knows about the second wave of attack for some reason and they all decide to go to Duren. 

Season 5: Earth

The theme of the season is free real estate because the wiki says there is no arcanum data for Earth yet. I am giving them the “already dead” thing. See, the mountains and the earth are stalwart and unchanging, the same as they ever were. Why worry about paths well established, your life is the same as another’s, it begins and ends the same way. This can also be interpreted as stubbornness, but mainly it is the arcanum used for mending and healing, as it deals with returning to true form. “To know yourself is to be unshakeable, we are all made of one.” 

GENERAL OVERVIEW: The “hits the fan” season. Rayllum gets together. Aaravos is invested in helping the Empire succeed because he needs his dark magic worker bees. Soren betrays his family’s secrets and helps the heroes before he dies, sending Viren and Claudia into hiding. At some point Callum used dark magic again out of desperation, and it was a star adjacent spell. However, Duren still falls, and it’s both side’s fault. Turns out that the kids really can’t do anything unless they have some kind of a power, and they are now willing to take it. With Aanya’s support Rayla and Callum decide to return to Katolis, which has taken the opportunity to sever itself from the Empire now that there are no easy ways to access it by land, and try to bring some order to the country and prepare it for Ez’ rule. Ez and Zym escape into hiding in Xadia with Terry’s help (he realizes that maybe seeing the world burn would NOT help him feel better), as it is obviously far too dangerous to keep them in the public eye right now, since that was the reason Duren fell in the end. Aaravos’ existence is now known to everyone. Sad sad sad. 

ARC 3

Season 6: Ocean

2 year timeskip. The theme of the season is “One is not in control, there are parts of yourself that you cannot understand, there are things that cannot be controlled, you cannot control everything, no matter how hard you try.” 

GENERAL OVERVIEW: The war has stalled for the moment, as the spectacular failure at Duren rearranged the map and introduced Aaravos’ existence into the world, so the game has changed now that both sides share an opponent and it is a god. Ez and Zym feat. Terry are on a quest to figure out wtf is an Aaravos from the Xadian side of the border, as they are probably the only incorruptible team in the game. Callum, now the High Mage of Katolis, is still guilt-ridden over how Duren slipped from him, and how easy it was to return back to dark magic. Rayla is dealing with trying to help a country that obviously doesn’t look too kindly to her existence. Viren finally reaches Harrow’s s1 arc and realizes this whole thing has gone too far, but Claudia keeps marching on, and he is determined not to lose his second child as well, so he stays by her side. The season is dedicated to Callum and Claudia both dealing with similar vulnerability to Aaravos and the story could really go either way, but ultimately, Callum learns to deal with it by letting go of control, while Viren kicks the bucket and sends Claudia straight into Aaravos’ waiting arms. He has a physical body and is ready to party.

Season 7: Stars

The theme of the season is once again free real estate, this time because the characters don’t have the ability to comprehend the arcanum of the season and have to make up their own, and it’s “You are insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and that is okay. Better to focus on doing your best regarding your own life and be happy than to perish in delusions of grandeur”.

GENERAL OVERVIEW: The Final Season. It’s Neolandia and Xadia being forced to unite against the same foe. No one side will ever get to claim to have won the war that was going on for thousands of years, and that’s great. The ban against human mages has to be lifted, the ban on dark magic has to be established. Those who couldn’t put their pride aside perished in Big Pride’s AKA Aaaravos’ party zone. I am intentionally avoiding writing character arc endings because I am trying not to reach 8k words on this thing, but you know enough by now to be able to tell what happens next. The divine right of kings is bullshit, we are all just regular people, and the divine is too smart to worry about our little lives.

And they all lived happily ever after~

[junkanimate]

EHY I'VE BEEN READING A LOT OF FANFICTIONS LATELY

I know, who would have guess?? Anyway I wanted to send some appreciation all around to some of the fanfics I've read, because writers need some more appreciation in general.

so, in no particular order:

✨Here's a list of fanfics I've read/I'm reading that I think they're pretty good✨

Solid Stone Turns To Clay by @randyzorra - MK fic

A solid Johnshi fic set in a pirate au, I'm absolutely obsessed with it. It's a beautiful slow burn, where Johnny is a disgraced bounty hunter who's trying to regain his fame by stealing The Shadow, legendary cursed ship. Ship that so happens to have a certain someone as her captain. Honestly not only I love the romance, but also the friendship between Johnny and Kung Lao and Johnny and Baraka.

Beware that this fic is tagged as explicit, so check the tags carefully

Back There by houndhead - MK fic

Ehy, have you ever thought that Raiden wasn't there when the others went to Outworld to find Shang Tsung? Yeah what if they never told him what happened back there because of good ol' classic trauma? I'm in love with this concept and houndhead explores it in a very interesting way, showing us how each character would act after experiencing what happened at the lab. I also really love how the characters interact with each other, in the last chapter Tanya and Tomas are just perfect.

Raise The Blade (Make The Change) by cherrycola94 - MK fic

A very fun Johnshi fic that's written a little bit like a script, it has some added scene set before the game, some exploration of the canon through a Johnshi lense, ad finally it continues as a post canon, with a very fun story. While I was reading it I could see in my head the scene perfectly, like it was actually a movie. The second chapter has an AMAZING SCENE, like I was so in love that I have a wip of that scene. I should come back and finish it honestly. The new chapter had exactly the kind of scene I was craving for recently, I'm so happy they wrote it!

But I lowered my sword when you held me and swore (you'd stay, stay, stay) by @necromanticzz - MK fic

It's a johnshi fic with a Kenshi pov, where Kenshi has so many walls up doesn't want any help but Johnny just seems to be able to go through them without any problems. Honestly I also advice the other fic necromanticzz wrote about them, the way Kenshi gets chracterized in both of them is just *chef's kiss* perfect, beautiful, amazing. The two fics are just my favourite in the way Kenshi is written, applause all around, love it.

Koffee Shop Kombat by @loujitsushotsoup - MK fic

Because a classic coffee shop au is always needed. We have multiple ships, different writing styles between chaptes, changing with which character's pov we are following, and I love the creativity that was put in it. You maybe saw this post where I drew one of the scenes in this fic, so YOU KNOW that I mean it when i say that I love this fic. And I'm a big sucker for coffee shops as a setting, really love them in real life as well.

Cole's Chilli Recipe by @before-time-had-a-name - Ninjago fic

Another fic where I drew one of the scenes and it's because it deserves it. It's a lostshipping fic, very sweet, very cozy, honestly Cole and Geo make me incredibly emotional everytime and this fic also straight up picked me up and squashed me. I saw in some of the reblogs on my post that people went to check out the fic and I'm so happy about it because they deserve his work to be checked out. And honestly if I can give her more spotlight I will take the chance. Go check out this fic, it's very cool.

Here Comes Casey Jones by Invader_Sam - TMNT MM fic

Very sweet rasey fic that takes place post movie, with the turtles going to highschool and Raph meeting for the first time Casey Jones. What can I say? I just really love Rasey, and I love they're both clearly crushing on each other but they're not really saying it. And the fact that there's no unecessary teenage angst, they just really like each other, and I love that for them ❤

Think Of It As War Paint by less_depresso_more_espresso - TMNT 2012 fic

Another Rasey one, short and sweet, where both of them honestly are giving so much gender in my humble opinion. It's hard to explaning it without just saying all the fic, so we could say it's about them just chilling on a roof.

A Garden Across Our Collarbone by PittedPeaches - LMK fic

I think everyone and their mom already know this fic, and if you don't it would be my honor to talk to you about it. This for me is THE spicynoodle fic, it was one year of my life and honestly at the end of it I cried. This is a soulmate au, where demons sometimes have soulmates, and when that happen it's like they share skin, so they can write stuff on their body and it will appeared on the skin of their soulmate. It mostly starts like a rewriting of seson 1-2-3 by Red son's pov with this new dynamic, and then it becomes a new original timeline. The way this fic is everything to me, every chapter was an incredible experience, I fell in love with this fic at every chapter. So many beautiful scenes, written so beautifully, as I said this fic was 1 YEAR of my life. It was also a very difficult year, and I'm honestly so happy that this fic was there for that time of my life.

Desde el Principio by ShippingMyWorld - Nicktoons United fic

Okay idk If you saw me reblogging a bunch of Nicktoons fanart like two days ago, but just so you know I'm totally going into the rabbit hole of this fandom and I will be lost for a while. Now, this is a Danny Fenton/Manny Rivera fic, the tag has only two fics and both of them are from this writer.

I wish I had this commitment in my life, to just being THE ONLY one creating a specific content for something and still having the motivation of doing it

I read this fic last night, I finished it at 5 a.m. and I do not regret it at all, this was amazing

I actually recommend reading both fics because they are very good, I'm giving a shout out to this one because I think it's the one that made the biggest impact to me personally. ShippingMyWorld you did it, you converted me, I ship this now.

And that's the list, thank you so much to every fanfic writers that give us such amazing art everyday, you're the backbone of fandom!

[sunnysaystuff]

My stance on the Jegulus-Jily-"All Death Eaters suck because canon says so" dispute (or whatever):

TLDR AT THE BOTTOM!!!!!!!!!!!

After receiving MULTIPLE hate asks (wtf I'm literally nobody why do you care so much) guess I have to put this out here!!

first up - stuff I think is important:

Wolfstar isn't canon and it's the backbone of the fandom, so why do we suddenly decide canon is the shit when people write Jegulus/Jegulily fics? "James would've never liked a Death Eater" fanfiction means you can make stuff up, regardless of what canon James would've liked or wanted.

"Canon-compliant Jegulus fics don't make sense" did James explicitly tell you to your face that he would never date Regulus :0 canon-compliant is a very loose term. a lot of the time it just means that canonical deaths and plot-related events occurred, moreso than relationship-related events.

Jegulus haters often say that Jegulus fans constantly villainize Lily, but the fact of the matter is that they don't. You see more Jily fans villainizing Regulus for originally being a Death Eater than you see Jegulus fans villainizing Lily. "Regulus deserves the villainization and Lily hasn't done anything wrong" - reminder that you can hate on canon Regulus all you want (despite the fact that he eventually changed) but you should know that fanfiction might present him differently. Random fanfic Regulus is not the canon Regulus you despise.

Jegulus fans who despise Snape for his actions in canon aren't being very fair. He joined the Death Eaters and then he ended up working against the Dark Lord, just as Regulus did. Yes, he spent years bullying Harry, but do you honestly think Regulus wouldn't have behaved similarly if he had been in a similar position? If Regulus had been in love with Lily, and James and his brother and their friends were constantly making fun of him, and then Lily died after marrying someone he hated, do you think Regulus would have treated the godson of his estranged brother who betrayed Lily, the identical-to-James son of his enemy, with fairness or kindness? Regulus was canonically also not a nice person at all - was literally a Voldemort fanboy, and Snape wasn't even confirmed to be that much - and in fanon he's often characterized as this petty little shit. So do you think Regulus wouldn't have been awful to Harry as well?

Adding on to that, people call Snape toxic and creepy for being "obsessed with Lily" (he loved her because she was a bright spot in his awful life, platonic or romantic. Obsessed? Maybe <- My hot take), but when Regulus does it with James, it's sexy?

"Stop romanticizing Death Eaters" if it's not your cup of tea, don't read. I think these characters are just that, characters, and fanon stuff means you can do whatever you want with them! You can rewrite someone's entire story and personality if you want (ex: THOSE Dark Harry fics, a number of Dramione fics).

my personal opinions:

Jily and Jegulus are both super fun ships. Love 'em equally, though I'd say currently I'm leaning toward Jily.

I love Jegulily. I think it's really fun and has a lot of potential :0

I'm alr with Snape bashing and no Snape bashing (it's not that deep gang, same for Peter 'cause honestly it's kinda silly how people try to sub-in other characters as the 4th Marauder. Peter existed y'all.)

I think the Black sisters deserve more attention :0

Yes sometimes the characters are ooc in fics!! What to do when you see this and don't like it is click the back button!!

I don't have a problem with Remadora, but I prefer Wolfstar :)

I don't believe in canon casanova of gryffindor tower; I think it's cute in fanon though<3

endnotes/tldr since I wrote a whole essay:

ship and let ship. every (non-proship) ship is valid. this is what fanon's for.

let people hc and do what they want omg pls stop throwing hands over little things

have your opinions they're valid! just don't try to force them on others!!

feel free to argue with me in notes if you want; just be respectful please! I'm down to hear others' opinions; you might change my mind on stuff!!

might add more if I missed anything! I just thought it was lowkey important to put my opinion out here.

[songclangen]

info

hi! this is songclan, a clangen account where i post event updates about my pixel kitty cats. right now i’m updating daily because i’m hyperfocused on this clan and have enough free time to do so but that’s subject to change

see bottom of post for tw tags. anyway, i am not used being super organized with tags so i will definitely fail at being consistent, but the general idea is this:

#songclangen - literally all posts surrounding songclan. other people are allowed to use this as well if they want to post fanart or anything like that! but yeah all events, extra art, memes about songclan etc are in there.

#songclan events - these are the moon event updates based on the game!

(here they are in chronological order, though this works best on desktop!)

#songclan sprites - sprites for characters in songclan. i usually add sprites of new characters than join directly on the event post, but feel free to ask for any sprite you’d like to see anytime, and it will also be under this tag

#songclan lore - i haven’t added much in this tag yet, but it’s basically just canon or headcanons that i write, potentially stories about songclan’s past or present. if anyone sends in an elaborate theory, fanfic or anything of the sort, i might remember to put it here

#songclan allegiances - will add to this one when the time is right (when we get to moon 50)

#songclan polls - i like polls

#songclan art - art of songclan characters that i or someone else makes that isn't an event post

#songclan fic - little stories i write.....and if anyone wants to send some in it'll be here!

#not songclan art - art that i make that isn't of songclan characters

#songclan memes - that sort of thing

#asks - yep. asks. 

HERE is a link to the big prongsloe family tree!

clangen is a game with occasionally quite gruesome events surrounding animal death, sickness, abuse and injury. i assume that most people following my account are familiar with warrior cats and are relatively comfortable with how dark those books can get, so i usually don’t tw tag unless it’s like…pretty darn bad. 

TW tags:

#animal injury - if it’s a relatively gnarly injury with blood and such i’ll most likely tag it, but scratches, dislocated joints and stuff like that most likely won’t be tagged

#animal death - any post where a cat character dies, or if there’s a drawing of a dead fox for example (haven’t drawn anything like that yet but maybe at some point), it will be here. dead prey will not be under this tag

#animal abuse - sometimes there are events where humans hurt cats, posts mentioning that will be under here

if i forget to tag something you definitely think should be under one of these let me know, but yeah warrior cats is occasionally dark. so...expect some occasional darkness.

[door-insurance]

My Life is strange hot takes:-

-I think we should know less about Rachel as a character because imo it was better when everyone had their own interpretations of her, i will forever hate BtS for the mischaracterization of Rachel Amber (and others). You can still show Rachel in game and have her be multilayered and hard to decipher

-never got it when everyone in game and outside hyped up Jefferson’s looks, he looks mid to me- just a white guy wearing skinny jeans and glasses

-Nathan is my least favorite character cause with Jefferson you’re meant to hate him but with Nathan you’re meant to kinda sympathize and I just can’t- he got something I call “infantilized tumblr white boy syndrome”, I always hated how Chloe, Rachel and Victoria got most of the heat from the fandom (and detractors) but never Nathan who did worse. I get it, your dad sucks and you have issues but that doesn’t mean you should go around drugging and killing people, by that logic- Kate marsh should blow the school up

-we all hate d9 writing but never talk about how Dontnod can screw some things up, I never liked how they treated the whole thing with Frank and Rachel- never calling HIM out for sleeping with a girl who was barely legal (I assume they met before she turned 18? In that case, that’s grooming), it’s not that they wrote that in I don’t mind that- it’s how they handled it that gives me the ick

- also constantly mentally whipping Chloe (I’m sorry I don’t like episode 4 it was too melodramatic) and Sean, it borderlines on whump sometimes which I don’t mind in fanfics but outside? Nah.

-i loved lis 1 dialogue it was so ass

-I didn’t hate true colors, I like it more than BtS; I just didn’t like how safe and predictable it was

-I don’t really care if they include Chloe in DE or not or if they canonize bae and bay, I give up on the canon a looong time ago- I just want the depth and grit from LiS 1 back, I just finished Road 96 (great game! Kinda relevant at the moment) for the first time and it left me with the same empty feeling that episode 5: polarized left me with

-in case you couldn’t tell, BtS is my least favorite entry because imo they wasted so much resources ruining continuity, doing character assassinations, adding unnecessary characters (par Steph and Mikey) that we don’t see in LiS 1 when it could’ve just been a 3 episode game about Chloe’s grief and meeting Rachel for the first time- idk why it needed the plot twists and breaking bad sub plot it was hella stupid, let narrative games be a little lowkey sometimes cause you can’t cover everything on a 3 episode dev cycle and budget

[lestats-ovaries]

putting in my two cents as an aroace hazbin fan to the whole alastor shipping debate (adding a cut below because this got long-)

before I start, it's important to remind everyone:

alastor is canonically ace and (semi)canonically aro, and that should be respected the same way we'd respect angel dust's identity as a gay man, or vaggie's as a sapphic woman.

"ace" and "aro", while also functioning as labels unto themselves, are umbrella terms for a lottt of identities. Some of which do include the ability to experience sexual and romantic attraction, in different ways and at different levels (demi, cupio, lith/lithro, grey, aro-and aceflux, the list goes on).

So, given all that, is it possible to interpret alastor as experiencing some level of romantic attraction, or sexual attraction? Of course, identities like the ones I listed above are just as valid as any other acespec and arospec identity.

So, what's the issue then? Right now, a lot of fans are using the breadth of aspec identities and experiences as a shield, to excuse them shipping him like they would an allosexual/alloromantic character.

Just to make it clear, that in itself is erasure. And I know that's a strong statement, and that there being such a broad aroace experience adds nuance to any statement you can make on that, but we have to acknowledge as a fandom that there are objectively wrong ways to handle aspec characters, both in the way we discuss them and in the way we portray them in fan works.

And before anyone says it, saying "alastor isn't real" or "fanon content won't change his canon sexuality" doesn't work when real life aspec people can't even look in a tag of a character that's supposed to represent them without seeing their identity erased. It's the way I feel attempting to engage with a lot of hazbin content, and I know a lot of my fellow aspec hazbin fans are feeling it as well.

So, what's the solution to all this? That's unfortunately kinda complicated. Everyone has a different opinion on what constitutes as erasure, what is good rep, how much benefit of the doubt we should give people, et cetera, and so everyone's solutions look different. In a way there also isn't a way to solve it, since aroace erasure is so normalized in fandom culture (not just the hazbin fandom; fandom culture as a whole) that there will always be a significant portion of fans who will ignore, erase, or otherwise deny alastor's or any other aroace character's sexuality.

So, to put my two cents on it:

My philosophy is that if you're going to ship alastor (or any aspec character for that matter), it's best to have an identity in mind for him to use as reference. For example, I think of alastor as sex-repulsed aroace, and I write him with that in mind. Whatever you pick can be a steadfast headcanon, an identity tailored to the story you want to tell, or one you want to explore in your fanwork, whether for fun or to educate yourself on it better.

What's better is that you don't even need to mention the sexuality itself in the work! Show don't tell is a great writing tool, and for alastor specifically, who canonically isn't aware of his sexuality, it works perfectly. Just simply creating with it in mind, asking yourself, "how would someone with [insert identity] experience this?" and going from there, makes a world of difference.

Just in terms of good fanfic etiquette, I'd also make sure to include it in the tags if you're posting it on ao3, just to make sure your readers know what's up and to help with filtering (I personally don't read any alastor ship fics that don't include the asexual or aromantic tag at this point). Bada bing bada boom, that's representation right there!

Since Alastor is one of very, very few ace characters in mainstream media, and even less aro characters in media period, us as a fandom creating good representation with him is really important, especially in terms of the breadth of aspec identities. We don't get much representation, so claiming he's definitively one label or another isn't productive, and hurts the community in the long run. Fanfiction is first and foremost an exploration of canon, so why not play around with what "aro" and "ace" can look like for him?

Case and point, I've seen some incredible ship fics that headcanon him as demisexual and/or demiromantic, and do a great job representing those identities. I've also seen some really good fics that portray him as sex-repulsed, and others that portray him as sex-neutral or positive. All of that is great, and again, even if it isn't directly mentioned: adding subtext, putting it in the tags, and even simply writing the fic with the sexuality in mind does wonders.

Me personally, I headcanon Alastor with the same identity as me; sex- and romance-repulsed aroace, but open to queerplatonic relationships. That doesn't mean fics that interpret him with a different aspec identity are less valid, or are interpreting him wrong. All of it is valid representation.

And that's not even getting into queerplatonic relationships, which is what I put Alastor into for my own headcanons (queerplatonic radioapple fic when). For that, please do your own research, but remember that queerplatonic relationships tend to look different for every couple. They can be poly, include kissing and physical intimacy, or look just like what most people would consider a regular friendship or regular romance.

So, can you ship aroace characters? Sure you can, as long as it isn't at the expense of their sexuality, or more accurately, the representation their sexuality gives to a historically underrepresented group.

That's pretty much it from me, please remember to support aspec fanartists and fanfic writers, and happy (early) aromantic spectrum awareness week for all my fellow arospecs!!

[monstersinthecosmos]

can i ask what you mean re: disliking how the amc show deals with SA? (zero judgement ftr i just love hearing opinions about this show from other simple italian perv enjoyers. btw you're one of my favorite fic authors ever ever & i think abt gallows bird daily 🙈)

Obviously since you mentioned Gallows Bird in this very ask (thank you btw dskjglads I’m blushing) I’m not going to sit here and say people should never write about rape!!!!!!!!!!!  And I’ve been soul searching and talking this out with a friend today to make sure I’m not just being a hater and that I’m not having cognitive dissonance over the difference between writing porn (intentionally, intended as porn, labeled as porn) vs lazily throwing sexual assault at female characters for “character development”.

(putting this under a cut bc I'm not trying to hate on youse guys's show!!)

It's not that we should never talk about it, or never write about it, but I think it’s like any other storytelling where like, the framework and intention inside the text matters, and criticizing if it landed the way the creator intended is worth discussing. So like, I’m a fan of noncon smut fic, I won’t deny that. I also approach it in a context where I know I’m consuming smut, and it was intended as smut, and it belongs in its own lane. And I think, personally, I enjoy fics (which by nature are anarchistic and transformative) because they tend to be a commentary either on our culture or on the canon source material. Even when fanfics are PWPs that don’t go out of their way to talk about character arcs or make profound commentary on the canon, fanfic EXISTS as a commentary on canon in the first place, so it’s there by default.

So with AMC there’s a few things that really bother me about how they wrote Claudia in S1, and full disclosure I haven’t watched S2 yet, so take this with a grain of salt.

I don’t think it’s cool when a production team of mostly cishet men think that the only way to develop a female character is to have her raped. It’s lazy and it’s hurtful to the audience, and in this particular show it was not handled with sensitivity to make the story worth it. Like, what was the weight of the scene vs what it told us, and what was the payoff? Did the show earn this? (I personally don’t think it did.)

RJ himself said it was to “toughen her up” and that’s just, absolutely fucking nauseating to me, especially when it’s stamped with so many hallmarks of How Not to Write Rape. For example, the fact that they use it to tell us about LOUIS. It’s about LOUIS. It’s not about Claudia at all; we see her assault and the net result is seeing how it affects the MEN in her life. And even using her diary as a framing device for these moments, to tell it from her own words the best they can, it’s still about Louis. The pages being ripped out (in S1, idk how this lands in S2) are about protecting Louis. Claudia didn't remove the pages to protect herself, as far as we know--the men in her life removed them to protect Louis. Fridging a female character for the sake of developing the mens feelings is lazy and obnoxious, and in this story in particular it felt extremely unnecessary to the plot, and adding it at all just came across as gratuitous to me.

(Also, I can tell that this show is like, an exercise in slow burning, but, I just think the bar is really fucking high if they make this all mean something smarter but made everyone sit through this and wait 1.5+ years to get around to tucking it in lol. And like, idk what the pages could possibly say/how they will present it that will change my opinion, but RJ's comments can't be unheard so I'm not sure it matters and the trust simply isn't here, for me. Personally I don't have the patience to wait years for a show to close a loop like this but maybe you're more patient than me.)

I don’t want to get into a whole side essay about how gross I find the Claudia writing in general, but like, as a TLDR the way they aged her up only to reduce her to sex is just so fucking gross to me, and not like in a IT’S HORROR, IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE GROSS way, but in a This Is Kinda Fucking Sexist way. Especially with the sexist comments RJ has made about Anne Rice herself, while piggybacking her IP to make his show. But like, there were OTHER things about Claudia already. They already told us she came from an abusive background. She did not need to be raped for her to come home and recognize the abuse between her parents. Any number of horrific things could’ve happened to her out in the world, but the only way this team knows how to traumatize a girl is to have her raped.

And again I didn’t watch S2 yet so like, I’m not entirely sure how it shakes out, correct me if I’m wrong, but we find out now that it was prolonged and worse than what S1 showed us?

Like, why.

Who does the torture porn serve. We already got it, it was already horrific. We already got it. You’re overselling lol.

Claudia is already tough. She survived her dismal mortal life, she survived Lestat. She was brave enough to wander into the world, not just as a teen, but as a Black girl! She was already independent! In the book, she was the driving force behind helping Louis escape Lestat, and she was pulling the strings in getting them to Europe. The show has that material to pull from. We can see that she’s strong already. We don’t need more rape to communicate it. It’s lazy and gross. Especially when, in the same episode, they are able to traumatize Louis with horrific violence. The show knew how to use violence, mind gift manipulation, race and age and power dynamics in ways that did not involve rape, but still chose to have Claudia raped.

I don’t have an issue with stories talking about sexual assault but I think like, especially after Game of Thrones, we’ve had like, 10 years of media criticism mapping out how to write sexual assault successfully or respectfully, we’ve had endless commentary about how we can find other ways to traumatize women that do not rely on sexual assault, we’ve had endless commentary about how stories about sexual assault would be more effective if they were about the victim and not ultimately about the men in the story.  Like, enough of this already.

So, I’ll be curious to see how the show handles Armand’s sexual assault history, and if we see the writing handled differently because he’s a man, or because we have him directly on screen to tell us about it. This might reveal if this is a like, “only tool in the toolbox is rape” situation or a “women exist in fiction to be raped” situation. But if Lestat suffered at the hands of Magnus without being raped and Louis suffered at the hands of Lestat without being raped*, I have to ask why it was okay to have Claudia raped, why that was the thing they came up with, and while they can’t backpedal and fix the way RJ spoke about it during S1, they have an opportunity to be more intentional with the way they write it for Armand.

(*I do want to add that S1E5 being bookended by blood drinking was a hint that Lestat drinking from Louis during their fight was also rape, contrasted by the way Louis drinks from Armand in the beginning as ~ lovemaking ~; imo that could've been a more tasteful way to handle it in this universe specifically, when that’s the sex analog in the books. So like, yes in some ways Louis was raped by Lestat in this episode, but that also shows we respect Louis enough to have it symbolic vs Claudia’s being literal.)

But I just have a real bad feeling, the way they made Lestat WAY WORSE I just imagine they’ll do the same to Marius. And it’s sort of ironic that the show in a lot of ways exists in conversation with the book canon, like, the racial commentary feels at times like a commentary on the books’ racism, and I wonder what the decision making process was when they were picking which themes to correct, or comment on. Because a LOT of people criticize themes of rape and abuse in VC, and in some ways the show making it more overt feels like they’re putting a huge spotlight on it to acknowledge it properly, and in other ways, having Claudia raped feels like it’s going down the same path of insensitive, shallow writing.

And also, idk where I’m supposed to tuck this thought lol, but as an addendum I can’t not mention that I think it’s really fucked up that they’ve talked nonstop about how much they respect AR and the canon and yet had the analog character of her daughter raped. Like, in S1 they burn the tapes, in S2 they mock the plotlines as being a soap opera, and they have her daughter raped. Like, Claudia was the REASON for VC in the first place. IWTV is about Anne Rice grieving her daughter, and it sucks that the best way they could come up with existential cosmic horror for a teen girl vampire was to give her a perma-hymen and have her raped. It’s just gross, I don’t like it lol.

The first quote I saw from RJ when the show got announced, he said something like "IWTV was written by a grieving mother" -- not Anne Rice, best selling author who reinvented the vampire genre, but "a grieving mother." And it's just, idk. Rubs me the wrong way that he can reduce her that way and be this disrespectful for the character based on her daughter. =/

[silawastaken]

I'm SO sorry and I feel like such a loser for it sometimes but I really do just want to talk about the technical stuff behind the things I write sometimes. Both fanfic wise, poetry wise, and more recently music wise, but I always want to talk about the attention to detail, the foreshadowing, the way things change in the process of writing, the original concept vs the final product.

I really really hate it but my brain really is wired for literature, and there's nothing that can have me talking for as long as asking about the detail behind my fics. The only one you can really ask about without it becoming a nit-pick of all the flaws (which is never attention or compliment seeking, I genuinely don't like most of what I write or make) or talk about foreshadowing aspects without major spoilers is the (not so) perfect pair as it's complete and well thought out (in my opinion).

The music I'm working on currently, when the lyrics are written out they read as a love letter, which is intentional!!! but also you could ask about the specific ties that each lyric has– for example in 'Prophecies of the Morning Sun' the lyric "a single witness as heaven comes down" the implication is that (as the song is written as if from my perspective) my lover is heaven, and I (or, whoever was listening to the song) was the only witness to their arrival, or the only person to see them as they are.

And then, in the final verse "facing you to see heaven in your eyes" is supposed to tie back to the idea that in my (or, again, whoever was listening's) eyes, my lover is heaven to me. IT'S ALL INTENTIONAL (or maybe not, but it all connects in the end regardless).

Anyway I'm sorry, slight word dump over, I just really wish I had more opportunities to properly talk over what I do. I would love to write a long ass essay dissecting the (not so) perfect pair bit by bit but also. There is no audience for that lmao.

As the gold bleeds into grey is where I'm going insane over this specifically, as there is always some detail which I am trying to point out without having to explicitly state it, but I feel the need to make sure people know what I'm doing. Especially with the most recent chapter (chapter ten – spoilers) where Chuuya is leading Dazai through Yokohama while it's busy, and he doesn't want to show his concern that Dazai was still following by looking back to check on him, but he does so anyway because he loves him.

This is a reference to Orpheus and Eurydice, which is why the chapter is titled 'Orpheus and denial', because in this Chuuya is supposed to represent Orpheus, but he also refuses to admit he still loves Dazai (whether to himself or to Dazai is up for interpretation– he's complex enough that even I don't know) and it was driving me insane that I couldn't explicitly state 'Hey! This is a reference!' because that's not what I want to do!!!! Ugh. Sorry. Soooo not worth this but I am constantly thinking about it lmao.

I'm always adding little details like that, I'm always referencing canon and making decisions about certain numbers to use for things (such as their room being number 15 on floor 3. They met at 15 in canon, and knew each other for three years before the split at eighteen. There's also another reason for it involving 15 and 3 years which would be Spoiling It but there's another reason behind that choice too).

If you ask me, I can tell you what characters who are never even mentioned in the main story of tnspp were doing at different points in the story. My au's are SOOOO carefully thought out most of the time.

Anyway. Yap actually over this time. Sorry I should really talk less lmao

[olderthannetfic]

My fanfic pet peeve: when commenters read against genre (both of your fic and of canon) in the interests of clutching their pearls about "the actual children".

Context: I write a lot of, I guess, like, light adventure-y novella fics? Like "what if this episode went THIS way and one of these characters faced a novel obstacle!" or "what if this secondary character had to this team up with a minor villain and then awkwardly hide it from her commander!" type stuff. (I know, AO3 loves relatively realist m/m romance writing, not this stuff, which is way more common on FFN or Spacebattles. But I like it there!)

So I get comments on fics taking place in a violent high fantasy canon with teenaged soldiers, where someone will go and get really mad that the adult characters in the fanfic don't care enough that X teen must be so traumatised by killing someone.

Or I get them about how the "actual children," (read as: late teens, again, these are "children," with licences) in a sci-fi war canon are being endangered by the adults around them. And, yes, the adults would certainly be negligent according to like... the real world department of human services... but they are just kind of benignly irrelevant in canon, because it's a story about the teen heroes and aliens. That's what it's about. It's... not about a realistic look at what the parents of teens in adventure stories should do. I'm so taken aback every time that I barely know how to explain it.

I know most people who get "think of the children" pearl clutchers are in the relatively more fraught position of writing about teenaged romance rather than... IDK, child endangerment? But this is still so annoying. It's like, do these people want teenaged characters to have cool adventures, or do they want the adults to be realistic adult caretakers? I think they'd hate that second story, because they're reading a gen adventure about teen heroes. You can read about competent adults if you want to, AO3 is full of that because people find competence sexy.

This is both me venting, and me adding to the conversation about "oh no but the children!!!" comments, because these people actually DO get upset about violence and teen endangerment, not just sex & romance, and I think a lot of people who write more about sex don't necessarily realise this kind of side to it exists.

But yeah, my pet peeve is: commenters getting mad that teens have adventures in fiction.

--

[snugglesquiggle]

hi again! I have another question😭 do you have any tips on writing pre-existing characters? (while still adding more to the table of course.) How do you keep it in character? like how you write J or Uzi for example.

unfortunately, this is an area where my expertise is more intuitive than theoretical.

before i'd ever written a word of Hostile Takeover, i had watched murder drones a few times and read many fanfics (in addition to being moderately versed in character writing already), so i already had a decent knack for holding a character's idea-shape in my head and rotating it into new configurations.

but let me try my best.

there are two different things you need to grapple with when writing an established character. it's simple enough: you need to understand them both internally and externally. but let me explain

external understanding is easiest to recognize and for me, easiest to pull off. it's the character voice, style, and vibe. for J, it's the buzzwords and condescension, for Uzi it's the sardonic teenage lilt and the insecure grandiosity.

for this, i recommend getting the episode transcripts and reading them. copy/paste all of the lines for the character you're studying into a personal notes document, and pay attention to how their lines are constructed. what words do they use most often? how do they structure their sentences?

there are some broad spectra you can clock dialogue on right away. what sort of vocabulary do they use? is it simple or complex, formal or slang, gamer or sailor? do they speak concisely, or at rambling length? confidently or insecurely, politely or rudely, passionately or callously, convincingly or deceptively, literally or flowerily?

these are generic buckets, but even if you treat them as dichotomies, ten yes/no binaries is already enough to write a thousand subtly different characters. and i already know you can think of specific vibes i didn't list out here, because there's so many to choose from

sometimes, when i'm writing J, i feel my command of her voice slipping, and i just write her as an archetypal Articulate Dominant Lady. but to a first approximation, that is J. she's confident and she comports herself with sophistication. not every panel of a comic will or can have a character fully rendered, and not every frame of animation has them completely on-model

another thing to note here is that just how a character sounds depends on who they're talking to; J won't address Tessa the same way she addresses N, nor V the same way she addresses Uzi. so the possibilities i listed off aren't even true spectra, because a character falls differently on them in different scenes, in different moods

it's something you should consider practicing, the way musicians practice scales or artists do gesture drawing. can you write someone who sounds angry? how do you write an expert vs someone ignorant? how do you write someone talking to someone they deeply respect?

if you can get a handle on the general principles of portraying characters, it's a skill that'll generalize pretty broadly.

but don't just practice this. you'll struggle with certain emotions, certain mindsets — everyone does. what you want to do is be on the look out when you're reading and watching stuff — try to catch a writer pulling off what you struggle with, and think about how they did it

if there's a fic that captures the characters about as well as canon, don't be afraid to make a note of it, quote it somewhere where you can study it (but be sure to keep it labeled and sourced; don't plagiarize. it's for reference, not tracing). you have my permission to dissect my fics if you think it'll help you

but enough about general character writing advice. how do you practice writing specific characters? here's an exercise. take some lines of dialogue from somewhere, the more the better, and think. how could you rewrite it so that it sounds as if the character you're studying said it? what words would you have to swap around, what sounds all wrong and needs a rephrase — would they even say it all, and if not why?

all the better if you do this with multiple characters at once: then you can see side by side how their voices differ and how to distinguish them. (as well as what they have in common — sometimes it's surprising)

but speaking of distinguishing them, a great exercise is to try writing a scene that's just dialogue. not even with he said, she said tags, just the quotes. how can you make it clear who's speaking from their cadence alone? (hard mode: do this with more than two characters)

i've been pretty laser focused on dialogue so far (i suppose it might be why my dialogue is what everyone compliments), but it's far from the only thing that constitutes an external understanding of a character

body language and small scale action are key components of a character. J glares and puts her hands on her hips, Uzi balls her fists at her side, N salutes. in a sense, "body language" generalizes to the style of how they approach actions. V famously takes every excuse to crawl on the ceiling; is it really Uzi if she isn't going for style points in combat?

this depends on the medium, somewhat; the techniques for portraying character in prose are different from those of a visual medium.

people (myself included) always say the mark of good dialogue is that you can tell who's speaking without needed it attributed. rarer, in my experience, for someone to assert that you should be able to tell who's acting without a name or face. but shouldn't you?

and more importantly, what does it take to make actions characteristic? understand this, and you understand how to present characters

still, an external understanding of character is only enough to carry you through a scene or two at best. you can't effectively tell a good story if this is all you have. what we've developed so far is less a character than an aesthetic tendency.

what an external understanding gets you is a way to ornament and present words and acts so that they evoke a certain character. what it doesnt get you is the worldview and motivation that generates those words and acts

to truly write a character, you need to know what they value — no, you need to know what they're afraid of.

every character is a story. now, every story has a beginning, middle, and end. (or as i spelled it out in my last answer to an ask of yours, presentation, transition, and conclusion). so, my assertion there is a little bit misframed, because characters aren't really like this.

rather, every character is an incomplete story. beginning, middle, and to be continued. they have a backstory, their current entanglement in the plot, and the future directions they could go.

in my previous answer to you, i suggested stories should start in a state of falsehood. an example was that story of Uzi killing N, where she's thrilled at first, only to later realize she's feels kind of guilty. and i think this lens is the perfect one for understanding character arcs, and characters in general

the inciting incident to a character's life story is a problem that demands some resolution or cope to deal with, and a character is defined by how they deal with that problem. even (especially) after they're no longer dealing with the problem, those coping mechanisms remain

let me be more concrete. take Uzi for example. why is she Like That? her mom was killed by murder drones, and her dad neglects her. so she acts out in class for attention, so she comes up with a brazen scheme to win her dad's respect, so she's brash and insecure. because she's isolated, she'll never get anyone's recognition unless she fights for it

or consider Khan. he watched everything his people built be torn down, and the only way for things he cares about to survive are if he builds something protects them. why wouldn't he be obsessed with doors?

Doll's another clear case. she watched her parents be killed, so she must grasp for purpose and power by plotting revenge. but i think the important part of the trauma here isn't the injustice of it, or even the loss, but specifically the loss of control. V violently reshaped her life, nearly had the cheerleader at her mercy — and thus, the revenge plot reasserts her control.

this distinction matters, because i think when she's killing the prom court, she isn't thinking it's an unfortunate means to an end, she's relishing that for that moment, she's the one in control, and killing V represents finally returning to the way things were and are supposed to be. not morally, but a order with Doll securely, comfortably, at the top.

you can trace an interesting throughline, and imagine that before V happened, Doll enjoyed a position at the top of the pecking order, unchallengeable with Uzi and the other losers beneath her.

throughlines are why i find this reading so compelling: because how else do we explain what happens after prom, where Doll quietly ditches the priority of taking revenge on V in favor of the solver plotline?

one analysis is to parse it as, structurally, distinct. the story of Doll the Avenger has reached its conclusion; and since every character contains multitudes, you can tell a different story with the same body. Doll the Afflicted, thus, would be one with its own separate beginning, middle, and tragic end.

but isn't it more compelling to notice that one concern echoes in both stories? they're both about control. before Doll fully understood her plight, she viewed V as the thing that had torn her life out of her own control — but after taking a bullet to head, after searching for a purpose in the wastes of Copper-9, after meeting "Tessa", she comes to understand (almost) the truth: the Solver is what's threatening to take total control, and thus is her true enemy and goal. her demanding a patch to exorcise the possession is then simply a maturation of the same thing she was attempting when she subjected V to rebar-cruxifiction.

the key to this model of understanding characters is knowing that every character has a theory, a logic that defines how they view the world.

a character believes. i have a problem, that problem is this, and i have to do something, if I do that, then everything will be fine.

remember what i said about falsehoods? you can tell a lot of great stories by having the character be wrong somewhere in that core logic. maybe they're wrong about what their problem really is, wrong that their approach to solving it is the best or only solution, wrong that their approach would even work.

there's more to be said about how this theory of character informs how you should write character arcs, but i realize this is getting a bit abstract and removed from the problem of how to characterize them.

but take that model of doll, for instance. if we're right that her overriding theory of life is that being in control is the most important thing, how does that inform how she talks to other characters? one obvious consequence is she probably wouldn't care about them except insofar as she could use them.

no matter how good your formulation of a character in these terms is, you can't reduce everything to it. Doll is a cheerleader, she likes fighting with kitchen knives, she's russian. you can tie a lot of character details back to their fundamental traumas and beliefs, but there's a line to walk between insightful and boiling everything down to low effort archetype-matching

still, knowing what logic a character believes in deepest of all is huge. another way to put this is — you know how they say every character thinks they're the protagonist of their own story? a corollary of that is believing you have a life story means believing you're in a certain kind of story. it's driving a certain conclusion by certain tropes.

if you want to know what a character would do in a certain situation, look at it through their story-lens, and ask what the obvious next chapter would be. if Doll thinks she's in a story of regaining control, she tried to do whatever would give her a sense of security and superiority.

this, i think, finally brings us to the real thing i want to offer. studying a character's speech tics and mannerism can help you on the line by line level, and figuring out a character's inner philosophy can illuminate their arc and core motivation. but despite being important, i don't think either is the most important thing, structurally.

what lies between the two extremes? what marries the gap of abstraction? how do you decide the broad strokes of what a character does in a scene, in a chapter, in an arc?

the best way to think about characters, i think, is in terms of verbs

you can't understand uzi purely through the lens of seeking recognition, but you can broadly group the things she does and the ways she acts into behavior patterns.

uzi rebels against authority. uzi hacks together and into technology. uzi blushes and stammers when boys are nice to her. she broods angstily and quips sarcastically and she theorizes conspiratorially. she gets scared and needs someone on her side. she gets manic and ready to kick everyone's ass.

that's not everything, but that's a pretty expansive palette to work with, isn't it?

every one of these tendencies is contextual. to rebel, uzi needs to be confronted with authority. she can't be scared if there's nothing to be scared of. key to writing a character, then, is to look at what's going through their mind, and figure out which of their preset scripts they'll try to fall back on.

this is a place where limitations breed creativity — so it can be better if your list of verbs isn't all-encompassing, at least if you know how to get creative in how you interpret them. for instance, imagine if Uzi encountered a person that she thinks is best talked to like a hacker trying to crack a system (imagine her talking to J like this :3)

but i've been yapping for a while, and if i don't wrap this up soon my evening walk is about to become a night walk.

in summary, to understand a character:

study their dialogue and actions and try to imitate it. practice different moods, different scenarios, and keep an eye out when you're enjoying other stories for stuff you can mine and repurpose for portraying characters

once you've taken a good look at their external components, try to group them into a broad but specific verbs. think about what situations prompt what behaviors, and see if you can't collapse different behaviors into expressions of the same impulse

once you have a effective summary of a character, think deeply about what trauma or dramatic incident prompted this behavior. what must they believe about the world for their behavior to not only make sense, but seem like the only sensible way forward?

if you manage to pull all that off... well, i can't tell you if you really understand how to write that character — but you'll be doing as well as i am, at any rate

P.S.: you'll note i didn't really talk about J in this essay. consider it an exercise for the reader. if what i said made sense, if the concepts are understood, you should be able to break her down, too.

in a way, doing this for her is both easier and harder than all the others. be careful out there — my friend tried to understand J and wound up with over twenty thousand words of character study. this J shit is serious. but it was also some of the best fiction i've read, so maybe it's worth it :3