#i have written a bunch of fic about her and indy but i don't think if i have put any of them online

[templeofgloom]

One of the best things about the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles is that it made Anna Jones into an actual character. Her presence haunts the narrative in Last Crusade, but she is not an actual character and as far as she exists in the movie it is to be a part of the father/son conflict.

I do appreciate seeing her and her relationship with Indy and Henry, and also how the show focuses on how she and Indy were similar and what kind of influence she had on him, too.

[bucketfullofstrawberries]

I Walk up to a tiny little podium in the middle of nowhere in particular

Taps the microphone

Ahem

Now introducing,

Welcome to the Paraverse

(A parody of Welcome To The Internet by Bo Burnham. Written by Me)

Welcome to the Paraverse! Have a look around~ Anything that brain of yours can think of can be found! We've got oodles of NEW content, Some better, some worse.. If none of it's of interest to you, you'd be the first! Welcome to the Paraverse! Come and take a seat, Would you like to see our theories or some senior citizens meet? There's no need to panic, This isn't a test, Haha! Just pick and choose your path and we'll do the rest. Welcome to the Paraverse What would you prefer? Would you like to make an eldritch god or see some chains occur? Go this way, Go that way, Don't move an inch! We got a million different ideas to pitch. Welcome to the Paraverse, Put your cares aside Here's some brand new art to steal, Here's the tenth time Stanley's died. We got animators, and artists, and fics of all kinds. And a bunch of colored digital drawings Of all the different characters in the game making out with each other, Welcome to the Paraverse,,, Hold on to your scarfs 'Cause Kevan just tweeted out about sawing little girls in half It's silly, it's stupid, He just tweeted more, Don't act surprised, these tweets are things that you' ve seen before! See the bucket shredded, Get offended, see a twink. Show us pictures of their children, Make them take the purple drink Start a rumor, buy a broom Or call out Thierry as a boomer Take your oc and then doom her Join a zoom or make weird humour Here's a brand new Narrator You should set that child aflame Here's why women never loved you Here's a guide to build your fame Which in-game character are you? Take this quirky quiz! Things made a bug that makes those gay fuckers kiss. Could I interest you in everything? All of the time? A little bit of everything All of the time Stairs are now a tragedy And time-skips are a crime Anything and everything All of the time Could I interest you in everything? All of the time? A little bit of everything All of the time Stairs are now a tragedy And time-skips are a crime Anything and everything All of the time You know, it wasn't always like this Not very long ago Just before it's prime, Right before the memory zone, the keeper of time This was button press Endless resets A sad death or two, We set our sights and spent our nights Waiting For you, you, insatiable you Mommy let you play indie games You were barely 4'2 And you went through all endings Which, to you, were brand new,, Now look at you, oh Look at you, you, you Unstoppable, watchable Your time is now Your inside's out Honey, how we knew And if we stick together Who knows what we'll do It was always the plan To put the decisions in your hands Hahaha,,HAHhahahHAHAH,,,HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Could I interest you in everything? All of the time A bit of everything All of the time Stairs are now a tragedy And time-skips are a crime Anything and everything All of the time Could I interest you in everything? All of the time A little bit of everything All of the time Stairs are now a tragedy And time-skips are a crime Anything and everything And everythings not ending And the ending's never ending And, All of the time~!

Thank you for your time <3

[oatmealmika]

FEM! TRAFALGAR LAW HEADCANONS BECAUSE I LOVE WOMEN

a/n : sometimes i just wish law was actually written as a girl cuz DAMN

first off, CLOTHES SHE'D WEAR!!

i'm getting major streetwear/chola style vibes from fem! law

like i mean ripped up baggy jeans, croptops, hoodies, oversized t-shirts, sports bras, long clickity clackity nails (if she really wanted to but very occasionally), and of course (his? her?) their hat

she got her earrings done when she was too little to remember so it's just annoying to have to redo them every so often

i have no clue who'd do her tattoos since she most definitely wouldn't trust some sketchy guy to do them

maybe herself but i don't think that's it either

and whenever you ask her, she makes up a different story (like that one blond guy in "ratatouille" who has a criminal record)

"woke up with it" "they're stick n pokes" "this guy i knew who would only wear bucket hats" and of course "nunya"

she is half german and half mexican (may or may not be self projection with the mexican part)

i get HUGE ymir from aot vibes with fem! law

she appears rude, hardheaded, and pessimistic, but she really does care about others and does have some hope in her (wishing her crew likes her horrendous hawaiian shirts)

her music taste is rock, rap, indie dream pop (tv girl), and then sad spanish songs that slap way too hard (i'm thinking "no me queda mas" by selena, a bunch of vicente fernandez songs my mom loves to play at full volume, and "amor eterno" by rocio durcal)

def not straight i mean just look at fem! law fanart on tumblr bro like honey... and man, am i glad she isn't straight cuz GODDAMN

if you go out with her, you need to order for her pls she can't do it on her own

but she will take the bill, no excuses

i think the type of person she needs as a partner would have to be okay with silence, they have to be outgoing and fun but mature with intense situations, and yeah

plays the bass guitar and has been for years

also plays the drums but her main instrument is bass

really wants to be in a band but not really since she hates the idea of having to be nice all the time for the public

at a mall, she either hangs out at hot topic, barnes and nobles, or justice the whole time

got a bunch of piercings all over her but that's a secret lol nobody knows...

UNTIL I TELL YOU: bellybutton, industrial, conch, ear lobe, tragus, bridge, middle tongue, hip, nipple, and then a bunch of genital piercings i will not be discussing any further XD

her most used apps are photos, notes, tumblr, pinterest, depop, and....... ao3

OKAY OKAY as hard as it might be to believe this, this is NOT self projection it is TRUTH

she doesn't religiously read fics or anything, just occasional oneshots about her nerdy crap when she's bored or something

my girl out here reading her "sora, warrior of the sea" 10k+ fics 💀

if you take her home to meet the family, at first they'll be thrown off by her intimidating looks, but soon enough they'll realize what a little loser she is! the cutie patootie she is <3

LOVE LOVE LOVES cringy 70s/80s/90s movies (think "grease", "the princess bride", "pretty in pink", "10 things i hate about you", etc.)

she doesn't know why. she hates the dumb stereotypes and all that stuff, but she just can't help it! she's so real for it too

idk why but i feel like she'd LOVE spiderman???? like as an obsession?

she is pretty normal about the live action movies, it's just SPIDERVERSE THAT MAKES HER GO CRAZY

she also wants to be good at art but never has motivation to do it

she def has an upside down smile (that what it's called? i think of it more as a "oh that's cringy look and stare y'all" smile)

is she scrawny? muscular? i can't decide honestly. like yeah guy law has some brawn, but he is still a pretty lanky guy, so that's why i see fem! law as a lanky chick. but i love muscular women... goddamn she is just lanky. she obviously has some meat on her bones, but not much.

that being said, i don't think she's very curvaceous either (let's pretend oda didn't draw her the way he did). she is no doubt an a cup, and while her butt is fairly larger, she's still pretty flat.

she also only ever wears sports bras since she thinks regular bras are uncomfy and a hassle.

for a va to replace masc! law's, i would say for japanese romi park. for english, i'd say either trina nushimura or elizabeth maxwell.

for one piece live action, i would want like zendaya as fem! law 😭 aye anything for queen zendaya

only bepo knows this, but she wears socks and sandals on sundays no fail.

has a tattoo somewhere of bepo's name inside a heart with an arrow through it (think those tattoos that tough guys get, with instead of bepo, "mom" is what's written)

fem! law still wears ugly ass hawaiian shirts, don't get it mixed up ✊

that's all for now :)

likes and reblogs are appreciated <3

have a good day!!

[olderthannetfic]

I don't know how many people kept up with this, but if you're on the internet you probably know about it, but there's a new Sam Levinson TV series that has been bothering a lot of people. It's called The Idol, and features Johnny Depp's daughter and The Weeknd, the former being this super popular singer and the latter as the cult leader who brainwashes Lily Rose into doing humiliating sex stuff with him with the excuse that it'll make her better at her job.

Now… the existence of this show bothers me a lot, and I know I'm not the only one, but while I can't attest to what others think regarding fiction, I know that I'm absolutely not one of those people who think that any depiction of sexual assault should be banned, or that kink has no place on TV, or that all sex scenes must advance the plot.

There's just something, in how those shows and movies are set up, that makes it all feel so exploitative and horrible in a way that, in fics, never seems to be.

Like... I'm a huge fan of Miss_Lv, who is definitely a "dead dove" author, and yet there's just something that makes me want to throw up at the idea that Sam Levinson shot a scene in which a bunch of guys (or maybe it was just The Weeknd, idk) come on Lily Rose's face and The Weeknd posts a pic of it on Twitter and makes it go viral with the tag #humancumsock.

I guess it's because it's acted out by real people, and there's a huge difference between "I'm imagining all of these characters doing these things in my head" and "These characters are played by actual people," but the amount of disgust the idea of seeing The Weeknd push an egg in Lily Rose's vagina and tell her that, if she cracks/drops it, he's not going to rape her is almost inexpressible while, if a fandom friend pitched me with this idea, I would simply reply with "That stuff makes no sense, but ok, I guess. Just good luck finding the tag for it."

My other best idea, as to why this whole series disgusts me so much, is that PR made Lily Rose go around interviews saying that she felt so empowered by the series, which is the usual crap that is pasted and copied from woman to woman whenever they act in a series in which their role is that of personality void human flashlight and doesn't really mean anything at all. It's that, and the fact that the series was supposed to be a feminist view on the world of celebritydom and Hollywood, but then the female director was fired in favor of hiring Levinson because The Weeknd threw a tantrum about the show being too focused on the female aspect of the question, rather than putting the spotlight on him.

I don't know, I feel like I'm the only one who's been conflicted about this series (which I have no intention of watching legally nor by pirating it, because it disgusts me to the bone) and wanted to know if someone else thought the same, or if there was no moral/interior conflict upon reading all the articles written by the exploitation of the female cast and how rape is depicted.

--

I hadn't even heard about it. I guess I haven't been watching much TV lately.

I think a lot of sexually transgressive media is made by people who, frankly, don't know how to execute something like that in a safe or self-aware way. You definitely do see examples where the actors say they were cool with it and I believe them, but the ones I can recall have mostly been indie movies or stuff from Europe with very different production dynamics.

I met a lady in L.A. who works as a... man, I can't even remember the term, but she's the person on set who works with the actors before a sex scene to figure out their limits and be a buffer between them and the director. For indie films, the usual procedure is to kick 99% of the crew off the set so the actors only have to deal with each other, the director, and the camera person.

I think live action media about weird sex stuff is harder to do safely and ethically than a written work is, but it can be done. That doesn't mean they did a good job in this case though.

[submalevolentgrace]

as i've said before, if someone reaches out to me asking my advice on their writing, i am going to assume that person is dedicated to improving the craft of their writing, and i'm absolutely going to engage with every word they've given me to analyse and interpret critically, looking for meaning and reflection on them as an author.

sometimes i can draw out something useful and constructive to say, and sometimes... sometimes i wish i had both the ability and authority to unilaterally ban someone from ever writing an amputee character ever - and put them on probation for disabled characters in general. at snap judgement...

everything you said sounds not only "trauma porn-y", but also "inspiration porn-y" and also "plucky rebel heroine has to suffer the tragic horror of - gasp! - a disability... but through the power of her suffering and great pain she rises up to defeat the single load bearing pillar of oppression and saves all the poor underdog cool people who matter, porn-y"

i honestly don't know if i could clearly breakdown all the components that inform my opinion: the choice of tropey words, tightly structured snappy sentences of detail blast, punchy bullet point plot breakdown, shorthand reference to assumed pre-existing knowledge of other media and genre staples, the choice of the term OC…. it's the sort of instinctive snap opinion that comes from decades of insufferable overanalysis of every piece of media i touch - including a stack of niche internet indie media - and falling asleep listening to people with film and literature degrees tear apart stories and expose the pumping mechanical guts of it all. it's the sort of snap opinion that makes a bunch of people go "wtf are you talking about??" and another bunch go "ugh, yeah, i see it", but we can't fully articulate why, or at least i can't.

see, i've read/watched/played your story a hundred times before, each time varied and unique enough that you couldn't necessarily hammer them down into a single list of tropes, but all sharing in the same kind of authorship that when you look upon all media as a whole, you're sure to mentally group them into a cloud of related "ugh".hell i've written that story multiple times myself! i might do it again! i am an incredibly fucked up person still processing the before and after expectations of my fucked up amputation and loudly shouting about it to deflect from the guilt i have for not really understanding disability until it affected me! who the fuck am i to advise on your fic heroine that i've seen a hundred clones of before?

but i wrote 5000 words on understanding upper limb amputation, why it shouldn't be used as a prop in fiction, and how to analyse your own thought process as an author to understand what you're trying to say; you read that and you still dropped a paragraph of misery porn in my ask box to ask if it's misery porn. you've had enough of a scratching at the back of your mind to realise something might be off here, might need tweaking, but you're so wrapped up in your own story that you can't see you're using limb difference as a prop, you can only think to shift it from traumatic to congenital. you have an "OC", and a priori, she's missing a hand, presented as a fact of her biography that you apparently have only minimal control over, and you want my advice on how best to frame the tragedy of disability, for which missing a hand is the only possible representation. and you asked for my opinion, a known angry hand amp bitch. the confidence!

i really just want to grab you by the shoulders and shake you and say: "it's bad", but i can't just do that, i've got to give you something to work with…

look, you write with the confidence of someone certain that they have something important to say, using the grammatical flourishes of someone clearly enamoured with the written word itself... but not the self reflection to realise quite what you've created. of course youhave something important to say, everyone does. and it resonates with you perfectly within your own imagination, because of course it does, you crafted it! but honestly...? outside of the pure form inside your head?

in 176 words the actual story you told me is about an inexperienced author trying to write a story to process their own emotions and damage, but striving for a level of weight that they don't yet have the deftness to achieve.

so what do you do? the way i'd lay it out, you have two real options for this story:

one, you take the hit to your ego, and listen to the person you asked for advice that's telling you you're in over your head. there's obviously still plenty there to salvage because it's clearly a bigger story than a girl losing her hand to a monster told in an askbox; and you're confident in your writing craft that you can still tell a story about a plucky heroine that sticks it to the man and fights the dystopia, for sure. random internet bitch has kinda lowkey said you can't even analyse your own process enough to understand where you've gone wrong about the reality of disability… so, you make it all fictional all the way down. no real disabilities, just fictional ones. it's allegory only. you can be as blunt and clumsy as you like and it doesn't matter because the themes and parallels are obvious without being real. the evil eugenics empire would kill a baby for being born without a hand? not touching that, too real. babies can be born with shimmery blood and they'll be taken away to some tower and locked up, or maybe they'll just be disappeared by sinister officials, better hide the shimmery blood babies from the empire. need your girl to have a bad encounter with a monster, survive, but walk away forever changed in a way that marks her as different, and maybe in the eyes of some, a failure? you know monster saliva is incredibly dangerous, it punctured flesh and now she's got a crystalising infection sprouting from the wound that can never be cured or concealed, how could she be so careless taking on a monster like that. the pathos and drama is there, with a big buffer of fictionalisation to ease the burden and risk of triggering people or directly saying fucked up things about them out of carelessness.

or, option two. who the fuck is submalevolentgrace anyway? what the fuck does she know? didn't she admit somewhere that she hasn't even written a finished piece of fiction in over a decade, let alone published??? she's probably just angry and bitter that being an upper limb amp is just mundane and painful, unlike all those cool stories about badass monster fighting girls that have their hands ripped off and then overthrow the oppressors. write whatever the hell you want, how you want, then when it's done, judge it for yourself. some people will love it, some will hate it, that smg tumblr bitch will write way too many words about it because she thinks she's important, and you'll have to decide deep down who you agree with more. and if it's bad…. well, you can interrogate why, you can look inside yourself, you can learn from it and grow,and hope not too many people are unwilling to give you that space to grow. the more you practice before publishing, the better the chances are there.

but i know somewhere some part of you is considering option three: trash it all and give up, on this story, on writing at all. and while yes technically that is always an option, i am knocking it off the table like a cat and saying no. you're not allowed to do that. if this particular story doesn't work out, isn't salvageable, fine, but you gotta move on to another. without an amputee character next time, please.

because if you want to get better at art, to do better as an artist, you have to keep making art. you have to practice, to keep trying. and part of practice is making bad things sometimes. you gave me less than 200 words and i made a snap judgement from it about your talent and ability as a writer to pull off this particular story, and unless you try, you won't know if i'm right or not. in all the nuance and detail that you couldn't have possibly compressed into an ask, there might be the structure and subtlety that can do the topic justice. i obviously don't think so, bit here's the thing:

when you pour yourself into a creative passion and the result is shit, you haven't actually failed. you know what shit is good for? fertiliser. every bad completed piece or abandoned wip is fertiliser for the next one, it's experience, it's the components and knowledge that will eventually make something good that you're proud of. and the same is true of that introspection and self analysis skill that i think is necessary to make a great writer. any skill, craft, or art… you can only get better at it by doing it and failing first.

and if i can break a promise to limit my analysis here.... i can tell you're young. young to me, young to most people i'm guessing. it's obvious, and maybe that itself should/would be enough to hand wave you away and say "try again when you're more mature".... but i'm assessing you as a fully fledged and mature adult creating art here, which is maybe a harsher standard than you need to be held to depending exactly how young you are... but it's a choice i make, because in doing so it shows you the expectations you'll be held to one day, and you can feel out how far you think you are and should be from that. a component of option two above is ignoring that expectation, and embracing just making whatever you want and worrying about growth and honing your craft later.

so yeah. i think the tiny window into your story that you've given me here is… not one i'd stamp with approval, and i've been harsh about it. but i also just spent about two hours writing in response to it, because i feel like there's a chance of getting through to you, and ihope others reading too. so, do what you will. decide to change it, decide to stick to it, fiddle around for a while trying and move on to a different project if you must.

but also i want this to be a warning in general: can everyone please stop asking me to asses your stories and OCs? i have clearly run out of fucks to give and am getting more aggressive, but so many of you are clearly lost in your own fantasies far too deeply to see the flaws with it yet still ask me… and upper limb amputees are so fucking rare, seriously!! why. why are you all so desprately intent on writing them? it's really weird.

please stop.

I'm modifying my idea for one of my OCs (for a personal project) to involve her having an upper limb difference. The setting of this story is a dystopia where it's likely being born with limb difference could have gotten her killed, so what I'm considering right now is that she lost her hand in early childhood. Basically, she ran into a monster and almost got killed by it, which also involved losing her hand, but the focus of that incident plot-wise is the "almost dying" part and the "abusive mom yelled at her for not handling it better instead of comforting her" part. Being an amputee also isn't the center of her story--she refuses to get a prosthesis and the revolution she's part of is fighting against societal ableism, but her character arc is mostly about breaking free from her past and learning to be more honest with other people. Do you think that the backstory as I have it now is too "trauma porn-y" and I should make her born without the hand instead?

i don't have the temperament or politeness to be a sensitivity reader, so that's why i don't offer to do it.

your icon sticks in my head so i know you've read the way i've responded to various probing on this topic, how aggressively passionate i get on many topics, how critically i'll analyse people that choose to interact with me and how blunt i can be, and hopefully you've seen me recently point out how often i'm flooded with asks like this and that i usually ignore them. you're the unlucky first person to send an ask after that. the best i can offer is that i'll critique just what you've put here in good faith and do my best not to assume anything beyond that.

so.

would you rather be ignored, or be rudely and publicly told something you probably don't wanna hear?

reblog and let me know!

[misterbitches]

(SNOB vOICE excuse me for talking abt myself on my own blog 2 no one...im always sf paranoid ppl think i'm being more pretentious than i actually am if they stumble upon my untagged posts)

i'm not a creative writer which is why i went to film school and not real school and write scripts. but i'll watch something dumb and post fics every now and then. so during lockdown i got this crazy idea in my head abt this very self-indulgent ridiculously boring but fun-for-me character study fic for winteam. i don't even know why i would have gotten the urge, i just liked them so much and bounprem's dynamic too.

around that time things everywhere were super fraught (still fucking is obviously) but it was when the pandemic was super bad and people were dropping like FLIES and there was constant state-sanctioned murder. in thailand there were a lot of protests because of a coup going on there and a protester in the VICE video i watched on it said music helped them deal with the poverty and drug use in the slum they lived in in thailand. the left and/or artistic, indie, DIY scenes in other countries always fascinate, inspire, and entice me. uniteasia is a great resource for alternative asian music. a large chunk is dedicated to metal, which i'm not into, but there's a decent amount of post-/punk, DIY/grunge, indie/alt, and post-hardcore. i've been seeing a lot of shoegaze lately too.

so all this brewing in me i started to really think about a (queer) anarcho-commieesque band au fic but team is a (gasp) [cis] girl and i know i know boo hoo but also fuck that! i got a comment about that which bugged me cause i had to justify my sexuality which was weird because why are we both not embarrassed to be on ao3? i get the impulse but no because it was specifically because of all the stuff above and me listening to a lot of my favorite bands like nirvana—in uwma win had posters of nirvana on his wall plus his hair (which could be poser-ish but now he has like 3 and a radiohead poster and an arctic monkeys and oasis poster so you know what werq plus i am actually a poser)—and hole, fiona apple (who had just come out with her new album), vince staples, a bunch of other good shit, and getting into sonic youth. it just got me thinking of like music and art and diy and gender and identity because that's something those bands/people talk(ed) about and struggled with, along with sexuality obviously, and i wrote a lot; still writing. so much was going on then but like life had to stop so so much wasn't? that intensity they bring...what it would be like when there's so much shit going on in the world, if team was different when shit is so different. in any other circumstance, i wouldn't have imagined this specific scenario (i published one? i think or maybe two fics i had for them b4 and wrote some on my own)

anyway i thought about just taking it down and completely reworking some of it into some script for some dumb romcom i'd attempt to write in a pipe dream for it to get made but these 2 are just too compelling for me and now that this show is here??!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?! they're the only ship that could make me give half of a shit enough to even think this hard or continue something for up to 2 fucking years or even think about it. and for what? cos the fic is bad cos again can't write like that but just what? they had FORTY MINUTES in uwma. that's actually bonkers insane. like i cannot believe this????? how can i clown on them too much when they got so many of us fuckin' whipped. it's fun writing them just being hot and cool and doing art tho lmao it's fun watching them jus tbeing hot and cool and freakishly in love anyway i'm editing the stuff i've written and posted and will just save it instead of reposting. so if anyone ever read it before they can be extremely surprised at how different it is ^___^

speaking of music prem's song is really fuckin' good it's just the right amount of good pop with an edge it's a greaaaaaat background song for their scenes. genuinely good and i am never a fan of tv OSTs they are usually generic to me

[not-poignant]

Can I ask about your method of deciding your Spotify playlists for stories? Where do you look for songs? How do you decide which you want? How do you decide the order, esp for stories that have long arcs that you have yet to write? If a song has perfect lyrics, but the wrong mood, or vice-versa, would you still use it? What if a song perfectly fits a character, but you personally don't like to listen to it? Are the songs more for you as you write? (Sorry for so many questions!)

You don’t need to apologise for a lot of questions, anon! Anything that sort of enables me to ramble hugely is never a bad thing, heh. :D

Can I ask about your method of deciding your Spotify playlists for stories? Where do you look for songs?

...On Spotify. I mean I have like about 300 playlists, about 3,000 local tracks not actually on Spotify, and I’ve listened to easily over (actually I’m gonna go check last.fm to make this legit hang on) - okay so over the years I’ve listened to 15,000~ unique songs over 255,000 times, from 3,200~ different artists. I am what you would call an avid music listener who deliberately seeks and explores for new music (when I’m in the mood.)

This is actually a huge part of my life with Glen, who was at university doing film and journalism (I was at university doing media studies and mass communication and scriptwriting, and film analysis fell into that) and that was how we met. So like fifteen years later, and we have consumed an unbelievable amount of music both together and apart. Like, way back in the day, 15 years ago, I had to make sure my computer had a CD burner so I could make mix-tapes for the both of us like all the time (and he did the same), and they were constantly changing.

Generally speaking, before Spotify, I used to look for music via the ‘similar to’ section on Allmusic, and sometimes Pitchfork recommendations. These days Spotify does a lot of that which makes it super helpful (along with the Discovery weekly list and the Release Radar). I don’t look on places like Youtube. I also do a lot of ‘who is the lead singer of this band’ and finding them in Wikipedia, and then listening to their other projects. Or ‘who is the guitarist they sound talented’ and finding their other projects.

How do you decide which you want?

The most important thing actually is I need to be able to write while listening to it (which answers the last question), which means a lot of the harder shit I listen to (dubstep, clubstep, some of the indie rock, rock and emo) can’t actually go on story playlists. So even if I find great songs for characters, that doesn’t always mean I can set words to them. For example Gulvi’s playlist I think suits her as a character, but I can’t write while listening to it. So I’ll often listen to some of that before writing her, and then switch into a quieter playlist.

I mean I don’t make the playlists for others. It’s nice that other people can enjoy them but for the longest time they were all set on private until I realised people wanted to see/listen to them. I make them to help my ability to write, they’re not...intended to be shared in the same way that fanfiction or fiction is? Like they are shared, but if people don’t see the character in the playlist, that doesn’t bother me and I’d never change it, because it’s about how I feel/see that character and how I’ll write them or interact with them based on the music I’m listening to.

How do you decide the order, esp for stories that have long arcs that you have yet to write?

Usually by evolution/feel of what I’m aiming for, to a point. The playlists generally always end with the happier songs (unless I’ve added a bunch of new songs and haven’t set them in order yet, lmao), or songs indicating that love is being more freely expressed. Though that’s not universal. Sometimes the order of songs is even mildly spoilery, if a playlist - like Mikkel’s - is ending with songs about ‘he was a good man but now he’s gone’ - chances are high someone’s gonna die. Like the last song on Mikkel’s playlist is literally a song about how we all die in the end. It was a glaring spoiler for those who were looking for it. There are playlists like that for The Ice Plague too, which I’m like ‘haha, *laughs nervously* I’m sure glad no one has commented on these particular songs yet, they probably think they apply to like, past loss or something even though they’re at the end of the playlist...’

Like weirdly, depending on how you look at it, I’m probably boldest about story spoilers in my playlists. Because the songs are often arranged by story chronology or character growth chronology (which is convenient for me, I can listen to the beginning songs in the beginning, the end songs at the end).

In stories I haven’t written yet, it’s more aspirational, like ‘I think I’m headed in this direction.’ It’s actually an important part of playlist building, is finding songs that inspire growth or plot, and then locking those in to remember how I want the story to feel.

You can normally tell I’m feeling pretty serious about wanting to write a story if it has a playlist though. It’s not guaranteed that I’ll write it, but it bumps up the likelihood to like 90%.

If a song has perfect lyrics, but the wrong mood, or vice-versa, would you still use it?

No, because music is just as important as lyrics, and if it’s not right, it’ll jar me out of my writing zone. (Lyrics can make me like a song more, but not always). Likewise, sometimes songs that feel right but don’t have the right lyrics will make it onto the playlist. Though not always. Downtown by Majical Cloudz is a song that actually makes me think of a lot of my stories, but the lyrics are so obviously contemporary, that I’ve only put it on the new Detroit Become Human fic I’m going to write. I just sometimes sneak out of a character playlist and listen to it while writing, lmao.

Thankfully I literally have thousands of songs to choose from, so some songs not fitting isn’t a problem for me. In fact my biggest issue is normally ‘all ten of these songs suit, but I’m not going to use all ten right now.’ 

With the latest Detroit Become Human playlist, I wanted a certain kind of bluesy rock for some of Hank’s songs. And I have very strong ‘this song belongs to this character’ ‘this song belongs to this character’ feels (sometimes they belong to both characters, in which case you’ll find the same song on both playlists.)

What if a song perfectly fits a character, but you personally don't like to listen to it?

Then it won’t go on the playlist, with some exceptions - again, Gulvi’s features a lot of music I don’t normally listen to.

But yeah like...music and listening to music is a huge part of my life. This week alone I’ve listened to 161 songs, which actually isn’t a huge music week for me (a sign that I’ve been out of the house a lot lol with appts etc.) Though I did listen to Downtown 66 times in order to help me write the last chapter of The Ice Plague: Book One. (I’m not finished yet, but I’m much closer).

[templeofgloom]

Rank the Indy girls and share your reasons? You could include non-movie characters like Sophia Hapgood too.

Hmm, rating them might be difficult since I like some of them for different reasons.

So let's talk the different ladies, all the movie ones and some others I like:

Marion Ravenwood.

Ahh I wish I liked her more. I don't dislike the character as a... idk in theory? but watching her is not fun for me most of the time in raiders. She starts out super strong and her introduction scene is great. Unfortunately that scene is her best scene :/

She appears in the comics and in some extra material and she's fun there but her relationship to Indy is really weird and just makes me feel like she's not into men.

And then there is of course Crystal Skull. I think her coming back and marrying Indy could have worked but the way it happens in the movie doesn't work for me, largely because it just expects you to accept they're a good fit based on your nostalgia.

Willie Scott.

My queen, the love of my life, best girl-

I like her, she's fun, has her own ambitions, and Indy/Willie is the healthiest romance subplot Indy has in the movies.

Elsa Schneider

IDK how to feel about her. She is a character with her own ambitions and she has complexity but I don't... IDK? It might just be because the actual heart of Last crusade is Indy's relationship to his dad and Elsa is kinda dropped into a hole in a way that feels. Weird to me (And I love the father/son relationship in the movie)

Maybe just if she wasn't the only female character in the movie idk

Sophia Hapgood

If you count The game Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis as the 'unofficial' 4th movie she is the best female character in the movies. Her relationship to Indy is like Indy&Marion but done better; they have a past, they used to be close but had a falling out, and have to team up now and end up rekindling their relationship. Both Sophia and Indy have legitimate reasons to be upset with each other, as opposed to Indy/Marion where it's just Indy having mistreated her

In the game in one of the endings Indy and Sophia kiss and it's fine but I prefer their relationship as platonic as it is in the comic adaptation. It's a fun friendship and I enjoy Indy panicking over the idea (he totally made up in his head) of Sophia wanting to possibly fuck him and making up this scenario in his head where they end up fucking although he's not attracted to her and just being confused by platonic feelings towards a woman I suppose.

Sophia is def one of my faves.

...

IDK if she counts as an Indy girl because she's not a love interest but I like Spalko. She's the only thing I take for fics and stuff from the 4th movie.

From the Young Indy TV show:

Vicky Prentiss!

It's sort of difficult to compare because the tone is so different but I love the romance between her and Indy and it's written in a much more mature way than most of the romances... TBH I really like most of the love interests Indy has in the series, even the Mata Hari thing was handled with depth I didn't expect. (But it's kinda difficult to compare the TV show with the rest of the franchise because the tone is different)

Honorable mentions from the novels;

Dorian Belecamus,

an older woman who seduces Indy when he's in his early 20's. It's her taking advantage of him and hurting him so it's an enjoyable story in a different way. I like her as a character though and Indy's characterization as someone who thinks he is totally mature but is still so young is good.

Ulla Tornaes, IDK but if Sophia who is not necessarily a love interest counts she does too. She's a Danish lesbian explorer who has a fun relationship and interactions with both Indy and Belloq.

There are a bunch of women in the novels and comics I like in theory... Like Gale Parker is a super interesting character in theory but everything about her is told in a weird way that doesn't appeal to me so maybe that's just Martin Caidin's writing style IDK

Overall I tend to like the love interests in the expanded universe more often than not

Personally... The ones I have most fun writing are Willie and Sophia (And I like Indy/Willie and it's one of the few m/f ships I love writing) Also I guess Spalko though I write her less because of the time period

Willie is the hottest but Sophia is wife material, I would like to party with Ulla (and when I say party I mean go spelunking)