#meta process

[anistarrae]

haii👋

[neo--queen--serenity]

Lena losing her patience and furiously berating Gwen for potentially endangering the staff members of the OAIR is quite literally the opposite of how Elias ran the Archives.

Elias used the Archival staff—as well as his Archivist—as pawns that can be readily replaced as needed. His patron offered them minimal protections at best (the Archivist’s privileges notwithstanding), and even then, he would never actually intervene to save any of them if they were in danger, much less take precautions to protect them at their headquarters. They are used as bait, as sacrifices, as currency, as objects. The listener knows, eventually, how easily he could discard them if his plans called for it.

But Lena. This episode showed us that Lena keeps her entire organization running through keeping her subordinates hidden, safe, and unnoticed by the Externals. It’s quite clear through her conversation with Gwen that such a safety risk has never happened before.

As far as we know, Lena has successfully kept all of her employees alive, watched them come and go, bemoaned the turnover rate, and then got them to look the other way while they documented and dutifully filed the horrors.

But most impressive of all, she’s kept her real work hidden from her subordinates, and her subordinates hidden from her real work—a feat Elias had no interest or desire to accomplish.

[mollysunder]

I don't think we've ever thoroughly unpacked how messed up the way Heimerdinger "comforted" Viktor. The only thing that Heimerdinger could really say is that the "brightest stars burn the fastest", but that's not what's going on here.

Viktor's dying from an unnatural cause!!! He's been poisoned by gas from the mines Piltover excavated in Zaun. This isn't a tragedy caused by random chance, Viktor's condition was done to him by Piltover, by Heimerdinger!

Heimerdinger is essentially comforting his own victim, and he tells Viktor that his death is just the way things are, as if there's no responsible parties involved except fate itself. I wonder if Viktor thought about this himself while Heimerdinger was talking to him. What a truly genuinely awful moment for him to sit through.

[gg-ladybug]

On today’s episode, I have now realised the power that comes from using duos / ships for these memes. I’m evolving with every post.

Alastor: (Part 1)

Lucifer: (Part 2)

Random Groups / Duos / Ships: (Part 3 - Here) (Part 7)

Charlie: (Part 4)

Adam: (Part 5)

Angel Dust: (Part 6)

[vaguely-concerned]

My two cents on how much of Mind!Varric is Rook’s mind trying to fill the blank space and how much is Solas actively talking through a convenient blood magic paper doll of the mind: I think it's a mix of both, a truly collaborative psychosocial horrorshow if you would, but waaaay more towards the second. It feels too directed and tactical at times to be anything else. Rook's mind is willing to go along with the denial phase as far as it can fucking carry them to not have to face the grief and regret and does its part in papering over details that don’t make any sense, the way brains will strive to create coherent meaning even out of deeply confusing input, but to my understanding it's a collaborateur in how that plays out, not the instigator or control center. Solas is using it as a path to agency and to gather insight into Rook as a person unguarded as he can't count on in his own guise. (That stoic option that leads to him being like 'oh I see you're cautiously denying me access to your inner life. well. at least you still have Varric to talk to. y'know as an outlet :)'. You absolute BITCH Solas! That alone convinced me that he HAS to have an active hand in it on some level.)

My guess is that it takes considerable effort on Solas’ part to make Mind!Varric do anything more involved or complicated than seeming to sit up in bed and give casual commentary, and that’s why he keeps having eerie five minute shallow pep talks with you before he announces he conveniently needs a nap aaanyway good luck kid you got this haha. When he’s just spouting NPC lines from his bedrest, I’m ready to believe that could be Rook’s mind being allowed to improv lines for him more freely because it’s less about Solas trying to get something out of them or working an angle and more ‘Still here! Still totally alive and fine and the mentor figure you know and love and trust :) don’t even worry about it! Thankfully there is no war in Ba Sing Sei, as we all know’ upkeep work lol. Rook’s mind is allowed to set the tone of Varric, the outlines, but not always the content. 

AND, on a (beautifully fucked up) character psychology level, I feel like Solas is indulging in actually getting to be the good supportive mentor figure to Rook with one hand to assuage the guilt he feels about what he's done -- and what he's going to do -- to them with the other. Same internal logic as he uses in Trespasser about the Qun. ‘Almost everyone is going to die from the course of action I’m doggedly pursuing eventually. But at least I can make their last years happier and freer and kinder than they would have been otherwise. and that kind of makes up for it right. a little bit. doesn't it. doesn't that make it better at least. I need that to make it better)'. Did I really take your beloved mentor and friend from you if you don’t know yet that I did? Some philosophers would argue not really! So it’s probably almost ok actually. Isn’t it even a little noble that I’m taking all this grief and guilt on myself and shielding you for now. With undertones that I’m not sure he would realize himself (and might be mortified by if he did) that he is so incredibly lonely, and even a dishonest and indirect emotional connection is more than nothing when you’re that desperate. In this setup he gets idk. Both the control he craves so incredibly badly in relationships and over himself, and the scraps, the fading afterimages, of intimacy and warmth and companionship, even second hand. The one thing Solas and Rook agree on deep deep down is that they really wish Varric weren't gone. They're handshake memeing this in the saddest and most creepy way possible.

I think an important element too is that Solas needs Rook and their team to *succeed* —  up to a certain point. He needs someone to hold the two other elven mean girls off until he can get out of here. Ideally, in a perfect world, even do all the hard work of killing them so he can swoop in at the end and do his thing when both sides are exhausted and out of resources to stop him, and then Bob’s your uncle! Same logic as he was using with Corypheus, and after that worked out so well, too! King of choosing to never learn from a single solitary mistake he’s ever made even though i fully believe he could have the capacity to Fen’Harel <3 The underlying idea isn’t flawed, you see, it was just unforeseen circumstances getting in the way. This time for sure it’ll all work out the way I cleverly imagined it in my head beforehand. Cue By Talos this can’t be happening etc. in the form of a statue almost crushing him like a bug. 

So he's providing guidance and forging Rook into a leader from two angles: one Rook might not trust, and one they probably will. Shaping them into what he needs slowly and carefully. He’s helping you hone your team into their most effective state, as he might have done with his own agents back in the day, setting up his chess pieces even if he has to squint through two glimpsed realities to do it haha. Pincer maneuver of an insidious stealth mentor you never asked for. Also… at one point mind Varric gives you a whole little monologue about how Solas' problem is that he’s always seen his interpersonal connections as flaws and see where it’s landed him, all alone and the worst part? it hasn’t even worked. it’s all been for nothing he’s back where he began with nothing to show for it but his mistakes. Like...that has such strong 'uh okay happy to play your therapist from two rooms away here what the fuck kind of traumadump is this' energy to me, I’m not sure Rook like. Thinks that much about Solas as a private person. So much of Solas' self-loathing and futile insights into his own flaws seem to shine through in Mind!Varric's dialogue all the time — I just can't believe that there's no guiding hand behind it as it were. 

Most of all. I feel like people underestimate the degree to which Solas is incredibly funny. As in, he has a very consistent and recognizable sense of humour. It’s one of my very favourite things about him. We must remember — it is crucial that we always keep in mind — Orlesian accent and wig Solas from May The Dread Wolf Take You (my beloved, the explanation for why I love this dude even with the. All of the everything else. No one does it quite like him). He is not at all above doing things or adding little flourishes for his own obscure amusement, in fact that seems to me to be one of his most consistent traits. The Randy Dowager Quarterly comment Varric has? The ‘Maybe this is the Dread Wolf’s revenge. Forcing us to house sit for him’ thing? To Me this is 100% Solas amusing himself in his boring Fade jail surrounded by the screaming hellscape of all his regrets. Source: it came to me as divine revelation through pure vibes trust me bro 

If nothing else I find it much more narratively interesting personally if the connection between Rook and Solas really is that defenselessly intimate and entwined (and so unbalanced!), and the sense of violation and invasion and betrayal afterwards consequently all the more nauseatingly intense. Even if you kept him at arm’s length in the open, he’s been under your skin the whole time, looking around, gathering what he needs to destroy you, wearing the face of a friend. Regretfully, probably, but choosing to do it every step of the way anyway. (Sound familiar, Inquisitor? Solas doesn’t have that many tricks when you actually look at it, he keeps returning to old tried and true ones like a dog with a bone haha.) Maybe he even genuinely meant some of it as mercy, which only makes it so much worse. It makes his sin against his own core principles of autonomy and the freedom of all beings in mind, spirit and body so much more juicily grave if it’s something he pursues actively and consistently, rather than it half-falling into his lap as a happy accident mainly orchestrated by Rook’s own subconscious. Solas, too, is at his very lowest point, the closest to giving in and becoming his own antithesis fully that he’s ever been, and it makes the choice of whether you still reach out your hand to him one last time or not all the more impactful and difficult.

[tealvenetianmask]

Visual Parallels: The Full Moon and Mastermind

It's mad scientist mode time ya'll.

The visual references to other episodes in Mastermind are wild. People have already beautifully pointed out how the duet sequence references Blitz's "Truth Seekers" hallucination and "Just Look My Way," and makes the two inner worlds mesh.

"The Full Moon" is also heavily referenced. I first noticed it in this shot of Stolas . . .

Which is repeated quite similarly a few times in the trial scene, and looks a lot like . . .

The camera angle (if there were a camera) is pretty much identical.

This made me realize that the whole sequence (the duet and Blitz getting pulled away afterward) has them positioned with Blitz facing Stolas and Stolas's back to Blitz, with a similar distance between them to what we see in "The Full Moon."

And as I rewatched both, I saw more and more.

An attempt by Blitz to touch Stolas, and Stolas not turning around, having already decided his course of action.

(Is anyone noticing a similar color palate yet?)

And a forced exit, based on a decision that Stolas makes:

So this very well might show that Stolas is holding a lot of the power in their relationship. But also, the similar elements in these scenes aren't identical- they simply rhyme.

There are some interesting differences with Blitz's physical expressions of desperation. Even though he's set away from Stolas against a bright red background when he's expressing himself in both.

In "The Full Moon," well . . .

He's guarded. His hands spend a lot of their time in fists. He's moving toward Stolas but not giving all of himself until it's too late.

But in "Mastermind . . .

It's like he's drawn by a magnet to Stolas while being forcibly pulled away. He's fighting the forces that would keep them apart, that would harm Stolas. He's fighting with everything he has. His hands are open the whole time he's fighting. The walls are gone.

Doors are also interesting in their contrast.

In "The Full Moon," we see Blitz bursting into the room like this:

In "Mastermind," the door behind Stolas serves as Blitz's exit point, but the camera angle, again, is very similar . . .

I don't know what to make of this one, honestly, except that these moments seem to reverse each other. I think there COULD be symbolism here (barriers and who creates them), but I'm not sure there's enough evidence that it's intentional like the others.

Now for a few key things "Mastermind" has that "The Full Moon" needed. Our boys weren't ready yet, but now they are.

Obviously the duet . . . but did you notice that their movements synchronize too? They're not looking at each other, but literally and figuratively, they're in tune.

2. Eye contact. FUCKING EYE CONTACT. It's so brief you could miss it.

There's recognition there. They each see that the other feels the same way.

Even though Stolas never turns around, and still has A LOT to learn about Blitz, they meet at the core of the matter. "Harriet, don't get on that train. It's going to London, and I CANNOT BE WITHOUT YOU."

[veinsfullofstars]

🌅 MetaDede Week 2024 Day 5 & 6: AU & Secrets 🌅

(ID: Kirby series fanart comic of a moment in King Dedede and Meta Knight’s youth, when - during a trip to the beach with their friends - the teenaged penguin realizes that he might feel more than just friendship for his little winged buddy. Transcript in Alt Text. END ID.)

Oh.

Previous Day | Next Day | Prompt List (made by @/mtddweek)

Started 08/20/24, finished 08/24/24. | Childhood Friends AU Masterpost

[rottenraccoons]

cirrus' and oleander's answers to asks are the ones that have me hysterically cackling most of the time

There is a reason we order the answers the way we do: Cirrus' responses usually make for really good "punchlines" (not always comedic, just the high-impact finisher in whatever we're doing), and putting Francesco up top usually gives a nice gradient from sweet to freaky answers. An all-boys answer often looks like:

Francesco Cute and earnest

Keir Gruff but reluctantly sweet

Oleander Fun and flirty with a chance of 🍷

Cirrus 🚩

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Thought I’d show you how I’ve been going about my digital drawings - I just discovered that you can video procreate - so maybe I’ll do one of those in the future, but for the Ryan and Oliver digital drawings I did, I can show you my layers and how I worked because I was taking screenshots of my progress!!!

First up Oliver

So original photo

my line sketch - with colour coding as it was easier to do it this way!

Background done

colour blocking - ngl I actually really like it when it looked like this it just tickles the right part of my brain!

Now all the colours are sudged together and I've added in some of the texture

Finished piece!

Now onto Ryan!

Original Photo

Line drawing - he looks like a sailor because I went a bit ott with lining in the beard!

Background and clothes done!

Working on the skin - the neck was actually a real challenge!

Arm and ear finished

Face in progress - he looks so creepy without eyes and I spent soooo long on his lips - I think I erased them like 4 times - but it was worth it because I am soo happy with how they turned out!

one eye in progress

Then I was annoyed with eyes so I did some of his hair before going back to his second eye!

Final piece

and there you have it - me with zero procreate or digital drawing experience having a mess around with the brushes and seeing what I could actually do and I'm obsessed with how they both turned out!

I've been doing some tutorials on procreate - so hopefully I'll get better now I"m learning how to alter the brushes and things!

Hope you enjoyed this little look at how I created my two pieces - I'm going to look at getting prints done (when I have the actual time to do the research!) so if anyone would be interested in prints please let me know in the comments and I'll let you know once I have everything sorted out!

[empty-movement]

OLD SCHOOL ANIMATION NERDS, I SUMMON THEE TO ASSIST

Hey! Vanna here! So I recently, in a rage at the loss of the end-of-series lot of production materials, bought a cheaper lot I had been curious about, and I kinda struck animation history gold with it! Try as I might to pull the whole context together, I need y'alls help accurately naming and identifying what I have!!! There are MANY MORE of these, all from the same episode, an Utena one, a LOT of Nanami, and a group shot even, all following this similar formula. But let's be honest, Vanna and Yasha wanted that sweet Touga smugness. Analysis and questions below the cut! These aren't ALL the sheets, there are ones for the face shape and sleeve also but to demonstrate. Also, fucking amazingly, I also have the storyboards for this episode, so I can even tell you the shot number is 287 ISNT THAT COOL

So Utena fans. You may or may not know, but episodes 6 and 8 had very chaotic productions, and did end up getting swapped in the end. Per Ikuhara's directory commentary in the Nozomi Blu-ray:

He makes explicit reference here to Akemi Hayashi, credited as the animation director for the episode. I can't recall where I saw it now, but I know the difficulty of drawing Touga on model is mentioned somewhere in all the production stuff I have.

Now. Here's the problem. I DON'T FUCKING KNOW WHAT THEISIWEUGWEYGF what do I callll these. My understanding is the the douga is the final line art, transferred onto the cel, and that is the only thing that you call a douga. A douga is the 1:1 match to its cels in a sequence. With an anime like Utena, it's pretty often going to be included with the cel, if you obtain one. These are douga, the final line art that creates the animation, scans donated by JadeSabre and edited into sequence. The frames are numbered in the top right, and there are no notes or anything drawn on the sheets.

Now. That is NOT what I have above. So none of these materials are douga, they are...genga? Help? (This will get wild with Nanami, where I even have a green sketch that is clearly like, VERY FIRST draft of the shot...)

What I have are the key frames, to my understanding. Meaning these represent a point much earlier in the production process. On first glance, the white sheets are significantly cleaner, but they are also so far off model they're flying along with the Voyager probes in interstellar space. They're very capably drawn, don't get me wrong, but they're clearly done by someone who is not on the Dorito face bandwagon. This is apparently pretty common? You get your initial key frame sketches (genga??) made, and then the animation direction (Hayashi??) grades your work by making messier, but more on model versions of the shots. These are the yellow 'correction' genga?

The douga of this shot are likely with the cels. There are 11 distinct cels of Touga's face (others for the sleeve), guided by the 4 key frame sketches I have here. Looked at individually, I can even see where the filled in frames struggle a bit more to be on model than the key ones, even in the final product.

So clearly, what I have are some pretty early process materials where there was a bit of a back and forth about how to draw the characters. The others I have are similar corrections, but this is the absolute most drastic one. It's like they said 'just do it like kinda shoujo and we'll iron it out later.'

The question I have is...can I safely assume these yellow correction sheets are actually Akemi Hayashi originals? Or would there have been another person in this process doing this correction work instead? Would there be a way to know who drew the original ?genga? That may not be possible to ascertain, but it would be really cool to try, since this episode was a Chaos Production, since I have the actual storyboard for it, since I now have a neat piece of context about what the Chaos might have meant. This shot always stuck out to me in the first arc, because it's true that for a lot of the first arc, Touga and Saionji look....far more like the first drafts here. The strict adherence to the Hasegawa style gets enforced later in the series, but this is an example of the exchange that needed to occur to get folks on board with what was a pretty unique art style.

PS. This is torture, the shape of these means I actually need to make two scans of each one and stitch them together, which is nervewracking when you want them to overlap properly and also you don't want to wreck your toilet paper ass production materials pressing them into the scanner bed. Also several are fucking taped together and lemme tell you, 25 year old 'clear tape' don't stay clear and don't stay sticky.

Basically, any context or knowledge anyone can impart I would appreciate a lot! I know I've got something really cool here, but I am struggling to get much clear information about it, because Google is broken.

[kuwdora]

A Vidding Primer

A guide written for @wren-of-the-woods who asked for advice about how to start vidding! This is far from comprehensive and I tried not to make it too dense because it's a big subject. I still wanted to share a variety of topics about getting into vidding because it's a hobby and art that is near and dear to my heart.

First Piece of Advice

watch a lot of vids and rewatch vids multiple times. Seek out vids on YouTube, AO3, Watch the TikTok and Twitter/X vids that show up on tumblr or wherever you’re browsing. They all have distinct styles and tools/techniques they use to make their vids and edits. Rewatch the vids and ask yourself what you like or dislike about them. The song, the editing, the source. That can give you a good starting point about how you might want to approach making your own fanvids. The TikTok style of 30 and 40 second edits are very different what you find on YouTube. YouTube editors tend to use a full song and a lot more effects and a lot more overlapping dialogue. Whereas the fanvids - Vids - from people who came into vidding in the mid 2000s/2010s have their own culture, different ways they approach song choice, clip choices and narrative. I also suggest watching vids for shows/films you’re not familiar with as well as your fandom favorites. You can learn a lot about how vidders try to tell a story even when you might not grasp the context behind certain scenes but you can still follow along with the emotional arc of the vid.

Second Piece of Advice

Have fun and enjoy yourself. Everyone starts a new hobby as a newbie. It can be a lot of effort to make 30 seconds or a 3 minute vid, but it’s such a unique type of fanwork that is fun to watch and fun to make. It can also be migraine inducing because of all the learning and technical issues along the way. But!! omg when you make a clip fall on the perfect beat with your blorbo crying that perfect tear or you find an idea and sources for the bestest perfect lyrics of the song, it’s a magnificent high. It can make you feel like a god. At least that’s how I feel a lot of times!

There are about 10 steps* to creating** a fanvid/edit:

• select your platform and software (phone/computer video editors) • gather your video and audio files • create a new project in your video editor • import audio into the editor • import the video into the software and mute audio tracks that contain your video’s audio • review, label and cut up the video into shorter clips - this step is known as ‘clipping’ in vidding parlance, but it’s also optional. Some people pull in movies and scrub through the whole film and just pull it directly onto the timeline • move the various video clips around on the timeline to match the audio track you’ve chosen for your project, add video effects and additional dialogue if you like • export the finished timeline • upload the video to a streaming platform and/or downloadable service • share your project!!! posting to ao3 and/or social media or share on discord, etc * there are a lot more steps involved with each of these steps. What what software to use, where to find video, how to deal with copyright blocks on Youtube, etc. Some of that will be covered in the links below but is not comprehensive. That would require separate posts and links and I don’t want to drop an encyclopedia on you right now! I’m happy to provide more resources that I can curate if you want more direction and pointers to resources and amazing vidders.

** like any hobby, there can and will be a learning curve and frustrations. Blank page for a writer, blank timeline for a vidder. Is anything you put down is any good, self esteem and confusion about what actually makes sense is part and parcel for any creative work. Once you're in the vidding process and committed, as long as you're enjoying yourself you gotta just keep going to get it done.

Getting Started Vidding

My knowledge and background and learning how to vid from people on livejournal and dreamwidth from 2007. I don’t have any experience in editing with a phone but if that’s something you’re interested in, YouTube will be a place for you to start finding tutorials for various apps and tools. Probably discord communities, too. Vidding Workshop - a great how-to/guide when you're starting out. This is on dreamwidth from the WisCon vidparty in 2014. Some of the tech discussions might be a little outdated but there’s a ton of relevant information. It covers technical subjects as well as developing vid ideas and actually getting started. If you have any questions about what you’re reading you can leave an anonymous comment and ask - some of these vidders responding inthe threads are still active. You can find them on AO3/YouTube, tumblr, discord and actually leave them questions about their vids. Many vidders are more than thrilled to talk about their vids and answer questions. Vexcercises - this is a dreamwidth community for short-form vid excercises. This is a very structured way of introducing vid concepts and constraints so that you can produce a vidlet. I highly recommend you check this out and participate! There’s even an AO3 collection so you can check out how people have done the different exercises, too.

The Process of Vidding

Watch Me Edit - @limblogs put together a fantastic playlist of YouTube editors who will show you beginning to end how they made their vid. A lot of these editors appear to be using Sony Vegas but the general process of vidding end-to-end will be similar with other nonlinear editors like DaVinci Resolve, Premiere, etc. It’s a great way to actually see the vid come together if you don’t know what that even looks like. Every vidder will develop their own workflow and approach (which might even change from vid to vid), but it’s useful to see in video how people actually DO the thing. @limblogs also created a handy YouTube playlist some vidders from Bradcpu’s Vidder Profiles (Fanlore page). These profiles are basically like a director’s DVD commentary on their vidding process, featuring the vidders talking over their own vids! So cool. Phenomnal insights from these vidders about how they choose song, use effects, think about their narratives.

Self Rec: I recently did a vidding textpost series called: do it for the process - a naked vid draft: What (Yennefer of Vengerberg). How I Edit by @vimesbootstheory is another textpost about their vidding process. Self rec: Here’s my text interview: Vidder Profile - Kuwdora 2011. I talk about my process with a lot of specific examples from my previous work and lots of screenshots. This profile is over a decade old but a lot of this still holds true for me today! videlicet - this is an incredible vidding zine that @limblogs put togegther with a lot of amazing contributors. These articles and discuss about specific vids and aspects of vidding. It’s really detailed and a fantastic piece of vidding culture. I highly reading recommend the Demystifying Vidding article by lim and the A History of Vidding by @meeedeee and…pretty much every article in the zine!

Doing the vidding!

I recommend joining exchanges and watching vids that come out of exchanges and checking out fannish cons that have vidshows and discords to get more exposure to vidders and vids. Many people have joined @festivids (AO3 collection here) and made their very first vid, it's a very fun and great way to get into vidding. It’s not quite festivids season right now but time flies and it will be time to nominate sources and do sign-ups in the blink of an eye. Follow @festivids and check out the AO3 collection and see what people are making. Join the Vexcercises community and make some short vids and share them on your tumblr or on discord or somewhere and bask in the thrill of making your first fanvids. Check out who reblogged the vidder ask game - go and read other vidders responses and ask some new-to-you vidders questions. Everyone has their own take on process and tech and everything. It's great to hear and see what a lot people are doing and making.

Final Advice - talking about vids and doing the vidding

• watch vids • rewatch vids • leave a comment and ask a question about something you saw in their vid! • Again: find someone’s AO3 page of fanvids and ask them something about their vid in a comment or send them asks on tumblr (people usually have the same alias or link to their tumblr or dreamwidth pages somewhere.) • YouTube can be a valuable resource for tutorials so if you don't know something, there is likely someone who has made a tutorial about how to use a cross dissolve transition or anything else you might want to replicate in a video that you've seen in a vid. • start making a vid, scream and cry, ask for help, and keep going until you get it done. Celebrate and bask in your completed vid and share it with everyone! • Follow vidders on tumblr that you find from the vidder ask game • Check out the vidding discord for community and questions and vid recs and news about vidding exchanges and cons. • Have fun!

Hope this helps you get started! Thank you so much for the ask! Let me know if you have more questions and I can help you out or send you to cool vidders who have great advice and suggestions. And please send me your vid if you make one!

[dduane]

The first part of that last message got me curious -- given how long-running of a series YW is, how do you keep track of All That when writing a new entry? Copious amounts of notes? Re-reading the entire series backlog? Keeping a fully-functioning simulation of the entire YW universe running in your head with perfect accuracy? (only mostly joking with that last one)

And somewhat-relatedly, did you have any plan or idea when you started for how long YW would run? Or was it more of a "I'll keep writing about this universe until it stops churning out ideas," type of thing and that point just (very thankfully!) hasn't happened yet? I know for per-book purposes you're a proponent of outlining (I swear I'll try writing to one one day Q_Q) but do you also apply that to a series as a whole?

Let me take this backwards, as it may make more sense that way.

Particularly when doing series work, outlining is more vital than usual for me. (Which is saying a lot.) Some of the most basic reasons for this are laid out over here.

The simplest one, though, for series outlining, is logistical. Without having achieved a sense well in advance of what events (or effects of events) are going to be most formative or important (or both) for the characters in a series, you won't have allowed yourself time to think about them enough. And to fail to spend enough time on this is to cheat both yourself and the books in the series. (And your readership.)

If you're smart, you learn very early on that attempting to save time by shortchanging or omitting the planning stages is potentially profoundly destructive. You need to have a plan... and you need not to let anyone make you ashamed of needing one. Putting off your detailed character-interaction and event planning in the name of some magically occurring fit of inspiration, or theoretical bid toward creative spontaneity, will serve neither you nor your creation. You can throw "Hail Mary" passes all you like... but you'd better be damn sure there'll be someone in the end zone to receive. ...If not Herself.

...And just in case you're worried, your initial plans can be really loose! They don't have to jump out of your head full-formed like some local war goddess after somebody hits her dad in the head with an axe. The plan for the Middle Kingdoms books—after The Door Into Fire dumped me gasping by the side of the road and left me a few minutes to breathe—was nothing more than "Now that his boyfriend's finally upped the ante beyond all expectations, Freelorn finally gets off his feckless Would-Be Robin Hood shit and gets to work becoming king." I then spent the next decade thinking purposefully about how that was going to happen, and writing the second book in the series—while sufficiently working out the fine details of the climax (and beyond) to then be able to get busy executing the third book. Even though there was a change of publishers between the beginning of that series and the end of it, the basic dead-simple MK plan from a very early stage quickly became detailed and robust enough (because the series was short enough) to withstand the change. Not least because I'd been thinking about it in a general way since the early 1970s... and continue to do so, pretty much daily. The Door Into Starlight is still hanging fire...

YW has been a different story—quite literally—because the only plan extant at the start of things was, "Everybody slowly gets older (and slowly closer)." I always knew there were going to be more than the original three: there was way too much interesting ground to cover to just stop with those. (I've never yet succeeded in finding out who started the rumor that there were only going to be three books. Over time it's become one of those things you just shrug at and move on.)

(Adding a break here, because this does go on a bit. Caution: contains publishing skullduggery, plans ganging aft agley, approximate word counts, software recommendations, and value judgments.)

("Now wait just one minute. 'Feckless would-be Robin Hood shit'? Can she just say that??")

The circumstances surrounding the writing of Deep Wizardry and High Wizardry, though, made it plain to me that I was not going to be at the then-publisher (Dell) all that much longer. By the time HW came out, they were already starting to pull away from midlist books and authors in order to spend that part of the budget on best-sellers... so it became plain to me that attempting to construct a long arc with/at that publisher would have been folly. Because who could be sure what was going to happen next, and blow everything I'd built to smithereens?

Sure enough, when I finished A Wizard Abroad, Dell declined to pick it up (even though the books had been selling steadily and increasingly strongly in paperback). This annoying validation of my concerns—and my shiny new agent's—made it plain to me that further books in the series were going to need to be thematically driven, rather than mostly character-event-driven, and almost entirely capable of being taken as standalones. Any long arc was going to have to be one that could be suspended, or reworked, with little warning. Because what happens to you once, in publishing, doesn't at all mean you're immune to it after that.

It wasn't until the YW books were picked up by Harcourt in the mid-90s, with a strong editorial team behind them, that I felt confident enough to start building longer-arc material into the books, beginning with the arc that kicks off in The Wizard's Dilemma and more or less completes in Wizard's Holiday and Wizards At War. There is a secondary (and I assume, generally less obvious) arc that picks up material still unhandled in the "War Arc," and deals with it in A Wizard of Mars and Games Wizards Play. But plans for those stories' management were already nailed down in electrons as soon as 2001, because I had made some early choices about where I was going with the characters and their situations; and as new books came out, my editors agreed with me that the choices had been sound, and should remain.

I'll say this only because I've said it before: there is one piece of business planted in So You Want To Be A Wizard that has never been explicitly dealt with/followed up on in any of the books, and is at the core of YW #11. For the moment, it's safest merely to say that I do not willingly leave loose ends hanging. Beyond that, I'll leave you all to your own deductions.

...Now. How do I keep track of all this stuff? (The urge to mutter "With great difficulty" and run off into the wings is strong. But never mind.) :)

The question's fair, as there's a million-plus words' worth of it in the series at the moment. ...Mostly my guide remains the books themselves, in ebook form (in their NME versions. If I need to, I refer back to the traditionally published versions as necessary). I normally have a general memory of where a given event happens or where a given issue comes up for handling. I then pull that copy of the ebook(s) in question, and do a search on various useful target phrases until I find what I'm after, and where it leads.

For new work, or stuff not yet committed to what passes for canon, I do have lots of notes. Some of them are actually out in public, at the currently-being-revised Errantry Concordance (though they're not in any form that anyone but me will recognize). Others are tucked away in the notes sections of pertinent Scrivener files—this being one of the most valuable things about Scrivener, as far as I'm concerned: the ability to store project notes in the project itself as opposed to "all over the damn place." Others yet are in my iPad, as either typing or dictation, and get transferred to other files/formats as necessary.

But the very first thing that happens, when a new work comes into train, is an outline. Sometimes a hilariously simple one, sometimes one with more detail in the middle than at the beginning or the end. Doesn't matter what shape it starts in. All notes, scraps, prose chunks, random thoughts, and midnight cogitations, get slotted into place in this until it's ready to be organized and sent off to an editor. And this outline—no matter how fragmentary or how polished—remains ready to hand at all times until I've finished with correcting the book's ARC and am looking at the release date.

And then I zip it up and put it away where I can find it later if I need to... because some other plan, still in the building stages, may need something in that one that never happened, but now has its chance. Because in YW, as everywhere else in my work, it's so often about the things that have always almost happened... until they do.

...Anyway: HTH!

[zeroducks-2]

When I see Jason and Bruce acting like the stereotypical "prodigal son and gruff but loving father" (in canon!) my blood boils.

Jason died. Bruce did not avenge him, not even "playing by the rules", so not even by arresting the Joker. He didn't do JACK SHIT after his boy was murdered. And once Jason came back, Bruce slit his throat in order to save the life of the man who murdered him, and then left him to die in a burning building.

They should be unable to coexist in the same room let alone speak let alone have a "difficult but ultimately loving relationship". I hate you DC I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE

[whetstonefires]

Underrated element of where Jiang Cheng is re: wwx after everything is that they always had a sort of dual relationship. Two different relationship premises, superimposed on one another.

There's the one where they grew up together, as close as brothers, beating each other up and complaining and being one another's closest companions, sharing a bedroom as kids and eating at the same family dinner table, actively encouraged by Jiang Fengmian to interact as equals.

And then there's the one where Wei Wuxian was in service to Jiang Cheng's family. Not as a servant--Jiang Fengmian absolutely refused to do that, even if he couldn't adopt him. But as a disciple of Jiang Cheng's father and recipient of his charity, as Jiang Cheng's future right hand and most trusted subordinate.

It's a vertical relationship, intimate in its own way but with very strict expectations about what obligations flow in what directions; they are not identical and reciprocal as between friends and equals.

(It's my opinion that Jiang Fengmian's core deal was a deep-seated discontent with the hierarchies he was at the top of, without access to any way to actually deconstruct them or even coherently articulate his opposition. Wei Changze was his dear friend, and no one thinks that's a good enough reason for him to treat Wei Changze's son like his own, because Wei Changze was also his servant, and you can't make that circle square. That's not a way you're allowed to love.)

Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian were like brothers; Wei Wuxian served Jiang Cheng.

The personal relationship was always the most important one. To them, in their hearts. But it was the other one that was real, that had weight in the world.

And it's important to understand that neither can be held up as more factual than the other, even though they conflict. Both relationships existed, and had power.

So then when Jiang Cheng chose to hate Wei Wuxian and articulate his grudge against him, he chose to do it in the language of fealty. Because as far as he knew, his case there was secure, watertight, and it wouldn't expose him emotionally or politically.

And those are the terms in which he's been condemning him all this time: for abandoning the Sect, for ingratitude, for lack of loyalty.

For fuckups, too, and poor judgment, but some of that now turns out to have been justified and some of it was mostly the fault of enemies behaving badly, or even Jiang Cheng himself allowing himself to be pushed into making unworthy choices.

And it was all for his sake.

The thing, the thing in my opinion, about what Wei Wuxian did, about the core transfer and his silent self-destruction around keeping it secret, is that that is a hideous thing to have done between two people who love each other, as an act of love. Beautiful, but awful. As the man who was like a brother to him, Jiang Cheng has a great deal of standing to object to it.

But as an act of vassalage, it's basically perfect.

If Wei Wuxian were only what he formally was to Jiang Cheng, if he is interpreted through a lens of fealty and obligation, he did exactly what he should have done, and went beyond what duty actually required. And went to his death silently, allowing himself to be judged, taking all the burden on himself rather than let harm come to his lord.

Like, obviously Jiang Cheng was harmed by the part where Jin Zixuan got manslaughtered and Jiang Yanli walked into the line of fire in situations where Wei Wuxian was resorting to violence and probably shouldn't have, but those are one step removed from the core issue. In terms of Wei Wuxian's intentional choices around Jiang Cheng himself, at the times he was feeling betrayed and abandoned Wei Wuxian was in fact being impossibly, poetically loyal, an absolute cliche about it.

But only in terms of the hierarchical form of their relationship.

Which means that even though Jiang Cheng has a lot of reasons to still be mad at Wei Wuxian, his actual complaints that he's centered for thirteen years are basically wiped out by the revelation of Wei Wuxian's sacrifice.

Wei Wuxian was in fact doing the tragic hero loyal vassal thing, which very much includes being misunderstood and slandered by the world. (Chenqing as a name choice absolutely references this expectation, and the idea that Jiang Cheng specifically will never understand that Wei Wuxian was trying to help him first and foremost all along; he is not subtle.)

The debts Jiang Cheng has been spitefully calling in and considering defaulted were already long paid.

So if at this point Jiang Cheng keeps pursuing that same line of rhetorical attack, now that he knows, he'll be putting himself morally in the wrong, and he knows it. But if he pivots to something else, he'll both be signalling the shape of that secret to the entire world and looking like a prize idiot.

Which is already how he feels.

To actually address the remaining grievances between them, which are considerable, would require releasing those safe, open grudges to Wei Wuxian's face and then reclaiming him as a loved one. Which is, one could fairly say, more than anyone could expect.

Which is why Wei Wuxian told him he didn't have to.

Which leaves Jiang Cheng at something of an impasse.

[justxtalking]

all the times gon showed affection, interest, care and basically relied on killua

Did I search all the times Gon explicitively expressed his affection to Killua? Yes, yes I did. Do I regret it? No, no I don't.

I decided to choose the manga since it's what Togashi wrote. However, it is important to note that there are a lot of more times if we add both versions of the anime and the movies. In addition to this, I chose the most explicit times in which Gon expressed himself so there is no misunderstanding. (Though I do think it's basically the whole manga.)

This post is hella long and had to be divided into parts, so bear with me. This is just the beginning. (Edit: Here's the link of the full post.)

Hunter Exam arc

When they first met and Gon was impressed by Killua's trick.

2. Gon happy to be with Killua and to explore with him.

3. Gon's interest in Killua's family, and surprising Killua in the process.

4. Gon being impressed by Killua's technique, curious about it and expressing "Killua is an amazing guy."

5. Gon defending Killua against Illumi and seeing right through the situation.

6. Gon swearing to take Killua away from Illumi.

Zoldyck Family arc

7. Gon's refusal for the Zoldyck's intent on separating themselves from the rest of the world and more than ready to climb the wall if it is to reach Killua.

8. Gon's phonecall with Gotoh.

9. Gon's intent on climbing up the wall to reach Killua.

10. Gon accepts to train if it means he will reach Killua.

11. Gon getting hit over and over again if it means he will reach Killua.

12. Gon playing against Gotoh while waiting for Killua.

13. Gon happy to see Killua again.

14. Gon impressed by Killua's ability to know other's strenghts, and embarrassing Killua in the process.

Heavens Arena arc

15. Gon relying on Killua's advice to win.

16. Gon happy because Killua wanted to go to his house.

(+)

Click here for the full post.

[vaguely-concerned]

huh. you know something I just consciously put together for the first time about caterina and lucanis' relationship is that through the game we get to hear them talk about each other a lot, but we get very few chances to hear them speak with each other at any length at all. contrast it with other companions whose storylines have elements of 'believed lost/long time no see relative returns!' like bellara and davrin, where we get to see both of them have several pretty in-depth conversations with cyrian and eldrin. hell I think even rook talks with varric longer in the regret prison scene than we ever get to see lucanis and caterina interact directly.

(and when we do see them interact, it's mostly one-sided -- it is, perhaps unsurprisingly, caterina who is doing most of the talking and giving all the orders, as he ruefully observes is her wont after murder of crows. including jumpscaring him with 'you're first talon now btw' and the shocked pikachu face in five acts he goes through in response lmao. perhaps it's more accurate to say that she talks at him and he reacts, than that they talk to each other much.)

it has such an interesting effect too, because in deliberately denying us direct insight or experience and only having this mosaic of description from each of them to go on, as well as forcing us to pay attention to the negative space of what is carefully not said, it's evocative along the same principle that you never actually show the monster in a horror film. if you've read the wigmaker job you have a clearer image of the more uh. worrying elements at play here going in, but there is something fascinatingly insidious and naturalistic in the way it's 'hushed up' in the game itself. she has his complete loyalty both as a member of her house and, more importantly, that of an abused child to a parent figure. he readily admits several times that she's a difficult person to live with, an even more difficult person to be loved by ("even for me. and I was her favourite")... but never once does he actively blame her nor truly conceptualize that he has every right to do so (that he can be angry with her and still love her, because whether he should or not he unavoidably does), or that she might have acted differently than she did, that she made a choice every time to hurt him. even affectionately he speaks of her as a force of nature, an act of god -- something that can't be reasoned or pleaded with or resisted, something you can only hope to navigate with as little pain as possible and pray to survive. let yourself get carried away by the riptide, resisting it will only make it worse. you don't compromise with a hurricane, you just try to find the best shelter you can and cross your fingers while you wait for it to pass and be calm again.

love is that hurricane. you do whatever she asks. you earn her continued affection day by day by never letting her down. you only want the things she tells you it's okay to want and cut everything else away preemptively. ("A wyvern tooth dagger?? I loved wyverns as a boy --Caterina would never let me have one of these, though." and as we have all wept and gnashed our teeth over, it never even OCCURS to him that he's a like thirty-five year old adult man who can buy himself any dagger he wants at any time. she said he couldn't have one. so he'll never have one. that's just how it works. and maybe if Illario could just accept that and find his peace with it like I have, this whole thing wouldn't be so difficult. oh lucanis.)

such is the price -- and the cost -- of being loved by her, it's a loan on which the interest will never stop piling up. you have to keep paying it down in perfection every day if you want to keep it. who got the worse deal there: the grandson who has abandoned everything else in life to live up to that and mostly succeeded, until the day he's so burned out and broken it threatens to no longer be an option, or the grandson who can never seem to scrape together enough worth in her eyes no matter how he begs, borrows or steals it, how he hustles and plays dirty?

one of the worst things that can happen to anyone is to be loved by a selfish god. another one of the worst things that can ever happen to anyone is to not be loved by a selfish god. (hope that helps, boys!) even in betraying everything else, Illario can't bring himself to hurt his grandmother, because that would defeat the whole point. who would he defiantly be proving himself worthy to, without her. in love, devotion, submission, hatred, frustration, bitterness, everything is defined in relation to her, you can spot the gravitational force of it through how the dellamorte family move through time and space. she -- her love and regard and attention -- is still the sun both of their worlds orbit around, even as adults. the game might never tell you outright 'she used to beat and starve them growing up. for their own good you see, so they'd be strong (and broken down enough for her to build them up again however she wanted but I'm sure that's incidental)', but if you know even a little bit about how these dynamics can work the writing is on the wall everywhere you look and all the more unsettling for it.

follow lucanis' freeze-logic and fraught interpersonal catch 22 irreconcilable mixed emotions problems back far enough, looong before the ossuary entered the picture, and you start to see caterina's ghost around every fucking corner. she is so proud of him. (well, she would be. she made him. she forged exactly the knife she needed and it rests willingly, devotedly, in her hands, it would return to her every time because it doesn't know love as anything but to be a knife. his tama never taught him how to be anything else. his biggest fear with her is that she won't even want him back, the way he is now.) to the best ability of her soul, whatever parts of it survived a lifetime of crow politics and 'five children, eight grandchildren, only Illario and me left now', I think she really does loves him. he certainly loves her, with all the sincerity and artless desperation of a child, of the little boy he was once. and what she's done to him (and to illario, for all his shitty gremlin scar-ass antics lol) is awful. the harm is real, and the love is real, and trying to find a way for these two truths to exist in the same space is driving all three of them their own individualized forms of insane. you know. the way only family can and so often does lol.

through implications and short glimpses and having to put the pieces together yourself, you can have the feeling that there is very genuine mutual love and attachment in this relationship... and that beneath that there is something so profoundly wrong. and the sneaking '...oh shit it gets worse the longer I think about it' horror of that is more effective for me at least than the stark in-your-face presentation of the facts of the matter could have been. the love is here. the love is here. it only ever makes it worse.