#or maybe i've just read too much historical fiction in my day and my brain is just getting more and more confused

[scottstiles]

sometimes i hear or think about certain jobs or activities of ancient times and i’m like. yeah. thats what i was supposed to be doing not THIS

[eusuntgratie]

Hi Grace! I read voice note last night and I absolutely loved it! The way you write their dynamics makes my brain melt 🫠 I was so excited to receive a notif for that series, it was such a pleasant surprise. Disaster verse is my favourite and the first ever RPF I ever read (taynick or otherwise).

If I could be vulnerable for a second and make a small confession? I used to be an uptight little prick about RPF before and chose not to go there. But then I found your blog (and Jon's too!) and I thought to myself "hey these people seem cool, maybe I could get over myself for two seconds and check out something new before I reject it".

Then I read this could be disaster and it turned my brain into soup. I set out to gingerly dip my toe into uncharted waters and ended up diving headfirst— thank god for that, I would have been missing out. I had read that fic months ago but some of the scenes are still so fresh in my mind. I LOVE that fic <3

You have inadvertently kickstarted my foray into RPF and I just realised I never gave you credit for it. Thank you!

D thank you so much for sending this. Checking my inbox in the morning is a bit of a dice roll but this is just such a lovely message to receive <3

Thank you for loving disaster. She's my baby, my love child with @bigassbowlingballhead that we've been working on and planning and writing and brainstorming for a year at this point. I love this 'verse, and this story, and it was so fun to write. It makes me really happy when other folks love it too.

Thank you for telling me about your rpf journey! I totally understand the hesitation, and I think that a healthy awareness that you are writing/reading about fictionalized versions of real people is important. It's clear that there are people in this fandom who have blurred those lines which leads to fandom drama and the actors being put in a weird position, or made uncomfortable. The fourth wall exists for a reason!

However, apart from that, rpf really isn't any different than reading about any other fictional character. Pam & Tommy on Hulu is RPF. Seb Stan's new trump movie is RPF too. Historical fiction featuring real life characters is RPF (there are SO MANY examples of this). Monsters on Netflix is RPF. ALL true crime is RPF. People have been writing rpf for EVER. It's nothing new, or even limited to fanfiction.

It is fun for me to take the bits and pieces that we see and fill in the gaps of what could be possible. the 'canon' of rpf is SO DIFFERENT from writing characters from a tv show, movie, or a book... it's an interesting and fun challenge for me (which is why i've written in...4? i think?...different rpf fandoms at this point).

I could ramble for days but I'll leave it there. Thank you for this message; I really appreciate it 💜

[multiverse-sya]

Learning about my paratype first

I've posted this on my dreamwidth first. In order to avoid cross posting in the tags on tumblr, I will be utilizing periods to break apart a word. If you see a . in the middle of a word, it's just to hide my post. I really don't want to do it this way, but at the same time, I only want people in alterhuman spaces to see this.

I connected to vul.cans, before discovering my main pro.toss identity. And I now consider vul.cans to be a paratype despite learning about them first.

To explain what I'm talking about, I will need to start at the beginning. About ten years ago, before I knew anything about alterhumanity but knowing already that I specifically felt nonhuman or animal,  I remember getting interested in Star.Trek. And although I vaguely knew what pro.toss were at the time, I didn't look too deeply into them even though my thoughts at the time towards them were: "I find them interesting. I should read more about them in the future", and you can guess what happened once I looked into them more closely and looked past their in game appearances. Although I was always interested in science fiction, I feel that getting into Star.Trek made me look into the genre more closely in general. And as I was watching the movies and series, I began to develop an attachment to vul.cans.  So when I first looked into Sta.rcraft, the knowledge I pulled from to understand the historical events and telepathic abilities were from the vul.cans.

In hindsight, they do have some similarities with pro.toss, even though you'd think of klin.gons first, since we were considered a warrior race as well. After all, one of the quotes from a pro.toss unit in Star.craft 1 based on a klin.gon warcry: it's a good day to die. But I can't clearly make sense of why I developed this connection with vul.cans, and near zero with klin.gons, past the honor components. Maybe I latched to them because of my anxiety at the time, and wanting to be able to control my anxiety (an issue I still struggle with and will always have to). Or my brain truly made some barely remembered connection to them based on what it knew about my life as a pro.toss, which I believe I've had since birth, or both.

I became so interested in their desert world, their culture and history, and I even began to learn the language. I recently went back to trying to learn the vu.lcan language and figured out that I still remember some of the basic grammar and vocabulary rules after nearly an entire decade. I don't know it fluently but I can pick apart grammar and verbs in a sentence, to the point that I consider it my third language. A few years later, I'd go on and try to learn the pro.toss language (called kh.alani), which there are only a few translated phrases on. To make life harder for me, there is apparently a real life kh.alani dictionary that the franchise uses, but it's not public. So I have to use my own imagination. My mind seems to be pulling on what it remembers about learning about vu.lcan and tries to construct it onto the pro.toss language, because it sees a similarity between the two. Now, there isn't anything inherently spiritual about that, it's just interesting that it's where my mind goes to, instead of pulling from the other languages I know much better. Although there are some similarities in word structure and sounds between the two. It could be that my brain also sees similarities and has an easier time remembering both of the languages that way.

I believe the passerby will look like phrases from the same language, but the first one is in kh.alani, the second is in vu.lcan:

"Ki nala atu.m...na adan saiosh." "Ki'sarlal nash-veh gla-tor du."

Despite how human vul.cans look, they are similar to pro.toss in a few ways. Mostly, we are both telepathic and have a focus on the mind and on mental abilities a little bit more than humans generally do. Control, practice, discipline and a focus on martial art skills are all things that they have in common and resonates with me. Vul.cans culturally have a great respect for privacy and although this isn't an entire species specific trait for the pro.toss, it is also important in ner.azim culture, a certain pro.toss group that I will talk about later. We also ironically, have a very similar history of bloodshed. I still recall that my first thought when I went through pro.toss history in the fandom wiki was something like: "Huh. So they went through that vu.lcan thing too", even though the outcome was the EXACT opposite of what the pro.toss had done back then.

To summarize to those who don't know, vul.cans had a very violent period in their history and were close to destroying themselves. But then along came S.urak, who managed to bring peace and discipline by teaching the importance of logic and the control of your emotions. Contrary to what most people believe about vul.cans, they experience emotions at a greater level than humans do, though they are forced to suppress them through practice and discipline. Vul.cans aren't born logical and emotionless, it's learned through practice. Although I personally don't think suppressing them is a healthy long term solution. Now prot.oss on the other claw, also went through a violent period of history where they went back to the stone age from all of the wars they fought with each other. And then came Kh.as, who fills the same literary role as Su.rak. Only instead of bringing logic, he brought a giant crystal that connected all of the pro.toss through an emotional link. There, hiding your emotions and thoughts were very difficult. A group of pro.toss, the nera.zim, severed themself from this link for the sake of privacy and individuality, which is a group I'm a part of.  But to put another wedge into things, there were also a group of vul.cans who despised Su.rak's philosophy and left. Those became the rom.ulans, which I don't really have any strong feelings towards. I think this is because rom.ulans took on an adversarial role throughout the story lines but the ner.azim weren't presented as evil, just as wanting different things.

(I can't be the only one who sees these similarities)

As a note, my memories are often pretty reliable, and go to great lengths to make sure I remember everything correctly and am not applying what I know now to the past. But I'm sure that despite that, there might be additional details that I'm missing such as more of my specific thoughts when I was learning about vul.cans.

As I mentioned once, I picked the name 'Sya' while learning the vul.can language on a forum. And I ironically decided to stick with the name 'Sya' when I started out in the therian community in 2017, completely oblivious about my pro.toss weirdness at that time.

[aaronstveit]

hi! ive been around for awhile now but never said hi to u off anon jdkdmdjd

how are you?

okay question, how do you read so many books? i used to be a bookworm in middle school but then high school and depression happened and i lost the ability to focus. im adhd so its not surprising but none of the tricks people recommend works for my brain. i sit down to read and after two words im like "okay nevermind."

i really like audio books but i miss actually Reading the words myself you know? there is a difference between them for sure and i also notice i remember the new words and phrases better when im actually reading them instead of just hearing them.

you read a lot so i thought maybe any advice you have might help me? its worth a shot to ask jfkdkdjd no pressure tho. <3

omg hi!!🫶🏻 i'm good, how are you? <33

i was exactly the same! couldn't stop reading in elementary & middle school, then high school completely destroyed my love of reading & learning. it's honestly taken me years to get back to being an avid read and to enjoying it </3

i'm lucky to have a lot of free time. i also have a lot of sleeping problems & end up unable to sleep around 2am most nights, so i get a lot of reading done from like 9pm-2am. it's not ideal to my sleeping schedule and i definitely don't recommend it, that's just one of the ways that i end up reading so much.

i think cossette @hollyfhumberstone has a phenomenal post here about tips for reading more that i definitely refer to when i find myself in a reading slump!

for me, it really helps to set a daily goal for reading. i use the finch app and every day i set goals to read at least one chapter of whatever it is that i'm reading. there is no punishment for missing a goal, but there are rewards for accomplishing them, and that helps me! like right now, i'm reading wuthering heights, which i've put off reading forever because it intimidates me. so i set a goal of just reading one chapter a day so i can get through it. sometimes i'll read two chapters a day, especially if they're short, but it's easier to get my brain to do it because i've taken the pressure off myself, if that makes sense! a lot of my reading is really about tricking my brain into letting me do it tbh.

i also let myself take breaks between chapters, even when i'm sitting down to read for a few hours! if i finish a chapter and i want to check social media or play solitaire on my phone for a second or get a snack or something, i just do it. i know some people really try not to look away from their book for certain amounts of time, but that doesn't work for me because then i'll be looking at the words but i'll just be thinking about doing something else the entire time.

one of my favorite things to do is talk about the books i'm reading, so that helps me, too! i talk to my dad and my friends about books, which always hypes me up to read more. if you ever wanna talk about books with me, my DMs and asks are always open! i literally just LOVE talking books, even if i haven't read them yet!

setting reading goals works for me too, but i tend to set running goals instead of definitive goals. like, i'll set my goodreads goal for x number of books each year, but the rest of my goals are not numerical. they're more like "read more diversely," "read more classics," "read more science fiction," "read more fantasy," "read more historical fiction," and "read more nonfiction." (those are my goals for 2024 btw). that way i'm not chasing a number, i'm just broadening my horizons!

what has really helped me the last couple of years was finding genres i enjoyed and getting really into them. i discovered i like mystery, thriller, and horror books a lot more than other genres, so that's most of what i've been reading! i still run into books i don't like, and i still branch out and find some incredible books in other genres, but i'm done forcing myself to read what's popular just for the sake of it.

oooh and another thing i do when i can't get myself interested in a new book is to reread an old favorite. i reread the hunger games pretty much every year when i find myself in a reading slump, because i know that series will keep me interested no matter how many times i've read it. annotating old favorites also works for me! i annotated thg this year, the raven cycle last year, and i think next year i will try annotating lord of the rings!

i hope this helps! i wish i could give you some better advice </3 if you have any other questions, please let me know!! 🫶🏻

[bookshelfmonkey]

September reading wrap-up

I did not realise quite how behind I was on these. At least I'm starting to catch up though.

Don Quixote- Cervantes- 3/9/23- 4/10 It had an interesting premise but was just too long. The first few hundred pages were interesting but after that it just felt repetitive and boring.

I, Claudius- Robert Graves- 6/9/23- 8/10 This was a very interesting and entertaining take on both biography and historical fiction. The attitudes towards disability weren't perfect but were definitely better than I expected from a book published in the 1930s.

The Eye of the World- Robert Jordan- 11/9/23- 8/10 Once it got going it was a very interesting and exciting fantasy book. I can see why this series is considered a classic of the genre.

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth- Andrew Joseph White- 12/9/23- 10/10 Showstopping. Spectacular. Permenantly altered my brain chemistry. Seriously, though, I don't think I've ever related to any character the way I related to Silas and the whole book just touched me emotionally in a way very few pieces of media ever have.

Roxana- Daniel Defoe- 13/9/23- 1/10 The formatting was beyond awful for my ADHD and, of what I could understand, nothing interested me.

You're Not Supposed To Die Tonight- Kalynn Bayron- 15/9/23- 8/10 I'm starting to think that horror maybe isn't my genre. It was good, just not really my thing.

How to Ride a Dragon's Storm- Cressida Cowell- 15/9/23- 10/10 Nostalgia to the max. Words can't express how much I love this series.

The Sorcerer In the North- John Flanagan- 19/9/23- 9/10 Again, this is a childhood favourite and I love it. I do feel like it would have been better if this and book 6 were combined into one, though. The pacing in both of them feels a bit off as a result, and this one definitely suffers for it.

The Day of the Dreader- Cressida Cowell- 21/9/23- 10/10 Fun.

Literary Theory: An Introduction- Terry Eagleton- 30/9/23- 6/10

Antigone- Sophocles- 30/9/23- 7/10 It was good, but it just didn't do much for me personally.

[phoebehalliwell]

Harvest, cocoa

harvest - what fictional character do you most identify with? why?

hmm that's difficult i mean right off the bat basically all of the charmed girlies just bc that's been so ingrained in my youth n just like whole life really I Actually Wrote a um. it was an application for a private high school and it was like name a person who you most identify with historical or fictional & i actually wrote mine about piper halliwell kfkdkskkfjg. um. I Did Not Get In. but whatevs. i do really. i do identify with all of them or maybe just project onto them w/e who's counting outside of the charmed fandom tho Another formative piece of media for me that i Loved was the summoning trilogy by kelley armstrong those were my favorite books in elementary school (that and wings by. i forget who that was by. with tamisin (tamasin?) and jak) anyways have not touched that series in Forever bc you know it's like a kids series or whatever but my friend was really bored i think in the beginning of quarantine and read that series and was like wow you got most of your personality from these books huh and i was like i did????? so um. in those books id probably sit somewhere between chloe and simon also maybe the reason i never liked enemies to lovers that much was no one could ever live up to chloe & derek (real ones know) so yeah. there is actually a margaret in that trilogy she's an ancient crotchety old lady she's a necromancer like chloe but (spoiler) she's evil but even if she wasn't she was a dick so. yeah!! but yeah prue's kind of sense of duty and feeling like you know. like you can do the best job ipso facto it is automatically your job to take control, piper's maternal instinct coexisting with her tendency to be a snarky pain in the ass, phoebe's desire for something bigger for something magical in the world knowing that there must be something lying in your future even if you can't quite see it yet, paige's optimism and dumb sense of humor even when it feels like you keep losing no matter what, chloe's rampant inner monologue that just kind of you know projecting your life into a story to try to contextualize it and like her you know. there's a scene where she's like. it's not important the evil lady running the show is like well aren't you the little instigator and chloe's like technically i'm not the instigator bc i never explicitly provoked anything rather things started happen once i arrived which would make me the catalyst But i don't think pointing that out would win be any brownie points. that is kinda how my brain works. n simon's great blend of kind of vain self confidence and dry humor coupled with you know like loyalty he protects the ones he loves.

cocoa - if you could have any type of hair, what colour and cut would you have?

i actually really like my hair it kind of looks like an early s4 phoebe except i think mine is a little longer bc i always try to grow it out don't take care of it get it cut and start the cycle again but like. i do really want a fun color i just hate the idea of committing to a fun color and wearing it every day and the process of growing it out idk. if i were to dye my hair i'd probably either go for a fire engine red which i've done with cheap hair dye for a couple halloween costumes or like a denim blue nothing too electric. but i really like being blonde i think it does best suit my personality 😗✌️

[seenashwrite]

Dearest Nash, I've touched on this before in (I believe) in a discussion re: why some mainstream fics get oodles of notes while more original ones do not, *but* I wanted to get a bit more specific here. There are certain writers here whose writing has a definite vibe to it (if you will) that separates their work from others, and your name is one of the first that comes to mind. Bear with me, because trying to detail what makes your writing stand out is difficult while trying to articulate a Q

^ this is a gif with parts 2 - 4, just FYI

Hmmm… this is a bit of a brain buster. But I can answer it, and I think succinctly, maybe with a touch of that Spidey sense you mention:

Thank you for your inquiry, hope that helps! 

I kid. But this is a brain-turner. And a characteristic which, like you say, ain’t limited to me. I’d honestly throw comedians under this umbrella, too, not because I’m necessarily gunning for a laugh every time, but because it’s pretty much their job to take a “basic” (a tenet or fact of life or present reality or whatever) and present the observation with a twist. I think of storyteller comedians specifically, your Patton Oswalt-s, Maria Bamford-s, Kathy Griffin-s, and John Mulaney-s.

So if I can sum up, assuming I’m tracking with you, what you’re more or less driving at with the “how” is this –> Is there anything beyond simply personality, or an auto-pilot thought cascade (for lack of better terminology) that contributes? Are there things someone could do/be proactive about, to perhaps cause this same sort of reaction to happen in their brain?

I think there just might be.

Folks reading this, let me ask you a question, and you cannot look it up:

What was the name of the Sherpa guide who led Sir Edmund Hillary up Mount Everest?

.

.

.

His name was Tenzing Norgay.

Nash, what in the name of the frozen corpse of George Mallory does this have to do with Lion’s question?

I shall tell you.

My father told me that fact when I was quite young, so young I legit couldn’t even ballpark my age for you. The context was that having little facts tucked away in your brain may come in handy. Not in a Jeopardy kind of way, more in a conversational way. I’ve no idea why the man thought the Sherpa guide who led Hillary up Mt. Everest would ever come up during a conversation with enough regularity to justify my knowing that fact (aside from him randomly quizzing me throughout my life) but hey, I guess it just did.

But speaking of Lil’ Nash, the situation for her was that she was the eldest of all the Nash litter by miles��� like seven or eight years, I’m not bothering to check. So I had a lot of alone time, and my grandmother was my chief babysitter, so prior to kindergarten and then til I was in about second grade (so: all day long during the week, then every weekday after she picked me up from school), I was pretty much always at her house. Yeah, there were toys, but not a lot to do. And I’d read. I’d been reading on my own for a decent while, not because I was some prodigy but because my dad read to me *constantly* when Lil’ Nash was Itty-Bitty Nash, and it “took”. My mom also, every time she went to the grocery store always - and I mean always - brought back a book for me. It might’ve been an Archie comic—-

Mandatory #fuck the CW’s Riverdale tag

—-or a Babysitter’s Club, or Sweet Valley High, Judy Blume, Madeleine L’Engle, Zilpha Keatley Snyder, you get my point. Some small paperback. It would piss Dad off because he’s a cheap bastard and two buck books once or twice a month were really gonna cut into the savings [eyeroll] but also, in a way, because I’d kill it in a half day/a day. Wouldn’t put it down. After awhile, I started writing my own silly little kid stories, then - and this is where the creative writing love came about -  I started writing soap operas for my Barbies. (When I was older - like, 5th grade? 6th grade, maybe? - none of my peers were still playing with Barbies, and I got made fun of when, at a sleepover, they saw my stash. And I was like - No, no, no. Those aren’t for playing. That’s my cast.)

Time went on, and when I was bored at post-church lunch/dinners, I would also read the old encyclopedias at my grandmother’s, the ones from the late ‘60s/early ‘70s that she had for my mom and my aunt. As I got even older and became fascinated with rooting through the boxes in gran’s basement, looking at all the cool old clothes, I stumbled upon my aunt’s collection of Whoa-Hooooo Shit There’s No Way My Grandparents Knew You Read These books. Those kinda Harlequin-esque ones, except my aunt’s tastes run close to mine, none were the same shtick with different covers, shmultzy-sappy romance, there was always some sort of intrigue along with the sexy times, and she also had, like, every legit V. C. Andrews (meaning: not the ones from the ghostwriter, this was way before her death) book.

What is my point? I read a LOT. Now-a-days, other than fanfic (which… straight up: I don’t read a lot of that, either. I peace out on probs 80% of it before the third-to-fifth paragraph. It’s gotta sell me fast, yo) I haven’t read fiction in probably, oh…. 12 years? I think the last ones were the first couple Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Wait, no! I lie! I read the 50 Shades books when I was traveling 2x/wk for a job about 4 years ago, and I needed the laughs. It worked. Oh my days, that woman can’t write. The screenplay might’ve been worse, it goes her, then Buckleming, then everyone else. It’s bad. In any event, past decade or so, it’s more historical stuff and true crime and science stuff and all that old fart jazz.

Okay, so that’s #1: Read. And not just anything, be well-read, and that doesn’t mean developing some level of expertise, by “well” I’m saying to cover the spread. You’re building your tool kit, is all. You won’t use most of it, but it’s nice to have options. You also don’t always have to get this stuff from reading now-a-days, because podcasts. Cover the spread there, too. Lemme look at my bookmarks…. 

[Spongebob narrator voice: A few moments later]

I’m back. Science - Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe; General current stuff without being news - CGP Grey’s Hello Internet; current events with shittons of pop culture, past and present - Greg Proops’ Smartest Man in the World; fun history stuff - The Dollop; entertainment stuff - How Did This Get Made.

#2: Keep a notebook with you and jot down turns-of-phrase that spark something in your brain - things you read on websites, on twitter, in articles, things you hear people say (real life, TV, movies, podcasts), and write it. Don’t snap a pic with your phone or make a note in your phone. There are studies behind this, I’m not hunting them down, you’ll just have to trust me, but there are, and it goes to being reflexive, a brain “muscle memory” thing, if you will. You’re not doing it to plagiarize, you’re doing it to dissect it, kind’ve like you did with the example you gave on me —> went from punch action to punch spiked with booze to a punch with a spiked gauntlet.

Which leads to #3: Mental dictionary. I have a large vocab repository, and it stems from the tons of reading - I stop and look up stuff if I either don’t know it, or it’s used in such a way that I think they’ve got it wrong and want to double-check that maybe there’s another usage I don’t know - and also stems from a drive to combat the (still fairly thick) deep South drawl I can’t kick, and not for lack of trying. But see, I couldn’t have whipped out that progression if I weren’t aware that one definition of “spike” is “to add alcohol to”, or of the common shtick in stories of spiked punch like at high school proms typically, or knew about the existence of spiked gauntlets / old school armor. 

And I guarantee you that a good chunk of people didn’t really “get it”, and just thought “Nash Be Nashin’, that nutty gal”. So they “get it” on that level, but don’t Get. It., if you see what I’m saying. And that’s fine. Maybe it got something cranking in the back of their mind and it’ll hit ‘em in the middle of the night, or they’ll be watching Game of Thrones or something, see a gauntlet and be like “Oh goddamnit, I just got a throw-a-way one-liner from three years ago” and have a chuckle.

Related, re: looking stuff up and things that people “get”? I didn’t know fuck-all about Twilight, but it seemed of import to the folks around 5 years younger than me, the Nashlings wouldn’t shut up about it, so I got a good working knowledge of it. Same with Harry Potter, and through it I got to “know” J.K. Rowling, who I find to be an exceptional writer, so that was great, and I’ve watched the movies for the most part over the years at Christmastime, and I don’t give the first shit about what “house” I’m in, nor do I care about what Patronus I’d fart, but I have a working knowledge of what those are, and horcruxes and who Snape and Voldie are, you get my point. I can keep up. But to do it, I had to take the time to look it up. One thing I would not trade for gold is Michael Sheen chewing the goddamn scenery in that battle segment from the last Twilight movie. Have I watched the movie? No. But that scene is the shit. And that baby CGI is horrific on several subtle levels. And not-so-subtle. I’ve digressed.

Back to those notes: So if you’ve got these notes jotted, you might see something else and think “I feel like that could’ve been snappier…. why do I think that….” And you’ve got a resource at your disposal, that little notebook. Hell, jot that thing down - things you think could be done better. I have in many documents a highlight around chunks of scenes for my big dog story where it says in bold above or below “DO BETTER”. Meaning: there’s a better way to get from A to B, but I’m just not quite there yet. I’m pretty quick on the uptake and can crank out something snappy on the fly (like say, in CASPN chat or when banging out a short reply or thank you note) but there’s definitely times I gotta slap a DO BETTER on it and walk away til that snappy something-or-other light bulb goes off. 

Here’s a recent one where I backtracked, matter of fact - that noir spoof thing I wrote? Along with my co-writer, Moscato? There was a line that I couldn’t hit with a good zinger, so I just said moments were going by like a fat hamster on a wheel, which is cute, but not really grooving with the setting/the vibe. Less tipsy, when I was correcting some inelegant formatting and a misspelling [sigh], I went “Oh! Why didn’t this occur to me last night? Right. Wine.” So the line is now about moments dragging like a rolling donut with a copper on its tail. Get it? The cop’s a fat ass. The donut-cop stereotype.

…….Fine, it ain’t my best, but it fits better. Moving on.

And this leads nicely into #4, and a specific tip I can impart - assuming you’ve got a passable-to-high level of vocabulary in your tool belt, practice messing around with making nouns into verbs, and twisting random stuff into descriptors and using bizarre words/things in metaphors/analogies. Like, I say “adulting” quite a bit. Ali - @littlegreenplasticsoldier - I thiiiink was writing recently about Sam being drunk, and he’s a tall wobbly Jenga tower on his last Jenga. Going back to the noir, pulpy detective style, try messing with the whole “S/he was like a ___ that ____”. Add on to stuff that’s well known - He was like a dog with a bone, if the bone was a ____ and he was a ____ and we were in a ____. (I have *nothing* in mind to fill those blanks, by the way, feel free to twist it into sumpin’)

What else…. okay, here’s a #5: In drafts, let yourself wander, and see what kicks out. It can be fueled by silliness or anger, but I don’t reckon you’re gonna get the “snappy” you’re aiming for if you’re down in the dumps and going full-court-press angst. The best stuff, IMO, comes from the space in between goofy and pissed, and that is The Land Of Snark. You can always re-style it to bend more dry or wistful should you need to, certainly, depending on the situation.

Have a sample of a primo Nash Digression that was fueled by ire in a recap from Season 12 (episode 19). I had said - RE: the random inclusion of the character Joshua, which still pisses me off because they burned a character that held massive potential for future stuff as he’d been shown to be the only angel with direct access to Chuck, so, y’know, that could never come in handy, like ever again in the series, right? - the following.

Mandatory pre-emptive #fuck Dabb

[Spongebob narrator voice] A few moments later —> 

On god, I have no idea where that came from, and here’s where we go back to ol’ Spidey up there, because end of the day?

All that other stuff’s the foundation, sure, but there’s always gonna be the weird iggy, the thing that can’t be learned or taught, whatever the quirky synapse is that fires off in my/our brains. In my experience, it’s an ADD-ish sort of jam mixed with the Nostradamus effect. Meaning, (A) we’re at Level 10, rapid fire thought processing >50% of the time, and (B) throw out enough stuff for long enough, some of it’s going to stick. And I whiff it plenty. Multiple times in CASPN chat I’ve been like “Whoo, tough room” when something falls flat.

A specific example: @mrswhozeewhatsis - and I think you saw this, but anyone else seeing this may not have - gave probably the most fantastic analogy I’ve seen regarding the whole “getting it” thing, and while it was on the topic of meaty plots that get too far into the weeds (my specialty) and how it can lessen appeal to a broader audience, it still applies here. 

She said “Sometimes, when I’m reading something of yours, I feel like there’s a joke I’m missing. It’s like watching Spaceballs without having seen Star Wars.” I say that to say - nobody’s gonna land references that cover the spread 100% of the time. And, y’know, fine. I figure maybe it’ll prompt someone to do a quick google for - well, let’s use Spaceballs. Most folks will no doubt get the Star Wars part, but maybe not Spaceballs. Maybe they’ll check it out, find something they enjoy. Or learn a new word. Or get a brainstorm for a story. Who knows?

Last tip: Don’t actively mimic anyone’s style. Much fail. And I don’t only mean because if they’re on a social Venn diagram with you, would likely recognize themselves in your stuff——

Takes a moment to wave to the peeps still trying with me! #bless your hearts

—–but because it’s fucking hard. I did it broadly on the noir thing, that’s not a hard thing, to homage generalities, but the way I’m messing with doing this on that silly Princess Bride series? Purposefully styling it like Goldman? It’s good  challenging and all, and it is making it feel more in the groove with the book/movie, but I have to be in the right frame of mind or it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard, and when I have pushed it, then gone back, it’s sloggy, soggy garbage.

I say all that to say: it’s an amalgam of brain-wiring/personality, and world/life perspective(s), and knowledge acquired over time. The first just is; the second will evolve in myriad ways, maybe for the better, maybe for the worse; the last is the one where you/we have control, we can fill bucket after bucket of information, and the well won’t ever run dry.

Sorry this took so long. I kept adding and subtracting. This is the edited version, if you can believe it. Welcome to Nash Brain. 😉

[ailuronymy]

hi Grey~ i've been hit with some inspiration recently, and i'm working on some folk-lore/myths stuff for my clans. however, i really have no idea where to start! i've started a bit on a creation story, but then i jump around to some mythical figures and then i'll move to some omens/general folk-lore stuff. do you have any suggestions or maybe a word of advice?

Hello there! This is a difficult one to answer, because I can’t really tell you your process for creating and in trying to answer, I can really only draw on what I personally know to be useful (for me). So, I guess that’s my preface to this answer: some or none of this might be useful to you! Take whatever feels relevant and good and ignore the rest. Hopefully that’ll be enough to get you started. 

First of all, I think it’s always worthwhile to take stock of your cauldron and see if you’ve been giving yourself enough fuel to work with. If you haven’t, the best thing for you to do isn’t write–it’s read, and watch, and talk to people, and look at art, and walk in parks, and overall replenish your soul with inspiration and curiosity and things you want to talk about. You sound like you’re topped up on inspiration, but it’s possible that some of your trouble is coming from not having any motivation to write or anything to bounce off from. For example, a decent amount of my motivation for writing fiction tends to come purely from exasperation and dissatisfaction: I have a selection of books on my shelf I read specifically to piss myself off enough to get to work. (Shout-out to Anne McCaffrey and friends). When I’m mad like that, I usually know exactly what I want to write–usually, a literary version of the academic In Response To, in which I do the damn thing right.

With that in mind, something that might help you know where to start and find what you want to say is seeking out things (not necessarily fiction) that make you really feel something. It might be anger, or disappointment, or curiosity to know more and understand or experience something outside of what you personally know, and whatever your feelings are, that’s your motivation. Writing solely for the sake of writing is hard, even when you desperately want to write something, whereas writing because you want to do something with what you’re writing is much easier, I find. 

Additionally, I think there’s a difference between writing “just for fun” and writing with purpose–i.e., writing because you’re curious or excited about an idea and want to explore it more, and writing to tell a holistic story. Both of them are good, and occasionally they overlap! But the goals and processes are different, and the mindset you bring to them is different. If you’re frustrated with your writing, sometimes it can be useful to sit back and figure out what it is you actually want to achieve.

So, my next word of advice is: figure out what you want to do. I know that doesn’t sound like helpful advice, but if you’re trying to create a completed story, you’re going to want to focus on different things than if you’re only looking to have fun frolicking in the rich landscape of your imagination. I believe that sometimes we use world-building as procrastination: it’s often easier (and more fun) to think up a million ideas about a world than it is to physically write the world into being in a story, sentence by sentence. 

It sounds to me you’re stuck in the mire of being overwhelmed by world-building and not knowing what you need to know about your world, so I’d say the fastest way to get through that is to simply not play ball with that whole trouble. Instead, I recommend sitting down with the skeleton of the story you want to use this world-building to decorate, and start writing it out. Let it be rough and messy, because the idea is to get your story–not the world-building–onto the page. Beautiful world-building is the wonderful skin and bones of your work, but the story you’re chasing should be the heart of what you’re working on. 

As you scribble out this story idea, my trick is to put TK every time I don’t know something about it–whether it’s a name, a concept, a piece of world-building, whatever. (TK because it’s the easiest letter combination to search for later). Block out chunks of how you think your story should go. Put TK in every gap and just keep going. Then when you’ve got some idea of the shape of your story, that’s the time to look back and go, “Okay, where does a creation story fit in? When would telling that tale that add something to the narrative?” and “Where does it feel right to experience an omen?” and “Which characters would talk about/care about/be influenced by mystical and/or historical figures?” and so on. Knowing where the gaps are in your story re: myth stuff is going to help you know which elements of world-building need to be thought about first, and it’ll also help you think critically about the structure of your narrative. From there, you can build outwards, but it might be useful to know upfront what bits are crucial to telling your story. 

Which brings me to my last bit of “advice”–or, rather, a previous observation, perhaps a warning. In a good book, most world-building isn’t shared with the reader. Less is often more when it comes to making a delicious world that is just unsatisfying enough, withholds just enough, to make the reader think about it for years afterwards. I know that the books I love best always leave me slightly–or sometimes very–hungry for more, but I’m always grateful to have that hunger, because there’s not much worse than a world that gives you far too much, plus all the answers, and nothing to snack your brain on for later. 

So I suppose what I’m saying is experiment now knowing that you’ll hold back later. In the end, you’ll only put the best pieces into your work. For now, feel free to jump around and try a dozen different things! I don’t believe any writing is ever wasted. These explorations with ideas will contribute to how you conceptualise your story in your own mind, and even the ones you decide to cast aside will help you learn what your story isn’t about. 

I can’t tell you what you care about or what you’re interested in or what you have fun writing about, but in my experience, you should write the things you can’t leave alone. If you expose yourself to enough of the world (fiction, non-fiction, real life experiences), some things are going to stick to you whether you like it or not and you’re going to find it hard to get them out of your head until you write them out of there. If you don’t have those things, it’s only because you haven’t come across those sticky moments yet–every writer has them. 

The other thing my experience has taught me to value is patience, I’m afraid. Some days the writing just doesn’t work. Sometimes you need to stew ideas for years before it’s their time to come to life. I try to enjoy it as a journey, because it’s not worth stressing over. I hope some of these thoughts have been useful to you. Good luck with your writing!