#phyn writes

[phynoma]

an extant form of life- chapter eleven!

“Oh, well, great!” Martin snaps. His cheeks are getting brighter again. Tim can almost swear he feels the heat radiating from everywhere Martin is flushed. “That's just wonderful, Tim! I'm so glad you made the choice to go– to go shag someone while we're having a-an emergency here; that's just lovely for you, isn't it? What a horrible time you’ve had!” “Actually, it has been, a bit!” Tim snaps back, spurred on by more than a little guilt and his own frustration over the whole damnable situation. “It hasn't been a walk in the park!” “Oh, it hasn't been a walk in the park?”

Everything's great, guys. It's cool. Everyone is totally fine and acting like their best selves

[dyed-red]

I voted for priest Sam hair! Not only because it was the correct choice, but, hey, bribery! So for a mini Dickey, a choice between outsider POV of the boys being weird about each other or late seasons domestic!Winchesters? If neither of those work for you, write something you like 😁

I love that my bribery accomplished nothing, because everyone taking me up on the offer is someone who was already going to (or already had) vote for the correct choice anyway :D truly net zero impact on the poll, which is likely for the best.

and ahh, i do love both outsider PoV and domestic!chesters, so this is good. and in my typical fashion, my answer is:

Set after 12x11, "Regarding Dean".

They're very beautiful boys is the thing. Well, not the thing, but certainly part of it. Rowena thinks that anyone would be hard-pressed to judge her somewhat embarrassing lack of self-preservation in this regard, if they too got to experience the full effect of Sam Winchester imperious gaze or Dean's intermittently roguish and boyish smiles.

That or, like so many before her, she truly just did contract Winchester Derangement Syndrome. Oh well.

She'd wanted to skirt out of town quickly, after helping fix up Dean's memory. It would be the prudent thing to do. But it was also an opportunity, one that might not drop into her lap quite so easily again anytime soon, to get a read on the brothers without being observed herself. One had to wonder how they did it, held the world together with duck tape and a can-do attitude, considering how ordinary and brutish they'd seemed at first.

Well. Maybe not entirely brutish. Sam's command of Latin and spellwork had always intrigued her. But that was neither here nor there, and he wasn't accomplished enough a spellcrafter to see through the glamour that she wove around herself -- an angling and aging of the face, a darkening and straightening of the hair, a thinning of the lips and tinting to the eyes. Enough that, with an outfit passably dull, she could opposite to them in the pub where they made their way for dinner and rest before they'd set out in the morning. A quiet place on the outskirts of town, locals trudging work boots in and tired or sore from the day. Sam and Dean fit right in. They seemed to fit in most anywhere they went.

Better chameleons than even her glamour could afford her. A few hundred years and Rowena wasn't sure she'd perfected the art of invisibility as well as two men gorgeous enough to be on magazine covers. That was something.

She'd followed them in, waited across the parking lot, and wondered if Dean had injured himself somehow on the day's misadventures. She didn't recall anything, not much action except for at the end there, otherwise just Sam pasting sticky notes to objects and Dean becoming cuter and more bearable by the minute. She didn't recall anything, but Sam's hand never strayed from Dean's back as they made their way across the lot, and Dean never shrugged it off.

By the time she slipped inside, found herself a stool at a table with a view of their booth, they were seated across from one another. She'd never noticed, never bothered to, how far their legs stretched under a table, tangled up into each other's foot-space. At her height, not an issue she had frequently. But Sam was leaned back, fingers on the table, leg, ankle jostling against Dean's calf underneath it. He looked relaxed, and something in Rowena's chest eased at seeing it.

The curse was properly fixed then. Of course she wouldn't wait around in town just to be sure, she wasn't their minder and anyway she'd been certain it was fixed before they parted ways. Still though, confirmation never rankled.

Dean looked around and Rowena turned her gaze to the bland offerings on the menu and in her peripheral she heard his voice, not the words, and then Sam's laughter, loud and startled for a moment then quieter.

When she glanced over, Dean was grinning, leaned in, and Sam's face was so fond her own stomach felt a little gurgly, as if caterpillars (never butterflies) might take up residence.

There was a motion, quick dart, and Sam's hand was on Dean's. Overtop, maybe on his wrist. Rowena's caterpillars turned to lead -- waited with bated breath as their waitress came over and they separated, expressions shifting quick like guilty schoolboy -- and then burst forth into winged insects instead, fluttering around her insides. She bit the inside of her cheek, eyes alight, and ignored the moths taking up residence inside of her.

Well, that was something then.

It wasn't all that scandalous, that kind of sin. Proscribed by the law of every place and time, but something you saw a time or twenty if you lived long enough. It wasn't as if she hadn't suspected. Her imaginings had been more brutal though, more teeth gnashing end-of-world anger with each other, clinging and messy and mad with it. Hand touches across the tables and -- the memory surfaced from earlier in the day -- delighted grins over the potential for a front row seat to some 'live skinemax', that hadn't been what she'd conjured up.

And oh, to be the live entertainer with Sam, to have pleasure made into a show for Dean's affections. Too bad Sam had to be so focused on fixing his brother, they could have had some real fun that afternoon. She certainly wouldn't have complained.

She ordered something herself, a salad and, because life was short, two types of dessert to follow. If there was some thing cold-blooded American capitalism had done right, it was egregiously portioned and delectably indulgent desserts.

The brothers ate, and laughed, and sighed across their bench from each other, seeming weary but well. Ordinary, but far from it. Their legs tangled deeper into each other's space. Dean's fingers drummed an absent pattern, no doubt from one of those rock bands he liked, and Sam nudged him with his leg and directed him to where some dart boards were setup. They brushed shoulders and elbowed each other, were close enough for her to catch snatches of their conversation. Teasing, mostly. Challenging, boyish one-upmanship. Flirting, quite obviously, when Sam's voice dropped to growl something in Dean's ear she couldn't catch, the tone of which had her stomach swooping anyway.

They left not long after, when her second dessert arrived. A little flavourless, in comparison. She left without bothering to finish, left town that night without dawdling any longer. The boys were good, and were comforting each other, and they owed her one. The rest was between them.

[phynsmutstravaganza]

Ongoing fic: Waelite

Well, that will make it easier to get down. Aloth gave the hidden stairs a rueful look. This is what I get for trying to think like the Watcher.

What was it ye said ‘bout him? Iselmyr piped up. How intelligent and clever he is…

I still hold to that. He also just has a penchant for doing things the most difficult way possible first. Aloth sighed. “Onward it is.”

Ayyyyyy it's a new fic!

Well. It's a fic I've had for literal years, finally making its way to the public eye.

There's a sorta actual plot in this one! Which is why it took me so long to finish it

[phynoma]

I feel like part of my automatic "cringe-away" reaction to OCs is the idea that all OCs are some sort of poorly written self-insert

And honestly? That's just something for me to get over. Because the most BRILLIANT fics I've ever read have had OCs that stole my heart far more than the canon characters. OCs are just the characters canon didn't have time to get around to. They're the world stepping up.

And even if they are self-inserts, even if it's a fic-writer's first attempt at fanfiction, those OCs are still going to resonate with someone. They're going to change the story for someone, even if that person is you. They're going to make that story alive in a way it's never been before, and when you put that story up for someone else to read you're inviting them on a journey you've taken as an author, and that is MAGICAL.

So yeah, fuck cringe culture. Fuck the haters. Write the story as it's been told to you in the deep recesses of your soul, even if it's a goddamn Goofy x self-insert slashfest. It's worth it, just to write it down.

pls write oc x canon character fiction I don't understand how that's cringe or why cringe is even a word we've affixed to fanfic in the first place

also sometimes the canon character needs a perfect partner written for them bc canon refuses to so yes write away

[name-centrum]

Name of the day...

Finn ˎˊ˗

ִ ࣪𖤐. ִ ࣪𖤐. ִ ࣪𖤐

Origin: Irish, Scottish, Old Norse

Meaning: Fair, white, clear; From Finland; Warrior, brave; Intelligence or wisdom; Thunder.

Notes: An androgynous name that is primarily used as masculine.

"Coming from the Irish Fionn, Finn was the anglicized name of a mythical Irish warrior and folklore hero. As a child, this little boy was blessed by the salmon of knowledge, giving him the wisdom and bravery to later, along with his followers, protect the king." (Source)

"The name Finn has several interpretations depending on its origin and usage. Generally, the name is associated with traits such as strength, courage, intelligence, and purity." (Source)

Finn is often short for the names Finnegan, Finneas or Phinneas, Finnean, and Finley.

Alternative spellings of this name are Fin, Fynn or Fyn, Phinn or Phynn, Fen or Fenn.

Nick-names: Fi, Fy, or Finnie

Popularity:

[phynali]

me: disappears for a month and doesn’t write and barely comes on tumblr

me, the second the new term starts: welp time to procrastinate by going on tumblr and blurting out 1300 words when i’m supposed to be working

[phynoma]

an extant form of life- Chapter 10

In which a familiar friend finally makes a reappearance!!

Tim loves people.  This isn't a surprise to most. He's well aware that he's considered charismatic, although he suspects that has something more to do with the people he's around nowadays– Ivory Tower types whose niche of ‘academically stringent paranormal filing clerks’ makes them unpopular with both academia and the usual monsterhunters– than any particular skill on his part.  What most people get wrong is why Tim loves people. It's nothing to do with some great, magnanimous love for humanity. God, no. He loves people because they are, objectively, fascinating. 

[phynoma]

Tim in my upcoming TMA fic

sorry i came back wrong do you still wanna hit it

[dyed-red]

His bruises are fading. Sam stares at them in the bathroom mirror, shirt still off while he shaves, skin damp from his shower.  

[phynsmutstravaganza]

Ongoing fic- Waelite

Chapter two up!!

The shock of such complete darkness sent a thrill of primal energy through Aloth's body, and he had to consciously resist casting a spell once again. He waited, feeling exposed and vulnerable, instinct telling him to flee back to the light while he still could. No matter how many mysterious tunnels and caverns he’d traveled through, nothing softened the first panic of being sightless in an unfamiliar and potentially dangerous place.

cw/for some violence, xaurip killing, and blood

[wordsandrobots]

Welp. Here's hoping the amount I've been listening to 'Great Night' by NEEDTOBREATHE doesn't convince Tidal to recommend bands tagged as Christian rock to me on the regular. I do not want a repeat of the 'accidentally adding a track about sinners going to hell to my playlist because it had a good beat' incident (I am often very shallow about music, as the above probably proves; I have gotten better at listening to lyrics on the first go).

But hey ho. I'm listening because it's perfect for the crack(?)ship Iron-Blooded Orphans slash pairing that Wishing on Space Hardware has totally not been building towards (it honestly hasn't but I need about ten years of character development for this nonsense to work so --).

A free writing request to anyone who can guess what that pairing is (Phyn, Walrus, you two are disqualified on account of knowing already). I'll add an IOU to the pile along with said nonsense, the other side of the Venus debacle, more Yamagi/Shino smut and that McGillis/Cyclase meet-cute I should probably jot down (cute = potentially murderous) . . .

[phynoma]

wow ouch

Actually tho

I have a theory about this

I used to think that "old soul" was just a phrase that meant (whether adults knew it or not) "traumatized beyond their years"

But now I think it's something different. This is still a theory in development, but this comes from readings posts on here, observing children, etc. And I think it has to do with how most adults develop the ability to be interested in the mundane

For a lot of kids, what they gravitate towards is big, flashy, exciting colors and things. They look at the world through broad strokes. They're not going to be excited about a new dish sponge when there's something more blatantly for *them* out there

Whereas kids that get easily overstimulated might have gravitated towards the things they saw adults doing: quiet crafts, especially those that involve counting and precision. Reading. Becoming obsessively good at something.

And after being praised for this your whole childhood, maybe you grow into an adult that is suddenly fascinated by all those things you avoided as a child-- bright colors and supposedly simple stories and carefree fun, only you still bring that serious deliberation you've always had, you bring a bit of snark, and just like always people don't know quite what to do with you.

So you become "childlike" instead of an "old soul," because you have a sense of wonder the world hasn't beaten out of you

That's my current theory, anyway

dunno if it's a neurodivergent thing or just me but do you ever feel like you've maintained roughly the same level of maturity your whole life

like as a kid you were "gifted" and "wise beyond your years" but as an adult you're just a grown child who just can't seem to grasp how to act like an adult

[coldtomyflash]

I've seen your speech pattern analysis on Flash characters. I was wondering if you had any advice on how to create speech patterns for OC characters?

oh heck this is one of the coolest questions i’ve ever received.

i’m gonna try not to go overboard/overwhelming and just give a bit of advice, and then if you want more details please come back and follow up!

There’s a few things to think about up front with character voices / speech patterns. The biggest and most obvious is language and cultural background. The second is personality. The third is personal history. Fourth, briefly, is gender. And the final one I’d say is idiosyncrasies to avoid ‘same voice’.

Culture and Group Dynamics

Depending on the setting, there’s a decent chance you’ll be writing characters from different cultural backgrounds. Even if you’re focusing on a single culture, there will be subcultures. Even if you’re focusing on a single narrow group of people, there will be age and generational differences.

Think about where your character is from. If it’s a fantasy world, that’s still (and even more, in some ways) important. What country, what ethnicity, what mother tongue? Did they grow up urban or rural? High socio-economic status or working class? What sort of educational background and peer group did they have growing up (and presently) and how does that factor into their vocabulary and mannerisms, if at all.

All of these can influence how people talk. There are regional accents and different modes of speaking to signal your group membership. There is code-switching across groups, for those who have had to learn multiple linguistics codes to survive and thrive in society. 

How much slang does this group and therefor this character use? What references (modern, outddated, topical, etc) do the rely on? What kind of references (pop culture, music, academic, etc)? What colloquialisms and proverbs do they say? Are these the same or different to their characters, even within the same culture, subculture, or group, and is it because they’re from a different place/sub-group or because of their idiosyncrasies?

You can use these to help your reader get to know more about your character’s background without having to spell it all out directly. Speech patterns and style are a great way to show instead of tell when it comes to details that are hard to drop in organically in other ways.

An important caveat: don’t write a bilingual character who switches languages in speech unless you’re ready to do a bit of research on that. In AATJS I did an absolutely horrific job of this because I was thinking more about fronting the fact that character was Italian rather than thinking through how people actually talk, and it came out exotifying and embarrassing. It’s important to make sure that the way you use language to bring in a character’s cultural and/or ethnic background feels authentic and manifests is a way that respects that language and its users. You can write a character with a complex cultural history without using multiple languages if you’re unprepared to do research and talk to bilingual speakers.

Personality

Probably the most salient thing in a writer’s mind when they’re trying to write character voices: is this the funny character? the serious one? the brainy one? etc.

Don’t overuse stereotypes and archetypes for creating speech patterns (or characters in general) if you’re trying to make a rounded, 3-dimensional character. Instead, go about three levels deeper.

Think about whether they’re introverted or extraverted, whether they are neurotypical or neurodivergent, whether they are introspective enough to express their own emotions clearly or whether they stumble when asked why they did a particular thing or feel a particular way (most people don’t or can’t clearly articulate exactly why they did something or how they feel, and come at things a bit sideways to circle around their motives and interior realities when pressed to make them external and concretely verbal).

Is this character calm, is their voice soothing, do they speak slowly? Are they excitable and loud and is their speech free-flowing? Are they angry? Do they swear? Do they use references for humour or are they more into puns? Do they laugh at their own jokes? Do they talk with their hands?

This character has social anxiety: how does that manifest in her speech? Does she clam up and get very quiet when she gets nervous, or does she go rapidfire and a little too loud (does she process by turning in or by distracting herself by turning outward)? Does she get very careful and deliberate in choosing her words (is she a bit high-strung?)? Ask yourself which fits best with the other elements of her personality and what you want the reader to know/interpret about her. 

This character is incredibly smart and a bit awkward: how does that manifest in their speech? Do they tend to use 5-dollar words, or do they expend a lot of energy choosing their words more carefully (how considerate are they to their audience when speaking and does that influence their speech)? Do they stumble over their words and explaining things, or are they good at making points with clear language learned from a lifetime of tutoring and helping others?

This character is the bff, who tries hard to make sure everyone else is happy first: how does that manifest in his speech? How does he switch between his happy-mask versus his more authentic self, and what changes in tone, word-choice, and inflection come in when he does?

-

Personal History

I’m only drawing a distinction between this and personality (archetype, really) so that I can draw attention to ways to add simultaneously unique and shared layers to characters that are distinct but related to group dynamics.

Here’s sort of what I mean: the level of education of a mother (or primary caregiver) of an infant can determine that infant’s vocabulary size. While we can break down all the ‘why is that’ layers to this, the one I want to point is to the simple truth that the more education a person does, the more specialized language they end up learning over time. This doesn’t have to be formal education though -- the more you learn about something and the more you read and access new knowledges and perspective, the more and more words you learn, and then if you start using those words, they trickle down to those close to you.

So.

What’s your character’s educational background? Is it the same as their friends who you are also writing? Is the same as their family’s? How does this character’s family influence their speech? Are they formal, informal, warm, authoritative? 

If you’re writing siblings, they’ll have some shared things! But also some very different ones! Me and my sister talk nothing alike in terms of vocabulary, but a lot alike in terms of mannerisms whenever we spend a bit of time together!

If your characters grew up around each other, they’ll have a lot of the same references. People from the same cities or regions will have things specific to that region, either due to sub-culture effects or because of local references. 

The city of Calgary, Canada for instance has the Plus15 which are a connected pedway system between the buildings in downtown, so named because they are 15feet above the ground. Drive 3 hours north to the city of Edmonton, and you have an underground pedway just called the pedways, no special name. Go a few provinces east to Toronto and their underground pedway system downtown is called PATH. These are all known to locals and part of the vernacular, but are opaque to people outside those cities. And the whole idea of them is probably opaque to people who aren’t from super cold cities that don’t require building-connecting pedway systems for pedestrians to get around high-density areas like downtown (or university campuses) without going out into the cold. 

Friends, families, and groups are like that too. In-jokes, shared histories, speaking in references. What are your characters’ relationships to each other and how does that history influence the way they approach talking to each other?

-

Gender

I don’t want to spend too much time on this one because ugh, gender. What even is it?

But like it or not, it has an impact on our speech patterns. There are cultural and societal norms in how men and women are likely to speak, and breaking those norms will be noticed regardless of whether you’re trans, enby, queer, or not. There are norms that people who are queer may fall into as well, sometimes without even noticing at first. A lot of these aren’t about word choice per se but instead about mannerisms and tone and body language, but some overlap or are specific to language.

Speaking in broad generalizations here, women use more emotional language and tend to speak with more hesitancies/qualifications. So more “i think, i feel” and less “it is”. More conversations that front emotions and dig deeper into those, with longer sentences to explain in detail. The obvious caveat is that personality matters more (i.e., is this a person who likes to talk about their emotions in detail or not) but it is something to consider because there will be general but subtle differences that you can use to help further distinguish your characters’ voices. 

Sidenote: this can also be exacerbated by different cultural backgrounds and languages (a simple example is Japanese which has different words for “I” depending on your gender as well as your personality, familiarity with the other persons in the conversation, and situational appropriateness, so interesting ways that gender and social expectations intersect in language).

Anyway this isn’t typically a huge problem except that I’ve found that a lot of writers have a tendency to overgeneralize the speech patterns that fit with their ascribed gender due to early-life socialization, or conversely to overgeneralize patterns that fit with their gender identity (when not cis) either due to heavily identifying with their gender identity’s speech model (or sometimes possibly due to a knee-jerk sort of backlash). I say this as an enby who both struggles with it and notices it and tries to edit and correct for it. 

I could get into all sorts of examples of ways this can lead to voice issues, but in general i think the point here is to make sure you’re writing any given character in view of that character’s personality and history, with gender only as a modifier for how some of these might come out in subtle ways but which can be important to help tell us about your character (and if you’re writing queer characters, it’s all the more important to consider how their relationship with gender and socialization might impact which speech models and styles they identify more with).

-

Idiosyncrasies

So, you’ve got a character. You’ve got their personality and history down. You know how they manifest in their speech. And you’re still getting some ‘same voice’ issues.

People really are unique snowflakes. Let that be reflected in their speech.

This person uses contractions differently than that one. This one says “ain’t” and that one says “isn’t.”

This person makes Simpsons references and that one doesn’t like Simpsons, and makes Brooklyn Nine Nine references instead. That other one doesn’t use referential humour much at all. This one loves old movies and hasn’t seen any of the new stuff so they make references all the time but no one ever notices.

This one loves the word “excoriate” and that one doesn’t even know what it means because what the hell, who uses the word excoriate?

This one talks about food a lot, it overlaps with their interests. This one uses metaphors. This one grunts in response. This one exclaims. This one says “like” and that one hates it. That one refers to themselves in third person. This other one uses reflective language an usual amount (e.g., “love me some candy”). This other one keeps misusing the word inconceivable and that one speaks almost without contractions but still comes off as more charming and humorous while correcting him.

I have an aunt who says “girl” or “girlfriend” a fuck-ton and she has been my whole life and I don’t know why because none of her sisters do, but she does and it annoys me so much the way she says it. I swear a lot when I’m feeling casual despite never ever doing it in a professional or even slightly-less-than-relaxed space, so the idiosyncrasy of comfort levels has a massive impact on my vocabulary in ways which, I promise, almost no one who meets me first in a professional space expect.

Let your characters be individuals and try to make them as unique as possible without overdoing it, or over-relying on a single verbal tendency or habit. 

-

And ... that’s all I’ve got for now. Completely failed at being concise. I meant to give like 2-3 bullet points or examples for each, not paragraphs, but here we are. That’s one of my verbal tendencies: long flowing verbosity :)

Hope this helps! 

[phynali]

Me: I'm so behind on work I have so much to do ahhhhhj!

Also me: writes snippets of Rest for the Wicked in my tumblr drafts because it doesn't count if it's in drafts and not on a proper page, obviously

[acircusfullofdemons]

DREAMSET CIRCUS [MASTERLIST]

Intro

––––––– ✧ ꒰ DREAMSET CIRCUS ┊ABOUT ꒱

TBA.

––––––– ✧ ꒰ DREAMSET CIRCUS ┊MISC ꒱

Tag

Playlist

What Everyone Does

Fun Facts 1

––––––– ✧ ꒰ DREAMSET CIRCUS ┊WRITING ꒱

tba

––––––– ✧ ꒰ DREAMSET CIRCUS ┊CHARACTERS ꒱

Bethany Crowley Raymond [bio / tag]

Calypso Raymond [bio / tag / playlist]

Clairette Raymond [bio / tag]

Delilah Lazzari [bio / tag / playlist]

Diana Harding [bio / tag / playlist]

Dice Van Doreen [bio / tag]

Guinevere Van Doreen [bio / tag]

Isaac Raymond [bio / tag]

James Porter [bio / tag]

Jamie Monroe [bio / tag]

Jason Moore [bio / tag]

Liam Bradley [bio / tag]

Lucy Fisher [bio / tag]

Phyn Raymond [bio / tag]

Prism Raymond [bio / tag / playlist]

Reagan Morningstar [bio / tag]

[phynoma]

Some advice I found really helpful:

1.) Know where your character is coming from-- it effects how they talk! Did they grow up poor? Are they high class? Are they pretending to be high class? Do they have an accent? Are they rural? City?

2.) Make a cheat sheet of some identifiable characteristics: stutters when nervous, or loses train of thought halfway through sentences, or always uses "like." These should be things you can tie back to who they are! Maybe your brutally quiet character speaks in short, clipped monosyllables. Maybe your character with ADHD and a phD goes on long rambles. Sentence structure can be a useful tool!

3.) Listen to your favorite characters and make *them* a cheat sheet to get ideas. Notice their inflection, their phrasing. How would you write their dialogue down? I find video game characters and podcasts work really well for this, because the voice is usually isolated-- but shows/movies are good too, to get an idea of how physicality effects voice!

i'm gonna try to write character dialogue today for the first time. does anyone have any pointers? i struggle a lot with everyone sounding exactly like me but any and all advice is welcome