#pyr0clast

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

1, 12, 14 for Lucius and Driscoll? 👀

HELLO FRIEND THANKS FOR ASKING!! referring to this post.

since this all qualifies as Deep Lore Hours (which i love!! you're the best!!), and i'm a wordy person, have a cut checkpoint on your dash:

1. What was the first element of your OC that you remember considering (name, appearance, backstory, etc.)? 

lucius actually happened because i asked claire for a starting blirb [sic] in ms. mecoli's creative writing class in high school (remember that???), and she gave me a bit about lucifer standing outside a churchyard with a big black dog*, and i thought "hm. bit on the nose," (for the weird little christian fiction thing i thought i was writing, which has obviously since mutated Significantly), so i changed it to lucius. originally he was the Antagonist™, and human although he didn't realize he came out of a test tube just like bewinged lili did, and all i knew about him was grown-up white dude with black hair.

obviously, he has since undergone SIGNIFICANT revisions (lol. lmfao, even), but embryonically he started with a modified name!! (i went digging through my archives, and i do in fact still have the index card with claire's pencil writing below my pen request! wild.)

(i don't actually remember when i decided he needed wings too, but i think it was around the time i realized i wanted my protags to be all Not Exactly Me, and therefore boy protag would be Different, and then he got his black wings!)

*the big black dog has also made it back into this version, after falling out of the intermediates!! vanya, my beloved, ...

for driscoll, i vaguely remember the purple hair probably being first (i recall chewing on finding The Right Name for a while?). to confirm, i went into THAT archived notebook (red, helpfully labeled "LIMINAL PREWRITE," with "LANGUAGE AND COMP" obliterated beneath thanks again, high school).

weirdly, the first four (4) pages of the driscoll thing is NOT the character profile (that shows up on page 5, and does mention purple hair/brown eyes/physical appearance), but one of these OC ask meme type things, transcribed into the notebook. hilariously, the very first question is "If they want to buy a firearm, what would it be for?" which. omg. (my answer eventually got to "no they wouldn't lol," but it's wild to see how that slow revelation happened on september 3, 2017, when i was first figuring this kid out.)

so apparently first for driscoll i wrote some random character finding Q&As, and then i have the story of their misplacement, and then the physical details, which: wild, on all fronts, to me. (it's a good thing i keep my notebooks in an archive refrigerator tower, or i would've bluescreened on driscoll 100% haha.)

12. What have you found to be most difficult about creating art for your OC (any form of art: writing, drawing, edits, etc.)? 

oooh, good question. my lucius answer is probably biased, because i hadn't started doing the Bitch Journal while i was working through that drafting/those revisions (and i have the object permanence of a fruit fly), but i THINK my biggest difficulty was figuring out the right balance of ~Interiority~? and i still don't love where i left that querying draft at (now, after four years' distance, lol), but getting the right balance of Thoughts and Reactions down on the page was difficult for me, which i suspect was because i've been too in his head for so long, if that makes sense? like the things he notices and what he narrates on imply enough of the interiority to me that i don't see gaps readers do (because, shocker, they HAVEN'T been living in his head since uh. 2007.). and i think i cut away some of the interiority in my preliminary Wordiness Passes, which nerfed me, but i started fixing that in the fourth draft!

my driscoll answer is just. a web of angst lol. and i know most of it is Living Situational/Circumstantial, so we're going to Ignore That and just answer with the Actual Textual Difficulties.

so: driscoll's Actual Textual Difficulties are mostly that i started out writing thing as "someone i'd like to be" with regards to kindness and gentleness and how much they care about people, but somehow i had to backpedal and get a Character Development Conflict in there, which is hard when my starting point was "very good noodle." i think i'm getting there!! but nesting competing wants into a late-stage draft without breaking anything (or, y'know, while finding stealth-broken things that i didn't think were), is a Trying Time™. i'm leveling up about it! enjoying the leveling up!! i'd be leveling up faster if i wasn't burning all this emotional bandwidth on a bullshit living situation! we're fine!!

14. If you had to narrow it down to 2 things that you MUST keep in mind while working with your OC, what would those things be? 

OH FUN, i percolated on this on my WHOLE BIG WALK yesterday, thank u for this enrichment

lucius: first, physicality is key. he has to be Very Aware of where he is in physical space/how much of it he's taking up (because an 18+ foot wingspan really doesn't fuck around, and only half the time is he somewhere that his dimensions are accommodated). when his awareness slips, it (1) has to be for a good reason and (2) usually results in something breaking, and both of those are fun to play with >:D

second, what he notices needs to read like More Than Human--he's got raptor vision, and he's spent half his life around other hybrids with combat training, so he's very visually Intense™ and good at reading a wide variety of body language. and because he's Friends with these combat trained hybrids, he's asked a lot of questions, and he notices a lot more than human people would.

driscoll: first, child, you have physical limitations, and you ignore them at your own peril. i put this kid in a shifting monsterscape armed with pretty much just a flashlight and the distinct ability NOT to be able to run away from their problems (because their lungs don't cooperate), so both driscoll and i have to be very aware of the Exit Plan for any situation they get themselves into (and they get into a Lot of Situations).

second, another dual-wielding type of thing: driscoll is both weirdly in tune with In Between and mostly cannot tell people that, so how i write about them navigating has to change depending on who they're with. hazard is the only one they're fully open with at the start, and they have to be carefully guarded with the other walkers/crew, AND they have to tell newly misplaced just enough to inspire confidence without revealing so much that they (the newly misplaced) will be Suspicious if they stick around to become townspeople themselves. it's a Lot to keep in mind (perhaps uh. More. than i kept in mind. in drafts two and three lol. we're working on it.)

THANKS AGAIN FRIEND THIS WAS SO FUN!!!

[fatalism-and-villainy]

🔥1, 7, 24?

the character everyone gets wrong

I answered this one already, but I'll take another stab at it wrt a particular element of Hannibal's character. Specifically, his response to feeling vulnerable or heartbroken in canon is either to lash out violently (as in Mizumono), attempt to regain his sense of control in some fashion (i.e. his attempt to eat Will's brain in Dolce - yes, Bedelia talked him into that, but it wouldn't have been persuasive if it hadn't spoken to pre-existing impulses), or manipulate (the amount of passive aggressive needling he does to Will throughout season 3B).

Which is to say, I'm not against Hannibal having emotions or feeling vulnerable in fic, but I often find him to be much too mellowed out and too outwardly vulnerable. When he loves someone the way he loves Will, and the way he loved Mischa, it makes him feel out of control, and he needs control and tries to project that outwards at all times. And even in a post-canon scenario, where he likely trusts Will and feels more confident in Will's affection for him than he does throughout 3B, I don't see him dropping the habit of masking physical and emotional pain. And he's definitely not going to ~own his feelings~ and take responsibility for them, lol.

(My most recent fic - No Second Troy - was actually in part an exercise in writing a vulnerable Hannibal that felt right to me, in which he feels insecure in his relationship with Will and is sort of internally flopping around sadly about that, but does NOT show (or, uh, tries not to show) that sad flopping to Will or at all communicate in a healthy manner about that.)

what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

I genuinely do not hate most characters on this show - my attitude towards the ensemble cast is generally "I love everyone in this bar."

That said - MATTHEW FUCKING BROWN.

Absolute nothingburger of a dude who has a philosophy towards murder that, according to the aesthetic ethics of this show, can only be described as "vulgar" (this dude doesn't even grasp that life is precious, something even HANNIBAL understands) and who Will doesn't even seem to like or respect much. Boring and unpleasant dude all around, and yet gets such an outsized amount of adulation.

(And yeah, I'll admit, I'm petty, because his fanon role, whether vis-a-vis Will or alone, is always a role I want to see other characters put into - Will's gay tryst outside of Hannibal? Jack is right there and has an actual developed relationship with Will in canon. Will influencing someone else vis-a-vis murder? Chiyoh is right there, complete with Hannigram parallels! A minor character who only shows up for a few episodes getting a ton of fanon attention? Give it to Miriam pls. Anyway I'll leave that because this is the most wanky I've gotten in these answers.)

topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

Anything to do with Will's neurodivergence is bound to do this (whether the prescriptivism as to how you headcanon him, OR the straight-up ableism in how people talk about him).

I've also seen a lot of takes on Abigail that uhhh.... REALLY demonstrate a lack of understanding of the psychology of abuse (even, I'd argue, when taking genre conventions into account). Let's just leave it at that.

[depizan]

Oh man, their mutual concern/relief/concern over each other's childhoods is one of those things I want to write/work into fics at some point. Kyrian grew up in an Imperial orphanage and Jezari grew up in the criminal underworld. Their initial imaginings of the each other's childhood aren't going to be good!

Of course, as they hear more about each other's childhood, sometimes it will be something that's reassuringly better than they'd imagined...and sometimes it won't be. Sometimes they'll guess very wrong about how a story from their past will sound to the other, or realize partway through telling a story that maybe they should edit it a bit.

Though talking about childhoods can get a little tricky on a ship crewed by orphans and near/possibly orphans, even without adding in cultures with really different ideas of child rearing.

Jezari doesn't talk about her mom, or the death of her dad, that often. But if she talks about her childhood much, it becomes pretty obvious that her mom stopped being in the picture at some point. And that her dad is dead. Kyrian will know at least that much, whether or not he's learned the details, before her mom reappears.

[robinyourcreator]

Favourite Female Character

Rules: Make a poll of your favorite female characters (no limits - as many or as little as you want) and see which your followers like the most!

I was tagged by my fandom auntie @defira85, thank you so much!

Now to uhhhh narrow this down. Let's restrict this to "women who have torn my heart out by way of my kneecaps" or otherwise reorganized my brain chemistry.

And I will tag @drewsaturday, @everyones-beau, @supernovasooth, @aurrieattorney, and @pyr0clast and anyone else who wants to play! /o/

[oh-my-hubris]

Gee Aki, you haven't played SWTOR in a while. It couldn't hurt to log in, see where things are at. Maybe talk to your husband about the fics you were working on.

Decide to write out Marli's pre-Revan stuff

Start adapting Youthful Indiscretions into a workable first chapter

Re-roll Marli -- get her to the temple

Move Breaker over to ellipsus and start editing it

Re-roll Jedi Jhonnen -- get him to the temple

Move Flip over to ellipsus and start editing it

Re-roll Inle -- get her to the evocii camp

Move Let Slip The Dogs Of War to ellipsus to finish that one too

Notice it's six am

The siren song of the devil sounds a hell of a lot like the entwining voices of @inkspot-fox and @pyr0clast.

[captainmazzic]

@soartfullydone thank you for tagging me! It's been a long-ass time since I've done poll-type stuff so let's see if I can do it right lol

But I mean let's be real this is a Star Wars blog we all know who would win. Which is why I DIDN'T put Thrawn or Maul on this list bwaaaahahahaha

challenge: make a poll with five of your all-time favorite characters, and then tag five people to do the same. see which character is everyone's favorite

My god that was hard to pick only five. But it is Very Clear I have a TYPE lol.

Tagging @q-iilin @pyr0clast @soartfullydone (AGAIN AGAIN) @editoress and I don't really have many other friends on here anymore that I remember blog names for soooooo

[swtorpadawan]

9 people you'd like to get to know better (Tag Game)

Tagged by @rajakaen - I am also old enough for Kerrigan and Raynor!

3 Ships

Canon Ship: Oh boy. This is where my age shows… you know what? I'll throw out Age of Apocalypse Wolverine with AOA Jean Grey. (NOT their 616 versions; that ship has issues.) I just liked the idea of these two being partners first, and then a couple second.

OC Ship: My Jedi Knight / Outlander, Corellan Halcyon, and Kira Carsen. I can't tell you how much time I've put into them.

Ship of the Week: I actually can't tell you this, because its the core of my "current" WIP! All I can say is that they are both minor characters from SWTOR, and they've been living rent-free in my head for awhile!

1st Ship NO ONE remembers back then. We didn't even have paper; we used papyrus. But since rajakaen put Mulder & Scully in my head, I'll roll with that. (Certainly better than Ross and Rachel from Friends. It took me years to see how toxic that got.)

Last Song: Britt Nicole - Welcome to the Show (I have eclectic music tastes.)

Current reading: Its been awhile since I actually finished a book…

God Emperor of Dune - Frank Herbert

Light of the Jedi - Charles Soule

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John le Carré

Kith & Kin - Marieke Nijkamp

God i need to finish one of these….

Last Film: Oppenheimer. I only count films I've actually watched in the theater; not films I've rewatched via streaming.

Craving: My addiction to Dunkin Iced Coffee is my own business and no one else.

Tagging: (no pressure!) @rikki-roses @eorzeashan @raven-of-domain-kwaad @queen-scribbles @luchadorbard @voidendron @pyr0clast @grandninjamasterren @berriku

[xivu-arath]

RULES: Post the last sentence you wrote (fanfic / original / anything) and tag as many people as there are words in the sentence.

tagged by @bramblebea <3

"It is only fair I remind you properly."

at last a short enough sentence I can reasonably tag people with:

@eri-223 @synnthamonsugar @flowers-of-io @cappurrccino @pyr0clast @wonderwafles @seasaltmemories @moirainessuspenders

[prokopetz]

#it gets extra super fun and awful when the DESIGNERS OF THE GAME invoke rule zero to spackle over their own acknowledged failures #white wolf loves to pull this shit #wotc seems prone to it too (via @pyr0clast)

Well, the trick there is that neither of them are really being honest about why they're doing it.

White Wolf likes to cite Rule Zero because they've historically suffered from a shocking lack of editorial discipline, sometimes to the extent that different chapters of the same book have been written by different authors who were operating under incompatible assumptions about how the game ought to be played, and who didn't communicate with each other at any point during the process. Like, the exact scenario I'm describing has reportedly happened multiple times.

Hasbro likes to cite Rule Zero because their marketing department is trying to position Dungeons & Dragons as a universal entry-level game where you don't need to understand anything to play, you can just sit down at the table and let the GM tell you when and how to roll dice, but also they want every group to buy every sourcebook. Basically, they're trying to maintain the fiction that the rules are at once completely unimportant to the process of play and so essential that you should buy a three hundred page book full of them every year.

The thing about the idea that "rules don't matter" in tabletop RPGs is that, while it's obviously wrong, there's only one relatively narrow sense in which it's actually a problem.

There are basically three major strands of "rules don't matter":

Groups for whom the rules don't matter because they aren't playing a game as we'd conventionally think of it – they're having a freeform RP jam, and occasionally letting a coin-flip decide what happens next for spice. The particulars of rules-based procedures aren't relevant to these groups because they're not following any particular procedures. This is perfectly fine; sure, some players who favour this approach like to go online and write bloviating thinkpieces about how all tabletop roleplayers secretly want to be doing freeform RP, and anyone who claims otherwise is simply too stupid or brainwashed to understand that they're not truly having fun, but that's not doing any harm – it's merely annoying.

Groups who have a narrow idea of what it's possible to do with tabletop RPGs. They'll look at the fact that it's possible to run – for example – a sword and sorcery dungeon crawl and a cyberpunk heist caper using the exact same set of rules, and conclude from this that it must not really matter what rules you use; of course, the real reason this works is because in terms of their formal and narrative structures, a sword and sorcery dungeon crawl and a cyberpunk heist caper are nearly identical. Again, this isn't hurting anyone – if they want to run endless reskinned dungeon crawls in a variety of milieux, that's their business, and the worst that can be said for it is that some people are a little annoying about it.

Groups who do want to play a game with a formal structure, and who recognise that rules have opinions about how the game ought to be played, but think it doesn't matter because if there's ever a disagreement between the game the rules want to produce and the game the group wants to play, the GM can fix it on the fly. This is always going to happen to some extent, because the rules and the group will never perfectly agree about how the game ought to be played, but positioning the ability to repair that disagreement regardless of its magnitude as a basic expectation of any GM is one of the reasons we have so many folks who GM for a year or two, the burn out and never touch a tabletop RPG again.

Basically, "rules don't matter because we don't use them" and "rules don't matter because tabletop RPGs are only one thing" are largely harmless, but "rules don't matter because something something Rule Zero" is demonstrably harmful, and we need to cut that shit out.

[shiro-tora3]

thank u for the kitties they are adorable <3 here is a reciprocal cat

:D a baby!

Edit woops @pyr0clast

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

so many three-quarters of one moon ago, @asexualbookbird tagged me to do the "random things in your room" poll, and i have FINALLY gotten my ducks linear enough to participate! therefore, without further ado:

tagging: @alloreli, @six-of-ravens, @e-b-reads, and anyone else who wants to play!!

[depizan]

I make many questionable reading decisions out of the combination of curiosity and working in a library. Well, and… I don’t want to chalk it up quite to being a writer, but the curiosity is sometimes very writer adjacent.

After reading Star Wars: Shadow Games, I chatted a bit with @pyr0clast about how some characters are unlikable because of how they’re written* and some are unlikable because they’re just…unlikable. And questionably a character in the case of Dash Rendar, who, at least in Shadow Games, seemed to be written to either be edgier Han Solo or definitely not Han Solo.

Which brings us to my latest questionable reading decision. An audio copy of Shadows of the Empire wandered by and I thought: “Huh, wonder if maybe it always boils down to how a character is written.”

I have yet to get to Dash, but hoooboy does Star Wars have a Villain Sue problem. I find Thrawn a bit much with his magic culture powers and very direct-line-to-the-author intelligence, but he’s got nothing on Xizor. With Thrawn, at least original flavor Thrawn, the realization that the author is just way too in love with his creation and is stacking the deck in increasingly improbable ways is a slow one. Xizor is That Guy’s character from moment one.

You’re sitting down to play your favorite role playing game with your friends and one of them brought a friend to join and, while everyone else has a character with a class from one of the official books and plausible stats and a reasonable background, that friend of a friend brought something else entirely. His character has a class from some on-line unofficial database and is a vampire lich demigod with maxed out stats and 11 billion gold/credits/dollars. But he’s still level 1, so it’s fine, right?

That’s Xizor.

Okay, so he’s not actually a vampire lich demigod. He is, however, a new, special race with pheromone powers, introduced just for him (or at least just for the Shadows of the Empire multimedia thingy) who’s an amazingly successful crime lord, in good with Palpatine, and obscenely wealthy. It’s just too much.

This does not bode well for the rest of the book, much less this author's handling of Dash Rendar.

*Which is what the whole Mary Sue thing should’ve focused on. It’s not purple eyes or being good at lots of things or even generally being liked that’s a problem, it’s the writer bending the rules of the universe into pretzels for a specific character. 

[unexpected-tigers]

@pyr0clast you're so right

generally i make fun of the orlesian version of an organisation more than any other but i’ve got to admit there’s no bitch as useless as a kinloch hold templar

[fatalism-and-villainy]

zhou zishu for the character ask meme?

Thank you for enabling me to talk about fandoms you're not in!

one aspect about them i love

He kills children. (No, really, this was the thing that made me straight-up love him when i read Qi Ye. Sometimes I'll see people say "oh, wow, he's so problematic... I guess I can love him anyway though" whereas I'm like "all these things are good actually.")

More seriously, he's so opaque about everything. He is repressing and compartmentalizing all over the place, and is so used to hiding his true feelings and intentions for court intrigue and espionage purposes that those things become obscured even to himself. (There's a part in TYK where he casually brings up Jiuxiao's name for the first time since his death, and it's noted that this is a big deal for him, and then it says something like "it wasn't a big deal, it was just that part of him was hollow on the inside" like buddy?? you okay there???) Like, he's very prickly, and a lot of his warmer feelings towards people come out through his actions and reactions, which makes him very fun to read about. (Like that scene where he's trying to act all nonchalant about Wen Kexing's sexual exploits while it's clear he's extremely flustered by the topic of conversation.)

But he also has such a playful side! He's very cool and controlled and measured throughout Qi Ye, but he is a Gremlin at heart and seeing him start to joke around and enjoying being a shit-stirrer is one of the joys of reading Faraway Wanderers.

one aspect i wish more people understood about them

*gestures upward at "he killed children"* Like I feel like I keep harping on the stuff that happens in Qi Ye, but he very much did arrange for a kid to be raped and murdered for politicking purposes. I think a lot of characterizations of him that feel jarring to me are based on his Word of Honor characterization, and fair enough, I can't fault people for wanting to work off the show if that's their preferred (or only) canon, and even this fic of mine is borrowing some elements of that version of canon, but. Sometimes I'll see people characterize him in relation to morality or specifically sexual violence/exploitation in ways that just... do not line up with what he's actually done.

Also, this is relevant to Wen Kexing as well (who I also have to answer an ask for), but I'll put it here - he's actually pretty similar to Wen Kexing in personality and morals. Again, I think the show allows more room to interpret them as having contrasting personalities, but one thing I love about their book dynamic and characterizations is how much it's impressed upon the reader that they are very similar, and process the world very similarly, and this is why they have such an intuitive understanding of each other.

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have about this character

This doesn't work if one takes them as having a more itinerant lifestyle post-canon, but - given Zhou Zishu's approach to the people close to him being "irritation and standoffishness --> reluctant affection, I think he should adopt strays. Let him have cats and dogs, and complain about how much work they are while secretly growing very attached to them. It just makes me happy.

Also, given the fact that he invented the nails, I want to see him come up with other magic inventions in his free time. He just likes tinkering. It's enrichment.

one character i love seeing them interact with

Wen Kexing is a given, of course, and really does bring out some of his most delightful qualities (the bantering and the little games they play!), but I'll put Beiyuan here as well. Just weird gay friends. Also Liang Jiuxiao, because of the codependency and tragedy of it all.

one character i wish they would interact with/interact with more

I'm always hungry for more interactions between him and Jiuxiao, haha. I suppose I'm also curious about the backstory of how he met Helian Yi, as well.

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have that involve them and one other character

Ah, this one I seem to struggle with each time. Okay, I'm inspired by the show's exchange between Wen Kexing and Gu Xiang about playing cards (and the entire concept of scary crime organization leaders playing cards), so I'm going to say that it was Jiuxiao's wont to regularly cajole him into playing cards with him (sometimes with alcohol involved). Zhou Zishu put up a fuss about being busy but always indulged him.

[transcendencism]

Sleep, happy, and friendship hcs for Izvoye?

☾ - sleep headcanon:

ma’am needs her beauty sleep. she doesn’t care if she’s got a council meeting at 7am, she gets up at 9am at the earliest. the council lets her get away with it because they know they’d be in deep shit if it weren’t for her. this is also why they don’t say anything about her being Married™ to her loving husband.

☆ - happy headcanon:

she has the most adorable laugh (we’re talking chortling and snorting and general giggling) and she used to be embarrassed by it, but hyroh was too funny to be around and NOT laugh, so over time she got used to it. and her friends and loved ones all agree that her life is cute af and like to make her laugh :’)

��� - friendship headcanon:

izvoye’s the kind of friend that’ll send you random cat videos at 3am and then not message you again for like three weeks to two months. not because she’s emotionally distant or anything like that, she just kind of... forgets to talk to people lmao.

[headcanons meme]

[swtorpadawan]

Tyzen’s plan to keep fighting on Tatooine had been futile, of course. Within a month, Algrunar, the only other Jedi who had stayed behind, had been killed and what counted for the local government on Tatooine had capitulated. When he’d realized that the people of Tatooine had only suffered more for his presence, Tyzen had finally been forced to flee as well, a local farmer named Galen Besk providing him with a way off-world.

By then, Denielle and the other Jedi had left Tyzen and the rest of the galaxy behind.

He could only hope that she was alright.

Tagging! @raven-of-domain-kwaad @rakiah @grandninjamasterren @rikki-roses @eorzeashan @queen-scribbles @luchadorbard @pyr0clast @dirthara-dalen @serenxanthe @sullustangin and anyone else who wants to play!