#shop talk tuesday

[lemonsharks]

talk shop tuesday! tell me about the last thing you wrote. what inspired it? what was your process of writing it?

Drabblefest, and I have no idea how I managed to produce a complete story in my current state (blargh)

I sort of blinked and it was there

[betweenthings2]

talk shop tuesday!!

first off how’s the roadtrip??

and for the question: how did you come up with the idea for the big light universe? where do you pull inspo from? i know since it’s rpf it’s a lot of real life circumstances used as material, but have there been other things?

Thank you for the ask!! I know I’m a little later than I usually am with answering asks, and I apologize, but it is still Tuesday here.

The road trip is amazing—thank you for asking! I was struck today by just how much I love the American West and how thrilled I am to be driving through. I’ll be home late tomorrow, so there I’ll posts some stuff later this week. I just have to sleep for about sixteen hours first.

I had to think some on the origins The Big Light Universe(trademark (I can’t figure out how to get the little tm on my phone)). I had the idea floating around for a long time. I wrote what became this dialogue:

"He's hitting you, Matthew!" George finally snaps, unsure of how else to get his point across.

"No, he's not."

"Do you think I'm stupid?" George asks. "You're doing a bad job of hiding it and you promised to be honest. You fucking promised, so don't lie to me now.”

"He loves me," Matty tries.

George scoffs. "It's been six months and he's hitting you."

"And I fucking deserve it!" Matty yells back.

"Did he tell you that?"

"Does it fucking matter?" Matty responds. "Are you honestly going to sit there and tell me that in all the years we've known each other you've never wanted to hit me?”

And I think it sat in my notes for ages before I figured out what to do with it. I think the original idea came from a song or something I was watching or a conversation I overheard, but it’s been floating around for so long that I can’t point to any one at this point. This Big Light did, for the most part, get written after Somewhere, which kind of touched on issues of domestic violence, so the idea was also kind of there in that. In terms of inspiration, a lot of it is me asking myself how miserable I can make everyone or coming up with a scene I want to include so I write a path to that scene. Inspiration also continues to come from things I listen to and watch and the idea that it gets worse before it gets better. I wanted to write physical hurt/comfort and I wanted to make everyone so sad, and The Big Light is what came out.

[imperiumwifestrikesagain]

Shop talk Tuesday! What’s your favorite thing about writing for your fave characters? And why?

I love thinking about what they are thinking. I feel like they are talking in my mind anyway, so I might as well write it down.

I also think it’s a part of me that loves acting, that just needs to act everything out in my head too!

[synestheticwanderings]

talk shop tuesday my beloved ♡(｡- ω -) if you could pick 1 work of yours to be adapted into a visual media (comic, show, movie, art installation, etc.) what would it be, what format would you adapt it to, and why?

This was harder than I thought, but I think can’t leave the night, in a future season of the show (ha), because I want my headcanon to come to life.

[woahpip]

happy talk shop tuesday!! what's a fandom that you've always wanted to create for but haven't been able to for whatever reason (intimidation, never quite the right vibe, not enough inspiration, etc.)?

usually when i don't write for something, it's that i didn't like it to the point of obsession, or that i don't think fanfic will add anything.

like right now i'm watching justified and i'm obsessed, but im just not interested in adding to fic. i enjoy the fic that's out there for all ships but don't feel compelled to write!

i'm a huge mood reader and writer without a lot of real reasoning!!!!

[withahappyrefrain]

HE BOUGHT HER A 6000 DOLLAR BRACELET???

He's an admiral who wants to spend his money on his sweet girl and Lego sets, why not?!

She gave a very important presentation and he wants to reward her! It's what she (and us) deserve!

I also picture Admiral Floyd to come from a family that's already rich. Being in the Navy was more about him pursuing a passion of his tbh.

[a-reader-and-a-writer]

What’s a character you really want to write for but haven’t?

Thank you so much for the ask!!! 💗

Hmmm....I feel like there are a few but the one that comes to mind right now is Eliot Spencer from Leverage.

I've mentioned the possibility before but

I'm terrible at writing action scenes and a huge part of his character is fighting/action.

The whole cast of the show and their interactions are VERY important to his character and I am not sure if I can nail all of their very specific voices.

I'm not smart enough to come up with complex heists for them to go on.

So, not saying I'll never take a shot at writing for him, but not at the moment....but I would like to someday.

Talk Shop Tuesday

[gemmahale]

Talk Shop Tuesday (9/10/2024)

Changing the format for this one, because I can. Gearing this more toward writers, but readers, feel free to chime in (sub reading for writing, etc.)

Questions:

How do you determine what POV to use for your stories?

Do you have a preferred POV to write in? Why?

If you're writing a character study, do you ever swap to external POV's? Do you find that valuable?

Other thoughts on writing and POV's and voices as you wish to expound upon them are obviously welcome.

Feel free to reblog this post with your answers, or drop me a line in my ask box! (I'll tag it with #Talk Shop Tuesday.)

[fanfic-obsessed]

Hi! Hope your August is off to a good start. Could I send a prompt for Talk Shop Tuesday?

Feel free to ignore the prompt if not!

Some or Several of the trainers look at the babies with their alor's face that said alor wants them to train for a war and go "we think the fuck not.

@somestorythoughts Sorry I did not answer yesterday, it took me a bit to get my thoughts in order for this.

Look there is never a bad time for me to receive a prompt,  a question, or a random message.  It brings me great joy.

Now For the Prompt:

Some or Several of the trainers look at the babies with their alor's face that said alor wants them to train for a war and go "we think the fuck not.

My first thought, before anything, is that Mij is the ringleader. There is no doubt that the medics would be the ones to spearhead this and Mij, of all of them, best remembers both Jaster and little Jango.

I also think that the medics do not really know what the babies are really there for at first. If we think about the Psychology of Jango Fett- Orphaned twice over, a leader too early, the death of his people (that he 100% will not face is partly his own fault-as he shot first) and his own enslavement, semi forced addiction to Spice from the aforementioned enslavement. While none of these things makes Jango evil, they do make him a bit broken. I do believe that in this one he is lying to everyone. 

He is telling the Kaminoans that he is training what will be the GAR (it does not matter if they know the full plot or not, Jango thinks they don’t). He is telling Dooku that he is honing the clones into a weakness for the republic and a wake up call for the Jedi while knowing Sidious’s actual plan for the clones. Of the trainers, he is telling some that the clones will be a trap for the Jedi, others that they will be getting some enormous payment, while telling still others (like Mij) that he is planning to steal the clones to rebuild the True Mandalorians, assuring the interested groups that he is working for the best of Mandalore. 

Most of all Jango is telling himself that he has not become worse than any of the crimes committed against him. 

It is all lies. 

For the first year, this house of cards remains standing. Jango has convinced most of the groups he is lying to that he is lying to everyone but them. Not that all of them care, but some do.  

It is such a small thing, in the grand scheme of things, that tips Mij off. Jango has managed to explain away the numbers (to give the clones a chance to name themselves), the lack of armor (that much armor is expensive), and other such discrepancies as necessities for ‘tricking’ their employer. 

It starts with a single look. A microexpression when Mij asks Jango to hold the toddler A-17 during a routine check. Disgust. It stuck in Mij’s mind all the harder, as he had just witnessed Jango with Boba not 10 minutes prior. 

Mij started to, discreetly, poke around. It takes him all of a week to find the chips. The slave chips embedded in the heads of babies. The babies with Jango’s face and slave chips in their heads. 

Mij has made an error. Mij.exe is also experiencing an error.

Everything is an error. 

Now Mij has a choice, and both those choices involve breaking a vow he swore so many years ago to Jaster Mereel, and later to Jango Fett. He could choose ignorance, and follow his Alor, convince himself there is a good reason for what he is seeing; pretend that there is any good reason for slave chips. And thus dooming untold children, untold babies, breaking his moral code irrevocably. Or he could choose the babies, could undermine his Alor, betray the trust that Jango had in him. Be one more person to abandon Jango, the boy that Jaster had adopted and loved. 

The choice was not an easy one, and it hurt. It hurt worse at how careful he had to be, gathering allies. The remnants of the True Mandalorians were bound by trauma and shared hell. It was excruciating, having to keep secrets, but Mij knew that not everyone would make the choice he had. Not everyone would choose the babies. He could not begrudge them, but he could not trust them either.

It took another month of wrestling with their choices before Mij and his allies, 14 other former True Mandalorians, came to a decision.  There were not enough of them to wrest control of Kamino, not enough to take the 10s of thousands of babies away and keep them safe. They debated going to the Jedi, having realized that the Jedi ordering the Clones was just another lie, but the Jedi were bound to the Republic. They could not protect or free the babies. 

There is only one group that could, politically, if not physically. One that Mij did not want to go anywhere near. Knew that he would have to give up what made him Mandalorian; that he would have to give up the Mandalore Jaster Mereel had envisioned.  By the end of the month, all 15 were in agreement that there was no other way.  

Though it took time, and careful planning, Mij makes sure to be holding a now toddler A17 when his call finally connects to Satine Kryze. He can feel her gaze slip to the baby in his arms as he pleads his case to the Duchess of the New Mandalorians. As he agrees to whatever hoops she wants them to jump through, if it would mean that the children are safe and loved. 

His Ancestors who marched ahead would be angry that he would give up their culture, but they would despise him for abandoning the babies to their fate.

[hollow-dweller]

Talk Shop Tuesday: is there a character you understand better than anyone else doss but haven’t written as much/at all?

as the Universe's Only Howard Stark Enjoyer, i am obligated to answer this with him.

Howard is so interesting to me, because the way he's constructed as a character is so clearly a reflection and response to Tony that narratively, you don't really get the sense that he was the progenitor, between the two of them. in the Iron Man movies, he is constructed as a foil for Tony: severe, business-like, and formal. he is unreachable, in a sense, a reflection of the ways Tony feels isolated from him: through death, through the tarnishing of his legacy that has been orchestrated by Obadiah but in which Tony is complicit, and through Tony's reckoning with and questioning of the value of that legacy in the first place. the Howard we see in those movies is heavily filtered through the lens of Tony's perception: the man who he feels completely isolated from and overshadowed by, who he at once venerates and dislikes, and yet who reaches through time, grudges and enemies carrying forward even as he leaves Tony with the tools to save his own life.

contrast that with the Howard we meet in Captain America: a playboy and genius, a little goofy, a lot self-important, written the way he is to create a clear connection in the mind of the audience between him and pre-Iron Man Tony Stark. it's narrative shorthand, characterization designed to help us bridge the gap between the Tony that we know and the Howard that we're meeting. but outside the meta-textual explanation, we also have to reconcile the Howard as we see him in Captain America, the Howard as we see him (heavily filtered through Tony's perspective) in the Iron Man movies, and Tony himself. in-universe, how do we explain the fact that Tony clearly remembers his father as austere and cold, but has emulated his devil-may-care behaviours and attitudes? if that is not the Howard that Tony remembers, why is that the Howard he mimics?

there are a number of potential explanations: maybe Tony met and knew the playboy Howard in his youth, but is obfuscating that in his own memory, either as a way to preserve his ideal of his father (cold, yes, but also powerful), or as a way to deny their similarities, or maybe simply as a way to honour his mother and pretend that that Howard never existed while he was with Maria. or maybe Tony never did meet that version of Howard, and it's a matter of inverted reflections: Howard moves so far in the opposite direction of who he was in his youth that when Tony constructs a rebellious identity in opposition to his father, he unknowingly mimics the behaviour of his father as he once was.

ideally, Agent Carter would have provided us the bridge between these versions of Howard, had it not been cancelled. we'll never know for sure, and while his character develops in fascinating ways in that show, he never quite escapes the shadow of Tony Stark 1.0. the part that really sticks with me, and has left me with the brain worms that inspired this sermon, is his role in season 1 in particular: his ruthlessness and manipulation in using Peggy, but also his genuine grief and desire for redemption as inspired by Steve. how he views Steve, Captain America, as the one truly Good thing he's ever done at that point, and how it connects to what we are told later, about his obsessive search for Steve and the way that isolated him from his own son. how that too is connected to what he says in Iron Man 2: that Tony is his greatest creation. the inherent selfishness but also deeply felt love evident in both those statements: love for Steve as a reflection of his desire for redemption, love for Tony as his assurance that he had in some way achieved it.

all told, you're left with a fascinating character built entirely from patchwork: imperfect and self-centered and yet idealistic, for whom we are missing key parts of the story from which to create a complete picture. in some ways i am not surprised that fandom often flattens both Howard and Tony's relationship to him, because we are missing essential elements to really conceive of Howard as a complete character. but it is also frustrating to me, because in those gaps i see opportunity: to explore Howard, yes, but also Tony, and their relationship to one another, and to the Stark legacy that permeates the world of the MCU.

having said ALL of that: do i see myself ever writing that story, or filling in those blanks myself? i honestly have no idea. i don't know how that story would be constructed, or what it would really entail. maybe if i ever get around to writing the Morgan Stark Fic, i'll slide some of this in there. but while i never say never, i'm also really not sure there's a dedicated Howard Stark Fic in me. i suppose we'll see.

[betweenthings2]

For Talk Shop Tuesday: What's one of your skills that you've learned over time that you're really proud of? Can you show off some examples of where you executed this well? <3 - @fieldsofview

Thank you for the ask!! I love Shop Talk Tuesday! =)

I am a lover of commas and m-dashes and semi-colons and therefore tend to write a lot of long sentences, so I've been trying to work on varying sentence length to create atmosphere/emotion.

This is from an unpublished prompt fill so it's a little bit out of context, but it is an example of me trying to so this.

Matty sniffs again. He's cold, even though it's a warm day. He feels very small. He wishes someone would come save him from George's upset. It could be a crew member. It could be a festival employee. Adam or Ross would work. Anyone. Anyone. Matty's pretty sure no one is coming.

My instinct is to write it more like this:

Matty sniffs again. He's cold, even though it's a warm day, and he feels very small. He wishes someone would come save him from George's upset, maybe a crew member, or a festival employee, or Adam, or Ross, or anyone. Anyone would be good enough, George wouldn't yell at him in front of anyone, but Matty is pretty sure that no one is coming.

I like the second one way better, but the first one does way better with creating some emotion and sharing how miserable and upset poor fictional!Matty is.

This is the first paragraph of Antichrist and I think it does the same sort of thing.

Neon. Matty's world is neon. Everything comes to him in flashes washed in pink. There's a mass of pink-washed bodies, dancing, moving in the room. Matty can't make out any faces, but that's ok. He has George, solid and real and visible. George, pressed against his back, arm around his waist to hold him close. George. Thank god for George. Matty is pretty sure George is his savior. He's pretty sure he needs saving, but not in the traditional sense. He needs someone next to him, someone to hold him, ground him when the world is washed in pink neon and coming in flashes.

I'm also very proud of my ability to simply write fiction. I still have the draft of the first thing I ever wrote and published and to be so honest, it's bad, but I just went back over a bunch of what I've published recently to avoid writing a paper and it's not bad. So. Ya'know.

[vryfmi]

TALK SHOP TUESDAY!!!

what's the last thing you drew?

second question: did you/will you ever open commissions? 👀

hellooo!! thanks for the ask!

oooh, you caught me with this one off guard. unfortunately whatever im drawing right now i can't talk about much (but soon! very excited to share it!). have a recent attempt at shitposting tho

[id in alt text]

as for commissions. as of now or any time soon im not planning on taking any - too busy with studies and life in general. maybe one day. i did take a few commissions before but only from my close friends. most notable was a dnd character that our party's dm commissioned. it was her character from another campaign, which was my first time designing someone else's character, everyone was pleased with the result

[dsudis]

Talk Shop Tuesday: If you could immediately pluck one story/concept/idea from your brain and have it fully formed in front of you, exactly as you would want, what would that idea be? Can you describe it to us, along with any potential factors that are slowing you down/blocking you from creating it in the first place? Thanks! <3 -@fieldsofview

Oh, boy, that is a question!

My first thought is that I'd like to have When Two Become One (or, oh dear, Little and Broken, but Still Good) completed, just to not have the dangling WIP to worry about.

But really, honestly, if I was sitting here with the one-use-only magical wishing stone that would take a story from my brain and give me a ready-to-release perfect version of it? I would ask it to finish the historical-with-magic m/m romance that I started writing a bit over five years ago and had plotted five followups to.

It's such a great story! It has magical soulbonds that are made, not found! It has a whole system of gay marriage fitted into a historical setting in a way that I personally find satisfying and logical! It has the obstacle to marriage between our heroes being that they are too exactly well-matched for each other (and therefore it's painfully difficult to determine which of them ought to become a non-person and lose his independent inheritance and social status by becoming the dependent spouse of the other, because it's 1834 and somebody has to not be a whole legal person anymore after they get married, that's the rules).

It has COMPLEMENTARY MAGICAL ABILITIES REVEALING ROMANTIC COMPATIBILITY. It has YEARNING. It has a DUEL (well, almost) and a huge historic disaster that our heroes get swept up in, leading to SWOONING FROM MAGICAL EXHAUSTION. It has the baby sister who the hero wants to protect SOLVING PROBLEMS HERSELF, with the help of her trans girlfriend. (It has magical gender affirmation for trans people, because what kind of magical setting would it be if it didn't??) It has a HORRIBLE COUSIN WHO WILL INHERIT THE ESTATE who turns out in a subsequent book to be not really horrible at all so much as, you know, autistic and traumatized and dashed awkward in sensitive situations, and in need of just the right adorable twink to understand him and love him.

It unfortunately has a terminal lack of writing momentum due to me picking away at it through all the years when my writing had not come home from the wars, and so I just feel sort of exhausted every time I think about figuring out what the fuck happens in chapter five and how to put that into words and sentences and paragraphs, so I've stuck it in the drawer and moved on to things that I feel a bit less daunted by, although just this second I feel daunted by every activity more complicated than playing Cake Sort on my phone and watching a lot of Air Crash Investigations, because life is a lot right now.

But if I just had this novel straight from the wishing stone, I could read it, and I'm sure I would love the whole thing again and be ready to write the next five books, and also I could publish the dear thing and tell people it's a bit like a KJ Charles (with less murder) or Jordan L Hawk (with less eldritch horror), and it would probably sell pretty decently and I could be firmly on the way with my five year plan to be able to do more writing and less day-jobbing. And that would be awfully nice.

[abcd-em]

For Talk Shop Tuesday, what fic idea are you thinking about that you haven't written yet?

This is a trap! I know a trap when I see one! This is it!!

IM TRAPPED!

I'm HIDING from certain people bc I know what they're like!!!!

I don't know that I ever WILL write it, but I'm thinking about Flash and Peter both pre & during HOCO

what if Flash wasn't MADE to be the alternate on acadec but decided to be, letting Peter have the smallest win after Ben had died

[pfhwrittes]

Talk Shop Tuesday:

What piece(s) has (have) been most influenced by friendships you've formed here, and how is that reflected in your work?

hi gemma, i love you 💜

(and heads up, this is going to get long)

oh boy, so many of my fics have been inspired by my friends here!

it's absolutely mental to me that i started this blog because i wanted to yell at @391780 on tumblr instead of in her ao3 comments. so i think we can all say thank you to the lovely early for being my entry point into the cod fandom (her work The Arrangement was one of the first fics i read in the fandom - and one of the fics i've mostly recently re-read. i finished it up around 7.30 this morning).

in fact the entirety of the Retail Hell AU was inspired by this ask which came off the back of a post of hers talking about john price working in retail post-141 life.

in fact, a lot of my Masterlist is the result of me going "EARLY I'VE HAD ANOTHER IDEA!!!" in her DMs. she has my eternal love and gratitude for being such a fantastic writer and cheerleader for my writing.

next up, the lovely @kaadaaan is the sole reason i have so many john "soap" mactavish is a Certified Freak posts in my Here Be Kink Masterlist (heed the tags with that one, it's 18+ for a reason). most notably my most recent fics featuring slightly pathetic!johnny x pervy housemate!reader (part one and part two or on ao3 here).

vi is the WORST for letting me run my mouth on her posts or in her DMs. i have a whole document of notes on how i want to expand those fics into a truly depraved universe (rip to kyle, he's about to get put in the middle of the weirdest threesome of his life while simon slowly loses his mind over the fact that his stolen t-shirt is now a cum rag for the most disgusting couple he knows).

then there's @syoddeye. i found For the Record on ao3 and fell in love with the way they write the messy reality of living with addiction and being kind of stalled out in your life. it dragged emotions i hadn't felt for years out of me and i think as a result it's given me the courage to be vulnerable in my own writing in a way that i wasn't confident enough to do when i first started writing for the fandom.

it's really fucking scary to leave parts of yourself in your writing, intentionally or not, but the fact that they continue to pour love on my kyle x transmasc!reader fic from my Binders and Boyfriends series and have called it a comfort fic just means the absolute world to me.

and finally, there's you cariad! yes that's right, you of @gemmahale fame! you have been one of my biggest and brightest cheerleaders for anything involving our beloved kyle "gaz" garrick. it has been an absolute joy to yell in your DMs over The Contract (and some other stuff 😉). i would apologise for going "wait, what about if we did THIS...?" and accidentally turning our lovely self-contained demon au into an entire universe BUT that would be a lie. i am deeply in lesbians with your brain and ideas.

i can't pinpoint a specific fic (aside from some still unseen stuff) that you've had the most influence over but much like sy has, you've encouraged me to trust my instincts with my stories. oh and to never ever scrap a single piece of a wip, just to put it in the odds and ends section at the bottom 😉.

special shout outs go to @greatstormcat, @mortuarywriting, @dragonnarrative-writes, @eilidh-eternal, @ceilidho, @secretsynthetic, @sentientcave and so many other fantastic people that i've seen pop up in my notes just to cheer me on and grace us all with their fantastic writing. every single one of you that i've mentioned (and some people that i'm sure i've forgotten) have encouraged me to keep writing, or to be conscientious and considerate in regards to keeping this little corner of the fandom i inhabit a diverse and welcoming space to ALL readers. from the bottom of my very mushy heart, thank you 💜

Talk Shop Tuesday

[mamadoc]

What's the last sentence you wrote?

I literally was writing this sentence when I saw the notification pop up.

(slight cheat of two sentences since they pair well)

Instead of taking his hands off of Lucy, Tim held her a little bit closer. His face hardened as he locked his chiseled jaw and glared intensely at the man who had the audacity to march into Lucy’s hospital room and claim her as his own.

What about you?