#shoutout to my friend Marlin who asked for these to be made lol

[soulsty]

I made a bunch of these, now you’re free to project your period cramps and/or other bodily pains onto Phos, via picture *big enthusiastic thumbs up*

[mrsrcbinscn]

Mak’s 2021 BDRP Questionnaire

Your Name: Mak

Characters in play: Crown Princess Elena Flores of Avalor, Tigg Khan, Reza “Ares” Kasraoui-Muller, Mu-yeol “Marlin” Bae, Mazhar “Mads” Morey, Franny Robinson, Violet Parr

Characters closed this year: Adella Triton, Vitani Blackwell, Marisa Soto

Pick one of your characters and talk about their growth 

...MARLIN.

Ugh. UGH.

Okay I’m so proud of him. He went from this sad, absolutely ruined man with no desire to live, no will to breathe his next breath, who only still lived for the utilitarian purpose of raising his son who he adored to...well, still a bit of a sad man, and still a man who lives for his son but with some key changes.

While Current Marlin still carries a heavy weight of sadness around with him, he’s very much carrying it now. It is not a ball and chain around his ankle, he’s in control now. Marlin still lives for Nemo but he is no longer counting down the years ‘til Nemo turns 30 and he can become...alive’nt. He now actively wants to live. He’s in therapy! He got a diagnosis for his mental health issues! He’s made friends!

Marlin lives for Nemo, but he also lives for Jun, Sled, Ting-Ting, and his Pixie’s “work kids.” We’re still working on Marlin seeing himself as someone worth investing in, like he still isn’t like “I’m living for me, Marlin” but the fact he’s now happy to be alive and not hating himself for still breathing instead of his murdered wife is PROGRESS!

Pick another character  and talk a little about where you WANT them to go. What are your plans for them going into the new year? 

2022 is gonna be the year of Tigg! I’m going to finally have her band be involved in things! And hopefully Tigg is going to discover more about her past, and decide more things for her future. I’m excited to see where she takes herself.

Also, I’m considering moving to close up two more of my characters, if not by the end of 2022 than like mid 2023 their stories may be up.

Pick a thread or a plot that you’re proud of and talk about why you loved it. 

Baby Sovanna!

I had more I wanted to do with it, but I lost my Cornelius right in the middle of writing her birth thread. But basically I wanted to go more into Franny’s journey of having a newborn in her 40s, and have her and Cornelius talk more about their marriage and see how his going back to work after paternity leave affected them...

But I still am very proud of what came of it! BIG shoutout to Sid for letting me use Ratigan and Laszlo anytime I ask for them, both before and in light of the absence of a Cornelius.

Franny’s brush with death post-partum was something we had plotted from the jump and I’ve very happy with how that turned out.

Someone give me a Cornelius and Wilbur so we can explore the family dynamic even more!

In terms of your own writing, identify 1-3 strengths and talk about why you think it’s one of your strengths.

1. Something I wasn’t super aware of until Sid pointed it out to me was my ability to write something absolutely gut-punching and then SLAP on some comedy three sentences later. After being made aware of it, she’s not wrong. I really enjoy being able to do that!

2. Worldbuilding! I don’t think I really need to explain this one because I feel like most of y’all have acknowledged how beyond extra I am when writing about how my characters fit into the BDRP-verse. But it’s something I truly enjoy doing and that I think I’m good at.

In terms of your own writing, identify 1-3 areas of improvement.

1. Writing smut lol I get so SHY

2. Writing action, like real physical action. 

3. Physical descriptions --- my problem  is. Okay, so like, I have a very clear idea in my head of how my characters are moving w their bodies in my threads, But I can never figure out how to articulate body language so my writing comes off very bland and trash lol.

Pick one of your plots, or even just a character, and come up with a list of 3-5 “mentor texts” where you can look for inspiration or research, then write a short (2-4 sentences) why you picked those texts.

I’m going to pick Franny Robinson because she is actually the character that I have the most outside inspiration for that I can directly point to things for.

1. The career of Linda Ronstadt. If you were ever under the impression that Franny’s versatility is a bit unrealistic, that it’s deff purely a work of fiction that she can have a career and clout in country/bluegrass/folk, pop rock (Seoul Hanoi’d), Khmer-language music, French-language music, and come from a musical theatre background, I pinky-promise this isn’t some Mary-Sue type legendaryness I’m pulling out of my ass. Franny’s storied career is very much inspired by Linda Ronstadt. Here’s the Sparknotes version of Linda. She’s the 14th highest selling artist in country music as of writing this (December 2021), and her country music creds were acknowledged by the likes of Johnny Cash. She was in the movie version of Pirates of Penzance and blew everyone away who turned their noses up at a rock singer playing the part -- she grew up learning musical songs with her mother at the piano. Ronstadt is of German and Mexican heritage on her father’s side and grew up steeped in traditional Mexican music, and her album Canciones de mi Padre is still to date the best-selling non-English-language album in U.S. music history. As you can see, Linda Ronstadt could sing anything and kill it. Linda and Franny are both people who just love music and love all music, and will sing whatever music they want to sing whenever they want to sing it.

CW: discussion of genocide

2. On Fear, Fearlessness, and Intergenerational Trauma by Monica Sok and The Science of Suffering. This essay and article are ones I revist...at least a couple times a year. Especially Sok’s essay. It is beautifully written, and it’s helped me a lot in considering how Franny and Sophea, her mother,  deal with the trauma of the Khmer Rouge years.

The following passage from Sok’s essay gave me a lot to think about:

This is me saying it: I am afraid of the history I have inherited. Trauma resurfaces in my life in all kinds of ways, as it does for all children of Cambodian immigrants. The oppression continues in my community through gang violence, high school drop out rates, poverty, etc. I ask this again. Who can be fearless confronting the history of the genocide?

I will say that while Franny’s mentioned it in game, and while I have visited the subject before in tasks, and in some of Franny’s songs, I have miles more thoughts and headcanons about Franny and her family in relation to the Khmer Rouge years than I will ever share on dash. It is not my cultural trauma and I do want to read carefully. I also do not want to never touch on it, especially because that is such a big part of Franny’s background and it frequently finds its way into Franny’s art. But I want to say that I have done my research. I’ve read, watched documentaries, interviews, I did my utmost best to respect Franny’s background as the daughter of a genocide survivor while not...grossly exploiting it for feelsy writing points.

Write a realistic story about such a person without over-emphasizing it, but think about it deeply and have more thoughts about it.

I really encourage y’all to read Sok’s essay. It isn’t very long and every passage of it is just so important.

3. A ton of articles and essays written by women struggling with infertility and frequent pregnancy loss, which are why Franny did not have a baby until Sovanna at age 41 earlier this year. Cornelius and Franny always wanted to adopted at least one child, because she comes from a blended family and Cornelius is Adopted adopted, so Wilbur would’ve been adopted even if Franny was able to get and stay pregnant earlier. Still, she always wanted a bigger family, more children, wanted to carry a child just once for that humbling and powerful experience-- and I hate kids and never ever want them, ever. SO naturally I read a lot of thoughts from the women whose experiences mirror Franny’s.

And now, a wishlist! Jot down a few themes or stories or genres etc that you want to maybe pursue in the upcoming year!

Marriage things! Y’all please, please, pleeeeeeease someone give me a Cornelius. I have so many different plot pitches depending on what vibe we wanna go with. I have happy plots, sad plots, drama, wholesomeness-- I have so many ideas and nobody to discuss them with.

Fake dating that turns into real emotions! AHHH MY WEAKNESS FANFIC TROPE

Crimes! I need a character who can do crimes specifically with Ratigan, my boi..

I want some dating things! Date me lmao

Avalor things! gimme Avalorans y’all