#sometimes characters are just like me for real. sorry!

[geminiwritten]

what is your writing process like? how do you write so much so fast and how do you not lose steam? (i love everything you write and tbh you’re inspiring me to finish one of my wips)

AH OMG THANK YOU!!! i am inspiring you??? gah, that makes me so happy 🖤

ooh, okay... my process haha WELL once i have an idea or outline, i'll usually info dump into a word doc or notes app. it's absolute nonsense, but it gets me excited and sometimes forcing myself to write through the whole summary will help me discover all the little bits that tie everything together.

then once i've done that, i'll (usually just in my head or notes app) break it up into scenes / moments (this is the part that REALLY helps me stay on track and not burn out, because each scene or moment is exciting so i look forward to the next)

e.g., let's look at my fic 'the plan' (this is literally how i planned it) 1. apartment with phoenix, payback, and fanboy: introduce reader's crush on bob and come up with "the plan" 2. the run where he sees her underwear 3. the sleepover: tension (games), cream pies, borrowed clothes 4. in the kitchen (almost kiss) 5. brief intermission to revamp "the plan" 6. montage of jealous moments 7. group setting to tease bob and get his pov 8. the beach / the finale

so you can kind of see that each scene or moment has something delicious or tense that happens between reader x bob.

THAT is what keeps me going. breaking it into 'moments' where i know something fun is going to happen. sometimes the in betweens and bridging bits are unexpectedly good (when hangman joins in on 'the plan') OR sometimes they're boring... and sometimes (a lot of the time) i just put a dash (-) and cut to the next moment because i feel like a bridging bit will make the fic too long.

and that's pretty much it! i struggle big time when i don't know what's coming next, which used to happen a lot. i used to just start writing and see where it went, but now i feel like i've got the rhythm down!

i know 'planning it' sounds like... duh. but planning out moments is what works. moments that lead up to the BIG moment. and making each little moment delicious is the best part!

other tips and tricks! (that help me, so maybe they might help others)

TALK DIALOGUE TO YOURSELF (i do this when i walk my dog or clean the house or shower, it helps SO much especially with fight scenes or big confession scenes where characters need to bounce off each other, because you can naturally respond without thinking too much which is what would happen with the characters if they were real! then don't forget to write it in your notes or something)

if you're not sure about your 'moments' use headcanons / tropes!!! or watch movies / shows with two love interests who have a similar dynamic to your characters (i get lots of cute moments from friends, b99, the office) even small bits of dialogue that you could build a moment around!

WRITE A FULL SCENE OR MOMENT, THEN READ IT BACK / EDIT. don't lose the momentum to edit as you go, but also i like to edit each section before i move on so i know it's flowing well. then i do an overall re-read / edit a day or so AFTER finishing.

take breaks! watch edits! go for a short walk! it all helps, because once you're not staring at the screen, it'll probably come to you

in saying that though... i write BEST when i'm at a desk, in my study, no noise. so if you're struggling on the couch with a movie playing and someone talking in your ear... i'd say give the quiet a go! (although, i'm a bit of a hermit and i talk to myself so much while writing, i can't possible be in the company of other people)

I'M SO SORRY THIS WAS WAY LONGER THAN IT NEEDED TO BE BUT I LOVE SHARING AND I LOVE HELPING OTHER PEOPLE TO WRITE WHEN I CAN SO I HOPE SOME OR ANY OF THIS IS HELPFUL 🖤🖤🖤

[amber-tortoiseshell]

Aprapos about your warrior cats genetic ask- what is your general (design) philosophy when implementing them?

Because I have personally about two:

1.Keep the iconic coat colours to a cat as intact as possible. Which in practice means that for example, Firestar is described as orange and his mom as a “brown" tabby, I’m turning her into a torbie rather than changing Firestar, where the change would be much more noticeable (main character) (a mix of orange+(black) tabby is a smaller change than the entire cat going from red based to black based)

2.No matter how rare or obscure, every single colour mutation found in (non-lab[1]) cat populations is fair game. I’m not including genetics to be realistic, I play with them because I find it fun— including all aspects of realism to me would make about as much sense as including all aspects of realism into the Lion King; It wouldn’t be the lion king anymore it would be just Lion, and Warrior Cats would just be Cats the-not-musical. I *will* pull out every statistically low chance explanation for the odd cat colours- Blackstar gets to be a white cat with a somatic mutation on both (front) paws[2], and it would be frankly disservice to Redtail if I didn’t keep him a tortieshell in some way. The entire discussion of «Redtail’s colour is impossible» «No it’s possible actually, in two possible ways even» is easily how I heard about intersex variations for the first time and got me curious about genetics, and I want to honour that, even if the effect wasn’t an intentional writers choice.

Actually implementing the genetics in writing and graphic design is a different beast, but these are my guidelines for behind the scenes- *when* I have a scene anyways. And I’m curious if you have something like this in mind too when deciding which cat recieves which changes.

[1] I just don’t personally quite feel like including things like Harrington’s brown and the UV flourescent cats- that is beyond the specificness I want and aren’t really eyecatching enough imo on their own in practice to bother including it.

[2] I think this should be a feasible explanation anyways, if the somatic mutation happens early enough in embrio. Didn’t specify high (extreme expression) white or dominant white because either works, really. Silver shaded with only the back of the back legs and underside of the paw keeps their dark (tabby) markings is also a fun alternative and a less complicated one that fits the description.

Hm, let's see.

The first is basically the same as yours. In an impossible mother-son or father-daughter pair i'll almost always make her tortie instead of turning his color from black-based to red-based or vica versa.

When it's plot-relevant that some cats resemble each other, i try to make their phenotypes match.

I use the following genes only: agouti, color restriction, dilute, inhibitor, mackerel/blotched, orange, ticked, white spotting, semi-fictional DBE, and the spotted polygenes collapsed into a fictional spotted gene - i limit my headcanons to them because these are the varieties i see in stray cats. (Ticked and color restriction are rare around here, but i know there are places where they aren't; on the other hand karpati IS present here, i've seen in real life at least three of them, but wherever warriors takes place, while it's obviously not a real location, it's also obviously not eastern-middle europe.) Putting a charcoal, a cinnamon, an amber or a shaded tabby into warriors would damage the suspention of my disbelief just as much as putting a purebred there. Sorry, that's just how i work.

Brown and brown tabby are both interpreted as black tabby... wait, no, pure brown is sometimes black point depending on the other family members. Gray tabbies will be usually blue tabbies, sometimes black, with or without silver. Golden is red or cream or sometimes warm-toned black tabby, yellow is cream.

If the description doesn't mention white, i try to give them no white spotting, but i'm willing to add a low amount if needed.

With white cats, i first try to make dominant white work; if i can't do that, they are pointed. I very rarely make them high white spotted, because that would realistically mean making both parents at least bicolor, and very often they don't mentioned to have any white at all - at that point, i feel like point is less of a deviation from the canon descriptions.

I limit my use of genetic anomalies as a tool for "impossible" colors, being excessive with it is once again feels like using breed-specific alleles, it takes the appeal away. (The appeal is the feeling that i'm being realistic.) I gave myself the permit of one (1) actual tortoiseshell tomcat in the cast, and i've decided that'll be Sol. (By actual tortoiseshell i mean a cat that looks like its genotype is Oo - with small sometic mutations i'm a little more forgiving, a little black patch on red Patchkit or Redtail is more acceptable for example, but i don't go overboard with that either.)

This is the least important point, but I try to give different phenotypes to cats that would be onscreen together a lot. For example when there are several black tabbies in the main cast at a certain point in time, they'll have different tabby patterns.

[evilneo]

sometimes im like "damn why is there not more discussion about [canonically abused character]'s and [canonical abuser who has no regard for autonomy or boundaries and is also a parental/familial/older figure of some kind]'s abuse through a lens of CSA bc im a victim of that and they resonate with me and also it would not be a stretch at all to view it as that even tho its not canon". and then im violently transported back to the real world where the internet is mainly split into either "we discuss it but only bc we fetishize pedophilia and incest LOL we dont care about survivors" or "we have a complex about this and we think if you hc characters in this way youre as bad as the first camp. what do you mean were basically telling survivors that their experiences are too disgusting and shameful to talk about? shut up" and well i think both camps are Dick Heads‼️‼️‼️‼️

[theelmoarchive]

THE SUCKENING!!!!!!!

Can you tell who my favorite is

I love drawing these guys so much Emizel is slowly filling every sketchbook page i flip

[anghraine]

One of the weirder parts of being formally tested for autism as an adult—apart from the hellscape of hours of math hell—was that they kept asking me for my conclusions or opinions about things I had very little knowledge of. These weren't basic facts you'd expect someone to pick up in the course of a standard US education, and I kept repeating that I would have to do actual research to form opinions on subjects I had no significant information about.

Obviously, "not opinionated" isn't a major problem for me when I do have a reasonable amount of information, but my eventual diagnosis specifically mentioned that I kept repeating that I would have to do more research to acquire the necessary baseline of data for forming opinions on [whatever], and that the phrasing of my various refusals tended to be identical or very similar (I didn't see any need to alter my wording when I was simply repeating the same position over and over).

*cough*

Anyway this is also about Star Trek. (Surprise.) I knew Spock would be relatable before we started the grand TOS watch, but did not expect him to be the most relatable character on television ever, and his continual refusals to deliver opinions without enough data for informed theories was actually a big part of this.

[dreamsy990]

some of the less nice thoughts about being aroace

extras below the cut

sketch

closeups on my favorite panels

bonus: adios

[pokemonblack3white3]

Girlies I have got to stop feeling guilty about creating art I enjoy

[wackywatchdotcom]

something i genuinely adore about tadc is how painfully flawed everyone in the circus is. and not in a small way

everyone does SOMETHING that negatively impacts the others. but it makes the fact that you are supposed to sympathize with and really connect with them all the more potent. because its easy to want to put a bunch of characters in a bad situation together and to just have them all be nice to each other and everyone and never make mistakes because theres no reason to hurt each other, and most of them dont TRY to, but the way they cope is so, so realistic for each of their personalities, and it doesnt always mesh with the others, and sometimes it exceeds self destructive and Just Hurts Others, Too

they still generally care about each other and the mistakes they make and the ways they end up hurting each other dont lose their weight but like. it doesnt take away from their humanity and the fact that they are all trying so hard to manage in an awful situation

and the characters seem to have sooome sort of understanding of this too. not fully, because the characters dont tend to be 100% communicative, but when they hurt each other, it often makes EVERYONE uncomfortable. because these are the only people they have. these are their friends. and theyre all coping. but it doesnt change how much it affects them (best illustrated by ragathas lines at the start of ep 2 or gangles 'i love her, but after a while it gets kinda hard to tell how genuine shes actually being'). its not all like this, theres a good amnt of variety, but characters knowing this but not really knowing what to do about it is very painful in an effective way

(i think a subtle example of this is how zooble handles gangles situation in ep 4- they were so genuinely trying to help her because they care. but could tell as the day went on that oh, this is not working at all and its making things worse, and they leave gangle alone- something that very genuinely couldve been the moment she abstracted, because of the mask zooble gave her- and we dont get to have a super blatant explanation of zoobles thoughts on it, but they reach a fairly healthy conclusion about it that helps both of them, and i like that a lot, because on paper zooble could be placed at fault but the narrative doesnt dwell on it excessively, because thats not the point. i dont know if that tangent makes sense but i think about it sometimes. i think zooble wasnt 'to blame' but it was still a mistake, which is a hard balance to strike, and having them help at the end feels extremely effective at rounding it off!!!)

but like. in general its complicated balancing making characters in a bad situation act flawed because it can run the risk of seeming like the story is scolding them or blaming them for the situation theyre in, or like youre expected to not sympathize with them despite it (though the inverse also has complications- if characters in a bad situation never mess up, it feels unrealistic and hard to relate to, and can imply that their innocence is why whats happening to them is bad at all), but the show handles it so well

even the characters who are genuinely trying all try in different ways- some of them have similar outlooks or attitudes towards these thing but theres vital differences for ALL of them- sometimes it works and sometimes it doesnt. in fact some of the more painful mistakes characters have made in the show have come from them so genuinely trying (like the thing i mentioned w zooble, or basically Everything Ragatha Does, or pomnis first attempt at helping gangle, etc), which hits harder than if every mistake characters made had wholly selfish and cruel goals.

i mean, there is a selfishness to many of the characters' actions but imo not in a way thats not warranted. because all of them are in a horrible setting. its uncomfortable to watch characters be selfish. but it is a natural instinct to survive. its not the foundation of most of their actions, but when it is, its uncomfortable but hard to completely disparage them for in a way that makes you feel kinda conflicted

and like. it hurts to be doing your best and for that to make things worse, but its what happens often in the show. because no one in a bad situation is gonna handle it well. by the very nature of trying to survive something is gonna give, but it makes the themes of the show so much more powerful. that making sure the people around you dont feel unloved, cherishing them and finding meaning with others is no less important just because everyone is fucking up. it complicates things, for sure, but it doesnt make those characters exempt fromt this. theres a reason pomni tells gummigoo that she doesnt want "anyone" to feel like theyre nothing, and that kinger doesnt add ANY quallifiers to making sure people feel wanted and loved (not that i think either of them were thinking SUPER super hard, but it conveys smth from the perspective of the narrative

it gets complicated when you add in jax for sure, since i think on the surface he IS the exception to this concept- none of the characters like him, including pomni or kinger. but i think this is something thats gonna be examined further down the line, bc hes the main complicating factor in this reading of the show, but i feel like thats on purpose. hes universally disliked (and so is caine, in a different way) and his actions arent mistakes. they are him coping. the show has made it clear that he can be a complex person AND also a piece of shit. his actions dont detract from the fact that hes a person and the show reminds us of this. so it makes things so messy, but im genuinely super excited to see how the show examines that. where his character goes is, imo, going to be a massive piece of how this show fleshes out this concept

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

literally the easiest way to make someone care about a character and make them feel well-rounded beyond basic traits like personality, sexuality, ethnicity, etc, is to give them an actual character arc, and it’s shocking how many people do not seem to fully realize this

you cannot just cram a bunch of tropes. tropes are not the main event, they are tools to tell the story you wish to tell. emotional impact comes from the lead up, so you can’t just jump ahead and expect the payoff to work. “I want this character to just ___ already!” but they’re not there yet. that’s where the arc comes in - how do they get there?

and! most importantly, and this is something I really want people to think about when writing - the most important relationship your character should have, always, is with the world and society around them. defining your character purely through their interactions with other characters are, I find, how a lot of female characters end up feeling flat or not engaging with the themes as much as the male characters, and also how queer and non-white characters wind up as devices for other characters’ development instead of being more fleshed out

[taraxippos]

I never touched it but I feel like i only ever hear positive things said about song of achilles.. in (rough strokes at least) what makes it dogshit to you?

Okay it's been a while since I actually read it so some of this might not be spot on accurate. Sorry if at any point I say 'the book never does xyz' and it actually does once or twice but I think my underlying criticisms are accurate

-Patroclus is made into like this soft gentle tender quivering little yaoi boy. In the source text, he's shown as compassionate and moved by the suffering of his own men (and apparently having some medical skill, tending to the wounded in the camp), but very much invested n combat and very, very good at it (pages worth of descriptions of the guys he's killing left and right). In this, the arguably more complex character from this 8th century BC text is flattened into Being A Healer, he doesn't want to go to war he just wants to help people, he only goes because Achilles has to but he doesn't want to fight he's a HEALER he's a gentle lover NOT A FIGHTER who just wants to help he just wants to help everyone around him he HEALS while Achilles is a doomed warrior who is so good at fighting and KILLING its a DICHOTOMY GUYS!!!LIKE THE BEAUTIFUL SUN AND MOON DOOMED LOVERS SO SAD patocluse HEALER . (I Think he's specifically characterized as being BAD at fighting but might be misremembering)

-I don't remember much about Achilles' characterization I think it just makes him less of a jackass while not adding anything of interest and levels out into being mad boring.

-Not getting into the literal millenias old debate whether the mythological characters Achilles and Patroclus were being characterized as some type of lover by the original oral sources of the Iliad or its Homeric writers. We will never know. We don't even know what (if any) culturally accepted conventions of male homosexuality existed in bronze age Greece (we know much more about their descendants). But there are some interesting elements of their characterization in this direction, with how unconventional their relationship is WITHIN the text itself- Patroclus is described as cooking for Achilles and his guests (very specifically a woman/wife's job), Achilles chides Patroclus like a father, but there's also scene where Achilles' mourning of him directly echoes a passage of Hector's wife mourning her husband, Patroclus is explicitly stated to Achilles' elder, and is overall treated as his equal or near-equal, closest confidant and most beloved friend (to the point that pederastic classical Greeks would debate over who was erastes (older authority figure lover) and who was eromenos (adolescent 'beloved')- many took it as a given that this text depicted their present-day cultural norms of homosexual behavior but it existed so Outside of these norms that it had to be debated who was who). Their relationship is non-standard both within the text and to the descendants of the civilization that wrote them.

Basically what I'm saying is this book had opportunities to like, explore the unconventionality of the relationship (being presented here as explicitly lovers), explore the dynamics of why Patroclus wants to do 'women's work' (besides being a tenderhearted softboy), the weird dynamics where they take on paternal roles to each other but also roles of wives, how they feel about being this way, and just kind of Doesn't. Which I guess isn't an intrinsic fault (because it omits much of what I just talked about to begin with). it's just like.... Lame. This book takes jsut abandons everything interesting about the source text in favor of flattening it into bland Doomed Yaoi.

-The conflict that sets off the core story of the Iliad is Achilles and Agamemnon fighting over Briseis, an enslaved Trojan woman taken by Achilles as a war-trophy, Achilles spends most of the story moping because he was dishonored by his 'trophy' being taken. Achilles and Patroclus and everyone else are raping their captives, all the women in the story are either captured Trojans (or in the case of the free women within the walls of Troy, soon to be enslaved, and are slave owners themselves). Slavery as an institution and extreme patriarchal conventions are innate to the text and reflective of the context in which it was developed. You cannot avoid it.

But obviously you can't have your soft yaoi boys doing this, so the author has them capturing women to Protect Them from the other men. Their slaves are UNDER THEIR PROTECTION and VERY SAFE (and they might even Like And Befriend Them but I might be misremembering that. Briseis does though). Our heroes have apparently absorbed none of the ideals of the culture they exist in and the author seems to think "they're gay and aren't sexually attracted to their captives" would translate to them being outright benevolent (also as if wartime sexual violence is just about attraction and not part of a wider spectrum of violent acts to dehumanize and brutalize an accepted 'enemy')

In the source text, Briseis mourns Patroclus as being the kindest to her of her captors, who tried to get her a slightly better outcome by getting her married to Achilles (which probably would be the Least Bad of all possible outcomes for a woman in that situation, becoming a legal wife instead of a slave), and wonders what will happen to her now that he's gone. This is a really really sad, horrible, and compelling dynamic which could be fleshed out in very interesting ways but is instead is tossed entirely aside in favor of them being Besties. Like brother and sister.

All of the above pisses me off so much. If you don't want to engage in the icky parts of ancient/bronze age Greece then don't write a retelling of a story taking place in bronze age Greece. I'm not gonna get mad at children's adaptations of Greek myths or silly fun stories loosely based on them for omitting the rape and slavery but it is SO fundamental to the Iliad. If you're not willing to handle it, either fully omit it or better yet set your Iliad inspired yaoi in an invented swords-and-sandals setting where you can have all your heartbreaking tragic doomed lovers plot beats and not have to clumsily write around the women they're brutalizing.

-The author didn't seem to know what to do with Thetis and she made her just like, Achilles bitch mother who spends most of the story trying to separate our Yaoi Boys (iirc her disguising Achilles as a girl and hiding him on Scyros is made to be more about getting him away from Patroclus than trying to save her son from his prophesied doom in the Trojan War) until she sees how much they loooove each other and I think helps Patroclus' spirit get to the afterlife or something in the end?

-This is more of a personal taste gripe but it has that writing style I loathe where the prose feels less like a story and more like an attempt to string together Deep Beautiful Hard Hitting Poetic Lines that will look great as excerpts on booktok (might predate booktok but same vibe). It's all very Pretty and Haunting and Deep but feels devoid of real substance.

I really like The Iliad and The Odyssey in of themselves. They're fascinating historical texts that give a window into how 8th century BC Greeks told their stories, saw their world, interpreted their ancestors, etc. And genuinely I think these texts have 'good' characters, there's a lot of complexity and humanity to it.

WRT the Iliad- all of the main Achaeans are pretty fascinating, the one singular part where Briseis Gets To Talk and laments her situation is great, Achilles fantasizing that all of the Trojans AND the Achaeans die so he and Patroclus alone can have the glory of conquering Troy (wild), Achilles asking to embrace Patroclus' shade and reaching out for him but it's immaterial (and the shade being sucked back underground with a 'squeak' (the squeak kinda gets me it's disturbing and sad)), Hecuba talking about wanting to tear out Achilles' liver and eat it in a (taboo, exceptioally pointed) expression of rage and grief for his mutilation of her son's corpse, just one tiny line where the enslaved women performing ritual wailing for their dead captors are described as using it as an outlet to 'grieve for their own troubles' is heartrending, etc. A lot of grappling with anger and grief and the inevitability of death, a lot of groundwork laid for characters that could be very interesting when expanded upon in the framework of a conventional novel.

And Song Of Achilles really doesn't do much with all that. I know a lot of my gripes here are kind of just "It's different from the Iliad", I would have thought of it as mostly mediocre and forgettable rather than infuriating if it wasn't a retelling (and I DEFINITELY have strong biases here). But I think the ways in which it is different are less just a product of a retelling (of course there's going to be omissions and differences) and more a complete and utter disinterest in vast majority of its own subject matter, to the book's detriment. I think a retelling has a point when it EXPANDS on the source, or provides a NEW ANGLE to the source. This book doesn't Really do either, it just shaves off the complexity of its source material, renders the characters into a really boring archetype of a gay relationship, and gives very little else. Its content boils down to a middling tragic romance that has been inserted into the hollowed out defleshed skeleton of the Iliad.

Bottom line: I definitely would not be as mad about it if I wasn't familiar with the source material but I think it's fair to expect a retelling to Engage with/expand on its source, and I also think it's weak purely on its own merits. This book was set up to disappoint Me specifically.

[witchzvamp]

first of all, these boys need to learn when shut the fuck up omg it's better than get more and more into this mess! everyone is so damn dumb, i was dumb when i was a teenager but god not this much

second, fou4mod is not all THAT, not enough to have TWO boys trying to get him like you guys (baabin) are better than this! i mean he such a mess like omg he doesn't need you guys in a weird competition to know who he gonna end up with he needs therapy and if you guys like him so much send him to therapy asap; all of you guys need therapy actually

third of all, i don't know how should i feel about bua?? he's a sweetheart but i don't know if he really does feel something real for baabin; i understand he's in need of real attention and love but it's like he clings to the first person he thinks will be good for him, which is a little unhealthy (actually VERY UNHEALTHY); but love him regardless

and i have nothing to talk about baabin bc he let me down so much and depending on what he does next week's episode i gonna become his hater #1

[princsstwilightsparkl]

saying "if aroace people can date, then can lesbians date men?" is absolutely aphobic narrative btw!

[konmics-n-stuff]

I really resent the Young Justice tv show for … a lot of things. TBH.

[thefloatingwriter]

relating to your reblog.. no one actually gets beetee i fear. minus you mostly. but the consensus of him being a chill tech guy and not in part a mass murderer both in the arena and in the rebellion & also pretty morally grey in a sense? yknwwww. yknw!

yes yes yes. all do this yes. he’s morally gray. it is so obvious he is morally gray it is practically written on his forehead. his morals are definitely questionable. that is so obvious and yet…

at this point i think i need a therapy session simply so i can rant about other people’s interpretations of beetee. because. do you even understand him. did you even read the trilogy. like i don’t even know what to tell some of you at this point except that you just don’t get him like i do.

[spoopup]

sonic discourse on twitter is uniquely stupid. and all of it makes me feel incredibly smart

[allbeendonebefore]

[realizes my deadline is tomorrow and goes through the 7 stages of grief in 30 seconds]

its technically a soft deadline because boss knows im Going Through It (tm) and was willing to extend it but i purposefully agreed to it in order to give myself the Time Crunch Determination but uh it doesn't help that I'm Putting Myself Through It as well as Going Through It you feel me