#the second reason i scrapped the idea btw is i wanted my fic to be different

[lunammoon]

⭐ !!

I was going to post this in the author’s notes of chapter 56, but I can post it here and then link back to this post when relevant..

So, this probably doesn't surprise anyone who's read any Doctor Who Time Jumper fic ever, but in early drafts (like, after Marion had a name, but before I had solidified what Marion's ACTUAL backstory was) Marion was a Time Lady.

She wasn’t from Gallifrey or anything. The house in which she’d grown up inside of had been on top of a Cardiff-style rift and since she’d been conceived there, there were some consequences.

I ended up scrapping it for a couple of reasons.

The first is that I was having trouble making Marion's other regenerations fleshed out in a way that they felt distinct from Marion the First (that's how the naming scheme would've been. First Doctor, Romana I, Marion the First).

But I did have some rough ideas about what they would’ve been like, and I MIGHT draw them later. But here’s what we’ve got:

Marion the First would've been basically the Marion in the fic. You know her you love her. Except she wasn’t as anxious.

Marion the Second would've been a 6' 5" woman with curly ginger hair and she would've been slightly paranoid and somewhat clumsy. She would also jokingly put an elbow on some version’s of the Doctor’s shoulder and head while talking as payback from the Doctor doing it to her when she was 16 inches shorter. Compared to Marion the First’s more causal whatever fits in and is comfortable to style, Marion the Second tended to dress a little bit more formally. In my notes, I compared the Marion the First’s style more to Nine or Four or Season 10 Twelve and the Marion the Second’s sense of style more to theThree or Romana I and II.

Marion the Third would've been a man with a sort of medium build and shaggy blonde hair who was constantly in thought and acted more or less like Romana I as far as trying to keep the Doctor in line. He was a bit more serious that the First and the Second and I have in my notes that he was a "bit of a buzzkill". A lot more of a stickler for doing things by the rules on the grounds that if you don’t deviate much from the rules, then if you do have to deviate, it’ll be easier to know what was going on than you would if surrounded by chaos. He would say all this with a sense of fashion comparable to Four and Eleven on a good day and Six on most days.

Marion the Fourth would've been a very goofy and peppy and energetic person with short black hair who was fiercely protective over the people in the TARDIS. I also never would've made it clear which assigned gender they had. When asked what his gender was, she would respond with some variation of "yes", "guess" or "pick one" and simply answer to whichever pronouns the person they talking to decided to use for her because having regenerated from a woman to a man made him completely apathetic to gender as a concept and so they genuinely didn't give a shit what pronouns people used for her as long as he could tell they were referring to him. Her fashion sense wasn’t particularly androgynous but would sort of fluctuate wildly between masculine and feminine styles depending on what he grabbed ahold of first.

(I probably would've referred to Marion the Fourth in narration with they/them instead of alternating around like I did in that paragraph because I fear it would get confusing otherwise.)

I didn’t get to come up with Marion the Fifth because it was around this point in my journal that I got a BETTER idea and instead kept Marion the First, who was the most well-developed of them all, and gave her some of the more interesting traits from the other three.

[artistic-mathematics]

sentience in animatronics, particularly in sister location?

Major FNAF lore spoilers ahead. Also, this is a very long theory post. Consider yourself warned.

This is a list of the main animatronics that are possessed, or have sentience in some way or another. (This list might be a little shady, so bear with me):

Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy, Golden Freddy (First Missing Children’s incident, FNAF 1)

Toy Freddy, Toy Bonnie, Toy Chica (Second Missing Children’s incident, FNAF 2)

Mangle (from the fruit maze minigame)

Puppet/Marionette/Lefty (for... obvious reasons)

Springtrap (also for obvious reasons)

Looking to each of their behaviors, it’s shown that the person who possess said animatronic (aside from Puppet) were stuffed into their respectful suit, which is how said animatronic gains sentience. For the Puppet, Charlie’s spirit kind of merged with the Puppet’s because the puppet wanted to protect Charlie, even after death (or something like that. That’s basically how MatPat explained it in one of his videos.) For this, we’ll kind of just... ignore the Puppet, because that’s clearly an exception and isn’t really useful here.

Now, if we look into everyone else’s behavior, we see the following. The main animatronics and the toy animatronics are weary of adults (including Mangle, btw!), especially night guard, because they look the most similar to William Afton (or their murderer). Springtrap is, well, William Afton, and he always comes back because he has the plot armor of every Disney princess ever. They all have a proper motive -- the children and the dog looking to avenge their own deaths, while William Afton murders more people and does more of his twisted experiments with souls and wreaks more havoc overall.

Sister Location is different. We know for a fact that Elizabeth Afton possesses Circus Baby, but even then, it’s an extremely fuzzy grey line. What was her motive in killing her own brother? Michael mentions that the Funtimes thought he was William, so actually, what was her motive in killing her own father?

For my fic (which is why I... started overanalyzing this to begin with...), I’ve written this off as the fact that maybe Elizabeth’s soul wasn’t fully merged with Baby’s yet. There seems to be a bit of a consensus on there needing to be time before a spirit fully merges with the animatronic, so maybe that is the case. Maybe Baby just had sentience and decided to do whatever it took to leave, despite knowing that he was Elizabeth’s father and her own creator.

We know that in FNAF 6, Elizabeth has some control or some say over Scrap Baby. I get that an animatronic literally made by William could call him “daddy”, but realistically, Elizabeth would be more likely to do so.

For the sake of this post, let’s just assume that Elizabeth had no say over Baby in Sister Location, but in part gave Baby sentience (because she obviously is sentient by then). The true motive that Elizabeth has, while actually possessing Baby, is to make her father proud, considering that the very last thing she did while alive was disrespect orders and disappoint him. She wants to make amends and make him happy.

We have all of these possessed animatronics with a clear end motive, one that relates directly to their death in some way. So what on earth is going on with the other Funtimes?

Let’s start with Ballora. The most commonly accepted theory is the theory MatPat proposed, that Ballora is actually Mrs. Afton (whose name has not been confirmed yet). The biggest issue I see with this theory, though, is the fact that not once does she actually display true sentience throughout all of Sister Location. Sure, she has a few lines that were definitely not coded in, but that doesn’t really determine anything. There is one major difference between Baby (who we’ve already determined to be sentient) and Ballora,

Ballora doesn’t learn. I don’t think Baby only meant that Ballora couldn’t learn to pretend in order to avoid getting scooped. When Baby first mentions Ballora, she simply tells you how to get past her. Ballora is predictable, and Baby knows that. She knows exactly what Ballora will do, because she doesn’t learn from her failures. You’d think, after being in an underground facility for so long, that any human (even a child!) would be willing to change their tactics. And yet now we’re talking about a fully-grown adult who’s possessing this animatronic? It just doesn’t seem likely.

I do believe that she is at least partially sentient, though, due to her voice lines and the ability to at least listen to Baby. She also has a less than fun reaction to the controlled shocks and is very, very hostile to you after that, showing that she has at least some capacity to understand that Michael hurt them. Also, if Ennard’s inner dialogue is to be believed in night 5, then I can see Ballora bringing up the fact that he had hurt them. (I do believe that Baby planned this whole thing out and told the other Funtimes to act hostile towards Michael, but uh, Ballora may have just held a grudge regardless.)

Another thing that’s worth mentioning is that it’s been generally confirmed that Circus Baby’s Pizza World opened after the first missing children’s incident. If this is to be believed, then William Afton would have already done experiments with remnant and whatnot. In this case, I think it’s actually quite likely that Ballora may have had Mrs. Afton’s remnant, but not her spirit. This would explain why she’s not as sentient as Baby, but is at least somewhat sentient. I think this was extremely deliberate -- I do agree with the part of the theory in which Ballora was modeled after Mrs. Afton in some way. He must’ve done this to honor her memory or something along those lines.

Now onto Funtime Freddy and Funtime Foxy. We know that the both of them are also sentient in their own way, considering the fact that they were also able to listen to Baby (while Funtime Foxy does have the same motives as Ballora when it comes to attacking Michael, Funtime Freddy does not. so I do believe that Baby must’ve talked to him beforehand to some extent in acting hostile.) My theory is that both Funtime Freddy and Funtime Foxy must’ve had remnants of other people, since they both also seem to have at least partial sentience like Ballora. But who, and why? It makes sense for Ballora to have Mrs. Afton’s if she’s modeled after her. But what’s the point of making these other two sentient?

The best solution I can come up with is to enhance the AI in them, so they do a better job of kidnapping and killing children... or whatever. I have absolutely no proof to back this up, though.

Then, well, Ennard happens. And the three of them vote to kick Baby out. While the three of them kinda just... let things happen in Sister Location, I think the reason for their rebellious behavior was actually due to Elizabeth being merged with them. I think that maybe she passed on some of that sentience to the other three, giving them just enough willpower to boot Baby. Do I have evidence for this? No. Is this entirely based off of headcanons? Yup. Honestly, I’m just spitballing at this point. I am so, so very tired of trying to figure out how sentience even works in FNAF at this point.

(Don’t even get me started on Bon Bon, the Bidybabs, and Minireenas. I have no goddamn clue how any of them even fit. The Bidybabs saying “She’s watching us!” or something along those lines just... my one braincell is crying.)

Anyway, please let me know what you think. This was long and convoluted and I want some opinions from other people, because I really am just overthinking all of this now.

PS. I have no idea how this remnant stuff even works. Couldn’t you tell? I probably should’ve researched it but I’m too braindead for that now. Literally putting this out there before anyone flames me.

[set-phasers-to-whump]

they both know

prompt: “hey, wait, you’re still bleeding!” from this post by @whumpster-dumpster !! (i am in love w this prompt btw, it is just. so good.)

this one is a little bit different...i’ve done one other fic like this before (funnily enough for last year’s wij) but basically there aren’t really characters. you can imagine the people as whatever characters you like, or imagine them as like, random people idk (that’s what i did lol). anyway this was really fun to do, i liked doing sth a bit different! i hope you like it!

“Hey, wait, you’re still bleeding!”

“Huh?” He turns around in the doorway, and for a second the light from the hallway illuminates him in a way that might be almost beautiful were it not for the rapidly-growing bloodstain on his shirt and the freshly cleaned (but still very much present) cuts on his face. 

“Look down. You’re bleeding.”

He looks down, then slowly looks back up, surprise evident on his face.

“What happened?” 

“I…I don’t know.”

She guides him back to the barstool that he’d so recently vacated. He sits down heavily, resting his chin on his hands, elbows propped against the cool granite of the counter. 

“You really don’t know how you ended up bleeding through your shirt?”

He shakes his head. “Honestly, I didn’t even register it until you told me I was still bleeding. I thought I’d gotten away with a couple scrapes and bruises.”

She carefully pulls his shirt up and away from the spot of blood, and he does his best to pull his arms through the sleeves. His injury protests, but he ignores it. The shirt comes all the way off, and he sucks in a breath, and so does she. 

There’s a small piece of metal embedded in his stomach, where the skin is scraped and dirty. 

“Do you remember your shirt being off at any point during the fight?”

He thinks hard, then shakes his head. 

A second later, he remembers. “Wait. I fell, at one point. I remember my shirt getting pushed up, my hands getting scraped. It hurt, but I was a little too busy trying to avoid getting the shit kicked out of me to pay much attention.” He laughs slightly. “Lot of good that did me. Got the shit kicked out of me and ended up with…whatever the hell it is that’s stabbing me.”

“It just looks like scrap metal,” she says. “It seems reasonable that it could’ve been on the ground when you fell.”

He nods. 

“I assume you don’t want to go to the hospital for this, either?”

He shakes his head. “I’ll be fine. I trust your medical skills.”

She sighs. “I appreciate the compliment,” she says drily. “When was your last tetanus shot?”

“Last year. I had an…altercation with a piece of rebar.”

“Of course you did. This probably isn’t gonna be pleasant, you know.”

“I know. I’ll be fine.”

She doesn’t argue - they both know he’s telling the truth. He’s had far worse. She’s patched up far worse. 

It’s a fairly simple process. It starts out the same way that their evening together had started - with cleaning the wounds. She snaps on a fresh pair of rubber gloves, then runs a cold antiseptic wipe across the raw, red skin of his stomach, cleaning out the small scrapes and the area around the piece of metal. He barely even flinches, used to the feeling by this point. 

The next step is to remove the metal. 

“This doesn’t look like it’s in there very deep, but it’ll probably start bleeding more heavily when I take it out. I’m gonna give you a paper towel, and as soon as I get the metal out, I need you to press the towel into the cut as hard as you can, okay?”

She grabs a few sheets of paper towel and passes them over. He grabs them, crumpling them into a ball and holding them at the ready. 

“One, two, three,” she says, half under her breath, and then grabs hold of the piece of metal and pulls, quick and smooth. 

He yelps, slightly undignified. He recovers quickly enough, pressing the paper towels against his skin as, sure enough, blood starts pouring more rapidly out of the wound. 

He holds the towels there until they’re almost soaked through. 

“Let me see now,” she instructs, and he carefully pries the soggy towels away from his body. She peers at the wound, looks carefully at the piece of metal, shiny with blood. It’s two inches long, at most, and the wound itself is no more than an inch deep. Not too bad, she figures. 

“I can work with this.”

“What does that mean?” he asks, though they both know already. 

“I’ll stitch it up. Won’t take long. Won’t feel very good, either.”

“It’s fine.”

Wordlessly, she reaches into a cabinet beneath the counter and pulls out a bottle of vodka. She passes it to him, and he sets the bloody paper towels down on the counter to grab it. 

“God, that’s awful,” he coughs, setting the bottle onto the counter with a thud. 

“It’s better than getting stitched up completely sober,” she argues. He grimaces at her, then takes another sip. 

“You ready?”

“Sure.” He looks down at her hands, watching as she dabs the bloody wound with a damp paper towel to clean it out. 

A second later, the paper towel she is holding has been replaced with a threaded needle, and they both take a deep breath before she begins. He keeps his eyes firmly trained on her hands. 

“You sure you wanna watch?”

He doesn’t reply. He kind of feels like he can’t look away, even if he wanted to. He watches the needle, watches the movement of her hands, even and precise and steady. 

The needle pierces his skin. He watches as it pokes in and then out, leaving a trail of thread behind. It doesn’t actually hurt that much, at any rate not as much as he’d expected, but the act of watching his skin get sewn back together makes him feel sort of dizzy. Still, he can’t tear his eyes away. He watches as the needle and thread makes its way up the fairly short length of the wound, and is thankful that it’s not larger. He thinks he might pass out if this goes on for much longer, but luckily it seems like she’s almost done. 

She ties off the thread, cuts the rest away, sets the needle aside. He’s left with nothing but the stitches in his skin. He lets out a harsh, shaky exhale, blinks hard to try and curb the dizziness, and then slumps forward. 

She catches him, putting two firm hands on his shoulders and pushing him upright. “You good?”

He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes for a few seconds. When he opens them back up, the dizziness has faded a bit, and her concerned face is sharply in focus. 

“I’m good,” he says. 

“Sure,” she agrees, carefully pressing a gauze bandage over the fresh stitches. “You’re good. You gonna walk home like this?”

He raises a shoulder in an approximation of a shrug. He’s capable of it, he knows. But it’s dark and it’s late and he did just get beaten up in a back alley, then stitched up in his friend’s kitchen, so - 

“Yeah, no, that wasn’t really a question. You’re not walking home like this.”

He entertains the idea of telling her that she can’t tell him what to do, except that they both know full well that she can, and she will. 

“You’re staying. I need to keep an eye on my patient, anyway.”

“I can take care of myself, you know.”

“Alright, Mr. Observant. And tell me again, which one of us was it that realized you were seriously bleeding?”

They share a smile they’ve shared a hundred times before, and he knows he’s beat (though, if he’s being honest, he’d known that since he first turned up here). 

“Okay, I give up. I release myself into your hospitality.”

She grins, wide and bright - victory. “I’ll grab some blankets. You up for a movie?”

He always is.

thanks for reading this even though it’s not for any fandom lol. i had so much fun writing it and i hope you liked it!!!!

[animation-is-my-jam]

General stuff about my Future Wordgirl AU (aka I vent about its development and random facts):

- it's more of a time skip than anything but I'm too lazy to change the tags.

- My Au has the events of the OG show and the AU caused by two dysfunctional egomaniacs.

- Tim Botsford seems to be the only good dad in the story, I don't know why. I mean there are also gonna be other good dad's but those are kinda not really the focus (and one is a spoiler).

- Honestly the amount of OCs I make for this AU in general is sad since I'm cutting so many due to how big the Wg cast was, like I had to cut out two other villain OCs to try and not make the story already cluttered. Even the one-off OCs are kinda getting scrapped or being made into a single OC.

- Okay so, the stuff with Tobey's dad is kinda gonna get weird; like it's dark--but I don't want it to make the story seem too emo since I still wanna keep the same theme and feel of the show (bc I like it so much).

- Here's a mystery: "Is Tobey still in high school, or did he graduate early?" 🤔

- There is in fact mythical and eldritch creatures OCs, why? Because the world of Wordgirl doesn't make sense and I like to get silly.

- Becky should just a get a break please.

- Tobey eventually changes his name to Tobey Mackenzie Ezperanza McCallister ( a spoiler worth mentioning since yeah Tobey eventually comes out as genderfluid).

- Like anyone in this AU who aren't my Villain OCs are either cis or straight.

- Tobey and Becky have been in other relationships before they had feelings for each other.

- I ship Violet with Rose and Dr. Two brains with Professor Tubing, which are probably the only random self indulgent ships I have in this AU.

- space lesbians and earth lesbians

- The McCallister's get therapy the arc.

- Becky finally gets too sleep the arc.

- Johnson and Tj are internet enthusiasts, with both of them getting into creepypastas and other dark web stuff like any other 14 year-olds in the late 2000s. (This Au starts in 2007 btw)

- Also Johnson definitely writes fanfictions, so did Tj but was kinda annoyed working on another fic with Johnson about Tobey x wordgirl.

- Tobey and Eme would actually be into the more memey side of the early internet with cat videos being their favorites.

- Tobey and Becky unironically like Johnson's fanfictions.

- friendship moments 🥺

- found family 🥺😢😭

-Eme (one of the OCs) actually doesn't actually consider the McCallisters a part her new family for almost a year in the story, she just lived with them on the account that's she's legally an orphan and that the family owes her one.

- Tobey and Claire don't adopt and make Eme's life better, Eme adopts them.

- RIP Theodore McCallister the II, a pretty terrible father, husband, son, student, friend, boss, brother, boyfriend, mentor, pet owner, inventor...ect.

- Becky still is a fan of pretty princess and funny enough the show has itself a reboot (commence the reboot jokes).

- Also no joke I got way too invested in the idea of developing the pretty princess reboot joke, that legitimately have made an actual story in the pretty princess canon, which itself is a fake tv show in a tv show. (Y'all wordgirl is too powerful, why did the creators/writers have to make it so good. (So yeah don't be surprised if I make pretty princess fanart 😶)

- Mr. And Mrs. Best! Get bent!

- Violet gets into punk rock.

- Kid math is still so good, he's a little dude trying his best :)

- The cookie War of 08. Idk I have a fun story idea where it starts out small with people arguing over cookie taste which eventually has the entire city divided fighting in a comical cookie war. Of course it escalated this quickly bc Becky was out of town for an author meet and greet.

- Granny may is eternal and so is her cat.

- Mr. big gets bullied by a bunch of second graders the side plot.

- Chuck and Whammer have been dating for a couple of years, Marriage subplot 😳???

- Bob tries to avoid his ex from lexicon.

- Tobey went to therapy 👍🏼

- Rhyme and Reason are close to taking over Doctor Two Brains spot of the most popular villain, since he’s been out of his game for a while.

- Doctor Two Brains recovery story featuring Professor Tubing.

[foriland]

For the fic title thing, 1 and 9 for chains? Love that fic btw :)

Oh my goodness... Chains. That was one wild and insane XDDDDD I feel like I had far too much fun writing it. It probably is among my top 5 favourite of my fics.

1. What inspired you to write the fic this way?

Uhhhhhh........ On one angle, I will say it goes back to the core idea I had. So, earlier this year, I was studying during my three months writing break. Writing Brains (for some absurd reason or other) had this 'brilliant' idea, which was the physical position that Jason was stuck in, as in the specific way he was bound in the earlier parts of the fic. And I was immediately interested because that would be uncomfortable and could hurt a lot.

If were talking about the fact that it was an insane stabby-stabby thing, I will say that it is due to my study-tired, stressed-thus-violent state of mind. I pretty much wrote Chains without much planning (I feel like I only plan any scene that I was then writing and even then it was more of a 'what fancy thing will I do to Jason next' kind of planning). And so that adds to it. Honestly, then, any sense of plot and backstory was merely an attempt to make the situation possible. I fleshed it out a bit as I edited (and add more scenes :P) to turn it into a more coherent story afterwards. And really, my reading choices and writing ideas can get pretty cruel when my mind either is tired or bored or stressed (even worse when it is all of those), makes Writing Brains go places. I was also partly experimenting with a few ways to torture that I had never played with before.

9. Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

Yes!!! :D Kinda. There is this one which was the original ending that I posted a bit ago. I wrote that during the very first draft. I like the ending, especially with the Dick-Jason interaction and uh... well, pain. But I wasn't wholly satisfied with this, I found it a bit skippy-ly quick paced and 'aloof', so to speak. And maybe I disagreed with the fact that it is fluff-ish but we'll ignore that. And it became a bit unfitting when I started to edit the fic more because I kept on extending that whole bit in the first chapter when he last woke up (he was not supposed to get drowned again but welp! guess that happened). The extension meant more pain and injuries, thus a worse condition, which I felt would be a bit 'unrealistic' for the original ending (Not that any of my fic, Chains included, is wholly realistic. I mean.........).

So. After I finished my first collection of exams some months back and got back to FINALLY properly editing (which I had missed doing), I tried to shovel up a different ending. And as I was mentioning my predicament on a Discord server, @geminibabyhere threw some good ideas my way, which, while not fully applicable to the fic as she didn't really know what I was writing (I think I just mentioned that Jason was in a really really bad condition and that I want Dick to be in the scene and feeling guilty), did summoned some good thoughts and potential ideas in my head. (Love you lots, Gem! You are amazing!)

So! I sadly didn't keep them, but some of the alternate bits were:

There was supposed to be a cool gun-crowbar-escrima sticks moment between Dick and some of the villains. Like the scene started as the chapter 2 did, and then someone was going to shoot Bruce (who was doing some Batman-threatening-or-something) and Dick did this epic thing of turning and fighting while also battling this other guy with a crowbar. It was a very rough draft and vague idea and didn't work out so I scrapped it.

I killed Jason. It was supposed to be sad. But it was a little thing that I did for fun and to get Writing Brains to work. And it was a lot dramatic.

I was going to have Damian or Bruce in as well, since they were among the indirect catalyst that had caused Jason to end up where he was (No. It wasn't their fault. Stupid things like that happens). But a) it was already nearing Ramadhan by the time I posted the first chapter so I didn't want it to be too long so that I could get the second chapter out before the month started (which I didn't get to in the end anyway), especially since I was also working on my Dark Week works then; b) I was more interested in playing with Jason's head and pain, and I couldn't squeeze Dami or Bruce with what I had.

They were rough, vague things so I cancelled them and went with what I did instead. Which........ was..... I did not expect that it would be that kind of a fancy mess of emotions. I went Dick and Tim angst for a long moment. But I think the ending was neat in the end. (But I love that original ending I had, which was why I kept it.)

-

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you so much, my dear! It went a bit longer that I thought, but I hope I answered your questions ^^ Thank you for the ask and for reading my stuff XD Have a lovely day!! <3 <3

[eyeslikefoxglove]

Episode 14 - WangXian are a (v soft) Battle Couple & Foxglove is hella mad

Hi! Welcome to episode 14. I should be studying. It’s day two of morning runs, so my soul has left my body already, send help. Yesterday I went to buy plants with my mum and got so excited I just whacked on a bunch of eyeshadow because I haven’t seen the outside in weeks, I’m also wearing makeup today, because I have nowhere to go, but I really need to finish this bb cream before it goes bad, so my parents are getting my full fresh faced “woke up like this and put on mascara” routine (which is a fucking lie because I’m wearing at least three blushes and two highlighters). I’m determined to get this bitch down in under five minutes so I can have another five to do eyeshadow, I have way too much eyeshadow to not wear it (I have way too much everything except maybe mascara and eyebrow stuff).

Yes, if y’all were wondering I am in fact a makeup magpie. ANYWAY BACK TO THE ACTUAL THING WE ALL CAME HERE FOR.

(Btw further down I discuss once again how shitty I think the Yunmeng sibs’ parents are if that causes an issue for you)

Ok ok ok, so I was talking with damnpoe-2187 here about how we found that sometimes WWX crossed from gremlin into asshole when he tried to get LWJ riled up. Like in the Cold Springs, putting our shippers hearts aside, that was a dick move and he should have stopped undressing the second LWJ went from annoyed to incredibly uncomfortable. I find this scene the complete opposite, a show of character development if you will. It is kind of similar in that they’re both hurt, and alone (although this time is much more serious) and there was some undressing going on; however WWX here behaves like a fool in love considerate person and knowing how uncomfortable LWJ already is tries to make it easier for him. They’re also super soft and I’m weak.

A brief interlude from my one track mind: That pond is full of corpses isn’t it? Or at least the remnants of the Murder Turtle’s meals I suppose. Damn right WWX should not have gone into the water with an open wound, but think no one should go swimming in there without a full hazmat suit tbh (I want to pump them full of antibiotics at this point ngl)

So I love this tiny montage (is it even a montage) of the, getting themselves ready to kill the Murder Turtle.

Teamwooooooork.

Listen, I have read a few fics in which their mind-meld stays in place due to reasons and I need me more of those.

Ok, turtles don’t work that way, but then again, giant murder snake-Trex-turtle so that’s low on my list of priorities. What’s not low is the fact that this guy is knee deep into pretty much a mass grave and I want to take a few showers just watching him.

Yeah, I know exactly what he’s smelling and suddenly I hope I don’t have meat for lunch today tbh.

The screaming sword has always been fucking creepy and does LWJ’s fist clench mean that he’s also hearing them?

BATTLE COUPLE! BATTLE COUPLE! BATTLE COUPLE!

So I know killing the thing took them something like six hours. And while it feels quite a long time in the show, I think that, if they cut the scene with idk, JC running towards Lotus Pier, then back to them, then back to JC, but now the sun is in a different position, back to them, but now the blood from LWJ’s hand has dripped down his arm; and so on a so forth it’d convey more clearly how long it took for the Murder Turtle to die. I know fuck all about cinematography tho so feel free to ignore all this if it is in fact an abomination.

Tiiiiiiny interlude here to say that Yiling Patriarch!WWX is probably one of my favourite character archetypes. He’s slightly creepy, slightly amoral (smiling while torturing and murdering bad guys is still amoral ok), more than a bit on the Dark Side, cocky, smirky, a bit of an asshole a BAMF, a rebel with cause and yet he will still do the right thing, not despite his nature, but because of it. He’s kind of like a Chipped Spike? But you know, he doesn’t need electroshock to behave.

I just want a fic where he’s this Dark Lord of Evil in everyone’s eyes however the ‘good guys’ take a break from trying to off him because a bigger threat just popped up and they have no choice but to ask for his help. He agrees, keeps being his charming self while also saving everyone’s asses, LWJ is smitten.

TL;DR: The Necromancer is hot. Oh and nobody dare deny LWJ has a Yiling Patriarch kink.

Oh my, this is the part when I always get teary eyed.

WUJI ON A CELLO? DO YOU WANT TO KILL ME?

“Why hasn’t Jiang Cheng shown up and rescued me yet?” THIS IS ALL THE PROOF I NEED THAT WWX IS THE BABY SIBLING.

“Lan Zhan sing me a song”

IT IS HAPPENING, STAY FUCKING CALM EVERYBODY (I’m crying)

That slideshow of their best moments set to WuJi is a masterpiece, and also, it kind of drives home the point of “how tf did we go from flirting during summer camp to this mess”?

(Btw if that’s YiBo humming he’s got one hell of a deep voice)

Ok ok ok, so this moment had me spitting up my tea the first time I watched it. Believe it or not my dumbass thought these people were actually serious with the censorship and we’d get scraps of their actual relationship. Lots of charged moments like in some other western tv shows I’ve seen when two dudes have chemistry but “they’re not gay”, no longing glances, no tender touches, no being unbelievably soft with each other; just you know, amped up, because if I’m not mistaken you can be arrested in China for “promoting the gay”. I mean, they changed the beginning when people insult MXY’s sexuality to insulting his mental health; no one would think “ah yes, the gays are good” when they hear it used as a slur, but they still erased it completely. One of the things I thought they’d fully take away was WangXian, I mean, the into/outro is named Wuji, which, you know, still a mishmash of their names, but not their ship name. It is such a significant part of the story with all the “what’s the song name? Figure it out yourself” that if something were going to give away that they’re married with a kid it would be that. I thought we’d get an artful fade to black BEFORE LWJ would say the name not after. And also, YiBo is enunciating it so clearly that, even with the sound muffled and the blurriness I, who don’t speak Chinese, can make out the two syllables. That’s deliberate, I can say “WangXian” loud and clear without moving my lips too much. At this point in time I must assume someone in charge of looking for censorship violations in the show is a fan and just ignored it.

Censorship person 1: dude, isn’t that a bit too gay, maybe you shouldn’t greenlight it.

Censorship person 2: shut the fuck up, sit here and watch.

*a full rundown of the whole of CQL later*

Censorship person 1: oh my god they’re so in love and they deserve to be happy.

Back to the commentary: I’m sorry but I have a mighty need of a WWX & Peacock friendship ok? This might be me just wanting WWX and LWJ to make other friends besides each other but I think that the Peacock is just bitchy enough to not take any of WWX’s bullshit.

And the Yunmeng bros timing for banter strikes yet again.

That’s terrible quality fake blood btw.

@ Yunmeng disciples: STOP SHOOTING FUCKING KITES PLEASE AND THANK YOU

Oooof even with a change of clothes our boy is still looking rough as hell.

MY LOVELY YUNMENG SIBS BEING SOFT AND HAPPY WITH EACH OTHER.

It hurts my soul that the second JFM starts praising WWX for surviving the Murder Turtle our boy’s knee-jerk reaction is to start praising JC in return. It is instinctive, how many times must this have happened for him to know his brother won’t even get scraps of praise? (Seriously fuck their parents)

It was going so well, I mean, JFM had a point warning him to not say things in anger. But I thought he was going to tell him that it is because sometimes he’ll hurt someone without wanting to, yet, this asshole decided to, once again, remind his kid he thinks he’s a failure.

And here comes Mme Yu who I can only assume had a servant posted at the door to warn her when WWX woke so she could throw some verbal abuse at him. I mean, she must have been missing it.

And JFM’s misogynistic bullshit strikes once again, because why defend ALL your kids when you can insult your wife.

(Every time someone berates WWX for “intervening” I want to scream. I mean, seeing this I can believe why the society as a whole thought genocide was a good idea.)

I love how they use their kids as props in their fight, I mean it’s not like they have feelings or anything. This woman is gaslight-y as hell too “you don’t love your kid because I gave birth to him”, you can’t tell me saying that in front of the son she’s supposed to love isn’t going to hurt him. And she knows it, I mean, besides the Wen attack I’ve never seen her hit the kids (although I very much doubt she hasn’t), so a good part of the abuse must be verbal. There’s no fucking way a person who regularly uses words that way won’t realise where she’s aiming those arrows. Which means to her (to both) the kids are collateral.

But FR, the barely-out-of-adolescence disaster bi necromancer PTSDing all over the place and living in a mass grave was a better parent than any of the current adults in this thing.

Which brings me to another point, Shijie is textbook “the oldest sibling is just another parent” and I’m making myself very angry.

[this is when I start frothing at the mouth and itching to write a modern-girl(and friends)-dropped-in-CQL because someone has to be a positive adult influence in these kids’ lives and it sure as shit ain’t the ones in the actual show.]

CAN WE STOP BRINGING PEOPLE’S DEAD PARENTS INTO THE FIGHT?

*deep breath*

I am going to feed JFM & Mme Yu each other’s spleens. Look, listen, look and listen, let’s first talk about how calmly they lay out the facts of their lives, one is only loved because he’s been brought up in the shadow of his dead parents, the other knows with certainty his father dislikes him and his mother uses him as leverage in marital disputes. When have these two not exploded their emotions all over the place? Fucking never. Yet here they are, talking about this bullshit like some bout of inconvenient weather. They’re used to it!

And now let’s talk about yet again siblings-are-just-extra-parents, with an added pile of WWX’s terrible self awareness that, to the man who brought him up, his worth is due to his dead parents. Again I’m extrapolating, but with the amount of times Mme Yu brings up his parents in such a negative light I refuse to believe JFM hasn’t made all the “you’re so much like your parents” comments to him every time WWX does something right. I mean, telling an orphan about their parents if they ask is a good thing, but WWX seems starved for stories about his them, which leads me to believe JFM refuses to talk about the topic except to make those little comments. What a fucking stellar way to give someone all the trauma if you ask me. May also explain a lot of WWX’s self worth issues if the biggest praise he’s ever heard is that he resembles dead people, yes, people who were loved, but they’re dead, and it doesn’t look like any adult has bothered to go and differentiate WWX from ZSSR&WCZ.

I’m just really mad, despite all the silly anecdotes I put in here my parents are fucking great at parenting, so I know what good parents should look like, and this ain’t it.

Ok, so I made myself angry and I don’t know if I should move onto the next episode now or wait till tomorrow but thanks for reading!

[thoseindarkness]

DtD News Nov 2020

Thank you to anyone who came back for this nonsense. For brevity I have an announcement that I want to make up front. I didn't have room for it last month so I pushed it back, but I can't anymore. I had to make one major revision to the published story. I want people to know about it.

This is the TLDR version. I tell a more in-depth story at the end.

ANNOUNCEMENT

The summary: I had a bad outline walking into writing Mistrust Goes Both Ways. I ran into a problem mid-story. Instead of stopping and taking the time I needed, I challenged myself to creatively solve my way out of my problems. I re-started with about half of what I'd written, published Mistrust Goes Both Ways, and restarting my outline with high hopes.  I was proud of myself for rising to the challenge.

Despite my best efforts, it didn't work out. In the end, I had to scrap my outline. I was able to structure the end I was going for and spent the end of 2019 trying to link the first two stories to the ending I wanted. It wasn't working. Then TRoS. Then COVID. Here we are. In June, I started experimenting with scrapping Mistrust and restarting from Read Between.

Mistrust Goes Both Ways will not be part of the finished story when I'm done. I know some of you love it. I love it. I have no intention of taking it down. I might, for a short time, when I'm posting the final story. I'll let you know if that happens and it will go back up afterward. I don't have specifics as there's no point planning for it now.

For right now, nothing is changing on my AO3 account. Feel free to read and comment to your hearts content. I promise it will stay up forever to remind me that some mistakes are worth sharing with others. I learned good lessons from this mistake. It stays.

That being said I think I owe you an actual update on the progress of this story.

WHAT THE HELL I DID THIS MONTH

After my first update I needed to re-integrate with Reylo friends. Funnily enough, that pulled me into another fic. I've been working on that between following this election. Now that it's called I can get back to writing. I tried a couple of times since I voted on Oct 30th, but I knew it wasn't what I wanted to be thinking about.

Thankfully, I've also begun doing more social/political essays lately. I'm not sure what overall form or shape those may take and I haven't published any. Still, I was creative and I did plenty of writing. Interestingly, all this political focus is good for Deceive the Deceiver. Spinning and listening to conspiracy theories is a big part of weaving a world like this one. A great deal comes from my thoughts and perceptions of the real world.

WHERE DTD IS

As of right now I am in the process of first drafting the entire story with Read Between as the starting point. That is, every one of the short stories in the series. What I'm doing is somewhere between a history, an outline and random scene writing. All of these elements are currently strung together in one long, continuous, chronological, first draft. It's everything from the history before Read Between (which starts in the 1930's), all the way to the final scene of DtD.

I'm taking all the good ideas I've created in the last couple of years and re-organizing them into a first pass. It's the skeleton and some of the meat now. I'm slowly building out now that I have a blank-er slate. It's about choosing what works and what doesn't.

I call it accordion writing. It just gets bigger and bigger. This outline will later level up into the first full story drafts for each part. I've got so much history when I finish this I might… I'm getting ahead of myself. Don't want to give too many clues away.

Another interesting thing that's happened recently is I've started pulling bits of other fic ideas that I’m just not gonna finish. A big chuck of the history I stole from a modern/academia AU where Ben and Rey are history students specializing in the ancient Jedi religion. Another was a complication between characters came from a canon story where I wanted to paint the relationship with a new layer. We'll see if I can pull that off.

I spent a lot of time prior to this year focusing on the heroes but my villains hadn't gotten much love. Filling in the history has given me a chance to flesh out the villains. All their moves and countermoves, woven through the bits I already have, are spinning a pretty tapestry. Oh, the villains are so much fun to write!

This other fic came together in the same sort of accordion fashion and it's been fun working through the kinks in the process now that I've seen some of the weak points on a scale like DtD. I think I've mentioned, but this is a writing experiment for me and I'm most invested now in improving my process and clue-threading with DtD. This other fic is helping me test it on a smaller scale.

Not that this needs to get any longer, I'm just going to throw pretense out the window and go with complete vanity. If you don't give a wet shit about my life (and I don't blame you) you have reached the end of your journey. I hope to see you next month. If not, then I leave you with this parting:

May we meet again in our next fandom, through mutes and not as rival shippers.

The following is the ridiculous story of my ups and downs with Deceive the Deceiver. I figure if I explain to you how much I'm invested in this story some of you will stop worrying that I'm going to abandon it. Trust me. I'm not.

This tale stretches from NANOWRIMO 2018 and the prompt that started it, through the ups and downs of 2019 and 2020, to the writing of last month's letter. Buckle up. I love bumpy rides.

DtD: from NANO '17 to COVID-19

This story truly starts in December 2017 when I drenched the seat beneath me during Last Jedi. I'm a TLJ shipper. I got caught on the thirst train. It hit a time when writing was becoming a really big part of my life. I've been writing since I was a kid. I stopped for a while and came back to it. It's a long story. Ultimately, I'd started writing a lot a few years earlier. A mix of fic and originals but I was running into problems so I start reading a bunch of books to get better. TLJ lit the fires. NO joke TLJ came out on the 15th. I have pages of writing from the 20th.

2018 was Reylo year! I was already on Tumblr for my previous fandom (Batman comics). I found Reylo AU week which is in August. I submitted a story for that. It was the first fic I published for Reylo. Fast-forward August to November. I'm in the Writing Den on Discord and someone throws out this spy prompt. People start running with. Throwing ideas around. One of those was the snuggie in Mistrust! I have that conversation saved and story spots for each crazy thing they threw out. Finally, I said I'd do it!

Mind you, this is November 2nd. Nano has just started and the event is about "turning off your internal editor." This prompt consumed me. I was trying to keep up with SpaceWaffleHouseTM that first year. I did, btw. We both crested 100,000. It was my first Nano. Word count is not my problem. Organizing my crazy ambitious ideas is my problem. Some of that 100k was other stories, like Custard which I wrote half of in November and the other half Jan/Feb 2019. Most of it… probably 80k of it… was DtD.

Read Between the Lies is currently 33,710. I wrote at least 20k of that during that first Nano, as well as outlines and scenes for what I thought would be the starting point. I remember wanting to write Read Between to "get into their headspace" by writing their first meeting. I didn't think it would become a whole story. I was just going with it then. Any idea that came to mind.

I took December 2019 off for a few reasons. Some personal. Some burnout. I'm one of those people that can use writing to relieve stress, but I was so exhausted from that month-long writing sprint. By the last week I was dragging to get the final four or five thousand words to hit 100k.

Also, what I had by the end (no internal editor) was a bird nest of ideas that had too many beginnings, not enough middles, and endings to go around. I knew one thing right away: I knew I had more than one story. There were so many fun ideas. I figured, what the hell. I knew another thing right away: the prompt was at the end of the story. Like, the very end. Like, the last short story. Or the second to last short story, at the earliest. That hasn't changed. Ever. That's just where it ended up.

Between January and April of 2019 I touched DtD a few times. I kept coming back to it, reading through it, trying to untangle it. I made new notes on the stories. Expanded ideas. Tried to structure it. I figured out a bunch of good notes, but no real substance. The hardest thing was figuring out where to start! Did I:

(1) Start shortly before the prompt with Ben/Rey's relationship established and fill the story with the history?

(2) Start a lot earlier and build Ben/Rey's relationship from the beginning I'd written in Read Between?

If I'm being honest, Read Between was a lot better than I thought it would be and I didn't want to get rid of it. For a while I was thinking of publishing it last as a "prequel" if people liked the series.

Funny enough, the turning point happened May fourth weekend 2019…

In the week leading up, I was struggling through another story and decided to take a break for the weekend. I'd start writing again on Sunday when I met with my writing group. I met them through Nano. We used to meet at Panera. Now they meet on Discord. They mostly sprint though and I'm not a sprinter. I miss Panera. Anyway.

May 4th was a Sunday (look it up). I gave myself a writing break for the weekend and marathoned Star fucking Wars. It was nerd weekend. I was going to nerd out. I wore exclusively SW gear all weekend. I remember it well. It was the start of something fucking magical in my life.

Have I mentioned recently I really love this story. Trust me I will fucking finish it. Oh my god the demons won't leave until I do. Get them out of my head…

I had a pretty rockstar weekend. I believe the reason I skipped the PT that weekend was because I'd watched it the month before or so. Right after finishing the Clone Wars animated series (which is awesome and I strongly recommend both it and Rebels). I skipped them and SOLO.

Starting with R1, I went through in chronological order. I stopped at RotJ. I was with my family on Saturday and they were playing RotJ in the living room during the party. We talked about my marathon. My mom came over to my apartment after. We watched RoTJ properly. Then Force Awakens. It was too late by then to watch TLJ. I know I went straight to bed after my mom left on Saturday night.

Somewhere during or right after TFA I started thinking about Deceive the Deceiver. I don't remember what sparked it. I went to bed thinking about DtD. I know this with 100% certainty because I woke up thinking about again on Sunday and I thought it was quite odd.

I dream about this story in a way I have only dreamt about a precious few. Technicolor folks. It keeps me up at night.

I went to my writing group with (a) no plan for what to write, (b) a gordian knot that I had yet to untangle, (c) a sudden urge to re-read it. I opened my notes and read DtD through all our sprints. I read most of it during that writing session. We go about three hours.

That night I had Game of Thrones at my parent's. It was the (spoiler alert) episode where Arya kills the Night King. I remember because two minutes into the episode my brother's car broken down a few blocks from our apartment and we had to go help him. Derailed the whole night (this is foreshadowing).

Side note: I live with my younger brother and he's the best roommate I've ever had in my 35 years of life. Love you, Mo!

The episode was recording so we ran out. Had to leave the car in a parking lot. Someone had already helped him push it out of a puddle but my brother was soaked to mid-calf and the engine was shot. We dropped him off at home and I rode back to my Momma's crib to watch GoT. It was only the beginning of a wild night.

I went to bed late. I had to get up a few hours early to deal with the car before work started for either of us. I guess we were both hoping to avoid taking the day off. That wasn't going to happen. I drove home but I couldn't sleep. That crazy episode and the fact that my brain was already on fire with DtD.

I spent the wee hours finishing my re-read through the rough draft of Read Between the Lies. It saw my starting place. I started writing. I wrote through waiting in a parking lot, for the tow truck, in my car, at 6 am, with no sleep. I did a voice recording as I drove from the parking lot to the mechanic where the driver was taking my brother's car. I thought about it the whole way back. I sat on the sofa a wrote some more when we got home. I went to bed at 11 am and I'd written 10k more words for Read Between the Lies.

Somewhere between the chaos of May 5th and the official publish date on June 5th, Read Between got written. I know it didn't take too long. I remember sending it off to beta (by my amazing beta team on 1 & 2: Em, Jen, and Sai) and immediately pivoting to my outline. I slapped that together far too hastily and kept moving. I was going on holiday in the UK (I'm American and I'm ashamed) in early August so I planned on trying to publish Part 2 when I got back. At the very least I wanted it ready for beta.

Also some to admit, around the middle of 2019 I was fatigued with the fandom. We were hitting a lull. I was psyching myself up for the end and the exit. I was trying to clean house. I wanted to push out unfinished fics. To make them work. There was a lot of that mood from me in 2019. I was trying to make everything work. It's why Read Between came out, and that was a good thing. It's also why Mistrust came out, and that was a bad thing.

With that mentality looming, tough outline in hand, I started writing Mistrust before the end of May. I hit my snag sometime during the period I was publishing Read Between because by the time it was all done I knew I wasn't going to have a finished story by the time I left for London. I would figure it out when I got back. I picked up another project to distracted me from my problems for a little while. That is going to be an original if it's anything. One day…

At some point after I got back I started focusing heavily on problem solving. I had two stories already and a number of plot threads I had to resolve. I have heavy, heavy, heavy notes from September to December of 2019. Lots of possible ways to run this story. It sucks that a lot of that stuff isn't going to make it, but I'm recycling shit every day and I learned so much about the characters/story in that four month period. It really shaped the finished product in an important way.

This period is where I started to look at the bigger structure and how I was going to solve specific plot problems in each short story to bring the whole together. That focus on the different parts is important because it was the last thing on my mind when TRoS happened.

December 20th (the release date) is my birthday. My ass drove up to one of those Reylo-only screenings and I was surrounded by amazing people as I watched a movie that ruined my 35th birthday. Thankfully, I spent it in incomparable company. Thank you to all the hosts and super special thanks to Jen. Not only was she a DtD beta on both, she invited me. Thank you love! You are the reason I still remember that trip with joy.

Side note: I no longer hate TRoS. I've made my peace with it. I'm a far happier person now.

Needless to say, the only Reyloing I did in January of this year was venting frustration. Then I took a few weeks away from the fandom. I'd done my purging into the void. I knew other people still needed the space to vent but I had to get away. Once the toxin is out I couldn't let it back in.

What occurred starting in February of 2020 was a series of situations in which, every time I logged into Twitter I was faced with the kind of vitriol in the fandom that I don't need in my life. Some of it was still TRoS stuff, even as late as May. I'm not judging, I'm just saying, with the world on fire (literally), I didn't need it.

I don't think I have to explain why I've avoided social media like the plague since early this year. I live in America. If you heard anything about our recent President I don't have to explain any further what this year has been like. That has been par for course all over the world.

So here's my secret to happiness. I don't fux with the trolls. Do not engage. Sometimes that means radio silence. I'm breaking that silence because I want you to know 2020 has not destroyed DtD. It's only leveled shit up.

I have pretty much been working on this story consistently since March of this year. I go back and forth with reading, history, documentaries. I'm learning to wield many new weapons. They take time to settle in. DtD is the de-stressor I go to in between the real shit.

Sometime in June I was screwing around with the order of the parts. I had worked out the end but I was trying to bridge the gap between the ending I was certain I needed to get to and the two beginning stories I'd already published. I couldn't bridge the gap. It had been a year since I published Read Between and it wasn't working. Then I had an epiphany.

What if I got rid of Mistrust? Read Between is a pretty blank slate. I didn't want to re-write it and I still don't. I have no intention of getting rid of Part 1. I may clean it up and add some stuff at the very last minute, but it will be right before the new stuff drops as a pre-cursor to the flood of subsequent stories. I may add a few new clues or alter a scene or two, but I have plenty of room to move with it exactly the way it is.

What does that mean for Mistrust Goes Both Ways? To make a long story short, there was no good way for me to continue with what I'd published and still write the story in my head. I'm sure there are cool places to take the existing story, but that's not what I'm trying to do. In truth, I should have left 1 and not published 2 when I hit a snag. Lesson learned.

In June I basically threw Mistrust out and asked myself, "Now what?" I have months of great ideas rife for reshuffling and no restrictions on how to bridge the gap from 1 to the ending I wanted. But the end had shifted.

That brings us up to speed. The last thing I did before taking a much needed break was get through 90% of the history in my accordion outline/draft. I poured the foundation that was missing. I walked away in early October and let it set. I'm going to button up this other fic I'm working on and then go back to DtD and check the foundation I laid.

I'm very confident that not only will it hold, but that with fresh eyes and the fun side stories I've had the chance to lay to rest, I will finally be able to start building the finished products on top of it.

IN CONCLUSION

I'm still as excited as I've ever been for this story. It frustrates me all the time, but that means the medicine for my soul is working its magic. Change it painful, but pain is transformative. I've embrace changed. That ache is just a sign the muscles are getting stronger. Growing pains. As I learn to live with them in my family, my country, and my job, I find that life's lesson's often end up reflecting in every place in our life if we but open our eyes to look.

Growing pains exist in my writing process too. They are as transformative in this corner of my life as they are in every other. They have revealed as much about me as a person in my writing as they have in my politics. They have taught me how to compromise with my family as I learn to compromise with my characters. As I consider how people treat each other I am reminded that struggles in understanding our fictional counterparts may shine a light on our struggles to understand our truer selves.

Take care of yourselves. Once you've got that covered, if you can, take care of each other. Feel free to poke me and say hi. If not, until next month.

Fari.

[lesbeet]

not to be a nerd but i accidentally just wrote a whole impromptu essay about editing ndjsdksksk im throwing it under a cut bc it's fucking inane and really long but honestly... i just want other people to become as passionate about editing as i am lmaooooo

i also recommend 2 books in the post so if anything at least check those out!

quality books about editing... *chef's kiss* a lot of the basic ones (including blog posts online n such) are geared towards beginners and end up repeating the same info/advice, much of it either oversimplified or misrepresented tbh. but i read one yesterday and i'm reading another one right now that really convey this passion for editing + consideration for it as its own sort of art and i just!!

it's such a weird thing to be passionate about lmao but i AM and i've spent a lot of time the past year or so consciously honing my craft (ik i mention this like 4 times a week i'm just really proud of how much i've learned and improved) and kind of like. solidifying my instincts into conscious choices i guess?

and these GOOD editing books have both a) taught me new information and/or presented familiar information through a new perspective that helped me understand something differently or in more depth, and b) validated or even just put into words certain preferences or techniques that i've developed on my own, that i don't normally see on those more basic lists i mentioned

btw the book i finished yesterday is self-editing for fiction writers: how to edit yourself into print by renni brown and dave king, and the one i'm reading currently is the artful edit: on the practice of editing yourself by susan bell.

the former was pretty sharp and straightforward. the authors demonstrated some of their points directly in the text, which was usually funny enough that i would show certain quotes to my sister without context

("Just think about how much power a single obscenity can have if it’s the only one in the whole fucking book." <- (it was)

"Frequent italics have come to signal weak writing. So you should never resort to them unless they are the only practical choice, as with the kind of self-conscious internal dialogue shown above or an occasional emphasis."

or, my favorite: "There are a few stylistic devices that are so “tacky” they should be used very sparingly, if at all. First on the list is emphasis quotes, as in the quotes around the word “tacky” in the preceding sentence. The only time you need to use them is to show you are referring to the word itself, as in the quotes around the word “tacky” in the preceding sentence. Read it again; it all makes sense.")

and like i said, i also learned some new ideas or techniques (or they articulated vague ideas i already had but struggled to put into practice), AND they mentioned some suggestions that ive literally never seen anyone else bring up (not to say no one has! just that ive never seen it, and ive seen a lot in terms of writing tips, advice, best practices, etc) that ive already sort of established in my own writing

for example they went into pretty fine detail about dialogue mechanics, more than i usually see, and in talking about the pacing and proportion of "beats" and dialogue in a given scene, they explicitly suggested that, if a character speaks more than a sentence or two and you plan on giving them some sort of dialogue tag or an action to perform as a beat, the tag or action should be placed at one of the earliest (if not the first) natural pauses in the dialogue, so as not to distance the character too far from the dialogue -- bc otherwise the reader ends up getting all of the dialogue information first, and then has to go back and retroactively insert the character, or what they're doing, or the way they look/sound while they're giving their little speech

and like this was something ive figured out on my own, mostly bc it jarred me out of something i was reading enough times (probably in fic tbh) that i started noticing it, and realized that it's something i do naturally, kind of to anchor the character to the dialogue mechanic to make sure it makes sense with the actual dialogue

so like. ok here's an example i just randomly pulled from the song of achilles (it was available on scribd so i just looked for a spot that worked to illustrate my point djsmsks)

the actual quote is written effectively, but here's a less effective version first:

“Perhaps I would, but I see no reason to kill him. He’s done nothing to me," Achilles answered coolly.

see and even with such a short snippet it's so much smoother and more vivid just by moving the dialogue tag, not adding or cutting a word:

“Perhaps I would, but I see no reason to kill him.” Achilles answered coolly. “He’s done nothing to me.”

the rhythm of it is better, and the beat that the dialogue tag creates functions as a natural dramatic pause before achilles delivers an incredibly poignant line, both within the immediate context of the scene and because we as the readers can recognize it as foreshadowing. plus, it flows smoothly because that beat was inserted where the dialogue already contained a natural pause, just bc that's how people speak. if you read both versions aloud, they both make sense, but the second version (the original used in the novel) accounts for the rhythm of dialogue, the way people tend to process information as they read, AND the greater context of the story, and as a result packs significantly more purpose, information, and effect into the same exact set of words

and THAT, folks, is the kind of editing minutia i can literally sit and hyperfocus on for hours without noticing. anyway it's a good book lmao

the one i'm reading now is a lot more about the cognitive process/es of editing, so there's less concrete and specific advice (so far, anyway) and more discussion about different mental approaches to editing, as well as tips and tools for making a firm distinction between your writer brain and your editor brain, which is something i struggle with

but there have been so many good quotes that ive highlighted! a lot of just like. reminders and things to think about, and also just lovely articulations of things id thought of or come to understand in much more vague ways.

scribd won't let me copy/paste this one bc it's a document copy and not an actual ebook, but this passage is talking about how the simple act of showing a piece of writing to someone else for the very first time can spark a sudden shift in perspective on the work, bc you'll (or at least i) frantically try to re-read it through their eyes and end up noticing a bunch of new errors -

or she talked about the perils of constant re-reading in the middle of writing a draft, which is something i struggle with a LOT, both bc i'm a perfectionist and bc i prefer editing to writing so i sit and edit when i'm procrastinating doing the actual hard work of writing lmao

it's just this side of fake deep tbh but i so rarely see editing discussed like this--as a mixture of art and science, a collaboration between instinct and technique, that really requires "both sides of the brain" to be done well.

and because of the way my own brain works, activities that require such a balanced concentration of creativity and logic really appeal to me. even though ive seen a lot of people (even professional writers) who frame it as the creative art of writing vs the logical discipline of editing. but i think that's such a misleading way of thinking about it, because writing and editing both require creativity and logic -- just different kinds! (not to mention that the line between writing and editing, while mostly clear, can get a little blurry from up close)

but like...all stories have an inner logic to them, even if the writer hasn't explicitly or consciously planned it, and even if the logic is faulty in places in the first couple of drafts. when you're sitting and daydreaming about your story, especially if you're trying to figure out how to bridge the gap between two points or scenes (or, how to write a sequence of events that presents as a logical, inevitable progression of cause and effect), the voice in your head that evaluates an idea and decides to 1) go with it, 2) scrap it, 3) tweak it until it works, or 4) hold onto it in case you want it later? that's your logic! if an idea feels wrong, or like it just doesn't work, it's probably because some part of you is detecting a conflict between some part of the idea and the overall logic of your story. every decision you make as you write is formed by and checked against your own experiential logic, and also by the internal logic of your story, which is far less developed (or at least, one would hope), and therefore more prone to the occasional laspe

but while ive seen a number of articles that discuss the logic of writing, i don't see people gushing as much about the art of editing and it's such a shame

the inner editor is so often characterized as the responsible parent to the writer's carefree child, or a relentless critic of the writer's unselfconscious, unpolished drivel

and it's like... maybe you just hate thinking critically about your work! maybe you view it that way because you're imposing external standards too fiercely onto your writing, and it's sucked the joy out of shaping and sculpting your words until they sing. maybe you prefer to conceive of your writing as divine communication, the process of which must remain unencumbered by lessons learned through experience or the vulnerability of self-reflection, until the buzzkill inner editor shows up with all those "rules" and "conventions" that only matter if you're trying to get published

and like obviously the market doesn't dictate which conventions are worth following, but the majority of widely-agreed-upon writing standards, especially those aimed at beginners, (and most especially those regarding style, as opposed to story structure) have to do with the effectiveness and efficiency of prose, and, in addition to often serving as a shorthand for distinguishing an amateur from a pro, overall help to increase poignancy and clarity, which is crucial no matter the genre or type of writing. and even if you personally believe otherwise, it's better to understand the conventions so you can break them with real purpose.

so editing shouldn't be about trying to shove your pristine artistic masterpiece into a conventional mold, it should be about using the creative instincts of your ear and your logic and experience-based understanding of writing as a craft to hone your words until you've told your story as effectively as possible

thank u for coming to my ted talk ✌️

[billiejean485]

Karmiro Kiss

https://www.deviantart.com/billiejean485/art/Karmiro-Kiss-800793669

(Text from DA:)

First of all, I'd like to state something: I don't usually upload art such as this often or at all, and I rarely even show it to anyone. Reason? Been bullied a hell of a lot for it in younger years, so I learned to keep things like these to myself. However, I am pretty sure the Karmiro fans would appreciate it, and I am having a really hard time finding artwork devoted to this ship myself (kudos to Iamaddictedtocoffee and KenKic4Ever - you guys are IMO the best I could find), and I honestly wanted to contribute.

Second thing I wanted to mention is that - although the show itself made me a huge Karmiro fan, this particular piece/sketch came as an inspiration from reading Arctimon's fics. My God - for the past 6 years I've been having a really hard time finding quality fanfics (I got older, and my standards became very high), and their in particular are among those rare that make me cling to it like an idiot, rereading it until I know it by heart (still in the process of achieving that btw XD). I haven't left a review yet, but, I can say here that that level of quality English, original ideas and great imagination is not something that you just stumble upon in the fan fiction world easily. I'm blown away. Still am. Still haven't read everything, so I won't drop that mentioned review yet. But, Arctimon, if you're reading this - you have my huge support, and I'm a really big fan.

Now on to the rant on the art aspect of this sketch.

I don't have much experience in drawing a kiss, and still learning to do that. What killed me even more here is just the position (that I probably didn't even figure out well) of the two - if you have that steamy kiss where both sides try to pull each other into it, and a couple with height differences between a girl and a boy such as Hiro and Karmi, everything gets complicated. The arm position is probably off (because yours truly was lazy enough not to reference anything). I hope at least I got their faces right - I haven't drawn either of the two enough for practice. Oh, and Karmi's hair was ridiculously difficult for me; it should be simple, but nope.

Ah, yes, and the Baymax sketch in the bg - the body probably should have been a bit bigger, but 'anatomy' wise I think it's okay. I just placed him in the wrong spot. And I have a feeling that it made perspective make no sense (he's speechless, btw XD).

Okay, and two last things.

I love the fact that Hiro is the shorter one in this relationship and is probably standing on his toes somewhat here, while Karmi has to bend down and/or pull him up. It's so relatable and heart-warming. :D I remember how all that went in those years of life (14~16). Wish we'll manage to see him grow, but who knows. Also, depends what Disney plans for the sequel of the movie, if they're even planning it (it got them an Oscar, so chances are high).

But one thing that saddens me in that is that - for most characters that appear in TV shows that are based on the movie there is like a rule that they don't appear in the movie's sequel. Which brings me to the second thing.

Even though I ship them with all my heart, I see little possibilities for these two to become something more than friends (there is more chance for that happening with Hiro and Megan, although the whole Karmutie stuff has led us on to believe otherwise up until she showed up). It seems as though Hiro and Karmi's relationship was made only to reach some "good friends" climax and that that's the whole point of it. Even Karmi's crush on hero-Hiro looks more like something that came as a product of her loneliness rather than actual need for a romantic interest in her life (I think she'd be a lot more invested in her relationship with 'Captain Cutie' if this wasn't the case). And when you take into account that this is a show aimed at kids... it all makes sense. Kids don't like romantic stuff, nor do they need it. But what do they need? Learning more about friendship, especially with that girl or boy they tend to fight a lot and don't get along well. It's a perfect reason to make you think that that there will never be anything more in this relationship. But it gets on our older fans' nerves because - naturally, the characters are not kids, they're teens. Things function differently here. I mean, okay - Karmi and Hiro may not be each other's type (debatable) in the end, but you can't tell me they don't care for each other at it's base, and that they will learn to get their rivalry out of the way to make a clear path for that. And when that happens, everything's possible.

But coming back to the first thing I brought up - the characters from the TV show rarely, if ever, make it to the sequel of the movie. Which means, whatever happens with these two, they will probably split up. It's saddening, and I wish things would change there. Hey, seeing Karmi in the sequel would make who knows how many of us happy. And not just her - bunch of other characters too. Or at least give them an honorable mention.

It's because TV shows get made for kids that nothing from it gets transferred to the sequel of the movie, which gets made for audiences of all ages. If there's something I wish would change, it's that - having TV shows dumbed down for kids. And with that I mean - seeing characters a lot older act like they're children. What the heck is that teaching the little kids? That reality will never be like they saw it on TV?

Kudos, and a really big KUDOS to the shows that are tackling this particular thing. It's good and it's healthy. If you wanna make something for kids, make it really appropriate for kids. Don't tug on the nerves of us older people, because - whatever the world says, there will always be those older ones that watch cartoons, ages ranging from older teens to who knows how old. We don't like watching those dumbed down things, no matter how profitable it is for you, content-makers, to target it only for kids, who will get you the most money. Yeah, it's harder to make such stuff, we know, but it's not impossible. At least show a little effort.

But, concerning that, I can't complain on BH6's TV show anymore. The second season was fantastic so far, and those 'dumbed-down' elements were reduced to the bare minimum. I just hope it stays that way.

... Well, this was a whole lot that came out of me just because of posting one silly fangirl drawing. XD Hope some of you actually managed to read this.... Too bad all of this is going to get dumped in the Scraps' section (please make a Sketch section, DA!), like most of my uploads do.

I live and breathe sketches. lol

Oh well - thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. XD I'm really done this time.

[cheswirls]

tether notes 3/3

attached links

reference maps

pt 4 drawings

pkmn team graphics for 5 char

big bang art one / two

timeline

[this is very loose and only goes chronologically, so some points may happen years apart from each other]

caesar, under the family, begins research on creating an artificial arceus

the river from law’s village becomes polluted, and lami gets sick

everyone in law’s village dies. he travels to alola

corazon, the ula’ula kahuna, gets wind of caesar’s experiments

law joins the family in alola

law meets corazon, and shortly after embarks on an island challenge

after getting a special material on poni island, law meets with corazon, who tells him he was planning to turn the family over to the international police

corazon dies, and law escapes the family with one type:null

law ends up in the kalos region

luffy meets shanks, and learns about aura

luffy leaves for the sinnoh region to train with shanks for the first time

ace and sabo set off on a journey through the kanto region

luffy is given his second pokemon, a buizel, by shanks, to help cope with the loss of his brothers

sabo and ace return to travel kanto once more

sabo’s accident occurs; he’s hospitalized, but convinces ace to continue traveling

ace dies in an accident; sabo takes striker, his charizard, and leaves the sevii islands

luffy starts his journey looking for sabo

a band of pokemon poachers begins to grow more prominent in sinnoh; it’s led by caesar, who escaped capture at alola all those years ago

dragon’s group arrives in the sinnoh region

marguerite, a close confident with the sinnoh champion, goes missing

shanks sends luffy a letter; law boards a boat for sinnoh from kalos

the sinnoh champion, boa hancock, contacts shanks about marguerite

dragon arrives at snowpoint and meets with kokoro

aisa goes missing

tama goes missing and, catching word of this, shanks heads to tsuru from his meeting point with luffy

anana goes missing

luffy arrives in the sinnoh region

chimney goes missing, and shanks sets off to go look for all the missing girls

luffy migrates to jubilife, thinking it was veilstone; law arrives in the sinnoh region

shanks is captured and loses contact with boa hancock

dragon separates from his group, going off on his own

law and luffy meet in jubilife

-

the battle zone’s real-life location is a formerly-japanese-but-now-russian island called sakhalin. the lower half, specifically. the other island on the map where the pokemon league sits is based off a chain of japanese-owned islands that i can’t remember the name of and am too busy to look up right now. sakhalin is pretty barren, pretty remote, and pretty unpopulated. it’s also colder than hokkaido, being further north, but bc the pokemon-equivalent has an active volcano, the climate balances out.

i spent more time researching sakhalin on google earth than i did actually writing the entire travel part of part 4. like, an absurd amount of time. more than i needed to. but the result is a good portrayal, and an accurate, effortless one. here’s some geography stuff.

1. the squatty plants on sinnoh’s route 225 are probably stone pines. i say probably, bc i still came away unsure, but this was my best conclusion. i cross-referenced sakhalin flora with what i was seeing on google earth, paired with what was most common since these trees are everywhere in the battle zone. specifically they’re japanese stone pines, so more of a squatty bush than an actual tree. (also called dwarf siberian pines, or the genus name of the dwarf version, pinus pumila) in pokemon verse, i chose aguav berries as the pine’s fruit since the seeds grow in pink bundles, like an aguav plant in-game. also, an unripe pinecone is greet, so there’s that too. 

2. southern sakhalin, that i can remember, doesn’t actually have black-sand beaches. there’s one in platinum off the base of stark mountain, but since that’s aniva bay area of sakhalin, it doesn’t match up great. the only thing similar is in northeastern sakhalin, off the sea of okhotsk, where dark mud will collect on the coast and turn the beach dark. i wrote it off as a game mechanic, saying ‘it’s from the ash from the volcano’, or something like that, and then referenced beaches in iceland that are actual black-sand beaches and really pretty. 

3. aniva bay is southern sakhalin, essentially. it’s a fork, and in the middle is where the black sand beach is in platinum. in actuality, aniva bay is not that big. there’s a lighthouse off one fork, not tall or anything impressive, but it’s there. at one point i wanted law and luffy to sail in (i saw sail, i mean like surf on a pokemon okay) past the lighthouse, and go through the bay, and stop on the black sand beach. this was before i knew most anything about part four, though, and soon the idea was scrapped as i deviated towards the cargo ship taking them to fight area. also, aniva bay isn’t deep enough for whales to flop around in, and i realize since i called it a bay in tether that that should also hold true, but i did say it was a wailmer so let’s jus forget that inaccuracy and say its okay bc the whale is tiny.

4. stark mountain was a challenge i spent. so long. so so long. trying to find the  mountain range it was based off of. pokemon wikipedia was no help, bc sakhalin is huge. if i was gonna do anything for the pokemon community, i’d wanna go and edit articles to include real-life landmarks that in-game ones were based on. i think the closest thing i found to a once-volcano was more into the northern half of sakhalin, so after spending too much time looking into it, i jus wrote based on screenshots of stark mountain, and on my own intuition. also, yea, i used video game logic the closer they got to the volcano. please don’t depict characters holding cloth over their mouths to protect from sulfur ash if youre going for accuracy, bc thats not going to help. 

5. the survival area and the ainu village. i wrote a little about the ainu in part one, while exploring law’s village. my main amount of research went into the ainu’s of sakhalin, though. it’s all sorta the same culture, since they all got kicked out migrated to hokkaido anyway, but there are a few differences. the sheer rock cliff is part of a sakhalin photoset i referenced, so it does exist, somewhere. yes, there are bears in sakhalin, perhaps even more than hokkaido, since it’s less-human-populated. but, again, also colder. i realize survival area is a settlement in platinum, but also.. its really small? and kinda nothing, tbh. so i transformed it into an ainu village, since it’s so outta the way of the other two areas down on each fork of the bay, and it’s closer to the volcano, where the fire goddess resides.

the ainu are the indigenous population of japan. i mentioned before, if you’ve read fma or one of arakawa’s spreads, you’ve probably heard of them. in fma, they’re the race that the ishvalans are based off of. nowadays, they reside in hokkaido, and a while ago they used to reside in lower sakhalin. i couldn’t figure up a creative name for tether for them and i was in so much of a time crunch that in the end i didnt bother, sue me. researching the ainu was most definitely one of the more time-consuming tasks. i spent a long time reading. i watched, after a good recommendation, all two seasons of golden kamuy (an excellent portrayal of hokkaido!ainu, btw, jus not exactly what i was going for) and all one season of sirius the jaegar, where i got the most help from. marking maps and writing the outline (and making myself remember why i dont ever outline. ever.) were definitely time-consuming, but ainu research was by far the most hours i spent on a task for tether (besides like, writing it.) 

i still don’t feel like i did enough research, so the cultural things i did include i tried to keep vague to keep from portraying wrong. the bear ceremonies, the signs of summer through salmon (finneon) hunting and huki harvesting, the bear cub raising, the ripping of clothing in a funeral procession, and the kamuy (ainu gods) are all real things and part of ainu culture. woman tattoo their lips, yes. the patterns of the clothing are distinctive (also warm, bc they’ve always been This Far North, and tether!law is a bastardization of forgotten ainu culture pls dont look at his sleeveless top next to his wooden earrings i beg you) there are lots of things i could go into, but im jus gonna leave it vague again and say if you’re super interested, go find an article or watch golden kamuy. 

there wasn’t a lot of pokemon depicted in the wilds of the battle zone, and for reason. at this point i really wanted to keep true to sakhalin, so i stuck with the fauna native there, and the pokemon native to sinnoh, and if i didn’t include any pokemon that actually appear in the battle zone in platinum? oops. my house my rules. anyway so horses, dogs, wolves, bears. rapidash, eevee, luxray line, ursaring line.. that covers it, right? oh, and fearow. okay, so i did include one pokemon from platinum’s battle zone. also wailmer, there was a wailmer. 

why did you include baroque works into dragon’s group?

so. i wrote tether while the vivre cards were coming out. specifically, right before i was supposed to have started writing part 4, the alabasta pack came out, and i was so taken with goldenweek’s real name that i re-read little garden and stuck her into the story. bentham was.. k, no lie, in my mind he’s like a pseudo-rev member? i jus associate hm so heavily with ivankov, and i read a fic once where he was iva’s student and since then i’ve jus always had to include him in rev stuff so that’s why he’s here. plus i love him. good enough, right? and those two are the only ones, so it’s not entirely baroque works. i don’t rly consider bentham bw anymore, like i said, he’s kinda a pseudo-rev. and i jus rly liked marianne’s name. also her, now. tether!marianne is cool. 85% of the story’s sass.

april 9th is both caesar and marguerite’s birthday. i think in the beginning i was searching for characters that share birthdays for a plot point, and when i settled on caesar i settled on marguerite eventually for this reason just so i could make the whole ‘it’s not his bday its mine!!’ joke. and then i formed the whole story on it being late march-early april and based the weather off that.

law’s sixth pokemon. see, i told you revealing it was strategic! you all were expecting null, right? and then out pops silvally. well, it’s been so many years, so it’s natural they would’ve figured out love and trust and such and breaking the mask and evolving. still! aaaa, that felt so good to write. 

there’s more of a metaphor with silvally, even more with umbreon, that i was going for. something along the lines of a captured being being granted escape, bonding with someone, coming back to get due vengeance with the old captor, showing how much more they had become. with umbreon, it was more thing-i-protected-grew-into-something-that-now-protects-me aka her helping law through his nightmares, being a generally supportive and kind pokemon like someone law knew wink wink. also literally protect, with the whole casear thing.

okay mind control time. i reread pt 4 real quick before writing the notes, and im still not completely satisfied with how shanks broke free. i tried to hard to research good mind control depictions but i was more interested in figuring out how the mind control ended rather than the state of being, and there weren’t many promising results other than the victim dying, which wasn’t helpful. i knew i didn’t want it to be the whole i-love-you-so-snap-out-of-it thing, thats so cheesy and kinda ridiculous tbh. i think luffy confronting shanks’ inner self directly and convincing him to step out is nice, but if you pay attention closer to the scenes and how they match up, you might notice something that aids this.

so, it wasn’t just luffy. i know a lot goes on in latter half of pt 4, and all the scenes are disjointed. law and umbreon and silvally defeat gengar before shanks awakes properly. it was luffy, yes, that convinced him everything was going to be okay, and to not falter. but since gengar was knocked unconscious, the control over shanks was already waning to begin with. it was more like, he was already fine, and out of the cycle, but the trauma kept him from realizing it until luffy came. does that help? so basically, it wasn’t luffy talking alone, it was defeating gengar, like luffy had thought of previously. and then it was helping shanks thorugh it, because you don’t just bounce back from that. thats why i wrote shanks Like That in the remaining scenes.

while not in the best conditions as lab 3, labs 1 and 2 were fully-operational and secure facilities, so if you were questioning why sabo and law (mortally injured, mind you -two stab wounds, ow) would just leave the people and pokemon next to a burning lab, it’s because it was secure and the fire contained. the base was inside a volcano, guys, there’s no way the rooms werent airtight to prevent an accident. imagine being That Guy that fucked something up and led to the active volcano erupting. of course they took precautions. also, sabo had been working in the base for a bit, so if he thought the people were gonna catch fire, he wouldn’t have left them.

koala having aromatisse was purely for plot purposes, for it’s hidden ability. i needed a psychic type, and if i haven’t mentioned, dragon’s group are based in kalos, so it had to be from there. it fits though, maybe, right? anywa, yea, that’s why sabo has a delphox and salamence after he fucks off for two years, because he was in kalos. (this is what i’m referring to, if you haven’t clicked on any of those links.)

Law takes Luffy’s hand and leads them backwards, until they’re out of sight again

and, finally, my favorite moment of tether, when lawlu graduates from arms to wrists to finally holding hands. /cries so proud

k but what’s with that ending?

fun fact time i always knew how i wanted to end tether. from the moment of its conception, even before i finished writing part 1 (before i started, really, back when i was gathering material) i knew it ended with dragon in front of the statue of giratina. insert obligatory sequel joke here marianne mentions, before the trio ventures into the base, that her group’s leader wouldn’t appreciate having to halt his own agenda to help them with taking out the hunters. giratina was this agenda. 

originally, before i started on pt 2, i thought abt law/lu taking a different route. i wanted them to go north, up through eterna forest and to eterna city, and examine the statue of dialga. then go east from there, still taking them through coronet, but then through celestic town and seeing the cave painting of the lake guardians. i also really wanted them to go to lake valor, since it was the only lake they could conceivably go to on their way to veilstone. i thought about switching pastoria for snowpoint and encountering sabo at lake acuity. none of this worked out, but it was all supposed to reference back into dragon and giratina and sinnoh lore. instead i turned it fully into a travel fic and then a rescue op, at the end. it’s still interesting to think how the story could’ve changed, had they gone up to eterna before crossing through coronet. 

in all honesty i wanted to end the story on a surprise note. almost like a goosebumps ending, where everything is resolved and then at the very end there’s a quick scene that leaves you grasping for more, leaves you questioning. (also like certain op chapters leaving you with zero answers and more questions than you started with, fuck you, oda) it wasn’t until i was almost done with part 4 that i started to kinda miss tether, even tho i wasnt done yet but my outline had been done for a bit so i kinda was? and then i remembered back in november when i created concepts for ace and sabo before i even wrote that one scene in mt coronet, and i remembered thinking so much about their story, and their travels, and sabo’s accident. and then, not long after i finished with part 4, i had a startling idea, and i had a first line of a maybe sequel, and i started to put a little more thought into it.

if you’re looking for confirmation, this isn’t it. this is saying i have an idea i’d like to explore. maybe. tether took a lot of work, and a lot of time. it definitely doesn’t have as much feedback as i would like it to, for me to invest in a full-fledged sequel. if i start this, if i ever do, it’ll definitely be more lax, and a chapter-by-chapter sort of thing. i guess it just comes down to how many people are actually interested in it.

[icharchivist]

Kind of a weird curiosity. But I remembers years ago when there was talk over what it'd be like if Allen had been a girl instead (I even read a girl!Allen fic about her time with Cross. It was surprisngly good. Probably because it had no shipping =p). For some reason I just start thinking about that topic again and I wonder how Allen and Lavi's dynamic would be? For the most part I don't see most of Allen's dynamics changing at all (except more (more) fanboys. Lol). But then I remembered Lavi -

2 and I think it's been pointed out Lavi treats females a bit differently. He doesn't seem to prank or tease them as much as the males (not that he's the perfect gentleman either. Komui Talks makes me wonder how innocent he actually is XD). Nor give them nicknames. With this is mind I wonder if Lavi would still act the exact same (chaotic prankster. Touchy feely physically. Retaliating over rough housing) or if he'd tone some things down but do other things more (maybe try to be more like a -

3 big brother initially if he kinda of bases off from Lenalee and Komui, w/o the complex, to get closer to a female Allen?). Lol, Idk. This is kind of more of a Lavi meta question since it's been stated Allen's relationship is utterly crucial to Lavi's character. Again, I'd be curious if a dynamic w/girl Allen would be slightly different or the exact same (in a you're an exception. And people bop him more because 'stop picking on a sweet girl' while Allen cackles menacingly from behind).

Oh my this is... interesting to think about.

I think it’s fair to start with... the fact that Allen was originally a girl. Or more- when Hoshino pinched the idea to Shounen Jump she made a one shot with a main character called Robin. Here you can find it. And Robin... was an akuma. A girl in a boy’s body. Long story short, you can read the one shot if you hadn’t yet - but ye that was originally the character we were going with.It’s to argue that it would make a point for Robin planned as a transwoman in those instances.

According to the Gray Arc however, when the series became serialized, her editors were against the idea, because “No one would care if a girl would be crying”. That’s litterally word for word the reasoning. So Hoshino had to scrap it.

and she mentions quickly that it was one of the reasons she had no idea what to do with Allen to start with. He kinda started with him being a revamp of her character. (What I admire a lot with Hoshino is how much Her Vision can be affected by little things? Like how Lenalee became an entiere different person in her head the moment her editors forced her to have her with long hair.)

There’s also the elephant in the room that considering the timeperiod it was originally written. DGM was originally published with some big name shounen, Shounen Jump had some control over some choices, would react to fan backlashes (Lenalee being forced to have her hair long again is among those btw) ect... I mean like I think people may take for granted that for instance, the Alma arc was a complete anomaly when it came out in 2009/2010. That it had like. Major effects on fanbases. I’ve seen so much dudebros yell at this arc while i was thriving my friend. And tbh before the Alma arc DGM was often lurped in the “basic Shounen” category. A lot of people argued about the tropes it had to follow or not, and if this sort of things had any impact on the writting of the manga earlier? I can see how things wouldn’t go smoothly.(The Alma arc rooted out all the bad dudebros i’ve known of though. I don’t even care what people’s reaction nowadays are to it, to me back then, from the experience i got from fandom, it was revolutionary when it came out.)

I’ve stired away sorry, but Lenalee also works better, bc I know Hoshino fought for the Alma’s arc and that her editors didn’t agree with the direction she was taking. But if you read some of the interviews of the Grey Arc specifically, you see that Hoshino was constantly told how to rewrite Lenalee to fit a male audience sort of. Her editor pushed her to have long hair bc “that’s the kind of idol he found cute”, there was a complete backlash when Hoshino managed to cut her hair, the fans supported the editors, Hoshino talks all about it with such a bummer because “her Lenalee” had short hair. (also during that specific interview her editor calls her a moron. Later on she got called very annoying for sassing her editors after they called her dumb when she had a writter block writting the 14th song, and she sassed them asking for help going “since you’re far more intelligent than me-”. And the editor failled hard, Hoshino didn’t even use his writting, and the editor insulted her for being bossy. Needless to say I’ve since then been filled with anger with how the early days of DGM must have been hard on Hoshino).

I’m forced to make this preface because I truly think it would have affected Allen’s writting had he been a woman. 

If i’m optimistic i would like to think that nothing much would change because Allen’s writting kinda transend genders. But If i’m realistic i know it wouldn’t have happened.

As for Lavi specifically (wouh 7 paragraphs in and i’m finally touching the point of this post) the thing is that he also has a soft spot for women. (I mean i personally would argue he describes Dug as “cute” far too much in his novel to be 100% straight but he at least show his attraction to women more easily in the manga). 

And ye he does tend to treat the women differently but he also doesn’t... have a lot of women to be around to. I mean Lenalee whom he respects (and can be worried Komui will kill him if he tries anything), Miranda that he kinda met at the wrong time? He was always so overly serious around her because he was griefing and we didn’t see him with her at all since he got better. Aside then from his occasional crushes, that he does let himself feel, he didn’t really have an opportunity to spend more time with those women.

My point is just that the women he had met don’t help us set up a patern about how he treats them more casually: in term of pranks for exemple. Like in the day-by-day, we only have Lenalee and Miranda, and pranking Lenalee would be really putting a target on him to be murdered by Komui, while I would argue that Miranda’s anxiety (and the circumstances in which Lavi met her) would make him go softer on her. It doesn’t mean we know for sure he wouldn’t tease a woman in his peer surrounding in others circumstances.

I would love to think he would make an exception for Allen if only because of the timing: He was still handling Dug’s recent death and I think even if Allen was a woman the parallelisms would be there for him to be bitter. 

I want to think that because of that Lavi would still have teased Allen normally like he teases guys. But it’s not impossible that he would have treated Allen differently.

I think eventually like... If Lavi recognizes his soft spot for women (that it is with his strikes and whatever) he might actually be more ready to keep a guard up around them? Like I personally think he has a major soft spot for Lenalee but it took eventually Allen shaking everything up for him to acknowledge this soft spot. That he would have otherwise just protected himself against.

That, the reason our Allen was so effective was that Lavi really, really didn’t expect anything like that. and I think expectations would have been his doom, and I am inclined to think if allen had been a woman, he would have had some expecations.

Regardless: The major plot points that changed Lavi’s mind on Allen were emotionally driven and would still have had the same impact had Allen be a girl, i’m convinced of that. 

So it’s only on how he would treat that Allen more casually. And tbh... considering how vicious Allen can be, I feel like if Lavi treated her “more softly”, Allen’s reactions would probably have ended up with Lavi going “nevermind she’s a prick” and tease her just like he teases our Allen. I mean just taking the Vampire’s arc, with a whole joke about when Allen got bitten and that Lavi was lowkey scared because of that that Allen would turn into a vampire- in the term of, Allen being a danger to him. And Allen therefore sassing him because Lavi was being a moron. I don’t see how the gender would have changed anything, and if Lavi did treat Allen softly “as a girl”, I think this sort of things would have stopped him dead in his track as in “ye no she’s a PRINK where is my sharpy i’m gonna draw on her face.”

But that’s wishful thinking. I honestly don’t know and I think a lot of this post is more how i’m tryng to reason it. 

I’m sure more people would be more able to pinpoint exactly the characters and how it would work. I think i can’t ignore what went down backstage in term of the women’s writtings  so i cannot help but let it affect how I would see the manga as written by Hoshino be affected by it. But also perhaps if Hoshino had managed to keep her female main character, she could have gone more “fuck you” to her editors and manage to flesh her out to a point where half of what i’m worrying about wouldn’t even matter. 

If we divorce the story from the backstage stuff, perhaps there would be a complete different take to have - and it’s cool if people get to explore it. I am just... not the one placed for that.

I used to be good at transformative media, like headcanons and fics, and let those a little take over, but I got kinda insecure of my interpretations so i started to rely on canon a lot more. I already get insecure when I push my interpretations of canon too far. So something that really get me out of my comfort zone is not where you’d find the best answers about that, i’m sorry. 

But hey i hope this ask made sense? If not for the second half, at least for the half where I mention the backstages issues.

Take care!

[dontcallmecarrie]

I just binge read TWiFFON, and its sidefic and almost everything that's here about this universe and sadgkjhakjg you're amazing and this is amazing and I love you and this is one of the best fics (out of MCU fics especially) I've ever read. IM1 is one of my favorite movies ever, I love Tony very much and it hurts to see what they're doing to him in MCU (and what they're doing with all the characters, really), and I love your portrayal of him so much, because that's real Tony. (1/4)

Competent, genius Tony, owner of the huge company, the man, who, without the suit, is still the person who’s built this suit. From scraps. In a cave. In Afghanistan. While being tortured. Revolutionizing science on the way. I’m looking at you, Mr. I-Saw-The-Footage(And-Made-My-Judgment-Before-Actually-Meeting-You-And-Decided-You-Suck). Yeah, you can see how I just -love- Steve in this moment in “Avengers”. (2/4)

I always wondered what footage he saw, btw. From before-Afghanistan? From the IM2 Senate hearing? From the disastrous IM2 b-day party? Even if the scepter amplified their feelings, those feelings had to be there in the first place. And AoU and CW just make me go Hulk, so most of the time I pretend they didn’t happen and don’t exist unless we’re talking about -consequences-. It’s been years and I’m still bitter and salty as the Dead Sea. (¾)

Um. Anyways, I love you and your awesome fic, thank you so much for your writing

Glad you’re liking it so far, and thanks! 

Also: same. [the rest is under the cut because surprise meta’s apparently a thing, as are major spoilers, and I get very rambly, RIP mobile users otherwise.]

I got into the MCU when it first kicked off, and my favorite movie’s a toss-up between IM1 and The Avengers [though, due to recent events, I’m really leaning towards the former nowadays]. I love all the characters, and if I had a heart [because no, I don’t, nope, nothing’s ever made me tear up nope heart of stone right here], it’d be hurting because of the turn the MCU’s taken lately, and the level of character assassination I’ve seen is….the best comparison I can think of include the way Naruto ended [specifically, Sakura], or…well, you get the picture.

Just…the turn canon took, after Phase 1, left a bitter taste in my mouth. Tony’s my favorite character, and seeing how the world’s done its level best to break him when his origin story is literally him forging his armor from the guns that would’ve killed him otherwise is something that I have very strong feelings about. Add to that my spite after seeing the turn the fandom took after Civil War, and I couldn’t not write the fic where he actually [albeit accidentally] took over the world, by taking him back to his roots. 

[aka TWiFFON’s basically me venting passive-aggressively about the issues I have with the MCU]

As for my take on Steve? 

Even if it doesn’t look it, I kinda liked his character, early on. The way his character was mangled by the writers is another thing entirely, however, and after Phase 1 my enthusiasm didn’t wane so much as it tanked, especially after Age of Ultron. [ditto as to Civil War.]

But early on? I actually liked his character. My headcanon/take on his approach during the first Avengers movie was him being adrift in a world that’s moved on without him, so of course he’s clinging to what he remembers. 

That ended up being something that SHIELD/HYDRA took advantage of, though, and while Fury tried to help, the HYDRA guys did their level best to sabotage him, which succeeded in ways that don’t show up until later on. For instance, while Fury’s crew was the one to break the news of ‘so you slept 70 years, welcome to the future’, it was a HYDRA contingent that were the ones to ‘ease’ him into it, and so his briefings on history and whatnot were basically sabotaged. 

As in, they made sure to focus on the shitty parts of the past century, and glossed over the progress, and did their best to be subtle about it so that when Fury came around, he thought it was ‘okay Steve’s still settling in and hurting’ rather than ‘Steve’s hurting and everywhere he looks only makes it worse’. I mean, it wouldn’t even have been hard; breaking the news would’ve been dicey enough as is, but I can guarantee that HYDRA would’ve pulled no punches in painting everything to be as shitty as they could. 

I mean, even if they were trying to help, it would’ve been hard enough: because good luck updating the guy who literally did a suicide run to prevent his home country from being bombed about the Manhattan Project. 

That alone would’ve been messy enough, but also going through Korea and Vietnam and the list just goes on, while also trying to go ‘we’re the good guys’, and I’m pretty sure Steve’s faith in humanity would’ve taken a hit somewhere in there. And that’s if it was SHIELD who was doing it; if it was HYDRA instead? Just…yikes.

And Tony has a lot of fodder that could be used against him. 

He’s a powerhouse, a loose cannon, and is very visibly anti-establishment when it comes to some things, so when Steve’s trying to cling to a vestige of the past, it’s so, very easy for a HYDRA technician to pull some clips of Tony’s messing around and gloss over ‘yeah he’s also a genius and built a suit somewhere along the way’ while doing their level best to make sure that Steve does not like Tony, because if those two got along it would not end well for HYDRA so best nip that in the bud. [I’ve got a fic idea that plays with that premise, actually, but…rambling again, oops.]

Doesn’t help that people’s values have changed, either; nowadays, we’re a lot more cynical as to what’s going down in Congress, for instance, or the military-industrial complex, so just right there’s some culture clash. Iirc, pre-Nixon, people viewed what happened in DC differently than they do now, and I don’t think Clinton helped any, either. And that’s just one example.

tl;dr: I headcanon that HYDRA sabotaged Steve’s possible relationship with Tony, among other things. 

Now, when it comes to the world domination thing…

You can probably tell I’m having a lot of fun with it. It’s part of what helps keep the tone of TWiFFON fun for me to write, and I’m choosing to go the cracky route instead of the grimdark serious one because this fic’s self-indulgence at its finest, and my life is stressful enough as is. 

Because, I mean, for me it’s either laugh or cry, and I can’t afford to cry, when it comes to the tire fire that’s going on. I can laugh or cry, so I’d rather go for deadpan ‘so apparently this shit’s more plausible than some of what I’m seeing in the news’ rather than get even more gray hair stressing out over stuff I have no control over. [Playing with power dynamics in a fictional universe where there’s magic and aliens is very good stress relief, is what I’m saying.] Plus, y’know, it gives me an outlet for whenever I see yet another ‘Tony Stark was the villain!’ post. 

You probably know that originally, TWiFFON was supposed to be way darker [and shorter]. However, thanks to…life, I decided to go for broke and went ‘screw it, this is stress relief so might as well go for broke’, and since I love the Accidental World Domination trope…[getting rambly again, oops] 

Thus, why it’s going to take a literal Destroyer of Worlds to break it to Tony that yes, he took over the world. Oops. 

However, since apparently I can’t help but be pedantic about power dynamics and politics and whatnot: it’s probably more low-key than some of my readers are expecting. Here, it’s not going to really show until we reach the Final Battle arc, but I’m trying my best to avoid imperialistic tones where that part’s concerned. 

Like, yes, the fic’s going to devolve to crack by then, but the world domination part’s going to end up being due to basically [heads up for major fic spoilers]:

The world: so 

The world: you have Skynet in your pocket. A horde of them, even.

Tony: guys, you are so grounded why’d you pull that stunt I told you—

JARVIS: *is unrepentant*

FRIDAY: *is also unrepentant*

JOCASTA: *is shamelessly using her full capabilities to help clean up the battlefield*

Tony: JARVIS, you were supposed to the the role model, not the bad influenc—

Tony: wait what do you mean you want me to take them offline

Tony: okay you know what? Fight me

on top of everything else. But the above being the main motivation for Tony’s not stepping down after the Final Battle, and I intend to go into more detail when the matter comes up. [Hopefully I do it right.]

But for the most part?

It’s not like he can put it on his shelf to collect dust or anything, no way does he want to rule the world! Tony’s got more than enough power as is, and he’s happy enough being the Head of R&D. Hell, he’s got more than enough as his plate as is, why the fuck would he want to add to his workload?! Strange, stop laughin—Rhodey, why are you giving Hope money? Thor, you too—what do you mean ‘you lost a bet’? JARVIS, you are so grounded!

aka his life is s u f f e r i n g because he didn’t sign up for any of this, thank you very much, how is this his life, where did he go wrong in his life choices?

Strange, you can stop laughing any time now. Any time. 

…screw it, might as well roll with it. Anyone mind if they call themselves the Federation if any other aliens come around? Or would that violate some copyright law? 

meanwhile, elsewhere: 

everyone at Stark Industries is scratching their heads and wondering where the miscommunication happened before shrugging and carrying along because business as usual now includes world domination, oops

Pepper’s in Maui finally getting her vacation. 

JARVIS doesn’t really mind, as it simply means he has less variables to control for to help keep Tony safe and happy, so he’s completely and utterly shameless about it all. Even if he’s so, very grounded for pulling the stunts he did during the Final Battle arc. 

Fury is in an unspecified location, laughing at Tony while also feeling very proud of him because this is the opposite of a problem and free entertainment at its finest, yes, this was worth it. Not what he’d expected, but most definitely worth the headache.

[just putting it out there to hopefully give an idea of what I’m aiming for, at the end of the fic.] Hopefully it gets across right. Just…world domination, but with a kinda relaxed take on things.

Kinda sorry for the spoilers, but that moment’s one of the ones I’ve been really looking forward to and it’s been the better part of a year and this fic just keeps growing.