#the woes of being a writer trying to describe things

[whereismycomputermouse]

The inconsistent character design in FFIV is going to be the death of me. Like everyone generally agrees that Cecil's hair is supposed to be white but it's been shown to also be blue and blond, Rydia's eyes somehow went from green to blue when she grew up, Kain has been depicted with at least 3 separate eye colors, and that's not even getting into how many outfits changes the entire cast has been given throughout the different re-releases. Seriously, pick a design and stick with it this is driving me INSANE

[scummy-writes]

How do you deal with writer's block? How do you execute ideas even with writer's block?

ohhh this is a good question. I may not have good answers.

It may depend on the type of writer's block you have, as I feel like there isn't just one singular over-encompassing type.

Sometimes, the writer's block is having all the inspiration, but nothing is coming out. This one plagues me the most because 90% of my fanfics and similar nowadays are just me daydreaming 24/7, and writing some of those daydreams down. Like a lil movie in the background. In theory I could write so much, but I struggle with actually putting pen to paper and considering the actual word choices used.

What I end up doing here is read or....write.... So the reading I try to find a published book that is different from my usual writing style and removed from fandomism, this is to personally help me distance myself from fanfic a little, to see how the pacing in a longer piece may be- which can help with learning to describe 'smaller' scenes and movements, or see how the writer handles scene transitions and similar. And, well, I read! And when I'm reading, I will usually pick the writing apart.

"I really like the way the writer described this movement, how could I describe that in my own words?" , "Wow, you can see how these last few paragraphs built up the foreshadowing for this turn of events, lets break down how they did that." , and... well... sometimes it does turn into "Yikes!! I really dislike that!!! If I were to rewrite that in my own way, how would that go...?"

And I've found that I often struggle to finish books, because I'll get that train of thought going so much that I'll have to put down the book to actually write.

Another thing I will do is that I will open up a wip, have it in a window taking up half my screen, then open a blank document to put on the other half, and rewrite everything word for word. This often helps me catch mistakes, odd sentences, and similar, and it's an easy way to simulate actually being able to write without having the 'blank document woes' where I'm too scared to defile a blank document. I find that once I get in the process of this with some good music, once I catch up to where my wip left off, I've rewritten a few sentences or added in more details I thought of with a fresh mind, and I'm able to go past where I initially left off.

(thats how I set up the screen)

If it's the type of writer's block where you have NO ideas, no will to write and only the vague *want* to write............ you may need some rest. A lot of people talk about social batteries, on how people need to recharge after a social function with some alone time or similar, and then their battery feels recharged! well... You need to do that for creative outlets as well!! You need to make sure you're taking care of your body, and also your mind. Recharge your creative mind by reading, watching, and listening to new or old and beloved things! Play a fun video game with a story that's interesting to you, read a cheesy romance novel, maybe even just clean some dishes and daydream as you do so. Once you remove 'gotta write gotta write gotta write gotta write' from the equation, and chilling out a bit, you end up getting inspired again after a while.

Typically with this one, I will end up writing notes that are very. bland.

So... if it's neither of those, or you have tried a lot of these things, then my next advice would be to try some basic writing exercises. Look up prompt lists, try to write the first thing that comes to mind when one catches your eye- i dont care if it's shakespeare or dahl, you just smack it down on paper. Much like drawing, you gotta do warm ups with writing! it helps a lot when you're stuck! If prompts don't work, move on to rewriting a classic story scene or story in general with your favorite characters, think about how they would act in the situation instead and rewrite it. If its fanfiction, look at some of the events in the game or routes, rewrite it with you or your mc, or how you wished the route/event went instead. write with friends! have friends send you prompts or detail a vague outline for you and try your hand at it!

If it stems from being too embarassed to read what you're writing.... turn the text itty bitty and just Type, to where you ignore what you're seeing and are managing to get words down. You can always make the text bigger when you feel less embarassed!

That's what I can offer off the top of my head!! I think there are plenty of more tips than this that exist out there, absolutely, so maybe some folks reading this might be able to offer to explain what helps them!

[backjustforberena]

20 questions for fic writers

Thank you to @joycieillustrations for tagging me. And whomever reads this, if you want to consider this me tagging you then go for it! But here we go, here are my answers. Dear Lordy, I'd forgotten about some of these fics until I had to tot up the word count.

1. How many works do you have on Ao3?

I have 25. Some completed, some... not so much.

2. What's your total Ao3 word count?

Total word count is: 174,231 words.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

I'm only actively writing "House of the Dragon". And actively is a strong word. Sometimes I look fondly on my "Holby City" (specifically the ship 'Berena') unfinished fics and the notes I still have and half-finished chapters, but I leave them be for now. Unless someone decides to bug me (by which I mean, offer a hand and lend an ear).

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

- Me Before You AU - a Berena retelling of the book/film. - Run And Hit - a Berena AU. - Home Now - a Berena AU. - Losing Her Would Be Infinitely More Terrifying Than Loving Her - a Berena AU. - A Fresh Page - a Berena AU.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Generally, I don't, unless it's been a mean comment or they've asked me something specifically. Otherwise, I know I won't reply to all and so I get anxious about responding to any! And I'm British - you try giving a British person a compliment, you see how they find it!

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

From my completed works? Shoot. I'm not sure if I'm the best judge of that. Most of them do include angst. But if they're angsty multi-chapters, then they're going to end on a happier note. And if they're an angsty one-shot, then the angst isn't just contained to the ending, it starts from the first word!

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Looking at finished works... I have written some fluff.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I have done on one of my fics. That was "Deep Waters". That was not fun at all, but equally, I had some really lovely comments on that fic as well. Moral of the story - don't write Daemon Targaryen in anything but a good light and certainly don't have Rhaenys act independently and with emotion. Woe betide you if you do! ;)

9. Do you write smut?

Nope.

10. Do you write crossovers?

I haven't yet.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not that I know of.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No. I bounce ideas off of people and get input but I've never strictly "co-written" a fic. I'd welcome it though. It might get something finished!

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

I enjoy many a ship but it's Corlys and Rhaenys that occupy my brain presently. I'm pretty sure though, if you pricked my interest again, that Berena would not be far away. They were a very, very good ship.

15. What's the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

How long do you have? In more seriousness, any and all of my Holby ones. But the most recent of those was "My Tears Richocet", which I did plan out quite a bit, but got derailed by the end of Holby City and the resolution of the plotline that I was re-writing. But I still love the idea; Bernie Wolfe was rescued three months after being declared dead, and returning to Holby, confronting everything she left behind and trying to not love the woman who rejected her and yet mourned for her. But the one most easily finished is probably another Holby fic; "Someone You Love" as it was a remix between two episodes, so it has a set ending, I know where the plot is going, it's outlined somewhere on my laptop and would only be a chapter more. Two at the most.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I have writing strengths?

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Finishing things! Describing things! Overthinking things!

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I have used some High Valyrian. Very, very minimal High Valryian. I also have a very clever, wonderful friend, to whom I can go to for advice on High Valyrian. But that's it. No other languages. It's not something I seek out.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Doctor Who. Wayy back when, on fanfiction.net.

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

Oh, gosh! I really love some of the "House of the Dragon" stuff I've written, simply because I've adored looking at the political aspect of it all and just generally trying to think out the consequences of various changes. Others, from "Holby", I love but they are rarely finished so I will have to say "losing her would be infinitely more terrifying than loving her" - only because it's complete (woo hoo) but also because it was quite a turning point for me. I'd never written something so action-packed, that needed to have a specific tone and pace. I was rather chuffed I could pull it off and it was well received.

[artheauthor5462]

I started having some late night thoughts about my own writing and I figured why not scream out into the void and share them!

Worldbuilding vs. Actually Writing

Oh my god the woes (read fun) of having such an expansive world. This world has been rattling around in this brain for almost six years now. SIX YEARS. The time sure fucking flies. Initially the story I had in mind was just that: a story. I had no set world and now………here I am?

So! Worldbuilding!

Pros: I really get to put my scientific interests to work. I am a STEM major (notably my field being most centered on biology) so I absolutely love thinking of the ins and outs of the different concepts and mechanics of my world. Moon cycles? Got that all worked up on its own spreadsheet. Different eclipses for a 2 sun/3 moon system? You betcha. The realistic functions of different species and why they would be where they are? That’s my drug right there. I love thinking of anatomical functions of different fantasy races and the flora/fauna in my setting. I love thinking of all sorts of astronomical phenomena that would make my world feel more unique. I even came up with my own subsection of my world’s geology in a document…….

Cons: Oh god, the humanities. I struggle with coming up with different cultural practices that don’t seem weird in my head. I’ve reached a point where I start to think “okay but it’s FANTASY” and I start to let go of that notion that everything has to make sense. But still. WHAT. THE. HELL. I don’t know how some people do it. I write up full anatomical descriptions of things and then I jump into trying to describe my world’s elves and all I can think is “um…………uh…….piercings………….yeah”

Actually Writing!

Pros: We all know the jokes that every writer actually hates writing (ignore that this blog is partially based around that). I ENJOY it. I cannot express how much I ENJOY writing with my every fiber. My brain works on the process of “don’t enjoy this? Okay we’ll never work on this again”. Writing gives the creative side of my brain one hell of a time. Sometimes I sit here and act like some middle schooler reading a fic of their favorite media (at least I would assume, I was too far up my own ass to actually read fics back then) when I’m reading my own stuff. God it’s so fun. I can sit down and bang out 4000 words in one sitting. It’s great!

Cons: …………

Depression

Depression kicks my ass. In fact, I know when I’m coming out of a depressive episode when my creative brain starts working again. The issue is, that’s actually not often. Most of the time I sit there and I stare and stare and nothing is able to wiggle its way out of the muddy escape my mind turns into. It’s sucks beyond belief. Those 4000 words in one sitting? Yeah that rarely happens. It happened within the last couple of days which feels great, but now I know it’ll turn into a situation where I feel exhausted while writing. That’s part of why I, as per the name, procrastinate. It’s not that I hate writing, it’s that it’s just….tiring, especially for someone who ultimately has other priorities in life.

As a whole, I find that I’m able to sustain worldbuilding much easier than writing. I don’t know why that is and I’ll just leave it to how my brain is wired. Ultimately, this post is just me ranting about my own feelings about writing and worldbuilding. This isn’t a guide or a “you should feel this same way” because no. Hell no. Do what gives you the most fun. Don’t beat yourself up if you can’t write more than 1000 words in a sitting. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t have a “fully fleshed out world” because let’s be real, no one really does. And honestly, don’t even dare think of beating yourself up over just daydreaming about some OCs and smushing them together in your brain. I, for one, would love to do that, but I have aphantasia, so alas.

Anyways, don’t know if anyone might see this, but have fun!

[hannie-dul-set]

HAPPY NEW YEAR ALLEX!!!!!!!!!!

HI HELLO!! how have you been since 2025 started?? Do u have any plans or resolutions for this year?

im so happy to see u more active lately SJDASHD AND thank you for the kind words and encouragement that whole thing about the birth of writers being a cycle was so sweet i wanted to cry 🥹!! My writing isn't worth showing off rn BUT ill keep trying so I can one day have something to show wo being embarrassed :))

I was also reading some of ur works and I was reminded of what made me love your writing sm!! The way you set the mood and describe things is so poetic and lovely like u are just so eloquent and then I get whiplash from lines that sound deranged and unhinged LMAOO the duality is crazy

I wanted to go read through ur whole masterlist but i didn’t know where to start (mostly bcs i dont know much abt other groups aside from nct 😭) but i really wanted to read more so if u don’t mind me asking (and if it wouldn’t bother u,,) could u maybe name one or two fics to recommend or just ur favorites so far?

-🍜

HAPPY NEW YEAR RAMEN ANON!!!

unfortunately my new year kicked off with a bunch of thesis sessions 😞💔💔 the woes of being a college senior 💔💔💔 as my for plans this year.....i'm currently postponing the inevitability of graduation + eventual employment because i wanna enjoy being a little bit more carefree atm HUAHAHAHAHAH fuck real life i just wanna be silly 🤙🤙🤙.

ANYWAY, that aside, i look forward to the day of reading ur works at some point!! pls don't hesitate to reach out once you're ready 🫵🫵.

i do feel a little bad bcs i stopped writing for nct at some point 😭😭 (except for jaemin....i will never be freed from this man....) as for my works that i'd recommend...hmm.....a lot of my faves fall under the reverse harem category HUAHAHAHAH but a million characters from groups you don't know would probably make the experience less enjoyable 😭😭😭 so i'll settle with these two!!!

the psychology of strawberries, ft. zerobaseone's ricky shen! one of the quickest things i wrote LMAO solely because it's 80% insane gushing over the man. fun read if u just want something silly and lighthearted!!! there's still quite a handful of characters. i can't see to write things that don't have a bunch of people involved. BUT everyone's from the same group so it won't be as confusing. i think HAHAHAHA.

butttt, if you want something with a bit more emotional depth, i'd recommend mogi, ft. tomorrow x together's choi beomgyu! still a handful of characters i'm so sorry 😭😭 but it's very beomgyu-centric, so i think it'd be fune HUHAHAHAHA. it can be read a standalone, but once you're ready you can read the (very fucking long) sequel, nabi!!! little less silly, still the same amount of disgusting love as the prev reqs BWAHAHAHHA it's my latest release and one of my best works methinks.....all in it's 49k words glory 😭😭. but you can def just ready mogi for now!!! 🫶🫶🫶.

[buds-and-baubles]

hiii it's florian and welcome back to: i read things i knew i'd hate so others don't have to suffer!

today we are describing stormwatch vol 3 (2011-2014)!

reasons why this was a no-good very bad icky yucky wucky fucker:

• swift and doctor were fucking erased from existence and didn't survive the transfer!

• engineer evil arc (not clickbait)!

• ruined the origins of apollo, midnighter, jack hawksmoor, and engineer! ex; no mention of jack being a result from repeated alien abduction/experimentation, angie becoming engineer was a result of experimentation rather than her choice, alien experimentation rather than u.n. government experimentation for mid and apollo.

• martian manhunter evil arc (also not clickbait)! ruined pre-established martian lore!

• what they had in hellstrike's backstory.

• had mid try to kill jenny quantum and later on say he wish he was successful and should try again!

• killed jenny quantum, brought her back, erased her from existence, brought her back, and erased her again! (i am not shitting you this is exactly what happened)

• tying into the above, nobody seems to fucking care that jenny quantum is gone! they for 99% of this comic were fucking awful to jenny quantum!

• lobo! i just hate him.

• harry tanner! i also just hate him not only as a character but they kept making all of angie's woes about this stupid bastard!

• kept beating into the ground with the first writer and continuing it to the next and next writers that midnighter and apollo aren't together. that they aren't friends, just colleagues. he quote 'hardly knows him at all' but they proceed to somehow queerbait the canon gay married couple they un-married! that's right, they did that! it took until the final issues to illude to them finally dating (again)! it took until 2023 pride to have them married! AGAIN!

• too many fucking batman mentions that show him on panel! if i wanted to read about batman, I WOULD BE READING ABOUT BATMAN.

• one arc fucked with red lantern lore i'm pretty sure

• zealot's appearance in it was not kind to her!

• destroyed stormwatch established lore thereby destroying the lore for all stormwatch members

• literally no wildcats or gen 13 mention.

• how they wrote apollo. his characterization, acknowledging on one hand that yeah he's strong as superman but they keep having him literally keel over from everything and having to be rescued by midnighter again and again, calling him yet again stupid and too emotional, making him bothered by mid killing (despite that this apollo's introduction has him do literally that but that they ignored/suddenly he don't kill no more and condemns it), etc.

• apollo's short blond hair and midnighter's awful chin spike.

• every single plot in this i am fairly certain an infant could do better writing. they could do it with actual quality writing without any racism or homophobia that stormwatch vol 3 very fucking much has and i cannot begin to tell you how much that pisses me off. i am sick of seeing racism in comics for fuck's sake. i am sick of seeing homophobia in comics.

[hoursofreading]

Does it matter that the three thinkers I’ve described here were women? Was their femininity part of what caused them to adopt this shared moral philosophy? I think it does. Over the centuries, male writers and philosophers—think of Immanuel Kant—have built these vast moral systems that portray moral life as something that disinterested, rational individuals do by adhering to abstract universal principles: Always treat human beings as an end in themselves, and not as a means to something else. That emphasis on abstract universal principles is fine, I suppose, but it’s impersonal and decontextualized. It’s not about how this one unique person should encounter another unique person. It’s as if these philosophers were so interested in coming up with coherent abstract principles and philosophically impregnable systems that they became afraid of particular people—messy creatures that we are, and the messy situations we find ourselves in—and the personal encounters that are the sum and substance of our daily existence. Maybe it’s partly culture and maybe it’s partly genetic, but over the long course of Western civilization it’s fair to say that men have been trained to think in this abstract, domineering way: to start from first principles, to lay down laws. Meanwhile these same men have often been blind to the networks of care right around them. Think of the way Thomas Hobbes was nearly oblivious to family life as he describes humans in a state of nature—“solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Women, through most of Western history, have, on the other hand, been charged with running these networks of care. It should not surprise us then that the philosophers most alert to the morality of personal encounter have been women. It should not surprise us that, during World War II, while millions marched and fled, fought and died, and history seemed to be unfolding on an epic scale, it was these brilliant women who were able to focus their attention on what was small, direct, and personal—the manner in which one human being gazes on another. The second question is this: Does it matter that all three were born Jews? The issue here is complicated, because Weil renounced any sense of peoplehood. But I’d nonetheless say that their Jewish blood, their Jewish history, propelled each of them to a remarkable degree. In the first place, they were thrust into a circumstance of unfathomable moral intensity. They were living amid a European culture that they loved at the very moment it was trying to exterminate the people they were born into. That’s bound to produce a profound set of moral responses. Furthermore, thousands of years ago Jews were a small, insignificant people living in a marginal part of the world. And yet they believed that God had centred history on them. It was an audacious conviction. And that notion has come down to Jews ever since in the form of a related responsibility: to live life as an audacious moral journey. God is not expecting great things; God is demanding great things—the life of the covenant. Live rightly and God will smile on you; live a life of moral mediocrity and woe will be your daily breakfast, bitterness your final sensation. That pressure fuelled all three women—even to put their moral aspirations above their instinct for survival. But most importantly, to be steeped in the Torah is to be steeped in particularity. It is a sacred book about particular humans—Abraham, Isaac, Sarah—in a particular place at a particular time. The abstract laws and commandments are incarnated in particular stories, stories that often defy expectations or generalizations. Why did Jacob do this and not that? Why did Ruth do this and not that? Attention is paid to the specific individual in the specific context. The sensibility is literary more than philosophic, Jerusalem more than Athens. Women steeped in this lineage are going to focus their gaze on actual persons before abstract ideas. And then consider the circumstances. What is anti-Semitism (or racism generally) but the insistence, on the part of one human being, to not see another human being—to not recognize the depth of their soul or acknowledge their common humanity? War is dehumanizing, and a war launched in part to exterminate an entire people is the most dehumanizing form of war imaginable. In the face of this onslaught, the most heroic and vital response is this one: I will see you. I will see you as the infinitely valuable and non-repeatable person that you are. I will see you whole.

The Feminine Way to Wisdom - Comment Magazine

[fionnaskyborn]

see the thing about the idea of "you can't make shit up lest you stray from the core ideas of the work or the personalities of the characters as depicted in the source" is that, as always, everything in this world is about nuance, so making absolute statements like that is inane, pointless. i firmly believe that one can shake their head at the passing along of ideas that do not at all adhere to those conveyed by the original work or the original iteration of a character and the passing along of those byproducts, so to speak, that have strayed so far from the things that they describe or stand for or represent that, in the most extreme cases, they can be considered as entirely divorced from the source material while also recognizing the flaws of the original work and pointing out what could've been done better. and doing so isn't necessarily going "HURR DURR i am a writer greater than the greats who have created this deeply meaningful work themselves" (though there are probably people out there who are doing just that, but i could care less about all that) - rather, i believe it to be a show of love for the work. not trying to make it better or trying to act as if you or i or anyone other than the author could write a kojima game or whatever but rather just trying to make sense of things based on what you already know to be true - not too unlike navigating life. creating a derivative work is a pain in the ass as much as it is the most fun i've ever had with anything that has to do with, well, creation, because in your constant struggle to do every concept and every character justice, you're going to run into some walls, and those walls come in the form of deviations from the concepts the work or a character or a group of character stands for so absurd that while the story does end up holding itself together (somehow) even with them being present, those same deviations make certain character arcs look like a snapped straw. and that's a part of the source. but if the source contains deviations, and the act of extrapolation is the essence of deviation, then, oh, woe is me, what's a man to do?!

well, there's no easy way to say this, but, uh. if you have the freedom to extrapolate that comes with creating a derivative work. then, perhaps, maaaybe you should exploit that freedom. maybe extrapolation isn't a cardinal sin if it's done out of love and passion for both your work and the original work and if it's done carefully while having in mind the original motivations of the characters before those deviations started taking place, and the things they were trying to convey. maybe the decision to make the unit commander deeply grateful to the man who helped shape her into the person she is today while having the feeling that she won't ever be something as great as that guy gnaw away at her while also consciously ignoring the advice given to her by that same man to quit war because War Is Bad (as we all know) is a more natural progression for that character than "i may have loved you once... but you are nothing to me now. also i'm going to be really mean to you on certain occasions for no real reason and passively aggressively call you terrible things while also going 'ugh, men.' in general". maybe that one guy wouldn't be too happy about being lied to about the life of his son by his own girlfriend/partner/significant other/whatever. i'm not trying to put anyone down, and i never will, and i am writing all of this out of love for the stories that have been told to me, but also the fact that i am writing this at all is a very rare act of me being confident in my skills as a writer, as an artist, as a media analyst and enjoyer, and i am going to revel in the moment as much as i can, and i am not going to write a single word of apologia for writing this post. thank you, goodbye.

oh you guys are getting a rant and a half alright

[blindbeta]

I have a question! Not for something I want to do, but something I was thinking of when reading through your blog. If a character is born blind (let's say completely blind for sake of clarity) and later experiences eye trauma that doesn't change their blindness, is that still a bad trope for trauma and eyes? What if the character doesn't treat it as a horrible incident? What if they make a joke of "boy sure glad that bad guy didn't go after something I ACTUALLY needed" or something like that? I am not looking for a reason to do this, nor am I looking for an "aha gotcha!" to your requests and tropes. I am just genuinely curious if this would be different, in your mind, or equally as bad, because I value your opinions. Thank you for taking the time to read.

The Accidents/Incidents/Trauma Narrative and Making It Better

[Note: This post will mention eye trauma and ableism]

When it comes to this trope, I do personally prefer characters to already be blind in some way.

Other people may have different opinions about that, but in a lot of cases, the issue with going blind through some horrible accident is that the character is sad and, understandably, traumatized afterward. For a lot of stories I read, this usually means the character is upset about their blindness as well because it is a result of that trauma. A good example of this is in my review of Blind by Rachel DeWoskin, where the main character complains about being blind for almost the entire book. I admit that I am not very fond of writing reviews myself, but in some cases, it is important for people to share big problems with stories like that. In sharing that review, I hope writers and readers can grow from it.

The character already being blind, whether totally blind or not, usually helps reduce the “woe-is-me-I-am-blind-now-and therefore-sad” factor. This allows the story to focus on healing from the incident itself, rather than making everything about being blind, even if the character is still required to relearn how to do a few things and deals with difficult emotions.

There are plenty of blind people who would react the way you describe in situations where they had to lose their eyes, such as when getting them removed for medical reasons.

Another issue that often comes up is that, because the narrative of going blind in traumatic, terrible accidents is so pervasive, people will ask blind people how they went blind. The assumption is that they must have lost their vision in some horrible way and therefore being blind is extra sad for them. You can imagine how this might invite unwanted pity, which can create barriers for blind people in everyday life. This also invites unwanted attention from strangers.

Not every blind person went blind through a traumatic fashion. And if they did, they probably wouldn’t want to talk about it when they’re simply trying to get food or something.

Showing diversity in how characters go blind can also combat this. Showing blind people who aren’t overly mopey about being blind also helps, regardless of how they went blind.

One last thing to keep in mind is that some blind readers may feel uncomfortable with graphic depictions of eye trauma for blind characters, such as stabbing out eyes. While your suggestion takes care of the trope of going blind through accidents, etc, some blind people might still feel uncomfortable if blind peoples’ eyes become a regular target in the same story, or if the act is graphically described. Keep in mind that disabled people can still be targeted for violence of this manner, whether by strangers and even family.

Either way, you are dealing with some difficult topics. It just so happens that one of them is a better way to evade the trope of accident- or incident-related blindness.

This post has been cross-posted onto WordPress.

[gloster]

FAVORITE FANFICS OF 2020

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

I know I speak for all when I say....I cannot wait to toss 2020 out the door the way Uncle Phil constantly did with Jazz. One of the things that got me through this rough year, besides family & friends & BTS, were fanfics.

It’s that time of year again where I make a list of all the fanfics that I absolutely adored. Some are by veteran favs of mine, others are new to me who just knocked it out of the park. If you’re interested in past lists, here is 2019′s list and 2018′s. If y’all are interested in doing your own fanfic favs of the year, please do so and tag me. Always on the hunt for new favs. 

So without furhter ado, my fav fanfics of 2020:

1). Another Word for Forever series by stardropdream (sheith)

Summary: Shiro knows better than to expect love in an arranged marriage. This is all for the sake of universal peace, after all, and solidifying a Terran-Galran alliance. At the very least, Shiro can hope to make a friend out of this. Becoming friends would be much easier, though, if he and his husband could actually communicate. 

With a language barrier and a mountain of cultural differences between them, getting to know Keith proves to be a challenge. Luckily, Shiro's always worked well with challenges.

2020 shockingly became the year of sheith. I ended up rewatching the show w/my bestie @littlenightdragon​. Diving more deeply into it w/my other bestie @kila09​. She and I spent the better half of this year devouring so many fanfics of them in various AUs. I came across new fanfic authors, and stardropdream is among them. 

If I could describe this series & stardropdream, I’ll take a cue from Lady Gaga: “ talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique, completely not ever been done before, unafraid to reference or not reference, put it in a blender, shit on it, vomit on it, eat it, give birth to it”

This series was just PERFECTION. I’ve gotten into arranged-marriage AUs and this has been one of the best I’ve read. It was just perfection. The language barrier definitely added an extra charm to it, in which Shiro finds his own ways to get to know his husband better: both creative and funny ways. So many cute moments, so many funny moments with Hunk being the translating middle man between them, and the smut. THE SMUT. THE SMUT. THE SMUT. Just *chef’s kiss* Incredible. It was just so so sweet, and such a comfort read. I reread this series 5 times already and hope Robin (the writer) does more stories in this AU.

Please read this series. You’re not gonna regret it. It will MELT your heart. 

Honorable Mentions:

If I Called You Mine

Sail Across the Sky Just to Get to You

Finding Shelter (The Alien Baby Remix)

Say You Do(n’t)

2). The Golden Hour by @goldentruth813​ (sheith)

Summary:  After a space mission failure, Shiro loses his arm and his career. Two years later he's settled into a quiet and simple new life on his farm, but when a beautiful alien crashes in his field, he discovers the answers to his questions—and possibly the keys to his future—will come from the stars.

I’m sure no one, least of all Janel the writer herself, is surprised to see this author featured on this list. For now the 3rd year in a row. WOOOW  👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿 She is the reason I got into shieth, and she just continues to put out amazing conent with them. This story by far has been the best she’s done this year-possibly one of the best ever. 

We have Shiro trying to have a simple life at the farm with his dog and animals. A curious BOM Keith who shakes things up with his boldness/innocence-and questions bound to test blood pressure, especially Shiro’s. Loads of cute moments, loads of funny moments, and also loads of oreos. 

If summary and my thoughts don’t sell you, only one thing will: reading it for yourself.

Honorable mentions:

Two Hearts in Bloom

Mountain Men

Home is in Your Heart

3). Spun like Gold by Neyasochi (sheith)

Summary: Though Shiro is currently operating his fledgling bakery business out of a decrepit food truck he got for cheap in a repossession sale, he dreams of something more: a cozy bakery and cafe on a tree-lined street somewhere, filled with the smell of fresh coffee and sugar glaze instead of diesel. A little money could go a long way to helping him get off the ground-- and luckily, Keith has money to burn.

Or: Keith takes care of Shiro’s financial woes, in exchange for a little sugar.

OMG, OMG, OMG was this story so sweet. Neyasochi already sold me with the baking/baker Shiro trope, but went a step further throwing in sugar-daddy Keith who knows his way around his manic family and cars, but when it comes to asking a cute guy out? What better way to make an impression than becoming his best paying customer?  

Honorable mentions:

oh, devour me

Healing Touch

on your hand of gold 

4). The Destiny You Sold by @tryslora​ (drarry)

Summary: In which Draco knits, Harry makes wands, and things get very tangled up between them.

If there’s one thing I love about fanfics is how they introduce you to tropes you never would consider before. Draco and knitting was a combo I didn’t realize how much I needed until now. And I love the fact knitting played a big part of the accidental bonding. Also loved the fact everyone in their friend group shipped them like crazy. Highly, highly recommend 

5) What’s My Age Again? by @lazywonderlvnd​ (drarry)

Summary: Harry Potter has had enough of pleasing the public, and his reckless tendencies are finally getting out of hand.

The Quidditch World Cup is only a week away; as Captain of the English National Team, Hermione has assured him that his immaturity won’t be tolerated by the Ministry.

And then Malfoy shows up.

(Inspired by the blink-182 song of the same name.)

It’s no secret that I’m such a fangirl of @lazywonderlvnd​. Any drarry story I read, I always love. Last year, I ADORED The Changing Lights, which was one of my favorites last year, and her updating/finishing the story was a massive highlight for me. I thank ya for that. 

This story was honestly refreshing. I’ve grown so used to Harry being responsible, always doing what’s right, that seeing a story where Harry pretty much has his middle finger in the air to “good reputation”, “being responsible,” because as he brought up: “I’m 25. I’ve been fighting all my life. I’ve earned my life to have fun.”

Okay, granted, it wasn’t quite like that but it was along those lines. And I agree. After all he went through, Harry deserves to have fun. He deserves to be reckless and make stupid decisions.

Also, it was such a blast reading a story where Harry is the brat & Draco has to keep him in line. LOVED.

Honorable mentions: 

Inside Your Mind

Aletheia

6). Chocolate and Pastry by agentmoppet, anemonen (drarry)

Summary:  When Pansy bets Draco that there is no chance he and Harry could carry out a genuine romantic relationship, he and Harry form a plan. But as their fake relationship progresses, Draco sees a side of Harry he never expected. Harry is struggling with something, pushing it far down inside him where he doesn't have to acknowledge its existence. Draco starts to worry, and then he starts to care, and then... horribly... he starts to fall in love.

Do not let the title fool you like it did me. Title alone, I was thinking it was going to be a fun, fluffy story involving baking, maybe chocolate crafting. However....it was not that at all. It was more. A lot deeper. A lot more angsty. It explored mental health, PTSD and the dangers of loved ones ignoring the signs, and contained an important message:

You can’t love someone out of their illness/disease/ addiction. Which is true and this story showed that. 

7). i’m still here by owedbetter (zutara)

Summary: "You see me."

And somehow, that makes all the difference.

If there’s one of the few good things 2020 has brought, it was Netflix bringing back ATLA to their library. Which in turn ignited my love for zutara & had me drag @kila09​ into that ship. 

This story was just incredible. The way it was written, it really felt like it could have been canon. Deleted scenes that a certain creator didn’t want us to see. The way Zuko and Katara came together, starting from their peaceful friendship after the Southern Raiders episode up, becoming closer along the way. 

I dare y’all to read this and not think OMG...is this secret canon bonus material? I definitely plan to read more by owedbetter. 

8). all the what ifs i never said by rosegardenlake (sheith)

Summary:  Keith is nine when he first notices Shiro. Shiro is gentle and quiet, always keeping to himself. Keith is rough and loud, running wherever his feet will take him, screaming on the top of his lungs into the wind. But despite that, they're a constant throughout each other's lives...if only that could be enough. As they grow, Keith just wants them both to be happy, but instead, he's falling apart.

Rosegardenlake is another sheith writer who I adored last year & adore this year as well. This was a story that I read during the beginning of quarantine-life and when I tell you the number of times Keith’s emotions of loneliness got to me, it’s a big number. 

Keith’s struggle with life after high school, after peaking in school, and his mental health reminded me too much of where I was at 2018, which wasn’t a good year for me at all, especially mentally. So that was triggering but it was also helpful since I saw how far I came. And it was beautiful seeing how far Keith came. 

Also the relationship between Shiro and Keith was just beautiful. It’s very funny how Keith was Shiro’s protector growing up and Shiro became Keith’s later on in life. There’s a chance your heart may be heavy, but will also be so swelled up with feelings these two bring it. 

Honorable mentions:

Where the Light Doesn’t Reach 

9). When Night Comes by Oh_Hey_Tae (BTS; poly ot7)

Summary: Jungkook’s tipsy, but he’s not buzzed enough to miss that he doesn’t recognize any of the four dozen people here. And seeing as his friends aren’t ones to ditch and there’s no way they’d play a prank this mean on him, Jungkook reaches the conclusion that he just walked into a stranger’s very expensive home, uninvited, and started eating their food and petting their well-dressed dog.

(Or: Jungkook shows up to the wrong Halloween party and meets the most powerful family in Seoul.)

I can easily say Oh_Hey_Tae easily one of my favorite BTS fanfic favs. Always come through with the stories, and this one was just amazing. We have Jungkook stumbling into a Halloween story, and soon enters into a intense, insane relationship with all six guys, who are already in a relationship with each other. Oh, and supernatural creatures at that. 

You do see certain relationships are stronger, deeper. For example, a lot of moments between Jin and Jungkook. Vmin has their own story and moments. But it was just so amazing. 

Fair warning. Halfway through, things get darker and Oh_My_Tae really loves playing readers diirty with the angst, but it’s so good. 

10). peace-weaver by magisterpavus (sheith)

Summary: You will be the peace-weaver, his mother told him, smiling though her dark eyes welled with unshed grief. The one who brings two bitter enemies together and ends the bloodshed and death between us, once and for all.

But men will always crave war. The Galra, most of all.

Yet another arranged-marriage AU that I loved. This particular one is well-loved in the sheith fandom. I can definitely say it’s considered one of the classic fanfics that’s been read or shared at one point or another. 

The story itself reminded me a lot of Macbeth, involving murder and dark forces at bay. The dynamics between Shiro and Keith reminded me of Drogo and Daenerys from GOT, one of my fav couples there, which only made it all the more better for me. 

I do credit the author for the creative approach they took with quintessence and Shiro’s role/persona as the Champion

Honorable mentions:

The Boy in the Window 

Sheith Demon/Priest AU

A Matter of Scale

Directive 

Honorable mentions that I seriously wanted to add to the list but this post is already lengthy. All amazing, all greats reads by various writers y’all should check out:

Hold Me Tight, or Don’t by snowfallen (yoonmin with a Mr. & Mrs. Smith AU featuring assassins and hitmen, secret identities, fake marriage, and a lot of smut)

The Prince and Pirate by Maniacani, @nerdherderette​ (drarry with a splash of royalty and pirates. Perfect if you’re needing to fill in any Pirates of the Caribbean or Black Sails cravings)

First Kisses are the Best Ones by SashaDistan (sheith in a 50 First Dates Fusion heartfelt/heart-gutting story)

freely, as men strive for right by @bixgirl1​ (drarry w/Harry explaining the many ways why Draco’s the love of his life. we love to see it)

The Sacrificed by SasuNarufan13 (sasunaru w/ dark fairytale elements similar to Little Red Riding Hood & Beauty and the beast + feat. mpreg)

Chasing Treacle Tart (and Draco Malfoy) by xErised (drarry feat. lunch lady Draco + scheming Harry + loads of fun w/sweets & more)

Red Desert by @beatitudinembty​ (taekook in a unique sci-fi AU; hard to explain but so worth a read

one way ticket to another life by starboykeith (sheith Hades x Persephone background)

Even So by lewilder (zutara; arranged marriage+ language barrier +soft strangers to lovers)

Well, lovely people, there you have it. My top 10 favorite fanfics of the year. I do notice a certain ship shows up a lot on this list, but I wasn’t kidding when I said they took over this year. Still, I tried to mix the list up with other fav ships/fandoms of mine. To the writers who created these incredible stories. I applaud you. I thank you for creating and sharing these wonderful stories. Anyone interested in doing the tag, please do. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR, GUYS

[gonzo-rella]

hi! do you have any tips for writing plus size readers? i've gotten a few asks for them but i'm not plus sized myself, so i'm afraid of writing shitty rep

Of course!

I feel like this is more of a personal thing than ‘tips’ per se, but I hope it will help you feel more comfortable writing for a plus size reader after reading this.

Also, I get that it can be terrifying writing for a group of people you’re not apart of, but you’ve done the best thing you can do and that’s listen to the people you’re writing for and about, such as myself. There’s no right way to go about it, but there are certainly things that you should keep in mind.

Please don't feel the need to put down non-plus size people down to lift up plus size people. I've seen plenty of writers (plus size and none plus size) default to ‘skinny bad; fat good’ just to make the reader-insert seem better. Authors tend to write in characters (typically skinny, attractive women) to bully and abuse the reader character, and this is a problem not exclusive to plus size reader-insert fanfiction, but I feel like this is more prominent in writing for and/or by us than in regular fanfiction. Let’s not be misogynistic, okay?

It’s usually best to avoid writing ‘plus size reader vs. the world’ stories, since I’ve seen plenty of us are sick of the typical ‘everyone in existence (aside from certain canon characters) bullies the reader, meaning she’s crippled by insecurity until she’s saved by her love interest’. It’s annoying that authors think the cure to years of insecurity is some conventionally attractive white guy (probably from the MCU). I’m sure there are a number of plus size people who have been mercilessly tormented, but it’s just gotten to the point where the ‘plus size reader’ genre has been saturated by this same, woe-is-me storyline.

It can be a little weird when the author has the love interest fetishize the reader for being plus size. Some readers might be into that, but I know plenty of us plus size girls hate it when a character says that they ‘like a girl with more meat on their bones’. Honestly, it’d probably better if the reader was loved by their love interests regardless of their weight, not because of it.

Describing the reader as ‘not that fat’ or ‘just a little chubby’ excludes the bigger people who will be reading your work. The people who are more than a little fat are well aware of the fact that they are, in fact, more than little fat, so don’t need a variation of that pitying phrase of ‘you’re not fat’. I’m sure this is done with the best of intentions, but more people need to understand that fat doesn’t equal ugly. Using the specific descriptors excludes the reader just as much as those regular reader-insert stories that describe the reader so specifically that it ends up excluding a number of readers.

Don’t completely endorse being overweight. Everyone’s allowed to be happy, but discouraging self-improvement is patronising and dangerous. I’ve read too many plus size reader-inserts where ‘exercise didn’t work’ so the reader won’t even try to live a healthier lifestyle. In my experience, eating at least semi-well and doing a healthy amount of exercise makes a difference. This might be more of a personal thing that anything, though. Still, I think it’s important.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to hop into my messages and ask, Anon! These were just some general tips, but I’d love to help you more if you need.

[razieltwelve]

Writing Genre Fiction

Not all fiction is the same. It’s why we often divide stories according to which genre or sub-genre they belong to. In the case of fantasy, it’s not unusual to see stories classified as epic fantasy, or humorous fantasy, or dark fantasy, amongst many others. Each of these genres or sub-genres has its own quirks and conventions, and a reader can generally tell whether or not a story fits fairly quickly. As a writer, then, what are some of the things you should consider when writing for a particular genre or sub-genre?

In my opinion, it comes down to the five crucial aspects of a story:

Characters

Plot

Setting

Themes/ideas

Writing technique

Each of these five areas is vital to the success of a story and each genre or sub-genre has its own conventions that apply to each of these areas. Adhering to these conventions, or at least acknowledging them, is the easiest way to ensure your story fits into a particular genre or sub-genre. To illustrate this, let’s pretend we’re trying to write a humorous fantasy or a dark fantasy story.

Characters

Characters are the heart of a story. There are very, very, very few stories that can survive having boring and formulaic characters. In contrast, readers are often willing to overlook a lot of flaws in a story if the characters are interesting and engaging enough. If you want to write a humorous fantasy, then you need to make sure that humour is a part of your characters.

Let’s start off with one of the stereotypes of fantasy fiction: the adventurer. Now, adventurers are commonplace in fantasy fiction. If we want readers to know that they’re reading a humorous fantasy, then we need to make our adventurer a humorous fellow. Now, this doesn’t mean that the adventurer has to be funny. On the contrary, it is entirely acceptable for their misfortune to be the cause of other people’s mirth. Consider the following introduction:

Jeremy could still remember the day he’d first joined the Adventurer’s Guild. They’d given him a wooden plate with his name on it and told him to go kill some goblins. That first mission hadn’t gone exactly to plan. If it hadn’t been for a serendipitous landslide annihilating the goblins’ camp, he might well have met his end then and there. However, there was nothing wrong with a bit of luck to start a man’s adventuring career off. Surely, it wouldn’t be long before his wooden plate gave way to a copper one and then a silver one and then perhaps even a gold one. Ideally, he’d get to platinum one day, but he didn’t want to be too arrogant.

Of course, his first mission hadn’t been the only one that hadn’t gone to plan. The second hadn’t gone to plan either, nor had the third, or the fourth, or the fifth… In fact, it had been ten years and twenty-seven missions, and he still had a wooden plate dangling around his neck. On the upside, he’d finally upgraded from a pointy wooden stick to a proper spear. It was progress. Kind of.

Now, the moment a reader gets through those two paragraphs, they’re going to know what kind of story this is. It’s going to be a humorous fantasy. The very nature of the character (Jeremy) makes it clear that humour is going to play a part in the story. What if we wanted to write a dark fantasy? Well, we’d have to approach it differently:

Ten years and twenty-seven missions. That’s how long he’d been eking out a living. Mission to mission. Day to day. Never knowing when he’d finally bite off more than he could chew. He’d done everything he could to rise up through the ranks, but nothing had worked. He’d lost a few fingers for his troubles – and more than a few friends. The best nights were the ones he didn’t dream. But when he did dream…

Gods. He could still hear the screams. He’d seen fellow adventurers ripped to bits by goblins, crushed under landslides, or set ablaze by fire drakes. It wasn’t skill that had allowed him to survive. It was luck. And maybe a bit of cowardice. But adventuring wasn’t a job for heroes. No. Heroes got killed quickly. It took a cunning man to survive, and a cunning man had to be willing to cut his losses, even if it meant losing a few friends in the process. It might make it hard to sleep at night, but it was still better than ending up in a dragon’s belly or on some ogre’s skewer.

Again, you can see how the character himself is quite a dour, pragmatic fellow. This already makes it obvious that the story will have different feel to it than the earlier one. Moreover, his explanation of his history makes it very clear that this is a world where bad things can and do happen quite frequently to people in his profession. Moreover, his admission that running and abandoning people is acceptable demonstrates a certain… darkness to the world he inhabits.

Characters often reflect the genres or sub-genres they are a part of. If you want to write a humorous fantasy or a dark fantasy, then that needs to be reflected in your characters.

Plot

The plot is another critical part of a story. It is, simply speaking, the sequence of events that occurs throughout the story. Once again, the plot itself can be used to signpost what sort of story a reader is dealing with, and readers who want to read a particular genre or sub-genre will almost always expect certain things from the plot.

For a humorous fantasy, this often means a subversion of expectations to create humour. Since fantasy, as a genre, has so many expectations, this is actually not as difficult as it might seem at first glance. Imagine you’re reading a story and you get this for a plot:

Prince Zachary was the second-most dashing prince in all the land. To become the most dashing prince, all he needed was to rescue a princess. It’s a pity, then, that there aren’t any princesses that need saving. What to do? Well… why not use his royal wealth to train a commoner to pretend to be a princess before hiring a dragon to pretend kidnap her? He could then ‘rescue’ the princess and claim the number one ranking. What could possibly go wrong? How about everything.

As you can see, the plot subverts a whole host of expectations in a way that immediately makes it clear that this is going to be a humorous story. Indeed, the plot is perfectly set up to create humorous situations from beginning to end. Now, what if we wanted to write a dark fantasy? Dark fantasy has its own expectations, and in this case, we’ll want to conform to them. That means taking the normal fantasy tropes and ideas and adding some grim darkness to them.

Prince Zachary was once the heir to the second-most prosperous kingdom in the land, but betrayal saw the downfall of his family. Robbed of his birthright and forced to wander the land disguised as a commoner, Zachary struggles to survive. Ambushed on a lonely road by bandits, he finds himself on the verge of death. Wounded, penniless, and alone, Zachary has no choice but to abandon his honour to survive. If he wants to reclaim his throne, he’ll have to become the same sort of monster as the traitors who struck down his family.

Dark fantasy features dark themes (as the name suggests), and this generally needs to be reflected in the plot. Betrayal, tragedy, and general horribleness are all parts of dark fantasy, and you’re going to need to have them in your plot if you want to write a dark fantasy. It’s not a coincidence that so many dark fantasy stories have what seems to be a whole dictionary’s worth of awful things happening to people.

The plot your story has can often be one of the biggest tells as to which genre or sub-genre it belongs to. A humorous fantasy will often have a humorous plot. A dark fantasy will often have a darker plot.

Setting

The setting of a story is the world in which the story exists as well as the rules that govern that world. What sort of setting you have will greatly influence how your story is perceived by the reader. As you can imagine, a setting full of tragedy and woe will lend itself more easily to a dark fantasy story… unless you make the tragedy and woe so utterly ridiculous that it becomes funny, in which case you’ll end up with a humorous fantasy. Don’t believe? Let’s try it out.

Evermere is a world riven with conflict. Its petty kings have fought for centuries, and their wars have done nothing but wreak havoc and suffering upon common folk and nobles alike. Driven to ever greater depths of desperation, the squabbling kings have turned to demonic pacts to further their power. Now, demons walk the land, harvesting the souls of all those unfortunate to cross their path and inflicting even greater tortures on all those who dare to oppose them.

Yeah. The world described above is pretty awful. It’s got all the ingredients you need for a dark fantasy because it allows you to deploy all of the most common tropes, traditions, and conventions (e.g., people getting tortured, civilians getting wiped out, people being betrayed, bloody conflict for petty reasons, etc.).

But what if we turned the tragedy and woe up to eleven? Well, then you’d get a setting that actually lends itself to humour:

Evermere is a world where kings are a dime a dozen. Wait. That was last week. Right now it’s about a penny a dozen – royal inflation and all that because of all the unnecessary kin-slaying and treachery. And let’s not forget the demons. Constant civil war wasn’t bad enough. Someone actually thought getting demons involved was a good idea. Now the local tax collectors are joined by demonic soul collectors in a never-ending bid to suck commoners and nobles alike dry of all their wealth and their souls.

As you can see, the setting here makes it clear that this is going to be a humorous sort of story despite it being quite dark. Indeed, the increased darkness is such that it actually goes from being dark to being amusingly over the top.

Setting matters. The world your story is set in is what gives it context. Dark fantasy stories often have dark settings. Likewise humorous fantasy stories tend to have humorous settings. In a dark fantasy, demons might expect payment in souls. In a humorous fantasy story, demons might demand payment in limited edition action figures.

Themes/Ideas

Every story has themes and ideas. In some stories, these might play a very central role. In others, they are more in the background. By now, you can tell where I’m going with this. Each genre or sub-genre has themes that occur quite frequently. Including these themes will often make it easier to write for those genres or sub-genres.

If you want to write a dark fantasy, it’s likely you’ll end up including themes or ideas like:

Betrayal

Crime paying off

The good guys not always winning

Pragmatism over honour

Moral relativism

What makes humorous fantasy (and humour in general) a bit of a special case is it’s not so much about what themes or ideas you employ but more about how you use them. For example, you can write a perfectly serviceable humorous fantasy using the themes given above with a few tweaks. Have the betrayal at the heart of the story be something petty, such as two wizards going to war because one dared to wear the same robes as the other to a prestigious convention. As for moral relativism, instead of making it a complex discussion about moral shades of grey, make it a story about a guy who has realised that sometimes it makes sense to pay a dragon to eat the bandits who’re troubling your village.

Certain themes and ideas lend themselves best to particular genres and sub-genres. Making use of those themes and ideas will help you to write a story that satisfies the reader and fits into those genres and sub-genres.

Writing Technique

Writing technique refers to the technical aspects of writing, such as word choice, sentence composition, and so on. Different genres and sub-genres are written in different ways, so conforming (or not conforming) to those standards can make your life as a writer easier.

Take something like epic fantasy. In most epic fantasies, you tend to see more advanced vocabulary and longer, more complex sentences. The prose will often come across as a bit florid or even purple to those who aren’t fond of epic fantasy stories. In contrast, dark fantasy stories tend to lean more toward more succinct prose and grittier descriptions and exposition. Battle isn’t some glorious, heroic endeavour out of story and song. It is brutal and ugly and bloody and all too real. Likewise, humorous fantasy has its own writing techniques, such as hyperbole, contrast, and so on.

Just contrast these descriptions of a battle.

Blood. The coppery smell of it filled the air. Gerard’s spear caught in his opponent’s gut, and the dying man lunged forward with his sword. Gerard let go of the spear and dodged the desperate slash before he drew his dagger and jammed it into the man’s throat. Blood spewed from the wound, and he shoved the other man into the muck of the battlefield. At his feet, a wounded man clutched at his leg. He kicked him in the face and yanked his spear free. There was still plenty of killing to do.

That, as you can imagine, would fit well into a dark fantasy. It’s gritty, realistic, and definitely dark. Now, how about something different:

The two men circled each other, their blades at the ready, each as keen for battle as a berserk wolverine. With all the grace of two walruses fighting on the shore, the pair lunged forward. To call what followed combat would have been an insult to the word combat. It was closer to the deranged flailing of two half-witted drunks.

The writing style should immediately give away that this isn’t a serious story. Instead, it’s a humorous one.

Writing technique can greatly impact how a story is perceived. Things like word choice, sentence construction, metaphor, exaggeration, and more can all help define what genre or sub-genre a story belongs to.

Summary

If you want to write a genre story, then you need to understand how that genre works. Each genre has its own rules, expectations, and conventions. You don’t need to slavishly follow all of them, but incorporating at least some of them into the characters, plot, setting, themes/ideas, and writing techniques you employ will make your task far easier – and far more enjoyable for the readers. This applies to areas as diverse as dark fantasy and humorous fantasy.

If you’re interested in my thoughts on writing and other topics, you can find those here.

I also write original fiction, which you can find on Amazon here or on Audible here.

[camxnoel-updates]

Hardship happens fast, recovery is a slow process.

‘’Look, I’m an extremely private person. I generally shy away from sharing personal information, especially sensitive or vulnerable parts of my life. I feel like many actors are this way, opting to reveal their emotional centers through the lens of character and performance rather than in black and white. But I’ve got nothing but time during the Great Pause of our World, the corona days. I’m well aware my personal story is not a tale of hardship or woe even close to the level of a worldwide pandemic, but perhaps someone may hear my story and appreciate it.

A little over six months ago, I was playing soccer. A break up that led to an emotionally draining on-again-off-again relationship dynamic had finally ended for good a couple days prior. Perhaps this was why I was trying to distract myself so heavily with athletics. I can’t say for certain, but maybe I overworked and weakened my leg with constant running, jumping, twisting. I had played tennis earlier this particular Sunday morning, went for a run, and still felt restless. So I hopped into a pickup soccer match.

It’s incredible how quickly fortune can change; priorities shift in mere seconds. An instant can color the rest of your life. This is exactly what happened when I felt soccer cleats on the side of my shin and heard a loud, distinct crack coming from inside my body. My opponent had leaped onto the center of my lower leg in what I’ll phrase charitably as a rough tackle. I felt his foot pass through my body and knew it was broken before I even hit the deck. I looked down to see my leg at very odd and unnatural angles, being held together by my shin guard like a strip of duct tape strangling a bursting pipe.

One 911 call and several shots of fentanyl and morphine later, I was in the back of an ambulance calling the Shameless production office telling them they’re going to need to re-open the writer’s room and make some changes. I was genuinely more upset at this point about my work being affected than my own body. In my nearly twenty years of acting, I had never missed a day on set, no matter how deathly ill I had been. However, my sock and shoe had been snipped off by the paramedics by this point, and I was able to see that the only thing attaching the lower portion of my limb was some muscle and sinew. My foot and ankle had fully turned around 180 degrees and were now facing south. One of my bones poked and prodded under the surface of my skin, desperately trying to make a jailbreak. So I figured I might not be able to film that scene the next morning.

An x-ray revealed that both my tibia and fibula, two of the largest and slowest healing bones in the body, had snapped cleanly in half. By this point I had called some of the people closest to me. I can’t describe the relief I felt as my friends, my makeshift family, filtered in and out of the hospital room. The warmth and calm that washed over me at the site of their faces accomplished what all the opioids had failed to do. They brought clothes and toiletries, they told jokes, they held my hand.

It took three nurses holding me down and two doctors to twist my leg back around and wrench it into place. A few days later, they cut me open and installed a 16 inch titanium rod through the center of my bone, bolted securely into place. Few more days and I was released from the hospital. I stayed at my manager’s house and later with my angel of a coworker, Shanola Hampton, and her family.

And I gained some perspective. Of what it means to take things for granted. To be able to roll a garbage can to the curb, or pick up a napkin which has fallen to the ground, or hop out of bed without excruciating pain. Life is delicate, health is fragile, and we’re all a bunch of pressurized bags of squishy meat with very limited expiration dates.

To be able to leap and dance and roughhouse is so much of who I am. Up to this point, I had considered it integral to my identity, my fundamental personhood. Physical autonomy is a privilege most able-bodied people don’t even realize they have. And as I had mentioned before, I’m a very private person. Moreover, I view myself as extremely self-sufficient and self-reliant. And there was no worse vulnerability than having to lean on other people for help (sometimes literally.) Yet here I was in this situation, where basic chores and tasks were no longer accomplishable without my friends. My beautiful friends.

And it truly hit me. The importance of community. The value of being there for people when they need you, and of accepting support when you need it. No man is an island. Who we are is not only defined by what we do but also the people who we choose to fill our lives with. There’s nothing like a little suffering to boost your empathy. My injury wasn’t even that serious in the scheme of things, but I gained a greater appreciation for the people who stepped up for me during this time, and recognized some of the people who didn’t. Choose kindness, fill your life with people who value the right things.

I wish I could say that it was a linear line of positivity, progress, and healing from there. I wish I could say that I never relapsed, never felt bitter. Most days were good. But some days I wallowed in self-pity, I drank, I hated the misfortune with a bitter passion. The banality of not being able to do the things you want can ache with a boring dullness that stings far more than the initial hurt of the injury itself. But eventually I learned new ways to entertain myself, placed greater importance on other pursuits and shifted my priorities. I’m thankful for the last half of a year simply for opening my eyes to the obvious things I had been missing.

Now, six months of physical therapy and personal training and healthy living later, and I am almost fully recovered. Yesterday I walked for 5 miles, jogged up hills, even sprinted a few times. It still hurts a bit, but I’m almost fully back. And I have faith I’ll be completely on my feet (bad pun) in the next couple months.

I guess that’s why I wanted to share this story. The world is injured right now. People are hurting and dying in an exceptional and awful way, the economy is in bad shape, many people’s jobs are on the line. So much of the things we so easily took for granted are not currently available to us. I hope the Earth takes this time to shift its priorities, to understand the joys of simple things we cannot currently do like going to a restaurant with friends or hugging your relatives. I hope if people have the means, they can give to those suffering in some way. I hope we as a nation choose kindness, charity, and positivity during this period. I hope we don’t rush this or selfishly leave our homes when we shouldn’t. I hope we protect those most vulnerable.

Healing requires time, it demands patience. This all happened suddenly. But that’s the thing: Hardships happen fast, recovery is a slow process.’’

via Cameron Monaghan’s blog.

[imnotwolverine]

The marriage pact - A Bird’s Life

Henry Cavill x OC Alice - multi-chapter

< Part 18 | Part 19 A Bird’s Life | Part 20 >

Disclaimer: Some strong language

Author’s note: I hope you can survive my attempt at writing poetry.🤓

Word count: 1.475

(Link to my Masterlist)

Dear readers,

When I was young my school reports always had one and the same comment; “Alice should try to get a bit more out of her shell”. I was simply said the shy kid, the nerdy girl, the one who always got the good grades and didn’t want to upset anyone. For the longest time I always put everyone before me. I was the giver, not the receiver, of attention and whenever someone wished to give me that attention, be it as a friend or lover, I pushed them away. I just didn’t know how to cope.

And even now after all these years it still, at times, makes me feel a little weirded out. I do not like to be the centre of attention. Not even when it’s the attention of just one person. Why I exactly feel like that, I don’t know. Is it a form of self protection? Building up walls? Perhaps. In any way, I will have to deal with it. Because me and chocolate cake are getting pretty serious about a lot of things. Adult things.

It happens to just be so that part of these adult things is caring for each other in equal measure. Being there for one another. Letting lust and demand grow into love and care. Or, as U.A. Fanthorpe lovingly described it in her poem Atlas; “There is a kind of love, called maintenance.”

And I, dear readers, want that maintenance kind of love, I do.

Ali

‘I didn’t know you read poetry.’ Henry said, your bodies huddled close together in the mid December wind. It was a small but unfortunate side effect of living near the sea; it seemed to always be windy. And in winter, that gave you a whole new sense of “fuck it’s cold”. I shivered into his chest, watching Kal zoom through the bushes like it was just another fine summers day.

‘Every now and then. It’s a bit of a left over habit from college.’

’Twas a nice poem. The whole collection of poems on that website actually.’ He smiled. ‘You read them all?’ I raised an eyebrow and looked up at his now outgrowing beard. Henry was growing a beard and I did not mind it one bit - it made me feel all kinds of literal and figurative tingles. He snickered. ‘Perhaps.’

‘Henry the poetry man! Makes me wonder actually. You are good with words, but do you ever write yourself?’ I looked back at the stone cobbled path ahead of us, our booted feet tapping in joined rhythm on the cold rock. I really, really enjoyed our walks together and from the fact Henry always near forced me to join him for his walks no matter how bad the weather, I derived he did so too.

‘Perhaps.’ He finally said, earning a inquisitive eyebrow raise from me. ‘Perhaps? Mr. Cavill, please do not dare and keep secrets from me!’ I prodded him in his side and he chuckled, shaking his head. ‘I wouldn’t dare. I just hadn’t ..come around to sharing it with you yet.’

‘Sounds like a secret to me.’ I laughed, seeing Kal had found himself a nice stick. ‘Oh Kal bear! At least you keep no secrets huh?’ I ruffled my fingers through his fur when he came to present his new found treasure to us, Henry’s hand near automatically taking it from the friendly Akita to throw it a bit further down the road, for the dog to fetch.

‘Okay. Something I wrote a while ago..don’t judge me though. It’s..-‘ ‘A secret.’ I squeezed my lips tight as if promising to keep my lips shut from here on. He sniffled. ‘Something like that.’

Clearing his throat and gazing out over the wintery landscape, he started:

‘A bird’s life

Before their singing rings I wake, an early riser Come morning do I take On the day, again a little whiter

Striding feet I follow Black and white, his beard too grey I hear my mothers voice speak again Do your duty come what may

But as I follow my winged friends Around the world I sink Dragging feet that stall and linger Not always can this be so, I think

My nests though many Are fewer my home My coffins are filled With gold silver and woe

As days then end I reach Yet another homeless nest Its branches prickle and when I look Hours more not to rest

Sun rises burning and Sore feet hit cold levels Long distances I go more Until sweet dreams too unravel

This journey’s not mine Too lonesome to stay I flicker my wings And yet again for love, do I pray.’

Silence fell as the last of his words filtered through the morning air, my ears still peeked as I now listened to his slow, calm breath, my hand wrapped around his arm. He had spoken as if his poem was directed at the birds in the trees themselves, his eyes reaching up to the empty branches in the near distance, no birds to be seen. It was just us two. Or three actually, as Kal, though blissfully aware of this magical moment, was there too, roaming around freely in the thicket.

‘When did you write that?’ I finally asked, looking up at him, his face calm. ‘The day after you left London. I actually hadn’t slept a wink that night before you had to fly back. I…gosh I’m such a foo-‘ - ‘Stop that.’ I halted my feet and gave him a fiery gaze. ‘Don’t apologise for your feelings.’ I admonished, then gently rubbed his arm. ‘And that was a terribly beautiful poem Hen.’

‘Hmm.’ He smiled, slightly unsure. ‘Thank you Ali.’

‘No thank you. And to answer your bird’s heart.’ I cupped his cheek in both hands. ‘I love you and I want to make that journey with you, I do.’

‘Even after all the surrogate mother shit and..’ - ‘Henry William Dalgliesh Cavill. Did you just haphazardly skip the first half of my blog this morning?’ I raised a teasing, yet authoritative eyebrow at him. He bit his lip to hide a chuckle. ‘I’m doing it too, huh?’

‘Yep. Take my love you fool! Take it! TAKE IT!’ I used both my hands to shake him like a salt shaker - though little did I actually get him to move as this man was about as built as the empire state building. His smile grew and grew and before long he was laughing aloud, his head nodding in amusement. ‘Okay Ali. Ali. You can stop now. I surrender.’

‘Then kiss me like you mea-‘ I wasn’t even allowed to finish that sentence, his lips crashing down onto mine. Soft and plushy, the after taste of his morning coffee still lingering, he was not going to let the moment go to waste.

We probably stood there for a few minutes. Just kissing, our cheeks burning like hot coals despite the icy wind around us, his hands carefully wrapped around my head, keeping me where he wanted me to be. His fellow bird, ready to fly out together.

Or well, almost; first I had to take my employer up on that hiatus proposal.  

—

‘I got the okay! She’s going to check for a temp writer and once that person’s all settled in, I could..go with you.’ I cheered, flying around Henry’s neck, not minding the fact that his parents were also near - his mom just peeking her head around the corner of the kitchen and his dad probably reading his newspaper in the living room.

‘What?! Really?!’ Henry’s smile grew from ear to ear as he wrapped me, winter coat and all, in his arms. ‘Baby that’s..’ He leaned back again. ‘Wow.’ He near giggled.

‘Are you staying for dinner, Ali?’ His mom inquired, infiltrating on our little moment. We quickly awoke from our little bubble and Henry muttered some quiet apology, pushing the still opened front door closed behind us.

‘Eh…’ I blinked at Henry. He smiled and nodded, bidding me to accept her offer. ‘Yes please. Thank you Marianne.’ I looked over at her and she gave me a most adoring wink. ‘You are practically family Ali.’ She mused, disappearing back into the kitchen where dinner was already well on the way.

I watched her waddle off, feeling Henry’s strong arms pull me in for a full-circled swoop through the air, making me fly like the birds in his poem. ‘I love you so much!’ He exclaimed, making me laugh with pure giddiness. ‘Hen! Carefu— OHH — HEN- put me down, put me down hahahah. Oh gosh.’ I squirmed until finally he put me back on my feet, his wide teethed grin causing sweet dimples to crease his cheeks.

‘I love you too, silly.’

‘Then I better start calling my agent, hmm?’

‘Mhm. You better.’

--

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[watching-pictures-move]

Put On Your Raincoats #15 | Rainbows in the Dark

To the extent that a porn director crossed over to the mainstream, Gregory Dark would be it. Certainly, there have been directors who did one or two porn features early in their careers, like Abel Ferrara, William Lustig and Wes Craven, but they're known almost entirely for their mainstream work. There are also porn directors who did maybe one mainstream movie, like Gerard Damiano, but their careers were relegated to porn for the most part. Dark is the rare director who was prolific on both sides, so to speak, starting with massive hardcore hits like New Wave Hookers, moving on to directing softcore, thrillers and softcore thrillers with some regularity and eventually becoming a popular music video director. My initial plan was to explore the full gamut of Dark's career. I wanted to get a sense of each phase of his work and to see what elements of his style translated across them. Essentially I wanted to understand Dark as an auteur. But then something miraculous happened. I got lazy. (Also I had a muted reaction to some of his movies and became more interested in another director in the meantime.) So I decided to limit my exploration to a few of his early movies and call it a day.

The first one I watched was New Wave Hookers, his best known hardcore title and considered a classic in the genre. What I expected going in and what worked for me can be deduced from the title. Dark's visual style very much brings to mind the "new wave" in the title: big hair, fog machines and neon lighting, all of which are first seen in the opening credits, in which the female talent almost ritualistically present themselves to the camera. There's some stylistic precedent in the work of Rinse Dream AKA Stephen Sayadian (the artist I got more interested in as I delved into Dark's work), but Sayadian's aesthetic feels culled from the art underground. (Dark reuses a few of Sayadian's actors in some of his films.) Dark's style feels more commercial, almost packaged for MTV. (Dark intended his film as a reaction to hardcore porn features of his era, although I'd argue that his choice of camera angles still feels in line with other films of the era.) This is a movie that looks good and, thanks to some choice music courtesy of the Plugz (whose song "Electrify Me" accompanies the opening credits) and the Sockets (who provide the theme song), sounds good too.

What I gelled to much less was the sense of humour. The movie opens with two buddies played by Jamie Gillis (wearing a tie over a t-shirt) and Dark regular Jack Baker shooting the shit and watching another Dark production. ("That fuckin' guy looks exactly like you. Is that you?") Baker starts expounding on his thoughts about pimping and "programming" women to fuck with music. Baker also notes, "a pimp calls a chick a bitch". They doze off, and when they wake up they find themselves inexplicably in an office. Baker is wearing a yellow tracksuit, Gillis is sporting an East Asian accent, and there's a guy on the floor substituting for their phone. (Gillis asks: "Why do we not have a regular telephone?" Baker explains: "He got the power, the second sight.") As the movie proceeds to make good on its premise, wherein women have sex after listening to new wave music, we're treated to a steady stream of racial taunting. Baker grouses about black music being ineffective for their purposes, dropping the N-bomb. Gillis continues with his accent. The two get into racially charged arguments. A middle eastern client is served in a tent and barks like a dog after he's finished. At one point, Gillis wants sushi and is served by Kristara Barrington while East Asian style music plays on the soundtrack. I recognize that a lot of humour from the era is extremely politically incorrect and has aged poorly, but there's something about Dark's use of racist and misogynist humour that feels especially confrontational. I admit I was a bit bothered by all of this.

Still, there are moments of humour that did work for me. One of the headsets that the characters use has dildos protruding from both earpieces (pointing outwards, of course), and the production design, while not always stylish, is at least endearing in its blatant cheapness. To their credit, Baker and Gillis have undeniable chemistry and do sell the material as well as they can. (I laughed when Gillis, when confronted by the vice squad, drops his accent and exclaims "I used to work in your fuckin' office, and now I'm rich, I'm satisfied, and I'm Chinese, you assholes." Am I a bad person? Probably.) And in terms of how it meets genre expectations, I do think Ginger Lynn and Kristara Barrington have a real magnetism in their scenes.

Given the racial content in New Wave Hookers, it probably won't surprise anybody that Dark was a pioneer in interracial pornography. I am not a sensitive enough writer to begin unpacking all the implications of the concept, but I did watch one of his movies in the subgenre, Black Throat. This was a shot-on-video effort and looks considerably cheaper and uglier than New Wave Hookers, but shares some other qualities. It opens and closes with a punk song that references that film as well as Let Me Tell Ya Bout White Chicks, Dark's first interracial feature, and to be honest, the song is pretty fucking catchy. The movie follows Roscoe, a man who wears yellow sunglasses and both a polo and a Hawaiian shirt and his friend Mr. Bob, a talking rubber rat. He's searching through the garbage while arguring with Mr. Bob over what to eat when he finds a business card. "Madame Mambo's House of Divine Inspiration Thru Fellatio!" (All of the characters pronounce fellatio differently. Mr. Bob says "fell-uh-tee-oh" and calls Roscoe a "fuckin' honky", to which he responds "Fuck you, Mr. Bob!")

Roscoe insists he has to find her. "If I don't find her, I'm gonna die!" (When asked why, he responds, "I dunno, it sounded kinda dramatic, I guess.") Mr. Bob enlists the help of a "young urban professional pimp" named Jamal, played by Jack Baker. (He prefers the term "flesh broker" and describes upgrading his diet, clothes and investments.) Roscoe, Mr. Bob and Jamal go from scene to scene, watching other characters having sex in different racial combinations, asking them where they can find Madame Mambo. (Sometimes they ask the characters directly, other times they talk to their private parts.) The best of these scenes, in my humble opinion, is a light domination flavoured sex scene featuring Christy Canyon. Perhaps because of the dynamic, there's an element of actual acting involved here, and because Canyon is, uh, pleasingly proportioned and has a certain magnetism, I found this scene more engaging than the others, at least until it turns into a regular sex scene.

Eventually they go back to Roscoe's place and find a voodoo ritual taking place where a black woman with multicoloured hair (think the George H.W. Bush rainbow wig from the Simpsons, but straight, not curly) is jumping on their bed while a bunch of white dudes in hats, capes and sunglasses jack off around her. This of course is Madame Mambo and at this point the movie makes good on the title while drumbeats and funk play on the soundtrack. Given the premise, this movie proved (thankfully) lighter on racial humour than I expected going in. There is an element of racial critique in Baker's character, and Madame Mambo is certainly exoticized, but the racial content otherwise is limited to the interracial couplings and doesn't overload the dialogue. However, this is a fairly ugly looking movie, shot on video, featuring unimpressive camerawork and lighting as well as extremely cheap looking production design (although the movie does mine this for laughs). I also found the sex scenes overlong and the music a bit repetitive. I imagine if you were jerking off to this back in the '80s it was easier to get through, but trying to watch it now as an actual movie, despite some decent humour throughout, proved a bit of a challenge.

The next one I watched was White Bunbusters, which despite the first half of the title is not particularly racially charged. The theme song here, crooned in the style of early '60s rock'n'roll, explains that the movie is about anal sex, as the second half of the title suggests. We begin with Tom Byron thrusting into his wife Shanna McCullough (while wearing his glasses) only to be disappointed by her refusal to take it in the butt. The next day at the office (decorated by construction paper all over the walls, drawers sketched in magic marker and a crude sign with their business' name "Acme Proctology"), he hears an ad for the "A-Busters", an enterprising duo who will convince your wife or partner to let you put it in their butt. We cut to the A-Busters office and see them in yellow shorts, lime green suspenders and orange baseball caps, fiddling with their hi-tech instruments (which include an "anal listening device"). Soon we see them go to work on Jack Baker's girlfriend, taking a cash payment after the fact.

Meanwhile, Byron's friend Greg Rome hears about his woes and offers to let him fuck his wife Keli Richards (Rome is named Bob and Richards is named Bobette). Of course Byron takes advantage of Rome's generous offer, but later gets annoyed when Rome insists it was a "one time deal". They're interrupted by Jennifer Noxt, who asks about a secretarial position for the law office next door. Rather than correcting her, which would be the right thing to do, they have sex with her, which is absolutely not the right thing to do. ("So do I get the job?" "We'll call you later, baby.") We go back to the A-Busters, who go to work on a pornstar warming up for her first anal scene (the movie is called Hershey Highway to Hell). Eventually, Byron decides to make use of their services, and in the climax, when he's having a nice dinner with his wife (complete with plastic cups and paper plates), they crash the party and get to work. After it's all over, Byron thanks the A-Busters and shakes one of their hands, only to promptly wipe it off on his suit.

This is as lo-fi as Black Throat, and features a lot of raunchy humour, but thankfully no real racial content outside of the title. Perhaps because the focus is on a specific set of acts (threesomes, anal sex, double penetration), the execution seems more consistently energetic. The ratio of the threesomes is a little off from what I prefer, but I was not unmoved by the scenes involving Keli Richards, Jennifer Noxt and Shanna McCullough. I realize there are more dignified ways to spend one's time than watching in its entirety and singing the praises of a movie called White Bunbusters, but sometimes the lizard brain takes over. I feel compelled to report the facts, and the facts are that this is good at what it does. As an actual movie, there isn't a whole lot to this, but were I to rate this on the Peter-Meter as the filmmakers intended, it would fare respectably.

Where Gregory Dark's style and the sum of his provocations really worked for me was in The Devil in Miss Jones 3: A New Beginning and The Devil in Miss Jones 4: The Final Outrage, a two-part odyssey through hell. (Attentive viewers may note that the original Devil in Miss Jones takes place before the heroine is sentenced to hell, but this is not a direct sequel. There is also a second part by Henri Pachard and later sequels directed by Dark that I did not see. The narrative in the third and fourth entries feels pretty self contained.) The movie begins with close-ups of our heroine, played by Lois Ayres, taking a shower while "A Christian Girl's Problems" by the Gleaming Spires plays over the soundtrack, her interiority hinted at with an astute song choice. (It's worth noting that this was not an original song made for the movie.) The structure intersperses her story with a series of interviews with those who knew her: an ex-boyfriend who "had a disagreement about the relationship" (he slept around); a woman speculates that Ayres was "a closet lesbian" and that "she probably went to live in one of those lesbian islands in the Caribbean"; a girl who knew her as a prude back in high school, a priest with a thick accent who offers a eulogy; her brother, who speaks in new age euphemisms and resents that she was the favourite growing up; and a blind ex-boyfriend who claims she was the loveliest person he knew "after Helen Keller". (This last character describes his sex life as very "normal": no peeing or dogs, wouldn't fuck pizzas, etc.) All these people knew her, but they didn't really know her.

The actual story follows her after she breaks up with her boyfriend (over the phone, as he shaves another woman's pubic hair while feigning innocence). She heads for a bar, brushing off a stereotypical black pimp played by Jack Baker who mistakes her for a prostitute, and promptly orders a "taco" (a draught beer, a Bloody Mary, and a draught beer in three separate glasses). Beside her is a man asleep on bar in tuxedo, who turns out to have been stood up at his own wedding. They hook up, leading to a sex scene scored by a blaring saxophone that I assume was practice for Dark's softcore work. The scene ends when the heroine knocks her head against the headboard and wakes up in a pitch black space near a grave. In comes Jack Baker, riding atop a woman, to tell her what the situation is. "You are dead, you got no clothes, and this is hell!"

The rest of the movie follows them going through different rooms, the heroine being unable to comprehend her fate, as they watch the different punishments endured by the denizens of hell. There's the room full of "peepers", virgins doomed to only watch sex for all eternity. (One of them explains: "I showed my tits to a guy to get a Gucci purse. He went off an overpass.") There are characters doomed to fuck until their genitals wear out or are ravaged by venereal disease. Baker gives Ayres a raincoat "to keep the come off", but the moment she forgets about it she finds herself getting gangbanged and promptly has to be rescued by Baker (okay, not that promptly, we get to enjoy this for a few minutes). Along the way we're led to believe from the interviews that the heroine might have a fetish for black men, and the conversation between Ayres and Baker grows increasingly heated and racially charged. This idea culminates in a trip to the "racist room", where a white man with a swastika armband is having a threesome with two women of colour while a white woman is sucking off two black men in tribal makeup. Ayres and Baker have a final confrontation on the subject.

"What about all the black racists?"

"Look bitch, when a black man hits a white man, we don't call it racist!"

"What do you call it then?"

"Smart!"

"That's ridiculous, there are plenty of black racists!"

"No dig, you stupid ass white bitch!"

"Look, you're even one of them, calling me a stupid bitch and a white bitch!"

"We'll you're stupid, you're white and a bitch, so what is your motherfucking problem?"

"You're crazy, negro, and you're one of the sickest people in here!"

"That's right, I'm a crazy negro! I'm so crazy I'll eat my own arm!"

This is a deeply uncomfortable scene, and what follows is even more disturbing, as we learn the true nature of the heroine's relationship with her father, a reveal that Dark plays for maximum shock value in depicting "The Ordeal of the Taboo Breakers".

In some ways this isn't all that different from New Wave Hookers, but Dark's direction seems more purposeful here. The stylized depiction of hell, with its black backgrounds and harsh neon lighting, imbue a real sense of menace into the proceedings. With the exception of two scenes, the sex isn't all that outrageous, but Dark's mise-en-scene has a way of rendering it almost as horror. It's not exactly scary and probably still "does the trick" if you're watching this for those reasons, but there's an undeniable charge here. Likewise, the dark humour and the racial content seem to work in tandem here, and Ayres and Baker really sell their adversarial chemistry. (It's worth noting that even by the standards of the video vixens that appear in Dark's movies, Ayres has an amazing hairdo.) Dark may not have entirely thought out his thesis along these lines, but the movie is provocative in its handling of this content, and unlike New Wave Hookers, not in a way that hurts it. At a combined 2+ hours, this probably runs a bit too long, but it does shape the usual procession of sex scenes into a structure that carries an uneasy momentum that matches the heroine's trepidation. We might not like what we're seeing, but we also can't help but keep looking.

[beliefbeautyizwithin]

I have yet to see a show change the direction of their main character like Good Girls has done. I would call Beth ruthless but I feel like that would be me giving her too much credit. A ruthless person at least has reasoning. Beth is empty. Empty, Disillusioned and oblivious. I use to feel for Beth , but now I can barely stand her.

Why ?

Despite how strained a relationship her and Rio have had. Things have never gone this far. You shoot the man, snitch on him, have sex with him then kick him out, throw keys in his face , then blame him for Alll your woes. All so you can uproot his business from him. Guys I dont think she cares for Rio. I dont need a Socrates 10 page report to figure that out. Has he done stuff to mess with her, ofcourse. Have they all been called for ? Most of the time Yes.

Looking at Beth's behavior this season really drew everything into perspective for me. I've been looking at Beth from the standpoint of this mother of 4 trying to make a life for her friends and children despite the forces against her such as her cheating husband. Then enters Rio , someone she stole from who she initially helps out to get out of paying the remainder of a debt. She then gets intrigued by his MONEY and business , and decides she wants to get involved.

I know Rio is not this great person and he is indeed this "gangster". But when it comes to Beth he's been very lenient with her. Now when you toss the coin the other way around, The way Beth has treated Rio you see these sentiments are not shared. Rio has yet to be shown as dilibertly trying to send Beth to jail nor has he shot or harmed her.

I keep wondering why people INSIST on making up excuses for Beth and come up with all these deep analysis to try and justify her actions. Beth is a character written by writers displayed and portrayed by the actress Christina Hendricks. She's fictional. So when people speak out against the character we are NOT speaking about a REAL person. Where you can describe as layered with complexities. We are referring to how a fictional character is being displayed on screen.

Beth for me has become this distant Character I can no longer relate to or feel for. She wants to continue killing Rio a guy who has given her sound advise on how to navigate crime. Despite the dangers of dealing with a unrealiable person like Beth .

Did Rio have to cut her in when she proposed washing his cash at the stores , No. After she snitched on him could he have shot her instead of shooting Dean? Yes. After Rio found out the lead witness on his case was connected to the girls could he have killed them? Yes. Mind you Boomer was going to snitch ON EVERYONE including the girls. Beth has this Disillusioned idea that she can jump in and out of crime whenever she wants on HER own terms. She so busy worried about Rio being her problem that she doesnt realize hes actually her solution. I know she wants her own business , but what criminal is going to take Beth seriously ? A mother of 4 ? Without jeporidizing her children or her sister and friend. They would all be killed ! Shes lucky Rio is the only person Beth has been dealing with. The guy that despite his many attempts to get her to understand what shes up against has fallen against deaf ears. To the point where she keeps trying to play him and steal from him and NOW wants to continously kill him !! I guess shooting him three time wasnt enough. But people want everyone to feel for Beth ? How ? When she keeps doing malicious uncalled for stuff.

Rio has already moved on from the idea of wanting her dead. He told her he was going to allow her to live. Then she gets Max to try and kill him after he has moved on. She starts stealing from him too. Then he CUTS her back IN AGain. Only for the woman to hire a hitman to kill him. Come on ! Enough with it. Now I see her dancing like a robot after she believes Rio is dead ? This is not the Brio I asked for.

Beth has crossed too many lines for me . It doesnt make any sense compared to the emotions shown in Season 2. You would think nothing happened between the two of them. They've made her an unlikable character. You dont have to be a fan of Rio to realize hes the one constantly being played by a woman he shows empathy and emotions for. I don't need anyone jumping on me talking about he's trying to frame her for Lucy's murder or mental abuse , or whatever. He had too , to make her realize how deep she is in this criminal establishment. Beth believes she can have the easy way out of everything.

Remember this : Beth was a mother of 4 who had the ability to stay home and not work for several years while her husband paid ALL the Bill's (or so she thought) and never had to work hard to earn a decent living most of her life. Then she has a guy like Rio who has her EARN everything and be accountable for her mistakes. Ofcourse this was going to be unsettling for her to deal with. In her world things are suppose to be given to her. No wonder whenever Rio says No or forces her to deal with something she rather get rid of him rather than handle her business. Beth wants to run her own criminal organization without ANY legit experience nor any understanding of the reality and dangers of crime aside from Rio. She's lost.