#there are things about these edits I would have done differently in an ideal world but I've been fighting with my editor so this will do

[sparrowsfallingfromthesky]

"...I speak to you now from the other side, from yet another exile, changed into a man without meaning or message... How I long for the past, its blend of confusion and terror, its stretches of solitude... I feel once more the unknown staring down at the known as if hoping to be recognized into existence."

From "Two Letters" by Mark Strand

[brainscrems]

Making a little pinned post for goyim who stumble across this blog. Nothing in your background, none of your experiences with marginalization, nothing at all makes you exempt from having unconsciously incorporated antisemitism into your world view and mindset. The best thing you can do is seek out a wide range of all jewish voices with no preconceived notions, hear how different things affect their lives and oppression, and take that into account about what you say and do. Next thing to address. Antisemitism from the left DOES exist and it IS in your movements for palestinian liberation, as ugly a truth as that is. I support a free palestine and an end to genocide. So, when I showed up to my first protest and saw a displayed swastika with hundreds of people around, I was extremely dismayed that not a single one was willing to stand up and say a goddamned thing. This is the state of antisemitism on the left. Most people won’t *openly* spout hateful rhetoric, tho those who will are quite loud. The real problem is that there is no collective willingness to go after the open antisemites in these movements. It’s deemed acceptable because it’s for a good cause. And let me tell you, this shit is quite typical and we jews see it constantly. Just because you aren’t seeing antisemitism doesn’t mean it’s not there. Of course you aren’t seeing it. You’re not jewish. You don’t have the background to notice shit that you’ve been taught is normal and fine. Yet, your silence in the face of these things or even your engagement in them still hurts us. And. You know what they say. If nazi joins 4 people at a table and they do nothing about it you have 5 nazis. So. What can you do? Seek out jewish voices and LEARN!! Don’t tokenize us. Don’t choose ones you already agree with. The first resource I recommend for dealing w antisemitism in leftist spaces is called “The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere” by April Rosenblum. This is a jew with a long history of palestinian advocacy and she has done a great job at breaking down where antisemitism happens. Link at the bottom. It was written in 2007 and remains depressingly relevant today. This pamphlet is 24 pages, a bit long, but very thorough. This pamphlet is the barebones details of what’s antisemitic btw. The things listed in there are basic “nearly every jew in the world” would agree things. There is more than just what is contained in there that’s antisemitic and your best resource is gonna be listening to jewish voices. No tokenizing. No dismissing. Just listening and seeing what makes sense. That said, this shit is essential reading because it gives you the tools to start making spaces safe for jews. If you don’t care about that then, well, you probably don’t belong on this blog.

EDIT: In an ideal world I would like a binational one-state solution with a right of return for jews and palestinians as well as massive reparations for palestinians. I don’t identify as a zionist. And. I know jews who identify as zionists who want the exact same things I do. If your rhetoric is calling for violence against those people you can fuck right off. Zionist is a jewish word that has been appropriated by goyim, both by christian “zionists” as well as those who wish to discredit jews wanting to live peacefully with palestinians in our shared homeland. It means whatever the jew using it says it does in the context of their speech. The people who support the ethnic cleansing and genocide of palestinians or the treatment of palestinians as second class citizens are called kahanists and racist assholes, not zionists. Stop misusing our fucking word. Learn what the word means from actual members of our community instead of shouting about it as a fucking outsider and appropriating a term with deep community roots. Yea, Israel has committed so many war crimes and is currently committing genocide. This is not what zionism represents to most zionists so if you’re pushing that narrative just fucking do better and stop putting jewish lives at risk with your irresponsible rhetoric. I once again redirect you to the linked pamphlet. This is not a heavily focused on topic in it, but it gives clear instructions on what not to do, even if it doesn’t give you all the details on the why.

[katsona-the-katsequel]

Doppelgängers

A list of the different personifications of aspects of oneself in Persona.

Shadow Self

Representation of the public cognition, person's desire, person's insecurities, and person's fear of public perception (everyone say: "thank you, Hiding in Private").

Distinguishable for their unnatural eyes.

Everyone develops one at some point in life (possibly during early teenage years).

Love to dunk on themselves, unless they're a Palace Ruler, then they dunk on everyone else... before dunking on themselves.

Must be battled and/or accepted by the individual they represent to disappear or become a Persona.

Can be found anywhere in the Expanse. If the issues the Shadow represents are too strong, they form a Dungeon to live in. If their desires become distorted, they form a Palace. Both structures attract regular shadows.

So tied to the individual that any harm done to the Shadow Self will be reflected on the real one. If the Shadow Self is killed, the real individual dies as well.

With the magic of science, can be forced into unstable artificial Personas.

Splitting

Shadows can be naturally split into more aspects of oneself if an inner conflict is too big for said Shadow to represent all of it.

Split into more specific aspects, Shadows gain more autonomy.

Some of the Shadows may want to obliterate the other Shadows if they have opposing aspects. This way the specific aspect gains more power inside the real person's psyche.

Under the Rumor Curse

Nyarly takes advantage of his domain to take control over Shadows and make them do his bidding.

Shadows basically thrive under the Rumor Curse, leaning more on their "public cognition" aspect.

Can lean on said public's perception to continue existing after the individual they represent dies.

Have a stronger desire to not only kill their real selves, but replace them as well.

The combination of greater autonomy and desire to replace the real versions grants them the ability to fight with Reverse Personas instead of transforming into bigger monsters.

May be formed regardless if the individual already has a Persona. Rumors about anyone exist regardless if they've figured themselves out, after all.

The opposite of a Shadow Self. Ideals are what an individual wishes they were and how they want to be perceived.

(EDIT: Shiori's Shadow wasn't born from the Rumor Curse. It was truly born from her subconscious and manipulated by Nyarly. Sorry about the mistake 🐧).

Ideal Self

SPECULATION ALERT: Might form as naturally as a Shadow, maybe even earlier than the teenage years. The moment a kid is asked what they want to be when they grow up, it's game.

SPECULATION ALERT: Unknown where they naturally reside, though it might be the Expanse as well.

Benevolent by nature, will always help their real self.

Can fight by summoning their own version of Personas.

(I don't have pics of P2's Ideal Selves, but they exist 😔)

Cognitive Self

Representation of how the individual is seen by a specific person.

Created from the perception of someone else, with no input from the individual.

Mostly found in Palaces.

Can be fought, but their power depends on what the Palace Ruler thinks of them and their death doesn't affect the real self.

Under the Rumor Curse

Lean more on rumors for their creation, rather than a single person's perception.

Can coexist in the physical world with the real selves.

Mostly come into being when the rumor is too contradictory to the real thing (like death rumors), unlike normal rumors that become part of a person.

Alternate Self

Come into being whenever there is an alternate timeline.

I suppose characters from P5X would count as this.

Anima/Animus

So far, has only been shown as a genderbent version of an individual.

They're not even called this, but I felt they needed a special distinction for lore-implication-reasons, and if Atlus can play loosely with Jungian terms, so can I.

Not even I know what's up with Theo.

Shapeshifters

Beings with the power to change their appearance to look like someone else.

Somehow both more AND less common than it should be.

[writingquestionsanswered]

Struggling to Focus on Plot vs Everything

Anonymous asked: I'm currently outlining (whilst still figuring out my plot and everything), but I keep getting sidetracked. My brain is trying to plant seeds to help me figure out the overall story, but it's distracting me from getting the main story line plotted out because instead I'm trying to come up with every possible scenario for why things happen. This method is exhausting, though, and I'd rather have a solid story line first, then flesh it out from there. Ultimately, I feel like I need to figure out my story's timeline and the main events, because I want that all sorted before I tackle how the characters experience it. It's just really overwhelming and when I try to pluck out the big pieces, they crumble into smaller pieces.

[Ask, and subsequent ask, edited for length and content]

So, if I understand correctly, it seems like part of you just wants to get down the actual plot of the story, but when you try, you end up delving into all these deeper background details?

What I'm thinking is this: if you're able to, I would start by doing what I think of as a "holistic summary" of your story... sort of like a brain dump but in general chronological order from beginning to end. It doesn't have to be perfect... you can backtrack, jump around a little, and go on tangents as needed. The point is to just get down as much of the story as you know... and as much as your brain will want to flesh out in real time... just to get it out of your head.

Sometimes, just getting it all out of your head on paper in one single container can help free up your brain to focus on the backbone of your story... the actual framework all of those details need to adhere to.

Another thing that might help, if you haven't done this already, is to look for a story structure template to help you tease out the story. There are loads of them out there from Save the Cat Writes a Novel! to Larry Brooks Story Structure, Three-Act Story Structure, the Snowflake Method, The Hero's Journey, Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet, Derek Murphy's 24 Chapter Outline, Gwen Hayes' Romancing the Beat, Shawn Coyne's Story Grid, The Seven Point Plot Structure, Dan Harmon's Story Circle, The Five-Act Structure, James Scott Bell's A Disturbance and Two Doorways, Kishōtenketsu Structure, Story Spine, and a bajillion others... The key to using a story structure template is to know it doesn't have to be followed exactly. They're not there as molds to cram your story into... they're more like "suggested itineraries" for a road trip. This is an ideal route with some popular stops along the way, but you may wish to alter the route slightly or make some different stops. Many writers actually use bits and pieces of different templates to suit their needs or the needs of their story.

Sometimes, just choosing a random template to tease out your main plot can be enough to help you see exactly what the main plot is, which makes all the other stuff fall into its proper place as character development, back story, and world building.

I hope this helps!

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I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

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[tanadrin]

This edition also includes some really useful historical notes to augment Book I of Utopia; the early 16th century was a time when the population was growing, adding slack to a labor market that had been tight since the Black Death (to the improvement of the position of the peasantry that survived it), there was gradual inflation that was also eroding at the position of anybody without much capital to invest, patterns of trade were changing, and of course the process of enclosure was spreading.

The problem wasn't just a lack of, like, theoretical underpinnings for dealing with these economic and social issues. Of course Henry VIII didn't have a court economist or anything to help him out with his fiscal policy. But it was also just that the conception of what the law and what government was for was different: in the much more leisurely pace of the premodern world, there was a strong feeling that the law and government were supposed to basically be a steady-state system. You would figure out the ideal set of laws, implement them, and be done; you might have to work to enforce those laws, but the laws were not supposed to be constantly changing, and you definitely weren't supposed to have to be continually updating and expanding them as an instrument of policy, because the world in general was supposed to be much like it always was, from one decade to the next.

And that's not a crazy way to view the world in the Middle Ages! Premodern inflation rates were low. People's intuitions around value and price were based on that experience. Population growth was low. Patterns of international trade didn't change quickly. When things did change suddenly, it was either because of a catastrophe like the Black Death or upheavals like war or famine; and communities and individuals that had won legal privileges from their feudal lords were jealous of those privileges, leading (along with the inherently fragile nature of subsistence agriculture) to a certain conservatism in the culture.

In this worldview, the job of a king or a minister isn't to be the careful manager of a dynamic system. It's to be a wise and thoughtful dispenser of justice and guardian of the inherited legal system. This is also the vision of Utopia itself: a society which has settled into an ideal steady-state, whose political economy is thus fixed, and which has no real room for "development," because the kind of development you or I think of as inherent to history is, at best, a synonym for "something went horribly wrong, and we have to repair it," if it exists at all. The irony there, of course, is that Utopia is not a medieval book: it's being written just as the Renaissance is bursting over Europe ushering in the beginning of modernity. Things are changing in England, and while they are changing slowly right now, the pace of change is about to pick up drastically, especially when that little German monk publishes his 95 theses.

Really, I wonder what it must have felt like to be a humanist at the beginning of the 16th century. There is much to be excited about--news from the new world (not yet the battleground of large European empires), the rediscovery of classical learning, the flourishing of art and literature. But so much is about to change--and much of it in a bad way! the European Wars of Religion are just around the corner!--and you have no idea.

[highdio]

concernedstick-love replied to your post: "DIO and the Plan for Heaven..."

Excellent post, but if you allow me, i am very curious about what one of my main problems is with the Over Heaven Stand. Like, from what i am reading, it doesn't seem like something Araki would write. I don't have the game, so maybe you can clear me out, but it seems like it has poorly constructed powers. Unlike Araki, who tightly explains and displays them. So, i hope you don't mind if i personally prefer at least an ambiguous result to what that game gave into. (Like, did Dio had to punch EVERYONE on Earth to conquer it? Punch the ground and it became a shockwave of brainwashing? It feels wishy washy and not what Araki would have done)

Just so we're on the same page, some facts: according to CC2's Hiroshi Matsuyama, Araki supervised Story Mode in Eyes of Heaven, and it wasn't just a case of him signing off on what CC2's staff came up with. Instead Araki was very involved. Like very. Not only did Araki edit and reorganize their original story script but he suggested DIO as the final boss. Araki supervised Heaven DIO's design in every detail - skin color, hairstyle, etc - and paid particular attention to his expressions and attack techniques.

Even though it was a collaborative effort, Araki definitely did "write" Heaven DIO and his stand powers.

Re: what you're pointing out, I think The World Over Heaven isn't a stand power Araki would write for a manga's main antagonist; it's written for a story mode boss. Heaven DIO's short in-game screentime limits how well you can develop the character. As it stands, Heaven DIO's abilities expand on OG DIO's powers: he's got time stop and he punches stuff, it's just that punching stuff rewrites reality and erases people from existence.

When I say I like heaven-ascended Dio's powers in EoH better as a realization of the Heaven Plan had DIO been the one to carry it out than I do Made in Heaven's universal reset, I mean this from the standpoint that the universal reset doesn't feel like a thing Dio would want (fully explained). But I do agree that the ideal realization of "heaven" by Dio himself would best be written by Araki not for the sake of a story mode bad guy but in longer manga form. Had Araki written a version of Heaven Dio for his manga, he would have developed Dio's storyline and abilities differently and more fully. This leads back to the unknowability factor: we don't know what form Dio's own heaven ability would have taken had Dio lived on to carry out the formula himself because Araki didn't take the canon in this direction. However, the existence of The World Over Heaven (which I'm not suggesting is canon) shows a different realization for the heaven formula's potentiality, and that fact alone creates room to think that Dio's own "heaven" really would have looked radically different than the one that Pucci enacted.

Back to the game, The World Over Heaven may be flawed (and easily defeated by plot armor) but I still love it. The fact that we got a new version of DIO with a new design, updated stand, new animations, dialog, voice acting, and he's purple and he teleports, manifests lightning and punches stuff out of existence? Love it.

[lysolstrider]

i didn't know you were making a game thats really cool, can you tell us more about it?

yes!! just for you my dearest mutual axolotlworld… sorry I took forever to respond I really had to think about what to say!

our game is (tentatively) called COLLEGEBOUND.. or SCHOOLBOUND… or CLASSBOUND.. we are indecisive. it revolves around concepts of change, willpower, and the drive to keep going. it is tangentially related to the COVID-19 pandemic though a physical sickness is not present anywhere in the game… quite the opposite

you play as atlas, a tired sophomore who’s ready to just leave school altogether. what’s crazy though is that you can’t leave. nobody can. you’ve all been on campus and its extended neighborhood for a year straight without any contact with the outside world. your college is floating in the sky, cut off from the outside world. it’s time to fix that.

it is based VERY heavily in paper mario style combat, and is heavily inspired by games like undertale and persona 5, i would go so far as to say i hope this is an appropriate love letter to those games!! if you enjoy making friends and avoiding class, you will love this game. we are trying a lot of new things outside these games’ scopes

ideally, we get the kickstarter launched sometime after having a workable demo in mid 2025. at the moment, the majority of the demo’s soundtrack is finished, the character designs are mostly complete, and the demo’s story is 90% done. though not programmed enough to have anything tangible, the combat system is 40% complete and the UI is about 5% done. the only reason i wouldn’t be like HERES THE DEMO SCRAPS is just because i hate reading devlogs where nothing happens 😭😭

there is a secret i cannot say, but it is the reason development isn’t as quick even though it’s a two person project. just know it’s a popular mechanic for indie games to do this lately and i’m wanting to take it to a logical extreme in the most intense way possible!!!!!! which is really challenging in Unreal Engine but it is possible!

the environments and such are extremely easy and not a concern because tbh most of that is free assets we have permission to edit mixed with my hand drawn or modeled things. unironically i’m really digging the amazing world of gumball style it gives the game. i’m a huge huge perfectionist and even refuse to answer texts unless i have a perfect response so i’m polishing things as i go and am really enjoying making it!

also, we’re going to apply for multiple scholarships dedicated to things like this— with what we have so far visually we actually have a shot maybe????!!!!! i dont have any good videos on hand but the paper style is PERFECT for my art and it’s really endearing to look at and play as

i wish i could be more specific but it’s such a novel idea and i told shems i can’t talk about it anywhere for a while ugh 😭 i can’t remember my login for here on the computer but when I post some of the soundtrack snippets I will tag you in them!! the music is coming along the best so far lol

here’s some screenshots of concept art tho!! theresa and anya. theresa is an HR management major and anya is an illustration major. we thought about Anya’s color changing when she performs certain skills but that’s up in the air rn

us messing with the lighting in unreal lol (we’ve since changed the filter on it as well as making the textbox different)

[roaldseth]

Since I don't think I'd ever expand Full Wage (fanfic)'s continuum outside of a really short one-shot not at all relevant to this, but recently had the absolute pleasure of meeting Y'nuush in CotC (H'aanit's Traveler Story), so thoughts on how I'd fit her in to that story because she honestly is not the wrench that I thought she would be, but rather, to my surprise, easily insert-able.

[Dear reader, this is the disclaimer that's to say this isn't meant to be reasonable. It's meant to forward my own agenda of making my blorbo Special(tm) for fun because I'm the one who's stuck in hell unwell about him]

First, I cannot (can) believe they just made genderbent Z'aanta because--for gacha reasons--they couldn't "get the rights" for regular Z'aanta to appear, I GUESS. Though my thanks go out to her comically done fusion of Z'aanta and Susanna if only for being able to appeal to my own inner world.

• Susanna (S'ooshana) and Y'nuush: for Full Wage's lore, they could easily be sisters if not twins. It would explain the Susanna bits in Y'nuush's character. I also made Susanna of the Woodlands in that fic for red string reasons that she herself is also a beast tamer, and that's why Z'aanta was initially under her (previous generation's tamer) tutelage despite taking vastly different studies (scholar).

[ OG Octopath Traveler itself doesn't say she was his mentor/master, but I personally did not interpret "like a son" to be casual given one of the central themes in H'aanit's story/character being interpersonal bonds. ]

Then, given Y'nuush's direwolf companion, she could also hold the talent/talent to some extent, but Z'aanta wasn't handed off to her initially because--given she is heavily Z'aanta designed for obvious reasons--she could have simply traveled too much on commission. Susanna, on the other hand, settled down in one place and would've been a more ideal environment to rear, at the time, a very young prentice. Then, in adulthood where Z'aanta was cautioned to return home (S'warkii) because of apparent perils, Y'nuush takes him at Susanna's behest.

[ As much as I also know what they meant when they said "met" in the Traveler's Story. H'aanit saying "met Z'aanta" in regards to Y'nuush's retirement gave me the impression that it was kind of a later experience, because why not say something like "teach" or something then? IDK that just how it rubbed me.]

• Thud, the direwolf: Z'aanta's direwolf pup given before his leave could have been thanks to Y'nuush, and with running with Susanna and her being sisters, that year in Full Wage whatever time before that summer solstice, Susanna could have reached out because the fic identifies it as a Woodlands breed and not really something in the Frostlands.

Thud's eerily relevant to Full Wage demise is me somehow, unintentionally making Z'aanta a unknowing companion killer by sheer random association given I had given Susanna a lynx companion (Sága) who also perishes, albeit from human intervention, during the narrative to protect Z'aanta on the dragon hunt (his greatest feat, parallel to the gigantes who was the one beast Y'nuush could not hunt).

• Y'nuush's retirement: the streamlined relevancy of my intricate Z'aantaganda lore in my head seen in Full Wage is Susanna, as a scholar who noticed Z'aanta as her better in the beast taming talent*, tried her best to nurture what she saw as an already above average latent talent in his youth. Then, it's Y'nuush that sees the full fruits of this nurture, and only the end result.

*It was edited out in the refinement process but originally I did have dialogue of Susanna admitting to Grotoff (OC) that Z'aanta was her better in this regard. The text still expresses that he's Oddly Good At It and she's Not That Good but it's more putting multiple pieces together instead of one nice, clean, clear line.

Then, the thing is, she sees him hunt. She sees him hunt in the combined experience of both a bright eyed young man--friendly, upbeat, open, and of all green and naive--but also the remnants of the fact that someone had put a bounty out for his (and Susanna's) head, and they had done so with a dragon, leaving a forlorn, tarnished outlook. And I like to think she sees Ische in some sense, and in a way that's similar to Grotoff's realization about Z'aanta: it's both magnificent yet horrifying to watch him.

And then she looses Thud, and it's just enough for her to stop. Whether or not to parallel what I had written in Full Wage with Sága (OC) with Thud, I haven't really thought about it tbh.

[glasratz]

On "Sacred and Terrbile Air" by Robert Kurvitz

I just finished rading Kurvitz' "Sacred and Terrible Air" and I just want to give some thoughts on it.

Summary of the important point: Don't read it now. Wait for a better translation.

Four girls on summer vacation go missing without a trace. Three boys who befriended them make it their quest to find out about their fate. Twenty years later, whit the world on the brink of nuclear war, they meet again at a class reunion to finally figure out the mystery.

The book takes place in the same world as Disco Elysium, so people who played the game will be familiar with several concept like the Pale, the Innocents and the political structures of the Isolas. For everyone else, these things are well enough explained in the text itself, the glossary at the end is a bit superfluous - especially since there is no index to make you know about it being there at all. It's an e-book. I don't know about you, but I usually don't just flip through the pages of an e-book like I would do with a regular book.

Even though the translation seems rough (more on that below) the writing style is very good. It has several characteristics of Soviet-style sci-fi stories. However, I think Kurvitz took some of those characteristics to the extreme, especially with the ending. Sure, the ending is fits the overall plot and is not unlike something you'd read in a story by the Strugatsky brothers - but it still looks like there's a sequel missing.

However, the presentation of the plot is also modern to the extreme. It's told in a non-linear manner with constant leaps back in time - and even forward later in the story. This is very common in modern storytelling and definitely necessary to build up some tension. But... I think it was overdone here. Many of the chapters are very short, the point of view constantly changes. Sometimes rather unimportant scenes are held back for later for not apparent reason. I really think a bit more of consistency and longer scenes would have done the plot good. Often I felt like the author was holding information back from me just to rise the tension and then those facts turned out not to be important at all. There's a long story arch that turns out to be just a red herring for example.

The character presentation is rather good for the most part. The three men on their quest are nicely described, even though we only really learn about Khan's motivation. I wish they would be allowed to shine a bit more, I felt like they were given too little room to act.

The world Kurvitz creates is phantastic. Mysteries and stories are hinted on, political systems are created with just a few words. I would have loved to read more on that - but that is actually what you get from Disco Elysium instead. The game will teach you much more about the world than the book does.

The edition I read was the supposedly "better" translation, allegedly done by a professional translator. If that is true, I assume it was an Estonian native with English as his or her second language. That may work sometimes, but it's not the ideal way to do it.

English is not my first language either, but I read English books on a regular basis (just startet Peake's "Titus Groan" which was never translated into German). Well, I had a really hard time with "Sacred and Terrible Air". Many of the sentences just aren't right. It's very hard to make out who is talking in a dialogue. Sometimes one character referred to in an action when the context makes is clear that another one should actually be referred to. I also felt that there were many parts that were supposed to be humorous, but the joke is missing. That is why I would really recommend not reading this book at this point in time.

Unfortunately, the book is not "more Disco Elysium" as many people expect it to be. DE is probably much closer to Kruvitz' tabletop RPG sessions than it is to the book: Countless different characters, and abundance of facts about a weird world and clever dialogues. You don't get this in Sacred and Terrible air. It's a work on its own, and I felt that it had a vastly different tone.

[hallucinateonpaperspines]

wait I get that our media and remains are a source of normality to mechs who for so long only has war, but doen't a lot of them not care for organic life (or at least a lot of cons). I honestly think hat when the truth comes out some of them won't care for what was done, more happy with having a New world. Really some might even say that humans should be gratefull that they were made 'better'.

YES!

While our media is a source of normalcy, it doesn't result in a universal organic love. Some might grow to appreciate it in that way, but that's not going to be the reaction for every bot. This is one of the reasons why Team Prime doesn't talk about their experiences on Earth.

Everything is glamorized and distorted to varying degrees, there is a distance between the reality of Earth and the perceived image of it.

That said, it's the spirit of Earth that was really connected to. A tricycle is displayed, not because of its small size or the image of how an organic would use it, but because it's a child's toy. Maybe it reminds the owner of something similar they owned as a sparkling, or they can hear the innocent joy that would surely accompany such a vehicle. The same thing would happen when watching surviving media, there's a disconnect between what the subject is and what the subject represents if that makes sense.

In a slightly more abstract way, the greater population of Cybertronians is doing exactly what Shockwave was doing. Taking surviving fragments and refitting them into a frame that suits their purposes rather than appreciating the creation for what it is.

100% some bots are going to see the cyberformed version of humanity as a (creepy) upgrade. They will definitely see them as a less civilized version of themselves, a subcategory of Cybertronian that just needs to be tamed and educated. They may even view Earth as another colony that simply needs to be reintegrated into the fold.

Others, well-meaning as they might be, may see this new species as a rarity that needs to be protected. To be explored. To be documented and examined. They'll understand that there is a difference, and they can accept pride for a species and a homeworld. But comparing metal to organic, they can't help but ask isn't this better?

The difference between pre and post-discovery consumption of human media is that, previously, humanity was dead. They were silent. They could be broken down into ideas and concepts, their stories could be twisted and their echos could be edited. The uncomfortable aspects of them, even if it was something as basic as their nature, could be overlooked and replaced with vague ideals. Now, humanity cannot be nitpicked and reconstructed into something else because they can talk back. Humanity can push against the acceptableness and the abstract versions because they are not a concept. They are not a philosophy. They are a people and they live.

Thank you for reading! and love the ideas!

[qqueenofhades]

Hiii! I hope this is not too random but you always have such good advices and it's always interesting to hear your opinion about different things.

So, I have this idea for a serialized web-novel that I really want to stick with, write it and actually publish it. But I'm afraid that I'm not good at writing and I'm not sure how to improve. As an academic/teacher who writes fiction, is there anything in particular you would recommend? Like the list of books?

Also, everyone says you can be good at only one thing so you should invest your time in mastering that one thing, otherwise you are going to always be mediocre, Jack of all trades. I have BA in Philosophy, work as a video editor and dream of writing that particular story. Am I too over the place? I thought that I could connect writing to philosophy as there are a few philosophers who write fiction, and connect it to video editing bearing in mind that video editing is also a form of storytelling and can be connected to scripting, in a way.

Ideally, I'd want my story to be in a comics formats, but then I'd also have to learn drawing, which I would absolutely love to do, but then will I be turning into mr. Jack even more? Lol.

First off, my chillun, I am here to safely inform you that the idea of "jack of all trades, master of none," thus implying that it's stupid to do a lot of things when you could devote your time to Doing This One Thing Only, is a pile of crap. What is life even FOR, if not to try new things, experiment, see what you like, make mistakes, and learn how to do it better? Especially when it comes to art??? It is the primal and timeless impulse of human beings in all ages of the world to make art, the end. Someone who has written a "bad" story or drawn a "bad" picture is still 100x more of an artist than some yokel who feeds stolen art into an AI algorithm and presses a button. They have made something original and creative and maybe it's not as good as those who have been doing it more or for longer, but WHO CARES? You can try again! You can laugh it off or pretend it never existed or whatever, but honestly, you should NOT be ashamed.

This whole "do only one thing and don't waste your time with unproductive side hobbies" idea is also an extremely capitalist conceit: you should spend your time being Financially Productive At Your One Skill, and not doing things that bring you joy solely because they bring you joy (even if not money). It presupposes that the only purpose of life is to be generating Profit at all times, which you can't do if you're not "good," etc etc nonsense. (Clearly, I have strong feelings about this.) So if you want to learn how to write and draw in order to make a web comic, you should do that! It doesn't matter if this is totally unrelated to anything you've done before. You don't need to justify it to anyone. You can just go "you know what, I want to do this" and do it!

That said, if you want to produce it to a publishable level in a reasonable timeframe, in this case it might be good to partner up with a person and/or persons who have more experience than you. You can be the storyboarder/show-runner/ultimate mastermind, but you can also reach out to writers and artists who have already practiced to the level needed, so you don't have to spend years becoming good enough (whatever your definition of that might be) to produce a quality product. You have experience with video editing and production; great! You can find someone else whose skills enhance and collaborate with yours, and who can do something that maybe you can't. But if you practice in the meantime, you'll understand more about how it works, what you want to do, and how to translate that into narrative/art form.

As ever, my only advice for people who want to learn how to write better is a) write, and b) read. Find writers whose style you enjoy, whose particular technical skills you want to emulate (is it character development? World-building? Plot twists? Smooth prose? All of the above?) and see how they do it. Sure, there are plenty of writing books out there who purport to tell you How To Do It The Right Way, but honestly, I don't think I've ever read them. I started writing around the age of 7 and worked at it ever since (along with a lot of reading, so yes). Some people might benefit from a more structured/guided approach, so if you think that sounds like something you want to see, even if it's just someone putting words down on a page about the basic technical craft of writing, then I do encourage you to check it out. But if at any time you go "eh, this doesn't feel like my style" or "I don't want to do it that way" or "this isn't quite what I'm looking for," you can shut that book and try something else. This, too, is entirely fine.

I realize that for many of us, writing is the Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, and it's hard to share it if you feel like it's less than perfect, but at some point, you will also need to start doing that. The nice thing about fandom is that we are all amateurs (i.e. not being paid for it, not necessarily "bad," since I have seen plenty of professionally published books that make me go YIKES), and there's generally a forgiving and supportive atmosphere. If you want to write about two blorbos kissing or not kissing (as the case may be) or whatever else, chances are there is someone out there who wants to read that story, and they will enthusiastically respond to you about it. Strangers who offer unsolicited criticism on fanfic are obviously dicks, but there are also beta readers, people who read your writing to support you and also suggest what can be made better or more polished or otherwise better. So if you think that's a feedback structure you might benefit from, put your toes out and see what kind of response you get.

Anyway, this is all to say: write, draw, make art, do it badly, do it again, you'll get better, and don't feel like you have to excuse it or explain why. In the case of this particular project, if you have a strong artistic vision but not the technical skills to execute it to the level you want, consider reaching out to people who DO have those skills and might be interested in collaborating with you. Write a lot. Read a lot. Find what works for you. And have fun.

[mylittlesecrethaven]

My Hero Academia Morals

I'm currently watching the new seasons of My Hero Academia and I've gotten to the part where Shigaraki finished his attack and ran away and Uraraka saw the hero dude say "I can't do this anymore, I don't want to be a hero anymore." And it made me think. My Hero is literally just about conflicting morals and ideals. Shigaraki doesn't count in this, he's just in it for revenge on the heroes and All For One is just an asshole. This is gonna be long so bear with me.

Spinner wants to change hero society because he was influenced by Stain, who had a good idea, but society deemed his method immoral. But was it really? I know I'm gonna get backlash for this, but just speaking about what's wrong with the world probably won't do anything. Stain was kinda right with how he put things into action. Although, honestly, he would have done better becoming a good hero and refusing payment. That would have been a better statement, but still.

Dabi's also in it for personal revenge, but he also wants the world to see that heroes aren't all what they live up to. Endeavor was not that good of a father, but he's trying on both the hero spectrum and the family spectrum. Dabi is kinda a half and half case.

Edit from Queue - Dabi was kinda just being selfish, so maybe ignore his thing that I wrote.

Toga is... well... another weird case, so I won't focus on her.

Overhaul saw Quirks as a disease and wanted to fix society. A lot of people wouldn't agree with him because they wouldn't and couldn't see the world from his point of view. Him testing on Eri is a... rough subject... I personally like Eri, so I won't say too much on that. But he had generally the right approach. He saw that Quirks were a problem and tried to fix it, but most people didn't share his views, so they wanted him gone.

Destro and Re-Destro had a good idea as well. Quirks are an individual problem and shouldn't be treated as a normal thing. Everybody's different and they shouldn't be put down by the same constraints. (If you've seen BNA, you'll know what a problem this is for the Beastmen) They both wanted people to be free to use their Quirks. However, many people like the idea of laws to keep the safe, and this freedom that they both wished for was a scary idea for a lot of people both in power and under said power. These guys, I'd say, had the right idea and the right path.

All in all, it just comes down to personal views. Another example, I really like Hawks, but I also really like Twice. Death is not a very big subject for me and doesn't usually upset me as much as other people. (I've been told I need to have more respect for the dead and feel more sad when people die, but I really don't. They're dead and that's normal, so I continue my life.) However, heroes are supposed to protect. Yes, killing can sometimes be necessary, but I don't like the idea that the people who are supposed to be protecting us can so easily kill us. (This is also evident with many law enforcement issues.) So I'm really iffy on if I still like Hawks or not. If you're going to protect us, you can't kill us, even if we have done terrible things like kill other people.

That's just my view on all of this. Morals and values change from person to person, as does the meaning of good and bad, hero and villain. Just, stay open to people's opinions and ideals. Be a nice person. That's pretty much what this entire post is about.

[dedicatedfollower467]

1, 7, 18, 26, 28, 47, 58, 70, 84, 89, 100 :3 <3

do you know how you want the story to end when you start, or are you just stumbling through the figurative wilderness hoping to find a road?

usually i am stumbling through the figurative wilderness looking for a road. there are a few fics/stories i have begun with a specific climax in mind, but almost never an ending. i almost never know how a story is going to end, i am figuring it out as i go along.

7. tell us about the plot of the first fanfic you ever wrote

so uh. i was in second grade. it was for Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. The plot was that Mrs. Frisby and her kids got captured by the NIMH scientists and put them through all kinds of experiments. But then Mrs. Frisby gave birth to a new daughter, and the daughter was SO cool and clever and sharpened a needle into a sword and cut her way through the cage and saved them all. so that's the kind of story i was writing when i was eight.

18. what is your most and least favorite part of writing?

most favorite is... i guess getting inside a character's mindset? i really like figuring out a character's voice or internal monologue, how they talk inside their head to themself as the narrator, how they react to the stuff going on around them.

my least favorite part is figuring out what the fuck comes next.

26. do you like to write one-shots or series, and why?

oh god. both? neither? i prefer to write one-shots (like legit one-shots, not 50k one-shots, in my mind those are basically series but as one fic) because they are easier to complete. i like one-shots because i like being able to say "there it is, it's DONE, i did the thing and it is over!"

but i like series because i almost always come up with ideas that are very intricate with many characters and different viewpoints and various scenes that interest or excite me that require a lot of plot/connective tissue to go together in a way that makes any kind of sense.

in an ideal world, i would make series of connected one-shots. no clue why i've never actually done that.

28. handwritten notes or typed notes?

both? i tend to wind up using typed notes most often for fic because it feels easier, but i actually prefer handwritten notes for the most part.

47. what story are you most proud of?

i was gonna say Smells Like Belonging, but really, i think it's actually All the Memories of All Our Lives, if only because all the memories is fucking FINISHED, ACTUALLY unlike slb.

58. what is the last thing that a fic made you google when you were writing it?

the last thing? "20 miles to km" according to my search history.

since that's a boring answer, the previous one before that was "how far can a human walk in a day"

70. are you very critical of your own writing? how much do you find yourself editing (either during the writing or after the fact)?

god. it depends very much on the specific fic? for shorter fics i usually do a couple passes for grammar/consistency and then post it without thinking too hard. for longer fic, i usually write and re-write sections over and over again, trying to get things to work out exactly how i want them. my cut/deleted/re-written scenes doc for smells like belonging is almost 70k words.

84. answered this one earlier!

89. sarcastic narrators: entertaining or overdone?

EXTREMELY entertaining. love them so much.

100. open question to the writer.

i think you're supposed to like, actually ask a question, es. if your questions is ":3 <3" then of course my answer has to be ">:3c <3"

[alikestory]

i keep seeing various iterations of that webcomic post going around and i HATE IT it's so depressing ;___;;;

this post got so long and rambly i'm putting it under a cut. talking points include: smackjeeves, my old comic Wander, and various tangents

there were so many good webcomics i read on smackjeeves and deviantart back when i was in high school, they had a whole different energy... like the creators were having fun with it and not worrying about how to Make It. (there wasn't like, an industry around it then so :v )

i wish i could have experienced making a webcomic back then and participating in that scene... but it just makes me sad to think about....

(if i did post anything polished-looking enough to get readers i don't think i would have really enjoyed it... the big story I was drawing then was Wander and if I'd been able to pull off what I was going for it would have been great but that was NOT HAPPENING (I did draw like, three chapters I never posted anywhere and outlined some more and that thing was a MESS u__u) tho I did post a comic to smackjeeves at one point it was really sketchy and I originally drew it for my friends so it was all just inside jokes....... I think a couple people did subscribe to it for some reason??? very nice of them. anyway like. even Blackout City that I started like seeeven?? years later there are lots of things I wish I thought through more or are kinda dumb but I still like reading it =w= )

BUT IF I'D POSTED WANDER ;__; BACK THEN. there would have been SOMEONE who read it and was like "this is awesome" and it wouldn't matter (to them) that it didn't turn out how I wanted......

you know that kind of thing where a creator is embarrassed by their old work because their new stuff has become polished and professional but that silly, crazy stuff they did when they were figuring it out has so much HEART..... it would have been cool to be that for someone.......

ALSO IF I'D DRAWN MORE OF WANDER I COULD READ IT. u__u well it would suck but IF I'D DONE A GOOD JOB. imagine a world. :v it's not something I'm interested in writing now (tangent: I started capitalizing the "I"s and nothing else like I'm typing on a cell phone that's autocorrecting them even though I AM NOT and I don't know why but now I need to keep doing it for Consistency) but I would like to read it if someone else wrote it ; 3;

it was about the people working at this hotel at a crossroads between worlds. for most of the story it was about them dealing with various visitors who would be the main focus of the chapters and then slowly you learn about the main characters. (ideally. I was not then and continue to not be any good at coming up with short stories.) and then at the end there's a serial killer who one of the main characters had a childhood romance with until he killed her sister..... you know, some standard melodrama. :'^)

also it was supposed to be seven volumes long..... because I had no concept of how long that would take...... and because tokyo babylon is seven volumes long AND THE COVERS WERE ALSO GOING TO BE COLOUR-CODED THE SAME WAY, OKAY???? IF THERE'S ONE THING YOU NEED TO KNOW IT'S THAT I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED TOKYO BABYLON AND I ALWAYS WILL. CLAMP NEEDS TO RELEASE AN ART BOOK WITH ALL THE PREMIUM EDITION COVERS BECAUSE I WILL NOT BUY SEVEN VOLUMES OF MANGA I ALREADY OWN BUT I REEEALLY WANT TO. I DON'T HAVE THAT MUCH SPACE ON MY BOOKSHELF. ALSO AN ART BOOK OF ALL THE CLEAR CARD ART BC IT'S REALLY PRETTY.

those are my demands. anyway, what was i talking about?

[santajp]

"These protests are disruptive!"

My bubby in christ, maybe the government should have addressed the population's concerns and they wouldn't get to this point in the first place.

Maybe if people felt like there was an actual option to be heard rather than ignored by 'representatives', they would be peaceful and quaint and whatever else you want them to be.

Though this government doesn't even deserve such formalities when damming others to die on mass! They don't deserve such formalities when Palestinians are having to constantly remind the rest of world that they are human! They don't deserve shit if they're not even doing a minimum, just whining that people think genocide is bad, just whining that people are rightfully questioning why money went to a racist state rather than those on the streets or students just wanting a damn education.

If the idea of a protest for stopping a genocide seems like not enough reason to be annoyed openly when the government refuses to listen, I must only ask what would be enough reason?

What else must you see for us to be able to openly and loudly criticize those who claim to represent us?

How much more murder must happen to those who are innocent, who are not just in Palestine but anyone who has done a 'crime' of critiquing the US and its actions, for denying its own past of blood and its own racist ideals that are the foundation of its dehumanization, which we so clearly see it would gladly export.

The US will give the funding.

The US will spread the economic systems that damn people to suffer by design.

The US will ignore its own people even to do so.

The US will, by design, will fund war and violence with soft and heroic words, like it has the whole time it has existed!

If your idea of happiness can only be brought at the neglecting of others suffering, then you are not new, not in any way that matters at least.

The places, the words, can change. They will change. They will take different forms too. Though the underlying ideal is the one the very nation was built upon, the very ideal that dammed those before me to chains.

The concept of being able to say freedom has been brought, even as you kill others and suppress it-

The idea that you can say you care for others while denying many of their humanity, while demonizing all who seem too different-

The very notion of equality being a tenant you want to preach while poor are killed and a pigment of skin deems you good enough to kill, all for somesort of culture to be kept pure, to be kept perfectly safe, to be kept well behaved and not disruptive, even if they themselves have damn good reasons to be-

So please, tell me how those who care are just dumb people who know of little sense; tell me how things are fine while you ignore those who currently suffer, while you act as if this has never, ever, happened before, and that this nation is somehow above the very nature of being held up to a standard it seems all too willing to use against others.

All they should be feeling is shame.

"In the view of the scientific racists, the white man's destiny was to "replace" people of color, but never to be "replaced" by them. Perhaps at the heart of these manifestations of racial exclusionism in the Untied States is the original sin- the fact that the county was founded, and expanded, by replacing its original inhabitants. In order the justify this original replacement, the rights of whites to expand, and the fate of the people of color to disappear, had to be constantly reiterated and reenacted."

Chomsky, Aviva. "They take our jobs! : and 20 other myths about immigration Expanded Edition." Boston, Mass. : Beacon Press, 2007, 2018.

[sirenalpha]

this is a lot of what I do as a gardener, but this advice also sounds like it's best for shorter fics (aka under 50k) and for shorter chapters (up to 1.5k when novel chapters tend to be between 2-4k) so some stuff I would add having written longer fics

-having written both consistently shorter chapters (like 1.5k) and then letting them grow until they were regularly 6k, there's a reason they're normally 2-4k, they seem to flow better at that length having a few scenes in them rather than only one or too many I don't remember exactly what happened in the chapter

-I usually have a plot or character goal to accomplish per chapter and sometimes it ends up being different than the one I expected because I kept writing and something else happened and I didn't get to the original one

-my chapter lengths are a little variable because of that and I sometimes have a 5-6k chapter cuz the scenes were longer and there was nowhere to split it up and sometimes they're a little shorter

-you can write your timeline and world building down after you write the chapter for reference, anything you find yourself needing to redo like recount the days or figure out what season you're in or what order events happened or this is how this aspect of worldbuilding worked, save yourself time and effort and write it down

-I personally love writing in order and I assume most gardeners are like that and skipping around like some people talk about doing for writing sounds awful because idk where this thing is going and shit happens on the way so ideally I would write a story from beginning to end no skips

but with longer stories it can take so long to get to the scenes at the end I'm excited for which means I'm gonna go on thinking about them for basically years and forgetting versions so sometimes you just write it down so you don't forget the good thing you really liked from that version

you'll probably have to change things by the time you get to it for real though

-you don't have to do this with fanfic since it's serialized work and a hobby, but it's nice to write ahead and then when you go back to edit a chapter you're doing it knowing what happened next

-note down any changes you want to make because you will not remember them if you start having a lot of chapters

-this is just my personal opinion I have no research to back this up and it's probably super biased but I feel like architect style lends itself to plot driven work and gardener style to character driven and that could totally be because I write character driven fics and fanfic generally is more character driven so I tend to think of fics in terms of character arcs not plot arcs

so I think of it as where's the character at in their life and emotional state to start and where do I want them to be at the end and why aren't they there now

it's easiest to see with ship fics because the start is these two characters aren't together and the end state is these two characters love each other and are together and why they aren't together is usually they don't know each other well enough to have the trust and affection for each other to be together so how do they get that, what do they need to see from the other person to trust and like them more, how are they proving themselves to each other

the nice thing about fanfic is someone else has done the plot so I don't have to think that hard about what happens, use that as a base, and make the character stuff happen around/on top of that

-the reality is once you get to much longer projects, you need more structure to help yourself out because it'll just be too big to remember every detail and you're going to want to minimize ruining your own continuity or worldbuilding so you don't accidentally take readers out of your work

Idk if this is too broad of a scope for this blog, but if you could answer this, it'd be great.

I've been in a writing rut since I started getting serious about writing, and I've identified the issue in the past month or so: I slant heavily on the gardener end of the writing spectrum and all the advice on writing I've ever seen was for architect-style writing. Not once in the eight years I've been serious about writing did I find any guides on gardener-style writing (and if it says it's gardener-style, it'sreally just architect-style with gardner aspects), and my experience has just been more or less jamming a square peg into a circle hole, getting nothing written and feeling bad about it.

Now I'm unlearning all the architect-style habits that are destructive to me as a writer, but I can't find any resources for gardeners aside from Stephen King's On Writing. If you or any of your followers know how to help a gardener's writing, that would be great. I have so many fic ideas I want to write, but can't since I'm learning to write all over again.

For those who don't know what gardener and architect refer to when it comes to writers, a gardener is a writer who starts with the seed of an idea and lets it grow in whatever direction the light shines. They prune it and weed it as they go but otherwise let the idea lead the way. An architect, on the other hand, plans their stories out first and then writes them. They have a structure and the details all mapped out first and then the writing is just executing on that vision.

As a gardener myself, my biggest piece of advice is to avoid writing advice. Like you've said, the majority of it is aimed at people who do things like plan and plot and worldbuild ahead of time. Because of the structure that that writing style enjoys, providing "one size fits most" writing advice works well for it.

I tend to find a lot of that advice to be counter to what I need to do. Planning a story out ahead just makes me feel like it's already written. Building out the world before I start writing it feels like a hollow exercise - more like writing an encyclopedia than developing a land and culture for my characters to inhabit.

What I find useful is taking an episodic approach to writing. The entire story will be like a season of a television show and each chapter is like one episode. I always have my eventual "season finale" end goal in mind, but any particular chapter can meander closer to or further from that goal. It's alright to take a circuitous route, as long as I get to my destination in the end.

It's also alright if my destination changes as I'm writing. Sometimes those meandering paths take me in a more interesting direction than I was originally going down, and that shifts the story. As long as you're vaguely following a three-act structure (or 5 act or 7 act), the flow of it will feel familiar to your readers and they probably won't really notice it happening.

This advice I'm giving might not ring true to you either. You didn't have a specific problem to address, so I've been wandering a bit in my reply. Really what it comes down to is paying attention to yourself and your needs. Figure out what it is that keeps you writing and what it is that makes you stop. Do more of the former and less of the latter - and don't worry if what you're doing is "weird" to someone else.

I write directly into the AO3 window (which AO3 specifically tells you NOT to do, btw) because drafting first in google docs or something takes the fun out of it for me. I post my chapters without previewing them first. I write in 800 to 1500 word sprints, and I focus on dialogue, and I almost always try to end on a joke or a pun or a cliffhanger. These are all things that make writing an activity that I want to do.

I can't really say anything much more specific given your ask, but I hope something in here was helpful. Let's see if any gardeners out there have some resources or advice that might work for you.