#they have such a cute relationship dynamic…… cus it’s like. still a relatively new thing for them

[peapod20001]

David knows just what to say 💕 (even if he has no confidence in the words coming out of his mouth)

[n0chanxes]

What “Matching Effort; Not Length” Means in Collaborative Writing [to me]

[small edit- this post looks like garbage on dash apparently but the organizational formatting is visible on my page ;;;;; hellsite why- Click to my page for an actually legible post lol T^T ]

Hey yall, its 7 30 in the morning and I can’t sleep even though I work tonight so Imma ramble for like half an hour to see if that makes me tired sfkjsdfhdj

I’ve been doing this for a long time. Like-- half my life, 13 years [I’m 26], ‘long’ and over the years I’ve gotten relatively comfortable figuring out what things go into a thread being successful [i/e fun and easy to keep going] and not fun. This is all obviously my opinion as both a solo story writer, avid reader [i have more favourite books than I do friend irl] and rp’er. And though this obviously isn’t some snooty checklist or anything, I’ve found that people who use some or one or even all of these things in their replies are the rp partners I still adore making stories with years down the road

Replying with the world and not just the character

This can be done pretty easily in ‘script’ replies as well as ‘lit’/wordy replies, but I never approach a reply like what my character is saying or doing is happening in a vacuum, because that’s not organically how life works. 

Are the characters in a busy café? Is there a long line? Is some asshole trying to cut which makes my character have to ask them to stop pushing around? 

How about walking down the street? It the traffic horrible that day, making them have to speak louder/move closer to your muse? Did they almost fall into a puddle or run into somebody? 

Oooor what about a night club? Is the music loud? Is the music shitty? Is it a little too crowded now even though it wasn’t like ten minutes ago, meaning our muses may want to move elsewhere

All this to say; think about your muses and people interacting in a space, not just two people talking/walking in a void.

Be comfortable with NPCs

There are a lot of humans on the planet! Like... a whole lot! Use them to buff up the story world you’re creating to make it more fun! This is also how I sometimes end up making a few of my favourite characters; they start out as NPCs to make my world more robust, and eventually I think up whole back stories for them [A good Example is Lux!]

Is that cafe owner making eyes at the other muse? Does that make your muse huffy and jealous? Or maybe that one dude who is still trying to cut in line gets a little too pushy and them and your muse have a little scuffle?

Is that a cute cat/dog? Sorry, gotta stop this very tense/flirty talk with your muse cus i have to pet this dog/cat.

Not only can these just be fun to picture, but a lotttt of character development can come from aspects of a world that aren’tt just because of muse A and muse b talking/thinking about each other, and can really buff up the foundation of whatever relationship muse and and muse b are developing whether its plotted or unplotted.

Be careful not to godmod- This isn’t nearly as much of an issue in this decade of rping as it was when I first started [it was bad lol] But just make sure these characters are feasible within a world. Don’t go and have muse a get randomly stabbed just because replies are hard to come by and you want to make muse b suddenly have to care about muse a. plot this shit out with your rp partner if you have even the smallest idea that some npc/event you have in mind might take away control/their right to control an event.

Reply to build off each other’s replies/characters; Not just to Reply. Give your partner’s character something to reply about.

I think , above most else, this can be the best or most frustrating part of an rp, and where I find I can lose interest in a thread or interaction. This is the most important thing I try to do, regardless of reply length or plot. This is what matched effort and not length means to me.

The most interesting aspect about rping to beings is being able to interact with them in real time, seeing this that its ever changing, real-time, and dynamic. If my character is stuttering a reply, eyes glancing every which way, sweating, but says everything is fine, getting a reply that doesn’t address any or the subtext or look to either amplify or fix a situation can be incredibly tiring.

Read a characters background/look for details in writing- Has ther other writer mentioned ther character has an interesting eye colour? Did the characters eye colour just change? Treat every reply as a chance to really build on something.

Did the character just say or do something that would logically result in some kind of shock/anger/attraction? Its okay to have your character shocked about things. Let them being an organic character/being.

Put equal effort in having interesting dialogue.-I can’t count the number of times on other blogs long ago [and long since dead] where I would give a few things in a script rp tp be interesting or cool to think on and reply about, things that were indicative to my character, only for literally all of it to be ignored in the next reply.

There aren’t many places for a story to go when two characters are just talking and walking together and nothing happens. 

Stagnation is the antithesis of progress, very literally.

And if you see or  a thread starting to become harder and harder to reply to, don’t be afraid to read through the thread and see if you notice a ‘drop’ or a place where you, your character, the world can add something which would be fun to reply to/react to/ imagine. 

And for god’s sake, read a characters about/have some information about your character at hand.

I am.....long winded [shocker, I know] and I know words can be hard. But at my core, I want to rp with you [yes you] because I like how you words and I like how you write characters. It is incredibly hard for me to know if a story would be fun or interesting if there is nothing about a character other than their fc.

Have crucial information in about sections, make sure you know about the other characters crucial information, this can be some of the things that help a thread start off a lot easier. These can be bullet points! Cool hair colour? Eye colour? Long fangs when angy? long fangs and red eyes when BigAngy?? Ears? Tails???? Anything thatt a character would notice upin first glance needs to be made clear to your rp partner so they and their character can operate more naturally in whatever world you’re creating together.

If you don’t have official abouts, that is fine, just make sure you have any information about the character ready for sharing! I use the sticky notes desktop app for characters I haven’t officially added yet and its a super helpful, low maintenance way to keep details about a possible/selective character on hand.

Talk shit out. Embrace a shifting story, figure out plot points that would be cool to see and write about. Have fun. Create worlds, universes, new characters! As long as both/all parties are on the same page, there is literally no end to what you can create together.

All of this applies to lit/novella/and script rps! I’ve had some very, very cool, in depth script rps in my time/on discord/aim so length is not a factor to fun, deep rps, its all in the mutual effort placed in the characters and their world.

[tedfashionski]

Finking, Finking.

Hi, welcome to my ted talk. (That is the only time I will ever make that joke. This is Fashionski Finks. Expect radically low standards of self-involved rantiness with zero research or accountability from here on out). For a while there I seriously thought that the covid-19 quarantine was going to result in people being increasingly placid and accepting of creeping extensions of the police state. But here I am, getting depressed again, not about the protests, which I love, but more about my relationship to in-group pressure dynamics. One of the problems with being a relentless contrarian is the discomfort of my impulse to rebel against groups even when they’re championing the right thing. I have to find my own way to fight against the system as an outsider. No gods, no masters, no fucking peer pressure.  I’ll never be happy joining a chorus line. I don’t sign fucking petitions (they’re just lists for the NSA). I do donate, but like fuck will I do it performatively. I can’t go to protests cus I get panic attacky in crowds. I empathise pretty strongly with outsiders of all stripes but believe ridiculously excessively in the public good of criticism, and have a nostalgic love of trolling (I like to think I’m gentle with it though). Bring back the troll! We need that fucker, he’s a sign of a healthy internet. I’m writing this blog thing as an extension of my need to vent my extreme negativity. TBH I never expected to get any followers with ted twitter and the bizarre welcomingness of the hf twitter community totally wrongfooted me. I’m not nice. Ted isn’t meant to likable. He’s my dark side. I was meant to be using this alt as a way to terrorise the nice nice (secretly cruel) fashion people. I’m gunna try and up that aspect more. Just bear in mind, my complaints are largely about the system, but if I see you perpetuating fashion’s entrenched anti-intellectualism or its insidery bullshit, I’ll come for you with a little meta-bomb with your name on it. Maintaining my misanthropic tone does take work tho, like, deep down in some twisted part of my psyche, I guess I do actually want to be liked. It’s fucked up.

I suppose it’s only fair to explain this Ted fursona. Like, new concept, who dis? Why all the furry porn? …..because I just think it’s hilarious. Every time I think about the furries I cackle (not at them, mind). I just love the mad corruption of pure Disney aesthetics into hardcore pornography. That’s anti-authoritarian as fuck. I love the sincerity of their culture. The way the crazy fetish aspect means they’ll never be fully blandified by mainstream acceptance. The way it’s so cringe but so delightful. And more seriously, I’m interested in how a culture of mostly gay male nerds developed to the point where they’ll invest 10k in custom fursuits and support eachother’s independent businesses in ways that the fashion community completely fails to do. The fashion world sucks. There’s so many correlations there that I want to investigate: the newness (furries date from around the 70s, fashion culture in its self-aware state dates from the late 19th C – both very young fields); the centralisation/decentralisation; the hierarchy (furries can be pretty catty, I have discovered in my research, and we all know what fashion people are like); the adoption of new identities; the cis-boy gayness aspect (I’m increasingly tired of the extreme nasty hierarchy of certain CSM queens. It’s all very UGH. Just, fuck those particular bitches.) There’s more to the furry love, but I’ll explore it in future posts.

More importantly, why Ted fucking Kaczynski? I’m not like, actually a terrorist. (….yet. tehehe. NO, seriously I like non-maiming violence. Fuck yeah to property damage. Fuck yeah to disabling the system in extreme way. But no to wooden IEDs. Think of my shitty jokes that fail to land as my hand-crafted bombs). I think I like the shitness of Ted. He was just an epic fail of a terrorist. I’m a little white girl living in London. I’m not actually a primitivist, as much as I crave a hut in the woods. I did go to an elite school though. I had some really shitty experiences in the fashion industry in my early 20s, and I watch my friends who are relatively successful in that system and I get so angry on their behalf at their poor treatment. They think I’m too angry. Fuck that. They should be more angry, and the fact that they can’t be angry at their extreme precarity and the fact they’re still insecure and terrified of being ejected by the system after all their investment and skills they’ve built up is BULLSHIT. I’ll be double angry for them, I’m not invested in that system. I don’t need it to pay my rent. I’m free, motherfuckers, and I’m coming for the abusers and exploiters. If you’re a complacent industry figure not fighting hard from within, uggghhhhh fuck you. Yes, YOU. Soooo, I relate pretty hard to the MK ultra stuff. (go look him up, he was basically tortured and experimented upon by the elite). But there’s a pretty big chasm between my views and his, and I’ll try to be clear about the extent of my interest in his extreme beliefs. I haven’t even finished reading the manifesto. Basically, I watched that shitty show on Netflix with sam worthington around the same time I watched Joker (that movie fucked me up) and thought it’d be a good outlet to larp online as a terrorist. There’s the angry white alt-right school shooter aspect, which I’m still figuring out, cus I’m non-binary and I was raised by nutso trumpy right-wingers, who I barely speak to anymore, and I struggle to get along with people generally. There’s sad, self-pitying rage here. I empathise with the angry white dudes too much. I feel guilty about it. That’s good ground for artmaking (yes, shamefully, this…is…art. Sorry). I modelled this fursona a little after my brother, who I spent years living with and arguing with and trying to lift out of his scary racist youtube rabbit holes. This is actually quite an emotional thing for me, cus I did the ‘talk to your fascist family’ thing. And I completely failed. I realised his right-winginess wasn’t lessening, I wasn’t gaining ground, and in fact my excessive empathy and desire to reach out to the relative most similar to me in character meant his extremism was rubbing off on me. Making me more resentful and depressed. Feeling powerless. I was being too kind-hearted and forgiving of his masculine impotence. So I’m exploring some personal shit here. But Ted is also a cute lil fuzzball teddy bear. He means well, but me being super autistic and faily at social skills means he’s kind of a dick, cus I am. I’m going to try and further develop this character, this POV, and this post is the only time I’ll explain the divide between him and his creator (moi). The ‘I’ on the twitter and here is Ted Fashionski, I need that space between me and him. Masks give us this freedom to be more ourselves. Internet culture has lost a lot of its wild brutal anonymity in the last decade or so, now everyone’s afraid of making mistakes. How the hell do you grow if you’re not allowed to fuck up? This is a vital outlet. He’s become an important part of my life and I have to say, I love being Ted Fashionski. He’s like Paddington Bear who just escaped form Guantanamo or something.

I get pretty fatigued as a matter of course. I’m a long-term depressive since childhood. I have a difficult time keeping my hard-on for living. I don’t get suicidal really but I do struggle with extreme fatigue. I sleep a lot. I often fall into spirals of self-hate. And as someone who utterly believes in revolutionary leftist politics, I beat myself up about not doing enough. I’m so middle class and english and white. I was raised in such a chauvinistic and complacent culture; I don’t even know where to start. I’m wading my way through post-colonial literature and beating myself up for finding it boring and uncomfortable. It’s hard to force yourself to acknowledge your culture is The Bad Guys. It’s easier to fall into fanstasies of supremacy and butthurt misunderstoodness. And it’s not like my depressive brain needs any encouragement to hate me. My trajectory is ever leftwards, but I remember the righteous fury of being right-wing. I get it, that was me. We need more paths back from fascism, more comprehension of why people are that kind of shitty. I talk less, and less well, the more depressed I am. If I’m talking, it means im feeling a lot better. Just, fyi.

Give me a minute to be critical here. With the George Floyd protests, a lot of the cool guys on fashion twitter has gone blazingly hardcore on the political side. But there’s this troubling rhetoric about ‘no return to normal content’ or ‘this isn’t the time for fashion’. Like fuck it isn’t. This is a key problem with fashion culture right here, we have this received perception of fashion as empty escapism. Escapism matters in fashion, yes. But seriously, talking about the surfaces of things does not equal not caring about deeper meaning. What the fuck. Clothes are a connective tissue, a membrane between us. They’re emotional and powerful. We can talk about things that matter THROUGH clothes. I speak fashion, pretty fucking well. Most people who work at fashion magazines are morons with no understanding or respect for their subject. They’re incapable of doing it justice, and that’s deliberate. On this tumblr you’ll see rants and reviews of fashion and other artforms, always interpreting through a fashion lens. cus it matters, cus it’s a vital part of the culture, cus just because something has a glittery, seductive surface doesn’t mean it doesn’t communicate or contain depth. There’s no going back to ‘normal fashion content’, yes. Normal fashion content is a fucking psyop to divert legitimate interest in aesthetics amongst largely non-academic dyslexic visual types away from careful thought/feeling and towards empty consumerist commericiality. The traditional fashion media wants you to express yourself and your interest in the zeitgeist through buying more shit. Another fashion world is possible. Let’s destroy the old and build a new one, one where surface and spirit are connected and true and fashion can’t be abused in service of evil industrial monopolists.

/end rant. TLDR: angry fictional teddy bear with tin-foil hat and an eco-anarchist fetish says no to stupid fashion and yes to the renewal of conceptual fashion. Also, Fuck White People.