#this might fit in terribly with the worldbuilding but sometimes you have to take creative licence for angsty fic purposes

[lucy-lockwood]

I wonder... If someone physically dies and then is resuscitated, do they leave a death glow?

Anyways one day Lucy is severely injured on a job and Lockwood sees the faint beginnings of a death glow start to form around her and even though she’s revived he can’t shake the image from his mind

[gwendeeagain]

How I wrote the Demon fic

Don't draw devil's traps in janitors' closets is one of my longest fic series I’ve ever written, the most notable of which would be my Demon Gakushuu fic, if you’ve seen it. 

In partial response to an ask post (link here), I’ve decided to revisit my writing of this fic series! It was quite a long journey for me and I think it might be fun (?) sharing it with everyone. It’s rather long, so I’ll tag it under “keep reading”. 

FYI this thread contains major spoilers for the fic (and would honestly make no sense if you do not have prior knowledge of it).

I'll just refer to the first fic in the series as Books because it has an insanely long title. Subsequent fics are in order Burgundy, Potential, Illuminate, Illuminate rewrite, and Addendum. The main series is linked here.

Addendum is not linked in the main series for reasons I'll explain below. (link here)

Books

I think one of my biggest mistakes writing Books is my lack of plot planning, and subsequently how thematically inconsistent it became. I start off most my fics with a rough idea of how I want the story to end, and a few good themes to carry me through the plot as I write, but for Books I started off with the first chapter and nothing else. If you followed the notes of my fic you'd probably have witnessed my gradual descent into uncertainty and despair as the fic spiralled out of my control due to how wrong I felt it was becoming.

The fic took a surprisingly hard toll on me. I absolutely hated it. I refused to mark it as complete because I was dissatisfied with how it ended. I thought that everyone was out of character, that I lost the original ending and goal in my head, that it was thematically messy such that I couldn't justify any ending I tried to come up with, and I was just grasping at straws trying to make it work. 

The three things that bothered me were Gakushuu’s wings, Koro-Sensei and the introduction of Aina. When I started this fic I had plans to kill off Koro-Sensei at the end, however as the fic went on it became a celebration of life and learning how to live, and I knew I couldn’t bring myself to have any death in this fic... but at the same time I had Gakushuu find a lot of meaning in Koro-Sensei’s (to-be) death and I didn’t want to undo that. The wings were on a similar note, because Gakushuu spend 50k words finding out who he is and accepting that he was different. Turning that message around and making him go back to being “the same” ate me up inside, but at the same time I set-up the Demon Society in such a way that they would kill Gakushuu if he didn’t have his wings, and it’s supposed to be a happy ending, dammit! Aina was a particularly egregious case because I threw her (and Ikeda) in without any prior warning at the very last minute. I already had a whole world and setting planned for them which I never got to expand on in the previous chapters because I was so anxious about the other two points, and when it came down to the last chapter I realized I had no set-up for these two, who were supposed to be major players in the finale. Basically I was bad at writing.

Even now I cannot fully articulate why it was terrible for me, but compounded with my real-life stressors, I suppose it just became a bit too much to deal with. (This is a piece of fiction that I am creating from scratch. If I can't even get this under control, what hope do I have for everything else?)

((For come disclosure I was never formally diagnosed with any mental illness, but my parents are the sort of people who don’t believe mental illness exists anyways. I would say that I’ve had depressive episodes when I was younger and sometimes even now, but I’ve learnt my ways of dealing with them!))

Burgundy

Four days later I published Burgundy, a short sequel to Books, very shortly after only because I had already finished writing by that time. I actually do still have several half-finished follow ups at that point, but I couldn't bring myself to complete any sequels because I couldn't even come to terms with the ending of the main story. (Those wips are lost to me now.) I think I was hoping that forcing myself to publish the sequel would show me that it was "no big deal" that the main fic didn't end the way I hoped it would, but it succeeded in making me feel worse.

Potential

About one month after that I wrote Potential. It was a three parter, somehow a fifth of the length of the main fic, that followed Gakuhou's perspective prior to the events of Books. It was a prequel which imo made it easier to write, because I still couldn't move on from Books yet. I think writing Potential was me trying to remind myself why I wrote Books in the first place, to perhaps reignite my original passion for the series. It's kind of funny to think about in hindsight, and a little meta, because Potential was a lead up to the events in Books. It worked... a little bit, I think. I still couldn't reconcile my feelings for the whole thing, but through it I got to revisit the original premise that I fell in love with and expand more on worldbuilding it. I could reprise Aina and Ikeda and finally write about the world I planned to introduce them in in the first fic and give more context and insights to how the demon society was supposed to work.

Illuminate

Six months after Potential, I ran into a comment that said, "what would Gakuhou have done if Gakushuu had died?" And for some reason it struck an epiphany in me. After that I wrote Illuminate in one night, cried myself to sleep, waited one more night to proofread it, and then published it. Illuminate was an AU to the first three fics in the series, and it was a fic about grief and mourning. Spoiler alert: I straight up killed Gakushuu in that fic. And somehow that was what I needed.

I quite literally killed my first fic - I upended the terrible ending I hated from Books - everything I had been uncertain about at first? I killed it. Plot points didn't fit my original plans? Killed it. (When I reread the death scene, I... honestly think I was unnecessarily cruel. I must have really been out of my mind when I wrote it, hah!)

And then I wrote myself a love story about missing it, grieving it, and finally letting go of it. It was heart wrenching for me - I made Gakuhou cry about what he lost, what could have been, what he realized he loved, and at the end of it all he could say "I love you and I can move on from you." And I did!

Illuminate (Rewrite)

Illuminate Rewrite, one year later, was me revisiting Illuminate to reflect on myself where I've come with this series. I actually just swapped the places of two paragraphs to change the mood at the end for something more contemplative. I elaborated a bit more on this in my notes for Rewrite, so I won't repeat them here.

Honestly, I still have a hard time coming back to reread Illuminate even after the whole debacle has happened. I attached a lot of emotions through my journey with this, and revisiting it each time takes quite a bit out of me.

Addendum

Addendum was just me having fun! After Illuminate, I managed to reconcile my feelings with the fic series. I was finally able to mark Books as complete and move on from it, and afterwards I wrote a fun little au sequel to Illuminate so that Gakushuu can live again. I could creatively expand on ideas and just do... whatever! It's more of a loose connection of plot points than a real fic, honestly.

Addendum follows Gakushuu in a future hundreds of years later, after every human who he's once known in Books has died. And... he moves on! Gets a job, makes friends, lives his life, and most importantly move on.

I chose to publish in a separate collection, however, because it was an incomplete story and I didn’t want to have a half-complete fic tacked on to what I have settled in my heart as a complete fic collection.

And that’s about it! <3

[venteamocha]

Thanks so much for the IF recs! I'd absolutely take a second post of recommendations for Twine games too if you're willing to share! <3

Of course!!

I... actually like twine games better than cog based ones, in some ways, just because they tend to be fancier and prettier, and I am secretly a ferret in the body of a human and I love shinies. ADHD, baby!

I only actually know of like 12 twine games, so if there are any that anyone who sees this knows of that I didn’t list, feel free to let me know about them! There’s a chance I do know about them and just didn’t put them here, but I would rather hear one I already know of on the off chance that I’ll get a new one dropped in.

That said! Another list of games I really like that is again in no particular order!

They’re all on itch.io by the way! They tend to work better if you download them but most can be run in your browser and most are also mobile friendly so you can play them on your phone! I’ll note which ones are.

Scout: An Apocalypse Story: I love dystopia stories, I dearly wish we had more IF based in this kind of setting. Set in a wasteland that is trying to pull itself together with people trying to find out if other settlements are out there while also trying to, well, stay alive. I gotta say, I played only E’s route for a long, long time, but once I tried the other ones I haven’t really gone back. I still love E, you can pry the childhood friend trope out of my cold dead hands, but wow. Oliver. Wow. That dude has serious UST. And Sabine!! I’ve been forced out of my little “play it the same way every time” rut and I’m not sorry. I very much like that you can choose the intimacy level, as someone who’s ace. Sometimes I like reading the smut, sometimes I don’t. Options! (mobile friendly!)

Bad Ritual: I got it baaaaaaaaaad~ I do though, I love Siruud. I have terrible, terrible taste in men. I mentioned Dracula in the other list, and here there’s an actual demon. This is a game with *sass* and I always love a chance to be sassy. I think part of the reason I resonate so much with this one is because of how jaded retail has made me tbh but that’s another story.  Honestly, if you like dark settings, I recommend you play this one first of all my recommendations. It’s just such a good game and there are so many choices and even the pronoun choices are pretty varied.  It’s just good! (mobile friendly!)

Wayfarer: Another for the fantasy list! I love the worldbuilding in this one, and the character creator is just amazing. There are maps, there’s a codex, seriously if you love reading lore, this is definitely a game for you. This is like if Tolkien made an IF. It’s amazing. I’ve said that a few times but it’s true. In all honesty it might count as one that’s not so romance focused, since it does focus more on plot. If I could just sit down and make an IF, I’d want it to be like this tbh. With a beautiful framework, a well organized space of information for the players to just look at and see stuff about the world, a way to develop and build their own character in a clear cut way, and the game immediately tells you what stats are effected by what choices. I really enjoy it when games try to work in character creation in creative ways, but sometimes I just want to sit down and go, “Okay, my character has red hair, blue eyes, is short, and has a crippling phobia of lizards” and this game lets me do that. Well, except for the lizard part. (Not as mobile friendly as the others but I make it work!)

Love and Friendship: It’s a regency game and I love Pride and Prejudice. What can I say? Something about the massive amount of rules of society just gets me. Propriety! This is a game that has a set gender protagonist, female, and it actually is a bit different from the norm in that it has two female love interests and one male, when most of the time it’s the other way around. So that’s something. You can even have a platonic route with a fourth love interest, who is also male. There really aren’t enough platonic routes, but I understand why that is, since a lot of IF players are looking for romance. (mobile friendly!)

Exiled From Court: Also a bit of the same vibe simply because of how constrained everyone is by rules. Nobility, after all. There are a lot of love interests, and one is the MC’s sister’s husband, which is definitely gonna be scandalous. Will I do it? Will I? Eventually. I do like how you can act like an absolute hellion, well, as far as that goes considering. You can try to be a better person but that’s less fun, lol. (mobile friendly!)

A Tale of Crowns: This is literally one of the very first twine games I ever played. Really! It’s got a lot of wonderful intrigue and the setting is very fun. There aren’t a ton of fantasy middle eastern games, and this game is definitely one reason why we should have more. There’s a great deal of customization, and the love interests’ gender will changed based on your MC’s gender and sexuality combination. I like R & D best, and no that’s not a pun. I think. (mobile friendly!)

For the Crown: This is a different game, I swear, they just both happen to have crown in the title, lol. You get to play as an assassin, which is a great deal of fun. The lore in the game is very nice too. I tend to play with they/them pronouns though, and there were a few pronoun hiccups in the game. Seems to be an issue across all of the games made by this author, but I know how much of a pain variables can be so hopefully those will get squashed soon. There’s an explicit content choice in this one as well, and if you turn it on there is an “equipment” choice, so this is definitely gonna be spicy later on! (mobile friendly, but after each chapter the browser shifts as it auto saves. you just have to tap restore game to keep playing.)

-These games aren’t exactly twine games, but I’m putting them here because they’re visual novels that fit the IF format for the most part and are also on itch.io and I love them and for this post at least I will bend my own rules! They all have gender choice MCs and are nonbinary friendly.-

Perfumare: This game is actually being made into an IF, with the visual novel as a sort of preview of what we’re gonna get there. I literally cannot wait for that to happen, this game is so good as it is, and from what we’ve been told it’s only gonna get better. This game has an excellent world, the characters are all messy in the best ways, and ugh it has hurt me quite a bit, again in the best way.  It’s another one on the dark side of things. The powers in this game are just so fun, I dearly want a game set in this world where we can choose what powers we have! Maybe that will be in the IF, but I have a feeling the answer is no. We’ve been teased that there will be a second game with a different MC who will get to romance the characters we can’t in this one, and that alone is enough to get me to jump as soon as it drops. The love interests aren’t gender variable but there are two male ones and one female. I, a known mess, recommend Laurent for lots of repression and pain. (not mobile friendly, you gotta play on desktop/laptop)

Andromeda Six: I’ve recommended this one to pretty much everyone I know, it is such an excellent game. The cast is a mashup of misfits and makes me miss my Mass Effect crews. I specifically set my pronouns to she/her just so they’d all call me Princess. What can I say, I like it. There’s lots of pain, lots of drama, lots of world building, lots of interesting lore, and there is much breaking of cuties. Much. Can’t wait till we get to the next planet. The author has gone out of their way to say that each love interest is gonna get their own arc and will definitely get their own share of attention, so no matter who you pick you’ll have plenty of time to be with them and watch them shine. (not mobile friendly, gotta play on desktop/laptop)

When the Night Comes: Not only do you get to play a badass hunter but it has multiple poly routes! Multiple! It’s rare when you get one poly in a game, this one has three! You can also choose to romance any of them individually if you so choose. It’s dark fantasy gothic, and I really really like that. (not mobile friendly, gotta play on desktop/laptop)

Errant Kingdom: Made from the same dev as WTNC, this one is set in a more fantasy middle eastern setting. Very pretty, lots of intrigue. You can choose between three set protagonists, who can have three different storylines depending on your choices, which is very nice for replayability. It’s got two poly routes this time, and it works the same as their other game in that you can romance them individually if you’d rather be monogamous. (not mobile friendly, gotta play on desktop/laptop)

[cromwellharvests-a]

THINGS A NEW RP PARTNER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT ME.

FUN NEW MEME HERE! WRITE 3-5 THINGS A NEW RP PARTNER (OR THOSE WHO WANT TO BE) SHOULD KNOW ABOUT YOU AND TAG 3-5 PEOPLE! IT SHOULD BE RELATED TO RP AND NOT TO OTHER INTERESTS. (ALSO DON’T WRITE YOU ARE A DORK/GREMLIN/ETC. THIS IS TUMBLR, OF COURSE YOU ARE)

REPOST, DON’T REBLOG.

tagged by: @cadcnce​

Like my bear-father said before me: [baymax voice] I am not fast. When I was a wee little highschooler, I was crankin’ out thousands of words a day across fanfiction and my multitude of RP blogs, but that just ain’t the way anymore. RPing is something that I do to decompress after all the schoolwork, WORK work, and chores are done, among other hobbies. So I might take forever to reply to something— but as long as my partner is still around and interested, I will get back to it. Promise.

In those big long periods where I’m not HERE, you can always reach me on discord or other ims, and I’d be really happy if you do. I’ve made some of the best friendships I’ve got through rping, and I’m always happy to talk shop about our characters, possible threads/interactions, or just... y’know, chat. be buds. sometimes I don’t have the creative juice to crank out a proper reply, but ranting semi-coherently is my specialty.

When we first start talking I will be so unbearably business formal because I’m an anxious mess and I worry about first impressions/how you’ll perceive me. Don’t worry. This too shall pass. After a few conversations I’ll quickly shift from carefully thought-out compliments and delicate suggestions to sending you shitposts saying ‘it’s our kids’. Just bare with me through the awkward teen phase.

I’ve written canon characters in the past, but as you might have noticed, OCs are my bread and butter, and most of the characters I bother to bring here are ones that I’ve had kicking around in my head for many, many years, repurposed or tweaked to fit into the tumblr rpc. ( gestures directly towards @sabuleum​ for the best example ) As such, I have a lot of established lore and worldbuilding for them. a) please ask me about it, I’ll cry, but b) there’s only so much bending I’m willing to do. my characters, and their stories, are very important to me, and I’m not going to sacrifice any of that based on criticisms of a character being “too powerful” or similar ilk— objections people have brought to me before in the RPC. This thought is getting a little scattered but the tl;dr is I won’t make my characters smaller or understate them just to make another seem bigger, or just because something about their characterization doesn’t match your perception of them.

There’s very few fandoms that I won’t interact with, and if I’m interested in a character from one I’m not terribly familiar with, I will put in the research to make interactions work. Hell, I’ve ended up reading whole manga and playing new games for this reason. That said, I’d appreciate if you returned the same respect to me— if we’re going to write together, read my about maybe? some ‘details’ and ‘headcanon’ posts? I can tell when people haven’t even put a bit of cursory research in and it feels like a bit of a jab, honestly

[mystery-moose]

get to know the writer meme!!!

I got tagged by @philosoverted so you can blame her for this. (<3)

1. Which writing advice do you dislike the most?

“Write what you know.” The most limiting advice I’ve ever gotten. If I only wrote what I know, I’d never write anything interesting.

That, or those posts with a million words to replace “said.” Just use said. Please. Please.

2. How do you create your characters?

In genre stories, I tend to rely on archetypes; there’s nothing better than a smug fancy villain or a revenge-obsessed vigilante.

But when I’m feeling more literary or low-key? I think about people I would like to meet. Not necessarily hang out with all the time, or even meet more than once, but meet. And then I try to build out an inner life for them based on what that initial meeting might be like.

That all sounds very pretentious, but in essence it’s just “imagine if I were actually interesting and then write that.” Putting yourself in another person’s shoes, y’know?

3. How long does it take you from getting the idea to actually write it down?

Depends. If it’s an idea that I latch onto, that I can’t stop thinking about, and I think I could bang it out in a couple hours, I’ll work on it almost immediately. If it’s an idea that I know will take tens of thousands of words, or an idea that isn’t fully realized yet, then it’ll take weeks, months, a year. It’s terrible and I’m trying to combat it as best I can.

4. What’s the most you’ve written for a story (aka word count?)

Incomplete? I believe at the final count it was 103,000 words. Complete? A little over 54,000.

I don’t post incomplete projects anymore.

5. Do you have a headcanon which you haven’t told yet for your current story? Which one?

For AMatMMP: Angus has been on precisely one (1) proper date before in his entire life and it was when he was fifteen. He has no idea what he’s doing.

6. With which of your MC would you get along the best?

Angus or Lucretia, probably. They’re very nice and we share similar interests. I’d have more fun hanging out with Taako or Lup, though, even if by the end I’d probably want to push them off a bridge.

7. Where do you get your inspiration from?

Music, mostly! A good tune can evoke a very specific mood, and mood/tone are usually the thing that first sparks an idea for me.

Also? Chillstep is just relaxing. And I do my best work when I’m relaxed.

8. Do your wips (if you have more than one) fit together? or if you only have one: do you plan on having fitting stories?

Hell yes they do. Well, some more than others -- I’ve got a few that are standalone/what-if sort of stories, but there IS a central “canon” I’ve been adding to ever since before Balance ended. I can’t help it, I love worldbuilding! Taking minor details from previous things and adding them in again with greater focus is like the coolest thing to me, and when people notice it? It feels great.

9. Which one of your characters do you like the most?

Sticking to original characters? Probably either Rocco or Priscilla. Rocco because he’s got an interesting job and some neat family bullshit I could really dig into if I ever felt like it, and Priscilla because she’s a stone-cold badass with a messed up backstory. I probably won’t ever dig too deep into that because it’s a tad too grim, but I plotted out a whole little origin story for her, so she’s clearly taken up some significant brainspace.

(If we’re talking about original fiction characters you’ve never heard of and never will? Charlie. Or Nick.)

10. Would you like to get published?

Hell yeah. That’s the dream. Well, part one of the dream, actually. And it requires me to actually send things out to publications, which requires the possibility of rejection, which sucks. But I’ll actually do the work one of these days! It’ll happen! Someday!!

11. Do you prefer to schedule your writing time, or go only whenever the creativity strikes?

I should do the former, but instead I do the latter. I’m trying to get back into the former again. The most productive I’ve ever been is writing for an hour every day, because sometimes I build up inertia and can’t stop!

12. Home, coffee shop, or library for writing?

I do the vast majority of my writing at home, but I also enjoy a good library. The coffee shop I enjoy less, if only because there’s more noise and people; I always worry that someone’s going to bump into my table or spill something or I’m going to trip someone or whatever.

13. Would you ever collaborate with another writer on a story?

Hell yes! There are a few writers I would adore collaborating with. But it’s a matter of feeling like I’d be bothering people constantly, y’know? Like even more than I normally do. And also fearing that I’d be a real control freak about it. I don’t think I would be? But it might be a struggle. I don’t know.