#to really rewrite it into something workable

[sparrowlucero]

if that story is true and Moffat wrote the Doctor's Wife, why wouldn't he just give himself credit?

He didn't write the Doctor's Wife, exactly; it /is/ a work by Gaiman, it's just that Moffat is rumored to have done some pretty heavy rewrites which likely should have warranted a cowriting credit.

Quite honestly this is normal, pretty much any given episode you see is going to have a ton of input from the showrunner (yes, even the ones they said they didn't edit at all), and it's (to my knowledge) up to them if they feel that warrants a cowriting credit. If true, I'm sure Gaiman being a guest writer who's name would undoubtedly draw viewers was certainly a big factor in Moffat leaving himself uncredited; "co written by Neil Gaiman" is just not a good look for marketing.

(The only reason it's notable here is because Gaiman later came off as a bit unprofessional and vindictive toward the production over his second episode (which was very poorly received), usually describing it along the lines of him having wrote a great script he was very proud of and the people working on Doctor Who not understanding his vision or not giving him as much creative control. So "actually, it seems very likely that he had a lot of creative control on the bad one and a lot of rewrites and guidance on the good one" is just a funny little counter to it all.)

[burntoutdaydreamer]

Weird Brain Hacks That Help Me Write

I'm a consistently inconsistent writer/aspiring novelist, member of the burnt-out-gifted-kid-to-adult-ADHD-diagnosis-pipeline, recently unemployed overachiever, and person who's sick of hearing the conventional neurotypical advice to dealing with writer's block (i.e. "write every single day," or "there's no such thing as writer's block- if you're struggling to write, just write" Like F*CK THAT. Thank you, Brenda, why don't you go and tell someone with diabetes to just start producing more insulin?)

I've yet to get to a point in my life where I'm able to consistently write at the pace I want to, but I've come a long way from where I was a few years ago. In the past five years I've written two drafts of a 130,000 word fantasy novel (currently working on the third) and I'm about 50,000 words in on the sequel. I've hit a bit of a snag recently, but now that I've suddenly got a lot of time on my hands, I'm hoping to revamp things and return to the basics that have gotten me to this point and I thought I might share.

1) My first draft stays between me and God

I find that I and a lot of other writers unfortunately have gotten it into our heads that first drafts are supposed to resemble the finished product and that revisions are only for fixing minor mistakes. Therefore, if our first draft sucks that must mean we suck as writers and having to rewrite things from scratch means that means our first draft is a failure.

I'm here to say that is one of the most detrimental mentalities you can have as a writer.

Ever try drawing a circle? You know how when you try to free-hand draw a perfect circle in one go, it never turns out right? Whereas if you scribble, say, ten circles on top of one another really quickly and then erase the messy lines until it looks like you drew a circle with a singular line, it ends up looking pretty decent?

Yeah. That's what the drafting process is.

Your first draft is supposed to suck. I don't care who you are, but you're never going to write a perfect first draft, especially if you're inexperienced. The purpose of the first draft is to lay down a semi-workable foundation. A really loose, messy sketch if you will. Get it all down on paper, even if it turns out to be the most cliche, cringe-inducing writing you've ever done. You can work out those kinks in the later drafts. The hardest part of the first draft is the most crucial part: getting started. Don't stress yourself out and make it even harder than it already is.

If that means making a promise to yourself that no one other than you will ever read your first draft unless it's over your cold, dead body, so be it.

2) Tell perfectionism to screw off by writing with a pen

I used to exclusively write with pencil until I realized I was spending more time erasing instead of writing.

Writing with a pen keeps me from editing while I right. Like, sometimes I'll have to cross something out or make notes in the margins, but unlike erasing and rewriting, this leaves the page looking like a disaster zone and that's a good thing.

If my writing looks like a complete mess on paper, that helps me move past the perfectionist paralysis and just focus on getting words down on the page. Somehow seeing a page full of chicken scratch makes me less worried about making my writing all perfect and pretty- and that helps me get on with my main goal of fleshing out ideas and getting words on a page.

3) It's okay to leave things blank when you can't think of the right word

My writing, especially my first draft, is often filled with ___ and .... and (insert name here) and red text that reads like stage directions because I can't think of what is supposed to go there or the correct way to write it.

I found it helps to treat my writing like I do multiple choice tests. Can't think of the right answer? Just skip it. Circle it, come back to it later, but don't let one tricky question stall you to the point where you run out of brain power or run out of time to answer the other questions.

If I'm on a role, I'm not gonna waste it by trying to remember that exact word that I need or figure out the right transition into the next scene or paragraph. I'm just going to leave it blank, mark to myself that I'll need to fix the problem later, and move on.

Trust me. This helps me sooooo much with staying on a roll.

4) Write Out of Order

This may not be for everyone, but it works wonders for me.

Sure, the story your writing may need to progress chronologically, but does that mean you need to write it chronologically? No. It just needs to be written.

I generally don't do this as much for editing, but for writing, so long as you're making progress, it doesn't matter if it's in the right order. Can't think of how to structure Chapter 2, but you have a pretty good idea of how your story's going to end? Write the ending then. You'll have to go back and write Chapter 2 eventually, but if you're feeling more motivated to write a completely different part of the book, who's to say you can't do that?

When I'm working on a project, I start off with a single document that I title "Scrap for (Project Title)" and then just write whatever comes to mind, in whatever order. Once I've gotten enough to work with, then I start outlining my plot and predicting how many chapters I'm going to need. Then, I create separate google docs for each individual chapter and work on them in whatever order I feel like, often leaving several partially complete as I jump from one to the other. Then, as each one gets finished, I copy and paste the chapter into the full manuscript document. This means that the official "draft" could have Chapters 1 and 9, but completely be missing Chapters 2-8, and that's fine. It's not like anyone will ever know once I finish it.

Sorry for the absurdly long post. Hopes this helps someone. Maybe I'll share more tricks in the future.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

The Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on bump stocks on Friday, legalizing a device that can effectively transform semiautomatic rifles into machine guns. Predictably, the court split 6–3, with the Republican-appointed justices carving a massive loophole in federal law at the behest of the firearms industry. Justice Clarence Thomas’ majority opinion is rooted in historical misrepresentations and utterly implausible manipulations of the statutory text. It enables future mass shooters to equip their AR-15s with an attachment that increases the rate of fire exponentially, to up to 800 rounds per minute.

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the decision on Saturday’s episode of Amicus. They were joined by David Pucino, an expert in firearms law and legal director of the Giffords Law Center. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

DAHLIA LITHWICK: Justice Thomas makes the claim that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms did a complete 180° on how it viewed bump stocks, suddenly changing their minds after the Las Vegas massacre and deciding that, actually, they are machine guns. That’s just not true, right?

MARK JOSEPH STERN: This idea that ATF said bump stocks were 100% legal, then turned around in response to political pressure and said they were unlawful all along—that’s a misrepresentation of history. What really happened was that gunmakers were developing various tools to help make semiautomatic rifles fire at a higher rate. ATF looked at these and said some were potentially legal while others were not, on a case-by-case basis, without making a formal determination at the agency level. Some were snuck through under false pretenses as an accommodation for disability. And when ATF decided to take a holistic look at this issue after the Las Vegas shooting, it decided that, when bump stocks operate a certain way—basically, enabling automatic fire—they are illegal. That, to me, is doing exactly what an agency is supposed to do. ATF looked at the facts on the ground. It looked at its mandate from Congress. It looked at its own past decisions. And it harmonized them as best it could in accordance with what experts at the agency say the facts are. To see Thomas slander ATF as caving to political pressure, then using this charge to overrule the determination of ATF’s own firearm experts—it seemed to me the height of arrogance.

DAVID PUCINO: I think it’s important to remember that there was really careful work going on at ATF to make these determinations on a case-by-case basis. The agency was faced with a problem: Folks in the firearm industry were trying to get around the laws on the books. When an agency comes out and says, “This is what the law is,” the industry is going to try to get around it. And the agency has to decide if they’ll succeed. What’s really striking here is that ATF was doing that engagement, and the Supreme Court came in and usurped it here in a way that’s totally unworkable if you apply it beyond the favored political constituency of the gun industry. It’s absurd to have the Supreme Court putting all this work into deciding the mechanics of a firearm and whether it meets the statute and trying to overrule an agency that made those same determinations. That’s not a workable way to do government. If every difficult regulatory decision made in this country that might’ve gone one way or another goes up to the Supreme Court, that’s all the justices would ever be doing. You’d need a thousand Supreme Courts to handle it. The volume of work that comes out of the administrative state is not something that the Supreme Court can analyze in this way, at least not in any sort of reasonable manner, and I don’t think they would ever even pretend to. But what you have here is a particular, favored constituency that is bringing these questions. And then, all of a sudden, the court decides to drop everything and figure out how this gun works. Now, the way ATF does that is to sit down and actually look at the firearm. They’re going to bring in their experts and make those determinations. But the way the Supreme Court does it is they look at an amicus brief by the Firearms Policy Coalition and co-sign it.

LITHWICK: That’s the group that created the six graphics and a gif that Justice Thomas used to illustrate how semiautomatic rifles work. Why was it notable that he copied and pasted their material into a Supreme Court opinion?

PUCINO: The National Rifle Association is not what it used to be, and that’s created a gap. And what has gone into the gap are a bunch of further-right organizations that are trying to take the mantle of the NRA by being as extreme as possible. Foremost among them is the Firearms Policy Coalition. Friday was a real moment for them. It’s one of the most extreme groups; it uses extraordinarily violent rhetoric. And it’s putting out material that’s getting blessed by a majority opinion of the Supreme Court. You have to take a step back and look at where we are—I don’t think that’s anything you could imagine happening even 10 years ago.

LITHWICK: You’re both hitting on a big theme of this term, which is the Supreme Court making it impossible for agencies to do pretty much anything. And it seems awfully important when you have Clarence Thomas substituting his judgment for ATF’s with what Justice Sotomayor pointedly calls “six diagrams and an animation.” The majority was just like, I know everything, here’s a Peanuts comic strip. It seems as if Thomas was trying to explain his tortured interpretation to the public, to make it accessible, but eliding the agency’s own expert views in the process.

PUCINO: The idea that you can get the amount of expertise that goes into technical determinations made by ATF by simply looking at briefs and diagrams—I mean, just, no. Obviously not. The amount of time that even clerks, let alone justices, require to do a deep dive on these issues, the depth of understanding they’re going to need—it won’t come anywhere near that of an expert who’s working on this full time. This is their whole job. It’s what they’re trained to do.

STERN: You can really only justify Thomas’ reading, in my view, if you start from the conclusion that the bump stock ban is unlawful and work your way backward, butchering the text to mean something it just doesn’t. This isn’t how ordinary people use the English language and, as Sotomayor showed, it isn’t how members of Congress who voted on this law used English when they wrote it in 1934. If “textualism” can be deployed in such an underhanded and cynical way, I don’t think it’s really getting us anywhere. It’s just another pretext for the Supreme Court to reach whatever result it wants.

This is part of Opinionpalooza, Slate’s coverage of the major decisions from the Supreme Court this June. Alongside Amicus, we kicked things off this year by explaining How Originalism Ate the Law. The best way to support our work is by joining Slate Plus. (If you are already a member, consider a donation or merch!)

[eowynstwin]

Finally finished the damn thing. I kept some notes but they all boil down to one point: the turnaround for this game must have been no more than six months. Nine maximum. And it shows.

I don't even know where to start. The scripting, the pacing, and the entire plot were slapshod. And it's almost as if the game refuses to make sense for the sake of contrarianism; it feels like it would accuse me of being stupid for not getting why everyone likes Rick and Morty. I could evaluate it plot beat for plot beat but I'm on four hours of sleep and frankly? I'd like to move on with my life. This is a demon I've meant to exorcise for months and the damn thing is nearly out of me. So here are my main points.

The script is heavy handed. It's like every line the actors spit out around a mouthful of gravel were written first to be trailer soundbytes and second to be dialogue. No one talks the way these characters talk, not in real life and certainly not in the games they've starred in previously. It's all workable enough, if you're thirteen and playing this game with one hand on the controller and the other around your penis, but for the rest of the population it's pure schlock.

Makarov is a nothing burger of a villain. We are constantly—CONSTANTLY—told how dangerous he is, how competent he, is how brilliant he is, and yet every scene he's in I fail to be compelled. He is the most generic of megalomaniacal idealogues; every villain speech he gives sounds like tumblr dom dirty talk, or maybe reddit whining. I can't help but compare him to Valeria of Modern Warfare 2. In very few scenes, Valeria compels us with the force of her personality; she owns every interaction she inhabits, shows us that she is every bit the bloodthirsty narco we've been told she is. It's easy to believe the she could have accomplished everything she did. Makarov, meanwhile? The most he does is tell everyone how stupid they are and how he's going to win in the end.

Nothing new happens. Makarov is engaging in chemical warfare like MW2019's Barkov. Every gameplay map is lifted from MW2's multiplayer. The ULF is being scapegoated again for terrorism committed by Russian forces. Even Graves and his fucking missiles are in this game. I have the strongest feeling that this game was developed entirely in crunch, with so little time to write it that treading old ground was the only way the writing team could meet their deadlines. The only exception to this is Soap's death, which honestly gave the impression that the writers needed to make SOMETHING dramatic happen, if only to defibrillate an audience that had not been marketed to enough to even be all that interested in this game.

In all I shouted "FUCK OFF" at this game multiple times. I can count on one hand the number of things I liked about this campaign and I really, truly could not tell you what those things are right now because my brain is fried. The result of less than a year of development is an amateurish second draft of a game that I've thought of more than once as a lost orgasm. Briefly, before I spent these five hours watching and reacting (and pausing to take ibuprofen), I considered trying my hand at doing a basic plot rewrite, but it is not. Worth. It.

I stand by what I suggested earlier this year/late last year—the game should have ended with Price's death—but now on the other end of this experience I don't care enough about MW3 to give it that kind of dignity. I'll sign off this review with what I've been saying since the start:

DON'T BUY THESE FUCKING GAMES.

[genericpuff]

The more updates that come out with LO, the more I wanna just shelf reading it entirely so I can focus on my rewrites/redraws. I just... can we just pretend like S3 doesn't exist? Is that an option? "The story ended after Persephone beat Kronos", that sort of thing? I know the S2 finale wasn't great either but at least S1 and 2 are workable, S3 is just tossing everything to the wind and throwing in so many convoluted plotlines that make zero sense (and are trying way too hard to be other, far superior media cough ATLA cough)

Anyways. This isn't a structured essay or anything. I'm just exhausted. The community, the fanart/fanfic content, and the memes and shitposts are the only reason I'm even sticking around at this point, I didn't read last week's episode until like, 3 hours ago and it was only because I suddenly remembered that I hadn't read it after seeing discussion around it in the Discord groups.

Saturday is just a day now.

Rekindled is gonna have a lot of rewriting to make the S1/2 content 'work'. But take this as a heads up that it's not gonna be tackling anything from S3. It's not something I wanna even try touching because there's no way to turn it into anything readable because there's just nothing there, period. And I know that's harsh to say but everything that's in S3 should have happened YEARS ago, when the plot was still fresh and we didn't have 278093573209532 things going on. Instead it's happening when, in all definitions of the word, the story is FINISHED. Kronos isn't a threat, Apollo isn't a threat, Hades and Persephone are the most boring protagonists to ever exist in a romance story, nothing's happening, it's just rehashing information over and over again and introducing new characters who then go on to rehash more information over and over again. And when it's not information being repeated ad nauseum, it's Persephone and Hades repeating robotic Therapy Speak dialogue that Rachel read on Twitter.

It's like we, the audience, are being viewed and treated like we're 4 years old by Rachel, who is playing mindless preschooler tapes on loop and calling it "entertainment."

Anyways. I'm kinda thinking of starting up a Twitch or something so I can work on new episodes of Rekindled live. If that's something y'all would be interested in, lemme know in the comments/reblogs/asks, I'd be down to hang out with y'all. I think we're all in need of some kind of group therapy over this shit.

It really sucks to say after so many years of eating it up and loving it to death, but I truly don't care for LO anymore.

Not even hate. I just... don't care.

The opposite of love is not hate.

It's apathy.

[greenjacketwhitehatdocmui]

DC: Absolute Power Rant

Warning: This is a rant about what happens to a certain character in the "Absolute Power" event. Feel free to skip it if you don't want spoilers.

I’ve heard a few things about the lead-up to the “Absolute Power” event that has (at the time of this writing) just started.  Once again, we have Amanda Waller doing what she thinks is right, no matter the cost in civilian casualties or other collateral damage.  I mean, it seems to be a given now that she’ll just learn to be cleverer about being so narrow-minded.

(I’m going to skip the part about the Failsafe robot.  Though, to be honest, Bruce should have really learned from the debacle that was Brother Eye and the OMACs.  But hey, we can’t skip out on potentially juicy event fodder, now, can we?  Ahem.)

In the lead-up to Absolute Power, Amanda Waller’s forces invade the island nation of Gamorra and apparently kill President Nakamura via violent defenestration.  Mrs. Nakamura’s final words were to have her son, Jay, try to get some help.

Jay is a metahuman, or post-human.  He can phase through objects at will, or as an unconscious defense.  In short, his body reacts to a threat by becoming intangible, often without him thinking about it.  Here’s an example from Son of Kal-El # 4, where the Kent farm has just been hit by an explosion.

Notice that Jay does not have time to think about turning intangible.  He’s probably in mid-word (Jon is currently trying to speed everyone out of the explosion) and doesn’t realize that anything is wrong.  Shrapnel is flying everywhere, but Jay is unaffected. 

A criticism of Jay’s powers is that they are ill-defined.  In fact, it feels like Tom Taylor created Jay this way in order to avoid any sense of peril, jeopardy, or even the slightest bit of harm.  It seems to boil down to “if it can hurt me, it goes through me automatically.”  In Jay’s words (when talking to Jon):

"I mean, with my powers.  I can't actually be hurt.  You feel like you have to protect the whole world, but you don't have to protect me.  I'm the one person in the world you don't have to worry about."

The only time we see Jay hurt is when he has to force himself to be solid, so that he can take his Mother’s blows.  It was either that, or Henry Bendix would kill her out of spite.  Other than that, Jay is effectively untouchable.  It’s as if Taylor didn’t want anyone to touch his precious pink-haired, perfect, cinnamon-roll of a partner for Jon.  He wanted to avoid the early Lois and Clark dynamic of Lois always being in jeopardy and having to be rescued.  Jay is the Lois of the relationship, only “better” by virtue of being unable to be harmed.

I don’t agree with the idea of the superpowered person with no weaknesses.  It’s a bad example of character creation.  It’s the creator’s pet of a character that you hate to see if, say, you’re running an RPG.

That said, in the Absolute Power:  Ground Zero prelude, Jay is shot in the ankle by a sniper.  Why?  Because his foot was tangible while he was running.

Um, no.  According to what Taylor has written, Jay’s power would have kicked in automatically, preventing any harm.  It’s more likely that he would have stumbled to the ground—and through it.  This is a better demonstration of how his powers work.

Now, if the comic had explained later that these were special bullets designed by Henry Bendix before his death, but never implemented, that would have worked.  After all, Bendix enjoyed making people suffer, rather than using a simple solution.  I.e., “why don’t you just shoot him already?”  It’s something that the co-writers could have worked out.  Instead, it feels like they’re trying to subvert expectations by rewriting Jay’s abilities into something more workable.

What am I trying to say?  If you’re going to create a character, make sure that they have weaknesses or limitations.  Doing a handwave of ill-defined invincibility makes the character that much harder to work with.

Comments? Questions?

--Doc

[tomwambsmilk]

keep seeing this post floating around and it’s driving me crazy bc ironically enough it completely misses the point of this tweet, I think.

I agree with the general sentiment that the point of a writing assignment is the process rather than the result so using chatgpt completely misses the point of the assignment. HOWEVER. I work admin in a grad school and have had convos with some faculty coworkers about this and the major problem is that it’s pretty much impossible to prove whether or not a paper was written with chatgpt. ‘AI detectors’ are notoriously bullshit, and there have been a couple of cases where a prof used it to ‘prove’ something was written with chatgpt when it was not (the student was just an extremely bad writer). Profs can often tell when something is chatgpt-bad vs bad-bad, but UNLIKE other forms of plagiarism where you can usually sniff out the plagiarized sources with a good plagiarism checker and a bit of legwork, you can’t definitively prove chatgpt was used bc it usually wont generate the exact same text twice.

So administratively, it’s entirely unreasonable to expect profs to fail students for using chatgpt unless they literally watch the assignment being generated with their own two eyes, because otherwise when the student appeals (which they will!) the prof has no proof. At best there are no consequences for the student; at worst profs can be censured (most good departments would not do this but many departments are. not good.) So given all of the above, the method proposed in the tweet - give the essay the grade it deserves - is not only the best but honestly the only way to deal effectively with students using chatgpt. And it usually teaches students pretty quickly that chatgpt will not get them good grades if it gets them passing grades at all, which is a pretty effective way to discourage its use.

also. what ‘if a student produces an A-level paper with chatgpt they probably know what they’re doing’ really means is that turning an chatgpt draft into an A-level paper actually does require students to go through the whole writing process. Research (to fact-check chatgpt and fill in the gaps in its research), outlining (to rearrange what chatgpt gave you into a workable structure), first draft (because at that point you DO need to rewrite basically everything), and revisions (duh). so like. If that is in fact happening they are still learning the process of writing an essay. That’s not generally happening, and that’s because if you have the knowledge and ability and drive to write an A-level essay chatgpt becomes an extra needless step, but still.

I still think chatgpt is Bad for all the regular plagiarism machine/factually inaccurate/data collection/environmental damage reasons. But if your issue is that ‘students should learn the process of writing an essay’ AND you have any actual experience with trying to teach someone the process of writing an essay then I don’t think you should have too many issues with the tweet. I think you’re just looking for someone to be mad at

[chartreuseian]

Hi! 😁

For the writing shop talk game: 🫂, 🐍, 😍, 🫀, 🎓

Hi hi! Thank you!!

🫂- What was your inspiration for your WIP?

Lol, which one!? Train fic? No clue (started it too long ago). Lessons: an image I had in my head of Helen, John and James on the couch by the fire. Modern AU: it's sort of inspired by the Out of the Blue rewrite I did in the Olden Days that I tried to transform into an original story (still in the Olden Days) that just didn't come together. This bears very little resemblence to either of them, but it's where the vibes come from.

🐍- How do you deal with it when you come across a plothole?

Complaining bitterly to myself about my own stupidity? To be honest, I'm not great at seeing them. Most of my stories come together as fairly complete ideas before I write them (and I almost always know what the main complication is and how I intend to resolve it) so I find a lot of the plot holes end up being small and more workable. The thought of starting something without a clear end goal freaks me out too much, I think!

😍- Post one sentence you think is really great.

Alright, I don't think this is really great but it made me laugh when I wrote it on my walk today...

And then she was kissing him and his cheeks were burning hot because 1) he hadn't even thought about that and 2) she had which meant that 3) Helen was very much intending to have sex with him.

🫀- Do you have an abandoned project? Why did it get binned?

Hmm... Not so much in the fanfic space. A few oneshots where I had made a single line an an outline of an idea, but nothing meaningful. Generally if I like something well enough to start writing it, it's because I've gone and hyperfixated for long enough to produce something that'll keep me working at it for a while!

🎓- Did you have formal training in creative writing? How do you feel about that?

Yup. Majored in Creative & Professional Writing at uni. Loved every second of it. Some of the courses were ridiculous, but some absolutely changed the way I approach writing. One of my courses in particular still informs a lot of the way I write, and I actually use the activities and writing prompts from it when I'm looking to play with creating particular effects in a story.

Honestly though, I went into the course pretty new to the whole idea of writing. I'd only been writing for about 4 or 5 months when I changed my major so it was a pretty drastic step (and looking back, risky given how ridiculously expensive university can be). Creative writing actually isn't my strength as a writer, but studying it really did change the way I approached the idea of writing and narratives. Certainly don't regret it!

[recurring-polynya]

For the fanfic ask meme :D: 2. Do you read/reread your own fics?, 3. What’s your favorite fic that you’ve written?, 5. What’s a fic idea you’ve had that you will never write?, and 10. Is there a fic that got a different response than you were expecting?

(question list is here)

2. Do you read/reread your own fics?

lol, yes, constantly. My first and foremost audience for my fics is me, I just share them because I thought other people would like them, too.

3. What’s your favorite fic that you’ve written?

I answered that one here.

5. What’s a fic idea you’ve had that you will never write?

This last winter, while I was coming up with tons of unworkable ideas for Renruki Week, I really wanted to do a reincarnation AU and shoehorn it into the "Love Over a Lifetime" theme. I got hit with Big Angsty idea of a story where instead of having Renji transfers to Squad 11, Aizen killed him off instead (nominally, by sending him off on a mission above his skill level with no backup, although it very well could have involved one of Aizen's Hollow experiments--in any case, it's just broadly accepted that he "died in action"). The thing is, though, he gets reincarnated as an Ordinary Citizen of Karakura Town. He's sort of a reverse-ghost-- he's kind of directionless and bad at accomplishing anything because he has this Unfinished Business in the afterlife that he has no memory of. He's still Renji, though, so he's friendly and knows everybody. He's in his 30s and works as a delivery guy, so he knows everyone in town, and regularly makes deliveries to the Urahara Shouten and the Kurosaki Clinic. He also coaches kiddie soccer, including Karin's team. In other words, he's just this nice young adult guy that everyone knows. The particular scene that I really wanted to write was Rukia coming out of the Shouten after ripping Urahara a new one about shitty soul pager batteries or something, and runs into Renji carrying on his long-running beef with Jinta, and he's like "hey, have we met somewhere, you seem familiar?" and then I cry a million tears.

Anyway, I couldn't come up with a workable story arc for it and a trap I am especially always cautious not to fall into is "rewrite the first arc of Bleach" so the only thing I've ever written is the opening bit, where Kira writes Rukia a letter to tell her that Renji is dead.

10. Is there a fic that got a different response than you were expecting?

(spoilers for What We Do with Our Hearts under the cut)

I definitely thought more people would guess that Ginrei was dating his tennis instructor, mostly on the basis of why else would I put a hot, beefy tennis instructor in this fanfic? And then every time Byakuya was like "WHY is the tennis instructor here?" and people would comment "Why IS the tennis instructor here?" and I would be like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but inside I was like "oh no i hope this plot twist lands well."

Anyway, when the reveal came out, a lot of people were very surprised, but also generally delighted about it, so all's well that end's well.

[fandomchill]

Look. Guys.

I’m a slow writer.

I write piecemeal and I have to revise. I’m not gonna ever be able to pump out good work on the fly. It’s not my style. It’s gonna be hella annoying and I might switch fics.

But I promise you I don’t ever use chatbot ai, and it’s for three very specific reasons:

1) the above. Like art bots the way chat works is by pulling algorithms and finding predictable ways people write and slapping them together. It’s mindless plagiarism . Sure nothing new under the sun, but at least I’m not just copy pasting and slightly rewording

2) soulless, seriously. It’s a formula that is dictated by a robot. Sure it’s gonna be polished, but it’s not going to ever have the fluid sense of a human penning it. Ai right is good at mimicking humans, but at the end of the day it’s still following a flow chart and there for cannot dynamically work with a scene to make it fresh and new.

3) have you seen the shit that even a properly trained ai bot pumps out? My S.O. Got really into it a while back and tried to get me to give it a writing prompt. I did and it was impressive so we did it again. Impressive sure but something was missing.

After about ten attempts I realized it was playing mad libs. It took my prompt, searched for things that were tangentially related, pulled out a giant list of “sentence templates” and like… slapped that shit together.

Was it workable? Yeah. Did it read okay? Sure. But to polish it to my standards I would need to get in there and totally rewrite everything.

It saved me zero work.

So it’s taking others work , it’s formulaic and it saves you zero work. Sometimes taking the short cut isn’t worth it.

kind of wanna reinforce this here. because i’ve seen ai writing become so popular on tik tok.

ai writing is not okay.

it’s literally theft. just like how ai art steals, ai writing steals. it’s using authors’ very real work to generate whatever you type in. and this also needs to be said as well.

writing is a form of art. fanfiction is a form of literature.

seeing this all over my fyp is REALLY discouraging. fanfic itself is already a labor of love and we love it when you interact. but please do not use ai writing for your fanfic needs when this writing literally steals from fanfic authors.

genuinely don’t know if this post will go around because my interactions outside of hcs are shit, but i hope it does.

[wukodork]

Good news! The bulk of the last episode is a fight scene, so it’s immune to the worst of the bad parts of the show.

Bad news, not all of it is.

Now there actually are quite a few good moments, but they’re fleeting moments. Hopefully you enjoy them enough that you still enjoy the episode overall. Unfortunately, I’m at a point where I don’t want to see Grogu again. I’ll probably see the next show whatever it is, but I Do Not Care what happens to Grogu anymore. Din has a support system now, they can help him grieve if something bad happens. I might have still liked most of it if the beginning of the episode wasn’t filled with almost everything I didn’t like in the show. There were so many things that were exactly my kind of bullshit.

Fennec does not work as the exposition dump character. I don’t know if it’s the direction, or if Ming-Na decided to give a subpar performance for some reason (if she did I hope it was out of spite). Honestly her exposition scene at the beginning and last episode made me wonder if she’s actually the only one being filmed at the time and they cg’d her in esp since Disney is notorious for cging the laziest things. She’s good in the entire rest of the episode and even has probably the best part in the ep, but the beginning of the ep is just ���meh.”

And then Boba. Mr. Fett I love you, but maybe don’t take battle advice from the extremely young biker gang that might be literal children? (I don’t remember how old they are, nor do I care) You don’t.....you don’t protect a city but luring an army to the city. I honestly can’t think of a good doylist reason to have the battle be in the city rather than at the palace where they can control the flow of battle better, especially since by making their stand in the city they’re putting all the civilians at risk. People died because they chose to hide out in the city. Half the city was destroyed by Boba’s rancor because they chose to hide in the city.

Boba does ride the rancor and it is indeed awesome. Other really cool things are Boba and Din vs the Pyke Syndacite’s army, a weird but delightful side character ship (that I honestly hope is broken off before either of them show up again), Fennec showing off why she’s the best assassin, Cad Bane literally just hanging around to bully Boba and Boba busting out his gaffi skills again. There also some moments with Grogu that are genuinely good, but I’m also quite bitter about him and Din hijacking the show for two episodes.

There’s also this line that’s supposed to be super dramatic with Cad Bane going “I KNEW you were a killer!” to Boba and it just...... Look. The first thing we ever knew about Boba Fett was that he kills people. He’s been a killer, this is not some revelation. The show keeps going on about how Boba needs to get his hands dirty and it’s weird but workable with Fennec, because she’s friends with Boba and is aware that he’s trying to change. But from Cad Bane it’s hilarious hearing him call the guy Vader was all “NO DISINTIGRATIONS” at a killer like it was some big condemnation. I guess they never crossed paths in the 30ish years between when they saw each other in Clone Wars and now.

Oh I forgot, even though the writing is rather cringe,  there’s something beautiful about Boba telling Cad that he can’t bully him anymore bc he’s not a little boy anymore.

Ming-Na and Temura deserved so much better. They’re both so good and they really do give much better performances than the crap they were given deserves.

I had thought of maybe doing a rewrite, but I don’t think I could write the changes I’d want well enough to be happy with it and I don’t want to rewatch the show. Maybe I’ll just throw up an outline. Maybe two, one with the same major beats as the show and one with them altered slightly more.

Ugh what was even the point of having the rancor rampage? All it did was undermine Boba and prop up Grogu.

[lets-steal-an-archive]

'Golden Girls' Polishes Its Scripts: Daily Revisions Geared to Sharpen Story and Hone Those Laugh Lines

TRUE OR FALSE:

Actresses Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty, Rue McClanahan and Betty White write their own dialogue for "The Golden Girls." (FALSE)

Older female writers write all 25 episodes each season because no one else could understand the problems of older females. (FALSE)

In order to keep the shows consistent from week to week, one writer prepares all the episodes. (FALSE)

Ten staff writers work together to prepare a season's worth of scripts. (TRUE)

It's a Monday morning in early October and on a sound stage at the small Renmar Studios in Hollywood, the "golden girls" have gathered to read a new script. This will be episode No. 60 of the series and it will air about three weeks later ��� on Halloween.

Everyone in the room has heard about this week's story line: Rose writes a letter to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. But apart from the writers, no one has seen the final script until now. It was completed on a Saturday, photocopied 150 times on Sunday and distributed this morning to NBC; co-producer Touchstone Pictures; the show's creator, Susan Harris; the show's lawyers and researchers, and the "Golden Girls" cast and crew.

"Hopefully, they'll laugh," murmurs head writer Kathy Speer as she prepares to hear the "table reading." "If they don't, we'll be here fixing the script for a long time."

The table reading really is at tables — eight of them arranged in a rectangle. The actresses and guest actors sit on one side, facing the writers. To the actresses' left are director Terry Hughes, executive producers Paul Junger Witt and Tony Thomas and co-executive producers/head writers Speer and Terry Grossman. To the actresses' right sit NBC representatives, the show's casting director and props and wardrobe personnel.

They begin. Director Hughes reads the stage directions: Interior, kitchen — day. Sophia is seated at table. She is reading book entitled 'Magic Made Easy.' Dorothy enters.

Bea Arthur, as Dorothy, reads: "Hi, Ma."

Estelle Getty, as Sophia, reads: "Give me your watch."

Another week is under way. As the actresses go through their lines, everyone else listens intently. They laugh (or don't laugh) and take notes. By the Friday-night tapings, this script will need to play at 22 minutes. But Friday is a long way off.

As soon as the table reading ends, the writers, producers, director and an NBC program executive huddle to discuss script changes. Then, while the actresses begin rehearsals using the first draft, the writers rush off to their yellow stucco two-story building nearby to begin rewriting.

"The secret of TV half-hour comedy shows is the revisions," explains Dean Valentine, NBC director of current comedy and also the program executive on "Golden Girls." "What they start out with is 75% away from what they end up with."

"I don't think this episode is going to need much work," co-head writer Terry Grossman announces cheerfully on his way back to his office. "It got a good response at the table. We just have to cut it, smooth out transitions and clarify some story points. New jokes will be the tough thing." He anticipates a few hours' work.

"Early in the first season we were throwing out whole scenes," he recalls. "Now we know what works for each lady and what she does best. That's the advantage of being in the third year of the show. The disadvantage is that stories are harder to come by."

Grossman heads into the office he shares with his wife Speer, who is also his writing partner. They are in charge of the writing staff. "That means we are the two who get yelled at the most when something goes wrong," he jokes.

Also piling into the conference-sized room are supervising producers Barry Fanaro and Mort Nathan and producer Winifred Hervey. Despite their titles, Grossman explains, "We're all writers."

"We are the five most dull people," Nathan insists.

"We're much funnier on paper," Hervey adds.

These five, all in their 30s, met when they worked on "Benson," an earlier Witt-Thomas-Harris series. They have been with "Golden Girls" since the beginning, and every Monday they jointly rewrite the script being taped that week. They jokingly call themselves The Gang of Five.

While they start rewriting, the show's other five staff writers — Chris Lloyd, Jeff Ferro, Frederic Weiss, Robert Bruce and Martin Weiss — go back to their own offices to work on new scripts.

"To keep quality, you like as many writers as you can afford," Speer explains. "This year, we have six 'entities' (writing teams) — four sets of partners and two individuals. And we also use a few free-lance scripts each season."

Approximately 25% of the show's budget goes to the writers, executive producer Tony Thomas says. Staff writers on a comedy series earn a weekly salary plus separate payments for completed scripts. A free-lance writer who does a story outline, a first draft and a second draft can earn about $11,000. (Note: All outside script submissions must come through agents.)

"A good comedy requires a lot of teamwork, a lot of people sitting in a room working together," Thomas emphasizes. "A good team is rare, but it's not extremely rare. It's like winning the NBA title. We had it in 'Soap,' and we had it for some years in 'Benson.' Obviously this is one of the most successful staffs we’ve ever put together."

Both Witt and Thomas deal with day-to-day details on "Golden Girls." Harris, who created the series, is less involved this season because, according to Thomas, "She is working on a feature for Disney with us. But she reads all the scripts and is familiar with most of the stories."

Flashback to the previous Friday, a week when "Golden Girls" wasn't taping. Every fourth week during the season, the show shuts down, giving the actors and crew a rest and allowing the writers to catch up.

The Gang of Five is trying to explain how their writing process works. They insist on telling, rather than showing, because, as they say, they're shy. "At the beginning of the season, even having our new writers in the meeting made me a little uncomfortable," Grossman admits. "It slowed down the process."

"One of the most important things that exists with this group is that the bottom line is making the show as good as possible. It's still very difficult when your script is read for the first time and the material doesn't work. It hurts for a moment. But there's no time to take it personally. It didn't work, and the clock is ticking. You better keep moving and get it right."

Like all sitcoms, "Golden Girls" has a "bible," a book that synopsizes everything that has happened on a series. Thus, new writers don't have to watch all the previous episodes. But there is no master plan of what will happen in the future.

The idea for "Letter to Gorbachev" surfaced last May at a beginning-of-the-season meeting of the writers and producers. "It was one of 20 or 30 story notions kicked around," Barry Fanaro recalls. The obvious similarity to Samantha Smith's letter to then-Soviet leader Yuri Andropov isn't mentioned.

"Most of them didn't work,” adds Fanaro's writing partner Mort Nathan, "but this one sounded amusing. Because Rose is a childlike character, we wondered what would happen if she wrote a letter to Gorbachev about world peace. We started fleshing it out, but we couldn't think of a second act. We went round and round, and finally six weeks later we came up with a way to make the story work."

"The five of us went over it scene by scene and agreed it was workable," Fanaro continues. "Then Mort and I went off and wrote it. It took about 10 days because we were also working on other things."

Each "Golden Girls” episode is written to a formula: "the idea, the act break and the resolution," Grossman explains. "Usually there's an 'A' story and a 'B' story going. It's the natural structure."

Although Fanaro and Nathan, who won a writing Emmy last year for a "Golden Girls" episode, wrote the basic Gorbachev script, the story the audience will see has gone through the usual "Golden Girls" grinder: The Gang of Five read and dissect the first draft, adding new scenes, new lines, new jokes. "It's really a team effort," Grossman stresses.

The jokes can be the easiest part — or the hardest. "They're only hard to write when you've got one that isn't working," Grossman says. "A joke in the middle of a scene can be weak, but the 'out joke' — a snappy one-liner that ends the scene on a laugh — has to be strong."

"We may decide a scene needs a new opening," Speer explains. "There will be a long moment of silence. Then someone will ask if anybody's eaten at some new restaurant. In the course of conversation, somebody will say, 'Wait a minute. I have an idea.'"

"With five of us, at least one of us is paying attention," Hervey deadpans.

"Good writers should be able to write for men, women, old or young," Grossman says. "We all draw on other people in our lives — parents, grandparents. Part of the reason for the show's popularity is that these are very vital people. The very same story you've seen 100 times on every sitcom takes on new light with characters in this age group. That makes life easier for us.

"Also, these four actresses are sensational. To have the entire cast be able to give such high-caliber performances means you don't have to adjust your material. You write the material, and they deliver. If they can't make it work, there's something wrong with the material."

The week goes by quickly. On Tuesday morning, the "golden girls" read over the revised script and discover that one scene has changed considerably. Some lines have been cut, while others have been sharpened. There are several new jokes. A press conference scene has been shifted from a hotel room to the ladies' living room.

On Tuesday night, the Gang of Five works late. During the day's rehearsals they realized that the revised scene didn’t play well so they jettisoned it and added some new dialogue and a few more jokes.

Following Wednesday's rehearsals, they hone the script a little more. Time is pressing. By the Thursday afternoon dress rehearsal, the actresses try to be script-perfect, although they often aren't. By now, the original 52-page script has been reduced to 50 pages, and almost every page has had at least one alteration.

For instance, on Monday when Blanche accidentally spat Coca-Cola on a Soviet Embassy official, he responded by saying, "No apology necessary." Now he says, "No need to apologize. In Moscow, we have to stand in line four hours to get this."

Late Friday afternoon, the audience files into Renmar Studios to watch the first taping. The writers are standing by, just in case a last-minute problem occurs. During the 90-minute dinner break, while a new audience is arriving, the cast, writers and producers calmly discuss how to improve the second taping. A few lines are cut, the taping is completed, and it’s on to the next week.

Source: Mills, Nancy. 1987. 'Golden Girls' Polishes Its Scripts: Daily Revisions Geared to Sharpen Story and Hone Those Laugh Lines. Los Angeles Times, October 30, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-10-30-ca-11702-story.html

[phoenixfeathersinfall]

The Dax Debacle: Re-Imagining S7 of “Star Trek Deep Space Nine”

*This post came about after a few discussions with Lee @creativilee on how the stories of Jadzia and Ezri could have been adapted to better serve both of those characters and respect the work of both actresses! Thanks to them for all their help, encouragement, and serving as a springboard! Anything in italics is theirs!

For all of us DS9 fans, the finale season can be rather fraught for several reasons, many of the biggest revolving around the transition from Jadzia Dax to Ezri Dax, henceforth called “The Dax Debacle.” Many folks seem to love one and hate the other, which is a huge shame because both characters brought amazing potential and storylines to the table, but the writers really fumbled in some key aspects. This sure-to-be-long-winded meta is an attempt between myself and Lee to fix some of those fumbles and give both characters the storylines they deserved. So, let’s get to it!

First, a little behind-the scenes context.

Why Two Dax-es?

To begin with, it’s important to acknowledge that the Dax Debacle was largely unplanned, and the writing often reflects the ways in which Nicole de Boer was shoehorned in as Terry Ferrell’s replacement, just as the character of Ezri was deliberately put forward as Jadzia’s replacement as the next host of Dax. What happened?

It is widely believed, based on various interviews Terry gave during the show’s run, that the set of DS9 was inhospitable to her, placing her in situations of harassment and abuse. By the time of S7, due to this as well as the sheer grueling schedule of the show, she wanted to be moved from a permanent member of the cast into a reoccurring role like that of Andrew Robinson. When it proved fruitless to negotiate this, Terry decided to leave the show, though she explicitly stated she had not wanted Jadzia’s character to be killed on her departure.

Though the writers went through with the decision to kill Jadzia, they still wanted the character of Dax to remain on the crew, and due to the way Trill physiology was designed, they decided to do this with another host, similar to how Jadzia was initially seen as the continuation of Sisko’s old friend Curzon.

Enter Nicole de Boer as Ezri Dax, a young unjoined Trill who had never intended to be a host at all, and the story of her adjustment to carrying on the Dax legacy.

The Story’s Seed

It’s definitely worth noting that the initial conception of Ezri’s story, the young suddenly-joined Trill joined under trying circumstances who has to re-discover herself has a lot of potential! It could have been extremely poignant and moving, in something of the same vein as Seven of Nine rediscovering herself on “Voyager.” Unfortunately, the choices made regarding how she became the next Dax make it hard to appreciate Ezri on her own merits. Both we as the audience and the other characters are constantly seeing Jadzia in her place. It stymied who she was able to be as a character and how the audience was able to receive her. The way she was written invites constant comparisons, often to Ezri’s detriment in her initial interactions with the crew.

Lee said some things extremely well here: “Ezri as a character was hindered a lot by being made ‘Jadzia's replacement’ instead of ‘the next Dax,’ a Dax in her own right. While Jadzia definitely had Curzon's legacy to live with, it was absolutely not all she was, and she interacted with it as such, but Ezri wasn’t written with the same care. She isn't ‘Ezri Dax’ she's ‘Ezri, the one who replaced Jadzia.’ She was entirely written as a replacement, and it shows.”

Fumbles, Fumbles, Fumbles

Let’s review some things that went sideways in Ezri’s arc, so we can see it for the purposes of our rewrite.

The “I'm the new host of your dead friends symbiont" aspect is very difficult to watch. It’s hard to say if the writers wanted to lean into this aspect deliberately, but even if they did, I don’t think they ended up hitting the emotional notes they wanted to.

Ezri doesn’t seem to get much training from what we can tell, and being joined is a huge change! We learned from Jadzia’s arc that initiates often train for years. It’s wartime, but she still really did get thrown into the deep end!

The audience can’t approach Ezri on her own merits, but quite often, the crew isn’t doing that, either. There’s the caveat that they’re grieving and it’s an odd situation to be in, but! Sisko initially tries to interact with her in the same way he would Jadzia (calling her old man, which upsets her a great deal,) Julian flirts with her with the same intensity he did Jadzia in early seasons, Worf seems to only be seeing his dead wife any time he looks at her.

Ezri is given a role as ship’s counselor when she is in no way emotionally able to handle the psychological difficulties of others when she’s going through so much herself.

Her return to Deep Space 9 (the station) seems to contradict what we know about Trill culture. Joining is meant to give the symbiont as many life experiences as possible, and re-association (to various degrees) is anything from strongly discouraged to forbidden. Ezri goes right back to living Jadzia’s life in some ways, in the same place with the same people. Jadzia wasn’t able to resume her relationship with Lenara Khan, but Ezri finds herself being intimate with Jadzia’s widower.

Our alternatives and fixes for the arcs of Jadzia and Ezri fall into three broad categories, which we’ll break down here:

1. Ezri Not-Dax? (Ezri is still joined unexpectedly, but rather than the Dax symbiont, she is host to another symbiont which needed her.)

2. Where in the World is Jadzia Dax? (If Ezri isn’t a Dax, we have to figure out what to do with the Dax we know!)

3. The Legacy Question (The age-old Trill questions of new hosts, old hosts, and interpersonal relationships.)

Ezri Who? Ezri Not-Dax!

The best solution Lee and I were able to find was the idea that Ezri was joined under similar circumstances to canon, but not to Dax itself.

This is still largely workable for the story we want to tell, because, as Lee explains: “The Dax symbiont isn't key to her character, except to affect her relationships with the crew. Her main personal conflicts are about being joined before she was ready, not about being joined to Dax. She still would have worked without the Dax symbiont.”

For the sake of convenience, let’s call this hypothetical new symbiont Nal. So, Ezri Tigan —> Ezri Nal.

Where in the World is Jadzia Dax?

Theres 3 different paths we could take with Jadzia!

If Terry was made a reoccurring member of the cast, the writers could easily have put Jadzia into the position of being given a transfer assignment. Though Jadzia might initially struggle to accept this because of her loyalty to her friends, “with things picking up in wartime, it's believable that Starfleet would want the people more familiar with what dangers are on the other side of the wormhole to be spread around and maximize the number of ships and stations that are prepared for it. Maybe Jadzia acts as a representative and goes around giving lectures/debriefings on that stuff. This situation puts us in a position to get frequent updates about Jadzia, even if we don't see her again!"

If Terry did not stay on at all, Jadzia as a character could still have died, but the Dax symbiont finds a new host back on Trill, away from the station. Maybe we get updates about this Dax because Ezri trained with them for a bit, or the new Dax reaches out to Sisko from time to time, since he was well-acquainted with two previous Dax-es.

The option I like best for purely self-indulgent reasons would be if Terry stayed on for one more season and was present on the station when Ezri arrived, serving as a mentor to her.

The Legacy Question

Since the “TNG” days, Star Trek likes to experiment with Trill, and what happens in relationships between joined Trill and non-Trill, particularly in the case of a symbiont with a new host. We might assume this was part of the writer’s intent with the Dax Debacle, but it went over much better in the move from Curzon to Jadzia then it did in the move from Jadzia to Ezri.

Other options for exploring “the legacy question:”

“If they wanted to explore the whole ‘new host when the previous host was close to you’ thing, they could have had an episode that went into detail about Sisko meeting Jadzia for the first time after the death of Curzon.” Or, just having Sisko reflect more on the changes and developments in their relationship as time passes. They did this quite well initially when Jadzia first came aboard, but dropped it soon after the first season for the most part and left it to our amazing fic writers to pick it back up.

The character of Curzon is often used as a vehicle for explaining Jadzia’s connection to Klingon culture, but he also gives us access to a wealth of relationships which could be used to explore the legacy question. “Curzon had so many friends, and we see a variety of reactions from them, particularly with his Klingon friends. Some of them immediately fall back into that friendship, some of them struggle to recognize that Jadzia may not be Curzon, but she is still Dax, and has a lot of Curzon in her.” Keeping that thread going would have been intriguing also.

The Life of Ezri Nal

Here’s how some elements of Ezri’s story might look with the “Nal” symbiont.

Ezri is joined rather unprepared when a medical emergency puts the life of a symbiont at risk and the host is unable to be saved. For convenience, let’s call this symbiont Nal.

Ezri was always interested in Starfleet Service, especially in working as a counselor (which she studied on her own rather than gaining the knowledge through the memories of past hosts.) She assigned to the station by the Trill Symbiosis Commission largely because there are people there who will know how to help a newly-joined Trill; namely Sisko, Julian, and Jadzia.

Jadzia+ Ezri

Being the only other Trill on the station that we know about, Jadzia puts herself in a mentor role to Ezri, helping her adjust to her new life and consciousness. Her personality and experiences make her perfect for the job!

As a bonus, we get to see how the mentor and mentee relarionships between joined Trill and initiates work.

We also set up some fun parallels! Take Jadzia, who had to try so hard to be joined, and it was a huge goal in her life (to the point where she applied again to the Symbiosis Comission after being rejected once, which is played as something that basically never happens,) versus Ezri who was perfectly happy to be just herself and ended up taking on this responsibility without being ready and without feeling like she had much choice because of how Trill culture regards symbionts.

From the little we know about Jadzia before she was joined, she was somewhat like Ezri-bookish, shy, anxious-and she initially struggled to adjust to the likes of Curzon. But now, she’s gown so confident in who she is, for the most part, and she’d be the perfect person to guide Ezri and help her find joy in her new life.

But, she also understands having difficulties with aspects of being joined, for example, her conflict in whether she should rejoin with Lenara Khan, or how she struggled in the aftermath of the discovery of the cover-up regarding Joran.

In short, Jadzia helps keep Ezri as mentally and emotionally healthy as she can be.

Julian+Ezri

Being CMO, Julian helps look after Ezri and ensure she’s physically well; after all, it’s what he does best! “Having Julian as the Chief Medical Officer on board would be a big draw for the Trill. He's even performed a symbiont joining and removal procedure. He had to be very familiar with Trill biology, meaning a newly joined host would be relatively safe and well-cared-for on board. And, I’m sure that there's a big chemical change in Trill when the get joined, and adjusting to that would be hard!”

Julian can also sympathize having something done you didn’t want or weren’t ready for, and can help her process those feelings. “ They both have complicated relationships with their parents regarding their parents’ expectations and their own desires and feelings, which would be interesting!”

In some ways, Julian can serve as another mentor to Ezri. It would be an interesting shift to watch Julian, who is often portrayed as the the youngest or most “green” be able to mentor and guide someone else. “This is also a good way to show Julian has grown and matured, without having to have other characters just say it.”

If we still followed their romance route, having Ezri as Ezri Nal rather than Dax could have make the relationship between her and Julian sit a lot better with audiences. With a rewrite, Julian is not chasing the “ghost” of Jadzia; rather he’s meeting Ezri for the person she is, on her own terms. This also prevents a regression of his character back to the way he chased Jadzia in the early seasons, and instead honors the relationship of treasured friendship that Julian and Jadzia built.

Sisko+Ezri

As he is with many of his younger crew, Sisko takes naturally to the role of a mentor and father figure with Ezri, again meeting her for the person she is, on her own terms. He serves as a valuable guide to ship life and helps her get acquainted with station staff and residents.

Like with Jake, Sisko encourages Ezri to find herself by being her own person.

Ezri tries to take up cooking as a hobby with Sisko, but the experiences of past hosts mean her skills vary wildly depending on what they are making.

Other Relationships

Garak helps Ezri figure out how she wants to dress, often integrating different styles from past hosts. (He rather jumps at the chance.) Ezri still has her difficulties helping him as a counselor, but her additional training and the lack of complications from the Dax symbiont make things easier. They also get to know each other through Julian.

In this Ideal Timeline, Ziyal survives and meets Ezri. They relate well to each other, both of them not really knowing where they fit and grappling with someone else’s legacy, but they have each other for support. Ziyal has given her portraits as gifts.

She has a similar dynamic with Jake, who is trying to figure out how to honor his parents while being his own man. Ezri starts writing memoirs of sorts about her past lives on his suggestion.

Surprisingly, she gets on with Nog, too. They’re both doing things unexpected and feeling like they’re going to be the first in something big.

She isn’t especially close to Worf, but he assures her that the sacrifices she made for Nal are ones to be honored, and becomes rather fond of Ezri due to Jadzia’s influence.

Thanks for reading this super-long meta! Please tell Lee and I your thoughts on this rewrite!

[sorcery-and-stupidity]

So, as for the name, I actually found something really interesting about Yukako’s original name I wanted to share (though I’m not exactly getting this from a credible source, so take it with a grain of salt). Apparently, her name is sort of a pun. Yukako herself is supposed to take Shoujo tropes to the extreme, right? Well, her name was made as a play on a phrase for a “perfect traditional wife” in Japan. The exact phrase is “Yamato nadeshiko” which is apparently referring to a specific kind of flower that grows at high altitudes. Meanwhile, Yukako’s name means something along the lines of a “flower at the base of a mountain.”

I thought that that could be used somehow. The President, as we’ve written so far, is a foil to Yukako, so I felt like it fits. As it turns out, Nadeshiko is a given name, albeit somewhat rare. Maybe a bit heavy handed, but workable and plays into her ego.

As for the surname, using “yama,” for mountain somewhere sounds good to me. “Maruyama” is a decent one- usually it means round mountain, but “Maru” can also be used for something complete or perfect in other contexts, so I think we can repurpose it.

So something like “Perfect Flower on a perfect mountain?” Nadeshiko Maruyama.

Anyway, I had the idea that we could rewrite Nadeshiko into being the last person to see Shigeki alive. You know, for the hurt.

Oh I had. A thought for the Cinderella Rewrite AU. Because now there's a girl out there who is extraordinarily pissed at Yukako, right?

Well that's great for Yoshihiro Kira who is trying to find people willing to distract the Morioh Gang from hunting down and finding his son. And this girl already has a grudge against one of them? Perfect Enemy Stand potential!

There are so many ways this plotline could go which is amazing. Does the girl learn the error of her ways or remain stubborn, becoming a shadow archetype to Yukako, someone unwilling to settle her feelings in a healthy way? Does Koichi beat her or does Yukako? Does this happen on The Thursday? If so, does Yukako reluctantly drag in someone like Hazamada to help or does she try to go it alone only to fail and need the help of, say, Joseph or Tonio?

Speaking of which, if it isn't on The Thursday, where is Yukako during All Of That?

OOOOOOOOOOO THAT'S A FUN IDEA TO GO WITH AND A GREAT WAY TO TURN THIS INTO A THREE SECTION ARC 👀👀👀

While I have no idea what her Stand could be, I LOVE the idea of her being turned into a Stand User and getting involved in The Thursday. Maybe she ends up teaming up with Terunosuke in the kidnapping of Koichi and it sorta skews how everything goes. What her Stand is will definitely impact how things are going, but with how we've created her there are. So many possibilities and I'm not sure which would be best. I do think it should be more inclined to trickery than straight up power but other than that I've got nothing

ANYWAYS tho, as for how this ties into things and redirects them: maybe the girl (also, we really need to give her a name don't we) was set up to work with Terunosuke, but under the condition that Koichi and Yukako were hers. Teru does his thing and kidnaps Koichi and Tomoko, but he ends up passing Paper Koichi off to the girl

Josuke, Okuyasu, Yukako and Yuya are all going to temporarily be together and chasing after Terunosuke, but maybe somewhere during the chase the girl ends up jumping them and goads Yukako into a fight. Yukako tells the others to go on ahead and keep chasing after Teru and that she'll catch up later. It only after they've left that Yukako learns Koichi is actually here. I'd imagine their fight is a lot of chasing and shouting, and personally I really like the possibility of Tonio and Joseph getting involved, though I'm not super sure how

Koichi definitely gets freed at some point, and when he joins the fight there's a noticeable difference in the tide. After all, out of the four of them Koichi has the 2nd most combat experience (plus, Joseph's gotten a bit nerfed because of his age) and isn't afraid to pull his punches if he genuinely believes he's in danger. He's had like. Three near death experiences at this point, two of which could be argued were just flat out death, plus who knows how many other fights where his friends were in danger. Koichi knows what's at risk here and he's not going to let anyone else get hurt if he can help it. (Now, he's not going for lethal shots, but he's definitly aiming to hurt)

and maybe that's how Tonio and Joseph get involved? For safety and potential back up, Koichi and Yukako ended up running to Tonio's since it was the closest place and Joseph just happened to be there (Shizuka is fine tho, she's Jotaro at the moment), and they end up getting wrapped into things

for the resolution of this, I'll admit I really want to play into the fact that this girl has no IDEA what's actually going on or how much is actually at stake here, and how her ignorance to it has consequences. She's far from blameless of course, she did do some really fucked up shit in the past and now, but she also had no idea she's gotten involved with serial killers who are looking to do far worse than high school bullying. She'd been so wrapped up in her own little world of getting revenge that she hadn't thought to think Hey Maybe The Weird Picture Man With The Arrow Doesn't Have My Best Interests At Heart

Now does this mean she gets off scott free? No, and to be honest given the amount of property damage and kidnapping and manipulation she's done she's definitely going to be on the Foundation's radar, double especially because she's a User who was again, working for a known serial killer (albeit unknowingly)

but finally, after weeks and weeks of all of this happening, she finally gets to see how there's more to this world that her immediate circle and there are going to be concesuqences for her actions

[purlturtle]

11, 25, 26, 56

Just answered #11!

What’s your favorite part of the writing process (worldbuilding, brainstorming/outlining, writing, editing, etc)?

... all of it? 😅 No, seriously, I really like the entire thing: getting that first idea and fleshing it out, seeing if a workable fic can be made of it; where applicable: think about how my "what if" will affect this world and the characters; noting down how I think things will go; doing the actual writing (I don't really draft, by the way? Like, 80-90% of the first draft stays as is, mostly. So far, anyway - I'm currently working on the first fic I've actually outlined/planned out in any meaningful sense, and I started to write a lot before I decided to outline, and now I have to decide what I can keep and what needs to go) - and I like that last part too, getting to reread my stuff (I like reading my stuff!), and getting to make it even better and tighter and tinker with the words until they shine or ring or clang or tear your heart out. I love all of it!

What’s your least favorite part of the writing process?

Waiting for feedback and sometimes not getting any. While I really like my writing, I wanna know if other people liked it too! If they think my story makes sense, if the things I put in it land as intended, if a reader sees something in it that I didn't even intentionally put in there - I'm STARVED for all that!!! (This is your call, dear reader, to go to your favorite fic of mine and yell at me about it! 😅)

Are there any fics that you would change or rewrite if given the chance?

A Blue So Deep It's Black is set on Themyscira, and tries to touch on trans women in a way. I could have done a much better job of that. Also could have done a better job of bi-ness in my Kathryn and Marie fic cycle.

Thank you so much for these questions; I always love to talk about my writing! 💜

[notquiteaghost]

i do not have the energy to do it myself but god i want someone to rewrite the dick grayson becomes a cop storyline to be like. good.

and by 'rewrite' i do mean 'the only similarity needed is 'dick becomes a cop to root out a specific instance of corruption' every other element can get fucked', cuz like...

dick realises Something Is Going Down but when he asks jim for advice on handling it jim just stares into the middle distance and laughs hollowly because arrest?? cops??? get cops fired???? in this country???!?

so dick is like. okay. how do i build an absolutely airtight case. how do i get inadmissable evidence when all evidence is handled by. the criminals.

oh shit fuck i have to go undercover don't i

(and also find lawyers and a judge and shit) (but for the sake of a workable story we'll say gotham has people in the justice system happy to persecute cops) (and obviously they are well acquainted with the bats)

so then. Dick Joins The Police.

he does NOT use his real name because Richard Grayson Eldest Son Of Bruce Wayne has maybe said some things, in some public forums, about cops. and how they were useless when his parents were killed and useless when his brother was killed and actively harmful in almost every other situation.

he tells bruce what he’s doing & he tells barbara cuz he'll have less time for patrol and who better to help you covertly get people to confess their crimes on record than oracle

and also if he doesn’t have someone to vent to about the process of becoming a cop and all the many many problems it has he will quit and then commit arson, and barbara has many years experience being a sympathetic ear to this kind of venting

but he maybe forgets to tell anyone else

which means tim drops by dick's place one morning to ask for his opinion on smth and dick is fully in a cop uniform and tim just jumps straight to 'i have fallen into another universe' because a) that Does happen and b) tim drake can be a little dissociative, as a treat

and it also means that jason is just walking one evening minding his business not even on his way to do a crime and then he sees dick grayson, who once looked a cop dead in the eye and told him he didn’t even know what sex is to give a sex worker time to scram, wearing a badge and telling off some kid, and he reflexively punches him in the face

the resolution of both of these is almost exactly the same. jason/tim yelling "a cop! a COP!", various statistics, "what would commissioner gordan say!!!" and "a fucking COP??!?" until they let dick get a word in edgeways and he says "i am undercover do you have that little faith in me" and they deflate and go "oh. okay. ...need a hand?"

dick IS purposefully keeping it from damian tho because damian does not approve of undercover work. damian would just break into the officers' homes and start breaking their bones until they confess. getting damian to understand what is and isn’t admissable in a court of law is very much a work in progress

and then. the process of dick gaining the relevant officers' trust and confidence, and then getting in on whatever they’re doing, whilst also trying to minimise the damage done in just a general sense. these two goals are very much at odds with each other, but dick cannot be in a situation where he could help someone and not do it

he does a lot of yelling. the ‘the only good cop’ groupchat (now dick, barbara, tim, jason, steph, cass, and alfred) (not duke. dick loves his brother and will not remind him of endemic racist violence if he doesn’t absolutely have to) points out he is possibly not the best choice, to go undercover as a cop; he asks if anyone else would like to volunteer; everyone remembers ‘being unable to sit idle when you could help’ is kinda a key part of being a vigilante; someone links a cat video

also there are explicitly no good cops. there are cops who think theyre good cops but they’re actively ignoring the really bad cops and that isnt the moral highground they think it is. one of them catches on to what dick is doing maybe and asks to help and dick is just like "if you really want to help then quit"

the end of the story is dick getting the evidence he needs and Literally Immediately quitting

and then the cops get charged! and sentenced! and fired! and imprisoned!

(prisons are bad but if anyone deserves to be in them it's cops. what goes around comes around.)

and dick goes on a vacation, because that had a genuine effect on his blood pressure. and maybe comes back from vacation like, y’know what fuck it full police abolition let's go. what’s the point in being adopted by one of the richest men in gotham if you can’t use that money to abolish the goddamn police. jim gordon deserves to retire.

and the moral of the story is dick grayson says fuck the cops