#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.

[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.

[redhoodinternaldialectical]

Wait what??? Chained is connected to all other fics you write??? That's so incredible and smart!

Hahahha thank you! Personally I've been thinking of it as a bit hokey, but I'll certainly take incredible and smart lol!

It's definitely something I've been toying with for a while now and it's a concept I do really like, so yes, semi-officially all of my DC fics do take place either as a result of Chained, or simply in coincidental conjunction to it.

page break for some major spoilers

The strongest instance of this will likely be B'traxia's Hive King Mating Guide, which is a timeline deliberately created by them. Essentially the Jason of Chained realizes that there was no reason for him to have gone back to normal after the events of Brothers in Blood, so they probably used the power of the Contract to do that. They go back in time and find out he was right, he only went back to normal bc of the contract. Then, as a kindness to an alternate version of himself, Jason asks Tim to open up a new timeline to ensure that at least one of him will get to freely enjoy tentacles for the rest of his life.

I'm planning on writing and publishing B'traxia's first, and then when they get to that chapter, adding in the notes "Hey if you want to see that alternate timeline, well here it is!"

Similarly I've got an idea for a version of Jason's death where someone clones Jason IMMEDIATELY after his death and tricks both Clone Jay and Bruce into believing that Jason simply miraculously survived... This becomes a serious problem when the original Jason still resurrects and comes gunning for his literal replacement

That idea was originally conceived of as a chapter of Chained, in which Jason comes across those two other selves arguing and convinces them to share the life and co-exist since both of them had equal claim to it now. It was designed mostly to be a study in how Jason conceives of his own selfhood at that point in the story. No idea if I'll get around to writing it fully, but I would like to!

If I ever get around to rewriting Devil's Briar into something workable (likely as a Jason/Lonnie rarepair instead of a JayTim) then that will probably be a result of Chained JayTim fucking around with the events of No Man's Land, resulting in Ivy winning permanent control over a huge portion of Gotham.

There's plenty of my fics that I don't have a significant overlap planned out for, but I do generally think they're compatible with co-existing in the same multiverse(s) as Chained.

Thank you for compliment and thank you for ask :3

[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

[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!

[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

[ladyfawkes]

Fic Questionnaire

Tagged by @trekkiehood

How many works do you have on Ao3? 15

What's your total AO3 word count? 158978

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they? 6:

Star Trek The Original Series, X-Files, Harry Potter, Doctor Who, Supernatural, Disney's Tangled, (technically 7, I guess) since I also heavily include Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Love is Blind (Harry Potter AU)

Desiderium (Tangled/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure)

Eugene's Amnesty (Tangled/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure)

Narcissa's Daughter (Harry Potter)

Tangled Just Before Ever After (Tangled/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure)

Do you respond to comments, why or why not? If I can, yes. I really do try to reply to most if not all of them.

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending? The angstiest ending that's actually been posted? That would be Harry Gets Even.

Have you ever received hate on a fic? Yes, I've gotten hate a few times and every time, it makes absolutely no sense at all. It's like they didn't even read what I wrote!

Do you write smut? If so what kind? I write some light NSFW intimacy and romance, but not smut.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? Yes. Several. More than once. This is why I have a love/hate relationship with Wattpad.

Have you ever had a fic translated? Harry Gets Even was translated into Spanish and French.

Have you ever co-written a fic before? Yup! I currently have Desiderium with @trekkiehood and in the past, I have collaborated on several crossovers (at least 8), many of which include Harry Potter in some way.

What's your all time favorite ship? I don't know, I've never really been heavy into shipping or ship-wars. It's only very recently (less than 2 years) I even started writing anything truly romantic as a central theme, as opposed to something incidental/side-quest.

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

Doctor, Heal Thyself. (A Fic with the Tenth Doctor.) It's been far too long; I don't even remember exactly how I was going to resolve the end of it. And now that I'm older and have dealt with multiple disease processes ravaging my body (and brain) nonstop, I have more of a Swiss-cheesed memory than ever. =/ I'm sad because it WAS going to be epic.

What are your writing strengths? Logistics. I'm pretty brutal with trying to make sure anything I write is somehow workable within its own universe. As such, I usually wind up being my own beta. I also research the FUCK out of everything. I also love writing action scenes.... Envisioning and bringing to the page various character interactions. My forte is drawing out emotions of all kinds -- positive, negative, ugly, poetic....etc etc etc.

What are your writing weaknesses? Staying power and consistency. It might take me years to finish a piece.....sometimes well over a decade. Focusing on and channeling the muse long-term has always been difficult. Getting out of my own head enough to just....write.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic? As long as I feel as if I can do the language/phrase in question some justice, I enjoy doing it. I love naming chapters and other pieces in languages other than English, in particular Latin, Italian, & Spanish, along with German, French, and Greek, and a little Aramaic, Urdu, and Punjabi (???) sprinkled in.

What was the first fandom you ever wrote for? Star Trek: The Original Series

What's your favorite fic you've ever written? Favorite fic I've ever written? Ever? From 25+ years of writing (and counting???) I'm afraid I can't truly answer this question, given that I have SO many WIPs and I don't know if they'll wind up being favorites by the time I'm finished or not. There's Harry Gets Even, my first-ever novel, originally written in 2004/05.

Yet with all of the time I've poured into researching for Desiderium, and although this beautiful brainchild didn't start with me, I still have a miiiighty huge soft spot for it too. Then again, I also like Eugene's Amnesty, my effective S3 rewrite for Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure, and Tangled Just Before Ever After, the what-happens-right-after-Rapunzel-and-Eugene-finally-kiss fic I've been writing, as well as An Abundance of Fours, that has so much of my own personal heartache disguised within the experiences of my favorite characters, Eugene and Rapunzel.

C'mere, mah babies. [Hoards fics close to self, you're all mah faves for different reasons.]

For the most part, I wouldn't be able to write my fics if I couldn't enjoy them myself.

Tags: If you see this, consider yourself tagged! ^_^

[kiradaxx]

Critical Care

This idea jumped into my head soon as I saw the scene with Tuvok and Janeway holding hands on the bridge in the episode Critical Care. This is definitely not a criticism of that scene because I loved it and found it hilarious and Janeway and Tuvok are bros for life. Tuvok's reaction was priceless and both actors crushed it. But I couldn't help reimagining this scene with a J/7 twist, cause, of course. So here we go, enjoy my brief, goofy J/7 rewrite of this episode's fake dating trope.

Also on AO3 here

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A powerful headache was throbbing in Janeway’s temples as she waited for the communications link to be picked up by yet another Delta Quadrant inhabitant in the long line of fruitless interviews she’d been conducting all day. Patience was a virtue she did not possess, but diplomacy she had in spades. So she’d been smiling and charming and biting her tongue down on more acerbic comments all day as she attempted to track down the scam artist who had managed to steal their doctor’s program right out from under her nose.

After hours of chasing down contacts and bouncing from one rumor to the next, from one unhelpful, frustrating source to the next, not only was Janeway tired, she was bored out of her mind. However, they had finally found a workable lead in Gar’s current girlfriend. They had just concluded a call with her husband- a sad, weepy man with little dignity left to his name. He had divulged far more information about his wife’s adultery than Janeway cared to know, but at least they had learned something to go off of. Now, they were hoping this woman could give them Gar’s actual whereabouts, rather than just tell them yet another story of how he had conned some unsuspecting soul and made off into the ether.

Janeway leaned heavily against the railing of the main command stage of her bridge, staring at the still empty view screen. Her chin rested in her right hand, her elbow on the railing, and as she stared out into space, she suppressed the urge to tap her fingers restlessly against her cheek. Waiting for the call to be picked up was about as thrilling as watching paint dry, and while she hoped for a more productive conversation this time, she wished she could be doing just about anything else at the moment.

Finally, their hail was answered, and the view screen displayed a pale woman with a large forehead of unique ridges sitting luxuriantly on a couch in what appeared to be a sunroom of some sort. Making quick work of her initial assessment of the woman and the necessary introductions, Janeway wasted no further time in explaining who they were looking for. This held little interest for the woman, though, and rather than offering any information about Gar, she instead asked how they had found her. When she was informed that her husband had given them her name, a look of vague disgust overtook the woman’s features. Janeway lamented internally as she realized the moment the woman opened her mouth that she was about to be subjected to still more details of this couple’s relationship problems.

“You’re a woman, you saw my husband with your own eyes.” Her tone carried a distinct distaste as she continued, “Overweight, depressed. You would have left him too.” A playful spark and a vapid smile lit up the woman’s face next, and she added, “Especially if you had met someone as exciting as Gar.”

Nasty comments about the man’s size or emotional state were hardly necessary, but Janeway couldn’t afford to lose this lead now. Not when they’d finally come so close to getting the scammer’s location. So for the sake of her missing crew member, once more she bit down on the inside of her cheek and held back on her criticism of the woman’s shameful attitude. She was only just able to restrain an eye roll when the woman began extolling Gar’s seductive qualities. But her day had been long and exhausting and filled with some of the most inane conversations she’d ever entertained, and when she offered a placating agreement to the woman’s assessment, she didn’t bother to muster any more enthusiasm than she would have for extensive dental work.

Chin still in her hands, posture slouched, and boredom leaching through every syllable, she said, “Yes, he’s very exciting.”

Somehow, unfathomably, this woman managed to interpret her words as genuine interest in Gar. As a threat of competition for her lover. She stiffened, growing defensive and accusative, throwing a glare through the screen while asking, “That’s why you’re looking for him, isn’t it? You want him for yourself.”

Janeway stared at her incredulously for a long moment, at once both insulted at the implication that she would be attracted to a sleeze like Gar, and baffled at how dense this woman must be to believe her lackluster agreement had constituted any actual desire.

Her patience had long ago run out, and even her dedication to diplomacy was wearing thin at this point. Her battle against the roll of her eyes continued to be hard fought, but not fully won as she felt herself blinking rapidly through her exasperation. She lifted her head off of her hand but changed little else about her posture, and replied, “I assure you I have no romantic interest in him whatsoever.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed and her shoulders remained squared, clearly still offended. “Why, not good enough for you?”

“No it’s not that, it’s just-” Janeway began to reply earnestly, but cut herself off. This was maddening, and she did finally allow herself to roll her eyes then. How did they even get this far off track, and why was she continuing this ridiculous topic? She exchanged a quick glance with Seven, who was serving a duty shift on the bridge and standing not too far from where Janeway was leaning against the rail of the main command well. The quirk of Seven's ocular implant and the amused but critical gleam in her eyes told Janeway she was not alone in finding this woman impressively asinine.

An idea occurred to her then, an absurd one. A ridiculous solution for a ridiculous problem, she supposed. She needed to get their conversation back to the matter at hand without angering Gar’s lover or drawing out this argument any further, and when she looked to the woman standing to her right, she saw a method to do just that. With an expression that made little effort to hide how unimpressed Janeway was with this whole situation, she reached her hand out expectantly towards Seven. She was completely bemused, but understood what Janeway was asking for and, albeit hesitantly, she placed her hand in the outstretched one the captain offered. Their fingers interlocked, sliding into a comfortable position without thought, and Janeway made sure to hold their hands up in clear view of the screen. She squeezed Seven’s hand in silent reassurance, and thanked the universe that she had played along without spoken question, even if she could feel Seven’s confused stare burrowing into her profile.

She intentionally allowed a little extra husk to fill her voice, a smoky lilt accompanying the suggestive look in her eyes as she said, “Gar’s not really my type, if you catch my drift.”

The woman observed them for a moment with no reaction at first, her defensive demeanor unchanged. Tom Paris turned from his position at the helm in surprise, and Harry Kim chuckled to himself while Tuvok merely lifted one eyebrow in their direction. Janeway ignored all of them; allowing herself to be embarrassed would hardly be conducive to getting the information she sought, and she didn’t have the intention of giving any of them the satisfaction. She had nothing to feel embarrassed about anyway. She was dealing with con artists, a little misdirection was necessary. After a few more seconds, she saw the understanding dawn on the alien woman, illuminating her expression. She observed them more curiously now, fixating on their joined hands and seemingly sizing them up. Her hostility deflated, and she appeared to be appeased by the insinuation that Janeway’s interests lay in a decidedly more sapphic direction.

Relieved that the ruse had worked, Janeway tried not to think too hard about the pleasant warmth suffusing her skin where her hand remained cradled by Seven’s. She hadn’t expected Seven’s touch to be quite so gentle, almost tender, and she wasn’t sure what to do with this information now that her brain was aware of it. But this was neither the time nor the place for her to feel a fluttering in her stomach that she wouldn’t want to analyze too closely even in the best of circumstances. She wasn’t actually attracted to women after all, she was simply skilled in the art of deception when the need arose. So, she pushed the thought aside and refocused.

“We have a business opportunity for Mr. Gar.” She said, resolute professionalism twice enforced now to maintain her composure. “One that will expire if we don’t find him soon.”

With all of the fight in her posture vanished, the woman released a slight sigh and finally, finally gave them Gar’s current location. “He’s on his way to the gambling tournament on Selek IV.” She paused, then in a softer tone, she added, “When you see him, tell him to hurry home.”

Janeway bit her tongue down one last time for that afternoon and refrained from saying that there was very little chance Gar considered their affair to be more than a quick romp in the sack, let alone his home. She hoped the look she gave the woman wasn’t too pity filled, but as the connection was terminated and the star filled vacuum of space retook the screen, she indulged in one last roll of her eyes. Just a small one, well earned after having had to insinuate herself even peripherally into the marital drama of several random civilians.

In the next moment, she remembered she was still holding Seven’s hand. Her skin tingled at the comforting warmth still present, and she looked to Seven with a slightly sheepish expression. Seven, for her part, was staring rather intently at Janeway, brows furrowed deep in question. Janeway was about to apologize in case she had made her uncomfortable, but the other woman spoke first.

“Are you sexually attracted to women?”

Well, at least Janeway could count on Seven not to beat around the bush. She fought the flames of embarrassment licking at her heated skin, and instead quirked her lips up in what she hoped was a confident grin.

“I was just trying to get Gar’s girlfriend to focus on the question. I needed to mislead her a little, make her think you and I were an item.”

Seven studied her another moment before replying, voice devoid of inflection. “I see.”

Janeway couldn’t shake the peculiar feeling that she had disappointed or upset Seven in some way, and she returned to her original plan to apologize. She still hadn’t let go of Seven’s hand, though she wasn’t sure why. She squeezed the hand in hers lightly, and said, “It seemed like the easiest way to get the information. I apologize if I made you uncomfortable. Thank you, for playing along.”

Seven nodded but said nothing, leaving Janeway to feel like she was still missing something. She offered Seven one more crooked smile, one more small squeeze of their hands, and finally dropped her hold on the other woman. While Seven returned to her normal work, Janeway strode over to her command chair, sinking into it with purpose. She put aside the seed of worry digging into her mind for the sake of focusing on their task. Crossing her legs and assuming her authoritative positioning, she commanded Tom to lay in a course for Selek IV. She would apologize to Seven again later if she needed to, perhaps find a way to make the offense up to her if she were still upset. But for now, she had a member of her crew to rescue.

[seekerseekingsomething]

WIP Meme from the depths of the dungeons

Well, I have been called out. @bunnimew lifted up my rock and turned on the light so here I am.   Time to find all the 1/2 finished semi-abandoned projects I have laying around.  I have kind of lost my will to write due to changing life circumstances, but I still think about it frequently and want to reclaim it as it is something I really enjoyed.  But oh well, the meme goes on. Well. I suppose we start at the top.... if something interests you I’ll mark the ones that have been at least in part posted with a * for AO3 and a ** for FF.Net *** for both. Final Fantasy 8 -  Echoing Through Eternity*** - my flagship, unfinished, no end in sight. Post-Game AU about the absolutely awful state of the world post FF8, as the gang try to do something about it.  Squall/Fujin.  The entire concept of the story is a rewrite of an older fic Promises are all I have** That I wrote about 15 years ago.   The only cure [...] *- Shameless pornography Featuring a rather conservative Rinoa trapped in the orbit of some pretty gleefully promiscuous SeeD that gets worked on extremely sporadically.  contains some kink, and a fairly large dish of WLW Divine Apatite 2 *- Wherein Ultimecia gets kicked out of reality and decides that the best thing to do with her eternity is boink people and have deep philosophic musings.  Me having fun writing porn starring Ultimecia, kinky.  Fully commits to Ultimecia’s Awful accent. Dead By Daylight - How to Displease [...]*** - Another chapter in slow roll, updated whenever something funny occurs to me in universe, just a mess of goofy ideas like The Shape learning to moonwalk, or The Huntress learning a new song.

Naruto - 

Hot Blood, Cold Sweat, Bitter Tears **- BIG Naruto rewrite, aiming to rewrite the whole series, got so frustrated with it that I wrote a whole ass other giant project when I got stuck, thus Echoing happened.  Total Rewrite of the series with a slightly darker world and a lot of people being played smart and the power creep virtually turned Off.  Very Very slow progress on this one. Now into the Obscure stuff.... None of these are even partially posted anywhere

Legend of Zelda/For Honor Crossover -  For the Honor of Hyrule - Unposted anywhere crossover.  Wherein the world of Hyrule (BOTW) is in much rougher shape and is essentially in a state of all-out free-for-all war.  After the battle failed 100 years ago, The Hero got locked away to regenerate, however the Gorons blamed the Hylians and Rito, the Rito blamed the Zora and the Gorons, the Zora got furious, Fighting deepened and 100 years later, nobody has even tried to get peace actually happening in longer than many’s memory.  Not to mention Ganon’s minions enjoying their functional immortality to constantly break everything.  A darker world where fighting would be a lot more central. Sidelined until a workable outline exists. 

Teen Titans - 

In Need of Change Untitled Rewrite - A whole ass AU where Beast Boy (now Changeling) fucks off to do his own thing in the wake of calamity forming a new superhero team with a whole lot of headcanon and a liberal dose of “There’s no real reason why this Couldn’t be the case...”  Jinx thinks this seems like a good idea and tags along, BB/Jinx. To Include OCs for interest and flavor and because I don’t like DC that much, lol.  Quarantined due to too many active projects.  Titans Inc - a Cyberpunk reimagining of TT crossing firmly toward Cyberpunk 2020.  A bad future in many ways.  Basically in the planning stages in the docs...  Will probably never go anywhere.  And that’s all of them that are actually being worked on or thought about.  Look me up on AO3 and FF.net as LastHarlequin. I’d tag more people but I literally don’t know anyone as I’m an anti-social rock-dweller.  This Meme branch dies with me >:V