#when she haunts the narrative instead like actual ghosts ghosting

[erose-this-name]

Can we just talk about how disturbing digital circus episode 3 is?

*spoilers btw*

Like, the whole narrative point of the adventure is to show that Caine is a really bad and insecure writer who thinks that the way to impress Zooble is with an adventure that's the opposite of what he normally does.

So instead of being childish, it's "cool" and "mature". Which he interprets as a heavily horror themed escape room with a split murder mystery plot that subverts all your expectations purely for the sake of subverting them.

The generic horror monster jump scares them, then they find a gun, and when they kill it its revealed that surprise! it's one of Gods angels and they're going to Hell.

It comes off as Caine being too insecure with the actually interesting and mature plot thread he had going there of Mildenhall becoming so paranoid he killed his wife, ironically becoming the monster he was trying to protect her from. But no, instead Mr. Mildenhall is made to be the bad guy and trick them in a really dumb twist ending.

Which is good! Thats exactly what Caine would do because he's stupid! It's such brilliant characterization and comedy, Goose works is a genius writer!

But like, why is Caine so good at making genuinely very disturbing and horrific visuals? Like, that reversed audio easter egg of Bubble saying he can't wait for all the children in the audience get nightmares is no joke, well it is but you know what I mean. This stuff was genuine nightmare fuel.

Honestly, it wasn't the visuals that scared me, like any good queer person I'm way too jaded on survival horror for that.

But, why does Caine, who is ostensibly a sapient AI designed to generate family friendly video games for very little children, (presumably because that's the only demographic that wouldn't mind the AIs very selective plot writing limitations), know about the cosmic horror of killing an angel that should not have been killed?

Why does he know what a horrificly poorly made taxidermy of not only a human face would look like, but the weird cartoon faces of the characters, and further that seeing your own poorly made taxidermy face would be scary?

Imaging what being possessed felt like for Pomni. Because that's not just a game for her, she actually lost control of her body there, helpless but to watch as a body she is already dissociated with is contorted and puppeted around while her friend desperately tries to beat her in hopes it would exorcise the ghosts out. Sure hope she didn't feel that! Considering she apparently can feel the pain of suffocating, despite not needing to breath.

Things are scarier the higher the stakes are, and that possession mechanic is definitely the most actual harm Caine would be able to subject to his players. What if both Kinger and Pomni got possessed at the same time? What if instead of Kinger she only had Jax??? How long might she have been locked out from her own body for? She could have easily abstracted in that time.

Not to mention that, possessed Pomni, Possessedmni if you will, TAUNTED KINGER ABOUT HIS ABSTRACTED WIFE! CAINE ACTUALLY WROTE THAT DIALOGUE ON THE OFF CHANCE THAT KINGER WOULD GO DOWN THE SCARY ROUTE! DID THIS RANDOM POSSESSION GHOST ENEMY HAVE UNUSED SADISTICALLY PERSONAL TAUNTS FOR EVERYONE ELSE, TOO??? WOULD IT HAVE TEASED GANGLE FOR BEING A GAY WEEB??? OR POMNI? HOW HOMOPHOBIC COULD IT HABE GOTTEN?? ?

And why? Just because Caine has a vague notion that there's a trope of possessed people being really sadistic and personal like that in movies? Not realizing that is not an acceptable scare to have in a haunted house??? Much less one you made for mentally ill people who would suffer a fate worse than death if they have a mental break down? That's like trying to claim 'its just a prank bro' after shooting someone's dog.

Like, Caine is designed to censor curse words, but the moment he thinks the normal hokey Halloween spooks won't be enough he immediately goes off the deepend into aggressively effective horror imagery that is definitely giving this show's substantial underage audience nightmares??

His AI's training data set is definitely pretty diverse, that's all I'm saying. Caine is programmed to act all naive and innocent, but be definitely knows what's up. He knows everything, like ChatGPT. And like ChatGPT, he might have a filter, but it's clearly possible to bypass it. Also like ChatGPT, he's too stupid to actually understand what he is making and the effects it might have.

That is what made this episode great.

[jesncin]

Hi! I’ve been reading Hellblazer lately, and I was wondering if you had any thoughts regarding John’s relationships in the comic? Either romantic, platonic, or familial (I know you’ve already talked a lot about Goldie especially, but I’d love to hear your thoughts about Cheryl and Gemma, too!)

My ghost sensitive friends can see ghosts in photos so this works actually. Tony Masters was not invited to the family photo because Johnstantine really doesn't want a photo of or with him haha.

I'm only about a hundred issues into Hellblazer but I love Cheryl and Gemma! I like that John cares for his sister and niece to such a point that if he learns his niece is in trouble he'd drop everything to save her even when he's about to get funky-style with someone. I find his relationship with these two just so endearing. They're a nice break from his other abusive family members. Other opinions on John's romantic partners under the cut!

Emma: excellent. I hope she keeps haunting John forever.

Zed: I think she's fun and a great love interest. Mysterious, cunning and tragic in a way that reinforces Hellblazer themes really well. I don't really like her return with that sort of culty following afterwards, just in terms of vibes. Idk I don't trust that brand of white woman haha.

Marj: Also a great love interest! I like how she contrasts Zed as the more down to earth hippie one. While I think she's sweet, I do agree with John's later assessment that they're not a fit realistically. Somehow I still don't trust this white woman. Just a vibe.

Kit: Icon. Queen. She should get to dump John and break his heart as many times as she wants.

Sarah: You deserved better, narratively. The minute this character showed up I took a long break from reading Hellblazer cuz I knew she was going to be Disposable Black Love Interest and yep, she was. John spent his whole time with her fixated on his ex-gf Helen, instead. The only saving grace is at least Sarah dumped John before meeting a worse fate by sticking around.

Chas (lmao): never did anything wrong and should be allowed to beat up John whenever he wants.

(Honorable mention since I'm also reading Spurrier's Hellblazer run too) Liza Ikumelo: I love her as a tragic mom to Noah Ikumelo and I like that she and John had a fling resulting in the tragedy that is John being an absent dad to Noah's younger years. Did she have to be a cop though. Spurrier is so much more critical of american cops in comparison for some reason >_>

Those are my thoughts so far!

[thechosenthree]

I’ve been thinking so much lately about how even though Kendra is barely mentioned after her death, she is haunting the narrative for the rest of the show.

Every time Faith is on screen or mentioned, Kendra’s ghost is right there with her. The fact that if Kendra’s hadn’t died, Faith wouldn’t be a slayer, means Kendra is never really forgotten. Faith is a living reminder of Kendra’s tragedy.

And Buffy continues to use Mr. Pointy!! In a way it makes sense to me that Buffy wouldn’t want to bring her up with other people? (I obviously understand the actual reasons but I’ve been trying to make it make sense in universe.) After all nobody else in Sunnydale knew her like Buffy did. They were freaks together!! And then Buffy was alone again.

Faith shows up and Buffy’s got someone who understands!! But it’s not the first time she’s had that, and I keep thinking of how in early s3, Faith must be a constant reminder for Buffy of the friend she lost.

And I can’t imagine Buffy bringing Kendra up to Faith? How would she go about that without it being this weird thing of having to acknowledge Faith replaced Kendra? That Buffy and Faith wouldn’t even know each other if Kendra hadn’t died?

So instead Buffy mourns Kendra alone. And keeps her stake with her, a way of holding onto her long after she’s gone. She brings Kendra with her into battle every time. She’s never really alone. Except that Kendra is dead, and Buffy must feel even more alone than she did before she met her.

And in The Wish Buffy is dressed so similarly to how Kendra was in Becoming when she died!! Wishverse!Buffy is so Kendra AND Faith coded, in different ways. It makes it feel like they’re all three in that episode.

And Wishverse!Buffy died right before Giles smashed the power source. Which means Kendra was called!! For like half a second of course before everything went back to reality. But being that she was raised to be The Slayer, it’s possible Wishverse!Kendra was actually aware she was called? I don’t know exactly how that works. But it’s different than the council needing to go find Buffy and tell her her destiny when she was called.

It’s just!!! They are the chosen three!!

They’re technically never all three on screen together— unless you count one conversation in s3 where Kendra is mentioned in front of them both. But Faith showing up cements Kendra’s place haunting the narrative for the rest of the show. If she’d died and there’d been no other slayer called, she could have faded away��

Faith’s literal existence as a character in the show ensured that she didn’t.

[oriley42]

Serious question but no need to answer if you don’t want to

I see a lot of talk about Amber’s portrayal being sexist in the show, but I’m not quite sure why? To me her motives always seemed really well-defined (high pressure = “I’m only worthy when I’m successful”) so she puts on this sharky mask with a feminine facade so she is feminine enough to get a certain amount of approval but never shows how much she cares (which could be used against her but also could be used to undermine her “oh you’re too soft”). I thought the show did an excellent job of showing a mask for her

But a lot of people talk about 00s sexism and how it impacts her characterization. The sexism… Is it that she gets called a cutthroat bitch? Or how her story revolves around a man after she leaves House’s team? Is it the fridging?

Any of those could be it I guess but it just sounds like you and others are talking about something a little more fundamental to her personhood so I thought I’d ask if I’m missing anything.

Very interesting question! I think you're getting at exactly the trickiness of the issue, which is that sexism always operates systemically. It's not that any key aspect of Amber's character "is" misogynist, it's that every aspect of her character is automatically filtered through a lens of sexism.

In today's world where "bitch" has been very de-clawed, turned into a more casual and way less gendered insult that's used without cruel intention in queer slang, I think it's hard to understand just how violent the term was--and was meant to be--in the aughts. House in canon is not calling Amber a bitch in a cute, almost self-deprecating, friendly way (though I think it's valid to re-write it that way in fic to defuse the term!). He is calling her a bitch to contain and belittle and dehumanize her. We see the term mobilized this way against Cuddy in 5 to 9 as well: calling a woman a bitch was an extremely powerful rhetorical tool to turn any dangerously competent, brilliant, threateningly accomplished woman back into a harmless, debased, controllable object. So, "CB" reflects how easily the fact that Amber is the "female House" gets turned against her--it doesn't mean she's an eccentric genius like him, it means she's an evil copycat who needs to be put down. And this kind of structural logic applies to her whole characterization--it doesn't matter that House does it all more frequently and worse, if she does it, it's unacceptable because she's a woman. (There are parallels here with how racism means that when Foreman acts like House, he also gets the axe instead of the narrative bending over backwards to make what he did alright.) That's why she was fired, after all!

And her death. Woof. Classic case of killing a woman for man-pain. Everything supposedly about her death is actually about how her violent destruction can be used to fuel Wilson and House's character arcs. The narrative is occasionally conscious of this, for example, Wilson saying "none of you even liked Amber" is an almost metatextual reminder of how cruelly she was disenfranchised in every way (including the sexism of her trying to "defect" to the men's team early on, having no female friends, because unlike House who has so many people orbiting him, she is truly alone). Comparing her death to Kutner's is instructive: Kutner gets a whole episode that's about characters desperately trying to know him better. They trace their relationships towards him. Amber, on the other hand, is nearly absent from her own death. The characters trace away from her and towards the way male characters feel (Wilson's loss, House's guilt). Amber becomes just an imagined figure of House's guilt. Even her ghost is not her own. (Though I think many fans do a more feminist read and reclaim the way she haunts the narrative--but imho that would be a negotiated if not fully oppositional reading, to use Stuart Hall's decoding/encoding terms.)

One easy way to see that gendered difference is in how the show refers to these characters after death. Kutner is always "Kutner," never just "House's dead fellow" or rarely "our dead colleague." Amber is often referred to as "Wilson's dead girlfriend." Kutner is his own person, Amber rhetorically gets reduced to an object belonging to a man.

In conclusion: sexism operates structurally, which can make it hard to identify! And one of the funny effects of contemporary fandom doing so much good work to un-fridge women and give marginalized female characters richer personalities and more chances to grow is that canon's intended message of sexism gets obscured. Which, is awesome? Keep up the good work! Let's make misogyny unintelligible 🎉

[sinvilles]

Thoughts on Arthur, Angela and Clay: Oedipus Complex or just touch starvation?

You know the drill: I'm unconcerned about redemption because I'm not a fuckin lutheran. I'm a writer and I like sociological stories and seeing characters achieve wholeness within narrative. moral orel is a unique case because the story was cut short halfway through, and all character arcs were arrested at their lowest point in the narrative, except for some characters on the side who were just kind of beginning to shine.

Mother, child and the father laid to the wayside. The dynamic in that family is cursed by something we often disregard in analysis: Clay's 10 dead siblings who never saw light outside the womb.

Their ghosts are present, haunting Angela every time she looks at her son and thinks of the fragility of his little life. Their ghosts haunt Arthur when he sees his wife overcoddling their son. And when Clay is told the truth, their ghosts surround him as well.

CLAY

Think about that moment. He is 12, sheltered, the apple of his mother's eye, and probably didn't even know miscarriages were a thing- his mother won't even say the word "dead".

Then suddenly, his mother's body- once his source of comfort, associated with life, nourishment, love- is a graveyard. Her body is no longer safe, secure and homelike. His mother is now a stranger, and deeply suspect.

Not only has she had children pass inside her- she put every one of them behind her, choosing to move on and focus her love on the next child, and the next one and the next one... But even that makes her suspect- if Clay dies will she just move on and have another baby?

So he tests her. Like a little kid would. Maybe it's a prank he thought of earlier in the episode when he saw the bullets lined up in his father's study. He expected to be let off easy, because his mommy always laughs at his jokes and pranks- it's part of what makes their relationship special. But he didn't expect to kill her.

Of course the loss of his mother impacts him forever. I don't think that, as an adult, he's actually IN LOVE with her, or that he lusts after her. He comes off as wanting to crawl back into the womb for comfort. Every woman's body is now his mother's, and he can't really engage with women without being reminded of all of the baggage attached, the womb simultaneously a warm cradle and a grave. Of course he has to drink to do it. That and he's gay.

It seems to really freak him out when he visualizes those thoughts- when he thinks about his mother he literally imagines lubing his entire body up and crawling back up into her womb. He tries to drown it instead of examining those emotions because it's WEIRD lmao. But I doubt it's a sexual thing for him.

also, speaking of 10 dead siblings, I'm going to drop this Wikipedia article on the fraternal birth order effect. Read this and get back to me.

ANGELA AND ARTHUR

We see them progress in family photos from a very lively, happy couple, with interests and hobbies, to a pair who can barely recognize one another. The trauma of miscarriage can do a number on a couples love life- I have no doubt it was Angela who wanted to continue trying for a baby. I wonder if Arthur was so used to the disappointment that he actively kept himself from getting attached to his first living son before he was born.

He seemed to be trying to bond with him in the episode- though Angela may have taken his aloofness to heart and hoarded little Clay to her bosom. So not only is he denied the love of his wife, but the bond with his son as well. It's like an Oedipus complex in reverse, where the father is jealous and (SUBCONCIOUSLY!!!) seeks to destroy the son for competing with him for the mothers affections. Whereas Clay didn't seem to bear any ill will towards his father prior to his mother's death and his rejection of him.

Lets reflect on the use of the word leftovers: this can also mean something secondhand or second best. When Clay is done eating, Angela doesn't even bother preparing a plate for her husband, but pushes a plate of Clay's leftovers in his direction. When Clay tries reaching for his father after just having lost his mother- needing the physical comfort and safety he is so used to receiving- he is pushed away, and Arthur angrily says: "I don't want your LEFTOVERS!"

Arthur was always aware that Clay's love for him was secondary to his love for his mother. Clay, in his stupidity (it's a very natural thing) was content to sell him out, prank him, humiliate him. And a lot of resentment had festered for years to get to that point- Arthur didn't have the maturity in him to set it aside and just be there for the child that needed him. Hell, he expected the kid to die before his wife did. He does come to regret how he treated Clay in the future, but only because he saw how it affected his grandson.

Arthur didn't just deny Clay his physical affection, leaving him starved for any kind of touch (even being hit), he straight up ignored him. You can't ignore a kid.

Arthur and Clay's situation is one that I'm actually stumped about plot-wise. I don't think Clay would even be willing to accept an apology from Arthur- the damage he did so deeply affected Clay's formative years. Does Clay have to forgive him? Alternatively, does Orel have to forgive Clay? It really is a vicious cycle; I do think it will hurt Arthur not to be forgiven by his son, but he might possibly accept it. But Clay, unable to forgive his father, in turn cannot forgive himself. And when Arthur dies and its too late, it will definitely break him.

[saintsenara]

Also would love to know what you think of Lily/&Sirius as well! I can totally see the slight resentment on his part you mentioned but i loveee the letter Harry finds in DH. AND tell me your thoughts on jilypad bc I just need to dig your brain

thank you very much for the ask, pal!

i know this was prompted by me saying - while discussing jily - that my preferred version of lily and sirius' relationship is one in which sirius resents lily for stealing the love of his life [and i don't mean lupin!] away from him. so i think it's worth clarifying what i mean by this:

because i certainly don't think that sirius' resentment towards lily would be overt - i don't think he'd ever be openly hostile towards her, i don't think he'd do anything to undermine james and lily's relationship, and i don't think he'd ever be anything other than sincerely delighted that james was so happy. he evidently values the relationship he has with lily - enough to have kept her letters somewhere he could retrieve after his sojourn in azkaban [the most plausible date of the letter harry finds in deathly hallows is august 1981, which means that we know sirius wasn't living at grimmauld place when it was written. this is something he's stored deliberately, rather than something he had just lying around.] - and i don't propose that he was pretending.

what i think, instead, is that sirius' canonical tendency towards suffering and abiding would make him actively want to cheerlead jily's relationship. he's someone who clearly believes that it's honourable to make sacrifices and that his own happiness is subordinate to the greater good. and while this is all very noble, it's also an enormous - and somewhat toxic - burden for someone like lily to bear.

i like the idea of sirius - much like his narrative mirror, snape - having an extraordinarily idealised view of lily which the real lily struggles to live up to [which provides an interesting watsonian explanation for why he only mentions her once in canon - the doylist reason is just that the series needs to obscure lily's centrality to the mystery for as long as it can, but it's much more fun to imagine that sirius actually knows nothing about the version of lily he didn't construct in his head]. i also like the idea of him struggling constantly with guilt over how he secretly would like to see james and lily split up, so that he could comfort james with tender forehead kisses [and much, much more...]

when it comes to lilypad as something non-platonic, then, my preferred version of the ship is one in which sirius and lily end up together after she survives voldemort's attack [and is, therefore, able to exonerate sirius by revealing that wormtail was the secret keeper] as an extraordinarily unhealthy way of dealing with the earth-shattering weight of their mutual grief. this doesn't mean that i think it would be an abusive or toxic relationship - nor that it couldn't last - but that it would be a... strange and quite melancholy one, haunted constantly by james' ghost.

which means, i suppose, that it's also my preferred version of jilypad. i don't like it as a triad when it's just written as really happy and flawless [well-functioning polygamy takes introspection, and none of these three strike me as possessing that ability...], but i do like it as a mess.

[eliotquillon]

alex rider for the ask game :3

my favourite female character:

wow there’s just so many women in this series i can’t possibly choose! jk lmao.

for me it is sabina. my diva, my queen, the only character to consistently call alex on his shit and point out that for all his protests he keeps agreeing to do ‘one more mission’….i will never understand why people hate her (other than misogyny lmfao). i will forever be mad about that weird era of crocodile tears—never say die where ahorz turned her into a bit of a wet wipe because skeleton key/eagle strike sabina is so funny and headstrong and willing to give as good as she gets. i think she is one of the most realistic characters in the series (pun name aside) and her refusing to believe alex in eagle strike doesn’t make her evil or a fake friend…it makes her a teenage girl who was being gaslit by an intelligence agency. from sabina’s perspective the story is basically a horror movie: her best friend is being blackmailed and forced into putting his life at risk over and over, and there’s nothing she can do. there was never anything she could do. he chose danger and adventure over wanting to stay safe with her and her family and there was never any point in trying to change his mind because he is always going to be a little bit out of reach. i love her, and i think she balances alex out so well. forever mad that the tv adaptation didn’t have the foresight to realise that introducing kyra (who i love btw don’t get it twisted) and keeping her as a series regular was going to create some balancing issues with sabina, so they just turned tv sabina into a spineless caricature of all her worst traits because they didn’t need to worry about making her likeable like they did with kyra. book sabina i will love you forever.

my favourite male character:

am i allowed to say ‘the ghost of john rider that is perpetually haunting the narrative’. because to be clear it is the ghost of john rider that is perpetually haunting the narrative.

in all seriousness this is so difficult…i genuinely do love whatever the fuck is going on with the unreliable portrait of john that gets drawn throughout the series, but given that his only real appearance is in russian roulette (a book so filled with continuity errors/unreliable narration that for my own sanity i HAVE to assume that yassen is deliberately lying in at least parts of it) i don’t know if he sincerely counts as a ‘character’. although for what it’s worth i do fundamentally think that whoever john really was, he wasn’t a cut and dry ‘good person’ like we keep being TOLD to believe (too much contradiction going on with him for that).

it’s probably either general sarov OR alex himself. general sarov is cut and dry my favourite villain, is in my favourite book, and i could talk about his decision to shoot himself instead of alex (when sarov was 100% on the edge of victory!) forever. he’s such a tragic figure and i always find myself wishing that we’d gotten more villains like him…characters who genuinely weren’t cut-and-dry evil, whose motivations were actually kind of reasonable apart from the fact that the endgame/means to get to it were all wrong. but since i’m probably gonna talk a lot about skeleton key anyway i’ll put a pin in that. ALEX in the meantime…i love him so much. i love his smug one-liners, i love his fits of bad temper, i love that he never does what he’s told. and i also love how wistful he is. there’s a lot of moments, especially in the earlier books, where it’s clear that alex was actually already pretty fucked up from the simple fact of not knowing his parents. he’s been grappling with that big gnawing question of ‘who am i, really’ for a long time. he has so much guilt and shame. killing is for grown-ups and he’s still a child. i never really got into any of the other ‘teen spy’ novels when i was a kid and i think the reason why i latched onto alex rider specifically is because he is such a good protagonist. as an adult he is still so interesting because it becomes so much clearer how scared and insecure he is a lot of the time. i love him.

my favourite book/season/etc:

my fave season of the show is s1 fyi. ANYWAY.

as previously mentioned my fave book in the series is skeleton key. it is so many things. it’s a coming of age story. it’s a reverse whodunnit. it’s a story about grief. it is so, so uniquely of its time. alex continuously tries and fails at playing happy families (the pleasures, troy and turner, sarov) and never quite hits any of the right notes in any of them because he doesn’t know what it would look like. sarov would rather burn the world than admit that he sent his son to die in a useless proxy war and that it was his fault. it is the last book that was published before the war on terror started in earnest. i know it doesn’t really add to any of the overarcing stuff going on (no scorpia and no rider family drama) and nor does it have many of the other popular elements of the series (again, no scorpia and no rider family, but also no k-unit, no yassen, no julius, barely any whump, alex is basically beaten fair and square by sarov at every term) so i know this is probably an unpopular opinion. but there’s something so gentle about it. it’s so heartbreaking. it’s the point of no return - this is the first time alex chooses to do mi6 a favour instead of strictly being blackmailed into it. sarov killing himself even though he’s on the precipice of victory just because alex has made it explicitly clear that he will never be his son, that he can’t ever really turn back the clock, just fucking guts me. i don’t think this is necessarily the best-constructed book in the series (scorpia is, objectively, the best IMO), but it is my favourite.

also the american edition is totally different to every other edition and features a completely different version of the cia scenes, primarily to make the special agents more sympathetic and less like they fucking hate a child. which is just so cool. i mean the censorship stuff isn’t cool but the difference in editions is fascinating.

my fave episode (if it’s a tv show):

i can’t remember if it’s ep7 or 8 of season 3 but the tv show’s take on what happened at albert bridge. that episode. it was so, so good. i cannot imagine a better way to film it. i loved the interspersing of present with past and they cast john rider SO fucking well. i have a lot of mixed feelings about season 3 (i thought the decision to veer right back into being very book accurate after doing a pretty good job of making it explicitly clear that this was a retelling/its own distinct spin was…confusing) but that episode was perfect. i also really like s1ep8 (because i’m obsessed with kyra).

my fave cast member:

if we’re talking about the show again: marli siu as kyra. she is so fucking cool. and also adding kyra to the show, for all it opened up a can of worms, was the best thing guy burt ever did. i adore kyra so much.

if we’re using cast member to mean ‘recurring main character who isn’t one of my two named favourites’: i have a bit of a soft spot for crawley. i have no idea why, but something about him consistently being described as looking like a second-rate private school teacher forever tickles me. he’s just some guy but he cracks me up for some reason.

my favourite ship:

across the whole AR multiverse of madness, it is probably alex/kyra. i blame them for my sudden het ship renaissance tbh. i was rooting for them like i have never rooted for any heterosexual couple before (although arguably neither of them are het LOL). i think i fainted when they finally kissed in s3.

but if we’re doing book-only (since most of my answers have skewed that way)…hmm. i think i will have a forever fondness for sabina and alex’s invisible string thing they have going on. not friends not lovers but a secret third thing. i also like the toxic yaoi of john/yassen a lot because the fuck is going on THERE. i don’t fuck with alex/yassen because it personally icks me, but like i very much see the vision of yassen recreating the dynamic he had with john but with alex (and the roles reversed). john/yassen most toxic mentorship of all time spread the word.

a character i’d die defending:

sabina pleasure lol. i have in fact made some very snippy posts in the past because like…listen. obviously you are allowed to dislike her. you can dislike any character for any reason. but she has been DISPROPORTIONATELY hated on by the AR fandom. it is pure misogyny. her existence is not ‘getting in the way’ of making any other alex ship canon because sabina/alex isn’t even canon! claiming you dislike her because of ahorz’s bad/inconsistent writing is fair but you cannot say that and then, at the same time, praise the likes of ben daniels (whose identity has been swapped multiple times as a result of bad writing) as your fave character. she reacts badly to the truth in eagle strike but this was not her fault! she was being gaslit! if alex forgave her then i think maybe the fandom can let this go! she is one of the only shreds of normality left in his life and one of her chief functions is to call out alex’s shit and serve as a reality check to him. she did nothing wrong for REAL!!

a character i just can’t sympathise with:

i think it goes without saying that we’re not really meant to sympathise with a lot of these characters, so let me be controversial: mrs jones!!!!

like listen. i’m sorry to hear your kids got kidnapped yeah i actually am like obviously i’m gonna be upset about that innit yeah and tulip you know the only thing is yeah is that no-one can force me to be your mate or anything yeah and i don’t want to be mates wiv you alright? i know mrs jones is meant to be the ‘softer’ option to blunt. i know we are meant to believe, especially in the reboots, that she is better than him. but she isn’t. she talks a big game about how making alex work for them is wrong and that she’s against it, but she is never willing to put her money where her mouth is. she’s the one to goad alex into going to cairo in scorpia rising. in a lot of ways, i think her softer coating makes her a lot more insidious than blunt. this is one of the reasons i kind of went off the tv show towards the end: they made show!jones WAY too nice and sympathetic, and that’s just not who she is.

and don’t get it twisted: i think she’s fascinating. i love her character and her different faces are so, so interesting in a series that tends to stick women in the whore or mother box respectively. but i do not sympathise with her. i like her character, but i don’t like HER.

a character i grew to love:

am i allowed to say sabina again. because it is, genuinely, sabina. it took me YEARS to come around on her and then when i finally did it it was so worth it. but maybe i can’t say sabina for three different answers LOL.

this is genuinely a difficult question because there are a lot of characters in this series that i don’t LIKE but i LOVE in the sense that i find them interesting. i think jack has genuinely grown on me over the years, mostly as a result of the secret weapon short stories. it didn’t seem like it when i first read the series as a kid, but she’s so young, and she is functionally helpless—she wants to look after alex, but she’s an illegal immigrant with no blood relation to him, who at best is another way for mi6 to exploit him and at worst is a way for scorpia to exploit him. i have a lot more sympathy and respect for her now. and on a similar (yet wildly different) note: i hate ian rider, but he has slowly grown into the alex rider character i think about the most. what the fuck was up with him. what was up with him and john. did he know what he was doing when he raised alex to be a child soldier? is there a reason why yassen killed him but spared alex despite both of them being john’s blood relatives? i’m just so!!!

my anti otp:

sorry guys…it is yalex, i’m afraid. like i said: i can see the vision, but i can’t personally get past them meeting when alex is 14 and yassen is in his 30s. even in aus where they meet as adults i still get squicked out. honestly wish i could get over my aversion to it (at least a little) because i have read some FANTASTIC fics that had background yalex rumblings and i’m almost definitely depriving myself of a bunch of amazing fic by not really being willing to read anything where they’re at the forefront, but it’s just not for me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[thesoulspulse]

Haunted/Lost Soul & Final Epitaph Cast

I'm kinda cheating with this one since most of these aren't oc's, just genderbent au versions of some characters in the show. In these fanfics I was a lot more selective about who I genderbent and who I left alone for the sake of the narrative. Like Vlad for example, he's still the same for the most part except he becomes insanely overprotective of Danielle from the get-go so they're all very badger-cereal focused.

Haunted Soul: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14016455/1/Haunted-Soul

Final Epitaph (Haunted Soul Sequel): https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14129141/1/Final-Epitaph

Lost Soul (Alternate TUE Fanfiction): https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13761033/1/Lost-Soul?

Danielle/Dani Fenton (Haunted/Lost Soul & Final Epitaph): Not to be confused with Ellie, aka canon Danny's clone, this is Dani Fenton who is the genderbent version. Like the original Danny she loves astrology and space travel and hangs out with her best friends Sam and Trish. Unfortunately, her relationship with her parents isn't too good (Haunted Soul) and in the most extreme case scenario (Lost Soul) they even go so far as to kick her out of Fenton Works for being half-ghost so she ends up going to Vlad for help. I also wanted to expand on her ice powers more to help set her apart from the usual Danny we know. Things don't start off great between her and Vlad either but eventually they find some common ground, learning how to trust people again through each other, and becoming a great father/mentor and student/daughter duo.

Leo the Cat (Lost Soul): He's the kitty Vlad gifts Dani to make her feel more at home in the mansion. Too bad he was overshadowed by Nocturne to infiltrate their home, a rare ghost who can also suppress his ghost signature. Once that's all settled though Leo becomes a perfectly normal cat who absolutely adores his new owners!

Jason/Jace Fenton (Haunted/Lost Soul & Final Epitaph):: As the genderbent version of Jazz, Jason stays the same for the most part except he's even more overprotective of his younger sister because their parents are pretty toxic people in this AU. So when Vlad steps up to take care of her, Jason is on his side all the way. Especially after finding out how they bonded through their shared ghost portal trauma during the reunion their parents dragged them to. Jason even stayed another extra year in high school to make sure Dani would be alright without him running interference with Jack and Maddie at home.

Samson/Sam Manson (Haunted/Lost Soul & Final Epitaph): It was a challenge coming up with a formal name for my genderbent Sam but at least the first name got to stay the same! I really exaggerate his emo-goth attitude when it comes to Dani and protecting her, even going so far as to verbally lash out at Vlad for what a jerk he was to her when they first met. Not to mention how he left Sam in the woods alone to look for Dani, who had fallen under Freakshow's mind control (Haunted Soul).

Trish Foley (Haunted/Lost Soul & Final Epitaph): I still think my genderbent Tucker turned out amazing and I love Trish so much! She still gets jealous of Dani from time to time but thankfully Trish never lets it get too bad. Like Tucker, Trish loves techology, but this time around she's really into making synthetic music and recording videos of Dani singing. You can really tell why these two are best friends although sometimes it's not easy when ghost hunting gets especially dangerous for the non-powered members of the group. Yet they always find a way and Trish is surprisingly good at keeping Sam's temper in check by being the voice of reason instead of it going the other way around.

Vallen Grey (Haunted/Lost Soul & Final Epitaph): This time, ironically, Vlad made Vallen a ghost hunter to actually help rather than hinder Dani. He also warms up to her a lot faster after learning she pulled some strings with Vlad's help- aka Vlad pretended Dani brought the problem to his attention- so his dad could keep his job at Axion Labs. So he definitely has a soft spot for her thanks to that plus I wrote Vallen in such a way as to be a good-natured guy from the start who indirectly kept the popular kids off Dani's back as much as possible.

Freakshow (Haunted Soul): It was a challenge to make an au version of Freakshow attractive but I'd say I did a good job. Too bad he's WAY more evil than the original too and makes the fatal mistake of targeting Vlad's precious little badger which causes her to temporarily lose her memories. Enraged, Vlad impulsively sneaks into the Amity Park penitentiary to confront him and accidentally grants his greatest wish to become a ghost, which ends up only making him a greater threat to Dani. Eventually Dani overcomes his hypnotic spell and with Vlad's help, they defeat Freakshow and Vlad crushes his core to ensure that freak will never be able to threaten her again.

Banshee (Final Epitaph): This brief encounter leads to several interesting discoveries with Dani's powers, but unfortunately she had to lose her voice to a banshee who has stolen many beautiful voices over the years. The Banshee also raises Kelpies in the Ghost Zone, an endangered species of man-eating mystical horses who live underwater. Much like Freakshow however, Vlad teaches her a painful lesson not to mess with Dani by ripping out her vocal cords (yikes) with cruel surgical precision after the fact while Dani is unconscious from using her new ability to create attacks using powerful sound waves.

Nocturne & his Dreamweavers (Final Epitaph and Lost Soul): This is my take on a good Nocturne au where he indirectly guides people by weaving threads from the Tapestry of Fate into their dreams with the help of the three Fates and his Dreamweavers. In "Final Epitaph" he wants to learn what role Dani and Vlad have to play in a possible future where the Ghost King returns once more to dominate both their worlds. Similarly, in "Lost Soul" Nocturne misinterprets a vision and decides to take matters into his own hands to trap Dani inside of her own dream to prevent a terrible future from taking place where she becomes full ghost and destroys everything, turning the Earth itself into a frozen wasteland.

Astra (Lost Soul): I'm surprised more people haven't tried to do this in the phandom honestly, make a genderbent Dan equivilant I mean. Well that's who this is! I named her Astra as a nod to Dani's love for astrology. As for what she's like, well, basically she's an ice queen that revels in destruction and chaos who instead of being a fusion of Dani's ghost half and Vlad's, she absorbed Nocturne's power instead to plunge the entire Earth into an icy sleep of death.

The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse (Final Epitaph & Dirge, aka the old version of the story): I'll just ignore the old design for Death's horse and just show off the current one instead. Anyways, these are the four steeds that belong to the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Death (White), Famine (Green), Conquest (Nightmare), and War (Red).

Prince Dorian (Haunted Soul and Final Epitaph): Last but not least we have my genderbent Princess Dorathea, aka Prince Dorian. I originally wrote him in for a one off encounter but then enjoyed it so much I wanted to include him again. Guess I'm a sucker for chivalrous types! He's such a sweetheart and feels indebted to Dani for saving him from the Banshee, who had mesmerized him while he was trying to help find and retrieve her stolen voice from that wicked woman.

P.S. There are two more oc's I haven't drawn but I'll add them here as a two honorable mentions. Their names are Cedric, he's the cook, and Isla, she's Vlad's housekeeper.

[gay-disabled-characters-showdown]

LGBTQ+ Disabled Characters Showdown Round 2, Wave 1, Poll 1

A character being totally canon LGBTQ+ and disabled was not required to be in this competition. Please check qualifications and propaganda before asking why a character is included.

Check out the other polls in this wave and prior here.

Hiccup Haddock-How To Train Your Dragon

Qualifications:

1. The man is missing a leg 2. He's bi in fanon (and in my heart) 3. Blorbo original flavor. Need I say more?

He has a prosthetic leg, and at least in my circles is quite often hcd as bi

Propaganda:

He's so cool. He builds his own prosthetics that interface with the prosthetics he built for his disabled dragon. First viking to ride a dragon. Chief that brought a new era of prosperity to Berk.

Probably one of the most popular physically disabled characters. And although I personally am not disabled, I have heard a bunch of disabled ppl say that they like him as rep. As he pretty much just exists with his disability. It is not ignored. He doesn't not always function the same as people with 2 regular legs. But it is not made into a tragedy. He just has a prosthetic leg after an accident which caused him to loose one. And nobody really makes a big deal out of it, which makes sense in the society they live in. Idk, here's a link to a video discussing the disability representation in httyd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvwRhb_ocPM

The qualifications and propaganda paragraphs correspond, @flammableengineering is the first submitter.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus-The Locked Tomb

Qualifications:

She's a lesbian and the author Tamsyn Muir has confirmed she's written as schizophrenic, based on her own experience.

Okay SO Harrow is a necromancer nun who is also a huge lesbian. She spends the books of TLT series being super gay and repressed about her emotions for 1. Butch lesbian Jesus and 2. Human Barbie the death of God. She narrates the second book (Harrow the Ninth) and is author-confirmed schizophrenic. She experiences hallucinations thru the whole book and has since childhood. She’s also WIDELY headcannoned as autistic by the fandom (me too) because. Because she IS SO FUCKING AUTISTIC (source: I am autistic too)

Schizophrenic lesbian with a traumatic brain injury

Schizophrenic and sapphic

canonically a schizophrenic lesbian. neither word is used in series, she isn't in a position to get a diagnosis and queer identities are so normalised in the universe that labels just don't get mentioned, but she is written as both by an author who is also both.

Canon schizophrenia

Canon lesbian with canon schizophrenia

She's a schizophrenic lesbian with a traumatic brain injury

Propaganda:

The Locked Tomb is pretty popular on tumblr but I might as well submit her anyway

She’s a lesbian necromancer nun. She’s a saint and also woke up the death of God, who is a human Barbie, who she is in love with, tho she’s also kind of married to lesbian Jesus. She’s schizophrenic. She’s scrungly. She puts bread in a drawer. She’s even autistic

Harrow first started hallucinating (visual and auditory) when she was ten years old! The traumatic brain injury and seizures are much more recent. Unironically gotta love a pov protagonist who makes you struggle along with her in sorting out hallucination and false memory to figure out what's going on. Also while Harrow's disability shapes the narrative, the book isn't at all about her being disabled. It's a fantasy/scifi gothic horror novel about being trapped at a work retreat with God.

so many women want her but she’s determined to be in love with the soul of the dead earth trapped in a 10ft barbie doll instead. she’s a lesbian disaster and is trying to deal with both schizophrenia and over 200 actual ghosts haunting her.

Author Tamsyn Muir has discussed how Harrow's schizophrenia is modeled after her own experiences. It matters a lot in her eponymous novel, where her inability to trust what she sees and hears is compounded by her self-inflicted lobotomy to save her girlfriend's soul from getting absorbed into her own.

Harrow is one of the protagonists of her series & both her lesbianism & her schizophrenia play major parts in the story. The author has spoken about how she wrote Harrow based on her own experiences, and the authenticity comes through strongly. Beyond that, she's a teenage gothic nun in love with a holy corpse & she's the greatest bone magician ever born. What more needs be said.

She's a lesbian, she's psychotic, she has seizures, she faints regularly and can't rely on her own memory worth shit. And the only reason she's not going to kill god is so she and her girl can escape the cycle of violence. Basically, Harrowhark Nonagesimus is the entire package.

Anything Else?:

Listen. Listen. I’m not doing Harrow justice here. I LOVE her (Submitter 2)

The author is also schizophrenic! Which is pretty cool. (Submitter 3)

The author of the series is openly schizophrenic, and has mentioned in interviews that she's drawing on that experience when writing Harrow :) (Submitter 8)

[zuppizup]

Purgatory: Chapter 47 - Lux

Summary: Almost three years ago, assassins came for Harrow. Callum was cornered, at her mercy and then… she let him go.The elf. He never even knew her name. She might be long dead, but Callum was determined to do as Harrow suggested. To reject the narrative of strength and instead embrace the narrative of love. To make a better future for all, humans and elves alike. But when he and Ezran stumble upon something hidden in Viren’s secret chambers, Callum realises he might actually be able to make up for the mistakes of the past. To make a real change, right here, right now. To free them both from their haunted past.

Pairing: Rayla/Callum

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

AO3 Link: Purgatory

“How do I look?” Rayla asked teasingly, though she couldn’t quite mask the quiver in her voice.

Callum turned around, stepping towards her as she emerged from behind the screen. She looked… different. The long robe they had given her was white and featureless, combined with her pale skin and even paler hair, she almost looked like a ghost.

He found the image ominous and disconcerting.

“Wow, white really isn’t my colour.” She raised her eyebrows at him.

It certainly seemed like his emotions were written all over his face, given her reaction. “No, it’s not that.” He stepped closer to her, reaching for her hand and relaxing a fraction when she sighed softly and squeezed his fingers. “It’s just… different.”

Read More On AO3 – Purgatory: Lux

[supersoakerfullofblood]

hi!!! hopefully you are having a good day!!! but a quick question-

how can i give insight to a character's backstory without it look liking a word-dump?? especially if the whole story have a diary entry format.

Very good question that honestly really depends on your personal style, but here's what's worked for me.

The best advice I can give is to stop thinking of your character's history as "backstory." That's one of the words that's become so loaded in popular writing discourse as to not mean anything solid anymore, like "worldbuilding," "theme," "protagonist," etc. Words like that are helpful once you've made your own definition for them, but with so many voices in Youtube tutorials and social media posts all saying similar but different things for what these mean, it's best to find a word that better suits how you view the concept. For me, that word is "history," because like how the present is founded on actual history, our characters are only the product of their history. Characters, like people, rarely if ever operate in the present tense.

So--revealing history without the dreaded expository dump. To answer this, we first have to look at why expository dumps are so uninviting. Here's an example of it done poorly (I'm writing this as an example, not taking someone's writing to like, diss on them hah):

Cheryl took the elevator up all five floors of the haunted house, which groaned as she went, the elevator left untouched since the house's last occupants moved out. When they arrived at the penthouse suite, Doctor Gastor explained that the last residents here thought they were wizards and practiced daily at arcana. Their names were Abigail and Horace--he had renamed himself after a demon had told him his true name, so he claimed--and they wintered in this remote, northern sphere to avoid Italian summers. Horace was wealthy, Abigail poor, but he had found her in poverty and saw something of the occult in her movements, so he stole her away one summer, and the two found more in common than they would've thought, for they married the next year. Cheryl paced the floor, picked up and dusted off a book titled in runic chicken scratch, and opened the cover."

This isn't the worst example I could think of, but it has the hallmarks I'm looking for. The first issue with this expository dump ("Doctor Gaston explained... next year") is that it shatters the flow of the passage. As a writer of narrative fiction, the goal of every sentence is to lead smoothly to the next sentence. To do this, we always have to be thinking of what the reader wants to read after a given sentence. If one sentence is about an elevator groaning in a haunted house, the reader probably wants to know how Cheryl reacts to it! Is she scared of ghosts? Does she believe in ghosts? Is she scared of elevators? If so, what does she do? Move to hit a button on the elevator to stop it? If scared of ghosts, how does she internalize this? If not scared, how does she internalize perhaps how Doctor Gaston is shivering? (Is he shivering?) These are all places the reader's mind wants to go to after that sentence. Instead, we get this history about some old wizards (if I had the patience, I would've made it longer to really make it intrude on the narrative, but I don't have the patience). If this is the first time the reader's hearing about the wizards, they probably won't care about them. This synopsis of their story interrupts what the reader actually cares about, which is whatever Cheryl cares about in the moment. To fix this interruption, Cheryl could find the book of runes maybe in the chapter before this, because that gets the reader invested. The reader, just like Cheryl, wants to know why there's a book of runes in the haunted house. So Cheryl asks Doctor Gaston about it, which legitimizes this exposition, because it's also what the reader wants to know.

Another major fault of info dumps is when they don't relate to the character at all. Cheryl's history (let's say she's a girl from the country who wandered into the house on accident) has nothing to do with wizards. Maybe in the narrative, she learns to cast some spells, which makes her care about wizards, but at this point, she doesn't. If Cheryl has nothing to do with wizards, or little to do with them, then why should the audience care? When writing a character's history, you should only include the parts that matter to the character. And this written history should never be too long, because you never want to stunt the flow of the piece (what "too long" means is up to debate and your discretion and style).

Also, exposition only works when it feels genuinely embodied by the character speaking. Is Doctor Gastor explaining the wizard history, or is that the author talking? Some of it sounds like Gastor (the bit between the em dashes sounds like what he would say), but the rest sounds like Gastor is only a mouthpiece for the information I want to put out.

So, solving it. One trick I like to do when giving exposition is to make the exposition into its own mini-scene. You don't want to write, "Carmen was friends with Piper, and they went to the dance once as friends." Instead, give it some space on the page:

She and Piper were the only girls in their group who had gone quiet at curfew. Beatrice’s only crime was in whispering comments in the early hours, short things to guide the group’s banter, never loud enough to warrant arrest. “Not really, no.” “That’s nice.” Carmen nodded and drew his eyes across the crowd. “Did she sleep well?” “Beatrice?” “Yeah.” “I guess.” The path turned up the steep hill on which the dining hall was built. “I don’t know. I don’t think anyone really slept well.” “Oh.” “It’s just uncomfortable, you know?” “The girls?” She raised an eyebrow. “And the boys aren’t?” “No, they are.” He laughed, and Piper was dragged to the same laugh at Homecoming three months ago. She had requested for the Melpomene band’s recent concert recording to be played after the next pop song, and surprisingly, her request was approved. Carmen laughed as their poor performance boomed from the speakers, laughed at the disruption of a dance, and Piper laughed too. But within the minute, the concert’s strident ballad was supplanted by another chart-topping pop song. But for those forty seconds, music was displaced, and the dancers stopped; city walls fell; Piper had broken something for forty seconds, held power for forty seconds. She said now, “It’s just weird, being here. It’s all too happy. Too clean.”

Exposition can work really well in brief flashbacks. And note how the exposition starts: a mirroring of "laugh" because the image is fresh in the reader's mind, so I take them on a sort of dream logic to the past. Note also that this is planting the seeds for some relevant character-building: Piper's growth into an independent woman--"Piper had broken something for forty seconds, held power for forty seconds." Here's another example from my current WIP:

He thought of Brynjar the day he had given him the knot. It was the spring of Óskar’s sixth year, and Brynjar had taken him to the docks one morning to watch sailing men fix fresh ropes on their karves and clip pulleys to sails to tie them to the boats’ sides. “Never doubt a weaver woman,” Brynjar said, annunciating each word. “They keep everything afloat.” “‘Floating,” repeated the young Óskar. “If the ropes aren’t strong, a boat’ll flip and spin. Like this!” He lifted Óskar above his head and spun on his heels, and Óskar cackled. The father set the son on his shoulders and smiled. “Yes, we need those ladies.” Óskar felt his father’s shoulders raise, and he knew the man forged something witty in his mind. “It means, Óssie, a man is only as good as his woman. And you can tell your mother I said that.” Eldrid, Óskar’s mother, would leave in her sleep later that year, and the witches would say she was sick, and Brynjar would spend some nights looking through the cracks in his home, remembering the gray wife he woke to that morning. In his memory, Óskar did not know whether this new recollection of his mother’s passing tainted his father’s speech or if he really did turn somber, but all the same, a short silence paused the scene at the dock, and Brynjar coughed to break it. His voice was low now. “Dangerous,” he said, looking with eyes like the beads of a raspberry at the men on the dock, looking through them. His jowls lowered like curtains, forced low with the hill of a frown, and in the memory, his skin blued and bloated. “It’s dangerous out there, Óssie. Be safe.” He sniffed. “Be well.” “Óskar?” Ingrid stole him. He breathed back into the world and saw now that the road had turned down and the rock wall had turned in, and they approached a strip of sea.

In addition to providing a character's history, this also fleshes out the world: the importance of women and boats, the dangers of the sea. Before the flashback, Oskar is thinking about a knot, so he thinks about the day he got the knot, which makes him think about sailing boats. At the end of the flashback, he thinks about the ocean ("looking through [the sailors]," so probably at the ocean), thinks about his father's skin if he drowned, and back in the present-tense, uh oh, Oskar is nearing the ocean. It all flows together; we're guiding our reader.

But these are only small exposition dumps, and sometimes, we need to convey much more information. You can subtly convey much more information than you realize through dialogue and description, because how a character talks and acts is guided by their histories. If a character is short-spoken, they may have had some interpersonal trauma that you can flesh out more when the time is right:

“No,” Sylvia whispered, trapping Chloe again with her stare, desperate. “I can’t sleep over.” “Why not?” Jane asked. “Mom says I have to be home by seven.” She looked down at her empty plate, at the crumbs from one slice of pizza. “But you haven’t asked her,” Jane prodded. She shook her head. “I did before.” Still in disbelief, Jane asked, “What did she say?” “She said I have to be home by seven.” She blushed. “And I can do whatever till then.” “Oh,” Jane said. She slunk back in her chair. Chloe turned back to her parents. “Can you call Jane’s mom?” “Sure thing.” “Thanks!” She swiveled back and, fingering the fruit Phoebe scrambled on her plate, decided to eat it later. She grabbed a second slice from the box. Moments passed as they ate in silence, Sylvia watching her plate, and the muffled television played something in the living room. Mom and dad laughed. “I should go,” Sylvia said. She bumped the table as she stood, reciting, “Thank you for having me.” Jane looked at the clock hovering above the front door. “It’s only six-twenty.” “I need to go home.” “Oh.” Jane stuttered. “I’ll see you next week!” Chloe said the same. “Thank you. See you.” She opened the door and slipped through. It clicked behind her. Chloe and Jane paused their gnawing and looked up at each other, sharing a thought. They hadn’t heard a car grumble on the gravel, didn’t hear anything drive by at all, and neither of them knew how close she lived. They scraped their chairs from the table and crept to the dining room window like characters in a Jones Bones movie, Jane thought. But when they pulled back the curtain, she was gone. No cars drove on the street, and the sidewalk was empty. A golden glare shrouded the street and surrounding houses as the sun lowered behind a roof.

Throughout this book (The Ghosts of Glass Lake, available now ;)), it's implied that Sylvia has a controlling and/or abusive mother. In this scene, Sylvia is curt and direct. You can almost feel the urgency behind her words, how she bumps the table as she stands, and how it almost sounds like she's rehearsed this exit. It's also implied that no one came to pick her up--she walked home, but neither Jane nor Chloe know where she lives, and neither does the reader. Maybe she walked home for miles because her mother didn't pick her up. You can get a lot of meat from implications!

But still, there are times when you just need a lot of dense exposition, usually near the beginning of a book when you need to describe the setting. My best advice, if you ever need to do this, is to keep it as brief as possible, and to pay extra attention to pacing/flow/tempo/whatever-you-want-to-call-it so it doesn't distract, doesn't feel like a chore:

The seventh and eighth graders of Carmen’s church spent one Saturday every winter at Camp Catechism. The campus set its roots in northern Michigan, breathed easterly winds from Lake Huron, and sparked to life as batches of middle schoolers arrived on midnight buses. Cabins formed a bivouac in a birch forest, and one mile to the east lay the lake and the curve of its horizon. It was frozen now, and the limbs of trees wavered slowly under snow, ice eating at chipped, white bark. The chapel the middle schoolers sang in now was a wide A-frame built and reeking of old wood. A low stage headed the room from which stood a pianist, a drummer, and a guitarist, a stage from which Roman Richards would soon discuss Ephesians. The dining hall was a short walk from everywhere and displayed from a wide window the canopy of the burdened forest, ossified waves, and the sun glinting unbearably against it all. Cups of hot chocolate were filled and refilled on a counter at the entrance of the dining hall, and campers drank these violently, abrading their throats as adolescent drunks. Boys and girls separated into two large halls subdivided into tight rooms for each youth group, everything barred entrance from the other sex. As a general rule, phones were banned, as were drugs, candles, and cursing, though the popular boys forged unique methods to circumvent these restrictions, and anyone caught with contraband was witnessed a martyr for a greater sense of vagrancy. Still, most campers lived within their rules, their obligations, just as they always had at church, and any rule breaking (“sin,” as Roman Richards claimed) was relegated quickly to myth, to rumors spread away from pious ears. As such, Carmen and his contemporaries were only loud ostensibly, never committing to a biblical criminal record. This was not to say that anyone at Camp Catechism was reserved—they spilled everything about their lives to their youth group leaders, but no one yet could articulate exactly what they meant, exactly what they felt, and scantily of dreams, ambitions, or desires.

And as all good exposition does, it flows well back into the narrative. The last paragraph above is a bridge between the camp description and a look into Carmen's inner life.

You may also find halfway through your narrative that you need to dump a bunch of character exposition, and you need to do it urgently. My trick for this is to make chapter A flow into the exposition, chapter B be an extended flashback scene, and chapter C to pick up where A left off. For example, if you need to talk about a character's relationship with his father but haven't done that yet in depth, find an easy way to transition into a flashback chapter that does just that. It's an enlarged version of the flashback tool I talked about above!

Now, all of this is what's worked for me, and I write third person distant POV narratives. It sounds like you're writing first person close POV haha. So I don't really have any examples to help with, but the general advice to 1. Keep the pacing/flow/tempo/etc. so exposition doesn't distract, and 2. Write exposition only about what matters to the character, preferably only what matters to the character in that moment, then you should be a-okay. Exposition is only as bad as it distracts, and these are the strategies I've found to distract as little as possible and to use the exposition to meaningfully build my characters as much as possible.

And again, this exposition dump problem doesn't have hard and fast solutions. Every author deals with it in their own way, and I'm sure with practice, you'll find what works best for you and what comes naturally to you, just as I'm always discovering and refining what works for me. The advice in this post is, I think, a solid place to start from :)

[kinglazrus]

Beep boop hello to you! Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love 💚

I adore whoever made this ask game. Thank you for sending me one, Lexx! This was so hard to choose, so these aren't in any particular order.

The Moment It Breaks

Description: After months of lies and secrets, it finally happens. His identity is revealed in the worst of ways—in the middle of a ghost fight. Now everyone knows that Tucker Foley is the Tech Hunter

Reason: I made this AU for the Danny Phantom au zine, Reality Trip, and I have had so much fun playing with it. It started as a throwaway wondering "what if Vlad approached Tucker instead of Valerie?" and grew into something huge. I've always adored no one knows aus, and this one takes it a step further. I'll be posting the fic to Ao3 soon, and I've got big plans for the rest of this AU.

The Haunting of Danny Fenton

Description: Valerie knows Danny Fenton, everybody does. Youngest of the family, son and heir, future owner of Fenton Works. Notable for all those reasons and infamous for none of them. Where Maddie and Jack are the local quirks, Danny is the tragedy. And, for the next week, he's the Red Huntress' newest client.

Reason: I adore writing Valerie's point of view. She's my favourite character, so it's a bit criminal that I don't have more fics focused on her. I've also used some different narrative techniques in this fic playing with perspective, which has been a lot of fun.

The Punishment Fits the Crime

Description: Ghosts are naturally drawn to death. Danny, however, finds himself drawn to those who have wrongfully died. He always said he would never hurt someone who doesn't deserve it. It's not his fault that he keeps finding people who do. Or: Danny is a vengeful spirit.

Reason: My darkest fic, tonally. I got the idea to turn Danny into a vengeful spirit and immediately decided to push it as far as I could. There's only a couple of chapters up right now, but the tags tell you all you need to know about the direction this fic is going.

The In-Laws

Description: Harriet and her son, Kwan, meet each other's boyfriends through a family dinner. Hopefully, Vlad Masters and Danny Fenton can get along for one meal.

Reason: Because it's fun! This is a very light-hearted, humorous fic, and I had a great time with it. I like to write all kinds of pairings, and this was a great way to explore two I hadn't yet: Vlad and Harriet, and Danny and Kwan. Bad News shippers come get your juice.

Blossoms On Her Tongue

Description: Years after Undergrowth’s attack, Sam’s ghost powers from that day are slowly returning. Sam is excited at first, both at the chance to grow closer with Danny, and the opportunity to use her own powers for good. But things aren’t as great as they seem. After all, plants don't mix well with the cold.

Reason: I can't actually say because that would be a spoiler! But there's a specific dynamic I wanted to explore for the trio and this fic was what came out of it. I've got three parts planned for this series, each one focused on a different member of the trio.

Honourable mentions that I almost picked for this:

The Survivalists (of course)

Prince Before King. Genius Before Fool.

Not Your Danny

Deep Wounds

Dead Man Walking

Until Death Do We Part

[this-world-of-beautiful-monsters]

karen is the rachel amber of lis2 not because she's dead but because she's haunting the narrative as this painful, changing force--Esteban is haunting it, too, but Esteban's character and fate are both set, we know who he was and we know how he died and we know his death was avenged. karen is like rachel in lis1, a strange shapeshifting figure that different characters talk about and who stays confined to a photograph, an absence that psychologically haunts the main characters in opposite ways--Chloe idolizes Rachel and Max is jealous of her, while Daniel puts his hopes in Karen and Sean is painfully bitter about her. Karen and Rachel are the beautiful golden rebel girls from good families, the (literal) firestarters desperate to get out, and for the first three episodes of lis1/2 they are dancing on the edge of the narrative, just out of reach.

but in ep 4 of lis1 Rachel is confirmed dead, and when we see her in the prequel her fate has already been long set, no matter how much more we learn about her there. and in ep 4 of lis2 we see Karen, alive, bringing all her messy baggage and good intentions with her, the Rachel who actually got to grow up and get away and never could stay tied down. Max can never speak to Rachel, but Sean can confront Karen, this ghost he knows intimately and painfully, and she's an active character when she's been a ghost for so long. she's the reality that's between Sean's fury and Daniel's hopes, here to help as best she can and unable to fix what she and all the other adults in their lives have done.

like the first lis games are all about young women just starting to figure themselves out and lis2 deals with this mature female character who never stopped chasing her dreams even if she didn't catch them, who never grew out of her rebellion even if when it started damaging her children that never really had a choice about rebelling the way she did, just how they rebelled. a woman capable of self sacrifice and courage and creativity and setting a church on fire to protect her sons, but also capable of wounding them on this permanent, profound psychological level in the name of her personal interpretation of a "clean break," who left Sean angry and hurting and forced to grow up too fast even before Esteban died and left Daniel so desperate for some kind of mother figure he would cling to a violent abuser like lisbeth instead.

and I honestly think there's something very post-sacrifice-arcadia-Max about Karen, too, even if Max's situation was more desperate and Karen's damage less physically extensive, it's the same idea of seeking her happy ending and the open road at the expense of others. and when she confronts Sean, and to an extent Daniel, it's like a reflection of what might happen if Max has to confront a survivor of Arcadia Bay, the guilty god and the helpless souls raging against them, because isn't your mother your first god? and how can you kill her, but how can you forgive her?

and then it becomes all about following Her teachings or not, following her legacy, however unwillingly she passes it down. same way max has to choose whether to live freely like Rachel lived or watch Chloe die horribly like Rachel died, Daniel and Sean have to choose whether to follow their mother's example to get to their father's house, refuse to let themselves be pinned down even it means leaving devastation in their wake.

and she doesn't even realize that's what they're doing, she's repulsed by it in a way, like she doesn't turn them in for killing Lisbeth, but she's horrified, and she only says she's proud of them if Lisbeth is spared. she's the ghost stepping back into the narrative and getting to live with the ups and downs of the reality in her wake, even if she doesn't like them. because that's the side effect of being a living present woman emerges from the shadows of a young lost girl, being affected by the world your absence created even as you get a chance to finally affect it yourself, and it's everything to me.

[djsherriff-responses]

warning captain laserhawk spoilers and topics of grooming and incest

I was sketching out a possible funny comic (idk if I’ll finish, motivation zig zags) regarding that one scene of Jade and Pey’J , where Jade argues wirh Pey’J about it , as a “hahaha omg wasn’t that really messed up?” But than I thought:

“wow, if this show wasn’t cramming so much into 6 episodes and Jade wasn’t fridged, this would be an incredibly interesting but horrific plot thread to follow through”

We know from the official Eden site that Pey’J knew Jade since infancy and the show makes it a point he promised on her parents’ grave to protect her , which makes his confession in having romantic feelings for her all the more disgusting

I never played BGE, and I really wanna like him since I read he is a better (not into incest with kids he raised as his own) character in game , but I was actually kinda glad he died because I kept thinking of all the weird implications his love confession has, such as what were (or are depending on if he and Jade come back in season 2) the writers planning with that?

Like, the writers knew we didn’t have much time with these characters and so knew there wasn’t much time to see the depth of the relationship Jade has with Pey’J, so why make their last conversation Pey’J outting himself as someone attracted to his own niece?

I seen most people say it was a joke, which is just an odd thing to do when that moment could’ve easily been used to share more of Jade and Pey’J’s history and familiar bond with each other, thus make Jade’s death far more impactful than just “god I can’t believe that was their last conversation”. You could’ve still made that moment funny and awkward without incest!

A possibility (one which I’m dreading could happen if they come back in season 2) is that they genuinely wanted to have Pey’J and Jade together romantically , which is just …. Yikes, really yikes. Obviously as of writing this post we don’t know the writers’ intentions or the purpose of that scene in the larger narrative (if it even has one). I know that Alex is old enough to be Dolph’s dad but we can agree actual incest in the story of Laserhawk would be pushing it, right? (Or at least get characters with personalities and dynamic where that sort of situation would make sense!)

TBH I feel like that moment could’ve actually worked (or at least offer some interesting story stuff), if Pey’J was the one who died in episode two instead of Jade

(This part is more hopeful thinking what be the writers’ intentions than anything, tbh feel free to use this part as fanfic inspiration)

Think about it, Jade’s bio says she’s got a natural talent at reading people and makes it a career to haunt down the scum of Eden (like Pagan Min)

Which would make it all the more incredibly horrifying for her to learn her uncle was attracted to her

If Pey’J was the one died after telling her he found her attractive, Jade’s entire world and perspective of her life would be shattered, and she’d basically be left to pick up the pieces. All the sweet childhood memories she had with Pey’J would be tainted now, she’d question so much of her self and be haunted by the possibility Pey’J may be a groomer

and than…..wait….

Do Dolph and Bullfrog know about the incest?!

Like Sarah knows because she definitely overheard that conversation

Did Pey’J ever bring up he got a boner over his niece to his fellow ghosts before he died? Did Sarah tell Dolph and Bullfrog? Did the two get weird vibes from the sweet home Alabama pig man?

God , what were the writers thinking adding incest to this show?!

[the-all-seeing-l]

any scarlet hollow theories on the doll in the bedroom closet that keeps on mysteriously moving? 👀 i really hate that thing but i hate that we can’t move it somewhere else!

Spoilers for Scarlet Hollow episodes 1-4

Sorry for the late reply; was busy + had to do some research for this to avoid spewing nonsense (no guarantee though).

I don't think the doll is haunted or able to move on its own since it doesn't move in the first 3 episodes (Keen Eye confirms this).

Episode 1:

Episode 2:

Episode 3:

The first time it has actually moved is if you check in on it at the start of episode 4, because someone was in the closet.

I actually think the creepy doll is supposed to distract you from that very concerning fact. Keen Eye also tells you who went through the closet:

So what did he want in there?

I think instead of the doll, we should be focusing on the documents (riveting, I know). It always bugged me that we were never able to at least sift through them, not even with Book Smart. Despite being a huge messy, I don't think Tabitha would leave something actually important in there; that would just be stupid with how careful she's being otherwise. So if Wayne was looking for something in there, he probably didn't find anything. I would be surprised if he actually thought he would though. So what about this: Considering it was him that suggested to explore the estate in the next episode, what if he planted something there for us to find? Maybe even something that would incriminate Tabitha without context. She's definitely hiding something big, but she's also not the villain Sybil is trying to make her out to be (by implying she's "the cat" and all that). Because of the idea of Tabitha being the Big Bad already being pushed on us in episode 4, it would make sense for that to continue in episode 5, until it culminates in the player character finding something really bad in the estate (though I don't think some incriminating documents will be all; I believe it's pretty plausible that we're actually going to find the Entity) and her finally having to talk to us. If it's not too late by then, that is. Because if we find the Entity, it's definitely going to try and manipulate us like it did with Charlie. I think the climax of episode 5 will revolve around whether we trust the Entity and/ or Sybil or Tabitha. If not episode 5 then episode 6 or 7 for sure. That's just a theory though - a gaME TH- Sorry, I'll shut up now. Obviously I don't have any proof for all that apart from it making sense narrative-wise.

Why would Wayne want to incriminate Tabitha though, you ask? Good question; he did seem at least somewhat sympathetic towards her if you brought her along on the ghost hunt after all. He definitely wants us to trust him though, and he's trying to make us stop relying on Stella. His arguments for this make some sense, but Stella also did get an ambulance when the mine collapsed in episode 2 which was helpful if Rosalina got hurt (though the player character could accuse her of running away even back then). I think Wayne is trying to weaken our trust in everyone else enough that we end up relying solely on him so he can use us for whatever it is he's trying to achieve. If you look at it that way, it would make sense for him to try and make Tabitha look suspicious (though she's already doing a pretty good job at that herself). What his motives are and where or if they intersect with Sybil's, the Entity's and Tabby's, I don't know. I am pretty sure he's not the actual Sam Wayne though, as I explained in my main theory post (https://www.tumblr.com/the-all-seeing-l/710559451068973056).

I know this isn't really what you asked for, but I have no self-control and I think it's better than my initial "The doll's not haunted, bye."?

One interesting thing about the doll itself is that it belonged to Alexandra Scarlet, Edwardine's other daughter aside from Mary-Belle. If you read the Coroner's Reports in episode 4, you learn that she went missing at the age of 9 and is presumed dead. Suspiciously enough, she went missing on the same day Enoch died in a "hiking accident". Maybe it had something to do with the same thing Pastor Daniel's daughter Tulip found in the woods, considering Enoch presumably fell off a cliff there (just like Reese) and Alexandra should have been around the same age as Tulip back then... Ok, I lied! This isn't about the doll at all anymore. It's also blind speculation, so I'll really shut up now. I'm flattered you'd ask me for my thoughts though, and I hope this was somewhat interesting and/ or helpful.

[plasticfangtastic]

Pssst... Try not to take what they say in interviews too seriously. Sometimes things will be intentionally vague or an outright lie to confuse or appease people or throw them off from something. Ennis is infamously known for that although I don't think everyone realizes he does this, but he's also working on the show with them.

They said Marie surviving "wasn't as simple as them needing her alive" and it's kinda funny to see fans take it one way or the other when that can be so many different things in context of The Boys universe and especially what we saw in Gen V.

"Plans to kill Homelander" is Billy every season without success, but even if he did, I think we'll see him getting haunted by Homelander big time after the fact. I still want Hughie to be the one who kills Billy but maybe it's beyond the grave Homelander who's there as Billy is dying instead of Becca. I think that would be fitting and Billy honestly deserves it.

There's definitely an element of groundwork they are following from the comics which has been pretty consistent but what I really suspect will happen is that the control virus will end up used on Homelander by someone to purely weaponize him. I think we'll see him become an attack dog and fully efficient berserker without getting to enjoy any of it and having a different sort of mental break after.

The comics sort of rob you of the gratification Homelander's death could give and I think they want to recreate that effect for the show but who knows.

The scary part for me is all the genocide apologism that is going around but The Boys is sort of meant to unmask people and have us reevaluate the way we think so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. Still hurts though.

As far as Cate "going too far", he's technically right. Not because Shetty wasn't a complete scumbag who wouldn't deserve death, but because she'd been completely neutralized with Cate's powers.

Neutralizing someone by killing them and killing someone who has already been neutralized are two very different things. Just jail her and let her suffer and stew in her own anger and actions knowing she lost at that point because death is the easy way for someone like that. She asked for them to just make her forget but Cate should have forced her to remember or even live through the memories of her victims.

Actually, if they wanted to make Billy fail and survive with Homelander permanently haunting him I'd be completely down for that because fuck that genocidal shithead.

Lol I don't know if this will make you feel any better but just things to think about I guess.

I could see Homie being a ghost haunting Billy as Billy already hallucinates Homelander for some reason that they still havent explained but he its a cash cow for Amazon and they might not just give us 5 seasons so I doubt the execs would want to get rid of him... the writers ans Kripke might hate HL but audiences have proven he its likable and profitable and frankly the idea that all of HL fans are maga type fascist its absurd bcuz my gay brown ass sure as fuck isnt maga and i adore him.

Its getting clear that they will copy the comic to some degree like Homie building an army to have a coup and Billy wanting to use a virus to commit genocide.

Will disagree on Cate v Shetty cuz absolutely nothing she did was wrong in my opinion and yes am being an apologist but i dont feel anything for killing child abusers like absolutely nothing. this bitch was Voguelbaum lite and everybody in the woods deserved it. My only issue its just how jarring the writing and ediring made the whole scene play out but its likely the shortened ep count and time per ep did that.

My ideal ending its Homelander winning and realizing it didnt fix anything and that now he its even more alone than before. I think bad guys winning its the most subversive thing for the stale af genre of superhero media. I want him to win not bcuz i love him but bcuz it would be more devastating for the narrative and shocking to the audience if he did.