you-are-my-neverland

[you-are-my-neverland]

If you're a writer you're supposed to write a lot of bullshit. It's part of the gig. You have to write a lot of absolute garbage in order to get to the good bits. Every once in a while you'll be like "Oh, I wish I hadn't wasted all that time writing bullshit," but that's dumb. That's exactly the same as an Olympic runner being like "Oh, I wish I hadn't wasted all that time running all those practice laps"

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Little zine I drew this past sunday at the Budapest comic festival at a "workshop" , theme was spring!

[you-are-my-neverland]

novelember was not even on my mind until i saw a post yesterday, and the week was so bad all things considered that i was just like 🫠 welp guess that’s not happening BUT had a really good day, including writing, today so are we back on or what??

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Shapeshifter characters are so inherently tragic and i eat that shit up every time. I fucking LOVE when a character's sense of identity hinges upon being anyone but themself. Like yesssss babygirl struggle with your identity as an individual person and not just a reflection of others youre so sexy haha

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i love you magic as a corrupting force. i love you magic that hurts the user. i love you magic that makes the user less human. i love you magic that takes away people's memory. i love you magic that's used for good but has a price. i love you magic that hurts to use. i-

[you-are-my-neverland]

basically I think that if your protagonist doesn’t want to fuck someone so bad it makes them look stupid, then there probably isn’t enough energy in your story. “Fuck someone” isn’t literal btw—they can want to uncover the secrets of their parent’s death, they can want to prove their worth, they can want a donut from one particular bakery—it can be anything so long as they want it so bad that they’ll make decisions that make any sane person go “are you a moron??”, with little to no forethought, or even tons of forethought and this is still the option they chose. Because they want to fuck that thing so bad.

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Favourite ship dynamic: no one truly knows what exactly is going on between the two characters, including the characters themselves. But whatever it is, it's written in the fabric of the universe.

[you-are-my-neverland]

Assassin by cheolseung ok

[you-are-my-neverland]

really hate how 'avoid therapy speak' writing advice is to write your characters not able to convey their emotions period, instead of y'know... making them convey them less clinically (which is what i think 'therapy speak' is supposed to mean?) and more in line with your character's view of life.

like if your character is someone who is very self-aware, or someone who ruminates a lot (hello ocd), they're gonna have A Lot to say when asked about their feelings. maybe it's unreliable. maybe it's diverting from the real issue. maybe they're lying. even untruthful/'wrong' answers can reveal so much about a cynical mindset or that they hate their self or that they've been gaslit so much their entire conclusion is wrong, and it's a "oh..." moment for everybody.

i even have a character who actually would say 'umm... not good, i guess? i have no idea' to being asked 'so how does this make you feel?' but that's cause. they literally have alexithymia. or, i guess if that could be an appropriate reaction for a character who is overly guarded & has trust issues. i also wonder if displeasure at 'therapy speak' has to do with the fact most of us probably don't have many people who ask us about our feelings, and conversations like these feel sappy and uncomfortable and like fanciful imaginings of unrestrained trust that won't be betrayed, because often IRL trust like this goes betrayed. most 'therapy speak' advice comes across as really jaded, and i'm saying this as someone who has trust issues lol. also, considering that alexithymia is actually very common, i wonder if that plays a role in how weird these conversation seem to readers who have it. (i'm actually curious about this.)

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love love love godhood... do you mind talking about ashka and naying? whatever you want, these kinds of dynamic just fascinate me endlessly <3

oh, i would be happy to discuss ashka and naying. maybe too happy, even.

where to start? naying doesn't remember the first seven years of her life, only waking up to find ashka watching over her. he tells her that her parents died in a car accident, the same one that injured her severely enough that she has to relearn just about everything. to her, he's the only parental figure she's ever known, and she's always felt a complicated sense of debt, awe, worship, and love towards him. sometimes, she felt as if she didn't know him, or understand him, that he was a distant point she could never reach, but she never doubted that, whatever happened between them, he loved her.

and then, when she's eighteen, he disappears. vanishes from her life. he had said he was going to meet someone, and then had never come home. she made missing posters, even talked to the police, but, eventually, it feels as if everyone but her stopped caring, stopped looking. the police found his bloodstained clothes, ruled it as a death, or murder, without a body, let it grow cold. naying dabbled in alcoholism, anger, and ruining her life one piece at a time. she never gives up hoping that he's alive, insisting that he's alive, because sometimes he leaves her things, groceries or gifts, things she knows are from him but can never prove.

so he didn't die. he didn't abandon her, he's not gone like everyone says. he just, for some reason, can't come home, and even though naying has rationalized it a hundred times in her mind, there's still a part of her that whispers he left you behind. it doesn't help that when she enters the outsider world, she's told some rendition of that line; her knee jerk denial is a defense mechanism, response, a way to protect herself, to not let it become the truth.

the ashka naying knows, though, the man that is her father, is a monster to the outsider world. he's the perpetrator of the greatest tragedies in the past century, a man honored as a god and then reviled as a devil. for his own greed, for his own selfish desires, he committed genocide (intentionally?), slaughtered a generation (intentionally), and, apparently, kidnapped a child just when they thought he might have gone to ground for good.

ashka is a man who looks to be in his thirties, but has actually been alive for almost a century. his believed power is unmatched, and, in the fifty plus years since the Battle of Black Cliff, he has become the bogeyman of the Outsider World. he's the last member of the last, revived godhead, a vengeful ghost who will not let the world move on. as long as he's out there, he's a threat to everything the Families and the World stand for. he's Wanted Number One basically. no one knows why, but everyone knows that, when she was seven years old, naying yue, heiress to the yue family, the next in line to be saintess, vanished. was taken. kidnapped. by a man described to be no other than ashka mihari.

most of the world has accepted that she was killed, but some outsiders never stopped looking, including the yue family. no body, no crime. when our naying appears again at twenty one, she is and isn't the naying yue they are looking for - to naying, they have the same name, but they aren't the same person. to everyone else, she's either a fake or a copy. no one knows the game ashka is playing, least of all naying herself.

now, in terms of writing, ashka and naying's dynamic/relationship haunts the narrative. particulary for naying, who has the main pov of godhood, ashka is a ghost in her past, always cropping up in her thoughts, memories flooding in at the most inopportune moments. the littles things bring him to mind; in her memories, we are shown a man who loved his daughter, a man who sometimes hurt her in ways only father's can (not in a dv/sa way though. let me make that clear; there are enough other evil people in godhood), a daughter who tried her best to understand him and be the best she could be. she's bitter and angry at him, but also longing for him. she just wants him to return, to prove he didn't abandon her.

to prove everyone else wrong.

but for the majority of godhood, we have naying's pov and memories contrasting with what other people tell her about ashka. we slowly learn the extent of the things he has done, the reasons he is hated and reviled. naying might not judge him, but the readers will have to form their own opinions on what sort of man he is. ashka himself doesn't make a (re)appearance until close to the end of the first novel at least; he himself haunts the narrative alongside the girl naying was.

[you-are-my-neverland]

The dead do not disappear after death. They persist, in their own minds as well as in ours. Again and again they return: sometimes envious, sometimes aggrieved, often just desperate for warmth. The message they bring back is always, in essence, the same: We live. We live. Our hearts burn.

Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land, Jacob Mikanowski

[you-are-my-neverland]

painting tag! godhood edition

Rules: Find a painting (or multiple) that reminds you of your story! It can apply to plot, vibes, characters, pretty much anything that comes to mind. Then explain why you chose that artwork!

i was tagged by @sableglass (weeks late, i know). i'm tagging @carnivalls @ellierenae @vacantgodling @lena-rambles. no pressure, and apologies if you've already done it!

artwork by bluecapsicum (2024

mjulmjul on tumblr (2022)

artwork by terra keck

the swan, no. 1 by hilma af klimt (1915)

vanessagilings on tumblr (2023)

hu jundi (unknown)

explanations |

i. the surrealist style reminds me of dali, and the 'eye in the sky' reminds me of a scene from the drama that inspired elements of the story. it's also about looking into the abyss and having it stare back at you. ii. the seraph, but also the heart. almost all the characters, as outsiders, are more than human, but this particular artwork connects to two characters whose inhumaness is slightly more physical than the rest - it can, at times, break free from the confines of their skin. iii. again, the seraph, the way they might seem when they come like death to claim you. iv. the obvious yin and yang symbolism aside, the crane is an important character/recurring symbol/motif in godhood, and makes multiple appearances in benji's arc. v. mythology; this reminds me of a young xinza, full of innocence. this can also be interpreted as naying, before her life with ashka, in the white of the yue family. vi. the girl and the moon is connected to local legend in the outsider world. also, i interpret this painting as there being two sides/faces/identities to one person, which is very relevant. one is in the front; one is hiding (waiting?) in the background.

interested to know more? ppt intro here

[you-are-my-neverland]

dvd player !! :]

DVD Player: post a piece of dialogue from your story

posting a small snippet of what i wrote last night on godhood.

“I never said this was a fairytale world,” Lien said, hands in his pocket. They got into the elevator. He pressed the button for the tenth floor. “This is the underworld.” He stared straight ahead at the doors. Naying watched their distorted reflections. “You sure know how to make a girl feel better,” she finally said.  “You need to be prepared,” he replied. “There’s so much you’re not going to really understand until you experience it. But it’s like I said. We’re all terrified of dying young or ready to face it. We have monsters who want us dead, but we don’t trust each other at all. The person who kills a seraph is just as likely to backstab you next if it could benefit them. The strongest survive, and leave the weak behind. If you stop to help them up, you’ll get killed too. Even if it’s not always true, that’s the mindset that Outsiders cultivate. That this world makes you cultivate. If you stop to help someone up, you’ll get left behind, too.”

[you-are-my-neverland]

Special feature ✨✨✨

Special Feature: post a fun fact about your story

doing this for godhood of course *sparkles*

a fun fact about godhood is that the very, very basis of the worldbuilding has been around since late 2021. that includes the concept of the glass men and some of the characters, namely naying, xinza (not introduced, but he's a character), and setskya, as well as ashka. of course, they were completely different characters (not even an iota of similarity for the most part, except for some notable points that are spoilers). setskya and naying were NOT related for one.

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trying to be gentle to myself while writing and reminding myself that this is the first draft. so all the writing that i feel is just using too many words and meaningless fluff to explain or establish something, i will be able to look back at and then effectively narrow down and reshape on future drafts.

[you-are-my-neverland]

Let's play a game!

THE RULES

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THE GAME

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Special Feature: post a fun fact about your story

Movie Script: post your most recently written line

DVD Player: post a piece of dialogue from your story