#i am experiencing the horrors of executive dysfunction and so am in a bit of a Mood but!! i hope to be back for dms and writing!

[flockrest]

everybody's asleep! time to post kido thoughts because i have so many things brewing in my head about him that i can never seem to word to my satisfaction and i am finally taking the leap and treating him like my canon muses in that you know what? the studies focusing solely on him do not have to be neat either!!

loves his dad. hates his dad. loves his dad enough to keep the quill from his feathered spear — the last physical connection to him he's got — to bind to the braided cord he receives from nekk for his growing semiplumes as a statement of you are still something to me. hates his dad enough that he never gave his weapon its proper rites by burning it in a funerary bonfire, which wouldn't be a problem if he also did not refuse to take it up in any shape or form ( nekk's still got it in his aerie, collecting dust ). it's complicated.

has healed enough from the loss that he can think of his dad and anything to do with him without ever feeling like his stomach's being pried open to be turned inside-out by the time totk rolls around. still wounded to the point of rejecting customary warrior training and finding that extensive, emphasised talk of warriorhood in general, a literal cultural hallmark, makes him genuinely anxious and even a little angry. just a little. he can at least immerse himself in the mythic touch and triumph of Songs.

loves revail. hates revali. still has all his Songs memorised and could recite the older ones by heart, still gets dreams of being buoyed up above the skies by what he imagines would be his gale, still quietly thinks he's one of the coolest people peaks among the ripples will ever have to grace their history. also can't feel normal about him in any single conversation. also gets irrationally mad when anyone goes on and on about him, the ( mostly silent ) critic to the enjoyer. also rather unhealthily, if only subconsciously, clings onto the idea that his dad chose revali and his legacy over himself — not in the "oh, i was not enough" way ( though he did have a stint of this ), but in the "oh, of course he'd choose someone so amazing like master revali over me" way. the idea of revali is the last thing connecting him to his past with his dad, where he was still present, and kido hasn't decided whether he wants to burn that bridge or reinforce it.

but hey, here's to fluffier things! is contender for the one with the best fine motor control among his peers. though he doesn't feel a passion for it, and would much rather something else at his current age, he does hold his clothier apprenticeship with nekk near and dear to his heart for giving him an outlet he very sorely needed and the inability to ( physically and emotionally ) self-isolate as he wanted to in the worst of his grief.

cartography came a bit out of nowhere, but at the same time it's perfectly fitting. he legitimately enjoys travelling, even if his initial taste for it came in little bites of attempted-and-failed rescue missions. and maybe he wants to make sure he'll be able to find anyone he cares about in the future, huh? maybe he wants to be able to pinpoint exactly where anyone could've gone no matter what. bonus points: it's an artisan's life, not a warrior's one! score! ( < is going to be so upset when he finds out that learning to at least know how to defend himself is a compulsory step in graduating from fledgling to globetrotter )

#* plumule / study. #* roosting / ooc. #some of these are part of his innermost thoughts and feelings that you will not be able to pry out of him unless you're looking for them #so like. not even applicable to threads. but you know me and meta that most likely won't come up in threads! #i realise the vibes with kido are. very somber. but i promise you he's a more joyful kid than my recent studies make him out to be slkfjkld #i am experiencing the horrors of executive dysfunction and so am in a bit of a Mood but!! i hope to be back for dms and writing! #hope you're having a lovely day folks! be seeing you <3 #child neglect implied

[yourfaveisyanderematic]

Hi! Just wanted to drop by to ask what the writing process is like for you? What kind of facet of the story do you focus on the most? What motivates you to write diamond-level-sexy writing? And how long have you been polishing your writing to the point that it's this emotionally riveting and interesting? From a nonnie who adores your blog. In all-caps.

Oooh boy!  This is a fun question, because it’s a complicated one!  (Wow, who knew I’d be at a point where someone thought I was qualified to answer this question?)

Under a cut because wow this is gonna get long.

I struggle with ADHD and executive dysfunction; of the time I spend ‘writing’ a prompt, maybe 90% of it (hours or days, in one case well over a week) is rolling the idea around in my head until I come up with an idea or angle I think would be really interesting or exciting to write about.  Once I have the outline/idea in my head, I sit down for a couple of hours and bang it out, proofread it for typos, then post it.  Second draft who?  Editing what?  Don’t know her, bitch!

The first couple of ideas that immediately come to mind are usually rejected outright.  For example: “Cioccolata falls for a mafia member who doesn’t know who he is”.  Simply having him do kidnapping and then nonconsensual surgery is scary, sure, but it’s also too easy.  (I also…basically did that for my first Ciocco request but hey.  Hey.  Shush, you.)

To clarify: there’s nothing wrong with doing ‘easy’ prompts.  Execution is always, always, always more important than the idea you write, and can elevate a simple concept or hamstring a great one.  But I personally rejected this first option because it felt too stereotypical to pick for this character; what about Cioccolata sets him apart from every Evil Doctor™ ever?  What scenes was he in that made my gut twist with fear?  For this fic, I decided it was the psychological aspect of someone experienced with driving others to suicide/self-harm.  In a previous request, I was fascinated by an online description of an experience with a drug.  Essentially, I picked a ‘centerpiece moment’ of the request and started to build around it.

This next part is going to vary for everyone, and you kind of get a feel for it if you read a lot or watch a lot of media.  Basically, you gotta know what’s important and how to pace things.  In the original outline, I was going to have the prompt take up two “therapy” scenes, where another mafia member makes an offhand remark about suggesting you see a therapist and Ciocco using that as his in, and set up him ‘collecting’ information about you for the second half.  I cut this because I realized it was unnecessary.  There was nothing about those scenes that justified their word count, so I took note of what I wanted from them and folded it into the rest.  

Once I knew what to write and how, I just sort of…did it?  The most important things to me personally are an attention-grabbing opening line, and a snappy finisher, bc it forces me to start the story at what’s important.  When I edit work for friends I get a lot of “ugh I know this is bad, but I just had to set everything up to get to the good part”….don’t do that.  Don’t do that!  Start the story where the story starts, and it’ll all go from there.  You just gotta, you just gotta trust your gut on this.  The gut that will develop a sense for what’s good or bad based on all that reading I KNOW you’re doing, because I told you to read a lot.  If you don’t like it, it’s probably for a reason.  If dialogue isn’t sounding right to you, read it out loud to yourself and see where you stumble, then restructure the sentence.  If you’re writing about something you’re unfamiliar with/too familiar with, go look at some pictures or read some accounts so you’ve got the pertinent information captured.  If you’re writing along and wonder “hmm…but WOULD DDR exist in an arcade in 1989?” then get distracted for three hours researching it and six other tangential factoids that won’t ever be important in the work, JUST IN CASE.

Actually, hang on, don’t do that last bit.  Nobody notices.  

Anyway, that’s my writing process.  Touching on what you asked about “how long” I’ve been “polishing” my work…not very!  I’ve “written” since I was an awkward preteen selfshipping with Naruto characters, but I took a loooooOOOOONG break from writing proper, narrative fiction for literal years.  Depression will do that to you.  What got me back into it was running DnD and WOD games, where I developed greater flexibility with working with characters and improvisational storytelling.  The instant feedback from players also helped me zero in on what was important and what was ‘fun’.  Eventually, I got frustrated with the fact that none of my storytelling existed outside of game sessions, and started seriously working on individual, written work again.  By which I mean I tried NANOWRIMO for the first time in a decade, made it to 20k words and then stopped to regroup because my project was, surprise surprise, not up to my standards.

When I’m reading, I tend to make notes on what I like and don’t like about a piece.  If something is jarring or irritating, I make sure to avoid it in my own work.  If I like something, I try to zero in on just what it is that gripped me and then emulate it.

This last bit’s gotta stay between us, but the reason I fixate on horror, and why I put so much into these stories, is because I am someone who is afraid of other people.  My primary motivation for these stories is to express even a small fraction of the fear in my heart.  If it’s on paper and separated from me, in a form that others can experience, it becomes a source of entertainment, and I can live with myself again.  Things just happen to get horny sometimes because let’s be real here I Am A Sub, but 90% of what I write is literally me telling the world how I live (but like, allegorically, so nobody calls me out on it or worries about me too much).

The other 10% is just my hatred of the government.

#writing haze feedback #me: yeah I'll just sit down and bang out 6k words no biggie #like a fucking liar

[myfandomrambles]

Lars Barriga Character Analysis

Facts:

Is a (nominally) Filipino teenager, likely around a senior in high school who lives in Beach City. 

Had a falling out with his childhood friend

Very stereotypical disaffected teen

Slacks off at work

Dances around attraction to his co-worker

Has a strained but generally caring relationship with Steven

Wants to join the “cool kids”

Can be paralyzed by fear

Has experienced a lot of side effects from the Gem stuff around them

Has his body possessed by Steven

Tries to join a band but is unable to ever engage those people

Is kidnapped in the “My Mom” attack

Ends up captured on Homeworld due to his own anxiety

Dies saving Padparadscha Sapphire

Becomes a revived human by the Pink Diamond Power through Steven

Fight with his new friends and steals a plain

Becomes the captain of the Off Color Gems fighting off other Gems

Pilots himself from Homeworld back to earth

Analysis:

Lars is a pretty relatable teen, he is struggling to find an identity and friends. Deals with relationships that are a bit complicated, past relationships that didn’t work out and a job he chronically slacks off at. His own insecurities and sometimes myopic focus tend to override his life to a point of severe problems.

Lars spends much of the show up till season 5 as a stereotypical anxious slacker. But ends up in a place of being a leader and much more confident. Lars shows clear signs of anxiety for the show and it creates a huge problem for him. He has almost no friends outside of Steven and a strained relationship with Sadie. His parents are shown to be worried about him because his grades are terrible and he seems highly distressed often. His self-esteem issues caused him to act fake around people a lot meaning many people are surprised if he ever shows confidence.

In the finale of season 4, he ends up with Steven captured being taken to the gem Homeworld. His paralyzing anxiety stops him from escaping. His anxiety makes it very hard for him on homeworld steen having to lead and protect him hear even with his own stress. During their escape, they run into the off colours who are “broken” on Homeworld. Lars bonds with them and we can see he feels guilty if he were to get them hurt. He is able to dredge up his courage to protect them fighting the bots chasing them as the others can’t because he has no Gem. In the end, he essentially dies saving the others. Puts himself in front of the beam and Padparadscha Sapphire. Steven then brings him back to life with his healing tears. Lars is transformed into a creature of indeterminate status like Pink Lion, a creation of the Pink Diamond based powers.

After this symbolic rebirth, he is first terrified understandably but accepts this. He lets Steven go home through his portal even if this leaves him stranded. The other Off Colours stayed with him, unwilling to leave him stranded with nobody and no way to protect himself. He bonds with them and even helps them take an escape attempt. They are able to capture a spaceship and head for earth. In this role las finds his confidence and acts as their “captain” taking charge of their future protection. He bonds well with them as he can be as funny and weird as he likes. They already consider him brave and worthy from his previous actions, and being victims of prejudice themselves don’t expect anything from him. The Rutile Twins and Rhodonite also show similar anxiety to the king he experiences and Padapsher is coded as neurodivergent in her own right.

His obliviousness of others and anxiety can come across as pretty problematic in his relationship with Sadie. They have a kind of song and dance around crushing on each other. Both being over possessive of each other and show affection in a broken way. Sadie let herself often become a doormat to avoid confrontation with Lars. She also performs horribly possessive acts like stranding them on an island hiding the way home in Island Adventure (01X30). This is the first time both show romantic affection through kissing, but largely feels rather taken advantage of and not loving. They don’t move forward well after this. Lars struggles to show affection to never expressing the way he feels clearly. His anxiety and slacker mentality interfere with anything that could be, and the possessive ways Sadie acts he feel put off, not really understanding how much he wanted to be around her after being stranded in space. His reactive inferiority complex makes him feel abandoned by her having new friends.

Lars and Steven’s relationship was generally friendly, and Steven even seemed like the only person currently who he hung out with on a more level playing field. It was impossible for him to push Steven away or run away from him because Steven never let him. Acting essentially as an annoying younger brother. Steven does want him to form new friends but doesn’t really understand Lars’s social anxiety issues. In The New Lars (03X10) Steven poses Lars in a kind of creepy way. There is an inherent violation here that is understandable disconcerting to him. It does allow Steve to see some of how Lars lives but takes the ability to “fix” his problems not taking into account what he would want. This has a few effects on their relationship outside of making Lars more anxious around Steven and the other Crystal Gem’s powers for a long period of time. 

As of I Am My Mom (04X24) Lars and Steven’s relationships changes extremely. The whole arc on Homeworld after this ending in Lars’s head (05X04) makes them into a more equal relationship in power. Lars’s new found confidence allows him to have new friends who respect him with the off colours. He is no longer the odd one out with her friends so he and Steven no longer have an annoyed sibling dynamic but colleagues in fighting a broken system. Lars new confidence also allows more direct affection like hugging Lars was scared to previously shown.

A past relationship we get some insight into is he had a friendship in previous years with Ronaldo. It’s shown they were pretty close to best friends. In Horror Club (01X41) we get this backstory during an adventure Lars, Steven, Sadie and Ronaldo go on. As kids, they share a love of slightly nerdy things and Horror movies. Ronaldo and he saw something spooky and supernatural. Ronaldo's obsession with “Keep Beach City Weird” type things wanted to show off images and expose supernatural things. Lars, however, destroys the images out of fear others will see it and humiliate him. This broke their relationship pretty fast, and it seemed to continue to be something Lars felt bad about doing on impulse. They don’t really talk it all the way through, but express kindness at the end, maybe showing no longer being mad about it.

Lars was never my favourite, relatable with my personal anxiety but he often was annoying. His stories lacked relevance for many seasons but when we get to his involvement in major plotlines on Homeworld the past descriptions of self-esteem problems and anxiety made the personal arc satisfying. His fining of courage partially by accident but really accepting the role of protecting others. Through taken charge, he starts to feel very strong and proud through this. He is one of the side town characters whose arc had a real effect. He along with Peridot and Amethyst have the strongest complete arcs. It was disappointing to have gaps afterwards not seeing much of the Off Colours and e bonding and stealing their ships. The time skip robs us off more slow build up in plot lines and character things.

He is a character who was able to tease out to be a pretty interesting strong character after a clumsy start. He is able to transcend his slacker behaviour and rudeness toward Sadie and Steven. It is also disappointing that until the Off Colours both of his friends did some rather controlling behaviour towards him. I hope they do something with him and the off colours moving forward.

Nd Headcanons:

Social Anxiety Disorder/Generalized Anxiety Disorder:

Avoiding social situations and anything that could cause

Catastrophization

Distracted by fear and preoccupation when in social situations

Fear of rejection

Fear of talking and/or otherwise engaging with other people

Has some “safe people”

Masking

Panic Attacks

Physiological symptoms: Freezing up, vocal changes, nervous energy

Preoccupation with fitting in

Rising anxiety around new friends

Rumination of being embarrassed

Trouble forming relationships based on his anxiety 

Depression:

Concentration issues

Difficulties with relationships

Executive dysfunction issues

Hopelessness in his own ability to do more

Low self-esteem

Restlessness 

Struggling in school

#fandom: #su #character: #lars barriga #steven universe #sadie miller #rhodonite #off colour gems #ronaldo fryman #padparadscha sapphire #topic: #analysis series #character analysis #nd headcanons #character study #steven universe meta #su meta #type: #txt #my post #ship: #lars barriga/sadie miller #lars barriga & steven universe #the off colors