hecatesbroom

[hecatesbroom]

as a generally curious person, the one question that's always burning at the back of my mind is: how do my mutuals look?? so because tumblr is the Great Anonymous Basement of the internet and we're obviously not posting selfies, I'm asking you all (very very nicely) to reblog this and tell me what you look like in the tags!!

#i'll go first! #i have lightish blonde hair and blue eyes (aka typical white person) #my hair is incidentally the straightest thing about me (and very long. i'm thinking of chopping it off and getting a bob soon) #i wear glasses. everyone agrees my face looks weird without them #my sense of style fluctuates between 10 y/o boy from the 1930s and someone's secretary in the 1970s -- or any combination thereof #actually i think it's safe to say i look like either: a grandma. the grandpa she buys clothes for or the queer kid who raids their wardrobe #depending on how i feel that day lol #oh and you can recognise me by my flat cap. i don't leave the house without it #yup. i get Looks when i go outside lol #i also still have a forehead covered in pimples. have done since i was 12. still waiting for that to clear up (if it ever will sjkdf)

[hecatesbroom]

How I organise my (fic) writing in Notion

@this-geek wondered how I organised my works in Notion, and considering I'm nothing if not always happy to ramble about anything concerning lists and sorting my various things, here we are ;) thanks for giving me an excuse to talk about this haha

Under the cut because I have unfortunately rambled quite a bit (sorry!)

Okay so first off: I really only use Notion for my fic writing (I prefer to work on original projects in physical notebooks or Word, for reasons unknown to even me) and I only keep my first drafts in here. I move on to Google Docs for second drafts (again, who knows why I do this? I sure don't!) Anyway, onto the organisation:

This is what my main page looks like! I have some fancy sidebars I never really use, the to do list is horribly outdated, and I haven't updated that quote (from one of my favourite book series: The Locked Tomb) in ages, but I still think it looks nice!

The thing this is mainly about, though, is the part in the middle that says "all fics". This is what Notion calls a database. It's basically one gigantic collection of pages (in my case: fics) that you can add tags to and display in various different ways. I prefer gallery view because it allows me to add a picture to the overview if I want to. I used to do this for my Locked Tomb fics and it looked pretty fun:

The thing is that it's also a lot of work to find pictures to match your fics (and nowadays I'm more focused on writing than all the thing surrounding it) so my Golden Girls overview looks more like this! I still like the gallery view because it gives you a little preview of every wip :)

As you can see, there's lots of different tags under the titles. The stuff you see in this view is a quick overview (mostly to help with sorting, so all my posted wips line up, and the rest shows up according to which state of unfinishedness they're currently in)

When you click any fic in this view, you'll be taken to the actual fic, and its complete overview of tags & info! I like to keep track of a lot of things (when I remember to, anyway). Here's a little overview for the things I tracked for the finish line :)

Created: shows me the date I started the document (and therefore the fic). Very useful! I love this feature a lot

Fandom: is mainly there for organisation purposes! I set my gallery view to toggle per fandom, so it's all sorted into neat little sections thanks to this tag

Characters: pretty self explanatory

Type: I've got several categories here: "one-shot", "multi-chapter", "drabble", "ficlet", and (reserved for one AU in particular) "i honestly don't know anymore"

Status: again, there's quite a few options for this one: "plotting", "writing draft 1", "1st draft", "2nd draft", "finished", "posted", "hiatus" and "abandoned" (which I rarely use)

Quick summary: is where I play around with my ao3 summary whenever I'm bored and don't really feel like writing

Draft 1 wc: I usually just put the final word count for the first draft there, unless I remember to track individual writing sessions (in which case I add those word counts as well, like in the example above, because I love looking back on the process!)

Draft 2 wc: I tend to completely retype a fic into my google docs for the second draft. Once I've done that I put the end result into my Notion doc

Finished wc: after I've reread and edited my 2nd draft, and possibly managed to have it all get a little out of hand (like you can see in that doubled word count for the finish line, lol) I put the finished word count here!

WC goal: is just a fun way to see what my initial idea was for the fic (I try to set a goal when I've got a general idea of what I want the work to look like, and always end up exceeding it)

The rest of it is just my writing, basically! Scroll down from there and you get the body for the fic :)

I hope this was somewhat helpful! I'm not a pro at Notion by any means, but if you have any questions or need some help, feel free to ask! I'm happy to try to help out!

#notion #alys.txt #my writing #how does one tag this lmao #notion tour #is that a thing?? #i think that's a thing

[hecatesbroom]

Do you have any opinions on modern (post-1970s) movies that you feel capture the essence (in a good way) of Old Movies?

No, unfortunately. That doesn't mean I don't like modern movies or that modern movies aren't good, but modern movies—and here I'm really using modern to mean post-2010, so contemporary movies—have different standards for pacing, characterization, budget, and production that make it harder (or impossible) to capture some of the magic of old movies. Even when modern movies clearly try to emulate that old-movie feeling—I'm thinking of La La Land, The Artist, The Shape of Water, In the Heights—they play the homage too broadly, or they ignore crucial components that make the original films work.

There's kind of too much to go into here without writing a full essay, but essentially, the Old Hollywood system—ugly, failed beast as she was—made some movies simply more accessible to make, due to the ongoing storage of props, sets, master craftsmen, crew, and onscreen talent that could move from one movie to the next without pause. If you needed a dancer, he was already on staff. If you needed a fancy bed, it was already in the warehouse. That kind of longterm storage is invaluable if you want to crank out movies quickly and cheaply because it saves so much time on individual negotiation and sourcing. Modern production companies have to work out individual contracts for every actor on every film; crew members have to negotiate rental contracts and source pieces from scratch; if you need someone with specialist skills, you have to contract them specially at a high rate, which a lot of small companies can't (or won't) budget to do. There's sand in the wheels where there needn't be any. It's wasteful, and costly, but that's the system modern movies are made with.

Which all means that even if the modern movie system wanted to make a classic movie musical just like the old ones, they couldn't, because the talent isn't already there—it hasn't been trained up enough, and there's not that breadth of knowledge you can only get from people who have been allowed to work in the same department in the same place for decades. Movies like La La Land fail, for me, because they present themselves as descendants of Fred Astaire or Busby Berkley movies, while missing the bit where Fred Astaire was a master of his craft. When you watch Fred Astaire dance—or Moira Shearer, or the Nicholas Brothers, or Ann Miller—you are watching a true artist at work, purposely showcased by the studios because they already have them on contract. Modern movies, on the other hand, tend to take people who already have star talent (as actors) and try to convert them into dancers/singers—or they pull dancers/singers off of Broadway, but then they don't have the star power built in. You end up with lackluster musicals where no one truly knows what they're doing, or they do but they're not built up enough by the studios to sell. And that's me discussing just on-screen talent for musicals—there is a huge loss behind the scenes, as well, for all kinds of movies, where roles that would have been filled by union crew who moved continuously from one job to the next have been swapped for freelance labor who live with immense turnover, financial insecurity, and knowledge loss. You could hand me the budget and I could try to make an old movie, but the industry itself has changed so much it's impossible to recapture that charm of steady, niche talent, the amazing possibilities of bonkers set design, and the ability to take a risk on a smaller movie because the other films being produced by the same studio can help balance the budget.

I've talked way, way too much about all of this! Sorry, I just have a lot of thoughts—and the one above is just one of them; the talent loss and storage issues are only facets of a much bigger problem that extends to how we watch movies today, how we market them, what we expect of them, and what's allowed in them. It's a crying shame because the talent is still there, but times change and so does the industry, for better or for worse. (And, just again to clarify, I don't think modern movies are bad—they're just missing a lot of the juice old movies got to play with, even if there's more talent available than ever before.)

#ooh this is fascinating!! i never quite thought of it this way #hotvintagepoll #film

[hecatesbroom]

it feels like there should be a million hours between 5 pm and 10 pm but theres only like two

[hecatesbroom]

Here's your daily reminder to Click for Palestine!!

Be sure to click for the other causes as well if you can!

[hecatesbroom]

Oooh, for the fic ask game! What was the first fandom you ever wrote for, and do you have a “guilty pleasure” (trope, character, au etc.) to read or write? :)

Ooh hi, thank you!!

What was the first fandom you ever wrote for?

...Warrior Cats when I was 12, but I basically took the world and only wrote stories with my own original characters because I was afraid I'd mess up the characterisation of canon characters. I think Orphan Black (2 years later) was the first fandom I wrote actual fanfiction (using canon characters and everything) for.

I've been writing in general for as long as I've been able to write down the words though! But my Warrior Cats phase is when I started taking everything a bit more seriously :)

do you have a “guilty pleasure” (trope, character, au etc.) to read or write?

No guilty pleasures, I think! I'm a staunch believer in the idea that if you enjoy something, you shouldn't feel like you have to hide it!

That being said, I love a good fake dating story — but I haven't actually tried my hand at writing one in a while! And my favourite thing to write is anything I can label "introspection" and/or "character study" haha

I guess you could say the golden girls Grease AU is closest to a guilty pleasure for me at the moment — mostly because I haven't published most of the little scenes I've written for it. But that's more of a laziness thing than an embarrassment thing :)

#thanks for asking!! these are always so much fun #honestly come to think of it warrior cats helped kickstart a lot of my hobbies lol #i taught myself how to draw & write #and even started using photoshop so i could make my own forum banners 😂 #ask game #ask

[hecatesbroom]

One more day of work and then I'll have 17(!!) days off let's go!!

#it's 2 weeks + the weekend but 17 days sounds so much longer lol #that's over half a month!! #alys.txt

[hecatesbroom]

I recently had surgery, and at the time I came home, I had both my cat and one of my grandma's cats staying with me.

- Within hours of surgery, I wake up from a nap to my cat gently sniffing at my incisions with great alarm.

- I was not allowed to shower the first day after surgery, and the cats, seeing that The Large Cat is not observing its cleaning ritual, decided I must be gravely disabled and compensated by licking all the exposed skin on my arms, face, and legs.

- I currently have to sleep with a pillow over my abdomen because my cat insists on climbing on top of me and covering my incisions with her body while I sleep (which is very sweet but not exactly comfortable without the pillow). She also lays across me facing my bedroom door, presumably on guard for attackers who may try to harm me while I'm sleeping and injured.

That's love. 🐈‍⬛🐈❤️

#my cats do stuff like this too and it's the *sweetest* #it works too because any and all affliction is immediately much less awful in the face of a kitty's love #side note but that is the most gorgeous cat i ever saw omg

[hecatesbroom]

I watched the Maude episode where she has a therapy session and I sobbed like a baby. First of all, Bea is a powerhouse and should have won an emmy every year for this episode alone forever. Secondly, it was so raw and real I almost had trouble watching and I didnt expect that. Like when she's talking about why she stopped kissing her dad goodnight as a kid? And how he didnt even notice? My chest actually hurt.

Ohhh the therapy episode!! It's so so so good. She should've won an emmy for it, I absolutely agree!! I don't think I've ever seen 20 minutes of a sitcom before where it's just one character monologuing the whole time — and I honestly don't think a lot of actors could pull it off as well as Bea did!

Yess, same here. I almost had to look away at some points (and I'll admit, it suddenly became very dusty where I was sitting 😂)

And even aside from the obvious raw emotion of that session, they still manage to keep the tone relatively light, and throw in a joke that fits the moment every so often. It's amazing!

#thank you for sharing this anon!! i went a little insane over that episode when i first watched it #and it's good to know that wasn't just me lol #maude 1972 #ask #anon

[hecatesbroom]

For the Fanfic writer asks:

Do you prefer writing longer or shorter works?

Which app do you use to write?

Oo thank you!!

Do you prefer writing longer or shorter works?

Shorter, only because I can never seem to stick with a long work long enough to finish it. I need variety, so generally juggling 2-4 short-ish WIPs is perfect for me!

That being said I do love plotting and outlining longer works — but I never got even close to finishing one before, and at this point I'm a little hesitant to try again 😅

Which app do you use to write?

For first drafts, I use a variety of notebooks if I'm writing on paper, and Notion if I prefer to type. I really love the way I can keep track of everything in Notion (I have tags to keep track of my progress for every WIP, and I can easily sort my writing per fandom!)

For my second and final drafts, I always retype everything in Google Docs :)

Thank you so much for asking! <3

#ask game #ask

[hecatesbroom]

inbox game for fanfic writers 📨🖊️

when did you first start writing?

what was the first fandom you ever wrote for?

do you ever read your own writing for fun?

if you could erase any three tropes from existence, what would they be?

do you prefer writing longer or shorter works?

do you have a “guilty pleasure” (trope, character, au etc.) to read or write?

what is your favourite thing that you’ve ever written?

tell us the titles of your three favourite works in progress.

which app do you use to write?

what is your most favourite character to write about and why?

what is your least favourite character to write about and why?

do you read a lot of fanfiction?

how do you shake burnout or writer’s block?

do you write smut? if yes, would you ever stop? if no, would you ever consider it?

are there any works you’ve written that you personally dislike?

when do you think you’ll stop writing fanfiction?

how many wips do you have right now?

name three fic writers you personally like to read from or are inspired by.

do you proofread your writing before you post it?

#ooh yay another ask game!

[hecatesbroom]

Back at it again, this time with a 2 am Dorothy doodle

#her hair is *so much fun* to draw #i was too lazy to draw her hand so i cut off the photo right where it started lmao #(i *should* be practicing hands actually) #my art #dorothy zbornak

[hecatesbroom]

writing fanfiction is just. i’m being so creative and original. i’m plagiarizing everyone by accident. i’m a genius. i’m cringe. i’m too angsty. i’m too cheesy. this is not in character. it doesn’t matter that it’s not in character because these are my characters now. i love my hobby. this is the worst possible use of my time. i’m seeking validation. i’m projecting my own personal problems onto this story and i’m barely hiding it. i know so many words and i’m using all of them wrong. im on tumblr posting about it instead of writing it.

[hecatesbroom]

Literally any show can be improved by adding more older women. Not many know this, but it’s true.

[hecatesbroom]

I hope every writer who sees this writes LOADS the next few months. Like freetime opens up, no writers block, the ability to focus, etc etc you're able to write loads & make lots of progress <3

[hecatesbroom]

It makes me happy when they listen

#yess!! i love it so much when people tell me all about the things they love #seeing someone happy makes *me* happy #and you get a whole lot of interesting new information as well!!

[hecatesbroom]

I think a surprising amount of writers don’t realize that tragedies are supposed to be cathartic. They’re intended to result in a purging of emotion, a luxurious cry; the sorrow caused by a great tragedy is akin to fear caused by a good horror movie – it’s a “safe” sorrow, one that is actually satisfying to the audience. It can still be beautiful! It’s isn’t supposed to just be salting the earth so nothing can grow.

But that’s how you get grimdark: writers who don’t realize that they’re supposed to be doing something with the audience instead of to the audience.