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matan4il · 3 years

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I didnt catch you before you created your meta 😔 buuuuut...I read it to see if you caught what I did. You did some of it like a lot of ppl, if that makes sense...let me explain...

When Eddie was with Marjan, Buck was there too (IG and the skateboard conversation)...and before then too. When Judd and Paul left, and left them Marjan complained and Eddie said something like, "at least no one is shooting" ...throwback to when he and Buck had their 'confrontation' when Eddie came on board. People going nuts over them flirting and I'm here like, sorry yall his man is front and center in his thoughts even when talking with a pretty girl 🙂🙃😉

Hi Nonnie! I’m happy you sent in this ask, no matter the timing. Thank you for this! xoxoxox

And yes, I did notice the very similar phrasing of what Eddie said to Marjan in the crossover vs what he said to Buck in 201. I ended up leaving it out because I wasn’t sure enough that that line connects to Buck uniquely, since sometimes I feel like when the show wants to take a shortcut in establishing that Eddie is impressive, they reference his military past. I try to only include in my meta things I’m surer of, so I ended up not addressing this.

BUT I do think you’re spot on with what you’re saying, because YES, clearly Buck was on his mind. I mean, think about it, Marjan sees Buck on Eddie’s IG and the show could have brought up Buck during the convo only in this manner. It would have still been meaningful, it say Buck is so much a part of Eddie’s life that you can’t scroll Eddie’s social media without coming across him. And YET the show chooses to first make Buck a part of the convo in an even more meaningful way, by having Eddie bring him up. Eddie could have just replied to Marjan’s astonishment by saying “yes,” as in - yes, the skateboard was built, not bought. He could have said, “I had help.” But no, he gives Buck his due credit and brings him up by name even though the name would be meaningless to Marjan. And then he smiles like a goof at the memory of what Buck did for him and for Chris, and the fun they had with that skateboard. Your honor, the man is whipped.

For real, that’s the thing, right? Eddie’s annoyed at Buck for staring, goes off with Marjan before Buck can do that, is smug that Buck gets to see it, but then when he goes, he doesn’t stop thinking about Buck. It plays out a bit like a lovers’ argument in sitcoms and romantic comedies, doesn’t it? Where one lover goes off ‘coz they’re annoyed at the other, ready to flirt just to make a point, but instead of the distance helping them forget the other person, it just makes them think of their partner more, miss them and wanna get back to them. That’s exactly what we got here. Eddie was annoyed, went off with someone else, but he kept thinking about Buck and it made him grin like an idiot. Because Buck is a force of nature. He came into Eddie’s life and made it better, he made Eddie happier. The heart eyes that Buck brings out in the prone to brooding Eddie Diaz, MY GOD. Those literal heart eyes were easy to spot even through the wildfire smoke! And then Eddie got reunited with Buck, was back to his usual “Buck is reckless, gotta go watch out for him” and then proceeded to take him home to eat with his parents. I CAN’T WITH THESE IN LOVE IDIOTS CAN THEY PLEASE JUST KISS ALREADY.

Thank you so much again for this ask, Nonnie. Hope you enjoy the answer and sorry about the small capslock meltdown at the end, but honestly, I can’t help it with them. XD Hugs to you!

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kae-karo · 2 years

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Ok so I am in love with your fantasy AU (the one that starts with DabiHawks) on AO3 especially the BaukTodo one 🥰 sooo my question is, do you have any quick advice for an amateur writer that wants to do their own fantasy AU? But I love novels of advice too in case you have time haha i know it’s silly to thank you for this but I appreciate how approachable you are. I’m just shy lol ok bye…

HI DEAR I HOPE U KNOW THIS ASK MADE MY DAY ???? u are so sweet, first of all thank u so much i'm so glad you're enjoying it so much!!! ngl i love excuses to talk about writing from a meta perspective so i am ALWAYS glad to offer my thoughts!! (also, fantasy dabihawks et al series for reference - x)

i think when it comes to a fantasy au especially (although this could feasibly be applied to other au ideas) there are 2 key approaches, and really that just depends on how you personally prefer to write. the first is a worldbuilding-focused approach, the second is a character-focused approach

in a worldbuilding-focused approach, i usually view the goal as setting the stage for your characters to be dropped in - building the magic system, if it exists, the political system/governing bodies and hierarchical systems, the world state (wars? power struggles/imbalances? stuff like that), and the local states that might affect your characters (ie are they subjected to the governing bodies? the justice system? the slums or small towns? etc) - i actually have a good friend who ADORES worldbuilding, so a lot of this is stuff i've learned from him. from there, the world gets applied to the characters - do they have magic? if so, how does that affect them? are they a part of the governing body, subject to it, outside it? etc. i'll be super honest, though, this approach is not my strong suit when it comes to fantasy aus! i'm not a very good planner, and going from the outside in (worldbuilding first) requires a lot of planning 😔

so, with that said, i'll dive into my personal approach, which is character-driven. and, in many cases, situation/interaction-driven - i'm more adept at starting small and working my way outwards as topics become relevant, and i am notoriously very horrible at planning, so if you are a planning person, this might not be your exact cup of tea lmao

okay so i think fantasy aus are SO much fun but can definitely be tricky, if you are like me and are a very character-driven/interaction-driven person when writing. if you are indeed like me and haven't built out a whole entire world from scratch prior to building (or inserting, when we're talking fanfic) the characters/interactions, some things that i've found helpful to have really solidly nailed down are the magic system (if there is one), general political climate (kingdoms? rival countries? power structure? religion?), and relevant influencing factors

for a magic system, which tends to factor pretty heavily into my fantasy aus, my key considerations are typically:

how does magic happen? via writing? speech? diagrams/glyphs? rituals? a natural energy flow from a person who can control magic? can everyone control magic or just certain people? are certain items involved/required for conduit purposes, or for ritual purposes?

what is the cost? most of the time, magic has a cost, though it doesn't have to (especially if magic isn't central to the story!) but it can be meaningful (like dabi's magic in my fantasy au) to the character's development or mannerisms, or to the way they interact with the world. costs could look like energy drain/passing out in extreme circumstances, physical costs, costs prior to doing magic (sacrifices of some kind, either to oneself or others), emotional costs/effects (i'm lumping this in here, but magic users with innate magic of some sort having emotional moments that trigger their magic is *chef's kiss* content!!), is the cost a damage to their mental health, etc!

what are the limits? can magic do anything? (if it's not relevant to the story, maybe it can! or limits are never discussed, but usually, they matter!) it could be a user's limits, limitations of creation or impossibility, or varying degrees of difficulty - transportation might be a challenge, but lighting a fire might be considered simple. or the other way around, if that makes sense in the world or for the story! this can also tie in with costs - ie a healer might not be able to heal a lethal wound if the cost for magic is one's own energy, as that might mean the magic user would have to die in order to heal the other person!

what is the societal reaction to magic? friendly, wary, outright hostile? is there any relation to religion, if it's relevant? is magic ubiquitous? rare? just rare enough that it's unusual to come across, but not unheard of? is magic classified in any way, either to outside users or to everyone? is it categorized or structured, ie with terms like '-mancer' (pyromancer, necromancer, etc)? is magic forbidden, or are certain kinds forbidden? if so, why? and how logical is that forbiddenness? is it out of a desire to protect magic users? or to protect non-magic users? or some other reason altogether?

what is the characters' reaction to magic? how do they feel about it? are they a user? if so, do the costs affect them? how, and how severely? do they fall into a category of magic user? are they set apart from other magic users in some way? what are their opinions in comparison to the overall societal opinions on magic? how do they react when encountering new people, where magic is involved?

this is a super minor one but i find it useful to pick terms and stick to them! are the magic users called magicians? sorcerers? wizards? witches? mages? do they vary based on the magic user? are there gendered terms? are there slurs, if that's relevant? what are the magic activities referred to as? spells? rituals? incantations? are there more specific terms for types of magic (again, terms like pyromancer, necromancer, etc), or terms for different degrees of magic, dnd-style? basically, because we're the ones defining it, sticking with something consistent helps reader understanding, and if there's a difference between 'witch' and 'sorcerer', or 'incantation' and 'ritual' if it's relevant!

ngl a lot of times i have this sort of already intrinsically figured out by virtue of what i'm writing, what characters will be a part of it, and how they interact - i knew the cost of dabi's magic would be something physical early on, and knew the reaction both hawks and initial village would have to his magic. the limits i ended up figuring out in tandem with the concrete decision about how the cost manifested, and the method of magic was basically decided from the start to be something intrinsic that didn't require any spells, words, etc! however, i crafted the method by which dabi received his magic as i went, mostly by answering relevant questions as they arose within the framework i'd already built

i've also written fics where magic doesn't have a huge prevalence, but it does exist - and most of the time with those, my process is 'only answer the questions that need to be answered'. how does the character do healing magic? it's innate, he was born with it, but he doesn't use it often because it draws dark forces to him and is widely unaccepted outside his home country. why is it unaccepted? oh, because the dark forces are dangerous, and they've gone to war with the people in his home country. there, questions about magic answered in a satisfying way, with the depth relevant to the plot. as a side note, is there a cost to this character's magic? nah, not really, because the cost isn't relevant and he doesn't use his magic often enough in the story for it to be a topic of discussion. for the most part, i find i work best when the amount of effort i put into building the magic system directly aligns with how relevant it is to the story

okay now that i've waffled about magic for like sixty five years,,,,,everything else lmao. i think it's pretty relevant to at least have an idea of the political (and religious, if relevant!) climate to the extent that it affects your characters - dabi is (spoiler alert i guess?) son of the king, hawks is a part of the spy network. the characters fit into the political structure, which means i need to build it out around them as far as it's relevant. and ofc that got a lot more complicated as i started adding characters, so for me personally, i found it especially beneficial (contrary to instinct) to have only built out exactly what i needed to know. it gave me a lot more freedom and flexibility to build beyond that with new characters without directly contradicting anything i'd done/said so far. this is definitely my personal favored approach, but there's also nothing wrong with planning it all out ahead of time - if you've accounted for everything relevant one way or the other, then it hardly matters how you got there!! i'm just horrendous at planning lmao

and now i'm using the most generic term in the world but..."relevant influencing factors". which is super vague, but really i just mean...what matters to the characters? if i'd told my whole story from, say, bakugou's pov, all the stuff about the intricacies of dabi's magic might be totally irrelevant, and there wouldn't have been much need to even build out all that detail. but i might've had a much stronger focus in detailing the army's proceedings, the hierarchy, etc (which doesn't become relevant for dabi and hawks til they're dealing with it directly!) this could expand in a thousand directions, but basically the gist of it is twofold: relevance to the characters in the moment and relevance to them eventually. if your characters are coming across something, make sure you know what your characters need to know about it, then make sure you know what you as an author need to know!

say they're stumbling across a shop in the rain - do the characters care about the wares being sold? the shopkeeper or the building? if they do, how much do they care? passing notice, maybe more ardent notice if it's a character known for their attention to detail or awareness of surroundings? maybe it hardly matters what they sell, your characters are only staying for the night, they'll be gone by morning. but you as the author want them to take note of the shopkeeper - maybe a physical description, if it's relevant later, or something they say, etc. maybe you have a whole entire backstory for them, or maybe you don't! maybe the characters only note that the roof is leaking, but everything else about the building is irrelevant. rinse, repeat, and apply to everything your characters come across! sometimes, this is where worldbuilding really shines, if you don't have to build the world as you go - but sometimes, building as you go leads to new ideas and discoveries that take you off the beaten path! that's part of why i love character/situation-driven approaches so much, it allows me more freedom to have my characters change course. perhaps one of the characters would notice something unusual about the shopkeeper, maybe ask after some topic and discover something that becomes cleverly relevant later on, or maybe it steers them down a different path from that point forward! either way, i find that 'what is relevant to my characters'/'what might be/will be relevant down the road' helps me build exactly the world i need to tell the story i want to tell

okay last point i promise lmaooo i know you wanted a novel i'm giving u like a four part series alskdjfsdf but the other general things i've found helpful are timelines (i had one written out for the dabihawks fantasy au once it got more complicated!) to make sure characters are referencing the right times/time periods (ie a week ago, two weeks ago, etc). i've also done timelines that include which characters were where, if that got especially complex. and while i don't often have planning docs anymore, for big stories like that, i had a lot of my details about the magic system, concepts, ideas, etc all written down in one place to refer back to and make sure i was consistent! i also have a personal discord server for just me where i put ideas now, and i'll make channels (most of the time, if i'm somewhat organized) that have references/scenes/etc which serves as the equivalent of a planning doc nowadays

ANYWAY i hope that was somewhat helpful? every now and then i have the thought to do a (general) writing advice post, so perhaps i'll do that at some point if there's any desire for more/more generic thoughts/experiences/advice?

#writing #ask #anon #fantasy writing #fantasy au #king of disaster series #seriously tho if a writing post would be of any interest #pls let me know?#i love talking abt writing in general lmao #so feel free to ask other questions as well #also 'approachable' u are so sweet dear???#very glad u feel that way!!!!#🥺🥺🙏

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