#IN CASE STUDY FORM

[aestherin]

status: currently dying bc of business ethics

#rambles #about acads #i mean #i alr have a stand #why do i have to explain it #IN DETAIL #IN CASE STUDY FORM #lord #aaaaa

[neversetyoufree]

I've been thinking lately about Vanitas and Noé's first "what is salvation" fight at the bal masqué and what it means about their individual definitions of the concept, and I've realized something about Vanitas.

Noé's definition of salvation is the obvious one. It feels natural. To save someone is to keep them from dying. But in a way, his understanding of salvation is also almost selfish. Noé's foundational trauma is the constant loss of his loved ones. He is the eternal sole survivor. So of course he wants to keep people alive—he wants to "save" the people he cares about in the way that keeps them by his side this time.

It's not wrong to want that, of course. I don't mean "selfish" as a condemnation. It's just that the definition of salvation that Noé starts the series with is inarguably the one that best serves his own happiness.

And it's the same with Vanitas.

When Vanitas kills the little girl Catherine by restoring her true name, he tells Noé he doesn't know what salvation is. He might be lying there, or he might be telling the truth in that he's never put his definition of salvation into words or acknowledged it on a conscious level. Either way, though, I do think he has a definition of salvation somewhere in his mind, and it's a very personal one.

Vanitas sees salvation as the preservation or restoration of one's true self. You're saved so long as you can preserve your essential self, uncorrupted by outside forces. Even if the price of that selfness is death.

While Noé's foundational trauma that informs his worldview is the loss of his loved ones, one of Vanitas's foundational traumas is the loss of his bodily autonomy. Through Moreau's experiments and Luna's mark/bite, he has been transformed into something no longer fully human, and he hates it. From the moment Luna told him he was dying, he said he wanted to die as himself rather than live as their kin, and he has been denied that opportunity.

Nothing is more important for Vanitas than being able to dictate the destiny of his own body, and malnomen are the ultimate corruption of bodily autonomy and selfness. Altering one's true name warps not only their physical body, but their very being on a metaphysical level. The curse takes everything a vampire is and changes it, and doing that to an unwilling victim is the ultimate horror for Vanitas.

Given that context, of course Vanitas thinks that killing a child to restore her true name counts as saving her. He's restoring her essential self and un-corrupting her body and being, and even if her self is only returned for an instant before she dies, it's preferable to living on as something warped by an outside force.

Vanitas absolutely starts the series with a definition of salvation, and like Noé, it's the one that best serves his own happiness. He wants to be saved. He wants to be returned to his human self, and failing that (since he knows it's impossible), he wants to wipe out all traces of the force that changed him and then die without going any further down the path of inhumanity.

Vanitas might not be able to admit that definition out loud (or even to himself directly), but it's there, and it guides him early in the series as much as Noé's own definition of salvation guides him in turn.

#and perhaps noé will learn to see death as a form of salvation when life is corruption #and perhaps vanitas will learn to see the value of preserving (his own) life #and perhaps they'll both find a definition of salvation that is neither of these things 👀 #but that's not the point of this post #anyway this is one of those concepts that I've been orbiting around and maybe gestured toward before #but I don't think I ever quite put it in words or thought about this connection so directly #so here we are #vnc #vanitas no carte #the case study of vanitas #vanitas #vanitas my beloved #english major hours

[hoofpeet]

The fact that there's no outward indicator of a pokemon being shiny on the overworld map is stressing me out so bad tho WHY

#and half the shiny forms in this game just being slightly hue shifted like a single tick to the left #.zooming in on every slowpoke to study it intensely . jsut in case

[shizukais]

#anime #manga #vanitas no carte #vnc #the case study of vanitas #lord ruthven #august ruthven #hear me out ! ruthven is one of the most intriguing characters to me #despite being portrayed as an antagonist i can't really see him completely fitting into that role / ruthven's actions are ambiguous #yea yeah he's a manipulative mf and is doing bad things now but i don't think that's what it's all about #i believe ruthven is being controlled by something (?) through his right eye and has no much choice in that matter #in the scene where ruthven tried to put a curse on chloe he looks almost shocked when he realizes what he was doing #he also spoke to someone who wasn't there and it seemed to be an act of desperation / even though the war was already over (?) by that time #the eye shows him terrible things ever since the war (and the betrayal that i'm not sure if really happened or was staged to trick him) #i think the continuous trauma the eye causes on him shaped him to be a colder and more cruel person #the opposite of what his original self showed to be (someone more like noe in beliefs and world view) #i guess he truly believes he's doing this for the sake of vampires / that idea of “sacrifices will be necessary for the greater good” #this could explain the alliance w charlatan who seeks to find a way to create more vampires (moreau's research) & rewrite the world formula #also it's clear that ruthven has a distorted view of vampire's malnomen (what caused that? what he saw in the war?) #both for his speech referring to luca's brother “salvation takes many forms (...)” and for the way he uses his own curse on others #until now we know he cursed queen faustina / jeanne / noe (i doubt he would betray the queen without a reason) #maybe his right eye is a malnomen he considers now as a form of freedom / or maybe that allowed him to finally see the “truth” #and yet i think his character is constantly questioning himself about it (in a very sutil way) #(e.g. when he listens noe talk about his ideals / when he sees jeanne dressed like a normal girl after her date) #in these moments we can see him falter a little bit and his expression changes to something more soft and genuine / introspective and sad #the curse he put on noe i think it has more than 1 purpose: 1)trump card against teacher 2)to not kill noe as monsieur spider had demanded #at first i thought it might be for naenia get noe's true name but if that were the case she would have done it by now #and in that moment naenia regained her form for a brief moment in d'apchier mansion and everyone felt her presence #ruthven looked equally surprised so he must not know naenia's true identity either (is he being used?) #lol i could write an essay about vnc... so many tags... lol sry i got carried away!

[dramatic-dolphin]

when i was like 11 i liked to lie that i was a 16 year old girl named kriszti. i didn't say this under the last post because um. i did not use that lie to avoid being targeted by older people. quite the opposite 😐

#i kept trying to get people to sext me on some game website's chatroom out of curiosity #just to see if anyone would #when i finally caught one (1) guy and he called me (kriszti age 16) “my dream girl [some weirdass emoji]” #i found it so fucking hilarious that i had to disconnect because i was laughing so hard i couldn't do it anymore #like wow..... he just believed what i said........... when i just made it up.... #why was this so funny? well i was 12. #<- case study in unsupervised internet use at formative ages

[rotten7rat]

BATFILES: Cassandra Cain

FULL NAME: Cassandra Cain

ALIAS: Black Bat, prev. Batgirl, prev. Orphan

DATE OF BIRTH: January 26, 1997

HAIR: Dark brown, straight

EYES: Brown

SKINTONE: Tanned

HEIGHT: 5'3"/160cm

WEIGHT: 123lbs/56kg

ETHNIC BACKGROUND: Chinese, English, Scottish

DISTINCTIVE SCARS AND MARKINGS: two bullet scars on left thigh, several scars on both forearms and hands, small scar on right cheekbone

LANGUAGES: English and ASL

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: due to the speech isolation she suffered through the critical period of speech development, she has not mastered correct grammar

#batfamily #dc comics #dc universe #cassandra cain #blackbat #batgirl #orphan #I studied the case of Genie for her speech development #because she acquired language so late in her life she missed that critical period of development #so realistically she would struggle to form complex sentences #she had a much easier time with ASL #her speech comprehension is good though #she and jason have matching scars on their cheekbones #the first time she points it out happily he is baffled #coz his face is busted and thats what she notices #her languages next to everyone elses looks so normal #sorry but chinese is out of the question #someone would speak cantonese or something at her and she would just cry #batfiles

[fluentisonus]

housing the dead: the tomb as a house in roman italy by andrew wallace-hadrill

#SORRY to post such a long thing but I just thought it was such a fascinating case study. like this was a gripping read to me #ultimate friendship drama. the final form of that ''friendship ended with X'' facebook post meme #thoughts

[shallowrambles]

So I've been thinking. It's funny how enjoying meta is somewhat embedded with trust.

Like, if you're "friends" and have followed a person for a long time, you have more a sense of their values, and it's easier to read their difficult meta because you trust more that they're being charitable/nuanced.

If you don't know them, it's harder to trust that they're not funneling difficult topics into rationalization of liking/supporting gross shit.

#meta thoughts #case in point - so much of the wincest community still comes off super classist to me and it sorts of...leaks into their meta #you'll be going alone with an interesting character study and then you read stuff that just BOOM classism about family ties #then you go to their page and you find that yes they're into that shit and there's typically a desert of thoughtful cas military angels etc #they tend to like benny cause benny is an idealized brother substitute / sam parallel and it's given the most uncharitable reading #just because you choose a partner than is familiar and like your fam members does not mean you're into your family members oh my god #and sure there's tons of visual and overt racism in SPN in general but to me that at least gets discussed #the classism inherent to narrative fangirl obsessions with incest? not as dissected #familism and community are seen as Weird (TM) to them and they kind of tell on themselves with that imho #and like with racism there are just some things you can't overlook to enjoy a series if you're black because that's your day to day life an #with classism it's hard too bc sometimes you can't escape the reminders of day to day life #and when ppl in the fandom see the villain's monologues as TRUTH you just wanna shake your head but know it's not worth arguing #communal living is more normal than america wants you to think...rich folks want it labelled *weird* bc they want you separated and drained #i am begging us to deconstruct suburbia instead of defaulting to TEEHEE incest bc shitting on pooled resources is paramount in a rigged gam #I find the inherent isolation of american living-to-work without any time to visit each other VERY isolating indeed...also... #like how did we get here #where we're so afraid of labels like*cults* and *helicopter parenting* and *enmeshment* than we isolate as a form of hallowed independence #american success culture has a dark side too #and separating low class families is the aim #get them to spend more $$$ and go for lofty ideals in pursuit of american dream instead of pooling their resources and meeting their needs #meanwhile rich folks do so much respectable nepotism and pretend they're *self-made* #to me that's what the symbol of zachariah is ALLLL about #and if you're blind to what his taunts ACTUALLY mean...i'm very suspicious of your worldview #if resource sharing and co-living becomes shameful and *incestuous* for lower classes then they won't pool their power at all #american exceptionalism #spn + class #class #class warfare #giving up college dreams to be a caretaker seems way more common in poor families too #i suspect we see the incest reading less from brown families / hispanic fams...cause familism is more common

[pochapal]

they're studying omelette route in undergrad english classes

#:) #senior lecturer asked to use my undergrad project as a case study for a dissertation prep class as an example of how to do everything right #HOWEVER the entire project was Literally Just Omelette Route But In Poetry Form so this whole scenario is both hilarious and mortifying #any longtime mutuals can imagine EXACTLY what an experimental creative writing project done by me in summer 2020 would look like

[mothbeasts]

please publically talk about her feelinsg on romance or i'll eat you alive 🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕

oukay I will

The Fabricator, to me, really holds up the idea of romance in her mind. She loves the idea of having a partner, going on dates, being in love and being loved in return. But every time she's tried it, something has gone wrong. She's been hurt, turned on, scorned- And now she's scared to try again. She wants to, she so desperately wants it, but she's terrified of what might happen.

I think she does love, still, but she never speaks about it. She keeps it hidden away and protected. Having her heart broken again... She wouldn't be able to handle that. She can't risk it.

#ieytd #the fabricator #putting my more. relationship oriented thoughts on this in the tags okay here we go. #fabrizor: horrible and awful. the terrible gilded love. zor doesn't love her but they have a lot to gain from keeping her at their side. #so they string her along. keep her love centered on them without ever claiming it to be romantic. it's the 5d chess to them. #they eat her smog and such. but it's not the kind of love fabby wants. or needs. #fabbylaris: could be exactly what she longs for. someone genuine who loves her for what she is rather than what they want her to be. #but she's too scared to confess anything. too scared to tell solaris how she feels. in case it ruins their friendship. #ADDITIONAL TAG RAMBLE READING IS OPTIONAL: #i see fabby as a lesbian because IM a lesbian and such. and i need more lesbians in my media. but also- #- i. am some sort of aromantic i think. possibly even aroace in some form. and dissecting the way characters feel romance is so fun to me- #- because of that. its studying them like bugs yaaaay #oukay thats all smiles

[whatudottu]

It's been a bit since I've rambled about xenobiology headcanons, and this time because I've been thinking about Andreas I thought today's edition would be about talpaedans, seeing as how I made a list that I haven't put into a post yet-

Let's go!

Between all members of talpaedan youth and development, there is an innate basic understanding of construction, as comparable to human's ability to recognise patterns and facial language (give or take a few neurodivergencies). And specific construction comprehension is linked to whatever tool talpaedan youth are integrated in, which develops over time based on what materials are consumed (a diet of concrete may make cement mixers, or a diet that requires a lot of digging may develop jackhammers) as well of course the genes of the parent/s.

And on to that 'parent/s' thing, let's bring up haplodiplody again.

On Earth, haplodiplody is the system where one sex is developed from a fertilised egg (which tends to be the females) and thus are diploid with DNA of the mother and father, while the other sex is from an unfertilised egg (males would technically be the result of asexual reproduction) and thus is only haploid with only the mother providing DNA. Talpaedans are not an Earth species, but functionally that is the basis of their sex-determination, where females would be best translated as architects and males best translated as tradies, which in of itself is rather contextually slang in English.

And even with haplodiplody, talpaedans still have a bimodal sex distribution, though tradies are neither part of the equation. Instead, fertilised eggs though typically expected to produce architects also just as often produce workers, non-reproducing talpaedan youths that are born an raised to be the most common labourers of the colony they were born under and never leave the hive, as opposed to architects who work higher profile jobs and are in line to be promoted to site queens, and tradies who pre-war were lower rung workers who took to training younglings for work as well as in general raising them. Being bimodal it's not a perfect list of traits to be considered as either an architect or a worker, though there is a bias towards architects being able to reproduce as that would be the key factor needed in promotion. Tradies that are infertile or more characteristically architects would be considered workers and are more of a consequence of asexual reproduction and the lack of genetic diversity.

Talpaedan gender has been typically correlated with sex throughout most Poiana Lüncas colonies, with the architects being the talpaedan equivalent for women and tradies as the talpaedan equivalent for men, but workers have a more diverse gender identity even in more conservative colonies, either being a third gender or having men and women and in between identities being formally acknowledged as such in worker populations. There might be a few general issues about identity especially among architects and tradies, but colonies are less focused on the individual and most of their aggression is directed to other colonies rather than it's own population.

It is this tension towards other colonies that had eventually and near inevitably sent Poiana Lüncas into many wars, though the most recent one had been the worst and the last in many years, a war that fundamentally changed how intercolonial relationships worked. A very large colony had been expanding it's borders to accrue even more resources for it's ever growing population, in turn threatening the smaller colonies on it's outer borders, elevating tensions to an all time high. The whole shtick lasted for years until a few colonies realised that alone no one could stop this large megacolony from wiping out each of them one by one, but through an alliance they could stand together and beat the ever loving crap out of the aggressor.

And how their alliance worked was through the sharing of resources and ensuring the protection of youths especially, and so began the first war-era runs of arranged 'marriages' as tradies live up to their name in a more eh... dubious sense. By sending in tradies (who's lower rung work was mining for resources and food) from colonies not on the front line, the colonies along the border had assurances that their home had well fed and well protected populations - as well as a general diverting of power - to beat back the aggressor colony and in fact not only raze it to the ground, but dug it completely out and functionally turned it into a mass grave reeking of death; No Queen's Land it would later be named, for no surviving members of the colony were left alive to name it after themselves.

With a combination of a clearly war-created desert and the whole 'ant death smell' thing that exists in ants aka the big inspiration for my talpaedan headcanons, makes No Queen's Land an omen that trade routes never cross, instead creating what would be a ring road surrounding the outer reaches of the ex-colony that would direct trade routes through the border colonies one by one. Direct trade or travel between the colonies on complete opposite sides of the pock marked, crater desert is both impossible and otherwise detested by Queens and the architects responsible for trade routes, instead being a multicolonial multigenerational process that circles the border colonies until reaching the 'opposite side of the world'.

To this day (or at least to the day that exists universally in the moment that Andreas would consider a 'this day') the trade routes affect the lives of tradies post-war. Instead of being completely locked to the hive like workers and architects, tradies at a certain age are sent to travel in as both tradesmen and concubines to whatever colony they have been raised for, a fact that had been determined early on at the development of their tools and the needs of the recipient colony. The host colony would arrange their young to be raised by tradies that once came from their own host colony, determined by their last name of [birth colony-trade colony] (as opposed to architects and workers whose last names are simply [birth colony]) in order to be raised as bilingual to understand the majority language of their trade colony and to be an example of the future youth they would need to raise speaking their birth colony's language.

Andreas was on one such trade route when Aggregor snatched the talpaedan for materials in functionally a fusion experiment, being part of a group about to be married off to a queen, an architect or as a working tradie, technically 'divorcing' the deal when Andreas was stolen away. Considering that Poiana Lüncas isn't the most peaceful environmentally, the trade routes also serve as a double use, a sharing of resources and a preventative measure for overpopulation. I mean, a colony would be pissed if absolutely none of their trade gets to them - probably spark a conflict that may get hairy - but losing numbers is an expected consequence. Andreas doesn't expect anyone to particularly care that they're missing the one or few talpaedans that disappeared in the night, especially with the generally large number a trade route sends, and Aggregor isn't going to take out a whole line of talpaedans just to get to one; a simple 'cutting off from the group' works fine enough.

And one final thing to note, now more focused on Andreas as an individual rather than talpaedans as a species. I've mentioned death smell and thought to bring it up here since, if you've seen my stuff before or straight up follow me (for my rambling or long enough to see my rambling), I love stealing @kariachi's necromancer Argit and the whole idea of him killing, healing, and reviving Andreas in the titular episode Andreas' Fault. I looked up how ant death smell works and apparently it's a constant thing that's only combated by a constant flow of life smell, so with a brief touch of death even if Andreas doesn't REEK of death, a talpaedan would probably suspect Andreas stepped into No Queen's Land and got cursed by something. But for those of y'all buried deep enough in my rambling would be confused; 'if one can smell actual literal death and associate it as actual literal death why doesn't Andreas at least even slightly suspect the idea of being briefly dead when the castle crashed?'

Well babes, you know what's an easy simple solution for this? Andreas is anosmic :D! Of course Andreas would be the last to know, Andreas' would have no frame of reference for what a 'death smell' is. Could even be how Aggregor got Andreas separated, if everyone else can smell death smell they might notice the fact that No Queen's Land reeks of the stuff. Not a great way to find out that one is anosmic admittedly, but I mean if Ra'ad is finding out that among the many neurodivergencies he does have much of his overstimulated suffering is magic and mutation that he thought every other amperi had to deal with because you find out your husband died and now has a magical mind barrier well...

Okay okay, one more final note. Given that Andreas is a tradie, Andreas's full name would be [birth colony]-Andromeda after the name Andreas actually gets married into because Earth and especially English dominated areas of Earth like last names. And I guess if Andreas gets adopted into any Earth-based packs thanks to being attached to Argit like a puppy you can shove in another last name like [birth colony]-[pack]-Andromeda.

This has been in my notes since August woops-

#talpaedan #andreas #andreas ben 10 #ben 10 #xenobiology #world building #this has been a large general and specific headcanons thing that i have been rotating in my mind for forever #even longer than when it was actually documented in at least dot point form #since i am bad at names i didn't come up with any colony names #though i could probably just look at fault lines and the people who study earthquakes maybe #eh if i come up with something i might just go around in a circle going 'who needs a last name and who can make do' for the andromeda 5 #which includes andreas but also might include galapagus because of that one elder i brought up once inspired by diego the species saviour #also i just came up with architect worker and tradies because i didn't like how females drones and males sounded #also i thought that the double entendre for 'tradies' was far too fitting for what i wanted to ignore #like they'd be the closet translation in english for poiana lüncas languages in a general sense #as in the work type influences the origin for the name of the sex which would then influence the name of any sex correlated genders #and in this case- sex AND work related terms like trade routes- lowkey the first thing that comes to mind to andreas when you say sex work

[neversetyoufree]

So Jeanne's coffin case for her gauntlet is like, okay-

I made a post recently about Vanitas's earring, and how his wearing an hourglass in which the sand has run out represents how he's dead already within the narrative. Like, he's clearly still alive, but his time has already run out, and his death is a forgone conclusion, so on a symbolic level, he's a dead man walking. And though Jeanne's character doesn't revolve around her own death like Vanitas's does, I think she's in a similar state of metaphorically dead, and the case for her gauntlet is the symbol of that. It's just that unlike Vani, Jeanne has the potential to rise from the grave.

On every level but the literal one, Jeanne has been dead since the moment of her parents' execution. "Jeanne" was a fully formed person with feelings and desires and individuality. But the moment her parents were killed, the moment she became a bourreau, all that went away. The Hellfire Witch was a tool, a mindless weapon of the senate, and in becoming her, "Jeanne" had to die.

Furthermore, Jeanne's name is explicitly called out as a reference to Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc), and everything about her bourreau persona ties back into Joan's death. Joan was killed at 19, the same age that our Jeanne appears to be physically frozen at forever. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake, just as Jeanne's parents' heads were burned. Joan was burned for, among other things, accusations of witchcraft, and Jeanne became "The Hellfire Witch." For all intents and purposes, our Jeanne burned on the pyre with her parents' bodies, just like the death of her namesake.

Then, as she begins her life after death, Jeanne is given her crimson gauntlet, and it becomes the Symbol of The Hellfire Witch. It's how people identify her. And she carries it around in a coffin on her back. It is the ultimate emblem of her status of bourreau, of Dead Woman Walking, and it lays in a coffin where her body cannot.

The gauntlet is the Hellfire Witch, and the Witch is already dead.

And to go back to the comparison to Vanitas's earring, it's so interesting to look at what a burden that coffin must be for Jeanne. Vanitas wears a symbol of his death, and he wears it seamlessly. It's a small thing, hooked onto his ear and ever-present. It passes as a natural part of him. But Jeanne's symbol is heavy.

Jeanne carries an object that marks her as already dead, and it is a massive, hulking thing that she has to carry on her back. She's strong enough to manage it, of course, but that doesn't mean that lugging it is pleasant.

Because Vanitas has his own issues to unpack, but unlike him, I don't think Jeanne is particularly suicidal. She doesn't want to die. She's just been pushed into an existence where "my individual self is already dead" is the status quo, and a lot of her arc so far has been about breaking out of that pattern of behavior. (And though she'd rather die than lose control and hurt Luca, I actually think Vani's promise to kill her helps her be more alive and lively in the long run). Vanitas's death symbol is something he presumably put on himself as a reaction to Luna, but Jeanne's was forced upon her.

She could be a vibrant, stunningly alive person if not for the Senate forbidding her to act as such, and we're beginning to see bits of that as her personality comes back to life. Her status as dead is something that she carries, but something outside of the core of who she is. And though the weight is tragic, and she's spent far too long "living" as an undead tool, the other thing about the coffin is that. she can take it off.

She'll be losing a weapon if she does, losing the power of her gauntlet and what little protection being Ruthven's bourreau offers her, but if it's someday made safe for her to do so, Jeanne can come back to life and put the coffin down.

#in the process of fact checking my Joan of arc trivia for this post. I found out that the specific thing #that made the church choose to execute her rather than imprisonment. was that they found her wearing men's clothing in her cell #and I feel like there's something to say about that as a last act of rebellion/conviction vs Jeanne #and how as she regains more agency. she keeps casting herself in traditionally male roles #(the fairy tale prince. the knight in shining armor) #idk this should really be a separate post but the thought is too half formed for that rn #and I wanted to get the idea out there bc I really like it <3 #vnc #vanitas no carte #the case study of vanitas #jeanne #the hellfire witch #jeanne my beloved #english major hours

[talentforlying]

if he likes you, you're in the club. if he doesn't, you're getting side-eyed, if not spit at. if he hates you, he's menacing. he's got three distinct flavors and they change constantly from sentence to sentence.

what was i talking about when i started typing this.

#( ooc. ) OUT OF CIGS. #i'm right tho #constantine's generally pretty indifferent about other people. he'll be offhandedly charming and polite in passing interactions #but if you're actively trying to talk to him he forms impressions Very fast and behaves accordingly #it's part of what makes him an asshole: he decides who you are on first look and it takes some doing to rework that opinion #to his credit he'll apologize if he misjudges someone. but he Will judge first #anyway it's my last night before we fly back & we're chilling so i'll be pokin around for a bit!!! #( character study. ) A WALKING PLAGUE OF A MAN. #tagging this in case i remember what i was saying later

[jorvikzelda]

At this point I've got a full list in my head of fics I want to write when You Know What is done lmfao

#the obligation to myself to finish it is real #In case anyones wondering. #I'm STILL going to write something inspired by that painting by northberg I havent forgotten that. I put the post (screenshot) in a word do #And then I want to write character studies/get-in-their-head fics for each of the soul riders and maybe also some other people (Maya mainly #And THEN I want to write Soul Riders baking a cake #I've also got two old drafts of Mayalex snippets that I'd like to elaborate on #one of them is centered around a Thing that I'd also like to write about from the other soul riders' perspective #At some point I would love to write longer-form things with more elaborate original plots but we'll see. I'm not very skilled at plots #z talks

[capinejghafa]

Taking the time to collect *most of the Kanej fics I've read has me like worried I've read too much fanfics and therefore have developed certain biased feelings towards several hcs lol

#*most bc if i put out the entire list it isnt realistic lol #listen after three years im allowed to form likes and dislikes #i also love the patterns of which fic i engaged in and which i didnt #this if nothing else has been an interesting case study on my reading habits #random #also also i do have to reread a few bc it's been awhile and i usually dont reread fics unless im in a mood

[cisthoughtcrime]

I know this is probably not anything profound and maybe people have already said the same thing... But in regards to you talking about your creative writing struggles, just write it. Yeah maybe it sounds stiff and shitty. Doesn't matter. Just write it. Speaking from experience, if you always let that get in the way you'll never actually write and get better.

So just write it, even if it sucks. That's what editing is for.

This is my weird attempt of encouragement but seriously I really hope you can reach a point where the creativity is flowing freely and you enjoy it :)

thanks for this 💖😄 genuinely encouraging

#really im usually a very confident writer. im very comfortable in my world of essays chapters and theses. #but this time it's not argumentative writing and i keep writing it like im trying to persuade my audience #it's coming across as so unnecessarily defensive of the story even before it's fully introduced #from a mechanical standpoint i know it's solid. but it reads as alternately soulless and insecure. distractingly so. #I'm still determined to finish it and i know it won't be a long piece #but it's hard not to feel like im presenting the story like data points in an evidence arc rather than plot points in a narrative arc #and yes yes I'll edit #but it's less about style and more about composition and scale #im so used to 'make your assertion; provide evidence; analyse your case study to demonstrate your assertion' #that even when the sentences are well formed and individual bits sound ok it still feels like... #idk what it feels like. sparknotes? or a powerpoint presentation of the plot like a pitch meeting? #again ill still write it #i like the idea and im determined to get it down #im not about to give up because im not instantly amazing at something i havent even seriously attempted since i was 14 #in all likelihood if i get it to a place i like I'll probably submit it somewhere anonymously or under a pseudonym #and wash my hands of it content that i got it out of my head #asks #anon