#i think i'm starting to get way too involved in fictional characters

[submalevolentgrace]

Hi! I'm very interested in attempting to write a disabled character (not for this blog, I assure, for an book I'm writing) in which the story doesn't fetishize/objectify her prosthetic limb. I'm in many writing circles and have been for a long while, but I've never seen this issue brought to light which I realise is a very important one. I have much to change in my thought process, and thank you for bringing this issue to attention.

I'm curious, and I apologise if this has been asked before, but what sort of design could you see for a functional prosthetic that doesn't go for a plainly aesthetic appearance, or is soully to please others? I do note that you said prosthetics are generally... not that helpful. So is there a way that it could be? Or do you think it would always generally be better to not use a prosthetic, as its mostly for aesthetic purposes, as you said?

I apologise if this ask is too outright or anything, and I don't mean to intrude. Thank you for your time and have a beautiful day!

okay, i want to answer this as in depth as possible, because whenever i talk about having a prosthesis, someone will always tag some variation of "#writing reference" and i do wonder what message they're taking away, and i want to get as much of my experience out as possible to maybe help shape how this is all portrayed in the future. and yeah… this is gonna be one of those rambly smg posts that the expand feature was invented for, so i'll start with the very abridged TL;DR:

if you're writing a character with an upper limb prosthesis; don't. arm amputees are unicorn level rare even compared to leg amputees, and i've never interacted with or even heard of an upper limb amputee that regularly uses a prosthesis, let alone relies on one. fiction has lied to you for the sake of cool aesthetics, don't repeat the cycle. more in depth writing advice including nuance and "but i waaaant to" will follow.

that said, grab your donning parachute and let's get started...

context for everyone involved: i am an upper limb amputee that rants a lot about how prostheses suck, i lost my right hand roughly five years ago at roughly the age of 30 after a very rough decline in health… it was pretty rough. this question is being asked in the context of a previous rant post of mine, and i checked that the ask is about an upper limb prosthesis in particular.

the situation regarding the usefulness of lower limb prostheses is totally different; i am definitely no expert, but by all accounts, prosthetic legs are incredibly useful for many people. getting a good leg can be absolutely life changing and more or less necessary for day to day life for some; mostly because infrastructure and society is just so fucking hostile to wheelchair users. being able to walk - at the cost of pressure sores and rashes and increased residual limb pain - is a preferable option to many people than being unable to fit through a doorway or in a bathroom stall or find out that the key to unlock the only elevator is in the admin office up three flights of stairs (true story).

but upper limb prostheses… see, the thing is, hands are incredibly complex organs that rely on a lot of immediate haptic feedback to work at all. hand dexterity is all about control, you need fine granular movements of the digits yes, but you also need the subtle sensations of pressure and proprioception in order to adjust your movements on the fly. i speak from experience, in the years leading up to the full loss of my hand, i was slowly losing function of it, usually swinging between numbness that made it clumsy at best, or screaming overstimulation from moving it at all resulting in unpredictable spasms… and let me tell you, a half working hand is infuriating to try and deal with. you can never know if you have a good grip on something or if it's slipping because of the wrong amount of pressure, and there's only so many smashed bottles of pickles on the floor before you give up using it all together… so amputation wasn't a great loss there, i had time to adapt.

a prosthetic hand of any kind has all of those issues and more. they're heavy and bulky, the cosmetic faux fingers or gripping claw have crude movement at best, and there's zero feedback (put a pin in this). 100% of the time you're using a prosthetic hand you have to keep your eyes on the grip and visually guesstimate whether or not the thing you're carrying is held tight enough but not too tight, that is if your "heavy duty" prosthesis can even support the weight without the servos disengaging or the wrist attachment socket just busting loose. i dropped a whippersnipper on my foot last week when my socket couldn't take the weight and i think that was the final straw in me desperately trying to prove to myself that there is a single task my prosthesis actually helps with.

this is usually where fully two handed people start talking about bleeding edge DARPA tech, and how we just need to invest more,research more, develop more. better tech, more tech, neural integration, more more more. okay i promise the writing advice is coming! for starters on tech, my experience is already with a mid-to-high end ottobock terminal device: i've got a myoelectric nerve-signal operated proportional control heavy duty greifer; about the only upgrade left for me to get would be a rotating wrist joint if i could coflex. it's not military, it's not "rockclimber that owns a prosthetic company", but it's quality tech. it still fucking sucks. secondly, that high level military tech exists primary for PR purposes so they can say they treat their discarded casualties well, "we can rebuild him, we have the technology" style. every war vet i've read about or heard from that's been gifted that high level tech also abandons it for the same reasons; it's imprecise, there's no feedback (or the haptic interface has to be fully recalibrated every time they put it on), but mostly they're more capable without one.

okay, the transhumanist ableds say (i should know, i used to be one), what if we did more ~research and development~ and got that neural feedback working? then we could have fireproof superhumanly strong robot arms to fix up everyone! here's where i take out that pin we put up before and i tell you that a class of prosthetic arms/hands already exists that has perfect proportional control, fine motor control, and physics perfect pressure feedback piped directly into the patients' existing sensory systems! they're called body-powered prostheses, and they were invented in like the 1600s. you strap a whole bunch of stuff to your arm and shoulders shoulders, and control the operation of the terminal device and elbow through cable tension by flexing your shoulders. they do take a considerable amount of training to operate - though hell i spent 18 months training to use my myo - but based on everything i've read, body-powered prostheses are the best option if you're an upper limb amputee and absolutely need a second hand for some reason.

but they don't look cool and futuristic, and according to my prosthetist, most people give up on using them too. we all give up on our prostheses, no matter the type. my rehab OT was impressed i lasted the 18 months of my training. towards the end, they even asked if the clinic director could drop in to one of my sessions to see my progress; he expressed genuine amazement at me casually using my bulky robot claw to use a brush and dustpan, and made an offhanded (hah) comment about what someone can achieve "if they stick it out to the end", implying it was somewhat of a rarity for me to have done so. several years on, and yesterday i wedged the dustpan between my ankles to sweep up into it, awkward but exponentially less effort than putting my dusty robot arm on. which, by the way, is a whole thing. look up some videos, they're all awful to don. i don't actually know the official technical name of what my clinic calls a "parachute" but it's a bitch to use! have you ever tried to pull back with your arm whilst also pushing it forwards at the same time, and simultaneously lean in to and away from an external force pulling on you? that's how you get a myo socket on.

bare with me, i promise writing advice is coming, and i promise it's more than the tl;dr. but. remember when i said a half working hand is infuriating to deal with? any prosthesis, from fancy myo tech to pirate-era body powered, will only ever be half as good as a working hand, and being juuuust within capability to do something but not quite able to is maddening! but you know what works way better than a half working hand? no hand at all. using whatever residual/vestigial limb you have - whatever "stump" you have, i hate that word - is pretty much always better than trying to use a prosthesis. i can use the inside of my elbow to grip and carry things, i can use the nub of my arm to apply pressure to hold things, open doors, use a computer mouse, turn on taps and lights, if i put a glove over it i can use it to prep for cooking. i have full proprioception and pressure feedback with skin contact, i don't think i've ever dropped and broken anything from my elbow, unlike countless things slipped from my greifer - which, by the way, absolutely will start clenching as tight as it can if i get even slightly too sweaty around the electrodes, which has both broken things i'm holding and also injured me, because surprise surprise but servo operated robot claws have pinch points on them right near the "emergency disengage" lever for some reason!

but i am exponentially more capable without it on than with it. no, i'm not fully independent, i rely on housemates and loved ones to help me out with some tasks that simply just need two handed dexterity, but none of those tasks are things a prosthesis makes me able to do anyway. i used to imagine my prosthesis would be like a bra; a bit awkward and uncomfortable, but i'd wear it throughout the day because it's helpful and take it off in the evening to decompress. in reality it's actually exactly like a bra: an absolute bitch to put on one handed, unbearably uncomfortable because it never sits right, ugly af unless you're a millionaire, and absolutely useless except for the fact that i get gawked at and judged by strangers if i leave the house without it on.

and if you really want to discover how far "no hand is better than a half working hand" goes, brace yourself, and look up the patient's stories (not medical system stories) of people that have had hand transplants. the first man to receive one hated it, he was promised a return to normal function, and what he got was a nightmare worse than being one handed; he wanted it removed again but the doctors refused because it would undermine their grand achievement of the first hand transplant. the doctors and society wanted him to be fixed, they wanted him to be normal, they wanted him to be abled. they failed. they made him less able to do things, denied his autonomy, and left him with someone else's hand slowly rotting on him, prioritising the idea of "scientific progress" and "two hands good" over the physical health, mental health, and ability to function of this man.

he's not alone; every story from the patients' perspective about hand transplants that i've read goes this way, including a woman who was born quad limb different and was promised hands would improve her life, pressured into a double hand transplant, only to find herself after the surgery essentially experiencing disability for the first time ever, because she had lived her whole life getting by just fine with her 'underdeveloped' limbs, but half working hands are worse than useless. you can try to find these stories yourself, but i'm not going looking for sources on any of these cases, because if you look back through enough of my posts you'll get a glimpse of the horrors and abuses that i too was put through by doctors who prioritised trying to "fix" me at any cost, rather than providing me the best quality of life, and in turn traumatised me and left me more broken than any loss of limb on its own could. dear goddess, i promise the writing advice is coming.

so. why do upper limb prostheses exist at all? if they're so terrible and useless, what is their function? i want to borrow something someone else left in the tags of a previous rant here, from someone who i believe works in prosthetics and/or rehab, cleaned up and anonymised at their request:

"upper limb functions are wildly more complex than: 1) bear weight static, and 2) bear weight moving. but every single upper limb amputee i know has a fancy expensive prosthetic just gathering dust in the closet because there is literally nothing it can do like a few years of adjustment and if needed non-dominant hand retraining can't do. the existence of forquarter prosthetics to begin with is just kind of silly and useless and entirely to make OTHER people feel comfortable, especially considering they universally are UNcomfortable for the amputee. i hate the notion that as soon as you get the amputation the prosthetic is The Thing That Will Fix You And Make You Feel Normal again because it universally isn't! but every forequarter person i know had like this ideal of Being Fixed By Magic Prosthetic that they were then obviously wildly disappointed by and had to do yet another grieving process with, versus if the dominant narrative were just one of: yeah. it'll take time, there is no magic fix."

and i think that really nails down what the actual purpose of upper limb prostheses is: they're not for the user, they're for the sake of other people. and not just their comfort when looking at our bodies, although based on the pressure for both amputees and people born limb different to get functionless cosmetic plastic hands, there is a lot of that. but it's not just that.

i fully believe that the reason prosthetic hands exists is to comfort the fears of the two handed. "don't worry", they say, "we can fix you again. you don't have to fear becoming Disabled, you don't have to worry about adapting or your life changing. we can make you Normal™ again."

you would not believe the number of people that have approached me to shower me with pity, to tell me how horrific my life is, how they can't imagine it. people have told me, apropos of nothing, that they'd kill themselves if they lost a hand. indirectly, that my life isn't worth living. unless, of course, i happen to be wearing my cool as fuck looking robot prosthesis! then they tell me how wonderful it is, how lucky i am, how glad they are that we have the technology to fix me. that's what a prosthetic hand says, what all the happy fishing photos on limbs4life posters at the rehab clinic say: don't worry, we can fix you. that's what the bleeding edge DARPA flexi-whatever fully articulated neuro-feedback hands say: don't worry if you get IED'd while hunting civilians for us to drone bomb, if you get hurt, we will fix you, we will fix the fuck out of you, we will motherfucking adam jensen you into a cool as fuck cyborg that your son will idolise; come on boys, don't you wanna enlist just for the chance at being as cool as this? join the bomb squad for a ticket to the upgrade lottery.

and so we arrive at fiction. as much as his dialogue options protest, adam jensen loves his robot arms, they punch through walls, turn into fucking swords! they make him the most special man in the world. what would he do without them? learn to cope? grieve? practice acceptance? take up poetry? just, be disabled? there's no power fantasy for ableds in that.

in fact, can you think of a single fictional character that's an upper limb amputee that's, well, just an amputee? they all have robot arms. not realistic prostheses, not medical devices; robot arms. sleek or bulky, top of the line or broken down self built, steampunk or nanomachines or magitech automail; they're never without them. never just an amputee. never born limb different either! there's always that element of tragedy to overcome, always suffering and misery porn, always focus on the pain and the helplessness without the absolutely vital robot arm that makes them Normal and Whole. the closest amputee example i can think of is furiosa from mad max, who iirc fucking punches max in the face with her residual limb like a motherfucking badass! i can barely lean on mine wrong and she punches a guy! but she still apparently needs a dieselpunk robot hand to drive a truck, something you can do one handed so easily most drivers don't even notice they're doing it! please don't, by the way

and so many disabled fans love to point to robot armed characters as disability representation; the winter soldier, luke skywalker, edward elric, misty knight, that genderswapped furry girl from ratchet and clank, jet cowboybebop, finn the human, and yes, adam jensen…. these are all characters that someone disabled i know has told me they love because they "represent disabled bodies"…. and i know nobody wants to hear this, because i've been screamed at for saying it before, but… they do not. they are not disabled, functionally or within fiction. they are either perfectly able bodied Normal people with chrome paint on an arm, or tortured misery porn we are supposed to pity and feel lucky we're not them. sometimes both!

also you ever notice how it's basically always arms? lower limb amputations are orders of magnitude more common than upper, my prosthetist said i was probably only the 4th or 5th upper limb she'd worked with in her career, with literally hundreds of lower limb fits. but fiction doesn't seem to reflect that, huh? or any other part of the reality of disability. it's always cool as fuck robot arms, never cool as fuck wheelchairs or crutches or dialysis machines or colostomy bags. a fair few "i was blind but now i can see with Robot Eyes and also infrared and xray" around, which again, plays into that "we can fix you and make you cooler" propaganda.

by the way, up above when i was describing body powered arms, if you wondered to yourself why i went with a myoelectric one instead when i clearly believe body powered is better… yeah. i am not immune to propaganda! i too wanted to be cool as fuck. i spent years with deteriorating function in my hand for reasons that are still unknown, was misdiagnosed and medically neglected to the point that removing my hand seemed to be the only option left to offer some relief, and even that was a clusterfuck that left me worse than ever… of course i wanted to believe in the power and prestige of a cool robot arm that fiction promised me.

but fiction promises fantastical lies. and so.

we get to the writing advice portion of the novella that is this post. you asked for advice on how to write a disabled character with an upper limb prosthesis. you've read the tl;dr, you've read everything above i assume, you know i don't want you to do it. the obvious twist is that it's been writing advice all along, me trying to share my perspective on what it's like being an amp with a robot arm and how shitty it is, implying how almost any fully realised and realistic character that's missing an upper limb would give up on a prosthesis at all. you can already tell that every value judgement in me says "don't give her a prosthesis, no matter how functional or cool you make it. don't try to make the tech better to justify it, just let her be one armed, one handed. just let her be disabled, but not helpless. let her show off her elbow or underarm carry strength. let her love interest appreciate how soft and squishy her residual limb is in a moment of tenderness. let her natural disabled body be respected and valued."

but that's a personal value judgement from me, and you are the author of your own work. i know it's trite to say, but you are! even the act of deferring to someone with lived experience in the hope of doing a better job at representation is a value judgement, a good choice in my opinion, but one you needn't necessarily take. maybe you do want to write a character that has a cool as fuck unrealistic robot arm as a power fantasy, or a comfort blanket… i did.

i've been slowly writing my own probably terrible scifi epic for over a decade now, and when my arm was giving me hell back then, i'd take great comfort in this fantasy of my protagonist with her chunky robot arm, the terrible traumatic suffering of her loss, overcoming, the power and ability her advanced prosthesis gives her over others, that she alone has access to, because others are not willing to make the sacrifices required. inspiration porn. awful stuff to me now, but empowering to me then. as i grew and gained direct experience, i slowly reimagined her, rewrote her, ship of theseus'd her into an entirely new character; a reflection of me now, bitter at the whole thing, spiteful that her natural flesh arm evokes fear and distrust, but unwilling to suffer the pain and frustration of her unnatural prosthesis just to make others comfortable and respect her as "whole", however artificial that whole is. and as with the ship of theseus being two ships, once i realised the transformation, i re-added the old protagonist back in whole cloth as a separate character; proud of her robot arm and its power, but in new context, as a foil and antagonist, an in-universe military prosthesis propaganda figure to reflect how i now feel characters like her exist to us, the readers.

i'm not just sharing that as egotistical self promotion, but to highlight that, even if i sit here begging you all up and down not to write characters with robot arms for how bad and unrealistic they are; there's still something genuine and true that their inclusion can say. the great thing about the story that you're writing is that only you can write it, as they say. but i whole heartedly believe that to write to your best, you have to be aware of what you're writing and why. as tempting as it is to feel these characters form naturally in us and therefore we're averse to changing traits about them that feel organic and self evident; as authors we have omnipotent control over the text, every trait and detail is a reflection on us, so we'd sure as hell better understand why we're choosing to write a character with this trait. because anything you write without being aware of intent will take on its own meaning in the space between.

and on that note, if i don't say this, i'm leaving it to be inferred: i definitely don't want to appear to come down on the side of saying "you cannot write an amputee unless you are one", because we are rarer than single young bisexual unicorns! and it would be a tragedy if anyone read through all this and then turned away in fear, deciding to never write an amputee character (with or without robot arm) because they feel they can't do it justice… believe me, no matter what anyone says, some hack writer somewhere is going to keep writing adam jensens and winter soldiers. don't let them be the only voices in fiction! just try to do your best.

so my ultimate advice on the topic of writing a character with a prosthetic limb is to ask yourself one question in two different frameworks, and meditate on what you feel the answer is:

why does she have a prosthesis?

from a doylelist perspective as the kids say, as an author with omnipotent control, why are you choosing to write about this topic? why are you choosing to give this trait to this character? what does it say about how you view ability and disability, what makes a person normal, and what our society values? will you let her be in her natural body? or will you give her a prosthesis, force her to wear it by authorial fiat, or author her a meaningful reason to choose to? if yes, be sure you know; why did you give her a prosthesis?

and from a wastonian perspective, diegetically, inside the story, why does she choose to wear a prosthesis? what does it say about her inner character, and how she interacts with the world? how does she feel about doing it, is she prideful and loves the attention she gets, or does she resent whatever necessitates its use? how do people in this world view ability and disability, what does this society value? and above all, whatever the answer to these questions, whether or not she uses a prosthesis or is badass without one, how does she deal with the eternal freezing cold that every amputee ever feels constantly in their residual limb and why does nobody make a heat pack that fits over a nub without drafty gaps???

i can't outright tell you how to write a good upper limb amputee, but if you at least know why you're writing one and for what purpose, you're on track to write the best character that you can. that's the best advice i can give… other than, like, this whole rambly mess.

and, as a reward for reading this far, please have a very blurry cryptid photo of my cat doing his old man sit:

#prosthesis #prosthetic #disability #ableism

[nostalgebraist]

the light, and the glass

So there's this particular quality I have, as a fiction writer, and I have very little sense of how common or rare it is.

The quality is closely related to that famous Michaelangelo quip, about his sculptures being "already complete within the marble block":

The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.

This is how I feel, too, about my works of fiction. They feel like "real things" that "already exist," in some important sense, before I write them down -- or, indeed, before I even fully know what they contain.

So, for instance, if I haven't yet thought of an ending for a story I'm playing with in my mind, I nonetheless have a vivid sense that this particular story has an ending, and that this ending already is whatever it happens to be. It's only that I haven't managed to "see" it yet.

To clarify the point, consider the contrast between this thing, and two relatively familiar ways of thinking about how fiction gets made:

Conscious, goal-directed craft/artifice. Intending to write a Satisfying Plot in which each character has an Arc, the Story Beats follow logically from one another and are arranged with what is called Good Pacing, the proverbial Cat is Saved, etc., and "solving for" these desiderata in a conscious manner. Or, intending to create something much more outré and unsettling than all that -- but having some specific set of (outre, unsettling) intentions in mind, at the outset, and concocting/arranging the elements of your work in a conscious way guided by these intentions.

Free-wheeling, self-expressive "creativity." Just do whatever, man! Follow your bliss. The canvas is blank and anything is possible. Whatever you feel like putting into that empty space, go ahead and put it there. (The key thing being that, after "putting something there," you'll look and recognize something with origins in you, and your own whims and feelings at a particular moment.)

For me, though, the process of writing, and even of "ideating" (plotting, etc.), feels like a kind of transcription or channeling, as opposed to either of the above.

When I say "channeling," here, I don't mean that I have some actual, mystical belief in a supernatural object revealing itself through me. Not in the woo-woo sense anyway; whatever is really going on here, I am sure it "merely" involves the mechanics of the human mind, as implemented in the physical human brain and body.

But I do mean that it feels a lot like that. Like the story -- and not just the story part of the stories, but the whole thing, the "art object" -- has some real prior existence outside of me, first.

Like I am merely doing my best to "get it right," to be a perfect transmitter for the radio signal. To "do justice" to the "real thing," in the secondary act of writing words onto a page.

To be a courier who transports a valuable object from some originary otherworld into a place which happens to be called "existence" -- and to ensure, as much as possible, that it suffers no disfiguring scrapes during the journey.

----

I should say, though, that there's a lot of the "#1" above in my process too, the conscious-artifice thing.

Except... when I do that kind of thing, the intentions all come from the "real object," and my goal is to fill in whatever I can't see of that object so that everything I can see is preserved.

So: I will come to know, surely and indefeasibly, that the story must have some particular feature. (An event, a little moment, a character feeling a certain way at a certain time, even a specific turn of phrase.) Better to say: I know the story does have this feature. I see it in the marble.

But I can't see everything that's there, already, in the marble. And sometimes these glimpses-from-the-beyond are strange, inconvenient, difficult to "fit" into the current story (or perhaps into any story) in a natural-seeming manner.

And that's my task, when I'm doing the conscious-artifice thing: to take this collection of axiomatically-present glimpses, and build a structure around them into which they can "fit," naturally and even logically, just as if they were ordinary story-building-blocks like their neighbors, being placed here and there for ordinary story-reasons.

----

This has various implications. For one, it determines which kinds of writerly anxieties I suffer from, and which types leave me alone.

Like, I have virtually no self-doubt about my "ideas." About the overall, large-scale goodness-or-badness of the thing I'm creating. At least, not when considered "in principle," in an idealized sense that abstracts away from my actual capabilities as a guy who puts words on pages.

"Was this story, as a whole, a good idea?" is a question I find difficult to ask myself. Even when applied to smaller units, like specific plot points, this kind of question simply goes nowhere when I attempt to think about it. Insofar as my mind can cough up any answer, that answer looks like:

Yes

(after a moment, with mounting bewilderment) Yes, obviously -- how strange even to ask!

(after another moment, and as an afterthought) ...but if it weren't any good, is that really my business? It's not like I came up with it. I was asked to keep it safe and bring it into reality, and I take that duty seriously, but once it has reached its destination I wipe my hands of the matter. Don't shoot the messenger!

It's not, just, that I feel like the "real thing" "already exists." I also feel, always, that the real thing is... really good.

I deeply, thoroughly trust the Muse / Higher Power responsible for originally "making" this stuff. (To speak in relatively woo-woo terms, for ease and clarity.)

The Muse / Higher Power is a seriously skilled artist, much more so than little-old-me; if She makes any errors at all, they are not really mistakes, but "are volitional and are the portals of discovery."

And what's more, there is a sacred, unearthly gleam to the artifacts She makes, perhaps having something to do with that Fairyland, that place-other-than-"existence," in which they are originally made.

It feels like an honor to be designated as a courier for these enchanted things. Perhaps not a deserved honor -- on which more below -- but it's never the nature and value of the transported goods that I doubt.

(There is a definite sense of ritual to the thing that I do, here; a sense of connecting with some other place, definitively apart from our mundane here-and-now, and likewise more important/primary/etc. than the latter. Hence, perhaps, my tendency to not-write for long stretches, and then write in long sustained bursts for many hours at a time, which need a good deal of preliminary building-up-steam before they fully get going; it takes time to pierce, and then fully cross, the veil between worlds. And the various imprints of this stuff on the works themselves are not hard to see, once you're looking for them; they are of course especially transparent in TNC.)

All that being said, I do suffer persistently from a different anxiety.

When Michaelangelo said the thing about the sculpture "already complete within the marble block," he said it as... Michaelangelo.

As a famous, incontrovertibly masterful craftsman. Not a guy likely to suffer from doubts about his ability to put the chisel to the marble block, and reveal precisely that shape which was already there, inside.

But I'm not Michaelangelo. I'm not even sure I'm a good craftsman, much less a great one.

Certainly I've never conceived of myself in this way, even aspirationally. (Well, maybe I did in childhood and adolescence, but that was a very different thing from what I'm talking about now.)

I don't do what a person would do, if they wanted to be a Writer, and strove to be the best one they could. I don't, for the most part, practice my craft. I write because there's a Real Thing that only I can see, and it's not going to make into Existence any other way.

And since I don't write by habit or as practice -- since I only write at times when a Real Thing is in need of some incarnating-work, and I'm the only one around to do it -- I'm not exactly an ideal candidate for the job.

I am like a man who never especially wanted to be a sculptor, never practiced the trade, and was never more-than-ordinarily good with his hands, even... who is then, suddenly, struck with a very literal version of the experience Michaelangelo described.

Who, suddenly and inexplicably, begins to actually see a sculptural masterpiece lurking inside, whenever he looks at a faceless marble block.

What is our protagonist to do? Naturally, he will find a chisel, and begin chipping away. He will feel that these things need to be freed from their prisons, released and revealed to all the world, so that all the world can delight in them as he already does.

But he will be very aware of the unfamiliar way the chisel sits in his hand; of the way that hand trembles, and fails to meet the mark, and sometimes shaves off precious bits of what was really and originally a beautifully formed hand -- so that the hand, in the realized artwork, forever bears some oddity of shape which was not a part of what he saw inside the block, but only a consequence of his own shameful incompetence.

He will feel that his works, such as they are, are an odd mixture of amateurish craft and direct, divine inspiration. Insofar as he is Great, it will be because he has had Greatness thrust upon him, from without. He will feel, sometimes, that his successes have been obtained through a kind of cheating, not won fair-and-square.

And he will feel, always, a particular kind of (justified) impostor syndrome: an awareness that what he is doing, when he sits down before the marble block with the chisel in hand, is a very different sort of thing than what is usually called "sculpting," and what is being practiced by careful, hard-working aspirants just down the road, at the local workshop. The students there call themselves "sculptors," and our protagonist supposes he must call himself a "sculptor" too -- but he knows that behind this coincidence of language, a vast and strange chasm is hidden.

(I worry that this metaphor sounds flattering to me -- I am divinely inspired, they are merely toiling away and following the rules -- when I don't mean it that way at all.

In particular, note that there is nothing in our story to rule out some of the "real" sculptors down the road from also being visionaries who see the finished work in the block. Indeed, I got the metaphor from Michaelangelo, who was precisely this way.

I am only saying that all the conceivable configurations of craft/inspiration are in fact possible: just as it is possible to be skilled but uninspired, it's possible for inspiration to strike someone who lacks the capacity to fully realize its content. And that is how I feel, about my own attempts to create.)

----

When I was getting near the end of Almost Nowhere, and struggling with this kind of feeling, Esther would often reassure me by saying: "you are the light, and you are the glass it shines through."

In other words: you are a transmitter, and you are the source of the transmitted signal. Remember that in actual fact, the "real thing in the marble" came from your own little brain, just as much as the rest of it did. In actual fact, if there is a Muse and a Higher Power, it is really just an additional part of the same creature that holds the chisel, and worries over its trembling hand.

I did, indeed, find this very reassuring. And that's a funny thought, in a way! I imagine that for some people -- and indeed for me, in many other endeavours -- the same sentiment could easily have the opposite effect.

"It's all on you. It's all your responsibility. If any of it is bad, there's no one else to blame. If there is any 'Higher Power' at all, it is only the one inside you at all times, and not able to save you through unexpected intervention, from some true outside."

But I already believed, thoroughly, in the magical potency of the goods I was charged with transporting. If I was (somehow!) their maker, too, then (somehow!) the root of that glimpsed, alien magic was in me.

And so, perhaps, I could trust myself to ferry them into Existence without ruining, without even much dimming, the fairy-gleam from elsewhere that made them what they were.

#blah blah blah

[izartn]

What's good about KnH is (besides its main char and bc of Maomao) the way it manages the power dynamics and what life was as a woman without falling into utter pessimism and powerlessness or full romanticism; which is a reason I usually avoid like the plague historical/pseudo-historical fiction with female leads.

Usually I'd be super skeeved out by the power Jinshi has over Maomao but the way the series presents both of them, their personalities and their agency (limited as it is for Maomao but it's there and it counts very much) it brings out all the best and interesting parts. I trust this series to get twisty with them bc it establishes so well Maomao own character and understanding of her situation and the ways Jinshi can and does or doesn't take advantage of his power over her.

Like. It's presented as a problematic element, but also unavoidable given their social situation and the world they live in, so I can trust given everything else this show has done when solving the mysteries and presenting us the situations of other women, that the romance will be treated with that same weight.

Honestly if you've read over what I like to read/watch in my tumblr you'll notice that twisty and even toxic/unhealthy dynamics are very much within my favorites, but it needs to be told in a certain way. And I'm much more difficult to satisfy when talking about het romance.

So to watch KnH, notice it's primarily about Maomao life and the various misteries/medicines/palace intrigue and the romance is playing second fiddle riffing on all the themes presented on the plot? And it's complex, and plays with messy power dynamics of gender and class, but never loses Maomao her personhood? Wow.

Also. Jinshi is so BL chara coded omg XD like, he's very clearly based on a kind of shojo ML prototype (hello tamaki suoh!) but it also pulls from BL in his case (nothing to do with their romances but I think of Yan Xiaohan re:his relationship with the imperial power, from Golden Terrace lol)

And yet his romance with Maomao wouldnt work near as well for what is trying to say if they weren't a man and woman (which I love in their case, is what has me fascinated). Yes~! Get into the meat of how fraught it is for a man and a woman to be together when the man has so much power over her. Get into it!!!!

He's so so messy and fun as a chara too. Sheltered and not at the same time, you really notice all the things he misses by way of his privilege of being a noble born man (and specifically royalty, last ep (19) left that very clear he was doing a ritual probably by proxy for the emperor and also bay exchanges people. Maomao noticed and buried that thought far far below her subconscious but we all now who he is lol). Like. The way he fumbles and ends up essentially harassing Maomao at the start sometimes, which is both played for comedic effect and also upsetting. Mmm.

Like I said, I like complexity.

Also that part when he buys Maomao contract and he goes to collect her and she's all dolled up, and the clear implication by everybody but our mains (who clearly prefer to live in willfully blind land although for Jinshi I think the subtext of what he's doing lands when he sees her) is that in any other case she'd be his concubine/side-wife. It's not their situation wight now, and she's put to work as a live-in maid and apothecary and put to study (he wants her to assist him in politics lol I love that, but also he's so so lonely) but it's very much what the palace rumor mill says.

LIKE. I love the messiness! It could go soooo badly, but it also could not and there's Maomao living at the edge bc despite herself and what she says, she wants more from life, but also as she says the rear palace isn't all that different from the high class brothels and ugh. That tension. She has to depend on the favor of a man as a women of low class but she also could lose her head! GAH. And then there's feels involved! Aaagh.

#the apothecary diaries #my thoughts #kusuriya no hitorigoto #KnH meta #meta #maomao #jinshi

[k-s-morgan]

Hey! I want to thank you all for supporting me, and I have great news - I found a new job! My interview on Thursday went well and I got the offer. I should be starting on Tuesday. Additional *huge* thanks to those of you who supported me through Patreon and PayPal. While I was lucky enough to find a new position quickly, I'll be still lacking a part of my monthly income due to the pause, so your help was absolutely invaluable.

I'm focusing on my fics again now! Will be finally updating soon.

Meanwhile, I'd like to share a rec for a show that someone suggested I watch. It's called The Devil Judge and I think a lot of my readers might end up loving it: it has Tomarry vibes + some Black Butler atmosphere and elements. Kang Yo Han reminded of Tom Riddle in some ways, but he's also a mix between Sebastian and Ciel. Kim Ga On, on the other hand, is closer to Harry: impulsive, naive, brave and determined.

One symbolizes darkness, another symbolizes light, and they both affect each other to the point where one begins to reach out to sunlight, finally experiencing simple human happiness, and another understands that some darkness can occasionally be necessary. Obsession, drama, arguments, forgiveness, manhandling, unhealthiness, their relationship has a lot of the things I love so much in fiction. While the show is not officially a romance, based on the show itself + the comments of crew and cast, it's pretty much that :D Oh, and Kim Ga On resembles Kang Yo Han's dead brother yet the sparks between them fly from the start, so you might feel bothered by it. I don't consider any incest to be involved here, I think Yo Han was simply enamoured with the ideal his brother represented, which made him initially zero in on Ga On, but still, I thought I'd warn about it in advance.

The ending is technically open/hopeful, but I read it as happy. The plot itself appealed a lot to me, considering the times my country is facing. Maybe you'll enjoy it, too!

And here's a fan video in case you're like me and prefer to get a glimpse into the dynamic between the characters right away) There are some minor-to-mild spoilers here, nothing really specific.

#personal #recs #the devil judge #lawful husbands #Youtube

[aerkame]

LMK Mute Reader insert (short)Drabble

Arrrggh, I know I should be asleep rn, but this idea was bugging me, so here you go!

Lately I've gotten much better at ASL, my friend and I have been learning it on and off for months but it really got me thinking, what if an Isekai reader was mute? So much to unpack, and Lego people probably don't have ASL or any way of using their hands to communicate. Worse, there probably would not be or ever be any mute Lego people because of design issues. If so, we just never see it. It presents quite the challenge for anyone entering their world. I can see this MAYBE working out well if the reader ended up in Journey to The West or any other movie/media that does not involve having plastic, yellow, macaroni for hands. Fandom: Lego Monkie Kid Summary: (This is just a drabble to get my idea out because it's buggin' me) Reader wakes up one day in Lego Monkie Kid and struggles to process the lack of human hands.

----------

Sometimes you wish you could scream. This was one of those times.

In front of you stood what was supposed to be a fictional boy in a fictional world; but, having been just ran into by the excited hero made you realize this was all too real to be a dream. Things were clear, you could get hurt, you could smell, you could breathe, and most importantly, you were very self-aware. All evidence points to this being real. And you wanted to scream.

Getting up to dust your clothes off, you watched as what you recognized to be MK also get up. This was so uncanny.

Seeing the gears turn in his head, you watched as MK realized what happened before he came running up to you. "OHMYGOSHIAMSOSORRYABOUTTHAT-" He was frantically bowing over and over, not paying attention as you tried several times to raise your 'hand' to sign to him. You realized you needed his attention but he just kept rambling...and rambling...and more apologies came out until you finally grabbed his shoulder, gave it a squeeze, and made a small smile. Looking up, Mk made a nervous smile back "Are you okay? I'm so sorry I didn't mean to hit you with my staff!" He was practically eyeing you up down your body, most likely looking for injur- Wait. You got hit by his what now?

You flinched upon realizing what actually happened, ignoring MK's worried questions and prodding. You weren't ran into, well, you were, but you also got a good whack from the staff as well. So why didn't you feel anything?

"Uhhm...hello? I didn't hit you in the head did I?" You felt a hand gently tap your shoulder, snapping you out of your thoughts.

Looking over, you quickly began moving your hands, making odd gestures, trying to explain you were alright. MK looked confused, you looked annoyed once you realized the issue.

These hands, they weren't like yours, you can't communicate with them like you would back home.

A huff left your mouth as MK nudged closer to get a better look, he probably thought you were crazy now.

"I don't know what you're doing, but I'm sure you'll feel better with a bowl of noodles and quick check over?" The sentence came out as more of a question, MK clearly wasn't aware of the issue going on but he was too sweet to leave you here it seems.

It was a hard choice as weird as it sounds. On one hand, you could meet the main cast, but on the other, you don't know what you're getting yourself into. But...you need help and you feel overwhelmed. You doubt you'd feel comfortable being with other characters.

You gave MK a quick nod after thinking it through. Not even a split second passed before you were stuffed in the back of a noodle truck with MK hopping into the driver's seat, eyes sparkling "Perfect! I'm sure you'll love Pigsy's noodles!" Starting up the engine, MK sped off, not giving you a chance to buckle in.

Off in the distance, a bird watched the truck speed away from the crater left behind from one of MK's 'attack'. Imprints of your shoes were embedded into the stone due the force behind the staff. What a concerning sight...

#lmk #lego monkie kid #lmk fanfiction #lego monkie kid fanfiction #reader insert #x reader #isekai #lmk reader insert #lmk x reader #lego monkie kid x reader #platonic #x you #drabble #fanfiction #my writing #mk x reader #lmk mk #lego monkie kid mk #mute reader

[awakefor48hours]

Update: they’re now @dailyanimeships (I'm blocked so no tag there :/) but it's the same person. Update 2: they’re blocked again. Let’s celebrate

Hello everyone, I need your help getting rid of someone that's been harassing people (myself included).

This is the person in question and I need your help to get rid of them and stopping any future harassment.

Even if you're not in the Black Clover fandom, I would appreciate a moment for your time to read this. For a bit of context, if you haven't seen Black Clover, the main ship in the show is Astelle (Asta x Noelle). In the show, Noelle has a massive crush on Asta (think Amity to Luz/Marinette to Adrien/Hinata to Naruto/etc, etc). It's pretty clear that Astelle will be canon but sometimes canon doesn't matter and people ship different things. Now onto this whole shit show.

Harassing in DMs

To start off, they're basically every shade of bigot. My moots and I have gotten really nasty DMs from dailyasnoel and I'm going to censor them because there's pretty bad slurs in them.

The first one was sent to me and the second one was sent to @the-geek-librarian

We're both in a server and everyone in this server (nearly 15 of us) have been blocked. Keep in mind, not a single one of us had ever interacted with them in our lives. We've all tagged our posts properly and haven't said a single negative thing about Astelle or their blog. They went out of their way to send us these DMs with very hateful slurs all because we don't want the same fictional teenagers kissing.

Harassing others

This isn't even the first time that dailyasnoel has gone after people simply for just shipping Noelle with another character. These two, ramiliadoesstuff and kcuf-ad have also posted about been harassed.

Along with that, there is now a ship week for Kahonoelle (a femslash ship involving Noelle) being run by moot @t-f-t (Alex) and this was the response to the original post (a post that was tagged properly and no malice towards anyone) announcing this.

This could've just been the end of it but they felt the need to send an ask to Alex expressing their disgust because there's people who don't want the same fictional teenagers kissing.

Then there's this lovely comment on that post.

Guess who's going to be extremely annoying during Kahonoelle week. (BTW, wouldn't it be really funny if we got them off the internet before their shit ass Astelle week).

Fanfiction

This harassment isn't just on tumblr either, it's on AO3 too.

I scrolled through the Yunoelle (Yuno x Noelle) tag on AO3 and the comments on some of these fanfictions are so vile. There's so many hate comments and I didn't even screenshot all of them because there's so many of them.

I found comments left by people with the username "dailyasnoel" and other guest users with different usernames that make similar comments to dailyasnoel because I assume it's the same person.

Making the Devils Cry

Yuno and Noelle Oneshots

When the Sea Goddess Snaps

Hot Tub Accident

While scrolling the Yunoelle tag, I noticed that there's people who have started limited their comment section, have deleted comments with responses like "dude, calm down," or have made their fanfictions private.

And even as a little side note, I want to make it clear that I was able to look at every single Yunoelle fanfiction on AO3 because it's not even a popular ship. There's only 31 fanfictions for them so a lot of these fanfictions are written by the same authors. On the other hand, Astelle has been consistently the most popular ship in the fandom and even has the most fanfictions. So it's not even like Astelle fans are hurting for fanfictions or that Yunoelle fans are invading their spaces.

The actual blog

The icing on this queerphobic, harassing, racist cake is that they're an art thief. Their blog only has art and all of it is from other people. There's no indication these are reposts, there's no signs that they got permission to repost these, nor any links to the original posters. (original art links > 1/2/3)

If you know nothing about Black Clover or the fandom, I want to make this abundantly clear, this is behavior is unacceptable. This fandom has been very peaceful as of late and this one person does not speak for Astelle fans in the slightest. The Astelle fans I've interacted with are quite lovely, and if Asta or Noelle or Tabata (the creator) saw this, they'd be disgusted.

Whether or not you're in the Black Clover fandom is irrelevant. This is a horrible person and art thief, please report and block this person. Together, we can get rid of this person.

@dailyasnoel I know you have me blocked but if you happen to read this, I want you to know that if this small part of you that you show on the internet is even a modicum similar to how you behave in real life (joking or not), you are going to live a very sad and lonely life.

I hope you enjoy your own company because no one will want to be your friend, no one will support you, and above all else, no one will mourn you. Your absence will be treated with nothing but joy and whimsy because you are a sad and pathetic parasitic monster.

#best part about all this #dailyasnoel couldn't even be right #i don't even ship yunoeIIe #i ship kahonoeIIe #i headcanon yun0 as aroace #AND i do (guess i should say “did” now) like asteIIe #anyway prepare to feel the wrath of someone who barely makes minimum wage

[prettygirlmjmjmj]

Romanticising school and studying

Going to school everyday can get a little monotonous at times, especially if you aren't a massive fan of all your subjects or don't like the class your in for a variety of reasons (annoying classmates, bad teacher etc). Romanticising school can help make going seem more appealing, help motivate you and ensure that you actually start to enjoy going - as well as meaning you look and feel pretty every day. These tips are ones I personally follow and they have helped me stay organised and motivated (so much so that people often describe me as 'that girl'). I really hope they help you too or at least inspire you to find ways to romanticise school/studying!!

Create school playlists. This is a playlist to put on while studying, going to school or when you need to feel a little bit more enthusiastic about school. Give it a pretty cover and title and pick songs that make you feel happy and motivated.

If you get to pick your own clothes, pick clothes that make you feel cute and comfortable, with jewellery to add extra details to your outfit. If you wear a school uniform (which I used to have to wear) try and find ways to make it cuter without breaking uniform rules, for example wearing bows/ribbons in your hair, jewellery, cute socks, stylish shoes and jumpers/cardigans.

Try to buy pretty school essentials. For example a nice bag, pencil case and stationary, an adorable water bottle, a lunch box and a pretty notebook.

Add stickers to your school book covers! Try to either find ones which fit the subject (for example quotes for literature) or just stickers that you love. Decorating your notebooks make them a little cuter and might help motivate you to open them more!

Make your notes colourful and pretty. I love taking colourful, fun notes (I'm pretty well known for it in my classes) and it always help my notes be more memorable and also easier to read and turn into additional revision resources. If you aren't sure where to start, pinterest always has super pretty note inspo.

Try and join clubs or activities which are around things that you love such as an art club or a football club! This is a great way of meeting new people but also making your day more interesting and busy.

Before you start studying, set your desk up. Turn lamps on, light candles, open a window, fill your water bottle up and get your favourite highlighters and pens! This will make it easier to start studying and make it feel more cozy, helping you to study for longer.

Have a delicious and nice looking breakfast. Nourishing your body in the mornings will help you to feel more energised and motivated for the day ahead. My favourite breakfasts (and the ones I think are the most aesthetic) always involve fresh fruits.

Bring a book with you to school! I always bring at least two books to school with me, one book that will be good for gaining more knowledge in classes and the other that's just a fun read. This will give you something to do when you're bored other than scrolling on your phone.

Find role models to inspire you to do better in school. Whether they are real people or fictional characters, try and find role models who inspire you to study harder and do better in school. Think about why you admire them and try to adopt those qualities yourself.

Try studying outside or in a café you love every once in a while. Order your fave drink and snack, put on your playlist and get studying.

Try to participate more in school or engage in class discussions. Verbalising your ideas and getting feedback on them can be so helpful, and so motivating especially when you make a good point or get something right.

Create a vision board or pinterest board themed around how you want your school experience to be. Look at it regularly and try to motivate yourself to fit that vision.

Install studying/school apps on your phone so you can revise between breaks or make revision a little quicker! Some apps I recommend are: quizlet (best app for making flashcards), flora (cute little timer), notion (great for organisation), wunderlist (to do lists), wild journey (relaxing sounds for studying) and xmind (for digital mindmaps).

Try studying with a group, a friend or with a 'study with me' youtube video! This is a great way of keeping yourself disciplined and motivated and of studying with real people can help you feel more motivated.

Thank you for reading! Good luck and all my love, mj.

#glow up era #that girl #glow up #self development #self care #glow up journey #self love #it girl #girl blogger #girlblogging #study inspiration #study motivation #study blog #studyblr #studyspo #study aesthetic #studying #student #student life

[patchwork-crow-writes]

Thoughts on Kris x Ralsei

This is so long I had to split it up into parts - this is Part 1, which looks into how the roles that Kris and Ralsei are given contributes to the idea of their romance. As more parts are written, they'll be linked below in this handy-dandy TOC!

Part 1: And They Lived Happily Ever After <- (You Are Here!) Part 1.5: I Believe Your Choices DO Matter Part 2: A Pair of Star-Cross'd Lovers Part 2.5: In Another World, We Could Have Been (Just) Friends

Okay, so.

Wanted to elaborate a bit on my viewpoint of this ship, because I don't think it's something I've ever really discussed before and I think it's actually a very interesting dynamic (or at least has the potential to be, depending on where the rest of Deltarune goes).

So, Kralsei is cute, isn't it? It's fun to hug the fluffy boy and watch him melt into incomprehensible stuttering and blushing. All the little signs he's really, really into Kris, all the cute little snippets of dialogue you can initiate with him, all the alone time they spend together, in both chapters... honestly, the game makes it hard not to root for this pairing.

And yeah, it's cute... in a very surface-level, don't-think-about-it-too-hard kind of way. But once you start thinking about it... hoo boy. There is. A LOT to unpack here. So much more is going on just under the surface, and once you see it, it's difficult to un-see it. And in my opinion, it makes the Kralsei dynamic so much more nuanced, more compelling, and potentially quite tragic.

Now, a disclaimer: it's fine to like this ship on a surface level. No real harm is being done, these are fictional characters and it doesn't matter what reason you enjoy it for - if it provides comfort to you and gets you through, then more power to you! This is more me sorting through my thoughts on the subject and is not a judgment on how others approach it. With that said, and in the spirit of full disclosure, this will go into slightly uncomfortable territory - picking apart the idea of destined love, the deconstruction of common romance tropes, how outside manipulation might play a part, and even the potentially incest-adjacent nature of the relationship. If you don't want to deal with any of that, you can stop reading right now, and that's okay. Please continue to enjoy Deltarune in the manner that is best for you, and thank you for your attention thus far :)

If you're still with me, then please click the read more and we'll get started.

Part 1: And They Lived Happily Ever After

The first thing you have to understand is that Deltarune is utterly determined to cram the notion of Kralsei down the player's throat. The game is not subtle about this in any way, shape or form. Everything from the narration, to the dialogue, to major game events, to item interactions, and even the roles that Kris and Ralsei play both in the story and the party, serves to reinforce the notion that these two are very likely to end up romantically involved with each other in some way.

Let's look at the characters first. Kris is portrayed as the noble knight - stoic, unwavering, courageous, a natural leader - clad in medieval-inspired plate armour and wielding a sword and shield. And Ralsei is the archetypal princess - demure, dainty, kindhearted, nurturing - who uses magic to heal his allies and pacify enemies.

I did not mistype there - Ralsei is a prince, but the characteristics associated with him are more commonly found amongst female healers in JRPGs. Think Fina from Skies of Arcadia, or Marle from Chrono Trigger (minus the temperment), and you might have an idea of what I'm on about.

Think of knights and princesses for a moment. Imagine St. George slaying the dragon to save a helpless damsel. Imagine Lancelot and Gwenevere. Robin Hood and Maid Marion. Link and Zelda. Squall and Rinoa. Every single fairy tale involving an imperilled princess and a knightly rescuer. For a more modern take, imagine The Bodyguard. Ness and Paula. I could go on, but then we'd be here all day.

Suffice it to say that there is a pretty entrenched tradition surrounding these archetypes - a male-coded, phsyically-adept, courageous, stoic, action-oriented figure, is paired with a female-coded, magically-adept (depending on the medium of course), less-physically-capable by comparison, emotional, and more passive foil. The (male-coded) knight protects and rescues, the (female-coded) princess nurtures and soothes.

It is a very, VERY emotionally-charged dynamic, by its very nature. Through their acts of service to their protectee, the Knight displays their devotion and care for the Princess, and is in turn emotionally-enriched and cared-for. There is a great deal of physical and emotional vulnerability between them, and it is therefore ideal for romance stories.

Look at Kris and Ralsei again, through this lens. Kris is immediately put into the role of Knight, and Ralsei quickly establishes himself as a classic Princess. Almost instantly, before you've even become aware of it, you've made the connection - they're going to fall in love, because that's what ALWAYS happens in these stories. Ralsei supports and encourages Kris, both in dialogue and in battle, and Kris...

...Kris, uh...

...they...

...hug Ralsei sometimes...?

...they... they give him a ribbon...?

...no, that can't be right.

But it is right, for two reasons. One, Kris doesn't have to do anything. The roles are already established, and Ralsei is playing his part like a pro. And two, Kris doesn't do any of those things in the first place - you do. It's the player who hugs Ralsei, who gives him the ribbon, who picks the dialogue options, who makes the connections. You're the Knight in this scenario, not Kris.

Because Kris doesn't get to make that choice. Kris has to do what you tell them to do. And many of us have already jumped to the conlusion that this romance is happening, becuase that's what always happens. The Knight and the Princess fall in love. They get married. They live happily ever after.

So we ship them, because hey, it's cute, and it's easy. I can't stress enough how easy the game makes this. I'm fairly convinced that Ralsei was designed by comittee, like the Funzo toy in that one episode of the Simpsons. Like he was created with the sole purpose of being the most disgustingly adorable, lovable, awkward little cinnamon bun that ever existed. Like he was created to generate the maximum emotional response in players. It's the cuteness response dialled up to 11, and we are almost hard-wired to want to protect this little bundle of fluff from any and all danger, because lookit how sweet and adorable he is! The glasses make his eyes look all big, his fluffiness is reminscent of that of baby animals, he stutters and fumbles his way through dialogue, and you just want to scoop him up and put him in your pocket or something.

And so, we're more than happy to fulfil the role of the Knight to Ralsei's Princess. Whether Kris actually wants to or not. Because it does become increasingly obvious that outside of our influence, Kris is still their own person, with their own goals and desires, but no real agency with which to pursue them. Would that we could know what they truly want, but we are never presented with an opportunity to find out.

The thing is, Kris is not particularly... knightly. They play pranks on their friends, they swipe sweet treats from their mother, they seem to enjoy getting a rise out of people, and particularly from Asriel, if the story about "dropping the lizard into the pit to jump higher" is any indication. They sleep through class, yet by Berdly's grudging admission they are the "third smartest in the class". The only reason they go to church is so they can drink the "sick fruit juice". They don't seem to have any issue with prank-calling their mom, while she's taking about them with their tutor, while they're standing just out of sight, while they're balancing a trash orb on their head.

Nothing about this behaviour screams "Knight." If anything, it would make more sense for Kris to have become a Rogue-type character upon entering the dark world. So the question remains - why is Kris forced into that role? And to what extent is the seemingly "fated" romance between Kris and Ralsei part of that role?

Folks, we have barely scratched the surface here. If I keep writing here this will become a novel, so I have to stop for everyone's sanity. But I will follow up soon, looking into the ideas of Purpose and Destiny and how they relate to Kralsei in-game. If you've stuck with me up to this point, let me just say thanks, because wow I wrote a lot here, and it's probably a bit rambly and says the same things two or three times, but I just. Had to get this onto the page in some way or another, so... here it is.

Thanks for reading, and see you in the next one :)

#essay #thoughts #rambling #deltarune #kris dreemurr #Ralsei #Kralsei #Krisei #shipping #romance #character archetypes #Knights and Princesses #long post #Part one of several #oh my god there's so much ground to go over here I didn't even know #and we're only TWO CHAPTERS in #no wonder I'm obsessed #theory

[dwobbitfromtheshire]

Stuck Between a Jock and a Metalhead

Summary: Nancy, on a whim, decides to visit Steve at Scoops Ahoy, which leads to her overhearing confessions from Steve that leads her to think about the decisions she's made. A few days later, she decides to come back. She finds him being hit on by the town freak. What's a girl to do? Oh, get stuck in a freezer with the both of them.

TW for SA. Yes, even though Jonathan didn't touch her, it was a form of sexually violation. We don't bring this up enough or the fact that Nancy shoved her feelings about it aside and then slept with him after being convinced to. It wasn't fair to all parties involved, but most importantly, Nancy and Steve, that this was how they started out. Yes, Steve was violated, too. I will be addressing that in another chapter. If you're going to do this in fiction, address it so all parties can have closure. Anyways, this chapter is dedicated to my fellow SA victims. Yes, I am a victim of SA, and some of my feelings bleed through there. This is for me and others like me. I also felt like I needed to do it for Nancy and her character, whose agency is constantly being taken away. She was in control when she slept with Steve but not when Jonathan took her picture and it was certainly in question when she slept with Jonathan. People always flip it around so Jonathan doesn't look quite so bad. Sorry, this is so long. I hope I did Nancy justice.

Chapter One - Chapter Two - Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Jonathan wanted to give Nancy her stuff back, which was awkward, to say the least. Unfortunately, he got called into the Hawkins' Post when Nancy showed up, and so, he left her with Will. It was another awkward moment. What do you say to the person who's older brother you dumped?

"I'm glad you and Jonathan are able to be friends," Will said.

"What? Oh, yeah, me too," Nancy said and paused. "You're not upset with me for breaking up with him, are you?"

"No! I mean, it sucks but if things aren't working out between you, you shouldn't make yourselves miserable trying to make it work," Will said. "Jonathan told me some of what happened, not all of it, and he's glad that it went the way that it did. It could have gone much worse. The fact that you still want to be friends with him means something to me, too. I'm glad that he'll have someone to hang out with who isn't me."

"Yeah, me too," Nancy said softly.

"Of course, I understand if it's still awkward. If you want to leave before he comes back, he said your stuff was in a drawer in his room," Will said.

"That'd be great, actually. I promised Holly I would take her to the mall. I thought I would surprise her with an old friend," Nancy said.

"Steve?" Will asked.

"Yeah," she said and turned to head towards Jonathan's room.

"Nancy?" Will asked.

"Yeah?"

"You're a great big sister," Will said.

Nancy was grinning from ear to ear when she entered the room. While it was true that Dustin was her favorite and apparently, Steve’s as well, she did have a soft spot for Will, too. Nancy hummed thoughtfully as she looked around the room. She pulled out the bottom drawer of Jonathan's desk. Nope, she didn't see anything that looked like it belonged to her. Just to make sure, she pressed her hand to the back of the drawer. Nancy frowned when she came into contact with a small cylindrical object. Curious, she pulled it out. It was one of Jonathan's rolls of film. She wondered what was on here. Her curiosity won over, and she unrolled it, holding it up to the light. Her heart stopped. No, these photos were destroyed. Jonathan wouldn't still have copies? The proof was in her hand, though. He had somehow kept them.

She vaguely heard the front door open and the sound of Joyce's voice filtering in from the other room. Nancy knelt on the floor, still clutching the evidence in her hand. Everything had happened so fast then. . . Will went missing. . .Barb went missing. . . There was a monster on the loose, and she didn't have time to think about Jonathan taking those pictures. It wasn't just of her. It was of Tommy, Carol. . .Steve. She thought back to their argument in the woods.

"You said I was saying something, and that's why you took my picture," Nancy said.

"I saw this girl trying to be someone else. It was like you were alone or you thought you were, and you could just be yourself," Jonathan had said, and as she thought about it, that was fucking creepy.

You were alone, or you thought you were. No, there was someone in the bushes taking a picture of her most private intimate moment.

"That is such bullshit," Nancy had told him. "I am not trying to be someone else. Just because I'm dating Steve and you don't like him - "

"You know what? I just thought it was a good picture," Jonathan said.

So, him saying earlier before that he shouldn't have taken that photo that had been just bullshit? The more Nancy really thought about it, the more she realized how wrong it all was. . . How wrong Jonathan was and how he wasn't even sorry for taking that photo. He had invaded her privacy, not just hers but Steve’s as well. She felt sick to her stomach. She had slept with someone who didn't care about whether or not her privacy had been violated and who didn't understand the boundaries he had crossed even with his reason for doing it. Keeping the copies of the photos had proven that. And she had gotten mad at Steve for breaking his camera when he was just defending her and himself. She thought about Jonathan's hands all over her, and she wanted to be sick. She kept pushing it away, pushing it down and pretending like what Jonathan did wasn't that bad. She had gotten mad at Steve for wanting to pretend that everything was okay for one night when it was really her who was pretending and laying it all on Steve, too.

"I saw this girl trying to be someone else."

"This isn't you, Nance."

Why wasn't it her? Why was sleeping with Steve. . .being with Steve wasn't for her? Why couldn't everyone see that it didn't matter what it looked like on the outside to them? On the inside, Nancy wanted to be with him. . .wanted to make love to him. It only mattered what she wanted, what Steve wanted. They made the assumption that she didn't really want Steve, and without even really realizing it, she started to believe it, too. She had always been a planner when it came to the things that had mattered to her. She had planned on being with him the moment he started talking to her. She had made plans to sleep with him. All that she wanted was for it to mean something to him, and it did. When she told him to stop, he did. When it came down to it, Steve had made sure that it was her who made the first move when it came to initiating sex because he knew she felt more comfortable taking control and he wanted it to be what she wanted. . .the way she wanted it.

Sure, she had feelings for Jonathan, but she hadn't planned on sleeping with him. . .on acting on her feelings because something had been holding her back. It hadn't been just Steve, but it had been the most important part. She had been slightly drunk that night and filled with a euphoria that her plan to take down the lab was going to work. . .that she was finally going to get justice for Barb. She had wanted it to be Steve beside her. She had been set on believing that she had been settling for Steve, but maybe it was the other way around. Maybe she was just settling for Jonathan. God, she was an awful person. The sound of Joyce walking down the hallway with Will broke Nancy out of her thoughts.

"Why are you here without Jonathan?" Joyce asked.

"I'm not alone. Nancy's here. Jonathan had gotten called to the Post. Nancy came here to collect her stuff," Will said.

"Oh, that's always tough," she heard Joyce say, and then she popped her head into the room. "Nancy, honey? Are you alright?"

"I'm fine. Really," Nancy said weakly.

"I would believe that if you weren't crying," Joyce said.

Nancy hadn't even noticed it until she had pointed it out. She touched her cheek and realized it was wet.

"Oh, I am crying," Nancy said. "He kept this."

"What is that? Is this one of Jonathan's film strips?" Joyce asked. "Full of sentimental photos?"

"I wouldn't call them sentimental," Nancy scoffed.

"May I see?" Joyce asked softly.

She really didn't want to, but she knew Joyce, and she knew how determined she could be. She released the roll into her hands, biting her lip. Joyce held the strip up to the light. Nancy watched her pale considerably, and she rolled it back up. Joyce turned to Will, who was standing in the doorway looking concerned.

"Will, go into your room and blast the music," Joyce said. "I don't want you to hear any of this."

"Mom - ," Will started to say and she gave him a look.

Will looked at Nancy and then wandered off toward his room. A moment later, they heard the music blasting.

"Do you drink coffee?" Joyce asked softly.

"Yeah," Nancy said.

Joyce helped her off the floor and walked her into the kitchen. She started the coffee and placed a box of tissues in front of Nancy. The roll of film was placed on the table, and honestly, it felt like it was staring at Nancy. Suddenly, Joyce set a steaming mug in front of her.

"Do you want me to call your mom?" Joyce asked softly.

"What? No, I'm okay," Nancy said.

"I understand if you wanted to press charges against Jonathan," Joyce said gently.

"Press charges?" Nancy asked.

"For taking those photos of you with Steve. That was Steve’s house, right? The night Barbara died?" Joyce asked. "Look, when Hopper gets busy with work, he usually comes over to complain about Mike and El. If you feel that it's what you need to do, I'm not going to be mad at you, sweetheart."

"I couldn't do that to you and Will," Nancy said and sipped her coffee.

"So, what do you want to do?" Joyce asked.

"I just want to move forward, but I need time to let myself feel all of this. When Barb died, I tried so hard to pretend that everything was alright, that what he did was okay because, in a way, it led to us finding Will. We knew what happened to Barb. I pushed what he did to the back of my mind. He captured me in my most intimate moment. It was my first time with Steve. . . With anyone," Nancy said. "And the bigger picture was Will and Barb. It made it easier to focus on that and push everything else aside. It was too much on top of everything else."

"I'm so sorry, sweetheart," Joyce said.

"I understand, I think, why he did it," Nancy said.

"You do?"

"He spends so much time behind the camera that he can't see the boundary line, and in some way, I think he uses that to keep people at arms length but at the same time, trying to get to know them. And I understand that he probably doesn't even know that he crossed a boundary, that it's harder for him to recognize that. He uses the camera to push people away, and sometimes, in doing so, it hurts them because it's easier to do the wrong thing in order to protect yourself from being hurt. I think if he just steps out from behind the camera, he'd get a clearer picture," Nancy sighed.

"I noticed that too," Joyce said softly.

"I know all of that and know he wasn't intentionally trying to hurt me, but he did. He crossed a line, and I just need time, I think, to be around him again," Nancy said. "I don't know how to do that, considering I work with him."

"You leave that to me," she said, patting her hand and squeezing it gently.

"I think it wouldn't have been so hard right now if I hadn't acted on my feelings for him," Nancy said.

"I think it would help you if you talked about it with someone. It doesn't have to be your mom, but it might be better if it was," Joyce said softly.

Joyce didn't say anything else, just squeezed her hand as they finished drinking their coffee in silence. A moment later, they heard Jonathan come through the door, and judging by the sound of his voice, Hopper had arrived at the same time that Jonathan did. They immediately noticed the tension in the room.

"What's going on? Nancy?" Jonathan asked, and she refused to look at him. "Is that my film? Did you go through my things?"

"Oh, getting mad about your invasion of privacy is not something that you want to do right now, Jonathan Byers," Joyce said.

Nancy's jaw clenched, and her cheeks flushed with anger. She picked up the film, stood up, and chucked at him. It bounced off his head and landed near Hopper's feet.

"You asshole! You kept copies of the photos!" Nancy shrieked.

Joyce placed her hands on Nancy's arms, rubbing them in comfort.

"Nancy, honey, I got this," Joyce said.

Hopper picked up the film and unrolled it, held it up to the light.

"Jesus," Hopper said, and his jaw clenched, his eyes looking at Jonathan in anger. "Do you have any idea what kind of trouble you would be in if anyone else found these? Do you have any idea what you did to Steve and Nancy by taking these photos? Do you know what this photo is?"

"It's just a picture, and I forgot I had them," Jonathan said.

He actually looked guilty, and Nancy wondered if he actually felt bad about taking them or that he got caught.

"They're just pictures," Jonathan repeated.

"Considering both Nancy and Steve were underage at the time. . . You were, weren't you?" Hopper asked, and Nancy nodded. "That's child pornogrophy! Even if Nancy didn't charge you, I would still have to arrest you for that alone. Not to mention taking the photos of the other kids involved without their consent. I could add harassment charges to that as well as trespassing. With what a hard ass Steve’s dad is, he could throw everything at you, and he would have the resources to do it, too."

"I was looking for Will," Jonathan said defensively.

"The minute you started snapping these photos is the minute that you stopped thinking about Will, so don't use your brother to try and escape the fact that you fucked up," Joyce said and sighed.

"Do you want to press charges?" Hopper asked Nancy.

"No, I just want to go home," Nancy said.

She suddenly realized that she wasn't all that angry right, she was mostly just tired. Just so drained of everything. Maybe she'll be angry later.

"Hop, do you want to take Nancy home, please? I want to talk to Jonathan," Nancy said.

"Sure," Hop said and looked at Nancy softly as he pocketed the film. "Come on, kid."

The first few minutes of the ride back home was a silent one at first.

"You going to be okay, kid?" Hopper asked.

"I thought it didn't bother me what he did. I thought it was Steve who was overreacting when he broke Jonathan's camera, but maybe it was me who was underreacting. I want to forgive him, but I think I need to feel everything that I've been pushing away right now," Nancy said. "In time, I think I will be okay."

"I've seen you take on anything. You're one of the strongest kids I know," Hopper said. "You're definitely going to get through this. You got someone to talk to? I'm terrible at giving advice, but I've got two ears."

Nancy laughed as she thought about Steve and Eddie.

"Yeah, I've got friends," she replied.

They fell into silence again as she thought about what she was going to tell Steve and Eddie.

"So, Steve broke Jonathan's camera, huh? Good for him," Hopper said, and Nancy laughed. "You know, I have to ask Steve, too. I'm not going to arrest Jonathan either. I can't with the pictures that are also on the film."

"I know," Nancy said softly. "Steve would never tell his dad, by the way. He hates his dad."

Once they made it to her house, she climbed out of the vehicle and thanked him before entering her house. Karen was busy doing laundry, so Nancy quietly climbed the stairs to her bedroom, where she threw herself onto her bed. There was a tiny knock on her door, and she smiled when Holly's blonde head popped into the room.

"Nancy?" Holly asked, and suddenly Nancy remembered that she was supposed to take Holly to the mall.

"I'm sorry, Holly, I know I was supposed to take you to the mall, but I don't really feel good right now," Nancy said. "Can we do it tomorrow?"

"Okay! I'll be right back," Holly said.

When she came back, her arms were full with her blanket, pillow, and stuffed rabbit. She threw them on the bed and struggled to climb on up.

"What are you doing?" Nancy asked.

"Moving up my nap time, duh," Holly said. "You can snuggle with Bobby since you don't feel so good."

Nancy smiled as she held her rabbit to her chest while Holly snuggled into her side. God, she wanted to stay like this forever. She couldn't wait to spend time with her tomorrow. It will be a brand new day and one step closer to a new beginning.

Chapter Five

#stranger things #nancy wheeler #steve harrington #nancy wheeler x steve harrington #stancy #eddie munson #eddie munson x nancy wheeler #edancy #eddie munson x steve harrington #steddie #nancy wheeler x steve harrington x eddie munson #stedancy #nessie #bisexual steve harrington #bisexual eddie munson #pansexual nancy wheeler #pan4bi4bi #lesbian robin buckley #robin buckley #robin & steve #platonic stobin #platonic ronance #platonic reddie #stranger things fanfiction

[zsakuva]

Hey Saku! I’ve been following your VA stories for a while now, and Alex’s audios have been such a treat to listen and analyze. Especially seeing everyone’s reactions to each one that comes out 🫢 (WARNING LONG MESSAGE) 

I saw on a post that you said you intended for others to see how the listener is a very flawed person, and clearly has major issues that they haven’t dealt with in a healthy way. But I’ve been seeing comments and there’s still people who really dislike Alex with a passion. I know some people have had situations like this in real life, and it’s a lot more complicated situation. So they may have more insight on this than me. I’m just solely judging the fictional characters here FYI. 

    I understand that he isn’t a perfect character and one thousand percent has some flaws of his own, and needs to apologize for what he has done and said, but even after we find out the listener literally followed Alex when he was with Natalie people still think he’s the major red flag that messed up the relationship? Maybe I’m being a little harsh but if I had a partner like the listener and they did everything they did- I wouldn’t have reacted to it nonchalantly. Maybe I wouldn’t suddenly resort to breaking up, but I would have to reassess the relationship. Yes, communication would’ve helped the situation but it wouldn’t have taken back the actions the listener did. And while both of them have to deal with the consequences of their behavior, I don’t think he deserves the amount of “dislike” he gets 😭

     All that to say a lot of people are villainizing Alex when he really didn’t do anything that jaw dropping except be closed off, hypocritical, and a bit of a gaslighter during arguments, which are not healthy reactions, but can happen when emotions get involved. The audience won’t ever know what the listener said back to him during the conversations so they no doubtably could’ve gaslighted him back🫡 Not a complete Alex defender, I don’t particularly like him (the two should definitely not be together) but I also don’t think he’s as terrible as he’s made out to be sometimes.

(Apologies for the paragraph) I do have a short question on it, 

  When you started fleshing out Alex and the listener as characters did you imagine the audience would see them as they do now?  Or was it a surprise to read the differing opinions and conclusions the crumpets came too?  (thank you again for creating such complex and thought invoking audios) 🫶🏻

When I decided to dive into this particular part of their relationship, I knew there would be discourse but I wasn't expecting it to be so divisive. I love reading everyone's opinions; there are so many factors at play to have them draw whatever conclusion they've settled on.

Some might draw from a personal experience, others solely from Alex, or solely from Gremlin, or a third party looking in. All opinions of Alex and Gremlin are valid, and as a writer who loves breaking down characters, it's amazing to see so many discussions about something I've created.

Of course, I have my own opinions regarding their situation, but I'll keep most of that to myself; I'm in a unique position to be omniscient so I'll observe instead!

#zsakuva #sakuverse #audio roleplay #boyfriend audios

[peachteaships]

Okay, I have some gripes about the self ship community. I need to get off my chest. This is a long one. Do not derail this, I will block you. Pro.ship and com.ship DO NOT try to interact with this post, I will block you too. I do not have the patience for this today.

Rant/gripes under the read more.

I'm probably going to get shit for this or something, but I'm getting exhausted over this. The self ship community didn't used to be so scary and hateful. What the hell happened?? What happened to being understanding and kind to others who didn't feel comfortable sharing f/os or having doubles? Why the fuck are we dealing with people spreading lies, causing drama and pulling shit because they're mad someone doesn't want to share? Or causing shit because you end up finding out you share with someone, but instead of blocking them and moving on, you start shti instead? You go out of your way to attack them, harass them, give them trauma and make them feel unwelcome all because you couldn't stand the thought of someone else sharing an f/o instead of using the block button and the black list function that are right there. All because you couldn't respect someone's boundaries.

Why the hell are we being racist or ableist to each other for no other reason besides "I don't like them"? That doesn't give you the right to be cruel to someone because they're a different race or have a mental or physical disability they can not control. There's never an excuse to be out here being so hateful to someone because you feel like you're allowed to say a word or term that you have no right saying or reclaiming just because you want to drag someone down.

And then there are people who question if others' sexualites are valid or not because of the gender of fictional characters they're interested in??? When the hell did we decide that was a "good" idea to do any of this?? Then you have the audacity to claim they aren't valid enough to be considered their own sexuality or gender because they're not good enough for you? Why the hell would you think this is okay?? Does it make you feel better about yourself?? Because it shouldn't. And if it does? You need to take a moment and ask yourself why.

And don't even get me started on the fact that we have to deal with so many pro.shippers and com.shippers in this community. Especially ones that try to lie about it, hide it, and disrespect other's boundaries. We already have to deal with enough toxic bullshit in this community enough as it is, and now we have to deal with these people as well.

It's already hard enough to thrive and grow in this community enough as it is due to the whole fact that unless you're popular or ship with a popular character or have a more appealing and attractive art style compared to others, you don't get much interactions at all. It's a struggle enough in this community for small blogs. We don't need to add on all of this hate to it.

All of this is exhausting and frustrating. I remember when it used to be fun and welcoming, and when we tried to uplift each other, give each other a boost and respected other people's wishes and boundaries. What the hell happened?? When did this all change?? If you're uncomfortable sharing, you're valid, but please don't be so rude and disrespectful to others over it. The block button and the black list function are available to us. It applies to basically everything. Someone rubs you the wrong way, or you don't want to interact with them? Block them. You don't like a person? Block them. Don't like a ship that involves a character you don't like? Black list the tag. It's that simple. I really wish we didn't have all of this hatred happening right now. I really wish this community wasn't so scary and cause so much anxiety for people. Self shipping is supposed to be about having fun and for your own comfort. What happened? What happened to this community?? We need to fix this. People have left the community because of all of this or have been driven out by others over this. This has to stop. We have to do something. I know I myself am just one person, and I'm just a small blog, but it doesn't mean I can't use my voice to an extent.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for taking a moment to listen. Hopefully, this community will improve soon.

Have a good day.

#self shipping community #self ship community #self insert community #okay to reblog #peach speaks #long post

[apparently-artless]

WHY YOU SHOULD TRY READING WIND BREAKER EVEN IF IT'S NOT YOUR CUP OF TEA

Content warnings to take note of before you read: poorly written explanations and BAD ENGLISH [like extremely bad I'm not even joking XD], a few manga spoilers like mentions of characters that might not be included in the current season of anime

A few days ago, I started reading the manga of Wind Breaker by Satoru Nii and reached the latest chapter after two days. Considering I have a life to deal with, this is actually fast because I couldn't stop reading for as long as there is a next chapter to read. This series was suggested to me by my sister and I was already looking forward to the anime. After watching 2 episodes so far, I couldn't contain myself and decided to read the manga instead. In all honesty, delinquent theme is not my cup of tea. At the very least, it is not a genre that I would actively seek. However, this series piqued my curiosity, kept me engaged, and made me want to read more. And now here I am, desperately waiting for the next chapter to come.

Before anything else, I would like to let you know that [as far as the latest chapters are concerned], there are no teachers involved in the story. Even if they are going to school, there are no scenes of them actually studying. There are also no authorities involved. So just think of them as students only doing social studies by protecting the townsfolk and interacting with them daily. But then again, THIS IS FICTION, SO IT'S OKAY!! So with that out of the way, let me point out a few things that I really love about this manga.

THE MAIN CHARACTER

The main character, Sakura Haruka has such a cool character design. Bicolored hair and different eye colors, who wouldn't be interested? To top it all off, he's good at fighting and he is such a tsundere he ends up blushing all the time! He also has a sad past that makes us want to protect this baby boy from all the pain and suffering he encountered thus far. If you've watched the first episode, it's quite evident that he was ostracized because of the way he looks. Ugh, my poor baby boy. T_T

The anime actually did a great job of including more tidbits of Sakura's dark past in the first episode. There were scenes that I noticed that are included in the later chapters. In fact, the first 1 minute and 30 seconds of the first episode gave us something that manga did not give until almost 50+ chapters.

Some of the scenes are these:

And this:

It may seem like a normal dark-lit room but it actually speaks a lot. One room, no other furniture, and just a futon he can sleep on. What I am trying to point out is there is a difference between someone who started living alone as soon as they moved to a different town and someone who has been living alone almost their entire life. Now, don't get me wrong. Sakura's past is yet to be revealed. The full details of how he ended up alone are not yet even shown in the latest chapters of the manga. We can only make assumptions based on what was shown thus far and his behavior as he tries to interact with more people. Anyway, as you read more chapters, you will eventually realize that the main character lived a painful life before coming to Furin High.

THE OTHER CHARACTERS

If the main character is great, it's a good series. But it's even better if the other characters are interesting too. The mangaka did an amazing job with the other characters and how they contributed to the story. Each character has their own personality that you will also love. I bet you might even have a top 5 or even top 10 favorite characters just for this series alone.

THE CHARACTERS' DEVELOPMENTS

Now this is one of the reasons why I fell in love with the series. I am not just referring to the character development of the MC but also the other characters! What's more, is that the author finds a way to make their development interesting but brief and how their past contributes to who they are right now. Sometimes, the past is even included in a single chapter and with a few more scenes of the present. Of course, there are longer backstories but I assure you that every scene is important and contributes greatly to the plot.

THE PERFECT BALANCE BETWEEN MC AND THE OTHER CHARACTERS

You know how there are times that the main character feels like they are being forgotten in some series? I can think of a few but let's not mention those. XD Anyway, this one will surely not disappoint. The MC is a first-year high school student and even though it was already proven how strong he is in the first two episodes, there are surely other characters that are more OP than he is.

To me, this is very important. If the MC is the only one progressing, it's quite boring. But if there are other characters developing to the point that it makes you think, oh maybe he's the MC all along, it makes the series annoying. If I ever encountered such tropes, I would immediately put that series on hold and get back to it once I felt like it. Or maybe just never get back to it, at all. XD

Wind Breaker, despite having many interesting characters, manages to highlight the secondary characters without having the main character overshadowed and underappreciated.

THE DRAMA, THE COMEDY, THE ACTION AND THE FOUND FAMILY TROPE

Since delinquency is one of the themes of this series, of course, there's action. And the anime so far is doing a great job with the animation of the fight scenes. The drama is superb. It tears my heart out and rip it to pieces every single damn time whenever one of the characters' past is introduced. And then there's comedy. MC is socially awkward, and tsundere to boot. Who wouldn't laugh at his antics? What's best is that despite the fact that Sakura's behaviors are quite disturbing [signs that indicate that he did not have a normal life], the author managed to portray these scenes in such a way that you will find them painful but endearing at the same time.

As for the found family, I wouldn't want to spoil a lot but just think of it this way, the founder of BOFURIN considers every member not just as a friend but as family. And not just the students, he also considers the people of their town a big part of their family. Not some strangers to protect, but a family to treasure. If that's not sweet, I don't know what it is.

ADDED LGBT THEME

Since it's been confirmed that the anime will only have 13 episodes, the character I am referring to will not be introduced in the anime. As you may have already noticed, Furin High is an all-boys school so needless to say, all students there are males [at least, biologically speaking]. She's the only rose among the thorns. She was included in the screenshot below but I doubt we'll get to see her completely in this season. So I will leave it to your capable eyes to identify who I am referring to. XD

Anyway, the portrayal of this character is very close to reality. Her story of how she struggled with her sexuality and how she wanted to be accepted by other people is so beautifully and at the same time painfully written.

I really love Sakura and this character's interactions. It feels like Sakura has a very reliable and beautiful older sister. I do hope that this series will continue getting more seasons because I am really in love with this character.

I can still go on but I think that I already made my point. Anyway, if you are still having doubts about this series, just give it a try. Read at least 60 chapters and if you really don't like it, there's nothing wrong with it. We all have our own preferences when it comes to anime and manga. I thought I just needed to make this review since it's really a surprise how this series managed to make me love it a lot.

So if you are looking for a series that has these elements: fluff, angst, action, drama, comedy, found family, lgbt themes, you will definitely enjoy it!

#wind breaker #manga #manga recommendation #artsrecs #artsreviews #manga spoilers #wind breaker spoilers #wind breaker manga spoilers #long post

[swaps55]

(Sorry in advance for the long message) Hey swaps!! It's been a while since I asked, I got into uni (with my best friend) and started studying creative literature and I needed to let you know that it's partially because of you, and I wanted to sincerely thank you. Otherwise I'd never have had the drive to do what I was passionate about instead of chasing an academic degree that would suck the soul out of me. When I read your stories it's incredible, I really experience the story, that only ever happens when I'm reading something you've written. And I'm not the biggest bookworm but there's something about yours, the way you narrate and tell your characters, you write the story but the characters truly do come alive, and I wanted to be able to tell stories like you. I'm currently attempting to flesh out my own story which I think is going not horribly, but I wanted to ask, how do you stay so true to your characters? I've read your posts and when people ask what would happen in certain scenarios, despite what you want to happen the characters have their own personality. Is there a system you use to get all your words out right or does it just come to you? Honestly any advice you could give would be amazing. Thank you again swaps, I know it might be silly to admire and choose a career because of someone on the internet that you've never met, but there's real passion in your work. We can all see how much you put into writing and it truly does make an impact, even if sometimes you can't see it. I think I speak for all dedicated mass effect, and more niche Mshenko, fans, thank you.

This is not silly. At least to me – this means the world to me, and I cannot thank you enough for telling me. And I am SO excited for you; my creative writing workshops taught me so many valuable things. I hope you love it, thrive in it, and write until your fingers fall off.

I can tell you from being in the workforce for a couple decades now that an English/Creative Writing degree can get you to so many places, because storytelling and the ability to write are skills that are crucial in so many industries. It’s so hard to know how much is out there until you get out in the world and really see it, but if you’re curious, adaptable, and passionate, having the ability to write and tell a good story can open so many doors. It has for me. My Real Life job doesn’t involve fiction, but I write and tell stories in ways I really enjoy every day. So whether you go off and become the next Neil Gaiman, and I hope you do, or you find other fulfilling opportunities, use that passion of yours to do something you love and enjoy the hell out of your uni experience.

On to your question: How do I stay true to my characters?

This is going to be a layered, multi-faceted answer because it’s a layered, multi-faceted question.

Developing characters is a very fluid process for me. I don’t like to get too prescriptive about them early on, because I want there to be room in the story for them to grow. I think there’s a relationship that develops between characters and story: characters shape the stories they’re in and are also shaped by them, and if you’re too rigid about the character sheet you have in your head (or on paper), you miss out on opportunities for them to grow with that story. But if you don’t know enough about them in the beginning, your characters will probably feel flat and inauthentic. I can’t really tell you where the line is between knowing too much and not enough – it’s something you learn by doing, and something you develop instincts for over time.

For instance, I don’t know if this will surprise you, but when I wrote Sonata, which was the first Opus story to get off the drafting board, here are just some of the things I didn’t know about Sam:

The nature of his relationship with Anderson.

What happened to his father aside from, “he went missing.”

Anything about his biotic mentor, other than “krogan.”

His biotic “handicap.”

Those line items are all pivotal to who Sam is as a character. But the details of them weren’t pivotal to Sonata, so I left them as broad strokes, and then filled them in when other Opus stories needed me to. This gave me some freedom to craft those details in ways that elevated both Sam and the story I was trying to tell.

There’s also a lot of value in developing characters from both ends: identifying a formative event/moment in their lives and using it as a guidepost to shape the way they see and interact with the world, and establishing a key behavioral or a character trait and then backing into where it comes from.   

Example of the former: Lora Alenko experienced having a teenage son who developed an alien medical condition that resulted in him being taken away from her and coming back as a stranger. What does that do to a parent? How does that shape the way she sees biotics? Sees Kaidan? I think about all of those questions when I write her.

Example of the latter: A simple question with a very complicated answer: Why is Sam Shepard the guy who saves the galaxy? Why him, and not someone else?

So that’s one way I think about characters. Here’s another that I think is equally important. I really subscribe to the ideology that every character is the hero of their own story. They don’t know they’re not the main character. They don’t know what comes next, what the plot is, what the themes are, or how they are supposed to serve the narrative. And for a character to really take on a life of their own, I think it’s really important to write them that way. Otherwise it’s easy for characters to get tangled up in dreams or lives that aren’t theirs, which robs them of some of their agency.

Therefore, whenever I park myself between the ears of a character, I do a lot of interrogation. What’s important to them? What isn’t? What does the world look like through their eyes, and how is that different from the other characters? What do they notice that other characters don’t? What do they miss that other characters don’t? How do they interpret the same series of events compared to another character? And then, here’s the kicker that often results in the gnashing of teeth, pulling of hair, and beating of foreheads against walls: how does that perspective tie into the narrative? Because yes, characters are the heroes of their own stories, but they also have to work within the story you, the writer, are telling, whether they know it or not.

That might sound overwhelmingly complex, and it is. But really what it comes down to is asking questions one by one and seeing where the answers lead you. Sometimes, especially with a character you don’t know well, this can be a lot of painstaking work. But in my experience it’s always worth doing.

I hope any of that helps. Sometimes I feel like the only good writing advice out there is that everyone works differently, and you have to find what works for you.

Thank you again, SO MUCH. Truly. This means so much to me, and I am so excited for you!!!!!

#swaps replies #ao3-enthusiast #how writing is written

[canonmisogynyvictimstournament]

PROPAGANDA

ARCEE (TRANSFORMERS) (CW: Transphobia)

1.) Transformers has had a troubled history with female transformers as a whole. They didn't really even exist until Season 2. And while they've all gotten the short end of the stick until recently, Arcee, who kinda ended up The Main Girl (sorry Elita) has gotten the brunt of this mistreatment. Mostly talking G1 here.

Toys kept getting cancelled over and over even though she's a main, important character of Season 3. She didn't get a decent widely available toy that actually resembled her G1 version (first one was a Botcon exclusive Blackarachnia redeco which I disqualify because convention-exclusive spider is not what I was looking for, and Binaltech is just kinda a pink and white robot who looks nothing like her, just with her name slapped on) until 2014. I wish I could use bold here, because there's no such thing as uppercase numbers. Before that, you just kinda had to look at the toys from other canons and squint because Hasbro doesn't think the pink girl toy will sell well.

And misogyny present in the fiction? A lot can be summed up in a couple words, namely, "Furman, why?" While most people go with his excuses of not believing in Cybertronian gender, it really comes across as him seeing men as the default, neutral state of being, and women as something that must be explained. Poorly. Explained very poorly. Not to explain things in Tv Tropes terms, but I have to, it reeks of the 'Men Are Generic, Women Are Special' https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MenAreGenericWomenAreSpecial trope.

Let's get us started with Prime's Rib. Oh my goodness, Prime's Rib. So, Furman doesn't believe in Cybertronian gender (and male is seen as default), and this has reflected in his writing. He's going along perfectly fine writing his dudes in the US run of the Marvel comics, Arcee entirely ignored… but what's this? The connected UK comic has her. He can't just ignore her. So, well. He needs an explanation. Explaining a plot hole isn't bad. It's how he did it. Arcee was created in response to a feminist mob who was mad Cybertronians were all guys. I don't think I need to explain this one.

I'm too tired to explain her treatment in IDW now. Something something unnatural attempt to introduce gender into a genderless species, something something, really weird uncomfortable treatment, it's a long story and I'm not an IDW expert, read the TFWiki page for Spotlight: Arcee.

I'm sure there's more in other media, but I've blathered on way too long and I'm starting to get frustrated and tired and AGH FURMAN WHY. He's gotten better, too, definitely not judging his present self over comics that are from many years ago, but asdfghjkl

Ok fine, one more thing. This isn't G1 but Michael Bay stated in interviews that he gleefully killed her movieverse version off specifically because he didn't like her. It's not NECESSARILY misogyny motivated. I wouldn't deem it misogyny coming from a different director with a different film series. Transformers writers have had personal beef with random characters which they wished to unceremoniously kill off before--Animated Beachcomber comes to mind, even if the writers never got the chance. But it's also Michael Bay's Transformers we're talking about here. Can you blame me for thinking that?

Arcee has gotten better treatment in recent years. Furman's clumsy attempts to explain Arcee's gender in tbe IDW run were slowly retconned into some pretty decent trans rep by other authors, she's really just come into her own as a character. But it was a long and rocky road to get there, and I believe we all need to acknowledge that.

2.) Was initially introduced in the 80's transformers movie only after being strong armed by Ron Friedman, being the first female presenting robot to be seen in the show. bright pink, cause, ya know, female. has the most romantic involvement of any transformer ever across all transformations media, cause, ya know, female, and god forbid she be her own person when hasbro can stick to her to Some Guy. she was made trans in the 2005 continuity and was immediately made berserk as a result. marvel made her a freak science experiment to shame feminists. why does the robot have curves when no one else does istg

i love her too much to stand by idly while she's treated this way

3.) hasbro keeps trying to convince people that her and elita-one (another pink fem character) are actually the same. "who cares same lore different names. what do you mean they're different characters?" and constantly flips their lore, designs, and names around with every single FUCKING continuity ie transformers rise of the beasts where they use arcee's design but call her elita-one SMASHES MY HEAD INTO THE WALL bro there's a whole group of autobots called the "female transformers". i don't. there's so little female representation in this series that hasbro decided the best way to fix it would be… segregation, ig. arcee is apart of it obviously. elita-one leads it. reminds me that i should (and maybe sick a couple friends on this poll) make a submission for elita because JESUS CHRIST hasbro fucked her up also apparently in some continuities arcee is trans. upon getting bottom surgery it fucking. idk how turns her berserk?? it's so weird. mind controlled/sleeper agent in like half of the fucking continuities for some reason. in every single one of these continuities she either gets with Springer or Hot Rod and ends up betraying them. every single time why does the robot have boobs

NAOMI MISORA (DEATH NOTE)

1.) I know everyone is gonna submit Misa but honestly she had it worse.

She gets introduced as this competent lady who's gonna help find Kira but then she just, decides to show some teenager her real ID as a show of trust and whoops that's Kira.

Also part of her introduction was her fiance going "You don't need to worry about this tracking down the killer nonsense, you're gonna be my wife, you should just be worried about raising kids in the future :)" or some shit. And it's barely addressed, because she just fucking dies.

2.) She was the only woman in the series to show any level of competence. She figured out more about how the death note works from some small context clues than L did in considerably less time. She was apparently so competent that the author decided to kill her off despite initially planning to make her a main character, fearing she would distract from the L and Light rivalry.

3.) the victim of “writer doesn’t understand women and also hates them” disease. Like, seriously, the author of Death Note could only imagine a female FBI agent as the fiancée of another, more senior FBI agent. The main character Light kills her fiancé Raye Penber (in honestly a really tightly written and cool episode) and so she tries to figure out who killed her husband. Unlike Raye who only figured out that Light was Kira as he was dying because Light basically told him, Naomi figures it out a lot sooner so oops guess she’s gotta die because she’s too good at her job.

#polls #round 1 #week 2 #new #cw transphobia

[sandybrett]

Here are my completely honest thoughts on a bunch of audio dramas I've checked out. (Don't worry, nothing scathing, they're all reasonably good. But please proceed with caution, or don't proceed, if you're involved in creating any of these shows.)

In the order I first listened:

The Storage Papers: Nine episodes in. A little slow paced, but I've heard it picks up in the later seasons. My only real concern is that it seems like a lot of the horror revolves around "this thing looks sort of like a human but it's Wrong somehow. also it kills people (or cats)." I hope at some point we meet a creature that looks and acts as unsettling as the Grinner but is nice, or at least complicated.

The Cellar Letters: Seven episodes in. I LOVE it. I love the natural-feeling messiness of it, the way Nate and Steve talk in circles and go back and forth on what to believe. It's made me laugh out loud multiple times. I can't wait to learn more about that weird little room full of letters with that one random word written on the wall (I forget what).

400 Words a Horror: Three episodes in. I had to re-listen to the first episode because I hadn't been paying enough attention, but I think that particular episode rewards re-listening anyway. Also it is the only show on this list that genuinely frightens me so I have to pace myself. Very good.

Tin Can Audio Presents: Middle:Below: Two episodes in. I won't say I'm hooked, but I am somewhat interested. It's a lot more relaxing than the other podcasts on this list, so I keep thinking I'll save it for listening closer to bedtime, then not getting around to it.

The Grotto: Six episodes in. Very much enjoying. I was SO proud of myself for correctly guessing the twist in the second episode. I love the characters and am extremely intrigued by the mysteries. My only criticism is that the musical interludes drag on too long. And I'm saying that as a WOE.BEGONE fan.

Soul Operator: Three episodes in. It's good but there isn't any particular element that's drawing me in just yet. There's a lot I don't know about the world yet, though, so there is still plenty of time for me to fall in love with this show. (Irrelevant note: I always get "Smooth Operator" by Sade stuck in my head when I think about this show.)

Shadows at the Door: Listened to half of the first episode. It was somewhat interesting, but I decided I had higher priorities for my listening time than disconnected hour-long episodes that are only *somewhat* interesting.

Archive 81: Five episodes in. Quite possibly going to become a major obsession. It's got everything: playing with point of view; the Power of Storytelling but in a menacing way; vivid character voices; probably a cult. I particularly love the way conversations play out on this show--I don't know exactly how to explain it but there's a certain... friction that happens in real conversations but rarely in fictional ones outside cringe comedy. I don't usually enjoy that sort of thing when it's played for laughs, but for realism or suspense? I eat that up. It does make me a little tense so this is another show I pace myself with and I'm glad the episodes are short.

Alice Isn't Dead: Two episodes in. I'm not going to make it a priority--it's got a similar sort of surrealism to Night Vale, but with higher stakes and less humor, and I had enough trouble getting immersed in Night Vale. I could probably enjoy it if I gave it enough time, but for now I'd rather focus on *gestures at some of the shows above*

The Silt Verses: Listened to the first ten minutes of the first episode and got bored, which I think says as much about me as it does about the show. It does get off to a bit of a slow start and leaves more space between lines of dialogue than most of these shows do, but I could probably get into it with adequate time and sleep. Not prioritizing it, for similar reasons to Alice.

#audio drama #the storage papers #the cellar letters #400 words a horror #middle below #thegrottopod #soul operator #shadows at the door #archive 81 #alice isn't dead #the silt verses #woe.begone #<-tagging because a lot of these shows are woe.begone-adjacent #media i'm gulping