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tame-a-messenger · 2 months

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Re: the last ask but only about the smosh games part, because I don't have fully formed opinions on pit tbh

I feel like with the amount of videos smosh games puts out, they couldn't do "love is blind" type videos 3 times a week. Logistically, energy wise, and financially.

The guesses videos are just a lot easier to produce and I feel pretty confident about saying that they need to do that to keep up the posting schedule. (Technically not those specific videos, but formats in that ball park.)

If they should is another question but probably they have to, because money. Idk how much profit smosh makes, but their margin must be a lot slimmer than people imagine. All the salaries they have to pay, etc. And yk how shayne and stuff talked about feeling like smosh would had to shut down if Anthony didn't come back. That makes me feel like they were barely turning profit in those times and now it prob is better, but not extremely more.

Smosh games is simultaneously the one that makes the best and the most boring videos. From all smosh channels, it is least consistent, and I think it very much has to do with the amount they produce. And realistically, that won't change.

They good thing is that you can skip a bunch of uploads and still have multiple new smosh games videos you can watch per week.

But yeah if all those considerations weren't on the table the perfect smosh games would be a lot of gaming content mixed with high energy character videos (love is blind falls under that too). And of course the pinnacle, characters playing video games.

Sadly my wish won't come true, because of what I just stated but also because the types of videos I enjoy typically get the least views on top of that (not always but yeah). I suffer from too great of taste djkds.

I think what you said about them having to turn profit is the sole reason they do so much of the "lackluster" content like the Guesses videos. Those videos get consistent views for all uploads (averaging about 600k views which I believe makes them "roughly" $18k if monetized) and are really easy to make, for filming and editing.

Like I've said and am sure everyone is aware of, they make a lot of videos because they know it'll get a certain number of views. Look at Reddit Stories! Whereas if one-off videos don't get views they don't do them again typically.

The topic of why they decide to certain videos isn't really what I'm the most peeved about. (even though it DOES peev me! It's at the least understandable why they do it)(we talked about how they could transition to doing other videos without loosing money here)

The main thing I want from Smosh is for them to better focus on what the ACTUAL community wants! somebody has to watch their content so they can make money? I don't understand why it's far and between when they do stuff for the fans. We've been saying that we want the Summer/Winter Games back since it's been gone, it's like whoever runs the creative directing(?) (whoever decides the video concepts) pays almost no attention to comments/generally anything Smosh related on the internet. It's like they only focus on their personal timeline and the trending tab.

(Rant incoming!->

Full shade, I really don't think the social team takes their jobs seriously. Something has to be going wrong behind the scenes for so much shit to come off so weird. Mainly talking about the disaster with Sword AF S2, idk who's idea it was to let the community know they couldn't do it WHEN IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE RELEASED. Their is no good reason they couldn't let us know sometime before. (however I am open to what they have to say) It just felt like they didn't really care about people that were excited. I had popcorn ready and my schedule cleared for the day so I could watch it :( waiting on the clock to watch the upload, just to get-> "Ooopsie! teehee! We didn't finish it! So sorry lol!" ...

They still haven't teased/released any further info about when it's coming back which makes me think they FOR SURE knew it wasn't gonna be ready by the date THEY FUCKING SET THEMSELVES, which again if they knew they couldn't do it in time why not announce like a week before? even an hour before would have been fine! but no, they sent out the community post at 10am pst when they were supposed to drop S2..)

The only thing the social team (if they handle this even) is the YT shorts and the Tiktoks. Pretty much everything else I can think of they could do better in my opinion

Sorry to rant about stuff I've already talked about, but this is really just to easy of a fix to not point out when I can.

Pay attention to what your community wants. You WILL get rewarded for it.

#smosh #smoshblr #smosh games #smosh pit #sword af s2 #sword af season 2 #sword af #rant #smosh social team #sucks #hire me instead fr

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i-luvsang · 8 months

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hi!! sorry for the late ass response, i've been wanting to reply earlier but life has been pretty hectic :(.

personally i love love loveeeee pet names!! like even the super silly ones like 'skrunkly' and 'pookie' i always forget not everyone uses those and most ppl probably find it cringe. it's very endearing in my opinion? pet names and nicknames just feel more personal for some reason?? like recently i've started using my nickname more and most of my friends have started referring to me using my nickname and idk it just makes me so happy :,)

and thank you so so sooooo much for the writing advice <333 the 'asking yourself questions to guide your own thinking' tip is so helpful!! i think when i do an attempt at writing or try to progress an idea i get overwhelmed at how much i still need to think through if that makes sense?? like my concept or idea is so small and i have to think abt a plot, and the progress and just the logistics behind everything?

i've also spend some time on pinterest making boards with like locations for visualisations? idk i'm a very visual person whenever i do an attempt at writing so i kinda needed that and it's actually been so much fun!! i've also had some fun ideas for a playlist regarding certain small ideas, i have a few songs that kind off give the same vibes i want to go for and it kinda helps me visualise and create some sort of scene in my head where the song would work as bg music yk? it makes me excited just thinking abt developing my ideas and actually writing it!

sadly i haven't had any time to start writing yet :(. i have some exciting ideas and in general i've been feeling more excited to actually write instead of feeling like procrastinating the process but i've been so exhausted lately bcs of school so i haven't rlly been in the right mindset to write, like whenever i have free time i just want to rest.

my assignments this year are bigger and more important so i'm trying to actually study this year and procrastinate less. so far i'm proud of myself bcs i spend this weekend actually doing my work and writing down important future deadlines instead of procrastinating and doing everything last minute so!! big win for me!!

enough abt me tho!! how are you?? how is college going? how are your classes going? and also if you don't mind me asking, what are you majoring in?

ps. i'm very excited for your upcoming fics!!! — 🎧

hELLOOOOO no worries at all darling !! i'm glad to here that you love pet names because i love using them hehe. i agree that silly ones are so much fun to use and super cute. yk i've always wished i could have a nickname that my friends call me but it's just never been a thing LOL but i have my online friends who call me nicknames and i love that <333

even if you haven't had the time to start writing yet, i'm super glad to hear that you think my advice is helpful for you !! i wish you the best of luck when you do find some time !! i totally get feeling motivation but not having the time or energy :,) it's like DUDE THE ONE TIME I ACTUALLY FEEL LIKE WRITING I CANTTTTT i've been behind on writing too tbh. i have a collab fic due at the end of the month and i'm only a few hundred words in akfjaksjdf

babe you should be so so proud of yourself, the fact that you've been able to battle procrastination and stuff like that is honestly super impressive and absolutely something you should be proud of, so i'm glad that you are !!!! but even if there are times where procrastination gets the best of you, remember that that's alright too! we're not built to be perfect at this <33

in terms of me! lollll i'm not fighting the procrastination too well myself, but that's alright lol. it's a very mixed bag if i'm very honest lol the adjustment has been pretty hard and i'm feeling a lot of old anxieties come back since i'm so overwhelmed. but! i've still been having a lot of nice experiences with new friends and experiences and i think that once i'm able to settle down i'll be having blast far more than i am now hehe. classes themselves aren't too bad though!! i took a pretty light course load for this semester which i think was a really nice choice for me. and i'm majoring in studio arts !!

askdhfjs i'm very glad you're excited, i am too !!! i hope you'll enjoy what's in storeeee

#［ my darlings %.#［ messages %.#［ 🎧 anon %.

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perexcri · 1 year

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hi hi

i just wanted to come on here and show my appreciation for your writing because you truly never fail to befuddle, gobsmack, and ofc flabbergast

like,, literally obsessed with you,, anyway

i dont comment stuff on ao3 because i am Terrified but um i do have a notion board where i log all of my reading stuff and i make comments on there so i thought id share some of my favs that i made on your works

this ripped my soul in half you cannot comprehend

this eternally altered my brain chemistry

this is what love is fr fr

fuck dude

as always this is very well written however i did predict like the entire plot but that is ok i love being right and it was very good some may even say slay idk if id go so far to say that, it may be too high concept for me but it was very good, i did however keep imagining that they both had stinky breath, cuz like will just ate mystery chili and mike presumably hasn’t brushed his teeth in months,, do vampires brush their teeth?

(and then promptly followed by)

one month later i am officially marking this as slay because i haven’t been able to stop thinking about it,, like that last scene where they make out against a cross so mike is being burned while hes turning will,, they’re both in pain together,, just sacrificing your whole life to be with the person you love, oposite of dorothea type thing tbh yah i just think i should grant it its slayage

yah this was so good like insane writing of tension and like idk all of the internal stuff pays of and OMG THE PAYOFF HOLY SHIT THE ENDING SO WORTH IT SO EARNED LIKE INSANE HOLY FUCKKK

i couldn’t stop reading i genuinely felt like i was going to puke from the tension/anticipation/suspense,, the dialogue was really good too and so was the like character study idk if i completely agree with this take on wills character but i really enjoyed in none the less and all in all it did deliver on the rom com of it all and had a very satisfying rom com esc ending that made me cry until it was actually solved because i really cant deal with lack of communication and unresolved tension anyway thats it this was really really good

this might be a bit above my reading level but i read emily dickinson for fun so im powering through just fine

ahhh hello!! thank you for sending such a nice ask and for the appreciation 🥺 i'm glad you decided to share these thoughts you have written down with me!! and i understand commenting can feel a little strange and terrifying, but just know it is appreciated regardless :D (as long as you aren't like,,,actively shitting on the fic ofc lol)

umm i wasn't sure exactly how to tackle this because some of them are clear to me which fics they go to and some of them aren't, but i'm gonna try my hardest and we'll see how it goes 😌✨

1.) so the first one with the "this ripped my soul in half" - i'm gonna guess that's beneath these boughs? maybe? that's the one where i've gotten responses most similar to what you have written down

2.) those next two paragraphs i 100% know are from come to me again!! you can tell i definitely wasn't as focused on the logistics of their later kiss for that fic because i didn't think about the whole brushing teeth/chili thing AT ALL. i picked chili because i thought that would be an easy thing to scrounge up in an enclosed environment and to make easy substitutions for, and i just,,,,,did not think about whether people would brush their teeth in a coldtown or not alfjlas. ah well, it was mainly about them making out on the cross while Mike's flesh is burning and he's turning Will into a vampire, right? that was the main goal and the biggest scene i wanted to write, and i did!! so i consider it a success 😌

3.) okay this one i think might be what a match?? it's either what a match or cheer up baby, but i'm leaning more towards what a match because of the mention of tension

4.) this one is definitely to hell and back again - so i'm glad you liked it despite the tension heheheh. and honestly i would maybe have to agree with you on the thing about Will's character? i guess the big thing with that fic is 1. it turned into an entirely different beast while i was writing it from what i originally intended for it to be, and on top of that it ended up being the first book-length thing i ever wrote, so i was a little in over my head and not entirely sure how to handle it, and 2. i was so focused on whatever the hell had happened to Mike in vol 2 that i did really focus on him more than Will in that fic so i do think Will comes off as a little ahhhh flat? not entirely himself? idk, i'd like to think i've learned a bit more since that fic, and that i made up for Will's lack of character in it with my fantasy au a flower that resembles you, which was very much centered on Will and his complexities

5.) ok i genuinely can't figure the last one out lol. i would maybe say beneath these boughs? but that's what i guessed for the first one, so maybe the first one is a flower that resembles you and this one is beneath these boughs? not sure haha

anyway!! umm idk if my guesses were right, but thanks again for sharing these thoughts!! it does help me to know that you are enjoying what i write and that you have these kinds of thoughts about it :D thanks for stopping by, and i hope you enjoy whatever comes next from this half-functioning brain of mine heheheh :] 💜💜💜

#ask

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kyluxtrashpit · 3 years

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2020 Fic Recap

I really like writing these and 2020 has been a HELL of a year, so here we go lmao. It’s been a wild ride for sure

Total wordcount: 88 109 words (note: I’m subtracting the ‘sorry I didn’t finish this, here’s a summary of the remaining plot’ that I published for a fic in a previous fandom from this since it’s not relevant here). Overall I wrote less than last year, but given all that happened in terms of the world and personally and fandom-wise and all of it, I don’t feel too bad about it lmao. I also have a lot of WIP words of half-finished things and some planning and such so I feel okay with this

Favours, 4906 words, posted Jan 4

This was a weird one cause this is a two chapter reader insert fic, the same story but told with both Phasma and Hux. I originally wrote this for Phasma, but later decided it would be easy to tweak into a Hux story (which it was lmao) and figured people might like that, so I did both. I had fun doing it, even if this is kind of a very small niche ship and trope wise

Know Your Shadow, 5022 words, posted Feb 16

Ah yes, here we are, the first foray into renben, a ship I had NO idea would grab me so hard but here we are lmao. I’m not done with them either yet, don’t you worry. There’s something about the corruption angle I really like, also Ren is HOT, and it’s also interesting to think about Kylo truly getting to find himself and be who he wants to be. Canon didn’t really satisfy on this, but the concept still interests me and it’s what had me writing this fic. Also, Ben losing his virginity to an older man like Ren is just *chef’s kiss*

Public Indecency, 3719 words, posted Mar 1

And my second renben! This was partially inspired by art and partially by just the idea of not giving one single fuck, and how thrilling that must be for someone like Ben to experience. Ren and the KOR truly do not give a shit and it’s really beautiful in a way. Plus some hinting at found family with the KOR. Ngl, Ben/Kylo finding his place and acceptance with the KOR makes me so Soft and there’s so many words I could write about it. Plus public sex is very hot lmao

Beautiful, 3254 words, posted Mar 8

Back to kylux, and this one was an old WIP I started back when the prompt was first posted on KHK in like 2019 or something. I got stuck on it and then left it for a while. I was digging through my old WIPs, looking for something that might catch my interest and boom, this one did, so I finished it and then posted it. I quite like the fic and it’s a bit more in the ~classic~ style. It’s also always a good feeling to get an old WIP done lmao

Choose Your Destiny, 5077 words, posted Mar 20

More renben and this was my fix it fic for ROKR vol 4. I talked about this more on twitter at the time and why I found the story as it was unsatisfying, but ultimately it’s really just a case of rushed writing and playing into established bad writing (e.g. showing a fall from grace by having someone kill someone eviler than themselves). I also really liked Ren and I felt like Kylo didn’t really get to have enough agency in like... any of it. His motivations were weirdly absent as well, despite this being ostensibly about him. So I wrote this, which I think handled how the story should have gone a lot better and, plus, it’s got smut!

(Okay and the rest are behind a cut for length)

Show of Devotion, 2479 words, posted Mar 28

Renben once again and this time, I mean, it’s all inappropriate use of lightsabers lmao. I was looking at the Ren and was like ‘wow that is SO phallic’ and then the horny brain turned on and, well, here we are. I also wanted a side of found family with the KOR and I think got that with this. It’s horny. It’s fun. What more could one want?

Aural, 2729 words, posted May 12

Okay this one... I have absolutely no excuses for lmao. I’m not even sure where the inspiration came from, I just remember I was in an online work meeting that was boring and the entire sequence of events played itself out in my head. It was all I could do to focus on work for the rest of the day and not immediately write this cursed creation lmao. The worst part was I’d been totally blocked on writing since March and this, THIS, was what eventually broke out of me. In case you haven’t read this one, it’s ear sex. Hux’s dick, Kylo’s ear. No, I don’t know the logistics either. But hey, I had a blast with it, both in terms of writing it and the reactions lmao. Someday I gotta write a follow up involving a nose too

Missed Chances, 10 749 words, posted Jun 7

Ah yes, this is the point where my renben met my kylux and created this absolutely enormous peanut butter cup of a fic lmao. It really was supposed to be like half the length it was, but alas, it was not. Also cockblocking kylux was SO hard, they wanted to fuck SO bad, but I had to stop them, the story demanded it lmao (and people in the comments were MAD, which is always excellent). It’s also when my renben series really started to have like, an overarching plot (aside from the modern au fics which I’ll talk about later). I even still have more instalments planned

Free Use, 6971 words, posted Jun 23

Another one that turned out far longer than initially planned, and also my most popular fic this year! I’m both surprised and not cause like. It’s a complete smut fest + my heavy headcanoning of the personalities of the KOR. People like smut, but I also feel it’s kinda niche considering how deep I’m in for the KOR lmao. So idk, I guess the smut won out. I did have a lot of fun with this one and there’s a lot of characterization thought put into each KOR, so it was really nice to see people loving that as much as I did. Canon gave us crumbs, but I just used them to make meatballs

Eat You Up, 1573 words, posted Jul 5

There’s not a lot to this one, it’s really just renben rimming cause the sexual dynamic with renben is so fun. Kylo/Ben is inexperienced yet eager and depraved enough to impress Ren, which is something considering I think of Ren as Very Experienced lmao. I really do love this ship; it’s a lot of fun to play with

In the Vents, 2002 words, posted Aug 3

Ah and this was my first piece for the stuck inside event on twitter, which I had a lot of fun with. Stuck fetish is one I’ve always wanted to explore, but never had any concrete ideas for. This event led to me finally getting to have Kylo stuck in a wall (plus more as well), which was fun. Also I spent far too long thinking about Hux’s vent contraption set up cause I knew he would never let Millie go anywhere that might hurt her, so I had to come up with a way to make the vent safe and here we are lmao. Hux being an engineer and also the most extra cat owner in existence worked out very well indeed. This was also the start of my creativity boom near the middle-end of the year that uh kinda burned out in a not so great way, but I’ll talk about that later lmao

Distraction, 3658 words, posted Aug 6

Another for the stuck inside event and another kylux/renben sandwich! Also featuring the KOR this time! Listen... it’s a gangbang, it’s got renben, it’s got kylux, it’s got Kylo getting stuffed from all ends... this is the kind of fic that, to me, is pure indulgence lmao. I had a tremendous amount of fun with it

Entrapped, 3484 words, posted Aug 8

So this was also for the stuck inside event (yes, I wrote 3 fics in about a week lmao - I don’t know how I did it either) and it’s darker than the sort of things I usually write. I enjoyed exploring something like this though, something outside my usual purview. It didn’t perform super well, but tbh the dark ones rarely do so lmao

Pit Stop, 1505 words, posted Aug 31

Welp, this is just an excuse for watersports lmao. I like piss, what can I say? And I’ve done it to kylux, so I had to do it to renben, and the modern au ‘need to pee on a road trip’ seemed like the perfect opportunity for it. Not much to say for it really

The Deal, 2431 words, posted Sep 3

Ah and this one here was the first for the throwback event I ran on twitter! The event itself ended up kind of being tainted by drama from one singular person who kind of ruined it by being a jerk for literally no good reason, but I’m not going to talk too much about that. Even with that, I still greatly enjoyed it and this piece might be my favourite from it as a whole. Kylo Amidala, political scandals, neither of them being nice... ahhhh yes, it definitely brought me back lmao

Devotion, 1929 words, posted Sep 10

Another for the throwback event, this time with Emperor and Hound dynamics which, unf, yes, I will literally never get tired of it. I really had fun with every fic from this event and this one was great because I so rarely get to write real action scenes, even if they’re in a flashback here. That and the dynamic itself really made it fun

To Be Wanted, 10 473 words, posted Sep 16

Ah yes, and here is my KBB for the year! I did a minibang this time, as, well, everything was going horribly wrong around the time of sign ups and I thought a mini would be more realistic. I think I was right on that and I’m glad I did it, even if I was torn at the time. The idea itself is one I’d been thinking about for a while. I can’t remember if I thought of it after seeing the leaks for tros or after watching the movie itself, but it’s been with me for a while and while I dithered over whether or not to sign up this year, the idea came back and was just perfect for a minibang. Plus I got an absolutely amazing and wonderful partner, which is really what makes the experience of doing bangs so great. I love this fic, I LOVE the art for it, and the whole experience was definitely a highlight to 2020 as a whole, both overall and in terms of my fandom/writing experience this year

Floss Me, 2033 words, posted Sep 21

My third for the throwback event and also the dental fetish fic I’ve wanted to write for a while now lmao but could never figure out a scenario for. As some of you may remember, 2018-2019, I went through some pretty horrific dental stuff and ultimately I think it kinda gave me a fetish lmao. Also I feel like there may or may not have been a kinky flossing prompt on one of the prompt sites at some point, but I looked everywhere and couldn’t find it so. But anyway, it was a fun fic for a kink I think is quite underrated tbh

The Cost of Certainty, 2541 words, posted Sep 25

My fourth and final piece for the throwback event, and this one is also a contender for my favourite piece from that event. I have always loved the idea of Hux being a serial killer and this was a perfect excuse to write it. I’d also recently finished a rewatch of Hannibal and, well, you can see where this came from lmao. I love writing tension and it was just very fun all around. I almost wish I’d done something like this as a long fic but tbh I don’t think I would’ve enjoyed writing it as much

Huxloween Drawings, 676 words, posted Nov 1

So this isn’t a fic but rather the drawings I did for huxloween, but people wanted them on ao3, so posted they are. Now, I mentioned above that I had this massive creative boom in Aug-Sep, but that it burned out rather badly. This is when that happened. I got into this place where I just... felt like everything I made wasn’t wanted or needed in the fandom. That everything I like is so unpopular at this point that I should just give up and leave. That I’ve spent all this time and energy over the years trying so desperately to get people engaged and so few ever cared and I just... ugh. It was bad. It was really bad and definitely partly fuelled by the bullshit that someone brought up regarding the throwback event (and I still believe that they are the sole cause of it’s poor reception). I, uh, am doing better now and still working through it all but it was a really rough time. But I found myself still wanting to be creative so I decided to draw. I am not good at drawing. I am not an artist. But that’s what made it fun: I went into each drawing knowing it wasn’t gonna look great. That wasn’t the point. So I never got upset about it. I think it helped me a lot tbh and I did really enjoy it and I’m glad I did it

Unconventional, 7243 words (in progress), updated Dec 20, first posted Nov 18

So the next part of me trying to fix the bullshit in my brain creativity-wise was to post the first chapter to this fic. This is a piece I’ve been working on since 2016-2017 (I don’t remember exactly when, but it was pre-TLJ, and I’ve gotten a new computer since so I don’t have the original creation date of the document) but I could just... never get a plot together for it and ever since I abandoned a fic in my old fandom (and this year I finally posted the ‘sorry this isn’t getting finished, here’s a closure summary’ chapter), I’ve been hesitant to post WIPs before being at least 80% done. So I said fuck it, I’m gonna post this and not be scared. Is this fic complete? Nope, but the plan is starting to come together. Do I know exactly where it’s going? Nope, but I don’t need to. Is it self-indulgent as all hell? Absolutely. I love this fic and I love this story and I love the concepts within it. So I posted it and tbh, it really helped. And I think this, combined with my writing break where I drew for 31 days straight lmao were really my saving graces here

Test Run, 3661 words, posted Dec 31

And now my final fic of the year! Which is a ship I honestly wasn’t super into (I don’t hate it, it just generally doesn’t do much for me) but then I did that thing where I thought ‘hmm but could it be written in a way that I am into?’ which, in my experience, always leads to me writing exactly that. Which is what I did here lmao. I’m pretty happy with it though and despite it being very strange to write, as I really had to work to get these two to get where they were going lmao, I had fun with it. I honestly doubt I’ll write more of them, but I’m glad I wrote this one, and I think it’s a good experiment to close out the year with

What have I learned?

Honestly, this year was a clusterfuck lmao. 2019 wasn’t great for me either, but we all lived through this and it was certainly An Experience. I think what this year really helped me focus on was what made me happy. I ended up in some dark places and I don’t want to go there again. It feels repetitive to say that, once again, I have learned that writing what I want is key when I say that every damn year, but tbh I think 2020 underscored it even more so. Spite as a motivator, when used to much, smothers the spark of creativity and the joy of creation. The most important lesson I learned this year by far is to not let that take the driver’s seat. A dash here and there? That’s fine. But as your main motivator? That’s just not healthy. And I need to work to keep it from consuming me like it has been for too long

Goals for 2021?

So last year I didn’t set any hard goals and boy, is it a good thing I didn’t, cause I achieved none of them lmao. I didn’t write more words (though I did write more individual fics, and the word count gap between this year and last is about the size of the difference between a big bang fic and a mini bang fic so really, I think I did okay), I didn’t even write a single fic for BTHB, and, to be really honest, I did not manage to keep my love for writing alive the whole time. I was in a really dark place a few times this year, but that drop in Sep-Oct was the worst from a creative standpoint. I feel like I’m mostly out of it now, even if I still have some work to do maintaining it. I’m hopeful for the future in that regard. The only thing I really did accomplish was that I feel positively towards all the fics I wrote; I’m happy and proud of all of them

So what is my goal? Honestly, I feel like every year I have to relearn the lesson of ‘write what you want, have fun, be self-indulgent, fuck expectations, etc.’ and my goal this year is to not have to relearn that again, but to keep that energy and carry it with me for the whole year. I realize I may have to put some effort in there, but I’m okay with that. I don’t know what 2021 has in store, but if I can just keep my passion alive and not fall into that pit again, I’m calling it a win

#kylux #renben #hey I'm not late this year lmao #it's been an interesting one that's for sure #anyway I'm happy with all my fics this year which is good #but I need to keep working at keeping my head in the right space #which will likely take some practice #but I'm off to a good start #and I have good feelings about the future in that regard #so here's to a 2020 full of writing about kylo getting railed to high heaven #and to a 2021 full of the same!#my fic #long post #shut up nerd

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woulddieforperrytheplatypus · 3 years

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ok so i have a hc (two technically) that would explain rodney's hatred of doof (and doof's dislike of monogram): Heinz and Rodney dated in highschool after being best childhood friends, but they broke it off before the graduated and have hated eachother ever since. similarly, doof and monogram dated in college, neither knwoing about the other's job, so when monogram found out he was dating a villain and visa versa, he broke it off completely. just wanted to tell someone this, sorry to bother you

YESSSS MONOGRAM X HEINZ IS MY SHIT

okay now that i’ve gotten that out of the way, here’s an actual semi-coherent response (but not before I tell you that you are not bothering me at all and I live for other people’s headcanons and just general thoughts on the show and I was super excited to see this ask)

it occurred to me midway through the next paragraph that this is all dependent on when Heinz started evil science, and that I can’t really finish writing this without an idea of when that might have happened, so I’m gonna kinda think “out loud” for a second. Absolutely nothing in this paragraph is important if y’all wanna skip it, but I figured I’d throw my thoughts out there anyway because, like, that’s what I do lol. We know he’s been building inators since he was a kid, but that at least his first inator wasn’t evil. We know he wasn’t serious about becoming the ruler of anything during his date with Linda, whenever that happened. We know he’s tried other things, from painting to poetry, before deciding on evil. We know he bought a $15 degree in evil science online, but that he did go to school for it because he had that one professor whose name I can never spell and that I’m too lazy to google. Was he interested in evil when he was in high school? Was Rodney interested in evil in high school? Part of me hopes they weren’t, just because I think it would be hilarious if they dated in high school as average people and then “reconnected” years later through evil science when it wasn’t even an interest they shared when they were together. I’m also interested in the logistics of their childhood friendship, because I absolutely love the idea of young Heinz having at least one person who likes him and understands him and who’s interested in building just like he is, and I have to imagine they both would have been ostracized for their love of building and inventing because Drusselstein is notorious for hating change and inventing is change. But how does that friendship transfer between countries? I can kinda see Rodney also being from Drusselstein, though I almost feel like he would have had to leave when he was younger than 16 because a) if he has an accent (which tbh I can’t tell with that voice lmao), it’s not as pronounced and b) he seems more cultured than Heinz in a way? Like I can’t really think of an example, but he just gives me the vibes of someone who’s been in America since he was younger -- even, like, 13 or 14, which could actually fit with the timeline if Rodney’s a year or two younger than him: Rodney left first, and Heinz was tricked by his family into following him a year or so later. They reconnect in high school and get together then. Idk, I feel like there’s a lot to think about there and I’m definitely gonna give it more thought because this is a really interesting concept. Anyways, side rant over and we’re back to where I was before I got sidetracked and put the side rant on top.

I’m not gonna lie: the idea of Heinz and Rodney dating has never occurred to me before, but now that you’ve said it I am living for it. I mean, there is absolutely no way they started hating each other so passionately without some sort of behind-the-scenes drama, and a lifelong friendship-turned-relationship gone sour would explain so much. I mean, this isn’t just your average breakup. It’s not even your average bad breakup. This sounds more like someone you thought would be a lifelong friend stabbing you in the back, and of course they would never let that go. I do find myself wondering what went wrong, though. They definitely treat each other like they think the other one wronged them, so whatever it was had to be a mutual thing. I’m open to hearing theories if anyone’s got any 👀

I love the idea of Monogram and Heinz dating in college. There’s definitely something going on with them, because I definitely can’t see Monogram paying attention to any other evil scientist as much as he does Heinz. I mean, he assigned his best agent to the guy and everything. I don’t know if Monogram actually went to college (?) because he did that stint at The Academy™ but I can lowkey see Monogram going to The Academy™ and Heinz going to Evil Science School™ and they meet somewhere (maybe The Academy™ sends their recruits to the local college for their pre-reqs and they met during calc class or something idk) and hit it off. I have absolutely no doubt that they would hit it off, either; that scene in Perry the Actorpus where they have a friendly conversation until Heinz accidentally starts saying something stupid comes to mind. They’re both very different kinds of stupid, but they’d complement each other. And now that I think about it, I kinda do hope they met while Monogram was at The Academy™ just because I think the absolute best kind of reveal that Heinz is evil would be him showing up in some capacity at The Academy™ (maybe the evil science majors take a group “field trip” to The Academy™ every year so both the evil science majors and The Academy™ recruits can learn about their natural enemies) and Heinz and Monogram just see each other and they’re like 0_0 Heinz would absolutely be willing to try to work around this (I mean, just look at how he treats Perry. The line between good and evil is very distinct, but he’s more than willing to ignore it) but Monogram would end things immediately, and that would break Heinz’s heart piss Heinz off so much that he would absolutely hold a grudge against Monogram for the rest of eternity, and Monogram would have a special focus on Heinz, too, just because of their history.

tl;dr I am in love with these headcanons and would absolutely be down for hearing more about them if you (or anyone else) has anything to add

#it's 4:00 am and i just spent 45 minutes on this ask for no reason other than i could lol #i should probably go to bed #look i have an ask #pnf #heinz doofenshmirtz #major monogram #rodney #Aloyse Everheart Elizabeth Otto Wolfgang Hypatia Gunther Galen Gary Cooper von Roddenstein #shoutout to tumblr for remembering that whole tag after seeing me type ''aloy'' lmao

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snakedevour · 3 years

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my thoughts on chapter 81 ahead, fellas. it feels like it’s been a while since i analyzed a chapter drop but in my defense they only release once a month and 80.5 didn’t give me a lot of meat to bite into.

nyanyway -- here’s kkg 81. this chapter brings the focus back onto yumeko a little bit, showing us again how she plays, how she thinks, and how she challenges the people around her. basically, for me, this chapter was the whole buffet after several chapters of scraps.

SPOILERS BELOW.

i made a post maybe a week or so ago at this point mentioning that i wanted to talk about how yumeko’s friendliness is “impersonal” despite being genuine and how that feeds into her ( for lack of better words ). and i’m still going to do that and it’ll be in a separate post from this one but this chapter gave me some ammunition in regards to that thought.

the thing that makes yumeko difficult to navigate in terms of interacting with her is that she challenges the conventional definition of “kind” and in a way kind of forces you to delineate between that and “friendly”.

yumeko is a cocktail with two major components:

1. she is friendly 2. she is powerful

and when you have a friendly powerful person it’s easy to fall into the trap tsubomi has here, in which you feel that because you side with someone friendly and powerful you’re inherently under their protection.

and in a lot of storytellings that’d typically be true... but yumeko is awfully atypical. recall tsubomi’s commentary from chapter 63:

so long as we frame “friendly” as something that inherently goes hand-in-hand with “good” i think we set ourselves up to misunderstand yumeko’s personality. yumeko is friendly but she is not altruistic. yumeko does not “save” people; every time that it seems that she has it’s because they “won” it from her -- yumeko has never been benevolent for benevolence’s sake.

by a lot of standard definitions, i’d argue that she’s not even a good person.

it’s really nice to be reminded of that weird layer of nuance. we’re also reminded of something that might have gotten overshadowed by her comparative calmness lately and the housepet drama from the last few chapters --

more than just wantonly putting herself at risk, yumeko is obsessed with simultaneously imposing high antes on other people.

let’s briefly throw all the way back to chapter 16 just to get that in her own words:

i kind of want to say that yumeko has sadomasochistic tendencies but that’s probably for another post another day.

anyway, this takes us back to today and chapter 81, where tsubomi goes on to notice the folly in her own thinking:

paired with her thoughts from chapter 63 this says a lot.

“would yumeko bother helping me if I’m not taking any risk?”

i’m pretty sure the answer is no.

this really just sort of further cements my original opinion that yumeko definitely operates on some sort of metric of “earning” what one has. if you’re interested in my thought piece on that subject it’s right over here.

i really like where tsubomi’s train of thought is going here. up until now we’ve seen yumeko’s cutthroat mentality mostly as applied to herself and an opposing player. we’ve seen her drive the stakes high with yuriko, with sayaka, with miyo and miri and so on.

this is what i mean when i say yumeko’s friendliness has an element of uncanny valley to it. you can argue that we’ve seen yumeko drag people into gambling alongside her ( like itsuki ), but we haven’t really seen it in this kind of light where it’s leveraged against her willingness to help people.

so +1 to chapter 81 for re-highlighting this fact about yumeko.

moving along, tsubomi is having these thoughts in the first place because terano came by and pointed out to her that she’s an “extra”, and per the logistics of the game yumeko only really needs suzui’s cooperation to win. then we cut to this short set-up scene where yumeko tells the gang ( and us ) the plan for this turn:

this gets tsubomi thinking. because yumeko is donating to suzui, she’ll have 0 points which means if tsubomi challenges her, she’ll win and thereby fulfill the requirements of her life plan to “knock either yumeko or terano out of the election”. tsubomi we’ve seen in past games though is still kind of coming into her own individuality, and is very much used to just taking orders. on top of that, she still feels indebted to yumeko for pushing her to play against kiwatari during the debt swap indian poker.

another thing i commented about in the past was the “human” qualities and motivations of the characters. tsubomi is a real highlight of this chapter because she reminds us of that quality too, because terano’s remarks spark what i think is a very organic conflict in her thoughts:

“i don’t want to be a housepet” vs “i don’t want to betray the girl i’m indebted to”

“i want to live as a person” vs “i want to keep a good conscience”

it’s the portrayal of internal struggles like these that make me angy at the sexualization in this series because these really show that it just isn’t needed. kawamoto absolutely knows what he’s writing and it’s not like he’s writing it poorly so its like...what gives.

not to make this about yumeko again but she does seem to get pretty meta here. i’m pretty certain that she knows what tsubomi is thinking here and i’ll also go as far as to suggest that she might have even set up the play this way to test tsubomi’s mettle. i’ll get into that here in a moment though :)

i say yumeko has an idea of what’s going through tsubomi’s mind here just because her question is very telling -- “have you made your decision?” -- yumeko definitely knows that some sort of choice has been imposed onto tsubomi, and tsubomi’s mentioning of her lack of guidance this turn also implies that yumeko is leaving her to fend for herself. which i think is something yumeko will always do. we’ve established that she’s not altruistic in the slightest...i don’t think yumeko is at all interested in people who lack the will to help themselves, regardless of how pitiable their circumstances.

i know suzui is supposed to be the audience-proxy but idk my guys... i think tsubomi is shaping up to be the better conduit through which we see yumeko’s real colors.

also, more of yumeko giving us some insight into her values and how she thinks... but @ naomura why did you draw her doing this. yumeko you look SILLY but ily anyway

“only a choice at the end of agony can move your heart” -- yumeko’s starting to give me vibes of someone who’s apathetic unless the ante is driven wildly high hence why she does it but i need at least one more backstory drop before i speak more on that one. just saying it’d line up with a few things tho

moving on, it follows that tsubomi ultimately decides to challenge yumeko because that’s the logical thing to do if she wants to look out for herself. plus some commentary from terano about how it’s all according to keikaku.

anyway, i really enjoyed this next sequence because it throws back to yumeko even more. it reminds us that while yumeko loves taking on huge risks, that doesn’t mean she plays to lose. it’s been a while since we’ve seen yumeko engage in a setup like this so it was great to see that kawamoto still remember what kind of gambler she is:

i actually really love terano but i do enjoy seeing yumeko consistently trip her up. it really upholds yumeko’s role as a dark horse.

anyway, remember how i said yumeko probably set this play up to see what tsubomi would do? this is where we can circle back to that because we see, in fact, that yumeko did not donate her points to suzui like she said she would.

yumeko is such a convoluted character that you can get caught up on one aspect of her character to the point of forgetting another. in recent chapters we’ve seen her in a supporting role: supporting mary, seemingly helping tsubomi... but thanks chapter 81 for reminding us that yumeko is a gambler before she’s anything else and can and will set up other players. this also kind of raises a mild albeit interesting moral quandary: i think it’s pretty safe to say that this was manipulative on yumeko’s part, but it could also be argued that this is a gamble and she read far enough ahead and just acted accordingly. i think that ambiguity is the point.

and that’s the jist chapter 81, and tbh i really enjoyed it. it felt like i was back in ye olden days of yore where kkg was yumeko’s misadventures. for a while there it felt like they were like “ok we’ve established she’s a really good gambler we must shine the spotlight elsewhere now” -- which is fair, don’t get me wrong. knowing the rest of the -bamis is really important to the plot. it’s just nice to see yumeko back in action proper again 🥺

#the kkg deep dive #kakegurui spoilers #are there typos in this? probably #i'll scan it over again later but my brain cells are fried for now #but 81 was Really Good #the whole buffet #long post /

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bladekindeyewear · 4 years

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Bloggin’ thru new Homestuck^2 bonus, The Influencers part 2. Kinda got my gears ground during part 1, but that largely wasn’t this sideplot’s fault, so I should still be able to enjoy it.

Reminder, bonus update blogging is always light on detail because I don’t wanna spoil all the paid content, but I’ll give the gist of my reactions and go into anything plot or character related that helps understand the main story, as well as giving you a real top-down view of “what happens” so you know what it’s about and whether or not to invest in looking yourself. (And I don’t necessarily have to give you anything that isn’t main-plot-relevant.)

So where are they going to follow the main party? They shouldn’t need to record the funeral I’d assume, because that already would have been televised (and awful for Jane’s PR)... *click*

9/28/2020 - The Influencers, Part 2

TEACHER: Time’s a-ticking. TEACHER: The next plot point is yours to change, if you want it. Don’t you feel it calling to you?

Yeah, just hanging a lampshade on this whole parallel sideplot I guess.

> (==>)

Whatever it is, Imode feels it. A tiny string of relevance spooling out from their belly. They want to follow it.

That’s pretty Lighty and/or Seery. I’ve used that terminology to describe the pull of Light and its “relevance” connotations even since the only fanfic I’ve ever written, back in 2011 during Homestuck’s run, and it’s obvious enough terminology that I think Rose later mentioned it somewhere like in the Epilogues. Are these three kids perhaps going to get a fourth, and become their own session by the end of this like Harry, Vrissy, Tavros and Yiffy might?

They can’t stop picturing their friend, Harry Anderson, arrested or tortured or worse. They’re not sure what there is to be done to stop this chain of events, but they’re sure as shit gonna find out.

(”They” is almost certainly referring to Imode here, not all three, since Imode uses they/them.)

Alright, self-aggrandizing used for good. Show off the sort of thing that Vriska could have accomplished if she actually used her talents for her team for once. (Besides, like, the similar thing she did just recently by making a scene.)

> (==>)

Imode is the first to choose pursuing this path over bootlicking, and the others are sure to follow.

> (==>)

Yup, Avril and Silas follow. (Had to be reminded of ALL of their names, it’s been months since their single named appearance.)

> (==>)

Crockercopters overhead but none taking note yet, just ominous setdressing

> (==>)

IMODE: lemme take a ⏱️ to 😮‍💨 before we figure out where to go next. AVRIL: wait don't you know? IMODE: Huh? AVRIL: we were following YOU this whole time.

Oh, that answers the first question I asked. They have NO clue where they’re going. Let’s see if they luck out and find the clock tower.

IMODE: You 👂 what he said about the next step 📞 to us, same as i did. Don't you feel it pulling at you?

Literal pull? Powers? Future player? --All baseless speculation of course.

SILAS: Woah are you seein’ this.

Vriska’s probably putting on her very public display now. (This is a bonus so I’m skipping lots of banter and arguing.)

> (==>)

Oh, they just saw John flying up to the clock tower in his outfit. And catching sight of him fly is rare celebrity gossip stuff so of course it’d stand out to them, apparently. (Only one of them is athletic apparently, the other two are groaning at the prospect of more running.)

> (==>)

Avril always enjoys running, but there’s something else thumping along to the rhythm of the thuds of his feet and beat of his heart. He’d thought Imode was nuts for feeling it just a minute prior, but now he’s realized he isn’t deadweight, that he hasn’t fucked up someone’s life irrevocably, and it pushes him faster and faster as he tears ass toward the belltower.

(Did we know Avril was he/him before this? Probably but if so I forgot.)

Okay, since we’re getting glimpses into each of their headspaces narratively that BOTH have had some oblique aspect references, I have to at least OPERATE on a guessy assumption that there’s a sort of classpect-for-each-of-them thing going here.

I’ve quoted both those whole paragraphs here... so what do I see? This is going to be a bit tougher because I don’t care as much to remember these characters...

Imode had some Lighty-or-Seery language, and then could not stop picturing bad things happening to Harry, wanting to avert that chain of events. So something of a Seer or Mage would make sense. But given how easily Lighty stuff and the Understanding classes (or at least what we think those are) can be conflated, Mage of Light seems a bit of a premature jump. Heck, I’m only saying Mage because a Seer of Light already occupies a starring role, and because her first act on that feeling was to jump after it herself and tell the others:

IMODE: Stay here and 👢👅 your way into fame if that's what you really want. IMODE: I’m ✈️. Follow me if you’re not 🐔💩.

--leading by example rather than directing the others into battle. Only half-caring if they followed, willing to pursue it herself if necessary. So, potentially more “Active”.

As for Avril... the word “heart” is mentioned there, sure, but the full context is “there’s something else thumping along to the rhythm of the thuds of his feet and beat of his heart”. I’m inclined to think that the rhythm/beat references, especially the even footsteps and heartbeats hitting like a metronome, might be more tied to Time? But if so, I don’t see anything class-related. (Could also be Blood, and him thinking of what he owes in the last sentences could be reinforcing that? Big question marks for now.)

> (==>)

Door to the belltower’s locked. The kids figure John’s forgotten that his son can’t fly.

AVRIL: this is it, this is the thing we can help with! #feelinit #vibes IMODE: OK I'm excited that you believe me now, but what are you gonna even do? IMODE: use your big all-star 💪 to break down the 🚪?

--so they think they can “resolve a missing plot point” by getting the way into the clock tower open? Is this going to be a theme or running joke of the Influencers sideplot, showing plotholes resolved in bonus content like how we finally saw how Gamzee’s body was relocated last time? When I was explicitly mad about that? (This seems like a much smaller one though.)

Apparently in HS^2 proper they remarked that the door SHOULD be locked, but Vriska just opened it anyway and wasn’t surprised it was unlocked, which she would’ve ascribed to her luck -- how the universe just makes way for her. (And we’re literally seeing HOW the “universe” “made way” for her this way, through these Influencer kids. Even though Vriska could have broken down the door in a second and it’s practically meaningless.)

> (==>)

Avril just has the key!

AVRIL: so like my photoshoots are like, #modernfashion #myworkout #urbexp IMODE: Yea, your 📸 are why we’re all in this mess. We know. Get to it. AVRIL: fair. ok well this is the urban exploration part. AVRIL: a lot of the public infrastructure buildings in the kingdom have the same weird, shitty deadbolts on them. AVRIL: its like they were mass-produced for ease of access or something. AVRIL: none of the deep crockergov stuff, but a lot of the kingdom maintenance buildings. AVRIL: so once you swipe one key, you got access to it all. AVRIL: that’s how i get a lot of my hard-to-get shots #tradesecrets #tellnoone

Hhhmmmmm. So what does this tell us about his potential role? Getting places you’re not supposed to is associated with the Thief, Rogue, Bard, and sometimes Knight classes... as well as the Time/Space aspects, or the Void and Breath aspects. A Thief or Rogue of Time could do the trick, and fit with the rhythm paragraph earlier... whereas Space doesn’t have the same rhythm associations even if it is “places” he’s getting into for these shots. And photography, snapshots still in time, is something Dave was also explicitly into. Plus, this exploit he’s showcasing is specifically for older buildings, playing into history/archaeology from an urban perspective.

So, Time is looking like a safer and safer bet for him.

> (==>)

lock click

> (==>)

long-hair swoop, cheer

SILAS: Yeah, I’m tickled a near-disproportionate amount by the unlockin’ of a door, so I’m inclined to believe you were onto somethin’.

Still no real hints about Silas, yet.

AVRIL: ok so. we did it, right? #missioncomplete AVRIL: feels a little anticlimactic #tbh IMODE: idk, I think so? whatever I was feeling doesn't seem so immediate anymore. IMODE: I wonder if-

Okay, that’s some near-confirmation that Imode was LITERALLY FEELING the plot or some such. We’ll probably end the Influencers sidestory eventually with at least solid GUESSES blatantly obvious for their potential Hero Roles or the like.

> (==>)

Ah, Vriska and the kids are coming-- and we get the Silas paragraph(s)! Silas is green-themed with green text, and a session with a Time player has a good chance of having a Space player too, so let’s see if...

Silas doesn’t know what being spotted by the other kids might mean, metaphysically or logistically or legally. She’s not particularly pressed by that sort of thing. But this is a day that’s come with more introspecting than she’s used to having to endure in a year, so she's ready to get moving before it becomes an issue.

As Harry Anderson, Vrissy, Vriska, and Tavros proceed to have this conversation, Silas pushes to catch up with Avril’s pace. She’s not sure where they’re headed, and has no clue what all this means for her. She knows the step she’s taken isn’t one she’ll be able to backtrack from, but she’ll figure that out tomorrow. For now, one foot in front of the other.

That...

I mean there’s a lot of talk of time-FRAMES, from a lazy perspective, but just-pushing-forward-in-the-here-and-now is reasonably Spacey? ...hm. I was excited for the Silas paragraph(s) but I don’t see any immediately-apparent pattern meant for us to discern classpect info here. Maybe a female Page example (since we could use one), propelled along by events without knowing what’s going on at first, too early in her journey to have taken more than her first step up the gradual incline of her long-term potential?

I really don’t know I guess.

Anyway, that’s the end of the bonus upd8! See ya in a while.

#Homestuck #hs2 #Homestuck Liveblog #upd8 #Homestuck^2 #Avril Thorpe #Imode Kurita #silas p beauregard iii #spoiler #spoilers

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kinetic-elaboration · 3 years

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February 8: Mountain Lion Mean Notes

Okay, so I was writing up notes on my Troped Western fic and then I clicked something and it all disappeared! I’m very upset and I hate the idea of starting again but like... I guess that’s what I gotta do :/

Mountain Lion Mean on AO3.

Written for @troped-fanfic-challenge

So as I said in my notes, I watched Hell or High Water on the Sunday the trope document opened and immediately became obsessed, and that was my main inspiration. I saw it and loved it and, like with most things I love, my first thought was how can I do this too?? I didn’t want to do a straight AU of it, because it’s just too good and I don’t want to mess with that kind of perfection, but I knew I wanted a similar mood. I also figured pretty early on that I would try to include a bank robbery.

For the first days after the trope doc opened, I mostly just gathered inspiration and tried to think Western thoughts. In addition to HOHW, my inspiration included:

The Western episode of Charmed

A Western Rock playlist I found on Spotify

This post of southwestern gothic aesthetics

“Ranch Girl” by Maile Meloy (also the inspiration for it is new moon and twilight, which, fun fact, was originally going to be a Western; I didn’t re-read the story but it’s been haunting me since I first read it c. 2001 and is probably a partial inspiration for everything I write)

William Faulkner (especially “A Rose for Emily” and A Light in August) for the “town POV” narration

Sigrid Undset for the floating third-person-POV

The wikipedia article on Westerns, for succinct summaries of the themes of Westerns

The original aesthetic, quoted from my notes: “The vastness of the west, the frontier, a little uncivilized, a little dangerous, tough looking men who don’t talk much, extrajudicial justice, the heat and the desert…“

By the time I sat down to brainstorm, I had a few ideas and a few images already in mind. I wanted to include a bank robbery. I liked the idea of Clarke as a gunslinger and/or purveyor of vigilante justice. I thought I might use Gina as a bartender (this was during the half-moment I thought I might write a Bartender Mechanic fic; obviously neither of these things happened). And I liked the idea of including Murphy as some kinda criminal or unsavory type. The image of Bellamy as a taciturn cowboy came fairly early too.

I was a little uncertain at first if I wanted to do an 1800s western or a neo-western, mostly because I felt like the tropes I was attracted to and the images in my head fit better in the 1800s. But ultimately I settled on neo-western pretty fast, because I thought the imagery and themes would work better in the modern day. Plus I just thought it would be easier tbqh.

My first concern was to not just re-write a shittier HOHW. I was really caught up in the logistics of the bank robbery; including too much of that would necessarily make it a copy of the film, so I tried to keep just the bare bones of the robbery + the general justification (saving the family land). Then I added additional portions of the scheme--not too difficult since I knew I wanted Gunslinger/Vigilante Clarke in there, and I needed some way to show that she takes Justice into her own hands--and additional characters. Again, most notably Clarke, but also Raven and Octavia. The characters have their own backgrounds, personalities, relationships, and motivations, all of which make the story more mine imo. I’m satisfied with the balance of Obvious HOHW Influences and original content.

At some point, I described it to my mom as “Bellamy is Toby, Murphy is Tanner, and Clarke is canon Clarke but in the modern West.” Which I still think is accurate.

Including Clarke, though, and privileging the various relationships among the trio of Bellamy, Clarke, and Murphy, made me feel like I was making an it is new moon and twilight knock off except with Clarke for Raven. I still kind of see it, tbh, in the sense that twilight was itself supposed to be a western--I think it would be fair to say that Mountain Lion Mean IS the fic I set out to write in February 2020--and in the sense that I could have written a different story in the same universe as Mountain Lion Mean that explored the Clarke, Murphy, and Bellamy relationships in a way that is similar to twilight. As is, a lot of that is unsaid and unseen. The two fics have different focuses, so it’s probably only apparent to me just how similar they are. Just like, to me, Mad Women and The Wanheda Tape are the same story even though they have very different aesthetics and plots.

Some excerpts from my notes that I think are fun:

I really want to work with the themes (haha themes) of frontier justice and also the sense that the west is infinite but also small, that nature is hard and impossible to wrangle but that the opportunities are narrow and it’s easy to get trapped in it, the melancholy nature of it, the dichotomy of nature (huge, powerful) versus man (small, struggling against nature and against man). Or some such. Or Murphy just robs banks.

Bellamy owns a struggling ranch. Clarke is a gunslinger (don’t really know if I can use this trope in the current day but possibly?) who doesn’t trust the law. Has a conceal[ed]-carry permit. Is the best shot in three counties. Murphy’s been in and out of prison most of his adult life, mostly for crimes like robbery and assault.

How do they know each other? Possibilities: Murphy knows Bellamy through Octavia (idk why…but I do feel like O should appear, riding a horse) (background Octaven? Just a thought), Bellarke are exes, Murphy used to work on the ranch. Clarke has killed someone (someone Bad) and gotten away with it.

I do like the focus being on these three characters, who have a long history but aren’t currently close, coming together for a mission (to rob a bank) for the benefit of one who is struggling (Bellamy) even thought this is an awful lot like both Hell or High Water and it is new moon and twilight lmao.

I like that mood from HOHW where actually Toby was the most dangerous, and the smartest, and he won—the idea that Bellamy is the taciturn cowboy who’s not good at sharing his feelings but he’s also the mastermind in the end. Is that the twist? You get the impression Vigilante Gunslinger Griffin and Actual Ex-Con Murphy are planning something, but then it turns out to be Bellamy who executes the plan? [Not quite how it turned out lol in that I think it’s decently obvious that Bellamy was a major part of it the whole time but I did try to get some of this in with Octavia in the final scene--to really drive home Bellamy’s importance, as the ring leader, since otherwise one could ask, what does he even do?]

Midway through the planning process I came up with some more images to work from:

B and C out at dusk on the ranch, she’s shooting can, a bit of UST perhaps

M shows up at the bar and there’s an awkward silent entrance—perhaps he’s just out of prison

Murphy or Clarke guns akimbo [I picked Clarke to emphasize that she’s the gunslinger, but I had Murphy shoot out the security cameras to show that they were using his robbery experience]

Bellamy being silent and awkward

At this point, it was just about putting all the pieces together. That’s how I tend to plan Troped fics: I lay out all the pieces I need or want to include and then I figure out the shortest and most efficient distances between them. For example, I knew I needed a bank robbery and for Clarke to administer some vigilante justice--so I use that justice as a way to launder the money. They fake a will for her victim and “give” the money to themselves.

I did worry, and still worry, about the timeline re: the Bellarke marriage and the will because I’m quite sure it doesn’t make sense and doesn’t work. But it also... it doesn’t keep me up at night because the whole point is that it’s a scam!! Worrying about legality in a scam is sorta... lol. What I mean specifically is that I wanted it to be clear that Clarke does not kill Kane FOR this scheme. They use something she already did to their advantage. So she and Bellamy can’t be married at the time Kane is killed. That implies the murder was pre-meditated for the bank robbing purpose. But I’m also fairly sure (and I should know this because I took T&E but like...honestly can’t remember) that the people in the will are counted at the time of death, not the time of probate, or you could like... adopt extra kids or marry or divorce someone to affect the will. Plus all that stuff about simultaneous death etc. etc. Also, on a practical level, if Clarke wasn’t married, Kane wouldn’t have an obvious reason to write her spouse into the will. But I get away with this in my head by saying, first, no one’s going to say the husband that’s standing right there doesn’t count as a husband--the law is the law but it’s implemented by people and they fudge corners all the time. They do what seems to make sense even if you’d lose points for it on a law school exam. And second, the will could have been written with the assumption or hope that Clare would marry. Possibly even, though I don’t say this in the fic exactly, on the condition of marriage--Clarke gets 100% to share 50-50 with her husband if she’s married, 0% if she’s not. Doesn’t really matter. It’s supposed to read as outwardly clever and create Mystery and play with the Exes Aesthetic even if it doesn’t hold up the strictest scrutiny. (JDs don’t @ me.)

I justified including the marriage as a necessity because Kane could possibly leave money to Clarke’s husband but he wouldn’t leave money to some rando. I do stand by that part.

I also decided at some point that I wanted to include Background Octaven but be really subtle about it so it was something else the reader would have to piece together: that Raven has a girlfriend, then that Octavia has a girlfriend but, hey, isn’t Raven a bartender?--and then it comes together in the last scene as we see that their relationship was factored into Bellamy’s plan all along: some of the loot goes directly to Octavia and her partner, officially as payment for Raven’s services, unofficially because Bellamy wants to give O a gift. Anyway. Either it was too obvious or too subtle/boring because no one mentioned it but I thought it was cool lol.

At this point in my planning I basically had everything I needed, so I wrote a quick outline of scenes, as I always do, to see how it would flow scene to scene and if I had a place to put all the necessary plot info. I also ended up doing “what I need from this scene” lists for each scene so that I knew what I had to have on my mind to include before I sat down to write each one.

The actual writing was done over 3 days and fairly easily and quickly. I had a lot of fun not just with planning but with the actual process of creation. I think it’s because I was just honestly excited to be in this universe and play with this aesthetic.

Not to blow my own horn here but some parts that I was particularly pleased with were:

“Arkadia hasn’t seen a drop of rain in thirty-two days. The asphalt on the highway shimmers with heat; the air crackles with heat; the heat rises, stifling and strong, from the parched dirt and the cracks in the pavement.” Like I’m sorry but that’s a good image, I like that a lot. Whenever I felt discouraged, I just read that again and felt better.

The description of past Bellarke because boy howdy do I not care to write romance anymore but that was fun. I thought it was hot.

Transitioning Murphy laughing until the coyotes can hear into Bellamy hearing coyotes at night into Bellamy still hearing them during the day. I don’t know if it worked quite like I wanted to but in my head that is a very Cinematic transition, okay? I also like that even though Clarke and Murphy aren’t literally riding off together in that scene, for the reader, they are leaving the narrative never to be seen again. So they get their Dramatic Exit.

Octavia’s explication of the Theme and Bellamy’s possible motivations. I’m pretty proud of myself for actually having a theme and I think I did a good job of explaining it without being too heavy-handed. I also think it was perhaps risky to end with the POV of Octavia, a character who’s barely been in the fic before the last scene, but ultimately that decision felt right to me and I think it had a good flow, a nice mellow exit from the narrative.

What I didn’t like as much was a lot of the first scene. I think it has some great bits but it was the most re-worked part of the fic, and there are still some paragraphs and phrases that I feel are a little stiff. For example, this is a paragraph that I cut entirely:

Diyoza was sure the Griffin daughter did the deed back in January and she's sure about it still. She even gives a quote to the Sun-Times about it, despite her troubles with Green. But she had no proof then, not even a body to justify a murder charge, and she has little proof now. So no one believes the investigation will come to anything.

As you can see, it gives no new information. There were other sentences and phrases that weren’t doing work but were interrupting the flow, which also got cut, but I’m still not sure that the flow is perfect in the final version.

Also displeased that I edited out a * from the version on AO3, thus letting two scenes run together. How embarrassing!!! It’s fixed now though.

Overall though I’m so pleased! I love this fic and I love that I can love things again. This year has already been so hard, just like being battered again and again by waves of a storm, and it’s only 5 weeks in but this experience was so unabashedly good and I’m so grateful for it.

#the year 2021 #2021: writing bts #mountain lion mean #troped

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jesslivesau · 3 years

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jess au @iloveeverythingwaytoomuch

pre show jess: doesn't know anything except that sam told her some fucked up shit and she didn't really believe him much like amelia didn't believe jimmy but what's clear to her is that sam's upbringing was deeply fucked up in what might've been some kind of apocalypse doomsday cult and she can say "sam, it wasn't real" as much as she can til she's blue in the face but it isn't going to change the fact that sam is Deeply Fucked Up by Shit. and it upsets her and confuses her but he does a good job of setting it aside or knowing when to give in and he's such a sweet and Loving Dude otherwise so she just files it away in her bf trauma bank and keeps cheering him on

s1 jess: your bf's CRAZY brother shows up says he needs help finding your bf's CRAZY dad who may or may not have been part of a doomsday cult and you say, bitch i watched the heaven's gate documentary there is NO WAY i'm letting you leave with him, but he's not gonna Stay cuz he insists it's just for one night (and his brother DOES seem relatively stable, like, as a person), so jess insists she'll go too. while she's in the back seat sam tells dean he told her everything dean's like lol. sure. you believe in ghosts, sweetheart? and jess is like no but i do believe that i'll kick your ass if we don't get home in time for sam's interview tomorrow morning. and then the whole white woman thing happens and she's like oh fuck it's REAL but they DO GO HOME and instead of jess dying on the ceiling there's like idk ghost mary on the ceiling or some shit and they NARROWLY escape the fire together andddd idk they can't go back to stanford cuz it's not safe and their apartment complex literally went up in flames. there’s a more complex reason here but idk what it is. maybe it was brady (demon brady) who died or something IDK LISTEN ITS JUST AN AU

anyway all of season 1 when they’re trying to track down john jess is the voice of reason asking why do they need john in the first place? And eventually sam is like listen we don’t need HIM but if he’s got research on where yellow eyes is, that’s what we need. and dean is mad about that and he’s mad at jess and they bicker like crazy. and sam sleeps on the floor because dean is like dude cmon. don’t make me sleep in the same room as you and your gf together. maybe meg gets replaced by meg possessing jess, and she doesn’t get thrown out the window so when they exorcise her she just needs a hospital and then she’ll be ok. and that would explain why she’s in the hospital and not there for the finale, but can meet up with sam & john & dean in the hospital after

s2 jess: sam is so consumed by grief and fear that jess is actually the first one to notice that dean’s spirit might still be still Around. i’m imagining a scene where sam is asleep next to dean’s bed and jess is awake, and she slowly looks around towards dean and you see ghost!dean Connecting with her for the first time

obviously, all the grief episodes keep happening. maybe jess got seriously hurt as well tbh so she goes back to her parents house to recover; there’s an episode where the boys go meet her parents and dean and sam’s Daddy Issues come out in full force. eventually jess is back and kicking ass and slowly getting along more with dean, partially perhaps because of dean’s Grief Response to john’s death, which is that all the anger and hate comes bubbling up, and jess is like i don’t fucking know this dude, but from what sam’s told me, i hate him, which is not something that sam is in a position to Deal With right now. things proceed pretty much along the course

i am considering now if jess could also be a special child. she also has some kind of psychic abilities but i’d have to choose something cool for her. anyway if she IS then that gets her in the town with sam in all hell breaks loose which i think is the best place for her during that arc? i know all the other special children supposedly had to die but maybe her psychic power was to go inviisble or something lmfao i don’t fucking know. anyway dean has his sad monologue but jess either (a) fully shuts down or (b) just goes STRAIGHT to hunt down whatever the fuck his name is. jake? leverage man? that would be dope actually. and then actually dean, sam, bobby, and ellen actually meet her at the hell’s gate

s3 jess: truly does not understand why they’re hunting. gets into arguments with the boys all the time about how this is pointless, if you’re not gonna try and save yourself then why can’t you just put it down and let yourself have this year?? and dean’s a little bit like you know what jessica that makes a lot of damn sense. but it makes sam mad and they argue a lot about it and jess probably takes off halfway through the season. maybe after malleus maleficarum? partly cuz that’s the ep where ruby more or less becomes part of the team and also when she confirms that she can’t save dean from hell. and i just feel like jess would be like i cannot.... Sit Here.... and watch you both drive yourself into the ground. dean, if you’re gonna die, sam’s coming after you. you knew that. you just didn’t want him to go first.

maybe dean hits her lmfao and sam screams at him for it and jess just Walks Away, tearfully

s4 jess: so jess bailed midway through s3, but when dean wakes up and starts making calls in that phonebooth, he calls bobby and bobby hangs up, so he calls jess. and she comes and gets him.

jess and sam are obviously not together anymore, but jess is totally civil with sam and even with ruby. she’s like we can work together, it’s fine, whatever. and this is the season where dean and jess really bond and become a good Team. and cas is just usually confused why jess is Around but eventually gets used to her. i’ve toyed with jess being jewish which would lend a good and also funny perspective to all the heaven and hell stuff

jess heard about hell first from dean, but not the specifics of the stuff that dean told sam, not until after on the head of a pin. she’s their Lore Expert on seals and is trying to identify as many of them as possible so they can put in place safeguards, and maybe that bumps her up against angel priorities for an episode. maybe we get an episode where cas has to Threaten her 00 and he can say something like sam and dean are important..... you are not. remember that. and then [flappy wings vanish]

uhhhh jess’s siren in the siren episode....... is just like a carbon copy of sam lmfao. which is extremely funny and sam and jess will both kind of awkwardly clear their throats and not address that. i guess jess is just fucking stuck with bobby during the finale because the point of her presence is that she’s so USELESS to both demons and angels

s5 jess: i’d probably add in an early episode where her parents are killed, probably by demons because the demons know they can’t touch the winchesters due to angel shit but they can fuck up jess as much as they want. then when sam and dean temporarily split up jess would go with dean cuz she’s a hunter now and has nowhere else to go and it doesn’t feel right to just sit around with sam. or maybe she also leaves and splits up and doesn’t stick with dean cuz she’s processing her own traumatic shit. at any rate, early in the season there’s a moment where sam is Gone and dean and jess are drinking together and talking about their feelings and they have a moment where they gaze at each other in the eyes and almost lean towards each other.... then jess goes you know what? this is fucking weird and dean is like oh thank god you said that absolutely this is too weird

in The End, it’s revealed that jess was killed and no one will tell dean more information or talk about her until he finds out that she was pregnant when she was killed (presumably with sammifer’s baby)

in changing channels they get put into a telenovela and sam and jess have an tearful emotionally charged confession scene in spanish. this is about when sam and jess finally get back together [cue cheering]

in the chuck eps it’s revealed chuck rewrote it so that jess died on the ceiling in the first book cuz he was like “i just didn’t think it made sense for her to be alive! it was literary symmetry that’s all!”

in sam, interrupted when sam is all high on meds that’s when he says lots of kooky sweet shit to jess about wanting to MARRY her and have a FAMILY together and it’s sweet and also dean throws up in his mouth a little bit having to hear it

in my bloody valentine the thing that jess is hungry for is Family but i do not know the logistics of how

in dark side of the moon jess does die with the boys but it takes a while to find her, tho they eventually do in one of sam’s favorite memories (probably from the first time they met or something). she’s like what the fuck i’m jewish

no, i have no clue how she factors into swan song. she just does, ok. lucifer can snap her neck along with bobby’s

s6 jess: she tried to check in with dean occasionally at the braedens, and actually had dinner with them once but started checking in less and less as the year went on, and it turns out she knew that sam was back and she’d been hunting with him + the campbells and a couple things

when dean finds out he is truly FURIOUS, but jess is like dean i saw you with lisa and ben! i saw you getting better! i saw you happy, i saw you ok, and hell i’ve only known you since you showed up in palo alto five years ago but it was the most at peace i’ve ever seen you, and i couldn’t take that away from you, and neither could sam.

she’s also like yes, dean, he’s different, he’s colder, it makes me sad but who was the one who put up with YOU when you were spiralling after your dad’s death? or when you were all buttoned up after you came back from hell? he did! so show him a god damn OUNCE of empathy, would you!

and when they find out he’s soulless jess is like. hm. and dean is like i TOLD you there was something wrong with him!!! and jess is like i mean.... yeah....... and maybe i didn’t really want to admit it... cuz.... the sex was So good.........

[soulless sam winks at her]

anyway, s6 happens the way it happens and that’s fine

s7: the only important thing that happens in s7 is that Season Seven, It’s Time For a Wedding! is actually about some sort of monster and the only way to kill it is to cast a spell but the spell must be cast by “two warriors joined before god” which means married and cas is awkward about it cuz he doesn’t want to Presume Anything

and the whole episode is lots of sam and jess being like “i mean, of course, if you want to..... .like, but if you DON’T, that’s also totally fine, of course.... you know.... whatever you’re comfortable with” until finally they’re in the final battle and cas has to marry them the way barbossa does for will and elizabeth in potc and when dean is pinned against the wall by the monster he goes “DAMMIT JESS WILL YOU KISS MY BROTHER ALREADY” and then sam dips jess in a kiss and the monster is instantly obliterated [heart eyes]

i truly genuinely do not remember anything that happens in s7. anyway jess and sam are married now

s8: sam was with jess the whole year dean was in purgatory. they were struggling to get back to normal life after everything. dean is still fucking mad that sam didn’t go looking for him. i assume everything else goes pretty much according to whatever the fuck happened in s8 except jess at one point has to go to bat for benny cuz sam for some reason hates him so much

i’ve been toying with the idea of jess doing the trials not sam but i mean how can i take that away from my Boy

s9: i do not know anything that happened in this season ):

s10: see above

s11: see above

s12: now i never watched s12, but in this au there is no lucifer’s son jack. instead jess gets pregnant midway through the season; cas finds out first because he can sense it and he’s like why does it feel like there’s an extra being in the bunker, and then he spills to dean cuz he can’t keep a secret, and then dean is like “oh shit what are you gonna do” and jess is like well!!!! sam and i.... talked about this. we were.....open to the possibility. and dean is like wtf how could u possibly bring a child into this world that’s fucked up adn cas is like [wipes tear] that’s beautiful

anyway when they come back from some kind of hunt (probably something that involved claire) and sam and jess are in the bunker, sam goes “jess, seeing claire, seeing jody and the girls.... it makes me think.... i wanna have a family with you” and jess hugs him and then cas walks into the bunker with dean and is like “oh, have you told him about the baby?” and everyone SCREAMS at him

and cas uses his annual miracle allowance to just reverse time about 30 seconds so when he enters the bunker he just goes “i have nothing to say” and Fucking Leaves

the baby is born in the back of the impala in the s12 finale, on the way to the hospital. dean is devastated. he’ll have to reupholster the WHOLE THING. sam accidentally names the baby john but they don’t want to tell dean that so they decide to call him jack.

s13-15 gets to be mostly about how cute it is to have a wittle baby in the bunker. cas is the best babysitter because he loves babies and is very powerful so he can protect him. the occultum nonsense in s15 can be about finding a Safe Place for baby jack, no matter what happens to the rest of the world. sam tells jess, you go with him, you’ll be safe there. dean tells sam, you go with them, you’ll be safe there. all of that good good cute family stuff. was it the best idea to have a baby in the middle of constant apocalypses? maybe not, but like, they are ALWAYS in constant apocalypses, so at some point you just have to bite the bullet

anyway. please clap

#au

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proudxkunoichi · 4 years

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kibaino, inosai (saiino? idk.), shikaino

KibaIno

vomit / don’t ship / okay / cute / adorable / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying / i will ship them in hell

I can see Kiba having a crush on Ino but not vice versa. A one-night stand, messing around for a bit. Nothing more than that, however. They are better off as friends. There'd be too much arguing involved here while their personalities clash horribly for a proper relationship.

SaiIno

vomit / don’t ship / okay / cute / adorable / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying / i will ship them in hell

I already answered this.

ShikaIno

vomit / don’t ship / okay / cute / adorable / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying / i will ship them in hell

I won't call it perfect or flawless because there is no such thing as a perfect ship or perfect relationship. Each one has its own flaws and struggles. Anyway, everyone who follows me most likely knows how much I love them. If you nonny had yet to find out, then here it is. (and if you know but still chose to ask as to give me a chance to rant about them...you are a sweetheart ^^)

*cracks knuckles*

I could write a book on this subject but I will try my best to be brief. ShikaIno is the closest pair to Yin & Yang, meaning harmony, balance. The feminine and the masculine, heaven and earth, heart and mind, spiritual and physical energy, etc. (Another ship that comes close is SasuNaru but we won't tackle them here). Their jutsu work in sink together. There is lots of trust and deep respect between the two of them, the kind that it's downright intimate. Ino is, canonically, one of the only people shown to know what Shikamaru is thinking and react accordingly before he actually voiced it (and yes, without going inside his mind). He is shown to be concerned about her multiple times in Part 1 and Part 2. In turn, Ino is Shikamaru's biggest supporter. She has been shown praising him, cheering for him, etc. He knows her better than anyone else, too. If you recall the Forest of Death episode where Sakura fights to protect Naruto and Sasuke, it was Shikamaru (the lazy 'coward') who actively chose to fight someone's else battle, for Ino. He knew Ino still cared about Sakura even if the girls were no longer friends. He talked Ino into making the right call and stopped Chouji when he wanted to flee the scene. I could go on and on about their interactions in Part 1, truth be told. Watching the anime, I was almost 100% certain Kishi would have them as endgame. I still think he wanted to, but for the sake of logistics concerning the Ino-Shika-Cho dynamic as well as ShikaTema's gaining popularity...he refrained from doing so. The first could have been easily solved, but I won't get into that. Shikamaru and Ino growing even closer after the war isn't far fetched at all. They know the same loss and pain. Overall, I think they would have made for a great ship and canon couple. He'd remind her to slow down from time to time while she would provide that motivational push for him. And vice versa, also. It's interesting how they grow a little into each other's opposite traits as the series unfolds and they reach adulthood, tbh.

Alright, I'm stopping here before I bore you guys to death.

#[ooc ask; answered]#thank you for sending!#and i'm sorry for replying late #and for how much i wrote #*hides in shame*

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lizzybeth1986 · 5 years

Text

Quick Thoughts on Is This The Real Life or Is This Just A Very Bizarre Fantasy?

• Here are the tags to block if you don't want to see this post on your dash: #long post, #trh quick thoughts, #trh qts, #trh qt reblogs.

• It's...Chapter 10. Often known as the midpoint. I know TRR isn't exactly the most nuanced series out there, but you know what used to happen by midpoints here? Important plot stuff that had buildup and development prior to it happening.

• Funny enough all three chapter 10s so far had something to do with Constantine! Book 1's had him announce he was stepping down and making Liam king, Book 2 had the reveal that the conspiracy against the MC was his idea. And then he actually dies in Book 3 Chapter 10. Now that he's no more, I guess they brought back another asshole dad to take his place.

• PB if you were really in a mood to bring back Bertrand's dad the least you could have done was build it up properly. You had an entire freaking chapter to at least build up on the Beaumont family relationships and issues! Yet all we see is that motorcycle with a hint that never fully gets told and very little besides that.

• Like, the narrative usually takes soooo much time to build everything properly, right? With chapters and chapters of hints? Look at all these things that you built up over chapters and sometimes over books: Liam's issues with his dad...The whereabouts of Savannah...Drake's connection to Bastien...Drake's mom's ranch...Drake's special relationship with his dad...Drake's duel...Drake's secret wedding...oh.

• Screenshots:

Hana: The Abhirio YouTube channel

Drake: @thefirstcourtesan and the BizzysChoices YouTube channel

Maxwell: @itsbrindleybinch

Title: The Beaumont Bachelor Bash

Alternative Title: Proof That Drake Is Undoubtedly Leona's Nephew. Even When He's Trying To Be Nice.

• Now Playing As Bertrand.

Wh - what...?

Okay but this is probably a tiny section and then my MC will come and save the day, right? Right?? I mean it's happened before (one of the most recent times we got a Bertrand PoV was in a Chapter 10, in fact!)

• ...how the hell did a motorcycle fit inside THAT BOX?

• I know, I know. It's mentioned time and again that the package is huuuuge. But that's...not the kind of packaging I'd be expecting for something that large. It wouldn't be SQUARE, at least.

• Okay wait. What was Maxwell panicking and stress-dancing about again? Bertrand isn't cottoning on to this plan as quickly as Maxwell/the LI was implying in that text.

• Okay wait so their great plan for the BBBB was...Bertrand putting away his cutlery and..."roughin' it"? Aren't bachelor/ette parties supposed to be catered to the guest of honour's needs?

Or is "something you want" only meant for Savannah? Because Hana actually read up and did research and tried to cater the entire party to whatever Savannah liked - not drag her along for something that wasn't her thing with "expand your horizons!" as an excuse.

• Like me, Bertrand doesn't fully trust his brother-in-law's motives.

• Wait what.

.• Bertrand is getting a new outfit. Oh he's wearing it already. Okay good. Must be free!

•

WHAT. WHAT. ARE YOU TELLING ME I'M NOT SEEING ESTHER FOR THE REST OF THIS CHAPTER

• I am NOT buying Bertrand new clothes. I didn't buy any last book, and I'm not going to start buying them now. Even if I didn't buy him the swanky maroon sweater last book he somehow wound up wearing it anyway in the finale. I'm sure he'll survive and they'll probably let him wear it for free some other time lol.

• Drake leads the boys to a nearby river, hoping to catch some fish that they can cook for dinner later.

• Bertrand gets...a dilapidated fishing pole. While everyone has prepared enough to get their own, perfectly alright ones. Drake is truly from Leona's bloodline, giving Bertrand stuff that'll make his task difficult (remember how she gave Bertrand a really rough horse to the country fair?). "I just wanted you to believe in yourself", my ass. You're doing this for your own entertainment.

• Also wasn't Maxwell organizing this party? Why does the end result look so much like Drake's idea? Or maybe the boys are splitting the activities between each other or something idk.

•

• That's a...puffer fish?

• The funniest option is the choose to grab Drake because Bertrand calls him "the Aggressively Rustic Drake" haha. It means of course that Bertrand will not get a fish but that's okay, Drake and Liam catch more than enough for dinner.

• But if Bertrand DOES catch that big fish his chest is all puffed out in pride and he notices no one else caught a fish as big as his 😄

• You can TELL Liam chose the next activity, because it's so aggressively Cordonian 😂 You need to shoot an apple with a weapon (preferably a bow and arrow, but the game offers you a rifle and an ornate gun as well).

• Of course I went ahead and shot Drake with a rubber bullet. Sorry Bertrand but I'm sure you can get your Knight-Marksmanship and Honorary Defender of the Realm award in a kinder person's playthrough 😅

• It's a nice scene, quite reminiscent of the first half of Maxwell's armoury scene last book, which involves Maxwell and the MC playing the same game.

• Now that we're done with the apples, it's time to bring out the bubbly!

• "This is not my bachelor party," says Drake when a surprised Liam asks him about why there's no whiskey. Coulda fooled me dude I've never heard of people giving the groom a dilapidated fishing pole to fish with for that kind of thing. I mean like more than 90% of this entire plan seems to cater to your tastes more than his.

• Bertrand (about the bubbly): This is from an excellent region of France!

Maxwell: Which one?

Bertrand: ...Champagne.

😂

• It's now night, so time for some...idk heartfelt man-talk or something.

•

It starts out with the main LI speaking about Bertrand and Savannah's relationship, praising them for how far they've come and there is some emphasis on the fact that they have Bartie. This leads the LI in question (if they're there) to talk candidly about their relationship with the MC and their sadness that they aren't pregnant yet.

- Liam: Speaks of how amazing the MC is and wonders if he's putting her through too much pressure on his Queen with the expectations of an heir.

- Drake: Very similar to Liam's, but this time Liam apologizes for forcing them into this kind of pressure and promises to withdraw it if that's what they want. (Liam will allow it, the narrative won't!)

- Hana: Since neither of the women are there, the conversation goes straight into Liam wondering if he did the wrong thing by placing that much pressure on them, and Bertrand reassuring him that both are phenomenal women and any child they bring up will be a worthy successor to the throne.

- Maxwell: From what @itsbrindleybinch was telling me, there's no discussion about Liam's offer or the pressure from him! The conversation is more centered around his fear that he might screw up in parenting...to which his brother has some of the best responses:

Istg when the writers really allow for those two to blossom on their own, the Brothers Beaumont dynamic is fantastic. I loved both responses from Bertrand.

I'm still wondering why there isn't much from Liam about the pressure he's placing on them, though! I mean, Maxwell and his wife are put under the same amounts of pressure so you'd expect Liam to speak up there too, right? (correct me if I'm wrong, because I can't find a full playthrough of Maxwell's route anywhere).

• The discussion slowly progresses into one about Bertrand's love for Savannah and not knowing how to show it properly to her...to which Drake responds that Bertrand needs to SHOW what he feels and maybe do a big dramatic gesture like the ones you see in romcoms (racing through an airport to confess your love, or confessing it while standing in the rain)...lmao I love how big gestures are something Savannah wants for herself but somehow she can't do the smallest things to help Bertrand feel more comfortable in her own damn home.

• Also I need to laugh at how desperately the writers are now trying to show us how "open minded" Drake is LMAO. TRR Drake looked down on his nose on practically all things not macho (including authentic Chinese food and pink cakes) and now they're making it sound like he's a romcom fan and willing to experiment with a tutu.

• Not buying that serenading scene. I didn't handhold Bertrand into telling Savannah about the Beaumont finances, nor did I handhold him into proposing. He did pretty okay without my help so far.

• The serenading scene has two main components (besides the logistics of communicating and then climbing up to her window) - telling Savannah his feelings and then singing to her. The first main options include suggestions from the boys:

Liam: Very sweet and romantic, with the kind of flowery language you would expect from Liam, and that Bertrand feels so comfortable with that he smiles as he says the words.

Drake: Very much, "I was an idiot but now I've come to my senses and I'm the luckiest man ever because of you" which...sure I can put it down to bias for his sister but now it just annoys me when I hear this. Esp during a time when he's claiming he actually likes Bertrand now.

Maxwell: Is just so fucking funny 😂

Bertrand: Savannah, I'm here because you're my...boo???

Maxwell: Trust me! Keep going!

Bertrand: Ahem. You are my boo, and I'm your...okay I'm not going to say that.

Savannah: What are you saying???

• For actually serenading her with a song you can either choose to go sweet and romantic, or you go "sexy", which tbh seems to be the funnier option because most of it is Bertrand muttering MmmMMmMmmm in place of all the sexy parts. Which is funny considering he and Savannah conceived a child atop an office desk of all places way before any of us even got to KISS our LIs 🤣

• Savannah is happy, Bertrand is happy, the boys are all back in the camp where they'll be spending the night. There's a tiny bit of "foreshadowing" in the ensuing conversation since Barthelemy is mentioned, but very much in a "Dad would be proud of you" way. I put that word "foreshadowing" in quotes coz there is very little it gives us, as opposed to how other things that have received foreshadowing were built up.

• Uh oh. BEAR ATTACK. From Kenna's pet-bear-from-Aurelia's descendant. Who somehow ended up in the woods in Texas 😂

• Drake tries to distract the bear, and Bertrand can either join him or go with Liam and Maxwell who are leading the way to an alternative location.

• We're out in the wilderness somewhere, and getting back to our tents is a diamond option. It's a fun diamond option though, and it doesn't involve me doing any unnecessary matchmaking.

• Liam is the strategist who makes a battle plan. Why don't I get to see him do these kind of things in his actual job PB!! Drake "knows the most woodcraft" and will therefore make a good scout, both he and Liam can draw the bear away, and Maxwell's hitherto-unseen present is now their secret weapon. Bertrand isn't sure about this plan but goes along with it anyway.

• Everything goes as per plan, and Maxwell unleashes the "secret weapon": Bertrand's beloved Cavilieri Novanta 9S motorbike. There's a small hint about him having to perhaps give it away or sell it when his father, well, did whatever he did, and Maxwell somehow traced it and got it back. I'm kinda certain that bike may feature in Bertrand's flashback if he's having one next chapter. Bertrand is emotional AND ecstatic, learning again to control his bike and to enjoy being on it.

• The best part of the bear scene, is when he uses his Duke of Ramsford voice and gives the bear the ole what-for 😂

(Bottom four screenshots from BizzysChoices' YouTube channel!)

• Even the bear could not withstand the severe tongue lashing LMAO. Bertrand has the option of ending this...um...verbal duel by telling his furry opponent to tell his children he has been bested by a Beaumont.

• The bear slumps back home in shame, but Bertrand is worried about what other tests Drake has in store. 'Tests?' Drake says innocently.

•

You're forgetting the part where you constantly blamed Bertrand for everything, knowing full well your sister made her fair share of mistakes. Or the part where you pretty much sabotaged an investigation just to stroke your ego about Bertrand getting her pregnant. Or the part where you repeatedly made it clear that you thought he didn't deserve Savannah. Or the part where you made him cluck like a chicken just before he proposed, just so you could have your moment to gloat. Or the part where you would shoot looks at Bertrand if he even so much as hinted your sister wasn't perfect. Or the part where your aunt kept making snide remarks about him, disrespected him, and gave him a rough horse, while you and your mother and your sister stood by and watched. And NOW you claim that the only person doubting Bertrand is BERTRAND?

Yeah. Well...tldr:

• My gosh. The amount of retconning happening here is giving me a headache.

• Like...I like that Drake can be nicer to Bertrand now and that most of the tension is gone. But let's not act like Drake wasn't knowingly adding fuel to the fire before??

• Anyway, the boys tell Bertrand they are proud of him and proceed to sleep in their tents or wherever they've chosen to sleep for the night.

• PB gives Liam the very, very rare chance to remind Drake that he grew up in a palace. Doesn't mean much, but I'm fairly happy.

• FINALLY. Esther's home and I can finally play as her again!

• If you bought the serenading scene, there are a couple extra lines showing Savannah and Bertrand looking super super happy.

• There's an old man at the door.

• BARTHELEMY???

• Neither of his sons even look like him. And it reads as if Bertrand is less surprised about the possibility that Barthelemy is alive than Maxwell is. What's going on.

General Thoughts:

• Alright, so it looks like this week we will be exploring the Beaumont family history, looking into why Bertrand lost his zest for life and ended up taking care of the estate when all this time his father was actually alive, and how the Beaumonts wound up so poor. There had better be a substantial amount of Maxwell because he's not been getting a lot of attention this book.

• I'm wondering if Barthelemy's return will cause Bertrand and Maxwell's insecurities to rise again, and we'll probably need to help them through that or something.

• Looks like the next chapter might have a young!Maxwell scene or Maxwell's first diamond scene, or both? Idk. I can't say for sure because I don't exactly trust the team on these things.

• There were...elements of the chapter that were good, I'll give it that. Bertrand's got an interesting narrative voice. You can tell it's him by the way he uses titles, by the way he speaks when he is proud of something he has achieved, the language itself that is heavy in its bearing. The scenes were fun from what I've seen. The bonding was good. Problem was...in a better book this wouldn't have been so irritating and such a sign of how not into the most important things about this book the team is.

• Since they had the time and the ideas, why the hell was the buildup to this reveal so flimsy and half-baked? I mean if you're going to give Bertrand an entire freaking chapter, shouldn't you have been using at least that space to have Bertrand speak a little more about Barthelemy? Or build it up earlier? All this time we'd had to deal with Savannah's griping and complaining and Leona's snide remarks, we could have spent learning from Maxwell a little about his family.

• Usually buildup to a lot of these things happen through hints over chapters. But this? Little to none. Maybe like two half-sentences said just before the reveal. It's all kinds of shitty, and it's what happens when the most important Beaumont is a Walker.

• I'm also pretty surprised Liam doesn't get to apologize to Maxwell the way he does to Drake about the royal heir thing.

• So the Walker Ranch chapters started around Chapter 6, and might possibly end around Chapter 12 (with a detour to Auvernal around Chapter 9). That's 5 whole chapters + one more to tour the States itself.

• I know the original idea was to do an epilogue book revolving around the Walker ranch, so there's obviously a lot more clarity in those chapters than in the others. But that is still no excuse. If they were going to change track they should have been doing it properly. There's no excuse for this kind of selective laziness especially when it's been manifested countless times before.

• I also find the whole idea of revolving the epilogue book still pretty problematic. At the core of it that would be more of Drake and his family (which was already happening honestly) and it would mean they are absolutely front and center of everything. If the original idea was to focus fully on the Walkers...yikes.

• Yeah honestly, this chapter was pretty iffy for me. And I'm not exactly very enthusiastic about writing for it, or playing the next chapter.

• Also! For those who didn't see it, this past week I'd been working on an essay about the treatment for Kiara and Penelope in TRR Book 3, and it's here below in case you haven't read it and you want to!

To Be Not Heard: Kiara, Penelope and the Question of Validation.

• Alright! On to the next chapter.

If you like it and want to discuss it, I'd be only too happy to read your comments! 😀

#long post #the royal heir #trh quick thoughts #trh qts #bertrand beaumont #maxwell beaumont #king liam #drake walker

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bthump · 5 years

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watching jojo's bizarre adventure anime adaptation and seeing how much the anime team fixed araki (the mangaka)'s bad writing makes me rlly wish that if berserk gets a proper anime adaptation whoever does it will do the same with miura's writing (and some of his art too tbh). like for example for all their faults the berserk movies did improve casca's character. what are your wants for a potential full berserk anime adaptation? (also let's hope that this is the year we finally get one 🤞)

I never finished JJBA or watched the anime so idk, but I’m curious how much they changed. Like were there big changes to the plot, or was it mostly just little minor changes to smooth over some flaws?

ty for asking, and I apologize in advance for how long this got lol.

tbh I think my ideal, if not realistic, Berserk adaptation is one that just goes ‘fuck it’ and throws out most of the story lol. Starts with Black Swordsman, ends with Femto lowering his hand and letting Guts escape - well more specifically, on this panel:

Like that is a perfect final shot imho.

(Also I might mirror it with the opening shot. Like I wouldn’t open on Guts fucking an apostle lmao, I don’t actually dislike that opening but it doesn’t fit this theoretical adaption. So how about we open on a long shot of Black Swordsman Guts surrounded by the ghosts he’s fighting, that mimics this?)

Ooh I might also… I might stick the Lost Children arc in between Snake Man and Count Slug. Ugggh there are some logistical issues to untangle there, but I really, really want Jill/Rosine Guts/Griffith parallels, and I want ghosts taunting Guts about becoming a monster like his friend. Subtlety is for cowards. Oh except we wouldn’t’ve seen Femto yet so that wouldn’t work. Well, “like him” then instead of “like your friend.” There now it’s foreshadowing 2 ways.

the climax of the story is the moment of sacrifice because there’s no Eclipse rape, Casca dies shortly after Judeau, and Guts’ horror at being sacrificed by Griffith is the emotional low point. Potentially no gtsca either if I can figure out a way to incorporate Guts’ stupid dream speech somewhere else. Maybe it can be a flashback during the Wyald fight, which I’d keep incidentally, sans attempted rape, w/ Guts talking to Erica. Actually yeah that would be perfect and immediately tie Guts’ “dream” of fighting stronger and stronger enemies with fighting monsters lol, meaning I could bypass Guts’ post Eclipse war declaration that draws that comparison more explicitly.

Boom, Berserk is now a nice little self-contained tragic story about two dudes each becoming solitary monsters because they abandoned each other for abstract dreams, and threw aside the potential for true emotional healing (relationships) for shallow coping mechanisms (swords/dreams). Uhhh, also Puck is cut. Sorry Puck, ilu but you’re a ray of hope that ruins the vibe here.

And finally since this is my ideal adaptation, the subtext between Guts and Griffith is text. They don’t actually fuck or kiss, because that would avert the Eclipse, but… hm how do you make it clear that they want to fuck but are too repressed to do it and that’s what ruins everything? Okay well Griffith’s torture chamber monologue includes “love” a la the anime dub, and maybe “desire” or “need” to completely remove that ambiguity desperately maintained in the minds of straight people. And Guts… I don’t know that I can go textual lol. The only point in the story he can possibly recognize his own feelings is chapter 71.

Ooh I got it. Just include “at that time he shone before me as something beautiful, noble, and larger than life” after the Count’s backstory lmao. Do you really need more? Well, maybe “he shone before me as something larger than life - noble, and… beautiful.” Or just cut to the chase completely: “At that time, he shone before me as something beautiful, noble, and larger-than-life. I loved him.”

OKAY all that said I feel like this wasn’t really what you’re asking lol since you mentioned a complete adaption. So okay assuming there are no huge major changes to the content or structure of the story, here’s a (stupidly long, like only read this if you for some reason enjoy seeing me ramble for days about minute details lmao) list of some more minor things I’d want to change:

I’d start with the Black Swordsman arc and continue as the manga goes. Yes, in this one Guts still fucks an apostle. This is right before the credits, and it’s depicted as badass and cool. In fact, I might actually split the scene with the credits - start the opening sequence right after Guts blows her up, and resume on this shot with more of a sombre tone:

Like okay that would be pretty cheesy lol, but this is the Black Swordsman arc. It’s supposed to be a little campy, and really unsubtle, and this seems like a fun way of highlighting this little tonal shift.

Relatedly, I would not acknowledge the fact that most people watching already know where it’s going. I would maintain the integrity of the first arc in starting off with Guts as an apparent cool badass and then tearing that down, as well as keeping Griffith’s identity and Guts’ motivation a mystery in theory, and making the Count’s backstory the climax of this arc in a revelatory sense, rather than in an action sense.

To get more general, no fanservice for straight dudes. no one’s tits are randomly out, and when they are they’re drawn realistically and subject to the laws of gravity. casca’s clothes don’t get torn all the time, rosine’s got full moth fuzz coverage, farnese is wearing a shirt when guts takes her hostage and if we need self-flagellation (and tbh I wouldn’t necessarily cut it) it can be in a flashback, etc. Oh except Slan I guess. Her whole character is fanservice so w/e I’ll allow it.

not every woman is in love with and solely motivated by a dude. skip the queen’s completely unnecessary reveal that she was in love with julius, skip casca’s “I lived my life with the intent of sacrificing myself on my unrequited feelings for griffith” bullshit, skip sonia’s crush on neogriffith, skip tf out of schierke’s crush on guts, skip the random period of incest-y bdsm-y vibes in Farnese and Serpico’s backstory that adds nothing lol, skip the suggestions that Farnese is jealous of Casca’s history with Guts, etc

also most sexual assault scenes are cut. Casca is running for her life during the 100 man fight, not from attempted rapists. Wyald does not assault Casca, Farnese is not almost raped by a fucking horse, we chill out a bit on the sexual torture in every bg scene during the conviction arc jfc, Casca’s multiple assaults during that arc are cut, troll rape is cut, you get the point.

I’ll keep Adon’s shitty threats tho bc i feel like some violent misogyny is necessary if i’m not changing everything, but I’d completely lose the comic relief vibe he gets and make Casca’s fight with him properly epic and satisfying. The movie did this a bit better imo, but I’d really remove Adon’s whole boastful loser schtick. That might disappoint some fans, but idc Casca deserves to kill someone who is actually kind of a badass.

There’s a lot of bullshit around gtsca that I’m torn between wanting to cut, and instead wanting to just depict very negatively. Like would it be better if instead of Casca shyly asking Guts how she looks in a dress she just complained about the dress being uncomfortable, ie we completely cut that burgeoning “soft side” bs?

Or would it be better if she still asked him how she looks, then we call back to that moment when she gets awkward about her scars before sex, we keep Judeau musing on how she’s showing a soft side, we call back to that when he tells Guts to save her from leadership, we tie it all together when Guts asks Casca to leave with him, and bring it home by making it abundantly clear that Casca moving from being Griffith’s sword to Guts’ sword is not a positive change.

Like highlight everything negative about it - Guts being a huge dick, the ominous undertone when he invites her along (like cue the creepy cello music when they kiss right before we shift to monsters and behelits lol), all the parallels between him and Griffith wrt their dreams, Guts telling Casca to fuck off while he fights Wyald, maybe even add a moment where Casca actually reflects on how she’s left out of all the dream/equals bullshit and what that says about their priorities and how they see her. Might be a nice lead up to her telling Guts to leave to pursue his dream and be Griffith’s equal.

also maybe show that judeau is wrong about casca being better off away from the hawks? ugh there’s so much that would have to be reworked with her narrative. like if she still has to attempt suicide, again can we ditch the lead up about how it’s because she has an unrequited crush on griffith and just keep it about the fact that she hasn’t slept in a week and she’s on the run and her hawks keep dying and griffith is being tortured and she just stabbed guts and she’s had a very difficult year?

and like, maybe she leapt to accept Guts’ ‘come with me’ offer because she’s exhausted and emotionally overwhelmed, but are you kidding me? While Guts gets an entire narrative arc about abandoning his found family, Casca doesn’t even think about it for a moment before agreeing to ditch them? Can we maybe have some indication about how she feels about the Hawks as a family, maybe some reflection about why she would choose to leave, maybe some second thoughts about it after the Wyald fight when it becomes abundantly clear what her role would be while Guts pursues his dream, like god she’s such a pawn of the narrative, I hate it. Give her some real reasons for doing stuff!

ANYWAY moving on

like the movie, I’d give charlotte more agency in the sex scene w/ griffith, I liked her asking him to stay and moving his hand to her tit herself. I probably would not actually make griffith so out of it though - i enjoyed that in the movie but I don’t necessarily consider it in-character. The way he went from literally crying in the rain to smiling and making charming jokes as soon as Charlotte opened the window in the manga honestly makes perfect sense to me lol. Just uh, make Charlotte into it from the start because there’s zero reason for her not to be other than bad misogynistic cliches?

Also I feel like there’s a balance to be struck between depicting het sex as dude sticks his dick in, woman somehow has a good time a la the manga vs making guts and griffith competent at foreplay and oral a la the movies lol. Like maybe depict the sex scenes as the bad sex they are but Charlotte still feels closer to Griffith afterwards despite not coming from a dude fucking her while thinking about another dude and like, just keep Casca telling Guts he was obviously a virgin afterwards lol.

I guess we’re stuck with the Eclipse rape, but it happens mostly off screen and in close, telling but non-explicit details, like yk, big clawed hand holding a wrist, Casca’s eyes squeezed shut, Femto’s hand on the small of her back (I’m thinking a reversed call back to the wagon scene w/ that to suggest Femto’s motivation being a show of power tbqh). Some would be from Casca’s pov, with maybe one brief moment from Guts’ pov as he loses an eye or something. Keep the movie’s visual reference to Griffith saving her. No pornographic angles. No apostle rape prelude to it. Casca doesn’t have an orgasm. Femto doesn’t stare at Guts. It’s not about Guts at all for either of them, it’s about Femto taking Griffith’s fucked up relationship to sex and expressing it monstrously, and it’s about Casca being betrayed and symbolically negating the agency she fought for since Griffith threw her a sword. Guts’ reaction is horror and fear, not manly heroic outrage. He might still rip off his arm to attack Femto, but that would be because that’s always his reaction to whatever scares him, not for Casca’s sake. Might have to contextualize that with flashbacks to his childhood, or at the very least strong visual parallels to both his childhood and the Zodd + Wyald fights.

I want to cut the fetus, replace it with like a cronenburg-y fucked up dog-like demon in the Black Swordsman arc - not as a literal version of the Beast of Darkness, but just as a metaphor for how Guts’ inner darkness is twisting him into a pathetic asshole lol. But tbh cutting the fetus is a logistical nightmare because Casca needs magic protection during the Conviction arc. So idk. But NGriff doesn’t need it, and his narrative would be more engaging without that scapegoat. Fuck emotional ambiguity, I just want to drop the news that NGriff has feelings, and then not change anything else about his narrative. The themes of isolation and loneliness threaded throughout would just shine through lol it would be great.

I would emphasize the shit out of the Beast of Darkness/Femto parallels. Yeah Guts would still assault Casca in my adaption too. If the Eclipse rape happens, that has to happen because the point is that Guts’ inner darkness is the same. But like, I’d cut the page where beast of darkness guts bites her head off while raping her. Also I’d keep the visual parallel to the Eclipse rape (the v similarly depicted kisses) and add another from Casca’s point of view, or have her flashback then instead of just staying in Guts’ head.

as for the fallout, I’d give Guts a proper scene where he sees himself as a monster, like damn he got more of a self-reflective and telling reaction that time he accidentally killed a random kid, we should get something when he sexually assaults Casca. but overall I’d focus way more on Casca being afraid of him now rather than his mopey guilt. I would also… I mean god this should be addressed in the fact that Guts fucking wears the Berserk armour all the time lol. Like one second he’s all, “omg Flora can put a magic seal on my brand that’ll depower my magical evil jiminy cricket wolf and hopefully prevent me from raping and murdering Casca, that’s great!” and the next second he’s all, “omg magic armour I can wear that will enable me to kill everything with the side effect of superpowering my inner evil wolf and turning on my companions? sign me the fuck up I’m sure nothing bad could possibly happen with that.”

Like what I’m saying is I’d either make Guts a lot more reluctant to use the armour and take Skull Knight’s warnings seriously and genuinely reflect on the fact that mysterious magical children have to prevent him from murdering his friends over and over again, or I’d draw attention to this idiocy and fully commit to Guts as a dumbass hypocrite blithely walking down the path to more tragedy of his own making. and probably the latter based on where the story is likely to be headed lol.

in the lost children arc, I’d give Rosine’s mother more of a role as a good parent who Rosine has a loving relationship with, who tried and failed to stop her father’s abuse or something, because honestly I love the Peekaf story and I find Rosine’s regret at the end as she tries to fly home v powerful, but I hate the idea that she regrets sacrificing her abusive father so maybe this way I can split the difference.

and Jill’s ending where she goes home to endure abuse would be depicted much more darkly.

like straight up I’d depict Jill flying with Rosine as a truly beautiful moment, I would show that Jill has the potential to fulfill Rosine in a way her neverland kidnapping bullshit can’t and that yes, if Jill stayed with Rosine everything might actually work out and with Jill’s influence the whole land of the elves thing could be reworked into less of a nightmare and more of a haven lol. And Guts would absolutely be depicted as fully monstrous in comparison, ruining both these kids’ lives. Like, no ambiguity, no suggestion that Jill learned an important lesson about living with abuse lmao, no implication that Rosine brought her tragic end on herself by not being a good enough child abuse victim, just Guts sowing tragedy wherever he goes.

I have no idea how to deal with the conviction arc in general lol, specifically the ultra cynical tone the actual narrative seems to take. Like, the Black Swordsman arc was idealistic compared to the Conviction arc, they clash badly imo. Extremely badly. Like it’s a giant mess. It’s like

Black Swordsman Guts: fuck everyone who dies because they weren’t strong enough to deal with my existence. *turns and wipes away a tear* *lets a zombie kid stab him* *evokes pity from puck*Conviction Guts: fuck everyone who dies because they weren’t strong enough to deal with my existence. *poses with his sword in one hand and the rescued love interest in the other* *the crowd cheers* *luca nods sagely*

yk it’s just… awkward. It’s hard to mitigate through like, film choices yk, because a lot of it is due to the circumstances. Guts telling Puck innocent people are just ants under his feet is much different than Guts refusing to let the big bad kill Casca by telling him that tens of thousands of people can and should die because they pray too much lmao, no matter what music plays in the background. Guts’ attitude is the same, the narrative’s attitude is contradictory.

Maybe I could make Guts less of a dick and cut a lot of those cynical moments? Not really call attention to the fact that Guts is effectively sacrificing tens of thousands of refugees for Casca, or more accurately, for his own desire to feel like a hero since he isn’t even the one who saves Casca, he got distracted trying to fight the fake Godhand.

Or lol maybe I’ll just have Isidro point that out in like, a smug way. Maybe I’ll have NeoGriffith personally thank him for his contribution to his resurrection. I mean I really want to call this questionable shit into question, yk? Not to declare Guts wrong for wanting to save Casca, but to declare his cavalier idgaf attitude a big problem that has consequences. Which would actually tie in nicely with emphasizing Guts’ dumbassery in brushing off Skull Knight’s warnings about the armour and insisting it’s nbd. lol I really hope this is what Miura’s going for, just more subtlely.

Actually I wonder if I could get away with cutting Isidro out entirely. Anyone could’ve saved Casca there.

Oh I’d cut the hell out of a lot of Guts’ fight scenes in the MF arc, and if I could possibly get away with it I’d cut out everything on the beach after Skull Knight’s ominous warning. Like this might end up being the Griffith show for a while because Guts’ half is a fucking slog. And of course I’d cut the entire boat trip. They get on a boat, they get off a boat, the end.

Okay I need to stop somewhere. I’m ignoring a lot of later stuff because it’s so dependent on where the story’s going now that Casca is awake etc. Like eg the Moonlight Boy. Can I cut him? Give him a more ominous tone? Emphasize the saccharine tone he evokes for the sake of pulling the rug out from under the audience later? Will I be forced to make huge changes anyway because I can’t stand where the story ended up going? Idk it depends.

If I could tho I’d definitely cut Magnifico, Isidro, Ivalera, mermaid… like Farnese, Serpico, and Schierke are the only characters on Guts’ side who contribute to the story in a meaningful way. And without Isidro Puck could again too.

Oooh yk one thing that might be nice would be framing Farnese as the main protagonist of Guts’ half of the story during the MF arc. Just focus on her, show more stuff from her perspective, cut down a lot of fights but keep her digression back home, maybe give her some additional content that explores her character shift better, show her struggling more with her own inner darkness a bit when she first joins and give her some character beats as she slowly grows more comfortable with Casca, maybe put her backstory chapters in the first episode of a new season (a great season ender would be Guts walking away from the Hill of Swords js), etc.

lmao god I feel like I could keep going forever. sorry this is so meandering but ty for giving me the opportunity to go on and on about this. Is there anything you’d really like to change yourself?

#ask #a #b #Anonymous #anyway jsyk the part before the cut is kind of its own separate thing so if you click this and decide it's too long to read #there's always just the first part lol #theme: adaption #theme: critique #theme: opinion

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sol1056 · 6 years

Text

This is what my inbox looks like, now. One ask after another, and none of them happy. Are you paying attention, @dreamworksanimation, @voltron? Because this is what a dedicated and loyal fandom looks like when it gets tired of its loyalty being rewarded with nothing but contempt.

Do the EPs themselves even care about their story anymore? Because at this point it feels more like they just warped it into a personal vendetta against the higher ups after they were forced to change their original vision. Trying to reinforce that their ideas were right, instead of adapting like professionals.

And then re-litigating their position in every interview, too, along with being really noisy about their animosity for the character they were forced to keep.

More behind the cut.

If they had time to include pointless scenes with a space wolf they could have, idk, maybe used that screentime for some character development. But then again that requires basic writing skills and not copy-pasting your series together.

In twenty years of fandom, I have honestly never seen a hatch job of a season quite like S7. It’s one for the books, certainly.

I still find it sad how many groups from different sides of a fandom can actually give a damn about its characters, story, world, and pacing while the actual writers themselves couldn’t even give a shit.

The EPs should’ve stuck with storyboarding.

How could they disappoint so many fans? Every corner of the fandom is disappointed at VLD. When I started reading metas, I was certain the story was getting shitty just because of nostalgia, but now? After S7? To me sounds more like spite. "We can't do what we want so we'll make it shitty because we're children that don't want to listen to our bosses."

My own boss would string me up if I were to boast about a full do-over when the product was already in the can. She’d draw and quarter me on top of that, if I also publicly specified what the clients almost got, but didn’t.

The only way I would watch a VLD spinoff is if JDS & LM were not producing it. I know that there would probably be lots of logistical complications that would come with that, but personally I just cannot sit through another show where the plot development is as nonsensical as VLD's currently is. I don't see how new writers could do worse tbh. If Netflix does a spinoff I hope they keep the same art team and animation studio but get new EPs, writers, and directors.

Agreed, but at this point, DW’s lost a lot of good faith from me. She-Ra’s been knocked right off my to-watch list. If this is how DW execs manage their projects, I’m not willing to risk falling down this rabbit-hole again.

I felt uncomfortable when the season came out, and they started patting themselves on the back for choosing not to give Shiro a happy ending. I hope these EPs never get another show.

I’ll be keeping a careful eye on IMDB in the future. From other conversations, I know I’m not alone. I see those two names pop up, and it’s an immediate and flat no. Once was enough. More than enough.

Petition to fire the EPs and everyone responsible for changing the story 2/3 parts in and violating everything it stood for and disrespecting the characters and the audience, and hire a new capable and respectful staff to rewrite the series from the point where everything was changed. An (actual) apology from DW and the story rewritten to be what it was supposed to. They owe us that.

Or find whomever did S1/S2, and put them back in charge. I’d be willing to forgo a formal apology, if DW just made clear they were fixing things -- whether that’s the staff or the story. Just do something.

I wanna know the part DW played in this. That interview cleared up that DW didn't object and the EPs didn't have to fight. So did they go to DW with THIS specific storyline? 4 dead gays, 1 resurrected just to suffer, 2 evil ones? And that's what they were OK with & greenlighted? Or did the EPs go with 'just Shiro is gay & there's 3 more queer characters' and they got the OK and wrote and animated the rest themselves and showed that? Because "DW didn't find anything wrong morally" (as they said) is very different between these two cases.

That’s the statement I’d like to hear from DW: just where do they stand on that? Because you’re right, there’s a huge difference. Did the execs think they were okaying mild LGBT representation, or did they know and approve a double whammy of Bury Your Gays? Or did they know and figure controversy was better than silence? It’s a matter of degree.

Who's really to blame for how VLD is handled story-wise? The EP's or the higher ups at DW? Assuming that the DW execs get the final say, then they're the ones that okay'd the clone storyline and making Keith the BP for good while Shiro is turned into a side character.

I have no idea, but we’re three weeks out, now, and no one’s getting any happier. The longer it goes on, the more it’s all going to be associated not with this one production staff, but the entirety of DW’s TV brand.

If DW has their shit together (not allowing the EPs to kill Shiro which was smart), it looks like DW trusted the EPs but the EPs failed. If DW apologizes to us and fires the EPs for the many things they did wrong in VLD, and announces a sequel with competent and decent creators who will fix the series to respect the S1/S2 premise, I'd watch it.

I might, but I’d need to see the new staff’s IMDB credits, first. DW has lost the benefit of the doubt from me, after this utter destruction of a childhood favorite. And even then, the very first sign of a multiple-minority character being treated as the series’ punching bag? Outta there.

#vld #voltron #this is not sa1t this is truth #fandom

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gingerly-writing · 6 years

Text

Questions Tag Games

explanation: I’m super late to these, I suspect not many people will want their dashes spammed with my random answers, and I’m not tagging people, so I’ve amalgamated all of these into one post.

tagged by @concealeddarkness13! haven’t spoken to you in a while, hope you’re doing great

1. Would you rather write a more classical hero or an anti-hero as a protagonist? I’d rather write a hero for the protagonist, but an anti-hero as a general character

2. Who is your favorite character you have written and why? Ever? That’s cruel. Out of people that y’all would know, Urial does seem to generate the most emotional reactions

3. How many WIPs do you have? 3 proper ones, currently: Iron Flower, Space Royalty and Piracy Pays

4. Who is your least favorite character you have written and why? To write? Klarion from Young Jutsice fanfic. Motherfucker would not follow the assigned plot. Hate-wise? Possibly Coincidence or Accord, neother of whom you guys have met yet. Those two are a pair of nasty criminals/villains, and they are a little too good at punishing anyone who gets in their way

5. What is your favorite aspect of writing? Finishing!

6. If you had only one sentence (per WIP) to get someone to read your books, what would the sentences be? They wouldn’t because I suck at loglinesss...humourously though?

IF: an entire continent is saved from the ravages of war by the ancient art of sexting via treaty negotiations Space Royalty: ‘she stabbed me? god-fucking-dammit I am so in love with her’ Piracy Pay: you get to chug your drink every time I kill a character

7. If your protagonists fought to the death, which one would win? Protags? Depends if morals were removed, and whether it was on-on-one. Koronis, if not -he’s an emperor with black magic and an entire galaxy-wide army. If it was on-on-one with minimised morals, Ace would stand a damn good chance. Boy is smarter than he gives himself credit for, and very adaptable. Galaxy is also pretty viable. Girl can swing a superpowered punch like she means it, and she hasn’t survived this long on luck alone.

8. Which protagonist(s) would survive the zombie apocalypse? Koronis would. Ace would die trying to save someone else. Solaris would...provided Monarch was dragging him around, and even then they might go down together in a dramatic last stand. Galaxy would be in charge of a small, benevolent queendom. Cleo would, those plant skills would make her handy to any new civilisation. Fact would go down staving off the hoardes so everyone else could run. Rosalie would think she was the weak link of her group, but they would probably keep her alive; L’aura would kick zombie ass.

9. Which is your favorite story you have written or are working on? Space Royalty is damn fun to write -the benefits of extravagant, overdramatic space operas I suppose. Piracy Pays has had a good reception, so I’m pretty proud of that. Hopefully I can keep the momentum going until the end! It is a huge pain o write though

10. Which of your characters is your favorite villain and why? Raph is my evil supervillin crimelord Big Bad and I adore him utterly

11. When do you find is the best time of day for writing? Evening! 8pm-1am

*******************************************************************************************

tagged by the lovely @a-sundeen! this is so old I bet you don’t even remember tagging me, oopsie

1. When you’re describing a new character, what feature do you usually note first? Build, usually, as in their height/weight ratio, muscles/skinniness or lack of, how they carry themself etc. The reason for this is that I often start with the macro ‘impression’ of the character before zooming in on a few specifics. I try to use an interesting description or comparison here as well.

2. Do any of your characters play an instrument or really enjoy music in general? If so, what instrument (or what genre, if it’s the latter)? I am the least musical person on planet earth, so making my characters musical often doesn’t occur to me. Koronis can sing and play the space-piano (forced childhood lessons), and Jade can play the violin, but neither of them are passionate about it. Kolya/Cynosure (the popstar/supervillain) is very very musical, but I skip around a lot of the specifics because I’m a big cheater. He mostly makes anti-establishment and anti-hero music, but he’s one of those artists who strays all over different genres.

3. Which musical artist usually gets you the most pumped to write? Les Friction does good dramatic music and they’re not so well known, so I like to tell people about them when I can

4. Do you prefer writing fight scenes over other types? (This is a weirdly worded question I’m sorry, rip) It’s worded fine, sunshine! And no, I don’t like writing fight scenes because I don’t like the logistics of them. There are too many limbs to keep track of, and then I feel like I’m neglecting their surroundings and potentially useful items in favour of mentally tracking who’s where and what their arms and legs are doing. I cover up for my fight scene weaknesses with too much dialogue, and I’m fully aware of that fact.

5. Is there a city or country you’d really like to write in or about? Write in is probably just where I’d like to travel, so Russia, India and South America (I know that’s general but it’s the only continent except Antarctica that I haven’t been to) are my top choices. Write about…I’d like to sink myself deep into east coast USA to really nail the feeling of Galaxy’s city and her character, and then be able to confidently write about it. I do have a study year abroad coming up in 2020, so here’s hoping…

6. Do you prefer to be warm or cold while you write? Warm! I love blankets and my big fluffy dressing gown, and on top of that all my friends always complain about how hot my house is

7. Do any of your characters have hobbies you’d like to try out someday? Fiction wise, glo-ball from Space Royalty sounds like a very entertaining game, especially when I’m kept safe behind a pod. sodding netball injuries Jade paints and draws, and I’d love to get better at art. Likewise, Rosalie sews, making and decorating her own clothes, and I’d love to be able to do that. Idk, does being a supervillain count as a hobby? I’d love to rob a bank…not even necessarily for the money, just the #aesthetic

8. What is your favorite type of character to write? Villains! And morally grey people. And characters where the POV character has no idea what they’re really thinking, who they really are, what they actually want etc. And, on the flip side, balls of positive sunshine, because they make me feel better about the world

9. Halloween is here! Which character has a costume made for them by their mom? Ahahahahaha can you tell how late I am to this.

10. Halloween is here (again)! Which character thinks the holiday is childish but dresses up anyway? I AM SO LATE. Rosalie thinks the holiday is childish but dresses up in the most elaborate homemade princess outfit ever and entertains all the kids she can find. What, it is a children’s holiday, surely she should be making them happy on their special day…

******************************************************************************************* tagged by @blackfeatherantics who is now @mbovettwrites I think? I hope?

1. How long have you been working on your WIP(s) for? Iron Flower is the oldest current one, and I started it on Christmas Day 2016

2. What song would you assign as your protagonist’s theme tune? I’ll just pick one, and Koronis’ is Young and Menace by FOB. No real lyrical reason, it just reminds me of him

3. Do you have any favourite spots (gardens, parks, cafes, etc.) where you like to write? The sofa in my living room next to my family

4. Poetry or Prose? Prose!

5. Where do you draw inspiration for your writing from? Everywhere! Other people’s writing and prompts and published novels and TV and movies and random stray thoughts and daydreaming and chatting to other writers and-

6. Is there any popular book that you wish you had written and why? The Lies of Locke Lamora because I’d take out the first 100-ish page of solid worldbuilding and backstory that seemed almost completely irrelevant to the rest of the plot?And the domino-effect of all the plot elements knocking each other into action at the end was so clever, it annoyws me that the beginning means I don’t like reccing it to people

7. What’s your planning process when you start working on a new WIP? I daydream about it for at least a few weeks to make sure the idea has staying power. Then I come up with character names, quirks, descriptions etc. finally, I lay out the plot chapter-by-chapter from the beginning to the end so I have a guiding rope throughout the whole process and I’m less likely to get stuck. Of course, that’s when I plan on letting a WIP bloom into being. Some, like Space Royalty and Piracy Pays, start off as short drabble ideas and then refuse to leave, which means I have no concrete plan for them...

8. Do you work best in mornings, afternoons, or at night? Evening!

9. Would you prefer to self-publish or work with an agent and publishing company and why? Agent and publishing company, because I value the help they can provide more than the ability to retain complete creative control over my book (since I’m crap at titles and designing book covers anyway)

10. How do your emotions/moods affect your writing? Not a lot tbh. If I’m very very tired I can’t write anything good, but I’m not sure that counts as an emotion.

11. What’s your favourite line of your WIP/one of your poems? I’ve written both of my current favourite lines for prompts, which were: ‘Time hollows all victories’ and ‘The hero doesn’t die in this one’. I’ve had other favourites in WIPs over time, but I can’t think of them right now

******************************************************************************************* tagged by the ever wonderful @time-to-write-and-suffer

1) How are you so awesome? Genetics.

2) What’s your favorite thing about your writing? The dialogue! Or the romances, which I mostly like because of the fun/cute dialogue.

3) Who’s your favorite character that you’ve written and why are they your fave? This is so mean. At the moment, Raph, because I can’t stop thinking about him and he’s so incredibly dangerous, yet on the low down (like the Mariana Trench level of low down) he has all these cute little quirks that only one or two people know about

4) One of your characters has been placed in the world/plot of a book you love. What happens? Rosalie becomes a Grisha in Leigh Bardugo’s world. She finds a sense of self-worth and gets to enjoy the little luxuries that come with the position.

5) One of your characters has been placed in the world/plot of a book you hate. What happens? X takes the place of Celeana Sardothien. He murders everyone in his path, tells the crown of Terrasen to get fucked because there’s no way he can run a whole government with any level of competance, probably murders Rowan with extreme prejudice, opens the Wyrd gates just to search the universe for Raph and bring him through so he can construct a decent government for Terrasen, would probably sleep with Dorian, would make it his new life goal to highfive Manon.

6) Your characters must fight each other to the death until only one stands victorious. Who wins? Raph. Koronis could conceivably stand a chance against him, but Raph would decimate pretty much anyone else. I think Raph would be able to stay above the fighting for longer, whereas Koronis would jump in just a touch earlier, which would be his downfall.

7) If you could steal a cover and a title from other books to use for your own WIP/s, which ones would you steal? Cover-wise I’d steal the minimalist Red Queen aesthetic, because that sleek shit is the bomb. Title-wise? That’s harder. The Lies of Locke Lamora has some sick alliteration, but I think I’d rather steal the style of it rather than the exact title

8) If you switched places with one of your characters, what would happen to you and to them? I would die, pretty much everywhere. If Rosalie swapped with me, she would slowly come out of her shell and become a fashion designer -not an A-lister, she wouldn’t like how vicious and ruthlessly businesslike you have to be, but maybe making her own high-end clothes in a small shop in London

9) What makes your style unique compared to other writers? Thanks for the existential crisis, Eff.

10) Describe your antagonist’s song number if they were a Disney villain. No Good Deed from Wicked, for Darklight

******************************************************************************************* tagged by the lovely @itstheenglishkid

1. Have you ever realized how similar an oc is to you and felt the need to change them so they aren’t so similar? I mean, Jade from Iron Flower almost shares a name with me, and she’s ginger, which did concern me for a while, but hopefully she’s nothing like me personality wise (or else I’d have to do some serious self-reflection)

2. Do any of your ocs like candles? I bet Rosalie loves pretty candles, especially patterned or strongly scented ones! Anything luxurious that she can’t afford, really

3. Do you normally write settings that are (or are based on) places you know intimately (ie your home town)? Oh god no. I like sweeping Chinese-inspired castles or creaking pirate ships or far flung space universities and man-made planets. I’m really not a contemporary writer though, so I guess this isn’t much of a surprise?

4. What is a book that feels similar to your own wip? Ahahaha, which WIP? Piracy Pays has similar vibes to @boothewriter‘s pirates and probably also @noodlewrites’ pirates (I’m guessing? I haven’t read any excerpts from you I’m sorry). Space Royalty is just weird. Iron Flower is probably similar to a lot of generic fantasy YA, like Red Queen and whatnot.

5. Do you have a dream cast for your ocs? I don’t really faceclaim? Or know much about a wide array of actors, so no, not really.

6. Are you good at story titles? Do they come easily to you? I am abysmal at story titles, holy shit. I mean, you can see the evidence scattered around this post. Piracy Pays and Space Royalty are just placeholder names, but I’m not convinced I’ll come up with anything good to replace them. Iron Flower is alright in that its relevant to the story and fits into the series title (The Flowers of War) but…idk, its not setting the stars alight or anything.

7. Do you ever change oc names once you’ve started a wip? Not often, though I am considering changing Ace’s name because I don’t think ‘Seb’ suits him. Only question, what to??

8. Which people have you let read your work? I mean, all of y’all have the opportunity to read Piracy Pays. No one has read Iron Flower, and I’m stretching myself by letting @rrrawrf-writes @lux-deorum@haphazardlyparked read Space Royalty in its raw first draft stage.

9. What usually catches your attention about a book first? Style? Characters? Plot? I’m quite an easy reader to catch and hold tbh. What makes me love a book is a clever plot. For me, a very strong plot can carry weak-ish characters, but I can never read super deep characters with no plot.

10. Do you have a favourite author? Probs Rick Riordan, or Julia Golding.

******************************************************************************************* tagged by the wonderful @typeaadventures

1. How many works in progress do you have? Properly, three. Iron Flower, which is written (143k) but needs editing, Piracy Pays which y’all are reading, and Space Royalty which crossed 30k about a week ago

2. Do you/would you write fanfiction I used to! I stopped in Y12/13 because I didn’t have enough time to do fic and original writing, and I haven’t really had the time to pick it back up.

3. Do you prefer paper books or ebooks? Either, I’m not fussed. Though if it has a really pretty cover, I’ll be hankering after a paper copy

4. When did you start writing? 14-ish on Young justice fanfic

5. Do you have someone you trust that you share your work with? Not all of my work, but yeah, I have a lovely server and also some irl friends that get the junk landed on them

6. Where is your favourite place to write? At home chilling with my family while we all do stuff

7. Favourite book as a child? Dragonfly by Julia Golding

8. Writing for fun or publication? Hopefully publication, but I know I need to improve a lot first, honing my skills etc.

9. Have you taken writing classes? Not a lick

10. What inspired you to write? Gotta get those stories out of my head and onto the page, man. Gotta get that sweet sweet representation out there too.

thanks everyone! xx

#tag game #about the author #long post

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