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thegameartist03 · 7 days

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@cryptidcaper I'd love to talk about them! This is gonna be a pretty long post, so I put in a couple tl;dr's for those who just want to get the gist of it.

I have no idea what to call this, so I'll keep running with it being a Phantom of the Paradise au. There are some changes to the themes and content of the original story based on what I felt comfortable writing about and discussing, but everything else is pretty much intact. If you have any questions, suggestions, or comments, feel free to throw them my way! I'll be happy to talk more about it.

(overall tl;dr: the au is set in the 2020s, the supernatural is part of everyday life, Swan is the head of media conglomerate Death Studios and working for an Entity known as Sparrow to collect souls, zombies and ghosts make for cheap labor, Winslow is trying to get his stage production of Faust seen, Phoenix has a YouTube channel for explaining the paranormal and wants her own show, Beef is a writer, actor, and director who gets an arguably worse fate than the movie, Swan took the band name Undeads too literally and now the Juicy Fruits are trapped working for him forever, Philbin is a stone construct disguised as a human)

A little context about the world to start. (tl;dr, it's the 2020s, paranormal beings like zombies exist and are well known but not talked about, Swan made a deal with a powerful Entity called Sparrow to stay young forever and collects souls for Sparrow in exchange, now Swan is head of the Death Studios media conglomerate, he's incredibly influential and successful, meanwhile he's using contracts to exploit and control his workforce which benefits both him and Sparrow, most workers are Undead or constructs because their labor is cheaper.)

This version of the story is set in the 2020s (partly because I didn't want to do a ton of research on the 70s, partly because I thought it'd be funny if Winslow started dissing Swan on twitter). The supernatural is very present and well known by people but not often acknowledged. Ghosts and zombies exist, spirits can decide to help your houseplants grow or give you bad luck, hand-carved constructs are used for jobs that would be too dangerous for humans, and fae-like beings known as Entities walk the lines between worlds and lure people into contracts to increase their power. Talking about these paranormal parts of the world is taboo for most so there's a lot of fear and misunderstanding surrounding them. It's also kept hush-hush by certain people who rely on the supernatural to profit.

Swan is one of these people. In the 50s, an Entity known as Sparrow approached him at his lowest and convinced him to sign a contract. In exchange for eternal youth and power, Swan would collect more souls for Sparrow. Swan has been largely successful with this through his company Death Studios (upgraded from Death Records) and has expanded from the music industry into general entertainment. He now directs a media conglomerate and makes use of social media to promote his definitely not stolen or exploited productions. Think Mr. Beast meets Disney meets Netflix. He's wildly popular, and partly due to the influence and power granted by Sparrow, almost no one questions how he's still so young and successful and those who do ask questions are quickly silenced. Every artist, writer, actor, singer, musician, producer, etc dreams of one day working for Swan.

Behind the scenes, Swan uses his sweeping control of the entertainment industry to hire fresh faces, sign them onto exploitative contracts, and then drain them of all they're worth. This benefits both him and Sparrow. And, if someone tries to leave or raise the alarm, they simply have a little 'accident' and are brought back as an Undead who can be exploited even more and paid even less. The majority of Swan's employees are actually Undead who have been trapped by their contracts and unable to move on as long as Swan finds them useful.

With that lengthy explanation over, onto the characters!

Winslow Leach is about the same, he's a composer and writer who's been working on a musical stage production of Faust for most of his life. He's not well known and dreams that his work will one day be seen by the world. He has a knack for getting into places he shouldn't be, he's bad with computers and writes most things out by hand, and at this point he's naive and almost blindly optimistic. I'm also giving him The Tism and reclaiming those vibes from the movie because Projection and Yes.

Phoenix never got into singing, though her voice is still terrific. Instead, she's a paranormal investigator and has her own small YouTube channel talking about the supernatural and its presence in their world. She's not as afraid of the unnatural as most people are, and she hopes that exposing these things that people try to sweep under the rug will help them understand the paranormal better and be less afraid of it. She dreams of having her own show one day with the budget to do proper explorations of lesser-known paranormal sites and beings. She's determined to reach this goal to the point of recklessness and risking her own safety, especially since some of these beings can be incredibly dangerous. She's waiting for her shot to get out of her dead end job and chase her goals, and she's not letting anything get in the way.

Swan is Swan, the only big difference is he has a bit more obvious supernatural-ness to him. His Entity-given power relies on perception, making people perceive him however he wants them to. He can extend this power to others and disguise his more inhuman staff so they blend in with the natural world. He plans to open a new major studio location/online streaming service called Paradise+ and is looking for the right content to do it. He's also on TikTok, which is horrifying enough.

Beef! He's a professional actor and writer who's directed and taken part in plenty of stage productions and films in his time. He's also a guitarist, which doesn't come into play in his work as often as he'd like. He suffers the same fate as he does in the movie, but that's far from the end of his story.

The Juicy Fruits are Swan's swiss army knife of an entertainment group, and of course they've all signed contracts with him. Whatever the trends are, the Juicy Fruits will adapt to them. They've gone from songs to gaming to children's entertainment. At one point, the group decided they wanted to move on from Death Studios and tried to exit their contract. Unfortunately, there was an 'accident' during one of the rehearsals, and now they're permanently trapped under Swan's thumb unable to escape or reenter society. The 'accident' also affected their looks, so when they perform they're either animated with motion capture or disguised by Swan or heavy makeup and prosthetics to hide the fact they are no longer alive.

Sometime in the 60s, Swan purchased an older property that included a number of stone gargoyles. In need of some body guards that wouldn't ask questions and weren't as fragile as the usual human grunts, he had them removed from the building and then brought them to life. Thus, Philbin was created. He's Swan's right hand man and does all the dirty work. He doesn't have much to complain about; Swan gave him a disguise so he can appear as human, he gets paid enough and treated better than most of the other employees, and he's got relative freedom in his job. Most contracts are signed through Philbin on behalf of Swan.

This is already really long, so I'll go in depth about the plot in a separate post. But, to give a short summary, the plot of the movie still happens (with a few twists and a different ending), and then the characters go through a few arcs trying to figure themselves out and how to escape Swan's influence. Winslow in particular struggles with his identity and who and what he is after getting Phantom'd. There's laughs to be had, horrors to be witnessed, and not everyone is going to be making it out alive (or un-alive). As a final note, if anyone has any ideas for what this should be called, lmk!

#gamma thoughts #phantom of the paradise #potp #potp au #gamma’s writing #faentom of the paradise

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abruisedmuse · 1 year

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Idk if you're ever gonna see this but did you ever end up writing the Elucien full fic you wanted to make back in April? The one where he meets and startles her late at night. I just couldn't find the link and I really wanted to read it. No worries if it doesn't exist! Just thought I'd ask :)

*Sorry for any typos. I can’t find my glasses and my vision sucks lmao

Hey Love!

I've been sitting on this ask for about a week unsure how to answer. (I didn’t mean to have it sit that long I was busy with Halloween.) Even though it's a relatively easy answer I wanna take this opportunity to state why my answer is what it is. I made a post a few months back but I can’t locate it.

Wouldn’t be surprised if I upset some people with this response but I need to get it all out. To be honest and transparent (blame the trauma and anxiety hooray!) I’m going to preface this by saying when I say acotar fandom, mention shippers or character stans I don’t mean all of them. I’ve met some amazing people within this fandom who I love to bits, it’s just better to use broader terms. I don’t mean to offended these are just my personal thoughts and how I feel as an individual. If anyone reading this does get offended well that says more about you than me doesn’t it?

Short answer: it’s in my docs. No I don’t have plans to finish it at the moment.

And here's why aka the long answer:

I am taking a huge step back from acotar. To put it simply, since acosf especially it hasn’t been a good fandom. There's been so much toxicity and immaturity within it. And Its honestly exhausting to see. No matter what social media you're on people are just...well they're ugly about alot of topics. Whether its ship wars, characters, or the story itself. It's just this circle you know? It's not just the E/riels or the Rhys can do no wrong stans. There's negativity in every corner of this fandom. Yes, all fandoms have this. Were all human and we wanna defend what we enjoy and what characters we like. However with the length people go to in this fandom to attack one another is shocking. People will literally chase someone on social media to drag them because of their opinions. I've seen this type of behavior in Harry Potter, Supernatural, Star Wars, Game of Thrones, a little in Stranger Things etc. Name a fandom I’ve seen it. I’ve never seen it to the magnitude that is Acotar. I mean I got dragged for posting a vote for overlays that I’m buying, people have poked fun of Sjm’s kids, bullying artists on insta, fic writers to the point they don’t want to be active anymore, commenting/reblogging fics with how much they hate the ship, among other things.

Around the time I began working on this fic there was more E/riel, Gwynriel, Elucien drama. On top of my recent experience with the voting this just added to my unhappiness and cause me to realize that I had fallen out of love with this fandom. I didn't wanna write for it. I didn't wanna make edits or posts for it anymore. Because why? Why dedicate my time and energy for such a hateful fandom? You’d think the toxic fans would be tired. But no. It’s always the fans that wanna be active and enjoy the space that become tired. That’s what I am. Tired. I’m over it. I know I’m not the only one.

I would really love to finish that fic and perhaps one day once I’ve distanced myself for some time and feel good going back I will. I do know what happens and it gets bad before it gets better. Because your ask was so sweet if you want the breakdown/outline of what happens I’d be happy to answer that. Aside from that consider me on hiatus from the acotar fandom. (You can still send me asks about acotar or anything sjm. but as far as original content it’s gonna be a long time.)

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sojournerstales · 1 year

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Belle's 2022 Wrap-Up Thingie.

Hello! I've been quiet on here lately, equal parts due to a new fixation and simply that a lot of my output has been spread across a bunch of different Works-In-Progress as opposed to focusing on finishing just one.

I don't think I'm procrastinating. I think the days are short and cold and these are not conditions in which I am the most productive, so I do what I can, work on things that don't have the pressure of polish, of showing and telling.

Still, that doesn't mean I can't have doubts over how much I'm getting done, how much I've written, so I'm doing this post to take stock of what I did get finished this year and maybe some quick thoughts on them.

If you're a writer and we follow each other maybe this'd be a fun thing for you to do too! (Or don't, I'm not a cop.)

Also some of this stuff won't be in any particular order as memory is fake, timelines don't matter.

SOJOURNER'S TALES, VOLUME 1: WE FEEL AT NIGHT.

5,200 words.

So I released We Feel At Night at around April time, it was the first project I put up on itch dot io and was a bit of an experiment as to whether that would be a format I enjoy. Each story was originally released on a single Carrd, hosted only until the next one was finished. Something a little eerie, a little ephemeral.

The stories within are In The Dark We Look Like Monsters, All I Am Is An Alley Cat, and Late Night Make-Out Sessions, along with I, II, III, IV and an Epilogue.

In The Dark We Look Like Monsters is a moody little look at the night-time rituals of a group of neighbours who all struggle with sleep, and the passing headlights of a car lost on their street. It has a guest appearance from Jackie, ostensibly my mainstay OC who is in a bunch of stuff I write. I think this is a really nice piece? It's about touching someone's life without ever knowing it at all. It's about freaking yourself at night with the shadows in your house.

All I Am Is An Alley Cat is probably everyone's favourite of the bunch, it seemed to touch a lot of people with its shapeshifting genderfreak main character. Alley Cat is a cool dude, guy, girl, creature who doesn't know what they want for themselves, and only just knows what others want from them, and they change themselves to fulfil those desires and to feel a little something. I'm really proud of this one.

Late Night Make-Out Sessions is the longest of this collection - though it is a short collection. It was important to me here to include a non-monster/creature/supernatural non-binary character. I so often write about non-human characters, like Alley Cat, and I didn't want to just relegate any non-binary character I write into the stereotypical shapeshifter, or alien, or robot. The story isn't really about gender, it's about making a friend who is so much braver than you, knows so much more than you, who teaches you strange rituals to reconcile horrible, unfixable memories. It's also about kissing in the dark.

I, II, III, IV are a series of personal ghost stories, each one appearing between the stories above to act as a little breather. They detail my personal, limited experience with ghosts. No, that's not strictly accurate; The stories are me detailing my personal thoughts on ghosts as I try to deal with the loss of my mother, the woman who has me believing in this stuff, the woman who got me into horror. I miss her a lot.

And the Epilogue is just a personal essay about my motivation to put the collection together, what themes I'd hoped to achieve, meeting strangers at night who showed me concern and made me realize that the way the world perceives me has changed. It's thoughts on trans success, I suppose.

A SERIES OF ROOMS

Some amount of words.

So some time after finishing Volume 1 I become enamoured with liminal spaces. I've always been into the quiet eeriness of the backrooms, or empty shopping centres, or roads at night, and I always see these things limited to a creepy, visual medium. I wanted to translate the eeriness of the backrooms into prose, and so what we have here as an experimental exploration of the backrooms. It's best viewed on desktop devices, I never tested the layout for mobile.

It's short, sweet, creepy, and I really dig what I made here.

SOJOURNER'S TALES, VOLUME 2: PARTICULAR MOMENTS IN VAGUE PLACES

11,000 words. Give or take.

So I published this around August time, it's a continuation of my fascination with liminal spaces, but here I marry the eerie horror of them with queer romance - my favourite flavour of horror. The idea I wanted to hit on is that I've always found the typical liminal space comforting. I've fallen in love in an airport, I've snoozed comfortably in the back of a car rattling around dark country roads, and there are so many places I'd love to be alone with a friend in.

I also did something with the titles of the stories here that works best if I write the chapter list out:

(What if-)

Waiting For D5

(-we kissed-)

On Sundays +1

(-between-)

Just Off The A48

(-the walls?)

(What if we kissed between the walls?) is a series of bumper-stories that again act as a breather between each story, and they detail a couple getting lost in the backrooms, this is where I lay the imagery on the thickest of impossible spaces, yellow halls, chlorinated pools. It's all alright, they have each other, these are great make-out spots.

Waiting For D5 is my love-letter to Birmingham airport. Or a love-letter to my partner. We started long distance, but that was okay because the flight was quick and I enjoyed the romance of Burger King at 5AM waiting for my gate to open. It's about travelling together, it's about being about to travel together. These stories are about liminal spaces, but they're also about liminal states of mind, states of being. Waiting For D5 is about holding onto that moment between where you were and where you are going and getting to share that moment with someone you love.

On Sundays +1 was the toughest to write of the bunch. Not emotionally or anything like that, I just struggled with the presentation and plot the most. It's about a girl who keeps waking up on an extra day that exists between Sunday and Monday, and only one other person is experiencing that with her. Together they explore and abandoned version of their hometown, getting to know each other totally separated from the realities of the world, from other people. Like their own private chat. It's about making friends online, in undefined spaces, and the anticipation of bringing that into the real world. It's also about all the transmasculine people in my life who I so often fall madly, platonically in-like with. I adore them all. On Sundays +1 is for them.

Just Off The A48 started off as a complicated beast. It was going to be about this pub in the countryside that every now and then is visited by someone who has just recently died. It was going to be about hitting it off with a woman at the bar and going to bed with her and refusing to turn around the following morning just in case she was gone, just in case she was never there to begin with. I tried so hard to make that story work but everything about it needed way more space than I was willing to give - I wanted each story to match the other in length, so instead I wrote something complete different that fleshes out the ideas of the Volume so much better. Instead JOTA48 completes the triumvirate: Liminal spaces with a romantic partner. Liminal spaces with a friend. Liminal spaces with a stranger. I once again get to introduce Jackie to one of my collections, and this time she helps a frustrated teenager get their car unstuck from a muddy ditch in the road. It's more than that, it's no more than that, it's being in the right place at the right time.

THE LONG FINGERS

I wanna say like 5k words?

Oh boy, The Long Fingers. I wanted to write something scary for October. I finished this in November. That's how it always goes! It's okay, I still managed to write something scary. I remember fretting over whether it was super boring, sending it to a friend who I rely on so often for test-reading, and being sent back:

"Jesus Christ, Belle."

The Long Fingers is about a shame spiral, it's about depression, it's about letting your hygiene slip, your house fall into disarray and mess, and being unable to ask for help because what if they judge you?

Shame is a long fingered thing, and as dire as this story is it is not meant to be without hope, it is meant to be a cautionary tale.

Fun fact! I still get nervous when I take the trash out at home because I based the apartment building in this story on my own home and I scared myself with it! Even so, I'm extremely proud of this work. I made something scary and meaningful and freaked a bunch of my friends out.

It's one of the last things I finished before winter came on strong and my productivity slowed down, I hope to finish a couple of other similarly themed stories to release as Volume 3: Siren Songs, but we shall see about that!

THE OBLITERATION PIT

Maybe 1,5k words?

This one was scary to post, but I wanted to post it. I wanted to post something to affirm that hello I am a lesbian trans writer, which is a shallow reason for posting something so personal I know. I just wanted to get off my chest some thoughts about dysphoria, non-physical dysphoria, the sort of dysphoria you feel in your heart and your brainstem and the bottomless pit in your stomach.

I'm doing good though.

THE WORKS IN PROGRESS

There are so many text files, I'unno like 4-5k words among them?

Between Volume 1 and The Long Fingers I have a whole bunch of things that aren't yet finished, that are only just conceptualized, that have half a chapter written and saved.

There is HERO-99, TRANSGENDER SCI-FI ACTION, a sort-of riff on the vibes of action cartoons aimed at teens, centered around a canonically transgender super-heroine in a cyberpunk city, DIY'ing her hormones and fighting against an evil scientist (and capitalism). I've been structuring this around the idea of lost episodes of a cancelled TV-show before it ever left production and have written the pilot, half of episode 3, and the first half of the finale. Will this ever see the light of day? Probably not. I'm writing this for me. It's so indulgent.

THE KNIGHTS ERRANT, my foray into sword'n'board fantasy writing. I've made a good start on it, motivated by a friend who is desperate for some good dark fantasy that isn't so, y'know, like that. This one probably will see the light of day!

ISTE BY THE SEA, hopefully this will be a part of Siren Songs, and I'm going to remain relatively tight-lipped as I'm likely to finish this within the next couple months.

FANFICTION. Nothing too exciting, just pornography and maybe a little something for Vi League Of Legends because watching Arcane has filled me with that classic spite-fuel. (I won't get into it here. I WON'T get into it here.) Oh, and some Warframe fanfiction too. Don't get me started on Warframe, I owe it my life and more.

There's probably one or two things I'm missing. I haven't mentioned A WARM FIELD or KALIEDOHOUSE because I haven't committed anything to a text document for them yet (though I do have some scenes and chapters handwritten in my notebook, I highly encourage this habit of scrawling some things out somewhere they can't be backspace'd). Taking stock of everything makes me realize I've had a good year for my writing. I got burnt out a little bit after I finished my book - BY THE WAY I FINISHED MY BOOK A WHILE BACK - and so it's feeling good to be back in the saddle and not crunching.

I'm still shopping around GIRLS AND GHOSTS to various publishers, but it's hard to find someone willing to bite on a first-time-author of a weird queer-horror-romance-anthology. It'll happen someday, I'm sure of it. It's a really good book.

Thanks for reading!

#writeblr #taking stock #2022 wrap up thingie #my year in writing #original fiction #short stories #prose #personal essay

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