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rebornbythunder · 2 years

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((Ok weird mun ramble under the cut, tw for mentions of abuse in vague senses, nothing graphic but it’s related to irl events. I figure, it’s munday, I’m manic and prone to oversharing, and I have so much love in my heart right now for this muse and for my Green muse as well and in what ways they intersect. I started writing this as a maybe one or two paragraph posts about Red’s service pokemon and it... got very out of hand and very personal, so take this. I’ve been writing for like a half hour, and it just feels right to share.

Every single day I realize that Red is just accumulating service pokemon. And honestly it’s been really freeing to write Red as a noticeably disabled character, as a disabled person. Not everything that Red experiences do I experience (I’m not an amputee, for example), but everything that I write him with I do it from the perspective of someone who is disabled, if that makes sense? Where my own experiences lack, I obviously do research, but its so... GOOD, to be writing this character that’s considered such a big name, almost a folk hero, and have him be very plainly disabled.

My Red is nonverbal, he’s autistic, he has PTSD. He probably has other things going on that I’m not aware of yet and I’m thinking about blasting his hearing half to death to give another thing that I also experience.

In a similar vein I do the same with my Green- he’s bipolar, he’s a child of neglect, he’s ALSO autistic and has PTSD but differently. I want to do more with him, I’m considering writing him with BPD as well but I need more research to do that justice since that’s not my experience, but all of it comes from that same place of “I go through this, these characters are unequivocally top tier people in their world, strong and respected, and they do it not in spite of their conditions but at least in part because of them”.

I write the pokemon world as generally extremely friendly to autistic people. This is because I don’t really like systematic ableism in my escapism, but also because iirc, pokemon was CREATED by an autistic person who wanted to make a game that appealed to him. The world would be influenced that way, and I chose to continue that thread. Some things a world could never exactly accommodate- PTSD, abuse, the lot of it exists because the world isn’t perfect and those struggles are inherent to my life experience. And because of that, because I can’t separate that from my own experiences, it goes into the world I create in my writing.

Basically what I’m saying is that I put a lot of my heart and soul into these characters. The choices I make aren’t because they’re popular headcanons or trendy concepts- its because I know what its like, or have a loved one who knows what its like, to live that way. That is my little special spark I have to offer to these two characters, I think, that makes them unique.

Red gets service pokemon and a good therapist because he’s a recovery fantasy. He’s a character that started as an expression of my grief and externalizing the abuse that I experienced into horror, as the genre often is. But over the decade that I’ve written him, he’s blossomed into something that is different. I’m growing, I’m healing, he is the part I want to treat kindly because he’s been through that hell. And yeah, sometimes I deal him hard blows like in the Rocketverse where he is set back HARD, and changes into a worse person. That’s a story about continuing under hard circumstances and persistence despite that. I came up in a high control group, and exploring that feeling of being trapped like that in this way, where Red can come out the other side maybe not a good man, but an okay one? Is good. And in the mainverse, I plan on giving Red good things. Happiness eventually, stability. He’s going to become someone his child self wouldn’t recognize but would be able to look at and say “that’s a good man”.

Hisui is similar to Rocketverse, but deals instead with grief more abstractly, and cuts out the high-control. It’s a story about a man who didn’t know who he was even before he lost his memory, learning to become someone new again. I have severe memory issues- I mention this in my about. But being able to write a character that I know will eventually bloom into a loved member of his adopted clan that struggles in this way, in a more hostile environment, is liberating. It’s also why I write Ingo, a muse I’m actually going to be bringing back in the VERY near future because like I said I’m manic as hell right now and this is a good outlet for it.

Green, conversely, is a character in active struggle. He’s stagnating, he’s trapped. He’s crushed under the weight of his responsibilities and the baggage that comes with being a gym leader, and the former champion’s rival, and a former champion himself. He’s disabled but won’t recognize it, he won’t admit a lot of things to himself and will not look at his actual problems head-on. This is a character that is in a transitional period of his life, caught on the cusp right now of deciding if he wants to address his problems and GROW, or if he wants to just sit with them, and passively allow his issues to ruin and steal away his life. Green is born of longing and frustration, fundamentally. He’s in many ways the opposite of Red; where Red grows, Green stagnates. Where Red seeks resolution to his issues and asks for forgiveness, Green denies there’s even a problem and continues to fester that self-hatred.

The core of his problems aren’t his fault- they arise from other’s choices, genetics, bad luck and misfortune. But where his extended troubles come in is from his lack of action- the familiarity of his suffering is what’s kept him locked in this cycle. Green is, at the core, an indecisive man afraid to take risks, someone who’s built up this facade of someone who knows what he’s doing that he’s terrified that one step out of his routine will make the illusion come crashing down around him. So he sits in his gym, wanting to travel the world, and wanting to define his relationship with Red. He’s not even afraid of being rejected by him- he knows that Red will say yes. But that would mean being even more open, and emotionally intimate and vulnerable, and he simultaneously craves and fears it more than anything. Green, for me, is less a fantasy and more commiseration. A lot of what Green struggles with, I also struggle or struggled with in the past. He’s an opportunity to tell a story of someone who made different choices. And, because I am a hopeless romantic, the story of someone who is loved and admired despite the fact that he’s a deeply flawed man.

Red and Green are both deeply flawed characters too, and it’s unrelating to their disabilities. Red’s biggest flaw right now is his backtracking, going back on his decisions. He can make them, but he struggles to follow through. He also is incredibly petty, as can be seen in the drama alert arc with @/zeconductor. His fear of following through with things has also kept him from making friends. I know that he and N would make GREAT friends, they’d get along so well, but because he can’t follow through they just end up glancing off of each other’s trajectories. Green can’t even start that process. He doesn’t know who he is, and he actively has started resenting Red a little for that. Green has a lot of cognitive dissonance and is very quick to anger, and a lot of that has to do with his unresolved and unaddressed issues.

Fundamentally, the stories I write with these two are stories about two men who, at the end of the day, love each other deeply, but have drastically different needs. They’re in different phases of the process of self-actualization and of healing from their pasts, with different levels of baggage and different types. Their needs conflict, and so so often. But at the end of the day, they’re Rivals. They’re Rivals and they love each other, weather they end up together or not, and it’s through that bond that they encourage each other to be their best and better selves.

Eventually, Red will follow through. Eventually, Green will address his problems. Eventually, they both know who they are, and they come at each other with the knowledge that the other helped foster and shape that person. They didn’t make each other, they made themselves, but their Rivalry fundamentally changed each other’s orbits with their gravity.

I write stories for me, about people like me, and I put a little part of myself in them. It’s how I connect with a world that I can’t often find myself in. Red is a man that everyone would look at and see a disabled person, seen with admiration and respect. Green is a man that might not be read as disabled, who masks at all times for fear of rejection- but in the world I’ve written, he would be accepted. He is accepted, by everyone but himself, and when he learns to accept himself, he’ll figure out who he is. They’re both a story of twenty-somethings who don’t know what they want, or are just figuring it out, and starting over. Stories about people who thought they wanted one thing all their lives and are confronted with the reality that they don’t know what they want but it sure isn’t this. Stories about people feeling out the world and making the best with the hand they’ve been dealt, and coming out the other side as people who are looked upon with respect.

They are both, at the end of the day, stories about people like me, being loved and respected for who they are, and who they are learning to be. About being supported through the realization that they need to do something completely new. About getting the help they need.

Their lives aren’t perfect. I love to hurt my boys so much. But their growth and their struggle, their disabilities and their flaws, the special little features that bloom from the cracks that come when I put them under pressure? That’s what this is all for.

The boys are like a scrying mirror. I’m letting you all take a look. What do you guys think?

#munday #meta #this is ok to reblog interact with whatever idc #I feel like I needed to be seen through this.#so here it is.

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hellyeahheroes · 2 years

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Read (and Steal) Like a Writer: 10 Tips For the Very Beginners

my brithday is soon. I’m feeling old and filled with regrets. Some of those are “wish I learned so many things early”. So here are few tips for would be creators who are just starting and still fret about things like “originjality” or “finding inspiration” that I wish I learned or realized 20 years ago.

1. Read Within Your Genre

It is my belief that no writer wants to create a cliche copy of someone else’s work. They all want to create something new and innovative. Then why do we have so many run off the mill, indistinguishible copies of big works in each given genre, just with names changed? I believe it’s because many writers do not read enough works in that genre to truly know what has been already done. If you want to write an epic fantasy like Tolkien, you aren’t competting only with Tolkien. You’re competting with Guy Gavariel Kay’s Fionavarn Tapestry, Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, David Edding’s Belgariad, Margaret Weiss & Tracy Hickman’s Dragonlance Chronicles, Raymond E. Feist’s Riftwar and Terry Brook’s Shannara. You need to know what they have done to distuinguish your own work from them. Do not get daunted and see them as competition, but as predecessors who treaded this road before. See their mistakes as warning signs, left by them for those who follow. Look at their own inspirations, if possible. Compare common threads and elements, then think why are they reccuring, what have the writers done with them and whenever there is anything new you could add to conversation.

2. Read Outside Your Comfort Zone

Life is not divided into genres. The whole concept of a genre is most useful for libraries and bookstores, so that good people working there know which shelf to put a particular book, for customers to easily find things like ones they’ve read and enjoyed before. And even then there is a reason why most don’t bother making separate sections for fantasy and science-fiction. That isn’t to say genres are meaningless, they do help you reach the right audience. But chances are that your story will be more than just one genre. It won’t be just “fantasy” but “fantasy romance” or “fantasy tragedy” or “fantasy political thriller”. Or “fantasy tragedy using a framework of a political thriller with a big romance subplot that is also a musical”. Read anything you think may be even remotely useful. Detective story, romance, political thriller, an RPG book, an essay about string theory. As a matter of fact, treat “read” as a shortword for all kinds of experiences of fiction. One of greatest examples of epic fantasy in last two decades was Avatar the Last Airbender, a cartoon.

Everything you absorb is going to either provide you with an inspiration or teach you something about writing. Even if sometimes it may take a form of “they completely wasted this idea, I can do this better!”. Even garbage or works of writers fundamentally opposed to you in worldview can have valuable lessons. Thorugh they will likely teach you things vastly different than what the author intended. For example, take a professional editor and right-wing poundit Ben Shapiro. His book True Alliegance has taught me a very important lesson: a writer, who does their own editing, has a fucking moron for an editor.

3. Put That Book Down

All the advice about reading can easily lead into a trap where you think that you have to read huge swats of material before you even pick a pen or open the word document. You may end with a huge reading list - the great works within your chosen genre, collection of Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle for the investigation part opf the story, non-fiction books about relative time pieroid. And when it comes time to write you can think to yourself “I can write my own story. I’ve read Tolkien, Eddings, Kay, Weis & Hickman, Brooks, Williams and Feist, I watched Avatar and played first Dragon Age, I’m read to write my own...hey, people are really talking up how revolutionary this Brandon Sanderson guy is, maybe I should read him first? And everyone is saying this Amphibia cartoon has great fantasy narrative...”

The reading part is not a process that just finishes on its own. The list of things to read is infinite and will only grow because great works will never stop coming for as long as human race exists. At some point you need to grow that confidence to just put down that never-ending pile of books and games, open that fucking document and start writing. In fact, put that book you’re reading down, close this tab and write right now. Come back to read rest of the list once you finish. You will thank me later.

4. Do Not Consume Poison

No matter how good and well-respected a work of fiction is, there is probably an equally good one out there that is not going to hurt you. If you think that there is something about Lolita, Breaking Bad or Planescape: Torment that is going to trigger you for any reason, don’t force them upon yourself. We all have enough trauma, you’re not doing anyone a favor by tearing off your old scabs and scratching the open wounds, less alone yourself. You do not owe it to anyone. Whatever good these titles could teach you does not outweights potentially scarring yourself. That dream project of yours is neither worth sacrificing your mental health, nor gonna write itself if you do yourself too much damage. Your writing is only going to suffer with your mental health, not improve.

5. Don’t Fear The Stupid Idea

Some of the great works started with an idea that in theory should never work. Amphibia started as Matt Braly’s attempt to mash together Dragon Ball Z and Pepper Ann. Jim Butcher turned a bet that he could never make a story out of “The Lost Roman Legion meets Pokemon” work into a best-selling Codex Alera series.

If you do look for inspiration in other people’s work, your mind will come with ideas of mixing the elements up. They may sound silly on paper. It is your job to polish and craft them into something that works. “X Meets Y” is just a starting point. Both the works I listed are so much more than just the two base components of the initial idea. Don’t be afraid of merging the ideas either. In fact, throw everything you have into one cauldron, cook it up until it looks like a consistent story soup and fish out the parts that didn’t dissolve into it.

6. Simpsons Did It

Do not fret about originaly of your work. Every story, trope, plot point or character concept has been told in some way before. You would be surprised how seemingly “original” works are actually parts of a chain of dialogue of sorts - different creators taking from a work that was already deliviative. Family Guy is just the Simpsons if they put empasis on quantity of jokes over quality. But the Simpsons are just the Flinstones with social commentary instead of dinosaurs. And Flinstones themselves are just the Honeymooners with dinosaurs in place of jokes about domestic abuse.

Just because someone else has done it doesn’t mean you should abbandon your idea. Hell, don’t be afraid of making your story “just story X but with Y”. Neil Gaiman’s the Graveyard Book is, by design, just the Jungle Book, but with undead. The Magnificent Seven is literally the Magnificent Seven Samurai but with cowboys. Does that make either of them less amazing? Not at all.

7. If You Steal, Give It a Paintjob.

If you are inspired by a something, be it from another work or real life, you cannot just jam it into your story. You need to think how does it fit your world and what are it’s interactions with other elements. The character you copy should be a starting point from which you modify, shaving off everything you do not need, adding new elements, or even parts ripped from other stories, if you feel that’s what they need. Then sew it together and start again until it has brand new and enteirly functional shape. Dragonlance’s Lord Soth and Gundam’s Char Aznable both started as an attempt to put Darth Vader into a story very different from Star Wars. But by the time writers were done with them, they both become their own entities, with their own backstories and personalities, distinct from Vader and each other. Hell, both inspried a ton of copycats on their own.

8. Anger Is Fuel Too

I briefly touched on it in second point, but it needs an elbaoration. A lot is being said about the power of stories we love inspiring us to create new ones. But the opposite is also true. There is nothing wrong in writing out of anger and bitterness, out of the frustration with another story.

A lot of people tend to dismiss it as childish reaction to stories. I disagree. A true, genique anger is not born out of frivolity. If you are pissed about writer wasting a story potential, you probably are passionate about themes that could be explored with that premise. If you think a character has been done dirty, they probaly represent things that resonate with you on some level. If you think message of a story is harmful, you likely care about well-being of people who may be affected by it. Dig deep enough and you are likely to find meaningful topics under the source of your anger. Tap into that. As long as you have something to say, it will ring true.

9. Fanfic is Great

A lot of people tend to dismiss fanfiction as somewhat “lesser”, as if it wasn’t written by many professional writers. Neil Gaiman wrote a Chronolicles of Narnia fanfic, Snow White fanfic and a Sherlock Holmes/Cthulhu Mythos crossover. As a matter of fact, any writer who ever used Cthulhu Mythos wrote a fanfiction. Ditto for any character from any Mythology, including Judeo-Christian, Arthurian Legend, Dracula etc. A lot of what we actually call parts of Mythology could have been written hundreds of years after original creators passed. A number of Greek myths could have been written by Romans, some scholars theorize myth of Ragnarok was a Christian invention and Lancelot was added to Arthurian legend by a French guy who wanted to see all those Brits getting their asses kicked by a French guy.

So do not shoot down fanfiction, no matter how weird it looks to you. Go and write that buddy-cop rivals-to-friends-to-lovers slowburn between Boromir and sans undertale, it’s as valid as all these award-winning stories where someone made Snow White a vampire. And if anyone tells you one idea is in any way dumber than the other, I’m gonna fight them in the parking lot. And if you think your story is good enough, change all names and try to get it published. Won’t be the first, second or last book we got that way.

10. Fanfic is Not Flawless

That being said, there is a trap that befalls writers trained on fanfiction, as try to move their skills onto original work. Modern fanfic is constructed on the idea it is read by people who already are heavily invested in this world and characters. We come in knowing who these people are and we already have emotional connection to them. As such many fanfics can skip “saving the cat” part, the one where they establish why should anyone give a fuck about the protagonist. We give a fuck because it’s Blorbo and his shows made us give a fuck. I have seen way too many writers move from fanfic to original fiction and utterly fail to realize they no longer are writing about Blorbo and no one is gonna give a fuck about Blorwalski the Original Character, unless the writer put a work to make them.

-Admin

#writing advice #writing #my writing #promised myself to finish one like these before birthday #so here it is.

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harringtontmaa · 2 years

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⚡ — CONTINUED from @munsontm :

EDDIE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE laying low. being careful. definitely not going out into hawkins alone at night when steve couldn’t even go with him to make sure no one tried anything. but while they haven’t been dating very long yet, steve has already learned that doing what he’s supposed to isn’t one of eddie’s many strengths. his boyfriend is smart & funny & good with the kids, he knows who he is & doesn’t compromise it for anyone. & truth be told, steve actually finds him pretty inspiring, most of the time. but for all of that, he just can’t seem to listen to instructions, even when his own life is at risk. steve’s beginning to suspect it’s not even on purpose — just something eddie can’t help, rebellious to a fault. which was why steve had warned him repeatedly not to go anywhere after dark without someone with him — if not for his own sake, then for steve’s. he just didn’t want to see his boyfriend get hurt again so soon. but he was also a little afraid that just by telling eddie not to go out alone, there was a part of him that would want to do it even more. just to prove he still could. so when steve arrives home after dropping robin off after a closing shift to find the house silent, all the lights on upstairs but eddie not responding to his calls that echo through out the cavernous hallways, steve feels a sick feeling in his stomach that something’s really wrong. & the sense is only made worse when he finds a handprint staining the stairway railing, dark red blood drying on the cedar finish. he takes the stairs two at a time, calling eddie’s name all the while. when he reaches the second floor landing, the bathroom door is halfway open, a foot just barely visible inside. & steve feels a fresh wave of terror overtake him, keys dropping loudly onto the floor in the hallways as he skids across the hardwood floor & forces the door open. he has to push eddie’s leg out of the way to get in — & none too gently, either — but even that doesn’t rouse him awake. & steve shoves inside in a panic. the sight that awaits does nothing to soothe him. eddie is sprawled across the floor, hair matted with blood on one side & dark bruises raising over his face. his eyes are closed, & he’s entirely still. aside from the injuries, the expression on his face is peaceful — a sharp contrast to the metallic scent of blood that saturates the small room. steve is at his side in an instant, knees striking on the tile with a sharp crack that he hears more than feels, his body all but numb with the fear. & his hands are on eddie the moment he’s within reach, one curling around his shoulders to lift him off the floor & the other holding his chin to keep his head from lolling back. but once there, he doesn’t know what to do, or how to wake him, his voice cracking with desperation when he says, ❝ baby, look at me. eddie, please. ❞ there’s a long, horrible second of silence after his plea where steve fears the worst — that he won’t wake up. but then eddie’s lips form his name, & steve releases a breath that he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. there’s a groan & a fluttering of thick lashes to reveal familiar dark eyes, & steve pulls in another breath, his hand now spreading to gently cradle the less bruised side of his face. ❝ jesus, baby, what the fuck... ❞ he breathes. eddie is already offering an explanation for the injuries, albeit an obviously false one. but steve doesn’t really have to ask what happened; it’s easy enough to imagine. & then eddie asks if he’s ok — like he’s the one whose face looks all raw & discolored like old ground beef — & steve can’t help but laugh. it’s a hollow, humorless sound, his grip around eddie’s shoulders struggling to stay gentle as the fear gives way to anger. ❝ eddie, baby, i’m pretty far from okay right now. i mean, i just came home to find the bathroom looking like a murder scene & my boyfriend unconscious on the floor, & then when i manage to wake him up, he’s either so out of it that he’s talking total nonsense, or he lies to me about what happened. & i just really hope it’s not the second one. because i’d hate to think that you’d lie to me, especially about something as important as this. ❞ & than steve fixes his eyes on eddie’s his thumb sweeping feather-light across his split lower lip as he forces himself to take another long deep breath. but then steve tears eyes away from eddie’s face & looks down at his body, reassured enough that he’s awake & talking that he can start taking his own stock of the injuries. ❝ you sure nothing’s broken ? what about internal bleeding ? do i need to get you to the hospital ? ❞

#munsontm #⚡ — INTERACTIONS.#⚡ — V / arc iv.#⚡ — V / closed au.#it's 11:25 pm so it's still your birthday here.#you asked for this.#so here it is.#enjoy the pain lmao.

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