#which itself makes up exactly half of the fandom tag.

[supercantaloupe]

tagged by @malcolm-f-tucker, ty! my fic writing output comes from a varied and bizarre set of source materials...we both will just have to deal with that i guess

Rules: share the first lines of ten of your most recent fanfics and tag ten people. If you have written fewer than ten, don’t be shy and share anyway!

le finestre son questa - don giovanni - 1.3k - mar 2 23

Your lady had a difficult evening: you’re not sure what happened, exactly, but you helped her dress for a masquerade before she left, and she returned hours later looking more frustrated and tired than she had when she’d left.

2. (currently still untitled. sorry) - don giovanni - 3.7k - feb 28 23

He wakes to the sound of steady beeping and the vague humming of electronics and machinery. Then, bright fluorescent lights, which he squints against the moment he tries to crack his eyes open. Then, the pain.

3. e buonnotte a tutti - don giovanni - 13k - feb 11 23

“Saint Anthony’s? Really?”

“Yes, really. Punch it into the GPS already.” Giovanni sinks a little lower into the passenger seat and fumbles with his dress shirt buttons.

4. 25th annual solesian national spelling bee - fantasy high - 26k - last updated dec 25 22

“Adaine, I swear to the gods, open this door at once.” The elder Abernant sister pounds her fist on the locked door to the library.

5. deh vieni a consolar il pianto mio - don giovanni - 3k - oct 24 22

The dining room is a mess, with bits of food and shattered porcelain strewn about the floor, and the faint haze of smoke hanging in the air.

6. skeleton in the closet - oklahoma! - 9.4k - may 22 22

“Beth, stay on the path. And stop swingin’ the dinner pail like that.” Clara scolds her little sister, who, from a few paces ahead, turns to give her a scowl.

7. starlight - oklahoma! - 34k - last updated may 13 22

Crickets chirp in the cool night outside. Laurey sits on her bed, trying to enjoy a quiet night in for herself.

8. dance you all over the meadow - oklahoma! - 945 - may 7 22

“Slow down, you’ll trip.” Laurey’s grip on Curly’s arm tightens, and she feels his on her shoulder tense. “What are you in such a hurry fer?”

9. l'astuto cacciator - giulio cesare - 2k - feb 27 22

“Enough financials for now,” Cleopatra orders, waving a hand to her attendants. Papyrus records of tax and grain are swept clean from the table and swiftly replaced with platters of fresh dates, olives, and figs for the queen and her advisors. “Tell me of the Romans.”

10. awake in a lonely room - oklahoma! - 1k - oct 10 21

Old Eighty is hitched to the fence in the front yard. Her eyes are sleepy and bored. 

tagging: @tragedyposting @kingfisherkink @grasslandgirl @pearlandbrine @druid-for-hire @leporellian and @theresa-of-liechtenstein...regrettably i'm not sure who else among my mutuals writes fic at all so i may have to leave it there short of 10 ;;

#sasha speaks #tagged for me #tag game #malcolm-f-tucker #ty #looking at it all laid out like this. EMBARRASSING! #gd it is so funny though seeing that one (1) fh fic make the list i forgot i updated that. with the first chapter in like two years. in dec #remember when i used to write mostly for d20. remember when people read my fics. lmao #also on my ao3 there are technically two other fics between numbers 8 and 9 on this list #but i posted them like two years after i actually wrote them so i went with the order closer to when i wrote them for this #my single giulio cesare fic on here is killing me sorry. what's cringer the 4 don g fics the 4 ok! fics or the One (1) baroque opera fic #which itself makes up exactly half of the fandom tag. #i honestly can't tell. #honestly the fact that i wrote for d20 at all is the outlier here going by fandom size. the only period of my fanfic ''''career'''' #when i actually had consistent readership LMAO #anyway. #next on the list is another fucking don g fic. and a figaro operas fic. both are stewing in my brain atm #also one very vague idea for a cabin pressure fic but. i wouldn't count on that one anytime soon. unless someone really goads me on #let the poet bless this round

[coraniaid]

Principal Flutie is, I think it's safe to say, not particularly consequential to the overall plot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Appearing only in the first half of the show's first season and almost entirely outshone by his successor Principal Snyder, his main claim to fame is the grisly manner of his departure: getting eaten alive by a gang of hyena-possessed students. As I write this, there are 26 works on AO3 tagged with this character's name.

Kendra Young is the second ever vampire slayer to appear on the show, Called as a Slayer after Buffy Summers (briefly) dies in the first season finale. Meeting Kendra helps to persuade Buffy that being a Slayer is a part of who she is and not merely a job she can one day escape from; while the existence of multiple Slayers will go on to become an important plot point in the show's third, fourth and seventh seasons. As I write this, there are 199 works on AO3 tagged with this character's name.

Given the above, which of these two characters do you think:

appears in the most episodes?

is mentioned in the most episodes after their death?

was actually given a full name while the show was still airing?

Here's a hint: all three questions have the same answer.

Here's a less subtle hint: it's not Kendra.

Robert ("all the kids are free to call me Bob ... but they don't") Flutie appears in a total of four Season 1 episodes (Welcome to the Hellmouth, The Harvest, Teacher's Pet, The Pack) before he dies, and is then mentioned again in three episodes (Season 1's The Puppet Show and Season 7's Lessons and Beneath You).

Kendra ("I have no last name") Young [who, despite being very clear on the subject when asked, suddenly acquired a last name when she needed one for the Buffy RPG tie-in] appears in a total of three Season 2 episodes (What's My Line? Part 1, What's My Line? Part 2, Becoming Part 1) before she dies, and is then mentioned again in two episodes (Season 2's Becoming Part 2 and Season 3's Faith, Hope & Trick) before never being mentioned again [at least not on the TV show].

You might think it strange that the show's actual focus seems so out of alignment with both fandom interest and what logic suggests should surely be central to its own mythos and world-building and to its major characters emotional arcs. You might think it strange that, after Season 2, Buffy never talks about Kendra again [the one time Kendra's name is spoken in Season 3 comes when Cordelia says it] despite Buffy having found Kendra's body and being falsely accused of her murder. [Fun fact: after Season 2 those same murder charges are mentioned more times than anybody expresses any sadness over Kendra's death, which is never. Oh, sorry, that's not a very fun fact.]

You might think it particularly strange that in Season 7 -- a season where the Slayer Line itself is a key part of the central plot and we meet many new Potential Slayers who Buffy is tasked with training and keeping alive, a season in which the Big Bad has the ability to appear in the form of any dead person she wishes and there are multiple episodes featuring flashbacks to the life of a former Slayer who was killed by one of the Big Bads from Season 2 [albeit flashbacks that involved recasting the original actor despite her interest in continuing to play the part] -- the Buffy writers thought to include two separate callbacks to the unremarkable and (up to this point) unlamented Principal Flutie (who surely only a minority of fans watching would have even remembered?) and exactly none to murdered Vampire Slayer Kendra.

Was a character who appeared in four episodes six years ago really so much more memorable than a character who sppeared in three episodes five years ago? Did Kendra really make so little impression at the time? Was there no reason to think one of the characters might have brought her up at any point? Was there really no room at all in any of this season's scripts to include even a fleeting reference to the very first girl Buffy met, tried to teach how to be a Slayer, and who then died in a way Buffy could blame herself for? Might Kendra's memory not have been slightly more thematically relevant to this season's story than the tedious ongoing sagas of "is Giles the First?" [no], "will the First ever use the hypnotized Spike as a weapon against Buffy?" [no] and "isn't Andrew Wells funny? doesn't he deserve his own spin-off show?" [no]? Is there any reason you can think of that might explain this puzzling creative choice?

Ah well.

Who can say what the writers were thinking? I guess it's just one of those little mysteries that will never be resolved.

#btvs #... oh wait: it's the racism isn't it?

[strixcattus]

I'm supposed to be working on other things right now but I'm thinking about that question on the survey that asked about which ending you preferred/considered canon. And I'm about to say a lot of things that may or may not make sense or all be related to one another, and I'm not sure they'll come out in a parseable order, so I may or may not even end up putting this in the main tag. We'll have to see.

I chose the answer I consider best. Or, least bad. And not in a narrative sense—after the update, I like the scene of the "And? What Happens Next?" ending better than perhaps any other. But I chose the one that I believed led to the most favorable scenario after the end, which would be the loop ending. And I've got a post in my drafts, half-written, that explains in detail why I consider each ending to be a "bad ending" for the world or the characters or both in some form, which I had to put on a back-burner because I wanted to ensure I wasn't doing some sort of bad-faith reading on the Shifting Mound during my discussion of one ending, and even though with the benefit of distance I can see I generally wasn't I've never gotten back to it. To sum it all up, each ending requires you to trade away something the game's story makes you value (unless, I suppose, you come to hate the Princess and by extension the Shifting Mound, or the Shifting Mound and by extension the Princess, on a nonnegotiable level) in order to resolve the narrative, but the loop ending allows you to put it off ad infinitum. What you're sacrificing is the resolution itself. So you lose nothing, and gain nothing, and probably something really horrible happens to the world, but you don't have to think about that part.

But I consider the canon ending to be "There Are No Endings." Maybe it has something to do with it being the first ending I got. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I consider it the optimal outcome for the world—you sacrifice everyone who's unconditionally been on your side this entire time (Shifty doesn't quite count, since she wasn't present in the same way the Voices were) in order to maintain balance and surety. Maybe it just says something about what I value, and that unseen value says something about the endings.

Shifty's right. She doesn't get it right about what you, the player, feel and value (unless your values happen to align with hers—mine don't, but I know some people's must), but that's how people are. She says it—and normally I'd go sifting through the files or the game itself for when exactly she says it, but it's late and I have other things to do, so I'll just say she says it very early on—she says very early on that she cannot know your mind, because you are not her.

It's the same way as your final words to the Voices in the mirror. None of your options are poorly worded. If you expect the Voices to take the harsh truth gracefully, that's an honest mistake, because you can't know what's going on in their heads. Your options are to lie kindly, or tell them a truth that will make them hate you, because just as you can't see inside their heads, they cannot see inside yours, and they will assume you must have some other choice. You don't. But you don't get to articulate it. Lie or hurt them. Those are your only options.

But aside from that Shifty is right. I've seen people ask—and this was early in my entrance to the fandom, and I don't know how much discussion went around about it because I wasn't in the circle, so to speak, even less than I am right now, but I've seen people ask if Shifty could have killed us.

That's not the question to be asking. Of course she could have killed us. She can do anything we believe her to be able to, and if we believe her able to kill us, she can. She always could have killed us.

But she never would have, because she knows. She knows something as a god that you cannot know until you choose to raise yourself to her level—she knows that a universe without either one of you may not be a universe worth living in. She knows that she needs her counterweight. She may not value people on the same level you might, but she does not want them to suffer—she specifically wants them not to suffer, or at least not to suffer in a way she could have prevented. She is a detached god, not a cruel one.

She's right. She's forceful, but she's right, and she can't understand why you would rather be a person than a god, because she has never been anything but a god, and her Vessels are as much a part of her as your Voices are a part of you, but while you lived alongside your Voices as a person before cannibalizing them, she only welcomed her Vessels back upon their absorption. She does not know firsthand what it is to be a person, but she is right about everything else.

(I have to wonder if she is less cruel to her Vessels than you are to your Voices. Hers maintain their form throughout.)

And now this has me thinking—what if the Voices are you? Not in the way in which they're obviously you. I mean that you live your life, you make your decisions, and then you die. And then there is a new one of you. But the new one is not the Voice that has appeared in your head. The new Voice is the old one, fully realized into his own person with a personality you can no longer mold, just as the Vessels are not their own persons until you make the choices that make them into real people. The new entity is you, unmolded, without any personality save what you, the person who does not exist in this world, pour into it.

#slay the princess #I don't actually know how comprehensible this post is #someone tell me if even one point makes any sense

[relaxxattack]

how come twitter hates knifetrick? i havent read it nor have i ever been involved in any mcyt or adjacent stuff btw

oh man. ok let me explain the story. it was around exactly a year ago the main bit of this shit happened actually

in 2020 minecraft roleplaying (mcrp) becomes super mainstream with the rise of dream smp. in these series, stories are scripted and then acted out live with some improv stuff

in the fandoms there is a LOT of drama over whether it's okay to ship the roleplay characters. there's lots of stances on this. in the beginning, most people say it's not okay to ever ship rp characters, because the youtubers usually just use their own persona as a base for an oc, so it's basically the same thing as shipping the youtubers together. shipping irl people is weird and gross, so nobody wants to do that.

in 2021 a couple of ships start getting confirmed as canon in the rp. characters date or get together or canonically have romantic scenes. this makes the fandom hurt itself in its confusion, because it doesnt understand if it's allowed to ship those characters together.

two guys have their characters literally get married and have a child. the fandom LOVED these characters, they were well written and cute and had a great dynamic. the fandom wanted to ship them and support their marriage so bad. BUT. they were played by real people. those real people (tubbo and ranboolive) were also minors at the time, who nobody wants to risk being weird about obviously.

the mainstream fandom decides that to solve this problem, they will pretend that the marriage is platonic, and ostracize and witch hunt anyone who claims it's not. they draw tons and tons of ship fanart of the two characters, all helpfully tagged as "platonic", sometimes tagging every single use of the word "husband" as platonic.

EVENTUALLY, people start realizing, hey wait, this is roleplay. it's fictional. the streamers are not actually traumatized war veterans who invented nukes, have amnesia, raised a child, are half hybrid alien etc etc etc.

in fact... it's actually really weird to try and make their roleplay relationship the same as their real life one. in the roleplay, they are married and have a kid and act lovey-dovey... why would you claim that's their real relationship? why would you conflate the two? can't we just understand that it's fictional?

most of the tumblr fandom, eventually, realizes that fictional characters and real human actors are not actually the same person. (it helps that the actors themselves state the same thing.)

the twitter fandom however... does not eventually realize this. they stay in their "platonic husband" hell, simultaneously being really weird about shipping and outwardly hating all shippers.

fastforward a bit, there's another mc roleplay series. it's a spinoff series of that first one we were talking about, and it's an athology series-- a whole bunch of oneshots with new characters each time. keep in mind, these characters are NOT EVEN RELATED TO THE STREAMER'S PERSONAS... they make up new ones each time!!

anyway they do one of the oneshots in a cool futuristic city and i was like "man it would be cool to write about this." one of the characters (ran) acts very weird and suspicious for the 5 lines he has total, which leads to a lot of silly theories about what he might be up to in this future city. i think, "man it would be fun to write about him." a different character (jackie) remarks on that character as well; jackie is also one of the only characters to live to the end of the oneshot.

ages after this oneshot was actually aired i thought to myself, what the hell, i'll write a story about ran and jackie. they have literally no existing personality and the futuristic city is not even remotely expanded on- i get to do all that myself!

so i write a comedy mystery action romance novel about an alien assassin (ran) assigned to kill the general of the city's army (jackie) while they try to find some kidnapped kids. keep in mind, i had basically nothing to work with for these characters-- they were side characters for a single episode from a spin-off series, they had around ten lines total. i got to make up basically everything about who they were and where they came from and what they would do myself. the story is also chock full of OCs, and all of the mechanics for the city itself were original and invented by me-- it was a huge labor of love and invention and original work.

the romance wasn't intended to be a whole thing, but honestly it felt very natural (and all the story's fans definitely wanted it), so it eventually happened.

surprising no one, the same twitter fans who believe that fictional characters are somehow LITERALLY the same as their actors started trying to tell me i was shipping real life people. (what? gross?). they told me i was being a bad fan by going against the wishes of irl people who didn't want to be shipped. they accused me of so much, of just trying to "hide" that i really shipped irl people, tons of things. but my story was not about irl people. the characters literally have different fucking names, appearances, personalities, dynamics... EVERYTHING.

twitter users eventually started a "cancellation" of me. i don't even use twitter. but anyway they dug up a bunch of weird innocuous comments or fanarts i had done before, and then pointed to knifetrick, and said i was secretly a gross person, that i was a guy who shipped gaming youtubers, etc. there was a thread about it, idk.

eventually the harassment in my inbox caused me to take a break from tumblr for several weeks. i actually wasn't sure if i would come back. HUNDREDS of people were talking about how terrible i was; people on twitter literally have me and my works in their goddamn dnis. it was such a surreal experience and it caused me so much anxiety.

eventually, several of my friends convinced me to finish the story, because really there was nothing all that wrong with it in the first place. i came back to tumblr.

i added the banner that is currently in my pinned to discourage gross shippers, or people who think *i* am a gross shipper, from coming near me anymore.

as far as i'm concerned, ran and jackie are my OCs. they were from a oneshot-- a oneshot that has not been MENTIONED by its creators for years now-- who i gave an entire story to. i don't want to associate with that fandom anymore, so i don't want the characters i worked so hard on associated either.

they still talk about me on twitter sometimes, kind of as an urban legend of drama. "holy shit you guys remember the knifetrick stuff? that was so gross, how did we let any of that happen. people kept defending it too 🤢". it doesn't bother me as much anymore, because i'm surrounded by people with the critical thinking skills to tell the difference between tom hanks and woody, but it's still sometimes surreal and hurtful.

don't take this as just me complaining though- making knifetrick was incredibly fun, and i still adore all the fans and memes and fanart to this day. you all were incredible and pretty much make those awful episodes worth it <3

in case you're wondering, the steamiest thing those characters did, that people were so upset about?

they shared a chaste peck of the lips for .2 seconds before one of them tried to kill the other.

#knifetrick #THE WHOLE THING SUMMED UP! ONCE AND FOR ALL! #sorry for going on for so goddamn long anon but you needed more context than just the story itself ToT #(slight ventish(?) ahead) #those were seriously the most anxiety inducing weeks of my whole life though. every morning when i woke up i wanted to puke. #i cant imagine what its like for big internet creators who get cancelled. i literally dont know how they survive it. #bkt

[the-marron]

Tagged by @miss-ingno - I was certain I did this twice already, but I cannot for the life of me find these posts for some reason, so I shall reply again 😅 Thanks for the tag!

How many works do you have on AO3? 150

What's your total AO3 word count? 1,284,770

What fandoms do you write for? recently I used to write the most to Guardian and Weilan derivatives (Luolin!~) but I am slowly and surely slowing down on writing altogether

What are your top 5 fics by kudos? skipping that one, I am certain I answered this one around five times and the answer is still the same. I can say that my most kudosed work is at 1,220, because I think this is the only new info I can offer on the topic.

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? I love writing comments and responding to them, no matter how much time passed! It's great to get a comment on something I posted around 10 years ago and remember what I thought about, how I saw that ship back then, and all that, plus sometimes people simply share their thoughts about the canon work itself in the comments and I love to have discussions with people I would not meet otherwise.

What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? eh, idk? My angst-meter is broken, so I cannot discern what is the saddest thing I committed. Probably either Unceasing Path (Luolin) or When I Make an Oath to the Flames (Weilan), but I don't know really.

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? well, not sure at all either. But I think the Grindeldore series?

Do you get hate on fics? More like hate on me personally, but not often, thankfully

Do you write smut? If so, what kind? I don't. Usually the story I want to tell doesn't need any sex scenes, because the emotions that would come up in those were already explored earlier, in a different way, and I do find them boring, so why force myself.

Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written? Oh, I absolutely do and I enjoy them both in reading and in writing. Weilan derivs are crossovers already, so I've written quite a lot of those. I think the craziest crossovers I've written are also the ones I will not publish, so I shall remain silent 😆

Have you ever had a fic stolen? not all of it, just ideas and scenes

Have you ever co-written a fic before? YES! And I love the experience!

What's your all-time favorite ship? No idea, any time I find a new ship I adore it pretty much looks like this:

What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? I have only one WIP in the works and I am pretty sure I will finish it, as for the rest - I only have ideas and I might end up abandoning them and never doing anything about them, so not exactly WIPs, are they

What are your writing strengths? I guess variety? I like changing genres and styles, to have fun with POVs and different settings?

What are your writing weaknesses? I am rather careless, keep on making typos, changing my idea of a sentence after writing half of it, forgetting which version of the plot I am ultimately going with, so I am a mess that keeps on updating stories years after publishing them because I spotted yet another typo while scrolling through them.

First fandom you wrote for? Inuyasha, an OC that was the main hero's half-sister, trying to fit into the family after realising she has it. It was a gen fic, surprise, surprise, and it ended up in a crossover with another girl running an Inuyasha blog - our respective characters made guest appearances in our stories. It was fun.

Favorite fic you've written? No idea. Really, depends on the mood, I sometimes think I did a good job with something, other times I decide everything I've written is terrible in new, exciting ways

Apologies for the short answers, I am truly out of my writing era 😅

Not tagging anyone because I am certain I did this tag twice so I probably would end up tagging the same people all over again, so if someone is reading this and would like to share, I would be very happy to read the replies (tag me please, so I can see), but no pressure~

#my writing #fandom #fanfiction #tag game #marron gets personal

[banesberry-anomoly]

Hello and welcome to hell our blog

We are Banesberry Anomoly, a system of 500+ headmates

We split easily due to stress and the 'tism affects that too. Please interact we love interacting with people we dont bite (this is a lie. We do bite, but its normally a friendly playful kind of biting unless you're being a dick)

COMMISIONS OPEN! Prices under the cut, Cashapp only for now, but also accepting nitro comms for pfps

Current Projects & Other blogs:

@ukulele-made-of-bricks - Sideblog for our main A-Major subsys. Used for spam and general rambling, and Ukulele also uses it to fight assholes (which you should totally go stalk from time to time cause we use it regularly to talk about shit)

@multiversal-traveler-clef - In character ask/rp/gimmick blog for the Timeskipper subsys, which itself is an Amaj subsys within our main Amaj subsys

@matte-blue-scooby-doo-gummy - Headmate sideblog. Its exactly what you think it is

@spamton-spammers - Spam reblog sideblog/partial gimmick blog. Tag it for notes goals games (believe me, we Will help lmfao)

@a-fracturing-incipisphere - SCP Homestuck au has us in a vise grip lmao

Some Frequent Fronter Intros: (Will be updated regularly)

Dr. Alto Clef | Synth 🥮 Amaj subsys - Lockhost - It/Lunar/He/Silk/Eye/Shotgun

Agent Ukulele 👥 Amaj Subsys - Protector - Any X Neos/It/Shadow/He

Francis Wojciechowski 🎧 Amaj Subsys - Comfortor - They/He/Soft

Chimera | Delta 🎆 Amaj subsys - Protector(?) - It/Fur/Claw/Beast

Cryptid ♟ - Splitroject Co Host - It/He/Blood/Cut/They/Bite/Green/Hood

Eden 🛤 - Co Host & Protector - He/Ve/It

Traveler ♾ Timeskipper subsys - Gatekeeper - It/He + Neos

Feel free to send us a frq on SimplyPlural: BanesberryAnomoly

We tag tws as they are, but will try to add other varients if we have room. For ex: blood by itself would be the main tag, but well also try to add other tags aswell for those that dont have the main one filtered, like cw blood, and tw blood

Commisions info, what we post about, Tagging system, and DNI under the cut

I dont have a proper sheet yet, but we're offering commissions for nitro, cashapp, or amazon/other gift cards 8⁰]]

Sketch - $3 bust, $5 full body

Flat Colours - $5 bust, $10 full body

Shaded - $15 bust, $17 full body

Rendered - $19 bust, 35 full body

Lineless +$3

Extra character +$10-20 per depending on complexity

Background (other than simple) +$10-25 depending on complexity

Dm for examples or just look through our art tag 'Banesberry art' 8⁰]]

Art trades are also open if anyone wants to do one of those!

Interests & what we post about: Our art :], SCP, BUCKSHOT ROULETTE FUCK YEAHHHHH, TF2, Plural/System stuff, Minecraft, General Horror topics and fandoms (including analogue horror and liminal spaces), Lgbtq/Mogai/Liom, and Way too many other fandoms

TAGGING SYSTEM (Mostly the important ones and the ones we sometimes forget, will update as needed):

gremlin ramblings - original posts

Banesberry Art - our art

Berry hot sauce - Horny tag. Minors please block this along with tags like 'mdni' 'minors dni' etc. Those posts will prolly be under the mature community label anyways, but for everyones confort and safety please block those tags

Berry mild sauce - Suggestive tag. Block this if youre under 16 please

just chatting - talking tag

name.exe - detonates headmates but 'name' is replaced with the headmates name, there may be multiple of these on a post

reblog haven - reblog tag

pretty art - reblog tag for art stuff

music soup - reblog tag for music stuff

.mp4 - video tag

OCs my beloved <3 - oc tag (Ive half given up on this :sob:. Ocs are also tagged with their name. Might make an oc masterpost later to link here)

know de wae - memes we made, either in response to something or as an original post

heehoo funny go brrr - funny shit goes here

INTERESTING AS FUCK - bottom text

SPAAACE - we fucking love space please tag us in posts about space

Liminal vacation - liminal space tag

train wreck posts - posts and threads that are an absolute train wreck and will probably explode your brain /hj

Personal fandom tags (for sorting purposes and for blocking purposes for my dear mutuals):

p o n y - Ponytown tag

HH/HB - Hazbin/Helluva tag, we post about this often but its here for when we do

BYI

-||| Please block certain tags if youre a minor or we may have to block you if we catch you interacting with those posts

-||| Feel free to make fanart of any of our ocs, headmates, or character interpretations, and make sure to tag us so we see it 8⁰]

-||| You can use art as pfps, banners, etc, but please give credit somewhere, and ask before using headmate specific art. We will likely say yes, but there may be something that we dont want used

-||| We use slurs that we can bodily reclaim, like faggot, tranny, cripple, and retard (also, Queer isnt a slur and we will die on that hill). If youre a close friend yall can use em on us, we dont care lmao (If we talk regularly on discord youre in the green zone, otherwise ask first)

-||| We consume content critically. We may interact with fandoms that have problematic content or creators, but please do not automatically assume we support the problematic aspects of it. We are usually well aware already, and likely the reason we interact with said content is out of our control (like having headmates from said media, or hyperfixtating on it for some reason, etc.)

DNI

Queerphobes, Racists, Anti-Semitic people, Israel supporters, TERFS/RADFEMS, MAP/NOMAP/Etc, Proshippers, Syscoursers, Anti-Endos, people against mspec lesbians/gays and other good faith identities

ScamKiller and Spooky-Hey supporters (SCPblr specific), Wilbur Soot supporters

We block liberally

#tagging system #pinned post #Updated: April 16th 2024

[elephant-in-the-pride-parade]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

I have been tagged by @timetravelbypen, yayyyy!! :D

1. How many works do you have on AO3?:

53

2. What's your total AO3 word count?:

1,521,662

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Sailor Moon, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Prodigy, And one Harry Potter story, the xover.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Parent Trap (301)

Sailor Moon H: Order of the Phoenix (283)

Sailor Moon H: Half-Blood Prince (217)

Out of Reach (currently taken down) (150)

Eden's Deception (149)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I always try to respond to comments. I especially love when people have questions or want hints about what comes next.

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

HAHAHAHAHA oh boy. Um... you... you want me to choose just one? hmmm... Alright so honestly I think while Afterimage and What Even is Three Minutes did numbers on the J/C crowd, nothing tops the cliffhangers at the end of Sailor Moon H: Half-Blood Prince in terms of how much angst they induced in readers. The double whammy: (1) the youngest senshi getting turned into a horcrux and taken hostage by Bellatrix Lestrange and (2) Morgana Avery, the OC whom I had carefully crafted to be a character you loved burning up her boyfriend's shop with dark magic and then casting the Dark Mark in order to infiltrate the death eaters as an undercover spy... My betas and I were taking bets on whether I'd get readers coming after me with pitch forks for that one.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

There's a few contenders but I don't think any happiness quite compares to Captain Kathryn Janeway in The Captain's Secret Santa, getting a puppy for Christmas.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

A smattering of memorable flames which I try to save to reflect back on when I need a good laugh.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

*opens trench coat* Smut you say? Well gosh golly gee. What in the blazes could that be? SMUT. Funny word. Hmmm. I'm not sure I know anything about that.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I have written exactly two. Sailor Delta is on hold for the moment because the other one Sailor Moon H has one story to go. And i think if there were an award for craziest crossover I would submit that one and have a good chance to be in the running. It would win on craziest word count and probably on shenanigans too. And then it had the nerve to give itself a real plot. I started that as a crack fic and it got a mind of its own. And I am still writing it 8 years later XD.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I had all of my unlocked works on AO3 gobbled up by the initial crawl that Open AI used to build Chat GPT and that SUCKED. Not because it's been reproduced wholesale but because they'll use my hard work to make millions of dollars and all of the writers who were included in that dataset are both uncredited and uncompensated. I don't think I've ever had a fic stolen by another human. But if you do see what looks like my fic anywhere fishy, kindly let me know!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No one has but I would be open to it!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I've co-written a few!

One for a challenge with @magdalenejaneway,

one with Dawn47 when I was there as a Shakespeare assist.

memorable live-writing adventures with @trekflower. (one of my favorite people to write sexy fic with.)

And the longest one, which I am still so impressed we finished (and still one of my favorite things to reread) was the big Threshold AU Season 7 with @jellybeansarecool

I've talked about cowriting with @theredheadedcaptain but we both agreed that given our penchant for massively long fics that combining both of those tendencies was a very dangerously large project to contemplate XD

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

J/C is very near and dear to my heart but so is the Outer Senshi OT3 and I could never choose between them.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

I am determined to finish all of my WIPs. Yes even SMH. Yes I know its been going on for 8 years. I am SLOW, okay. SLOW. Not lost. I know precisely how I want that thing to go.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I don't like tooting my own horn but okay... I feel confident in my ability to plot a long fic and see it through. In my ability to write something that brings you to your knees with emotion. And I do a damn good villain speech.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Time management. Word Count management. Oneshots.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

Depends if it's there to be understood in context or there to stand out as not understood. I'd write dialogue in another language if it was there to be understood. I'd gloss over it if the intention was that the character and reader shouldnt understand it. I also wouldnt do it for whole lines of dialogue unless it was for a very good reason. Would prefer to throw in only the untranslateable words or to use greetings/honorifics and other smaller phrasal cues to indicate which language is being spoken.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

W.I.T.C.H. in 2009-2010

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

Two:

I fell in love with writing The Universe to Mend this year and I've already re-read it once since finishing it in October. It brought me so much joy. It was such a fun challenge. and I think it was some of the best character work I've ever done.

While I wince when I re-read some of the typos, Pax Lunae was still the first ever story that I felt proud of and that remains true today. It was a challenge to dive into the lore of Sailor Moon and create something that could be canon. It was also the first fic I could hold up and say "Hey! I wrote something the length of a novel. I could write a novel" And I like to reread it to remember that feeling. Someday I'll have a chance to clean up some of the spelling too..

Alrighty let's see. I want to tag @theredheadedcaptain @divinemissem13 @jellybeansarecool and @curator-on-ao3 if they'd like to take a crack at it. and anyone else who follows me and wants to - go for it!.

#that writing life #elephantwrites #fanfiction #writing

[dndeceit]

This is just a bunch of meta for my fic “Nails in the Coffin”.

The initial idea for this story came to me years ago after my initial fic binge upon finding this fandom. Influence wormed its way in from a lot of the fics I read at the time, but the anonymously authored series "a feeling's not a thing you own" probably had more impact on it than most. Part of why I sat on posting the fic for so long was because I was of two minds linking it as “inspired by” the series. The tone, themes and plot are all very different (mine being an occasionally humorous story centered around a fantastical problem, while the other dealt with very serious topics more closely rooted in reality). Still, both focus on Thomas experiencing extreme upheaval in his life, and how this manifests in the Sides in real-time in a way I’m not sure I would have done without reading that series. And Nails echoes enough of the same story beats in places that I feel I'd be remiss in not mentioning it.

Also, AO3 doesn’t let you link a series as an influence. Linking just the first story wouldn’t make sense, as it doesn’t contain the relevant themes, which are scattered over the series as a whole.

Further, it bears significant repeating that "a feeling’s not a thing you own” is a series dealing with some very serious real life subjects. To a certain degree, citing it as an influence to my story would feel a bit like making light of those subjects. And it is very well written, but the series doesn't pull many punches. It certainly might not be for all readers, so I absolutely insist anyone interested in giving it a look make sure they take a good close read of the tags for the full series before doing so.

Moving on to other things, it might be noticed that, for a vampire AU, the word itself pops up only once, and then only in writing that Logan is crossing out in chapter 4. This is partly to highlight the themes of denial and coping with huge life changing things by not thinking about them. Even in the narration, and even after they’ve accepted that it’s happening there is a lot of effort put into talking around the issue. However, this is also just a personal writing affectation of mine. One of my favorite vampire movies is an old film called “Innocent Blood”. That movie also never used the word vampire anywhere out loud, but still managed to make it very clear that every character knew exactly what they were dealing with. That vampires are such a clear, strongly realized concept in our culture that you don’t need to say it for it to be understood, and sometimes what people don’t say does a better job of showing how scared they are. How afraid they are to believe it. It made an impression on me.

The end of chapter 5 was actually the first scene for this fic that existed as anything complete, and it was mostly born out of the image of Roman's magic girl transformation into a brooding vampiric anti-hero.

Chapter 7... This chapter gave me so much trouble. It was probably my favorite chapter to write, and one of the ones I had the strongest image for after the scene in chapter 5. But as much as I tried I could never be satisfied with the ending. I’m still really not happy with it. But if I continued to agonize it, I might never have posted the fic at all.

It has already sat basically finished for more than half a year without posting.

Early versions use a version of the mindscape that is closer to the common fanon version where all the sides share a space with a long hallway with doors to their rooms. This made it really easy to indicate what had happened in a very simple way (in that version, Patton’s door vanished and Janus’s took it’s place, while Patton’s room later reformed in the subconscious near Remus’s). Still, I was dissatisfied with that. While very simple, it’s somewhat anti-canonical (we’re shown Patton and Virgil’s rooms as expressions of Thomas’s current surroundings). I also didn’t want to support the Light/Dark side divide as anything fixed or concrete rather than a label based on how Thomas interacts with them, but that is otherwise largely arbitrary.

(Also, the basic thesis of this fic is “Everyone Gets to Be a Dark Side Because Thomas is a Friggin’ Vampire”. Everyone gets to be a little dark. As a treat.)

While it might come off as sounding somewhat jaded, Janus’s “hope is a lie about tomorrow” speech here is really not meant to be. Janus is lies, so of course something merely not being known to be true isn’t a condemnation from him. It’s meant to actually be hopeful, and I hope that comes across.

(It’s sort of my attempt at the “one atom of justice” speech from Prachett’s Hogfather or “not lies, dreams” from The Sandman. Probably with limited success.)

Fun fact: In the original notes for this story, Janus's line in the final chapter originally read "In that sense, we've always been siblings, you and I." Which drew a direct parallel between them and the twins as being two sides of the same function. But then the “Over the Garden Wall” video came out, and it was part of the push to work on this as part of my NaNo project. And...look. Look. I'm not much of a shipper, but after that scene in the video, I couldn't bring myself to use the word siblings after that, okay? Not and still take myself seriously. And then of course Patton would be flustered at the idea rather than disturbed, which was a great way of illustrating that their dynamic has changed.

Also, I just want to say, the joke about Remus trying to convince Thomas to eat the governor has been in the notes for this fic for so long. This fic has existed in my drafts folder for two years. At one point I was concerned it wouldn’t even be topical enough to be funny anymore. Joke’s on me, right? This joke is going to remain evergreen it seems. I might even make it a running gag if I ever write anything else in this universe. It’s going to become one of Remus’s favorites.

(Not to “get political”, but Florida governor Ron Desantis is a lamentable pile of festering human trash. Just. You know. In case anyone didn’t know.)

I liked the ending I wound up with. I thought that it ended on a good, hopeful note for everyone. However, there was a slightly sillier ending in my original notes, which would have involved Janus defusing Remus’s fixation on feeding by starting this exchange:

Janus: "Oh, by the way, Remus, you missed it: Patton said a swear." Remus: "What? No way. Which one?" Janus: "Your favorite." Remus gasps. Remus: "Patton said the fuck-word?" Disbelieving Princey noises. Logan narrows his eyes consideringly. Virgil: "No he didn't." Janus exaggerates his offense. Janus: "I'm offended you'd think even I would lie about at thing like that." Patton: "Wh- No I didn't!" Virgil: "See? Yeah, nice try." Patton: "I mean, c'mon guys, which of us are you gonna believe?"

While it would have highlighted more explicitly what is hinted at in the final chapter (by lying Patton hints that he is now part of a dual manifestation of Deceit in much the way that Remus is part of a dual manifestation of Creativity), it didn’t have quite the hopeful impact as Patton and Janus ending on good terms.

There’s more to say about how the sides have changed in this verse. Patton is now keeping secrets from the other sides, and there’s probably a whole sequel about Logan and the heart he’s keeping in his desk. Unfortunately, I don’t know when I’ll have the energy or focus to work on them.

#my fanfiction #writing meta #fanfiction meta

[broomsticks]

Marauders era femslash ship stats

aka what the hell is a dorlene

Some stats focusing exclusively on the 15 ships between the six characters Alice Longbottom, Dorcas Meadowes, Emmeline Vance, Lily Evans Potter, Marlene McKinnon, and Mary Macdonald -- namely all the female characters that appeared in the Order of the Phoenix photo taken in summer 1981 (the former 5) or canonically known to have been in Gryffindor House at the same time as the Marauders (last).

Omission of Pandora Lovegood, Amelia Bones, Black sisters and Hogwarts faculty (incl. Sybil Trelawney) was intentional, but other thoughts/suggestions welcome!

other notes/caveats: works on AO3, stats gathered April 2023.

an overview:

• • •

the first question I was interested in looking at: just how overrepresented in Marauders femslash shipping are Dorlene and Marylily some ships?

Lily and Marlene are the two most-written-about characters on this list, with 42k and 12k works respectively. Dorcas and Mary are both close at 8.5k, and there are comparatively very few fics about Alice (4.7k) and Emmeline (1.5k).

that in itself is interesting and curious considering there's comparable amounts of canon info about Dorcas and Marlene (next to none), a smidge more about Emmeline, and definitely more about Mary and Alice. some suggestions there about what drives fanon popularity, at least within the 2020s HP fandom!

dorlene!

interesting -- it might feel like there's a ton of marylily, but that's actually 'just about the amount we would expect to see if they were all shipped with each other at random, with equal frequencies.'* good to know!

significant lack of alice in these marauders era pairings

also that's quite the overrepresentation of mary/emmeline! (proportionally, for two very minor characters.)

*: i really like this analysis method and might try to apply this to All The Marauders Gen(TM), and maybe make some observations about M/M vs F/M vs F/F shipping. note to self!

some % over- or under-representation. lazy to explain the logic but it's essentially observed/expected similar to that above, "how much more or less do two characters appear shipped together based on what would be expected by how often they're each tagged", where 1 would be the 'baseline' of "these characters are shipped together exactly as often as would be expected", <1 is "less than expected" and >1 "more than expected".

dorlene centralization

marylily overtook lily/marlene

many mary femslash ships growing

alice is really not shipped with this crowd hahaha

• • •

on a different note,

for comparison, the OTP:true % for wolfstar is 43%, drarry 70%, jily 23%, and jegulus 22%. the average otp:true % for the top 5 ships here is 8.9%.

most of these femslash ships are written alongside wolfstar and to a lesser extent jily, more so than jegulus...

...with the biiig exception of lily/mary, which was notably different from most femslash ships in the lack of overlap with jily and 80% overlap with jegulus.

surprising and unexpected: the overlap of dorcas/emmeline with jily, and mary/emmeline with dorlene.

i would love to do a change over time but i'd have to get sO MANY STATS that realistically idt this is happening

• • •

"overall average" looks identical to dorlene, which makes up 70% of the fics here.

this is not filtered for otp:true or for f/f excluding m/m and f/m, so more stats needed to determine whether this relatively low % of E fic is exclusively a femslash phenomenon or a more general marauders subfandom trend.

(alice/marlene, the ship with the highest % of E fic, is one of the ships with a relatively high otp:true %, but with 11 fics total i'm not sure how much we can conclude from this.)

also not too sure what to make of the (in my opinion?) high? percentage of NR fics.

• • •

my very rough attempt to quantify 'average age of ship' -- getting a "date at which which half the existing works in the ship tag on ao3 were posted updated."

Dorcas/Emmeline: 2019/04

Alice/Lily: 2020/05

Emmeline/Marlene: 2020/08

Emmeline/Lily: 2021/02

Lily/Marlene: 2021/03

Alice/Marlene: 2021/04

Dorcas/Mary: 2021/07

Dorcas/Marlene: 2021/08

Emmeline/Mary: 2021/09

Marlene/Mary: 2021/09

Dorcas/Lily: 2021/12

Lily/Mary: 2022/01

all dates obviously veerrryy rough.

• • •

Conclusions:

there isn't actually an overrepresentation of lily/mary (*within the very specific parameters of this study etcetc)

dorlene centralization over time

these marauders femslash ship fics are mostly also wolfstar fics

marylily fics are mostly also jegulus fics

lack of E rated fics?

some interesting differences in 'average age of ship'

#hp fandom stats #hp femslash #fandom stats

[goodfellowe]

I hope you don't mind me asking, but what originally got you into Hatstache? (If you ever answered this before, I am so sorry)

anon firstly i'm so sorry according to tumblr this ask has been sitting here since october 6th. i keep looking at it trying to word my thoughts and then telling myself ill answer it later and then... not doing that. lol

i got into ahit waaayyy back in 2019, when the fandom was mostly saturated with snatcher content at the time (people who have been following me since then probably remember that i hated him for like a solid two years just because he was everywhere lol). i remember very distinctly feeling very dissatisfied with how the game treated and wrote off mu after seeing her storybook, and i couldn't really find any postgame content that gave her a happy ending that i felt personally satisfied with. i ended up finding the hatstache tag on ao3 completely by chance trying to find that postgame content i wanted only to find that there were exactly two fics (neither of which i will not mention out of respect/not wanting that tied to my blog) that did not appeal to me for reasons lol.

the concept of it really stuck with me, though, even if i didn't find anything to fuel it with at the time. i like relationships where people who are hurting/have hurt each other work through it. and i am someone who looks way too into every little detail of everything, ever, and its always felt like mu both holds hk in a very high regard+was very hurt by her actions throughout the same. (see: dialogue+cut dialogue, graffiti around the game, the finale+mu's dialogue before it, the paintings, hk's 'betrayal', etc). paired with what little official content we did get of them being friends (postgame? maybe?) and it was a natural progression ehe

but even then i didn't actually feel super strong about it for a while. it was mostly just thoughts like 'damn, wish we got more content of them interacting' and 'it would be cute if mu had a little crush on hk without realizing'. i didn't actually get super passionate about it until i started writing the original version of twtt that summer/autumn (known as a crack in time at that point), and i only really wrote the ship in because 1.) i thought it would add some flavor and 2.) it made me really sad that there weren't too many options for people who wanted to read a hatstache fic at the time. and even then...

(screenshot from august 3rd, 2019. transcript in alt)

... it wasn't actually endgame. woah woah if you follow me for twtt please for the love of god put the pitchforks down they're endgame now and that's what matters. the story to twtt was significantly more different than it was now, but by the time i had actually wrote hatstache in, the ending i had planned for it was pretty bittersweet. it was just something i wanted to explore in my own self-indulgent way (as i always do ehe), and i was working through some stuff with my own sexuality and relationships at the time, so... yeah. threw it in for spice :D

then i started actually writing it and i just instantly fell in love with their dynamic and just how well their characterization worked with each other. i tend to write them as characters who come off as opposites at first interaction but are very similar at the core and that just makes them bounce off of each other really well. i got attached really fast, and as the story went down a totally different path than i originally expected, i was incapable of letting it go. it really just kind of worked its way into my heart. and the more i analyzed things and learned about the game and all of the little stuff hidden within/cut out, the more it seared itself into my brain until i was like... damn. i understand why they call it an otp now because i would go down with it. even when i trashed acit and took my year-and-a-half break from the fandom, hatstache was just a dynamic that lived in my head rent free.

it has a really special place in my heart because it is, in a way, what pushed me to start writing again and really exploring what i was capable of with my writing, too. and again its just a dynamic that i think can be explored in so many different wonderful ways. despite it all i want them to be happy and by god they will be... eventually :)

i guess basically to answer your question i just kind of wrote myself into it... but i hope you enjoyed my little trip down memory lane+some history behind the creation of twtt (there's a lot of it)

thank you for asking <3

#and also: im always happy to answer questions like these! it takes me some time to get into it but i love rambling so please dont hesitate #to ask me these sort of things. or things like hcs or ideas or what influenced certain decisions behind certain fics. etc etc #ive mentioned it somewhere but what originally got me to write twtt was some doodle of mu in a suit i did at a pizza place lol #the sketchbook its in got trashed but i know the drawing is still floating around there somewhere. i just have to find where ehe #long post #ask #hatstache #not art #twtt posting #just a little :) #twtt meta

[getoed5725]

“I am sharing my opinion on my account” if your opinion is just bringing down another artist you can shove that opinion up your own asshole because no one wants it. People and artists are doing this for FREE for the fandom, they can make whatever they want, so unless you are supporting artists and content creators may be just think about shutting the fuck up

sorry, this is pretty late due but uh.

firstly, i deleted the post and apologized for making a fuss.

secondly, i didn't "bring down" anyone. it was an opinion for one (1) work and i never asked if anyone "wants my opinion" bc i NEVER mentioned what it was or who it was exactly. i never tagged nor jumped into their work thread to express my opinion either. it shouldn't have anything to do with them making works, that's not my rights. it was the "general idea" of that work that i disagreed with, and it's not the first fanwork i see that goes in such direction, that's all the rant was about. but i agree it shouldn't be made public.

there's context to that though.

opinions for works happen. even i'm aware there are ppl who hate my works (and they're free to have opinions on that too). but NEVER did i say anything personally about the artist. i still appreciate their other works, it's absolutely cool they still make works for the fandom, and they should be supported as a content creator. but that specific work has a counter-argument to the official manga that roused discourses and was released during sensitive time. the reason for that was not limited to the work, but that artist's previous opinions regarding the manga's canon events that they posted in public on their local platform/socmed, which was now deleted, and which i will not elaborate even though i've seen it with all its negativity. that statement was reflected on the work, and as a result it did affect my opinions for that work and i ranted out with frustration, and i apologize for that.

so yes, there's more context to that "opinion" thread of mine, but i won't discuss it anymore. my "opinions" should never matter in the first place. anw, please block me if you are against the disagreement to that general idea presented in the work (not the work itself) and don't want to see it.

p.s. i do buy from artists and content creators if you're curious about that. Half of the stuffs i buy for Jjk are fanmade goods, and there's a LOT.

#i have a certain tolerance for the insults being thrown towards gege for his final conclusion for gj #i dont wanna talk about that context either #ask

[neondiamond]

✨ 2022 Writing Self-Evaluation ✨

I was tagged by @so-why-let-your-voice-be-tamed @hellolovers13 and @onlythebravest

1. Number of stories posted to AO3 this year: 26 (How did that even happen? 🤯)

2. Word count posted for the year: 132,344

3. Fandoms I wrote for: One Direction

4. Pairings: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson, Louis Tomlinson/Liam Payne, Liam Payne/Zayn Malik (as a side pairing)

5. Story with the most:

Kudos: I’d Walk Through Fire For You (Just Let Me Adore You) (I don’t often look at the amount of kudos my fics have so the fact that this has gotten just over 600 kudos in half a year is insane to me!)

Bookmarks: I’d Walk Through Fire For You (Just Let Me Adore You)

Comments: One for the Books

More under the cut!

6. Work I’m most proud of (and why): 

I think I have to say Here You Come Again. This is the second longest fic I’ve ever written (after my advent-ish fic from December) and I think the one I spent the most time working on this year. As someone that’s usually all about the fluff, it’s definitely a bit of a different one for me. It’s got a bit of angst, lots and lots of feelings, and I’m so proud of the way it turned out. It takes you a on bit of an emotional rollercoaster reading it, but I absolutely love it.

7. Work I’m least proud of (and why):

I’m going to take the easy way out here and say none. I can honestly say I’m proud of every single fic I have put out into the world this year. <3

8. Share or describe a favourite review you received:

I love every single comment I get on every single one of my fics. I guarantee you I smile every time I get one! But there is one ‘review’ in particular this year that just touched me so much. It’s something @lululawrence said in her podcast about my fic Baby, Don’t Apologize. This fic is so close to my heart, and hearing the way she described how it made her feel seen just made my heart so so full. This was exactly the intent I had with this fic and hearing her words definitely made me cry a little bit. 🥹

9. A time when writing was really, really hard:

The last few months have been pretty busy and a lot has happened in my personal life that has made it a little more difficult for me to find the time and inspiration to write as much as I would like to. So I’d say from like mid-September to now-ish.

10. A scene or character you wrote that surprised you:

The smut scenes in On Thin Ice were a big surprise to me (which make up about half of the fic if I were to guess; which is another surprise in itself lol). Writing smut is something I struggle with a bit, and when I do write it, it usually ends up being pretty… vanilla, I guess? Nothing spectacular and I don’t usually play with kink… except for this fic, apparently. I knew I wanted to have smut in this fic, but I wasn’t really planning anything different than I usually do. And then I started writing the first scene, and Harry suddenly had a praise kink. It came as quite the surprise to me haha! But I do like the way it worked out!

11. A favourite excerpt of your writing:

It’s so hard to pick just one!! I’ll go with this tiny exchange between Louis and Harry from one of my Wordplay fics, Waiting by the Tire Swing. It’s short, but I feel like it really conveys what this fic is all about:

“We can take it with us to the new house if you want,” Harry says softly, pulling Louis from his thoughts. “There are trees in the back garden. I’m sure one of them will be sturdy enough to hold it.”

Louis appreciates how patient and considerate Harry has been through this whole moving ordeal, and he actually considers his suggestion for a few seconds before shaking his head.

“No,” he says, giving the swing a gentle nudge and watching as it sways slightly. “This is where it belongs.”

12. How did you grow as a writer this year:

I think this year I really sort of let go of the idea of writing things to please other people. A LOT of my fics this year were really self-indulgent, and I didn’t really care much if other people read them or not, because at the end of the day, I write for myself first. I also wrote a lot of short drabbles and ficlets this year that I would bang out and post within a day or two, which isn’t really something I ever used to do because I used to think my shorter fics weren’t as good or worth my time as my long ones… but I fell in love with writing little fic babies whenever I want and that’s definitely something I want to keep doing next year!

13. How do you hope to grow next year:

Going into next year, I’d love to continue writing whatever I want, try my hand at slightly longer fics, and expand into writing new pairings, perhaps.

14. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta or cheerleader or muse etc etc):

If you’ve read, left kudos, commented, bookmarked, reblogged, or rec’ed any of my fics this year: this one goes out to you! I feel like there’s always a lot of love for writers, betas, etc. (and it’s very much well deserved, don’t get me wrong) but I feel like giving readers a little appreciation today. You all rock! 💕

15. Anything from your real life show up in your writing this year:

Whether I like it or not, there are always little parts of me that slip into my fics, often in the form of a habit or personality trait I give a character. The one that stands out the most though is for sure Baby, Don’t Apologize, in which I made Harry ace just like me. 💜

16. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers:

I’m pretty sure this is what I said last year but: Just write what YOU want to write. Have fun with it, and the rest will work itself out!

17. Any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year: 

I’m surprisingly not bringing a whole lot of wips with me in the new year. I have one nesting fic I’ve just started writing for the Omega Harry fest, an outline for a potential Narry fic I’d like to write, and a few smaller ideas/prompts for shorter fics. I do also have my eye on a few upcoming fic fests I’d maybe like to sign up for, but apart from that, I’m keeping things fairly open to fresh new ideas in 2023.

18. Tag some writers whose answers you’d like to read.

@disgruntledkittenface @wabadabadaba @larrieblr @littleroverlouis @alwaysxlarrie @lunarheslwt @brightgolden @thinlinez and whoever else feels like doing this! ❤️

#my writing

[caralara]

Would you share your thoughts about louis take on mental health

hi love, I wanted to take the time to properly respond to this, so apologies for the delay! This was sparked from the Music Week interview in which Louis says following, making the fandom have half a meltdown over what he said, saying he's lying for example:

Louis Tomlinson on mental health and music “In terms of One Direction, it’s often easy to stereotype these big evil managers or big evil label heads who demanded that we did this [or that]. It wasn’t really like that, I will say that everyone did their best by us, and I’m talking specifically about our mental health. However, being an artist is very individual and the pressures that you have day-to-day, no manager or record boss understands that. Until you experience it, you don’t understand it. Sometimes words are powerful, it can be a little throwaway phrase that comes from this suited label boss and you think about that for the next couple of months.”

I said in my tags that I thought this was aligning exactly what I thought Louis is on about, generally, and I was quite pleased with his response.

What he's saying here, is so important, especially in our fandom, in my opinion. It's easy to lock onto one evil mastermind who's supposedly pulling all the strings and easy to blame, but that's rarely how the real world works. The music industry is a part and a result of our society, and almost like a little society, a little cosmos itself. Everyone who works in the music industry was born and socialised in our society, and whenever loads of money and big egos are involved, as it is in the music industry, the ugliest faces of humanity make their appearances.

To me, what Louis is saying, is that from a rational, calm viewpoint that he - I am very sure worked very hard to achieve - found, there's not really one person at fault for making the time during One Direction tough on their mental health. That humans make mistakes, and that he also gives a lot of the people around them the benefit of the doubt that they truly were trying to look out for the boys. Unfortunately, other people don't always know what's the best for you, and that is something Louis also says in this quote, that if you're not in the situation yourself, you just don't understand the full impact of the circumstances. Let's say, the people surrounding them genuinely had their best interest at heart, but the way they were raised and grew up in the industry, to them Louis' best interest meant commercial success and fame, meaning they would try their best to maintain a certain image for them to make sure he would be commercially successful and famous while not completely breaking down. And to them, they would genuinely feel like all their actions were justified and the right decisions, because that is what they felt Louis' best interest was, and be genuinely appalled by anyone accusing them for exploiting Louis.

He also touches on the fact that similar circumstances can have very different effects on different people. Maybe he was coping better than others (like I believe, I think he was coping much better than Harry during 2013/2014, which led him to say yes to babygate to take some of the pressure of the closet off of Harry), and that it is generally a very, very complex matter.

To me, his quote speaks of understanding and kindness towards the people who simply didn't know better, and his wonderful phrase of "it is what it is" (and he's doing all he can to make the best of the situation instead of wasting energy with holding grudges). And don't get me wrong, I also believe that Louis still has a lot of rage and frustration in him towards specific people, because, again, he also is just human and it's not easy to forgive people that fucked your life over, no matter how badly you want to (looking at you "how do you sleep at night when you're just like me" and Simon), and believe it or not - those are both things he can have in him simultaneously, humans are wonderfully paradox and complex like that.

So, yeah. Just reinforcing my image of Louis being an incredibly thoughtful person, deeply interested in human psychology and someone who took the first part of the lockdown to really go into his own mind and search (and find) some of the peace he needed to be able to move forward freely :)

#louis and mental health

[ironwoodprotectionsquad]

So I think you're referring to my post here and I would like to apologize for my flippant attitude in my original post towards the tooic of ironwoods backstory. In all honesty, I've been recently frustrated with the flippant attitude the writers have towards him and so the post want meant to be mostly facetious rather than the typical mocking of the character among the fandom (which also rubs me the wrong way) - but I understand with my joking tone and word choice it came off very horribly and that's my own fault for being careless and crass.

(also I do not know how the post ended up in the ironwood tag since I don't recall tagging it purposefully in that way. I try not to tag non-serious posts in the main RWBY or character tags too often -.- but I apologize for that too. I also hate it when people tag hate for characters I like.)

Anyways, I've liked your blog for a while and what you have to say so I'd hate to be on bad terms with you! I'm sorry for any upset feelings I've caused on top of everything else recently ~~~

Hey their anon. I really appreciate your ask and I apologize for jumping to assumptions about what your post was supposed to be about. It has been a long and frustrating week within the James tag and in the heat of the moment I assumed it was just more bullshit piling onto the whole mess of a situation. It's just unfortunate the FNDM is just so.....bad about this its easy to think something is being said seriously and not register it is supposed to be facetious. I have trouble with trusting intentions of people I don't know, and that is not your fault or problem it's just what's happened with my nearly a year (wow I didn't even last a year) of being in the fandom. Their are unfortunately really nasty people who have said things like "It's James's fault he lost his arm" or "He's not really disabled" or "It's his fault he lost half of his body" which is why I jumped to the conclusion I did.

Oh I know exactly how it wound up in the tag, Tumblr's tagging system is truly a joke and even if you don't tag something if you use a specific word, in this case "Ironwood" the post will start showing up in his tag because for some reason Tumblr's tagging system doesn't just use tags it also uses the text itself for some idiotic reason. If people want to avoid their posts showing up in the tags they'll do things like RW//BY or Ironw00d and that seems to work well from what people have said.

Thank you, I really appreciate you reaching out and I do again apologize for jumping to conclusions. Thank you for giving me a chance and reaching out, I really appreciate it. We all make mistakes (myself included) for me at least, being willing to reach out and apologize and change is what is most important. I would love to chat more if you of course are willing and I do apologize again for jumping to conclusions.

#RWDE #james ironwood #ironwood protection squad #pro james ironwood #pro ironwood #general ironwood #general dadmiral #dadmiral ironwood

[serendipitous-magic]

What is your writing advice for young people who want to write fanfiction and original stories in the near future?

If this is just Way Too Much, skip to the end (#16). My most important piece of advice is there. I also happen to think #5 is pretty good.

-_-_-_-

1) Literally just write. Write whatever you want, and do a lot of it.

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2) You don’t have to post everything. In fact you don’t have to post anything. You can, don’t get me wrong, but it can be intimidating to sit down and think “I will now write something that other people will see and read and judge with their eyeballs.” Because that’s probably gonna lead to nerves and writer's block. Just write down the ideas that you have, the things you want to write, whatever’s in your brain that you want to explore and expand upon and make into something. And then if you want to, share it. Or don’t share it. I have plenty of half-baked ideas and documents and random story chapters and shit hidden away on my Google Drive that will never see the light of day, for a whole number of reasons. I wanted to write it but it wasn’t ~Spicy~ enough to warrant posting, or it’s only like an eighth of a good idea, or it’s like one scene with no story around it, or it’s just something incredibly self-indulgent I just wanted to write for my own enjoyment.

Point being, don’t write for other people. Don’t write so that other people can read it; write what you want, write for yourself, and then if you want to share it, do.

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3) You can pretty much ignore any and all of these for fanfiction. In fact, you can ignore pretty much any rules or guidelines you want for fanfiction. Fanfic is a sandbox. You don’t have to be a “professional writer” to post fic. No one expects you to be Stephen King or Margaret Atwood. Fanfic is just for playing in a fandom and having fun. If you wanna write a 50 chapter slow burn with very little plot aside from the OTP slowly getting to know each other, and no real stakes or central conflict, I guarantee people would read that. Really, fanfiction is the Old West of writing: lawless, wild, unpredictable, and free.

However, here are the rules you must follow:

-Separate your paragraphs. (I’m sure you know this already, but I’m gonna say it anyway just in case.) Do not post one big block of text. Make a paragraph break when someone new is talking, when the characters are in a new place, when a new event occurs that changes the scene, when a chunk of time has passed, and when there’s a major change in subject.

-I know it’s obvious, but... grammar, punctuation, and capitalization. They exist to make writing easy for readers to read, and more people will read your stuff if they don’t have to stop and try to figure out what you meant.

-Use tags and labels, as is possible with whatever site you’re using. Especially if you include possibly triggering content in your story. Again, I know it’s obvious, but it’s common courtesy. Bonus: tagging the themes and content of your story helps readers find it and read it :)

-If possible, limit the use of all-caps and exclamation marks / question marks. 99% of the time, one ! or one ? will do. If you overload the page with a lot of all-caps and long rows of exclamation marks or question marks, it hampers readability.

... That’s literally all I can think of. And, like I said, it’s all pretty basic stuff. You were probably rolling your eyes like, “Uh, yeah, Gwen, I know.” But that’s literally it. You can pretty much do whatever you want in fanfic.

That being said, here’s my advice for both fanfiction and original work...

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4) A quick and dirty rule for coming up with a plot, starting a story, keeping up pacing, or maintaining tension: figure out what dreams, desires, and goals are nearest and dearest to your main character’s heart (see #16). Then set up the main conflict to be directly in opposition to that goal. It doesn’t have to be in a tangible way, though it could be. But, if your main character wants more than anything to reach the ships on the southern coast of your world and sail to a new life, make sure the main conflict immediately prevents them from doing that - in fact, make sure to send them north. If your main character just wants to keep their loved ones safe, kidnap the loved ones. If your main character just wants to date their best-friend-turned-crush, make sure they think they have no chance - or, make them cocky about it, and make sure it makes Person B determined not to ever like them. You get it. Figure out what your character most wants, and then keep them from having that. Boom - your conflict now ties in with your character's motivation. It's like instant yeast for plots.

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5) If you’re anything like me, you want your first draft to be Good, despite all that advice about how the first draft doesn’t have to be good and it’s just to get words on the page, yadda yadda. And if you’re somewhat of a perfectionist (like myself), it’s easy to get stuck looking at a blank page because you don’t have The Perfect Words, and you want what you write to be Good the first time.

Here’s how I cheat that:

Instead of trying to write a Good First Draft from a blank page, hit the enter key a few times, skip a little down on the page, change your ink to red (or blue, or whatever - just something immediately identifiable as Not Black) and just thought vomit. Write whatever the hell you’re thinking, exactly as you think it. Don’t worry about it being readable, don’t worry about narrative flow for now, don’t worry about covering all the details, don’t worry about anything except either a) getting all the details of your idea out onto the page, whether that’s a lot or whether it’s just a sentence or two, or b) if you don’t have an idea yet, finding your way there.

Because this method is also very good for finding your way to ideas when you’re stuck in writer’s block.

Because of how human brains work, getting this stuff out onto the page - in all its messy, stream-of-consciousness glory - will likely spark more thoughts. As you write your original idea about the scene, it’ll likely spark more ideas. Creation begets creation. If you just start thought-vomiting your ideas onto the page, chances are you’ll think of more things as you go, and you’ll start filling out description or dialogue or tone or action or whatever, and pretty soon the scene starts writing itself.

Not sure where you’re going with the scene or which ideas you wanna use? Use a lot of ambivalent language in your “thought-vomit draft.” My pre-writing notes are chock-full of the words “maybe,” “perhaps,” and the phrases, “At some point...” and “...or something like that.” In this way, I don’t tie myself down to one idea; it’s just an idea, and I’m keeping it on the page in case I use it, but I might chuck it in the trash or change it or whatever.

And then, once your ideas for the scene (or story, or chapter, or whatever) are on the page, then go back to the top and start translating them into a “real” first draft. Use black ink, and start copy-pasting chunks of the thought-vomit up into the top part of the document and translating them into Draft 1. Separate out paragraphs where paragraph breaks should be. Add the correct punctuation and whatnot. Change “describe the lobby here - include potted plants, fancy carpet, blood stain, etc.” into an actual description of the lobby. Flesh it out, or condense, or whatever it needs. And if you’re still stuck, change back to red ink and ramble some more until you find a path that feels right, then plug that in. This keeps you from looking at a blank page, and it allows you to generate a kind of Draft 0.5, somewhere between a plan and a first draft.

You don’t have to use every idea. Like I said, jot down whatever comes to mind, put a “maybe” before or after it, and keep working. If the idea grabs you and you wanna keep expanding on it and exploring it, cool. If you just wanna jot it down so you don’t forget it and then move on, also cool. Red-ink draft / “thought-vomit draft” is your time to jump around in the timeline, add or finesse details at whatever point your brain moves to, etc. Don’t try to do it exactly in story order, because you will get tangential thoughts and ideas, and you will not remember to write them down five pages later when you finally get to taking notes on that scene. Trust me. On that note...

_-_

6) Write everything down the moment you think of it. Seriously.

“I’ll remember it when I get around to writing that scene in a couple days / weeks / months (/years).”

You won’t.

Write it down.

Phone, journal, google docs - hell, my family regularly laughs at me for grabbing a napkin during dinner and scribbling thoughts down alongside pasta sauce stains.

And then, once you have it written down somewhere...

_-_

7) Consolidate your writing ideas in one place.

Maybe this isn’t really your style, and that’s totally chill.

Buuuut, if you’re Type-A like me - or if you tend to be somewhat unorganized and you know you’ll lose track of your writing notes if they’re scattered across multiple notebooks, journals, napkins, phone notes, etc. - having one consolidated document of notes is a life saver. I keep mine on Google Docs so I can access it, add to it, and look through it for inspiration anywhere at any time. When I have one of those Shower Thoughts that I jot down on my phone or on a napkin during dinner, I set myself a reminder on my phone to type it up in my Story Ideas document later.

(Or, if the idea I had was for a story of mine that I’ve already started planning / drafting / whatever, I put it in the document for that story instead of the Big Random Story Ideas doc. You get it.)

_-_

8) Have other ways to collect and save writing ideas, besides just writing stuff down. If you like Pinterest, make pinterest boards of your characters or stories or settings or whatever. If you’re big into playlists, make a playlist for your character / setting / story / etc. Or both. Or something else. I’m not good at drawing, but maybe you are, and maybe you like to draw your ideas. Whatever form it takes, having another way to save ideas and think about your stories is invaluable.

_-_

9) Some writers can just start writing with no idea where the story is going, and they just kind of figure it out as they go. I envy those writers. And I do that sometimes for fanfiction, where the stakes are somewhat lower and the audience is reading more for scene-to-scene enjoyment (and to see their OTP kiss) than for a Driving And Compelling Narrative.

But here’s the thing: especially if you’re just kind of starting out, writing without some sort of plan is really, really hard, and will likely lead you into a slow, meandering narrative that will likely frustrate you.

Even if you think you’re someone that just can’t write with a plan (and again, I have the highest respect for pansters out there - I don’t know how you do it, you crazy bastards, but you keep doing you) - even if you think “I can’t work with plans, they’re too prescriptive, I just want to write and see what happens -”

Try at least making the most skeletal of plans.

Even if you have no clue what 90% of the story is, yet. That’s fine. But you need to have some idea of what you’re building to, even if that’s nothing more specific than a feeling, or a turning point for your character. Even if your entire plan for everything beyond Chapter 1 is, “At some point, Charlie needs to realize that Ed was lying to her.”

This is where those Draft 0.5 notes come in handy. Because, more than likely, working on your current scene that way will spark ideas for later scenes, which you can put down at the bottom of the document and save for when they become relevant. In my experience, the line between planning ahead and making a Draft 0.5 is exceptionally thin. One can quickly turn into the other.

If you’re really, really resistant to the idea of planning ahead, that’s okay. It’s not everybody’s style. But for the love of all that is holy, write down your ideas for future scenes, even if you’re a person that doesn’t like to plan and writes only in story order, because you will not remember that idea once you get to that scene.

_-_

10) You don’t have to write in order.

Here’s the thing: I’m a person that can only do my Draft 1 in story order (meaning, chronological order). I just have to be in that flow; I need to write in story order for me to best channel where the character is at from scene to scene, both narratively and emotionally.

But my Thought Vomit Draft is another thing entirely. By using the brain hack of putting my notes in red (or another color, it doesn’t matter) and going down to the bottom of the document / page and taking notes there, and then integrating them into whatever plan I have, and then translating them into Draft 1 once I get there in the story - by doing that, I can get my good ideas onto the page (and expound upon them and let my muse carry me and ride that momentum while I’m in the moment of inspiration) without writing out of order.

Maybe that’s just me. But if you’re a person who really prefers to write in story order, that could be hugely helpful to you. It is to me.

_-_

11) Emotion and motivation will do more for your story than technicalities of plot.

If your characters really care about something, and their journey through the (shaky or weak) plot is emotionally engaging, it will be a much more compelling story than a story with a “perfect” plot and unrelatable or unmotivated characters.

If your characters care about what they’re doing, and it means something to them, and their goals and actions are driven by dreams or fears or emotions that are integral to who they are, your audience will care too. If you have a perfectly crafted plot that hits all the right beats and has high stakes and fast pacing and drama - but your characters don’t connect with what’s happening in a way that’s deeply meaningful or emotional for them? You’re gonna have a hard time engaging readers.

When in doubt, prioritize character emotion and motivation over plot. Emotion is what drives story.

This power is highly exploitable. (Just look at pulp novels and shitty but entertaining movies.) You can even use it to glaze over plot holes or reinvigorate a limp narrative. Use it that way sparingly, though. It’s a band-aid, not a surgery. 

_-_

12) Evil villains are hard to write - mostly because there are very few truly evil people in the world. (There are a few. Billionaires and several big name politicians come to mind.) But by and large, there aren’t that many evil people. There are plenty of bad people, but bad people have some good in them, somewhere in there. Trying to write an evil villain is hard, because they often turn very cartoony.

Here’s a tip: it’s much easier to write antagonists who aren’t evil. Even if they’re bad people. Of course, there’s no reason you can’t write a villain that’s just truly evil - a serial killer, or an abuser, or a billionaire, or someone who legit just wants to hurt people or blow up the earth or stay in control of an oppressed population, or whatever. But chances are, it’s gonna be really hard to make them feel real, and even harder to create a plot around them that doesn’t feel forced or contrived.

Instead, try writing an antagonist / villain whose motivations and goals directly clash with your protagonist’s - but not because they want to take over the world or see people suffer. Write an antagonist who’s chaotic good, but whose perception of the situation is completely opposite from your hero’s. Write an antagonist whose only desire is to save people, and who will do anything to achieve that goal - anything. Write an antagonist who believes in the letter of the law, and will hinder and oppose the hero’s methods even if they agree with the hero’s motivation. Write an antagonist who got in way over their head and did some things they regret, and now they don’t know how to get out, and they’re doing their best but whatever they set in motion is too powerful for them to stop now.

Write villains who are human. Write a killer who thought they were doing the right thing by taking their victim out of the equation, who vomits at the sight of the body and sobs over the grave they dig. Write a government leader who truly believes she’s doing what’s best for her people in the long-term, even if it might hurt them in the short term, and is willing to endure the hatred and belligerence of the masses if it means securing what she thinks is a better future for her people. Write a teenage bully that thinks they’re the one being picked on by the world, and they’re just fighting back, standing their ground. Write a scientist who will break any code of ethics and hurt anyone he needs to - in order to bring back his baby sister from the grave, because he promised her he’d protect her and he failed. Write an antagonist who is selfish and self-centered and capricious - because in order to survive they had to look out for Number One, and that habit ain’t about to break anytime soon.

Write villains who aren’t even villains. Write antagonists who oppose the hero because of moral differences. Write antagonists who are trying to do the right thing. Write antagonists who treat the heroes with kindness and dignity and respect and gentleness.

They don’t have to be good. They don’t have to be Misunderstood Sweethearts who “deserve” a redemption arc. They can be cruel and nasty and dismissive and callous and violent and etc. etc.

Just hesitate before you make them Evil-with-a-capital-E. Because evil is hard to write, and honestly, boring to read. Flawed human beings with goals and motivations that directly oppose the main characters’ are much easier to write and much more interesting to read.

Ask why. Why is your villain trying to take over the world? What does that even mean? Are they trying to create a Star-Trek-like post-capitalism utopia, but they know that won’t happen in a million lifetimes, so they’re trying to do it by force? Are they actually super in favor of human rights, but they got very impatient waiting for the world to do anything about poverty and war, so they decided to take it into their own hands? Are they determined to fix the world - no matter the cost? Are they terrified and overwhelmed, but committed to see it through to the end? Or - maybe they’re just doing it on a dare. Maybe they don’t really give a shit about world domination, they were just a mediocre rich white guy who decided to fuck around and find out, and now he’s kind of curious how far he can take this thing. And now he’s kind of an internationally-wanted criminal, so he’s kind of stuck living on his hidden private island in his multi-billion dollar secret base, strapping lasers to sharks’ heads for the hell of it. Gross, selfish, uncaring, and dangerous? For sure. Evil? Depends on your definition. See, now we’re getting somewhere.

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13) It’s tempting to let the plot control the characters. It’s easy to drop your characters into a situation and see how they react. But here’s the thing: that doesn’t drive plot. In fact, it bogs down pacing. Instead, try to build you plot off of your characters’ actions and decisions. Let your character build their own situation. Not to say it should go they way they wanted it to go; in fact, usually, their grand plans should go to hell very quickly. But having the characters take action and make decisions, and letting the plot develop based on that, is much easier to make compelling than making a rigid series of events and then trying to herd your characters into them.

_-_

14) Having trouble justifying a character’s actions? Consider having them make the opposite decision, or having them approach the situation in a different way. For example: you need your character to go meet the bad guy, for plot reasons, even though there’s no way it’s not a trap. If the character goes, readers are gonna be groaning with their head in their hands, because c’mon man, that was really fucking stupid. But he’s gotta go, because the plot needs that. Two ways you might handle this: a) He knows it’s probably a trap. He decides not to go. The plot conspires to get him near the villain anyway. Or, b) He knows it’s a trap. But he needs to go, for (insert reasons here). So, he approaches it in an unexpected way. He brings backup, recruiting a side character we met earlier in the story. Or he arrives on the back of a dragon, because ain’t nobody gonna fuck with a dude on a dragon. Or he goes - early, and ambushes the villain. It may work, it may not. He may get himself kidnapped anyway. But it moves the plot along without having Stupid Hero Syndrome.

_-_

15) This is a legit piece of advice: if all of this sounds overwhelming, literally just ignore it and write what you want. For real. Writing should be fun, and every single writer operates differently. If you’re sitting here like “I’m getting stressed just reading this,” just flip me a good-natured bird and get on with your life. I promise I won’t take it personally. Same goes for literally any other writing advice you see. Lots of rules and guidelines can very quickly make anything thoroughly un-fun. Just write. If you’re passionate about it and you do it for long enough, you’ll start figuring out the tips and tricks on your own.

_-_

16) Here’s the best piece of advice I can give you: know your characters. More importantly, know what’s important to them. Build their personality and decisions off of that, and build your plot off of their decisions.

I see a lot of character building sheets that ask a shit-ton of questions like “What’s their most prized possession?” “Do they like their family?” “What’s their favorite food?”

And while these are good questions, my problem with this type of character building is that if you start there, with the little stuff, you’re building on nothing. IMO, to make a truly strong character (not strong like Inner Strength, strong like effective), you need a strong foundation.

Here are the things you must know about your character:

a) What are their greatest fears / deepest insecurities? And I don’t mean “wasps” or “heights.” I mean the deep shit. I mean fears like “living a meaningless life,” or “turning out just like their parents,” or “that no one will ever love them,” or “being powerless.” You may say, “But they’re really scared of wasps! They fall into a wasp nest when they were little and got stung so much they almost died!” Great! That’s a fantastic bit of backstory. They should absolutely be afraid of wasps, and that should absolutely be an impediment later in the story. But dig deeper. What about that event actually scarred them? Was it the helplessness? Stumbling around, swatting at the air, not being able to do a single thing to stop what was happening to them? Was it that they were alone, and no matter how loud they screamed, no one was coming? Was it the bodily horror of feeling themself turn into an inhuman creature as they swelled up from the stings, unable to move their fingers or face normally anymore?

And don’t forget insecurities, because those factor in, too. Are they deeply insecure about their identity? Do they believe, deep down, that they’re ugly? Did they grow up poor and they’ve always been really touchy about that? Why? Dig deep. Figure out what really, really bothers them.

b) What are their hopes and dreams? What do they truly want out of life? What do they consider the most valuable to their experience here in this thing called life? Is it the freedom to forge their own path and be independent? Is it the approval of their family or peers? Is it a home? Is it knowledge, or understanding? Spiritual fulfillment? Is it deeply important to them that they contribute to their community, or protect those they love? What do they need in order to feel truly and deeply fulfilled in life?

Figure out those two things (each one encompasses several things, btw, you don’t have to stop at just one for each), and then use that to inform how they behave and the types of decisions they make within the story. 

It also informs character behavior and personality. 

Let’s say we have a character who’s afraid of helplessness. They’re probably gonna be the person that always wants to do something, try something, no matter how hopeless the situation seems. They’d despise just sitting and waiting, probably, because it makes them feel powerless. They might even be the person that makes rash decisions and acts impulsively and puts themself in danger unnecessarily, because in their mind it’s better than being at the mercy of fate. This is one way you could use a character’s personality to inform their decisions, which in turn helps to inform plot.

Or, let’s say we have a character whose greatest fear is being left behind or forgotten. We may have a chatterbox on our hands. They might be obnoxious. They might love the spotlight, constantly vying for attention no matter the situation, because deep down they’re so afraid that they’d be forgotten otherwise. Or, it may go the opposite way. They may be so afraid of people leaving them that they’re terrified of bothering people. They don’t want to do anything that could annoy people, anything that might give people a reason to leave them. They might be exceedingly polite, quiet, accommodating. A push-over, really.

These are two nearly opposite types of personalities, both stemming from the same core fear/insecurity. You can go a lot of different ways with it. But if you build on that strong foundation, you’ll have a strong character, and a stronger plot.

Likewise, the structure of your story can and should inform the design of these character traits. If you need your characters to team up near the end, it may be impactful if you give your main character a deep fear of commitment, an insecurity about being unwanted or left behind, and make them highly value independence and freedom. That could make their team-up for the final battle very meaningful. Conversely, you can use your character’s deepest fears and desires to help design the plot. Is your character deeply insecure about voicing their opinions or taking a stand, because of trauma they faced in the past? Make them face that. Build that into the climactic third act. Give them the big inspirational speech where they stand up and talk about what they believe to be important, what they think the group should do. And then design that character arc to run through the story, giving you more handholds and stepping stones, more pieces of foundation on which to design the plot.

In this way, character should inform story as much as story informs character. It’s a feedback loop.

Bonus: if you build your character and your plot off of each other in this way, it automatically starts to build in the foundations of that emotional investment I mentioned earlier. If your character’s decisions are based on what they most want and do not want in life, you basically have your character motivation and stakes pre-built.

Note: you need to know these things about your villain, too.

-_-_-

I’m genuinely sorry about the length of this, lmao. But you did ask.

Best of luck!

Edit: I forgot an important one:

17) Start when the scene starts and end when the scene ends.

What do I mean by that?

If your notes say “Danny asks Nicole out after school and majorly flubs it,” start the scene when Danny approaches Nicole after school. Better yet, cold-open the scene on “I was wondering if, you know, you’d wanna. You know. Hang out some time?”

Don’t start that morning when Danny goes to school, unless you’re gonna cover the school day in like one or two sentences. Don’t spend whole paragraphs going through the school day, unless it’s to cover other plot points first (in which case apply these same guidelines there), or if the paragraphs are there for a specific reason, like to illustrate how stressed he is and how it seems like every little thing is going wrong. Even then, trim the fat as much as possible. Expounding and describing everything Moment-to-moment is for the meat of the scenes, not the leading-up-to and coming-away-from.

Here’s my rule of thumb: study how and when movies cut from scene to scene. Movies have exceptionally strict, limited time for storytelling; they’re excellent examples of starting a scene when the plot point starts and ending when it’s over. If you can’t picture a movie showing everything you showed, start the scene later and end it earlier.

#asks #anon #writing advice #writing tips #writing #fanfic writing #fanfiction #character creation #plot development #character development #my advice #original writing

[makeste]

my biggest worry about the UA traitor is that it won’t feel significant as the major characters suspected in being it don’t play a big role in the story leading up to now.. like aoyama yes he might cause shock but hagakure?? she doesn’t done much imo but i do think she is the traitor i just wish hori given her some spotlight early on to lead to the moment and the suspense yk

fwiw, you're not alone, anon; I see this concern crop up pretty much every single time there's a U.A. traitor discussion. but the thing is, there's an underlying assumption here that the sole purpose of a plot twist is to shock people. and I would argue that's not true. imo, a well-written plot twist serves many purposes, and shocking the audience is only one of them, and far from the most important one. (in fact, I'd argue that it's not even strictly necessary.) here are four that I can think of right off the top of my head.

they catch and hold the audience's attention. this isn't the case for all plot twists, but it's certainly true for ones which the author chooses to deliberately dangle before the audience, as Horikoshi chose to do with the U.A. traitor plot. if he really wanted to shock people with the reveal, it would have been better for him not to call attention to it in the first place. there was no need whatsoever to have Present Mic bring it up back in chapter 83. but he chose to go that route because he wanted the readers to notice, and he wanted them to start thinking about it and to start speculating about the traitor's identity. it gets the audience excited, and it gives them an incentive to keep reading to see how the story will play out.

they encourage the audience to engage more with the story. the U.A. traitor plot is easily one of the most talked-about elements in the entire story. at this point I don't think there's a single teacher or student character who hasn't been the target of suspicion at some point or other. and again, this was a conscious trade-off on Horikoshi's part, because it would have been much easier to blindside readers with the eventual reveal if they weren't out here forming all of these exhaustive theories. announcing that There Is A Traitor pretty much guarantees that no matter who it ends up being, someone will have predicted it ahead of time. but the trade-off is that fans are paying closer attention to the story, and continuing to think about the plot even when they're not reading the manga, and engaging in more discussion with their fellow fans. and all of that is more than worth the loss of the shock element imo.

they add new layers and depth to the story. this is the hallmark of all of the most iconic plot twists. anyone can write a story and tag on some sort of half-assed unpredictable heel turn at the end in order to try and surprise people and make themselves look smart. but the best plot twists are the ones which actually make sense, and which have foreshadowing sprinkled in throughout the story, so that when you go back and look at everything a second time it makes you go, "ohhh, that's why." a good plot twist should be just as enjoyable to read the second and third time around, even after the shock value has expired, because the satisfaction of seeing a well-planned and executed plot development is still there. and with the very best twists, the story is actually even more enjoyable to go back and reread afterwards, because the knowledge of the twist adds new insight and context and perspective to all of the previous scenes.

and last but not least, they add suspense. there are plenty of ways to keep your readers on their toes that don't necessarily involve surprises coming out of left-field. and this is another thing that the author gains when they make that calculated sacrifice of announcing a plot twist ahead of time. the reader is no longer going to be shocked, because they're now anticipating it -- but that anticipation is a great consolation prize in and of itself. and so with this particular plot, for instance, there's more to the U.A. Traitor Mystery than just the question of who it is. there's also the questions of why, and most important of all, the question of what will happen when everyone finds out? and those questions add a ton of suspense to the story. when will AFO call on Hagakure again? what will he ask her to do? what's going to happen if and when she finally gets caught? how exactly is Aoyama involved in all this? and how will the other members of class A react?? each of these questions has enough inherent suspense that you could make a separate cliffhanger out of each and every one of them if you wanted to.

the thing that everyone always seems to overlook is that the reveal isn't the point. the reveal, when it happens, is going to be a one-time thing which will only be in play for a single chapter at most, after which the plot needs to still be able to stand on all of its other merits. so for instance, suppose that Horikoshi does go for shock over substance, and decides to go with someone "unexpected" like Ochako. sure, you get the shock value, because no one seriously expects it to be her. and maybe to some people it would feel more impactful, because she has a closer connection to Deku and the other characters. but the trade-off is that a twist like that would make absolutely no sense. it completely lacks the careful foreshadowing of the Hagakure/Aoyama twist. and it would detract from Ochako's character development, rather than adding on to it, because it would completely undo so much of what her character journey has been about up until now. all of that sacrificed just for the sake of a one-time twist, which a good chunk of readers would be spoiled for in advance thanks to the weekly spoiler leak cycle. ymmv, but to me that would absolutely not be worth it, and would be a huge waste of both Ochako's character, and of all the careful work that Horikoshi has done to weave this whole plot together.

on the other hand, the fact that Hagakure has had next to no spotlight up till now is exactly what makes her the perfect candidate. with her there's no need to worry about undoing years of carefully planned character development. there's no need to worry about the twist not making sense, or not holding up to the scrutiny of hindsight, because all of Hagakure's interactions with the other characters have always been curiously superficial. we know next to nothing about her family or history or motivations. her character is pretty much a blank slate, which makes her pretty much the only person in 1-A whose betrayal wouldn't feel awkward and forced and completely unnatural.

and as for everyone who's already made up their minds that her betrayal would lack any impact, I think they're both underestimating the amount of impact that any betrayal from one of class A's own would have, and also underestimating Horikoshi's ability to deliver when it comes to ninth-inning backstories. Dabi's backstory came pretty late in the game as well for instance, and that didn't take away from its impact at all. and the same goes for Hawks as well. just because Hagakure doesn't have any backstory yet doesn't mean she's not going to get one. and if you think Horikoshi doesn't have something good cooked up after all this time, then I don't know what else to tell you, except just, "wait and see."

anyway so yeah. and also just a reminder once again that even though fandom sometimes gets bogged down in this kind of discussion involving our personal opinions as to who would be the best traitor candidate, or the most shocking or meaningful or unexpected, etc., at the end of the day the actual evidence we have all points to Hagakure. I know I sound like a broken record at this point, but yeah lol.

#hagakure tooru #u.a. traitor #hagakure traitor theory #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha meta #bnha theory #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #asks #anon asks #long post