#you have no idea how much fun they are to write dialogue for

[derinwrites]

The Three Commandments

The thing about writing is this: you gotta start in medias res, to hook your readers with action immediately. But readers aren’t invested in people they know nothing about, so start with a framing scene that instead describes the characters and the stakes. But those scenes are boring, so cut straight to the action, after opening with a clever quip, but open in the style of the story, and try not to be too clever in the opener, it looks tacky. One shouldn’t use too many dialogue tags, it’s distracting; but you can use ‘said’ a lot, because ‘said’ is invisible, but don’t use ‘said’ too much because it’s boring and uninformative – make sure to vary your dialogue tags to be as descriptive as possible, except don’t do that because it’s distracting, and instead rely mostly on ‘said’ and only use others when you need them. But don’t use ‘said’ too often; you should avoid dialogue tags as much as you possibly can and indicate speakers through describing their reactions. But don’t do that, it’s distracting.

Having a viewpoint character describe themselves is amateurish, so avoid that. But also be sure to describe your viewpoint character so that the reader can picture them. And include a lot of introspection, so we can see their mindset, but don’t include too much introspection, because it’s boring and takes away from the action and really bogs down the story, but also remember to include plenty of introspection so your character doesn’t feel like a robot. And adverbs are great action descriptors; you should have a lot of them, but don’t use a lot of adverbs; they’re amateurish and bog down the story. And

The reason new writers are bombarded with so much outright contradictory writing advice is that these tips are conditional. It depends on your style, your genre, your audience, your level of skill, and what problems in your writing you’re trying to fix. Which is why, when I’m writing, I tend to focus on what I call my Three Commandments of Writing. These are the overall rules; before accepting any writing advice, I check whether it reinforces one of these rules or not. If not, I ditch it.

1: Thou Shalt Have Something To Say

What’s your book about?

I don’t mean, describe to me the plot. I mean, why should anybody read this? What’s its thesis? What’s its reason for existence, from the reader’s perspective? People write stories for all kinds of reasons, but things like ‘I just wanted to get it out of my head’ are meaningless from a reader perspective. The greatest piece of writing advice I ever received was you putting words on a page does not obligate anybody to read them. So why are the words there? What point are you trying to make?

The purpose of your story can vary wildly. Usually, you’ll be exploring some kind of thesis, especially if you write genre fiction. Curse Words, for example, is an exploration of self-perpetuating power structures and how aiming for short-term stability and safety can cause long-term problems, as well as the responsibilities of an agitator when seeking to do the necessary work of dismantling those power structures. Most of the things in Curse Words eventually fold back into exploring this question. Alternately, you might just have a really cool idea for a society or alien species or something and want to show it off (note: it can be VERY VERY HARD to carry a story on a ‘cool original concept’ by itself. You think your sky society where they fly above the clouds and have no rainfall and have to harvest water from the clouds below is a cool enough idea to carry a story: You’re almost certainly wrong. These cool concept stories work best when they are either very short, or working in conjunction with exploring a theme). You might be writing a mystery series where each story is a standalone mystery and the point is to present a puzzle and solve a fun mystery each book. Maybe you’re just here to make the reader laugh, and will throw in anything you can find that’ll act as framing for better jokes. In some genres, readers know exactly what they want and have gotten it a hundred times before and want that story again but with different character names – maybe you’re writing one of those. (These stories are popular in romance, pulp fantasy, some action genres, and rather a lot of types of fanfiction).

Whatever the main point of your story is, you should know it by the time you finish the first draft, because you simply cannot write the second draft if you don’t know what the point of the story is. (If you write web serials and are publishing the first draft, you’ll need to figure it out a lot faster.)

Once you know what the point of your story is, you can assess all writing decisions through this lens – does this help or hurt the point of my story?

2: Thou Shalt Respect Thy Reader’s Investment

Readers invest a lot in a story. Sometimes it’s money, if they bought your book, but even if your story is free, they invest time, attention, and emotional investment. The vast majority of your job is making that investment worth it. There are two factors to this – lowering the investment, and increasing the payoff. If you can lower your audience’s suspension of disbelief through consistent characterisation, realistic (for your genre – this may deviate from real realism) worldbuilding, and appropriately foreshadowing and forewarning any unexpected rules of your world. You can lower the amount of effort or attention your audience need to put into getting into your story by writing in a clear manner, using an entertaining tone, and relying on cultural touchpoints they understand already instead of pushing them in the deep end into a completely unfamiliar situation. The lower their initial investment, the easier it is to make the payoff worth it.

Two important notes here: one, not all audiences view investment in the same way. Your average reader views time as a major investment, but readers of long fiction (epic fantasies, web serials, et cetera) often view length as part of the payoff. Brandon Sanderson fans don’t grab his latest book and think “Uuuugh, why does it have to be so looong!” Similarly, some people like being thrown in the deep end and having to put a lot of work into figuring out what the fuck is going on with no onboarding. This is one of science fiction’s main tactics for forcibly immersing you in a future world. So the valuation of what counts as too much investment varies drastically between readers.

Two, it’s not always the best idea to minimise the necessary investment at all costs. Generally, engagement with art asks something of us, and that’s part of the appeal. Minimum-effort books do have their appeal and their place, in the same way that idle games or repetitive sitcoms have their appeal and their place, but the memorable stories, the ones that have staying power and provide real value, are the ones that ask something of the reader. If they’re not investing anything, they have no incentive to engage, and you’re just filling in time. This commandment does not exist to tell you to try to ask nothing of your audience – you should be asking something of your audience. It exists to tell you to respect that investment. Know what you’re asking of your audience, and make sure that the ask is less than the payoff.

The other way to respect the investment is of course to focus on a great payoff. Make those characters socially fascinating, make that sacrifice emotionally rending, make the answer to that mystery intellectually fulfilling. If you can make the investment worth it, they’ll enjoy your story. And if you consistently make their investment worth it, you build trust, and they’ll be willing to invest more next time, which means you can ask more of them and give them an even better payoff. Audience trust is a very precious currency and this is how you build it – be worth their time.

But how do you know what your audience does and doesn’t consider an onerous investment? And how do you know what kinds of payoff they’ll find rewarding? Easy – they self-sort. Part of your job is telling your audience what to expect from you as soon as you can, so that if it’s not for them, they’ll leave, and if it is, they’ll invest and appreciate the return. (“Oh but I want as many people reading my story as possible!” No, you don’t. If you want that, you can write paint-by-numbers common denominator mass appeal fic. What you want is the audience who will enjoy your story; everyone else is a waste of time, and is in fact, detrimental to your success, because if they don’t like your story then they’re likely to be bad marketing. You want these people to bounce off and leave before you disappoint them. Don’t try to trick them into staying around.) Your audience should know, very early on, what kind of an experience they’re in for, what the tone will be, the genre and character(s) they’re going to follow, that sort of thing. The first couple of chapters of Time to Orbit: Unknown, for example, are a micro-example of the sorts of mysteries that Aspen will be dealing with for most of the book, as well as a sample of their character voice, the way they approach problems, and enough of their background, world and behaviour for the reader to decide if this sort of story is for them. We also start the story with some mildly graphic medical stuff, enough physics for the reader to determine the ‘hardness’ of the scifi, and about the level of physical risk that Aspen will be putting themselves at for most of the book. This is all important information for a reader to have.

If you are mindful of the investment your readers are making, mindful of the value of the payoff, and honest with them about both from the start so that they can decide whether the story is for them, you can respect their investment and make sure they have a good time.

3: Thou Shalt Not Make Thy World Less Interesting

This one’s really about payoff, but it’s important enough to be its own commandment. It relates primarily to twists, reveals, worldbuilding, and killing off storylines or characters. One mistake that I see new writers make all the time is that they tank the engagement of their story by introducing a cool fun twist that seems so awesome in the moment and then… is a major letdown, because the implications make the world less interesting.

“It was all a dream” twists often fall into this trap. Contrary to popular opinion, I think these twists can be done extremely well. I’ve seen them done extremely well. The vast majority of the time, they’re very bad. They’re bad because they take an interesting world and make it boring. The same is true of poorly thought out, shocking character deaths – when you kill a character, you kill their potential, and if they’re a character worth killing in a high impact way then this is always a huge sacrifice on your part. Is it worth it? Will it make the story more interesting? Similarly, if your bad guy is going to get up and gloat ‘Aha, your quest was all planned by me, I was working in the shadows to get you to acquire the Mystery Object since I could not! You have fallen into my trap! Now give me the Mystery Object!’, is this a more interesting story than if the protagonist’s journey had actually been their own unmanipulated adventure? It makes your bad guy look clever and can be a cool twist, but does it mean that all those times your protagonist escaped the bad guy’s men by the skin of his teeth, he was being allowed to escape? Are they retroactively less interesting now?

Whether these twists work or not will depend on how you’ve constructed the rest of your story. Do they make your world more or less interesting?

If you have the audience’s trust, it’s permissible to make your world temporarily less interesting. You can kill off the cool guy with the awesome plan, or make it so that the Chosen One wasn’t actually the Chosen One, or even have the main character wake up and find out it was all a dream, and let the reader marinate in disappointment for a little while before you pick it up again and turn things around so that actually, that twist does lead to a more interesting story! But you have to pick it up again. Don’t leave them with the version that’s less interesting than the story you tanked for the twist. The general slop of interest must trend upward, and your sacrifices need to all lead into the more interesting world. Otherwise, your readers will be disappointed, and their experience will be tainted.

Whenever I’m looking at a new piece of writing advice, I view it through these three rules. Is this plot still delivering on the book’s purpose, or have I gone off the rails somewhere and just stared writing random stuff? Does making this character ‘more relateable’ help or hinder that goal? Does this argument with the protagonists’ mother tell the reader anything or lead to any useful payoff; is it respectful of their time? Will starting in medias res give the audience an accurate view of the story and help them decide whether to invest? Does this big twist that challenges all the assumptions we’ve made so far imply a world that is more or less interesting than the world previously implied?

Hopefully these can help you, too.

[transhuman-priestess]

How do you write so good?

Practice!

Practice and practice and practice.

A bit more in depth tho:

1.) write what you want to write. You are your story’s first audience. You should be entertained by it!

2.) Don’t delete stuff. Save it, put it away, and come back to it in a day or two. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been stumped on something and wanted to delete the whole thing only to come up with an idea a couple days later.

3.) Forget (almost) everything you’ve heard about word choice. “Said” is not something to be avoided at all costs. Words used for transitioning from dialogue to prose in particular are more often to be distracting than they are useful. Nobody cares you used “said” 20 times in a scene.

4.) Write original works! I know fanfiction is fun and gives you characters that are already established, but when you write original stuff you’re so much freer. Nobody can tell you “he would not fucking say that” except YOU!

5.) If you write smut, focus on imagery when it comes to sensation. Don’t just describe the mechanical movements of sex. Focus on describing the actual things the characters are feeling, both physical and emotional.

6.) Don’t beat yourself up for not writing. I’ve not written anything substantial in about 5 months now and it’s really getting to me, but it’s not productive to beat yourself up. You’ll get things done when you come. Don’t force it.

7.) Don’t be afraid of “clichés”. Every work of art is derivative. It’s okay to be blatantly inspired by other works. It’s okay to use tropes other people have done to death. It’s about telling a story you enjoy.

8.) Don’t give into fans. They don’t know what’s good for your story.

9.) Most importantly, have fun and be yourself!

#writing about writing #writing advice

[vickychendraws]

Hello! Hello! Question: I’m trying to get into comic making and I already have a few. But I’m trying to get a frame of reference. What’s your planning process for your little comics that you make (like the falin/marcelle ones. Not quite mini comics, but also not full fledged comics that I’d be able to bind into a book) I love them very much 💕

hi!

omg, first of all, thank you so much!! and that sounds like a lot of fun!! i'd love to read your comics when you're done :D low key, i feel wildly unqualified to be consulted about comic making LOL. i kinda stumbled my way into them, but now that i'm actively going into it with comics in mind, i... kinda have a process?

i sorta just work out a scenario in my head and start scribbling. For whatever reason, the ideas and dialogue come out better when i start seeing the characters and the scene (even if it's super loose). During this phase, i make whatever notes i need, write out options for dialogue, adjust the layout (i'm not a very clean line drawer, so that makes things easy to move around; but also, the lasso tool is a dear, dear friend), and just let myself get the idea out in a really rough form. From there, i tighten things up, rearrange a bit more, edit, and then i just do a cleaner line drawing and add color :) Sorry if that was a really long response! But hope that helps! (i've included a couple of my first sketches to give you a better idea of how messy things start out)

[boba-beom]

All your posts are making me like 🫠 I think I reblogged all three keke

I need to shout about this... In the Miracle tiktok where Taehyun is dancing while SoobKai film with ILLIT... I don't know if he's eating or chewing gum but it looks like he's chewing gum and why is it so attractive to me. Now I've combined this with basketball Taehyun, thinking how hot it would be to watch him doing a solo practice, shooting and doing dribbling drills while casually making conversation with you, chewing gum the whole time. Am I crazy? Maybe, because before now, I'd probably say gum is gross.

WAIT but now I'm imagining this scenario is the first time you hang out after he sees you fraternising with the enemy (Yeonjun) and he's trying to act like it doesn't bother him that you gave him your number, only that you were clapping for the wrong team OKAY stop me and my imagination 😅 I love Taehyun

and I love you, so glad to see you're still around 💕

CEE I love you too! and I'm happy to see you around also <3 you have no idea how much I've been giggling to myself from your tags hehe :> thank you for the rbs and reading your reactions were fun too 🤭 and you saying that I make sport-centric fics fun for you to read is truly a huge compliment to me omg, I always get nervous because I'm not 100% sure about what I'm writing most of the time, so thank you ilysm 🫶🏼

ALSO reading this made my jaw drop because you're literally onto something with that omg. I noticed that too during soogyu's tiktok with ILLIT— it's the way taehyun does it so nonchalantly with the subtle chewing and it is kinda hot. I used to find people who do that quite obnoxious lmao, but like I can't stand if they're really smacking their gum, ygm? ANYWAY—

jealous bsf!taehyun x gn!reader, dialogue heavy

okay so, the first time you and taehyun hang out after the game is a couple of days later. he'd agreed to hang out with you at the park since you both had checked the weather in advance; it was sunnier than usual. you both decided to meet each other at your regular spot and you're not surprised to find taehyun already there, sitting on the grass and on his phone. usually he'd notice you when you walk up behind him, but it was almost like he'd purposely ignored you and waiting until you had to announce that you were there.

"tyun?" you sit beside him slowly leaning in to give him a usual hug when you greet each other but he gave you a lazy side hug. damn. "been waiting long?"

"no."

that's all you get? he pockets his phone, palms against the grass as he leans back chewing his gum nonchalantly and looking at the busy field in front of you. there seems to be a group of high schoolers training for soccer.

"um, are we good?" you ask quietly, heart pounding in your chest and a little afraid for the first time in forever.

he hums, eyes focused on the ball being passed from player to player.

"yeah, why wouldn't we?" his voice monotone but knowing taehyun, that was normal. "how's yeonjun. are you guys like text buddies now or something?"

now that wasn't what you were expecting. well shit. taehyun's mad and you don't know if that's all he has to say about it.

"no, tyun. he didn't even call me so I don't even have his number. I'm assuming he's busy is all. I wasn't really expecting much." you nudge his shoulder playfully, craning your neck in attempt to be in his visual field, but to no avail, his vision doesn't budge. you sit back in your original position, also watching the ball from afar. "does it bother you?"

you best friend scoffs, apparently he finds something humorous that you possibly missed.

"it doesn't. why'd you even talk to that guy anyway, you know he just does that to boost his ego because he lost the game." taehyun finally turns his head to look at you and you look at him within a fraction of a second, eyes holding eye contact for the first time that day.

"I'm sure he had good intentions-"

"good intentions." taehyun scoffs again, almost chuckles after he repeats it again. "that guy never has good intentions, ___. and I thought you were there to support me, then I catch you clapping for his three pointer."

your stomach churns a little from the guilt. you didn't know he saw that. and what do you even say? you thought it was impressive? you had a feeling yeonjun shot that shot for you?

"don't even try and think of some lame ass excuse because you know damn well I can tell when you're not telling me the truth." his voice assertive but his gaze on you softens, wanting you to be comfortable with him like you usually are.

you let out a deep sigh.

"he looked at me before that moment and I assumed he did that to impress me..." your voice trails off, trying to look at taehyun through your peripheral, not wanting to look at him directly. "I don't know tyun, he seemed pretty genuine and he's kinda cute too."

after explaining as honestly as you could, the air was filled with a short silence between the both of you and distant shouting and birds flying by.

"I can be kinda cute too." taehyun grumbles under his breath and you swear it wasn't some sort of auditory hallucination. that is what you heard, right?

"hm?" you turn to him, tilting your head to the side waiting for him to hopefully repeat himself.

"why'd you want him when I've been here all this time." his rhetorical reply left you blinking a couple of times, processing what exactly he's inferring. "in short, you have me. and I have you."

your chest starts heaving slowly. taehyun, your best friend, really said that. his fingers gently caresses yours, also supporting your weight on the grass while you both lean back.

the train of thought in your discombobulated mind is disrupted by him calling your name, now in a softer tone.

"so, what do you say? I'm willing to risk this friendship and try something more with you, ___. if you let me."

his says his confession, almost as if he's been yearning for you to be his for a while, but is it wrong that you still can't stop thinking about yeonjun?

"taehyun," you sit upright, holding his hand in yours. "I'm going to be honest with you, but promise me don't get mad."

the hope in taehyuns eyes disappears, feeling his heart sink to his stomach ready for your rejection. he nods.

"I love you, and always have, but that's because you're my best friend. and at the moment, yeonjun left quite the impression on me so he's still on my mind, but there's nothing much that helps him in his favour."

"so what you're saying is?" your fingers interlock with his, your thumb rubbing the back of his.

"is that I'm willing to try this with you, because, unlike you," you tease, "I like to give people chances."

you prod at his side as he exhales and rolls his eyes playfully.

"I couldn't risk you being whisked away before I even made a move on you." taehyun defends himself the best he could.

"no but really, from time to time I have felt like I've loved you more than a friend. so that's why I want to try, but can we take it slow?"

"yeah, of course. I'll just have to push yeonjun out your thoughts first." his comment makes you laugh.

taehyun's singular dimpled smile returns and it's contagious, he has you smiling back at him too. you didn't realise when you two ended up sitting closer to each other to close the gap, but you took the opportunity to lean your head on his shoulder.

"and you are kinda cute."

© BOBA-BEOM ; all rights reserved. do not repost, copy, alter or translate in any way or platform.

#cee ᡣ𐭩 #mapofthemazeinthemirror ᡣ𐭩 #[ 🪴 ] — asks. #[ 🧸 ] — mutuals. #I got carried away lmao #again probably took a different turn #but :> #I love taehyun too hehe #taehyun soft thoughts #taehyun soft hours #taehyun fluff #taehyun angst

[pinkanonwrites]

Washrack Academy

Jetstorm and Jetfire have a lot of questions about humans. But you? You just want to take your shower in peace.

TFA Jetfire, TFA Jetstorm, and Reader, no ships but it's implied Jetfire has a little crush on the reader, human reader, non-sexual nudity, is it still voyeurism if it's mostly fueled by curiosity? probably, AFAB Reader with GN Pronouns, alien anatomy discussions

"You know, humans are being much more hygienic than Sentinel says they are being."

You rolled your eyes, hefting your small duffel bag further up your shoulder. "Yeah, well Sentinel doesn't know as much about humans as he thinks he does. Most people I know shower every other day at the very least. We aren't big fans of being dirty."

"But now you are being extra dirty!" Jetstorm loomed over you with a cheeky grin, running a huge metal digit over the top of your head. A slick of motor oil came with it, sending another disgusted shiver down your spine at the gooey sensation. "Bumblebee maybe needs to working on power steering! And not splashing human friends with drinks of celebration."

Being a human liaison representing the city of Detroit on Cybertron was already a job way outside of the normal parameters of your career, and the stress was leaving you pretty wired. But Bumblebee accidentally tipping an oversized can of motor oil off a table and directly onto your head while showing off just had to be the final nail in the coffin. In front of a whole bunch of big important Autobots and everything.

Now you were being flanked on either side by Sentinel Prime's personal squadron (a gig they eagerly volunteered for and a choice both you and Sentinel had little say in) as they showed you to whatever the Cybertronian equivalent of an army base locker room was so you could get cleaned up. 

"And motor oil not to be damaging your fluffy organic fibers?" Great, now Jetfire was poking at your greasy hair too. At least he had half a processor to keep his igniters off while he did.

"It's called hair. And it'll only damage it if I leave it in too long. Plus, it's really bad for my skin."

"Good for it not to be doing badness to hair! Yikes for it to be doing badness to skin. So sensitive, little organics. Must be very hard!"

"You're telling me, bud."

"Here! Coming this way." Jetstorm gestured for you to follow him through a tiled doorway. The room beyond looked remarkably similar to the locker room you'd had in high school, though blown up to a cartoonish scale. "We have tiny washrack for mini-bot sizes. Maybe too big for you still, but is better than nothing!"

He wasn't exaggerating, the handles for the mini-bot sized faucets were still a good two or three feet out of your reach. 

"Where do you even put your towels? Your soap?" You glanced around but failed to find any bench or wall divot suitably placed for setting your things down. "Is there anywhere I can set my bag?"

"Just be putting bag into subspace! Easy for peasy!" A small compartment popped open on Jetstorm's chest, and from it he procured… a metal scouring pad? A giant one, about the size of a large restaurant platter. If the situation weren't so incredibly absurd already, you might've gotten a chuckle out of the idea of a robot using a Brillo pad as a loofah.

"Yeah, we don't… humans don't have that." You said instead. Because this situation was, in fact, incredibly absurd.

Jetfire and Jetstorm looked at each other, mirrored expressions of visible confusion. Then, they both shrugged.

"Being a human…"

"...Is very difficult!"

"Look, just- can one of you hold it for me? Please?"

"For certain! I will be best at human wash rack supplies holder job! Be counting on me." You dropped your duffel bag into Jetfire's cupped hands and wrenched it open. Grabbing your various bottles of hair product and a large towel from within, you lined them up on the floor along the wall and hopefully just beyond the reach of the shower's spray. But as you moved for the bottom of your shirt to pull it off, you felt the prickle of two pairs of optics staring just a little bit too hard at your body.

"Are you two just gonna… watch me? You can wait outside, you know."

"We are to be protecting you from curious bots! And make sure you do not do the snooping or the wandering off." Jetstorm insisted.

"Are you gonna do that while staring me down? A little privacy, please." Was it ironic to ask for privacy in a locker room? Probably. But most people had the decency not to stare while someone was getting undressed. 

Most people. Maybe that sentiment didn't extend to twelve foot tall transforming robot soldiers.

"Staring? Who is doing the staring? Certainly not us goodness bots!" 

"No, no! We would never be the staring! Especially not at soft and squishy little human frame!"

Both brothers rushed to cup a servo over their optics, continuously asserting their supposed innocence all the while. You sighed, peeling your way out of your slick and permanently stained clothes and letting them fall to the ground in an oily heap.

"Well I don't know how it is on Cybertron, but on Earth staring at people in the locker room is what we call 'bad manners.' You two ever heard of those?"

"We will being so very manners-filled! No staring from us at you, big promise." Jetfire insisted, carefully depositing your bag into his subspace as he brought his other servo up so they were both covering his faceplate.

"Though do not be trying to do the sneaking off while we are look-away! That would be also called 'bad manners.'" Added Jetstorm with a cheeky thumbs-up.

"I'm not going to go sneaking around your base naked, so you don't need to worry about that. Now could one of you get the water for me, please?"

As Jetstorm felt along the wall and cranked the water to partial blast, you swear you heard him ask his brother 'But what is "naked" meaning?' The hiss of the showerhead quickly covered it, though, and you decided you'd rather focus on getting clean before you struggled to explain the foreign concept to the pair of ridiculous twins. The water ran just hot enough to make your skin tingle as you lathered your hair with shampoo, vigorously scrubbing the motor oil free from your scalp. It'd probably take more than a few rinses to get everything out, you'd have to ask Professor Sumdac to bridge you some more toiletries way sooner than you'd originally planned. Maybe Sari could pick some up for you on her next trip home?

But as you lathered your hair up for the fourth (maybe fifth?) time, you couldn't help but notice a quiet, metallic buzzing that could just barely be heard over the hiss of water. It paused and fizzed in a rhythmic pattern, not all too dissimilar from Morse Code. It would stop for a moment, before picking up again, slightly lower pitched this time. It sounded almost like… a conversation.

"If you've got something to say, you can say it out loud." You called them out. Jetfire startled at the sound of your voice, his own sounding slightly strained. 

"What? But we are such quiet being!"

"You're doing that… that 'EM field' thing. Where you talk to each other with your brains? I've heard Bee and Bulkhead do it before. So, c'mon. What do you want to know?"

He clammed up, absentmindedly scuffing one of his pedes against the tiled floor. Jetstorm, meanwhile, had a sly grin growing across his faceplate. He raised his free servo up in the air like a student waiting to be called on.

"Actually, Jetfire is having a question!"

"I-I am not! Do not listen, brother is merely making funny joke!"

"No, no! Do not listen to him! Jetfire is very, very curious about human not having sp-MRMPH!"

A cacophony of metal on metal echoed through the wash racks as Jetfire tackled his brother to the wet tile, wrestling his servos over the other's intake to keep him quiet. Jetstorm grabbed for his brother's goggles and pulled him into a shaky headlock, even as Jetfire repeatedly kicked him in the knees with the flat of his pede. You scrambled to grab your towel, clutching it to your front as the two bots collapsed to the ground in an ear-splitting crash.

"Hey, HEY! Quit it! What the hell are you two doing?!"

Both of their heads snapped up at your tone, Jetstorm still looking mischievous while his brother had the decency to look a bit sheepish. He quickly pried Jetfire's servo off of his intake.

"Jetfire is wanting to know why humans do not have spike! You know, since he was doing the peeking."

"Y-You were also doing peeking! I know you were curious too!" Jetfire shot back.

"Maybe curious, yes, but you are obsessed! 'Oh, little humans are so soft and so squishy being! Why so warm? I want to be holding one!'"

"I am not sounding like that! You are making exaggeration!"

Jetfire seemed on the verge of tackling his brother again, so you quickly stepped in. "Okay, geez, look. I will answer one, ONE! Question each. And only if you stop hitting each other. That's it. I don't have the energy for this today."

The two bots awkwardly clambered back to their feet, Jetstorm looking down at you with a playful grin while Jetfire seemed to be looking anywhere but your unclothed frame.

"Brotherrrrr?" Jetstorm teased. "Would you like to be going first?" 

Jetfire dignified his brother's teasing with a sharp elbow to the side, but spoke anyway. "S-Sorry to be peeking when you said not, but, um, do humans not have- uh, not have spike? Or is it hidden? Maybe not pressurized? If embarrassing you don't have to say. No biggee."

You furrowed your brow. 'Spike.' You don't think you'd heard any of the Autobots use that term before, at least not around you. Maybe it was a built-in weapon? Or some sort of specialized armor plating?

"I, uh, I don't know what a spike is. Sorry. Can you be… more specific?"

Jetfire let out a high-pitched sound, similar to heat escaping a tea kettle, while his brother only seemed to beam even brighter at his humiliated suffering.

"Ah, you know! Spike!" Jetstorm grinned. "Right here, above valve? Comes out like 'fssshh'? No modesty panel on you, so maybe just hidden away!" He made a bunch of vague motions in front of his crotch, and with a looming horror you started to catch on as he mimed the motion of something growing and rising up in front of his crotch plate. His modesty panel.

Holy shit they had robot dicks.

"N-No? No, I don't have a- a spike." You were doing your absolute best to stay focused on the conversation at hand, not think about… about the robot penis that apparently all Cybertronians had? "Humans, uh, most humans just have one or the other. The, um, the spike or the… the…"

"Valve?" Jetstorm happily supplied.

"Sure? I guess?!"

"Something new to be learned every day! Right, brother?" Jetstorm thumped his brother on the back with an open servo, while Jetfire was openly refusing to make eye contact with you. The temperature in the room seemed to peak by a few degrees, and based on the heat waves rolling off of Jetfire's body you had an inkling suspicion it was his doing, however unintentional it may be. "Anyways, my turn, yes? You said word 'naked'. What is 'naked' meaning?"

"Uh, y-yeah. Um, yeah. Sure." God, you did not have the mental fortitude to deal with these revelations today. "Naked just means you're not… covered up? Wearing clothes. There are some parts on a human that have to be covered in public, otherwise it's uh… inappropriate." Your only solace was that now you had some sort of comparison to make between Cybertronians and humans. "Like, you guys wouldn't walk around with your… your spike out? Same for humans."

"Ohhh…" They even had stunned realizations in unison. You'd almost consider it cute, if you weren't already so burnt-out.

"Yep, well, class is over. Can I please get dressed now? Preferably without being watched?"

"A-Ah! Yes, of course! So sorry! Here is things." Jetfire quickly fumbled your duffel out of his subspace, only for it to slip through his digits and hit the floor with a thud. Wincing, he turned to shove his brother from the room, calling over his shoulder to you as they went. "We will be watching door so no bots do peeking! Then there is no way we be seeing you naked, not even little bit! Seeing you in moment- but not naked! Just normal seeing!"

"O-Okay? I'll be out in… a bit." But they were already gone. Weird. Weird couple of bots. But hey, at least now you could dry your hair in peace.

~  ~  ~  ~  ~  

"Very bumpy landing, brother." Jetstorm couldn't fight his mirthful grin as he stared down at his spark-twin, who was currently sitting with his back to the wall outside the wash racks, knee-joints pulled up tight to his chassis and faceplate hidden from view. "I may not be seeing exact same appeal you do, but humans are verrrrrry entertaining being. That human especially so!"

"I wish to be offline." Jetfire lamented. "So awkward, very very uncool. They will never be speaking to me again."

"Do not be so downer, brother! They answer questions very nice, and do not even yell when you peeking at their array!"

Jetfire let out another pathetic wail. "Do not be reminding me! Me, caught peeking? Would rather scrub every rivet on Omega Supreme than be that embarrassing again." He slammed his helm against the tops of his knee-joints a few times for good measure, a loud, echoing clanking reverberating down the hall. "Why are little humans being so soft? A-And when covering self, why are little peeks of soft bits around towel so- so erotic?"

Jetstorm cackled, patting his brother atop the helm with his servo. "And to think, we thought being human is hard. Sounds like liking human is much, much harder!"

#transformers #transformers x reader #transformers imagines #transformers jetfire #transformers jetstorm #tfa jetfire #tfa jetstorm #long post #my writing #maccadam #i love these doofy robots and their doofy accents so much #you have no idea how much fun they are to write dialogue for #sorry this isnt smut but i PROMISE there's more smut stuff on the way

[carlyraejepsans]

Do you enjoy underfell? I thought you disliked aus /genq

i don't dislike the concept of AUs itself, I'm just not a fan of like... the subculture that spawned around them in the UT fandom specifically and how it eventually took over almost all canon content (especially when it limits itself to the bros)

i like aus visually! i am an artist at heart after all. it's just that, if I'm going to care about them as stories and not just fun design ideas, my bar is uhh almost impossibly high the further you move from canon lolol.

#uf being one of those! the story is centered on certain characters (mainly asgore) behaving very ooc #so as a stickler for canon I don't have much interest in it #but there is a very clear visual idea and motif in the redesigns that ties every character together very efficiently #and also fucks like a rabid rhino #so i can appreciate its visual/aesthetic aspects instead #i mean you can't understate the impact that good *artists* specifically had on the proliferation of aus back in the day #good writing is almost inseverable from good characterization because dialogues and characterization ARE an integral part #of what makes writing good. while good art (as much as it too is tied to its own conventions) is free-er from the bounds of accuracy #as was as being easier & faster to consume. writing has to be read first. you can just look at a piece of art and go ''wow that looks sick'' #without thinking about logical details/accuracy #you can show a pic of sans to an artist who's never touched the game and they might draw you the most gorgeous piece of art you've ever seen #it's significantly harder to do for writing #swap aus are a fun design challenge to see how you'd incorporate different aspects of some characters visual signatures into another #it's a game of translation of sorts. but if you want to treat it like a story well... the matter becomes a lot more complicated #answered asks #au tag

[13eyond13]

one of the lesser talked about fun things about intentionally reading more books is finding new stuff to be a bit of a hater about tbh

#and i know sometimes im probably just not properly picking up whatever the writer is putting down but whatever it's still fun #to actually know what you think about stuff like the highly regarded classics and extremely popular hyped up things #here are a few writers im a bit of a hater about w my opinions now btw #neil gaiman: does not do it for me at alllll #have read the graveyard book and american gods and hated almost every minute of both #in american gods i just found the aesthetic ideas and characters completely unappealing and in the graveyard book #i thought it was dreary and not well described enough... kept feeling like it was too bare bones in some way to picture things properly #i was like 'hmm i wish this was one of his graphic novels instead bc i'd like to be able to see what's going on here a bit better...' #also his humour just never lands for me and i do not often get his references either #ray bradbury annoys me in a similar way to neil gaiman but also somewhat oppositely like where #the way they write characters and plots and ideas and the stuff they care about gets on my nerves in an almost identical way #that i don't know how to define except to say i had a bit of a 'same energy' experience reading Something Wicked This Way Comes #and some of neil gaiman's stuff #but unlike neil gaiman i think that ray bradbury attempts to describe things unusually so much and TOO much #to the point that it takes me out of the story in a different yet similar way #to how the lack of description in neil gaiman's stuff does #what else have i become a bit of a hater about or did not get the appeal of lately? hmmm #oh hp lovecraft hahahaha #least scary stories ever god everything he's scared of is so dumb #like even aside from his extremely racist takes and fear of the 'exotic other' his fears about being cosmically insignificant are just like #yeah and? whats so scary about that hahaha i literally just dont get it #also the amount he writes dialogue in heavy accents annoys the shit out of me #p

[orbdotexe]

A new Lightbearer breathes his first panicked breaths, throwing the blanket off his resting place, and finds himself in a world that instead takes pity on him—Much to his displeasure. But he’s been having strange dreams, and everyone warns him away from some strange… person? As more time goes on, and the warnings compound—he’s less and less sure of that notion, or if they even exist.

The brainworms said "what about Crow pre-Vanguard?? he was never in Spider's 'employ' in TFE!" and so here's some Salty Crow and the start of him being determined to figure out who killed him!

Mind: the divide is a time skip, to when Crow is out of the Dreaming City-- and this is the armor I use for the YW, since I don't give much detail. Anyway, Crow's Rez, "Bury Me Shallow":

— — —

“Who was buried up there?”

“I’m sorry?”

“I mean- No offense. Just… he seemed important.”

“...You don’t know?” The Corsair eyes him, wary.

“Know what?”

She takes a moment to study his face, though it’s shadowed by his hood and the sharp light behind him. It feels like she’s trying to flip through torn out pages and looks like she cut her fingers open on the shreds— He resists drawing any further in on himself.

“...Nevermind.” She scans his disheveled outfit, “You’re a Guardian?”

“Not sure what it means, but that seems to be the consensus,” he replies, mentally bristling at the judgmental tone. How can someone tell by just the clothing? Why would he be buried in this if it was that bad?

…Oh. Right. He was buried in it.

Well, maybe buried wasn’t the right word—There was just a blanket thrown over him, laying on some stone slab. 

Not much of a burial. Could just be how the dead are treated, though.

“You haven’t spoken to any of your… lot, yet, either?” The corsair asks, some disdain in her words. He’s been hearing that tone a lot on the subject of Guardians, though not at him. If he’s one of them, shouldn’t she be disgusted by him, as well?

“Ah… no. I’ve seen some around, but haven’t gotten to speak to any. They seem awfully busy.” It’s not exactly a lie, but he hasn’t exactly tried to speak to them at all.

The thought of approaching one makes him nervous.

She snorts, “Busy is one way to put it.” There’s that resentment again.

He doesn’t think he will ever understand why. It seems the Guardians are trying to help, so why does almost everyone he talks to seem to hate them? Well, there have been a few Corsairs that seemed more thankful for the help, but… Most aren’t.

In the ensuing awkward silence, the Corsair seems to get a call in her helmet, turning away from him and murmuring into nothing. He can’t pick any of it up, though it sounds urgent, and she shoulders her rifle.

He can’t help but sigh quietly, knowing that meant no real conversations for another week or so.

She huffs after a few more moments, and sighs. “Well, I hate to cut this short, but the Crows’ feather falls that there’s enemy movement around.” She pauses, mouth pulling into a grimace, before continuing, “Your… abilities, might be… useful.”

“Oh.” She’s asking for his help, isn’t she? Even the Corsairs who didn’t mind Guardians hadn’t asked him to. He… hasn’t done this before—Helped from afar, sure, but not in the thick of it. 

She eyes him, with some mix of anxiousness and detesting having asked. “Well, I’m… happy to help.” He smiles, despite the nervous knot in his gut. “Just lead the way.”

He swears there’s a glint of familiarity in her eyes as he says it, and she relaxes some before clearing her throat. “Let’s get going, then.”

— — —

“Sooo… Don’t remember nothin’?” The shadowed figure asks from the thick branch it’s laying on, a deep and modulated voice carrying just loud enough to reach him.

He has to crane his neck to see the ominous red glow of what he assumes is its eyes. “Uhm… no. Didn’t think I was meant to.”

“Yer Ghost tell you nothing, either?” The figure adjusts some, legs now dangling. Seems he’s interesting enough for its full attention.

“Was he supposed to?”

“...Guess not.” It drops down, not a sound leaving them as they right themself, and their face comes into view. Grey metal plates and red dots for eyes greet him. ”Any idea who ya are? Where ya woke up?”

“Looked like…a cathedral, I think.” He takes a half-step back, savouring his personal space, “He must’ve been highly respected. Did you know him?” The apparently metal man—not that he hasn’t heard of Exos (because he has, if only some), but hearing of and seeing are two different things—eyes him for a moment. 

“Not personally, but knew of ‘im. An’way, strict Vanguard policy n all, can’t tell ya much.” The exo turns on his heel and starts walking, waving a hand for him to follow.

“...Riight.” He peers around the trees and rocky terrain before deciding to go along with it. “Actually, what’s with that? A few people have told me that already.” 

“S’posedly, knowing obscures judgment… or som’thin along those lines. Never bothered to listen ver’ much. Got better things to do than listen to some raving mad Warlock’s lecture.”

“And… I’m supposed to be a… a Hunter?”

“Look it to me. Cape, dirty look,”—Dirty? Now that’s rude—“Things like that. Got that stature, too, and the slouch.” 

“Ah. You’re…”—Brutal—“forthcoming.”

“You asked. An’way, got a name for yerself yet? Like to keep track of who I meet.”

A name. His Ghost talked about those; he had seemed excited to pick them.

“...No, not yet.”

“Could give ya some suggestions, if ya like. Though, you’d prob’ly like to do that wit yer Ghost, rather than a stranger.”

“Yeah… he’s been nagging me about it. Seems important to him.”

“Might wanna get on wit it, then! Unhappy Ghost makes a’ unhappy Guardian, y’know. In the meantime, got a preference? Any topics in partic’ you like? Might wanna fly with ‘ose.”

He thinks for a moment, and the black feather on the Hunter’s hood catches his eye. “Well… What’s yours? Might give me some ideas,” he shrugs.

“Rancher!” The other Hunter announces, wholly confident.

“Rancher,” he deadpans back, deciding that whatever he picked would have to be better than that.

“Yuep.” He opts not to question how the Exo popped the P without lips. “M’ Ghost, Iridant, wouldn’t let me jus’ keep Hunter.”

“You were going to name yourself Hunter?”

“Well, it was before I knew ‘bout the Vanguard an’ their classes thing! Iri took ‘er sweet time telling me, an’ I knew I liked huntin’, so…” 

The first statement gives him pause.

Are there… are there Guardians outside of the Vanguard? Well, are not all Ghosts with the Vanguard, at least? 

“Huh.”

So it’s not just him, then. Maybe Rancher’s Ghost kept him away from the Vanguard for awhile for the same reason his Ghost does… Whatever that reason is, anyway.

As the pair come up on an uphill, littered with stone piles and boulders, Rancher kicks some gravel rocks aside. “Soo, heh, how long ‘ave you been up ‘n about?” 

He eyes the patch of gravel for a moment, watching them resettle, “Not too long. Spent some months in the Dreaming City, but only been out here for a few weeks, I think.”

“Ahh, so yer a new Newlight, then! Yeah. Yeah! I imagine those Awoken’re a bit weird, ey?” A barking, modulated laugh brings his gaze back up, finding Rancher to be stood at the top of some larger boulder at the top of the hill now, “How’s that place, an’way? ‘aven’t had the chance to go quite yet.”

Weird was one way to put the Corsairs. So much disdain for Guardians, and yet they seemed fine with him—among other things. “Well, it’s… It’s pretty, when you aren’t under fire.” He could paint pictures of that sky, but… What were the pale things called? Scorn? “The uh… the ones with crossbows were trouble.”

Rancher laughs, again—now more entertained, rather than antagonistic, “Ooooh, big man too good for Taken? The ozone smell don’t bother you? Might jus’ be a’ Exo thing, that, but I ‘ear it makes some a bit nauseous.”

The memory of spinning around, mid combat, to be met with a Taken Knight towering over him moments before waking up—with a few Corsairs gathered around him—springs to the front of his mind. He opts to hum in agreement rather than debate it, climbing up on another slab across from the other Hunter.

The hill below drops-off into what looks to be a patched together base of sorts, old enough to have a dusting of moss and vines over it, but recently lived in and the vines cut back over computer panels and exits. 

He catches Rancher stretching (though, he doubts Exos have any need to do so) out the corner of his eye as the other Hunter sighs, “Ahhh, ‘ere’s my stop.”

“Your… stop?” Despite the lived-in look to the base, he can’t see any proof of the occupants anywhere nearby. Or was Rancher here to reclaim it? He had heard Hunters were largely meant to be scouts. Supposedly.

“Yuep!” The Exo pops the end, again. “Got an op to run out ‘ere. That base down there? ‘posed to hold some pests, an’ I’m on exterminator duty!”

And there goes the scout theory. If he went to the Vanguard, would he be put on these missions, too?

“Ooh,” Rancher stops and turns back, “‘fore I go—Careful if you see a Hunter in red an—ahh, no, that’s… That’s not specific at all. Hm.”

He’s heard this warning before. No one ever tells him why, or what that Hunter did, just to stay far away. Every. Time. Other than the vague warnings, he’s not even sure what he’s looking out for.

And it doesn’t help that “red and black Hunter” is a good seventy percent of Hunters he’s seen.

“Why? What did they do?” He tries to put force into his voice, but Rancher skips over the question.

“Just- ah. Complicated. I’ll send yer Ghost a picture, heh?” Rancher’s Ghost—a foil-textured, pink colored, and green eyed… mini Servitor?—appeared with a series of trills. “You’ll want to avoid–” The Ghost projected an image, “–that one.”

He could barely study the figure before there was a blast followed by the sound of Pikes somewhere nearby, to which both Rancher and his Ghost snapped to attention, projection fading. 

“Ah!” Rancher sounded excited as his Ghost dematerialized, “That’s my que! Pleasure t’ meet ya, blueberry, but I gotta run.”

“Wh- Blue–? Hold on, what does that—” but the other Hunter is already plowing through the woods on a still-materializing sparrow, giving him one last wave, “—mean…”

He sighs, but can’t help but stare, dumbfounded, after Rancher, yet—

One thing stuck in his mind; That single, holographic, orange eye. 

The same one in his dreams.

What happened to his past life?

#the forsaken exile #destiny 2 #destiny 2 crow #and i need it to be known. outside of the content box. that the title isnt as poetic as you might think #i am entirely poking fun at Uldren's burial. and Crow is so salty about it #also. ''The Crows' feather falls that ___'' is basically saying ''word has it ___'' and is also in reference to the Crows being spies-- #(i have. so many little headcanons lmao. we'll see how many i can fit in TFE) #thinking that Rancher will be the Hunter in Impromptu Arsenal Check (egregore) but not sure if i'll do anything with him past it #he was very fun to write though! #anyway-- versus the Drifter chapter/short. i think the pacing and dialogue of this flows so so much better #a few qualms here and there but overall. very happy with it #and i KNOW i was supposed to finish like... the angsty cayde hug. or fluffy crow walk. or the fungi wolf fight. but this took over my brain #it took me over so badly #but also that start/summary format. dont like. i think i just talk too much LMAO the ao3 format works so much better for #my overly talkative ass #got a place for the summary. opening notes. and even CLOSING notes. and i can even hide shit in tags at the START instead?? #ough #i have no idea what to tag this with though so i will... add the link to it here when i get that done lmao

[doverstar]

suffered through a rewatch of Power of Three and Dinosaurs on a Spaceship last night and I wanted to scream the entire time. I am nobody and have never run a 60-year-old television show. but. Chris Chibnall does not know how to write. he is bad at it. he is bad at it. who gave him control of the entirety of Doctor Who? why? he had Amy narrate the first and last scenes of Power of Three like she's in some kind of early-2000's romcom because he doesn't know how to write dialogue or how to show-not-tell. the last line of Power of Three sounds like a preteen who has no idea how to end her oneshot fanfic and I know this because I have been one and I would never have let 12-year-old me write a single episode of an actual show on tv. the Silurians are a crutch. the Doctor got sucked into a Wii game? Kate Lethbridge-Stewart has zero personality outside of the Brigadier. Brian is an empty, emotional-exposition robot. who let this man run the entire show for years, I want names and addresses-

#I don't CARE if rtd or moffat genuinely think he did a good job #they've been wrong before #I don't CARE that I am nobody #I have been a bad writer before #I am still in many ways a bad writer #I can SPOT a bad writer. his episodes REEK #and I can't imagine his work as the showrunner was suddenly magically better #go back and watch those drippy interviews with him as a young member of the official DW fanclub back in the day #it's PAINFUL #he is SO pompous and SO critical and CLEARLY thinks only he really knows the good Doctor Who or how to write it and what it's LACKING #and then he goes and tries to force it in every chance he gets to write for the real thing #but it's like he has no idea how to write for an individual character or how to be subtle or how to transition from emotion to action? #the dialogue alone is torture #Amy and the Doctor could literally be ANYONE in their conversations he writes #the only good part of Po3 is the “before they flare and fade” and truthfully I'd be surprised if that piece wasn't Moffat's because it's- #-too much sentimental poetry not to be. doesn't sound like chibnall at all #and hi - dinosaurs on a spaceship can be FUN if you were a good writer but you are not. you make everything bland #you're kix cereal sir. you are the plain oatmeal of doctor who writers #you're worse than that. you're the bran muffin of doctor who writing #how can anyone have fun with Doctor Who if they're unable to relate to or care about the CHARACTERS? #GARBAGE. #chibnall #chris chibnall #anti chibnall #doctor who #dw #bbc #the doctor #eleventh doctor #eleven

[july-19th-club]

the thing about reading fantasy is that i love it, some of the genres of all time, some of the narratives of all time, i love worldbuilding, i love magic systems, i love when characters go roving down the road for large portions of the story, i love it. it’s fantastic. but also the other thing is that there are so many fantasy writers with absolutely no clue how to develop a voice and no desire to figure it out so there’s a specific sort of Fantasy Voice you get in like 50% of all fantasy novels that is just simply corny and unmusical . i dont have a problem with corny if there’s still flow to it but there’s a lot of fantasy out there that is just not fun to read aloud or even read silently . a lot of fantasy is like that

#i still read it! i just dont reread it lmao i simply rotate the characters and plots in my brain bc the actual prose is painful #branderson im looking at you a little bit dude your style is. your style is Not #there are some incredibly lyrical fantasy writers out there too! but the fantasy genre is one of those ones where if you dont have a Voice #i feel like it does genuinely take something away that it wouldn't matter in another genre #mysteries are another one like this mystery books need Voice . you know what i mean? #q #it's #for the fatnasy version of this problem. a mix between stiltedness of dialogue and internal dialogue #(like the author doesnt pay enough attention to conversation to be able to reproduce it in a natural-sounding way) #overformality (because fantasy worlds tend to be pre-industrial and there's this idea that those settings beg formal speech) #and.....just bad ear for which made-up words sound cool and which ones don't #to be fair a LOT of that last one is subjective. none of le guin's favorite sounds are my favorite sounds but she has Voice so it's good #tolkien is famously formal but he also has a way of mixing contemporary speech in at the most unexpected times. it's fun and deliberate #he was a linguist he knew how to move between voices and it still sound natural #but ... like branderson? absolute tin ear for made-up words sorry dude your prolificness has not made you immune to Stupid Words #one of my absolute favorites for Voice that's accessible and original is nk jemisen. broken earth? so distinct so memorable so much flow #THAT's voice #croggon? as much as i love pellinor i would have to say that she sits somewhere in the midde. nix too #but you also have to take into account that as dense as their worlds are they're writing for a younger audience #the language IS going to be a bit less complex they can only do so much with voice

[iamthescalesofjustice]

i definitely share the problem many people have of whats in my head vastly outpacing what ive actually written, but i sort of have the opposite problem with other parts of the creative process bc the thing is when i do actually write its never so much bc i sit down to write, more like the ideas that have been pressurizing finally burst forth in a chaotic torrent that drags me into a fuguelike state where there is nothing but feverishly getting the words out with minimal mind to editing or organization and eventually after at least several hours i surface and find myself with like 8k new words of writing to sort through, and hope the spell is broken rather than being only a brief window of lucidity bc it wont properly be done for the next couple days actually, which is what happens sometimes

#these days i am lucky bc i usually have a typing medium at hand and can get the new writing in the form of typed files #in the past i have definitely used all sorts of things that were less than ideal bc the writing frenzy hit in inconvenient circumstances #i have covered paper plates front and back. scribbled in pen on the inside of water bottle wrappers. literally stolen paper from nearby #printers or on a few occasions /ripped blank pages from unattended notebooks belonging to others/ bc thats how bad the Need to write is #obviously at that point i had already run out of room on my hands arms and available sections of my legs so i was desperate #i once had no better writing tool available than green icing so guess what? i used it and later had to transfer the notes worth salvaging #to actual pen and paper once available bc icing attracts ants so it couldnt stay #in drama i covered a piece of scrap wood all over with writing while having a psychotic episode and people called it the board of prophecy #and this is just counting the times it has actually been story/character/worldbuilding notes and scene/dialogue fragments and timelines #yknow actually useful creative stuff? as opposed to just randomly Needing to Write Anything Just To Be Writing And Have Written which #has produced stuff of wildly varying content and quality over the years lmao #anyway under no circumstances be jealous of 'actually being able to get the words out' lmao its losing days of your life to it #its not being able to eat or drink or sleep even when your brain is released from the frenzy enough to remember that those 1) are things #and 2) you need to do them. its missing important events you needed to go to and important things you needed to do #and not being able to explain why without gambling over your continued freedom and autonomy #etc etc anyway guess why im mentioning this? hint it has to do with the new folder in my notes app with a total of ~32k new content in it #most of which is Fun and Fresh but with a dash of Throwing In Some Revitalized Versions of Old Ideas and which holds so much potential as a #new thing to occupy my days with for the next few months at least and which also. crucially. stole several days of my life from me #i only stopped bc i hit cluster headache time and was forcibly jolted from being able to process anything that wasnt overwhelming pain

[echotunes]

Do you like writing? Are you an MCYT fan? Do you sometimes struggle with getting that one character's dialogue to sound just right?

Well, I have a solution:

Echo's MCYT writing cheat sheet doc!

Featuring notes on 80+ CCs ranging from Hermitcraft, Empires SMP, and the Life Series to QSMP, this Google doc has now been in the works for nearly two years (since November 2021!), currently comprises 18k+ words, and still receives tweaks and updates pretty much every day.

Contents of each CC's section on the doc (which are in alphabetical order!) include:

Commonly used words/phrases - adjectives and adverbs! Exclamations! Filler phrases and words! and other turns of phrase that make their speech distinct from others

Sentence structure - including transcriptions of example sentences that help get an idea of how exactly someone tends to say (and stumble over) their words!

Interaction with others - do they use nicknames? Which ones? What little phrases do they tend to say in conversation?

Typing - how do they type in Minecraft chat? What emoticons do they use? Do they send one long message, or several short ones? Should it be all lowercase? Do they use apostrophes? and more, with example screenshots!

In-game movement - how do they move their cubito? Do they shuffle around on the spot while talking, or stand still to look someone in the face? How expressive are they? Do they shift for emphasis, or nod? etc!

and other random characterisation notes - any fun facts about their character that you might want to keep in mind while writing!

There's also some bonus content outside of the specific character sections - links to general writing resources, recaps and summaries and quotes from the series the CCs on the doc have been involved in, as well as notes, conversation transcripts and clips I've compiled for some specific character dynamics!

(Important disclaimer: This isn't a 100% comprehensive guide - I'm just one person, and this is entirely comprised of notes I take while watching, so it's never going to be perfect or fully accurate. It also varies a lot on its level of detail for each CC, because I watch some people more than others, and in the case of QSMP there's language barriers involved, too.)

But I do think it can be pretty helpful. So if you're struggling, maybe consider giving this doc a try - you might find something useful inside! <3

#there we go. it's getting its own post. into the wild. enjoy! #mcyt #hermitcraft #empires smp #life series #qsmp #fic #echo.txt #character voices cheat doc #echo hall of fame

[kazumist]

COULD IF YOU WOULD .ᐟ

✩ — the two times aventurine referred to you as his "work wife" and the one time he seems to have left out the "work" part.

✩ — includes: aventurine x f!reader. fluff (?), crack. cw: ooc!aventurine probably, very messy and i kinda hate this piece LOL. wc: 820. reblogs are very much appreciated !!

✩ — note: trying to write aventurine as his usual self now and not some delusional hc that i have of him yay! (i went through hell and back writing this just to get the dialogue match his way of speaking.) pretend that the ipc holds company dinners btw 🥹.

you don’t really know how it started. but maybe it’s because your co-workers tease you both too much about how you and aventurine act like an “old married couple” due to your constant banter, or maybe it’s because of aventurine’s (annoying) flirtatious remarks towards you.

however with the constant jokes and all, even aventurine got infected because there’s times when he would refer to you as his “work wife” as well. the first was when you were out at a company dinner. working in the same department with aventurine didn’t really help your… predicament, but for some reason, it wasn’t so bad.

“so how are you two love birds doing?” a co-worker asked, clearly drunk from the way they slurred their words and how red their face was slowly getting. aventurine just laughs at them—casually swinging an arm and resting it on the back of your chair. “my work wife here seems to be doing well, right?” he glances at you, a whiskey glass in hand, as he rotates it with his wrist. he was simply met with a glare in return. people wouldn’t care if you responded anyway because they’re too drunk to even remember this in the morning.

the second time was when you two got stuck in an elevator ride. and the worst part? aventurine purposely pressed at least four floors below your destination on the panel just so he could chat with you. “wouldn’t it be a nice idea to ditch work for today?” he asks, his eyes focused on both of your reflections from the elevator’s doors.

“you’re insane.”

“my dearest work wife, you wound me! i was simply asking you out.”

“no one would ever agree if you asked them in that way.” you refused to make eye contact with him.

“if i asked normally, then where’s the fun in that?”

when the elevator hit the current floor, you made your exit despite the floor not being your destination yet. 

of course, he had called or referred to you as his “work wife” many more times than this. however, as for the third one, it was when you were assigned to work with aventurine to dig up some information in a bar of sorts. a bar is quite a dangerous place in general, but you both had no choice but to split up so work would be faster.

that is, until you started being pestered by some stranger at the bartender’s counter.

no matter how many times you told him to go away (in reality, you really wanted him to go fuck off already), he was just being too persistent. but you couldn’t do anything because it would most definitely cause a scene—and you don’t want that. it was starting to suffocate you, how the stranger kept getting closer.

“dear, who is this?” you knew that voice from anywhere. you looked over to your side and saw aventurine next to you, already wrapping his arm around your waist as he looked at the stranger from head to toe. after telling him that you had no idea, you swore you could’ve seen his jaw clench for a quick second. playing along was mandatory with how the situation is turning now, even if aventurine had to pretend that he was actually your partner (well, technically, he is your partner for this assignment).

“who knew that there was actually someone indecent enough to hit on someone’s wife?” it was weird. you always felt icked by how aventurine kept calling you his “work wife." but this time, it was weird. and you hate it.

because you had a revelation that you liked the fact aventurine called you his wife at this very moment.

aventurine has a way with words. he always does; he knows what to say to rile up someone—to provoke them. it was no surprise that the stranger became another one of aventurine’s victims when it came to his provocative terms. yet, it was all over in a blink of an eye because the guy retreated. (you weren’t able to understand what aventurine specifically said to him, but does it really matter at this point?)

“are you alright?” he asks. 

“yeah. thank you.”

“how about we hit the hay for tonight? i managed to gather some information anyway.”

“agree, i was able to catch some as well.”

“really now? we make a great team, don’t we?”

“don’t let it get to your head, aventurine.”

he chuckles. “i was serious, though.” you look at him, confused. “about…?” aventurine leans to your ear and whispers low: “we could actually get married if you would let me do the honors of asking for your hand.”

thwack!

“ow! hey! i was only kidding! okay maybe i wasn’t but—hey! that actually hurts a lot now!” he yelps as you slap him by the shoulder repeatedly. “you’re insane, i tell you!”

maybe being called aventurine's work wife had its perks after all.

#( writings ) #honkai star rail x reader #hsr x reader #aventurine honkai star rail #aventurine x reader #aventurine #x reader

[ao3commentoftheday]

Idk if this is too broad of a scope for this blog, but if you could answer this, it'd be great.

I've been in a writing rut since I started getting serious about writing, and I've identified the issue in the past month or so: I slant heavily on the gardener end of the writing spectrum and all the advice on writing I've ever seen was for architect-style writing. Not once in the eight years I've been serious about writing did I find any guides on gardener-style writing (and if it says it's gardener-style, it'sreally just architect-style with gardner aspects), and my experience has just been more or less jamming a square peg into a circle hole, getting nothing written and feeling bad about it.

Now I'm unlearning all the architect-style habits that are destructive to me as a writer, but I can't find any resources for gardeners aside from Stephen King's On Writing. If you or any of your followers know how to help a gardener's writing, that would be great. I have so many fic ideas I want to write, but can't since I'm learning to write all over again.

For those who don't know what gardener and architect refer to when it comes to writers, a gardener is a writer who starts with the seed of an idea and lets it grow in whatever direction the light shines. They prune it and weed it as they go but otherwise let the idea lead the way. An architect, on the other hand, plans their stories out first and then writes them. They have a structure and the details all mapped out first and then the writing is just executing on that vision.

As a gardener myself, my biggest piece of advice is to avoid writing advice. Like you've said, the majority of it is aimed at people who do things like plan and plot and worldbuild ahead of time. Because of the structure that that writing style enjoys, providing "one size fits most" writing advice works well for it.

I tend to find a lot of that advice to be counter to what I need to do. Planning a story out ahead just makes me feel like it's already written. Building out the world before I start writing it feels like a hollow exercise - more like writing an encyclopedia than developing a land and culture for my characters to inhabit.

What I find useful is taking an episodic approach to writing. The entire story will be like a season of a television show and each chapter is like one episode. I always have my eventual "season finale" end goal in mind, but any particular chapter can meander closer to or further from that goal. It's alright to take a circuitous route, as long as I get to my destination in the end.

It's also alright if my destination changes as I'm writing. Sometimes those meandering paths take me in a more interesting direction than I was originally going down, and that shifts the story. As long as you're vaguely following a three-act structure (or 5 act or 7 act), the flow of it will feel familiar to your readers and they probably won't really notice it happening.

This advice I'm giving might not ring true to you either. You didn't have a specific problem to address, so I've been wandering a bit in my reply. Really what it comes down to is paying attention to yourself and your needs. Figure out what it is that keeps you writing and what it is that makes you stop. Do more of the former and less of the latter - and don't worry if what you're doing is "weird" to someone else.

I write directly into the AO3 window (which AO3 specifically tells you NOT to do, btw) because drafting first in google docs or something takes the fun out of it for me. I post my chapters without previewing them first. I write in 800 to 1500 word sprints, and I focus on dialogue, and I almost always try to end on a joke or a pun or a cliffhanger. These are all things that make writing an activity that I want to do.

I can't really say anything much more specific given your ask, but I hope something in here was helpful. Let's see if any gardeners out there have some resources or advice that might work for you.

#asks and answers #long post

[randomgods]

who’s your favorite slugcat and why?

The Hunter is definitely my favorite! You can’t get better than this lil guy :)

I connected so much with their story when I first played Rain World. Their selflessness, their battle with terminal illness, how they spend their last moments doing everything they can to save someone. It was so cool seeing a slugcat that was so involved in the lives of the iterators for the first time. And on top of that the gameplay was amazing! It was so much fun to challenge myself to learn how to fight and move through the regions quickly and efficiently in the face of danger. Just such an awesome experience.

But I also ADORE The Rivulet! I actually made an OC back in 2020 named Seven Speaks who followed The Rivulets story to a T. The story of an aquatic, salamander-spliced slugcat repairing Looks To The Moon which then allows her and Five Pebbles to reconnect was something that was very meaningful to me. So seeing it actually play out in the game almost exactly how I imagined it years before was incredible! It was everything I could have ever wanted for a continuation of the story! I definitely cried lol.

The Spearmaster is also a big favorite :) I love their story, their gameplay, and the broadcasts! I really really loved how their campaign fleshed out the iterators and their relationships. It’s so sooo cool. They’re kinda like an easier version of The Hunter to play which is fun when I don’t want to race the clock. I usually play as them nowadays.

And AHH THE SAINT! THE STORY! When I first realized what The Saint was my mind was blown. And don’t get me started on the chimney canopy change… I honestly think that was the most effective part of the entire game as a whole. You start in an area of the game where your first instinct is to go “oh I should go to Five Pebbles first, I’ll climb the wall.” You have this whole idea of exactly how you’re going to get there, I mean at this point you’ve done it so many times before. You make your way through Sky Islands and run across the top of chimney, everything is going great, and then the final screen changes. It’s gone. It’s all gone. The confusion of it all before the realization sets in. Five Pebbles collapsed. AH! I don’t think I’ll ever experience something like that again. It was so effective.

I’m going to stop myself before I start writing an entire essay on everything about this campaign. The Saint wrapped up the story of Rain World in a way that was very emotional and fulfilling to me. The only thing I would change is the dialogue between Moon and Pebbles at the end… It fell flat for me when it should have been such an impactful scene.

But ultimately The Hunter is the best!!! Love this freak!!!!!!

#long post #rgtext #rain world #rain world art #asks #the hunter #rw hunter #the rivulet #rw rivulet #the spearmaster #rw spearmaster #the saint #rw saint #five pebbles #rw fp #looks to the moon #rw lttm #squidcada #rain world spoilers #rain world downpour #downpour spoilers #downpour #rw #rw dp #randomgods art

[teapartyprincess4two]

Could you write about a random morning with Matt as his girlfriend? Sorry if I not making any sense.

Your writing is amazing!!! Have a wonderful day!!!

A Cold Sunday- M. Sturniolo

pairing: Girlfriend!reader x Boyfriend!Matt

classification: fluff

warnings: use of y/n, slight cursing, established relationship, a lot of dialogue, very short

inspiration: request^^, A Cold Sunday by Lil Yachty, just the title mostly

summary: You and Matt spend a cold Sunday morning together, snuggling up and keeping warm.

—

Every day of the week was chock full of activities for both you and Matt. Whether it be work, appointments, events, or daily chores; you two rarely had time together during the week. Even Saturdays were hectic for you both, you’d usually only get a few hours together before bed before one of you dozed off.

That’s why you loved Sundays, they were the only day neither you worked and you always made sure never to schedule anything on those days.

“Good morning, beautiful,” Matt croaks from beside you, a lazy arm wrapped around your waist from under the comforter. “Good morning, baby,” you reply, pushing his hair back and kissing his forehead.

“How did you sleep?” you ask, his eyes closing once again as the drowsiness settles back in. “Mmm good,” he hums, nuzzling into your chest slightly.

“That’s good, baby.”

You’re playing with his hair, your mind filling with ideas of what to do throughout the day. The possibilities were endless, especially because your only responsibility was to have fun with Matt.

“What do you wanna do today? We can go to the flea market, go eat some breakfast, or maybe we can try that new coffee shop,” you say in excitement, your cheery tone being too much for Matt this early in the morning.

“What about the mall? The mall could be fun. Ooo what if we have a picnic? We haven’t done that in so long,” you continue, subconsciously braiding strands of his hair as you compile a list of possible activities.

“It’s cold,” he murmurs, the statement being followed by a soft yawn.

Yawns are infectious, causing you to yawn shortly after. “Yeah, you’re right,” you reply, the yawn making it sound more like a roar.

“We can still do stuff…” he trails off, pulling away from you slightly to look at your face. You smile at him, you’re just happy to be spending time with him. “But we can stay in?” Matt suggests, loving the idea of a cozy day in.

You hum in response, already anticipating the cozy day ahead.

—

“Hurry, Matt! I’m cold!” you exclaim, lifting the comforter up so he can hop back into bed. “I can’t! The hot chocolate is gonna spill!” he shouts back, panicking as he tries balancing both mugs so none of the liquid spills over.

You groan playfully, scooting to the edge of the bed and reaching for a mug, “here let me help you, you goof.” He chuckles at the nickname, carefully handing you a mug, “be careful, it’s hot.”

“I know, I’m smart.”

You sip the hot chocolate, trying to prevent it from spilling, but the scorching liquid has you pulling away immediately, “Fuck! That’s hot!”

“I just said that,” Matt chuckles, getting comfortable under the covers and pressing play on the movie you two were previously watching. “Shush, it’s good,” you murmur, going back for a second sip.

You settle back against the headboard, sipping occasionally as you watch the movie. Matt blows on his hot chocolate, afraid to burn himself like you did.

He blows on it hard enough for the liquid to spill over the cup. “Oh fuck. I spilled it,” Matt says blankly, looking at you as he tries not to laugh.

—

“Why was that movie so sad?” Matt sniffles, rubbing the tears out of his eyes. You’ve seen the movie a million times before and each time Matt has the same reaction.

“Babe, you know how it ends. How does it still make you cry?” you ask, chuckling slightly at his dramatic behavior.

“Y/n, don’t be so heartless,” he replies, looking at you as if you’re some type of monster. “How does it still not make you cry?”

You take a sip from your hot chocolate, fighting the laughter. “It’s really not that sad,” you say, taking a hold of the remote to find your next watch of the day.

“YES IT IS!”

“Matt, it’s Toy Story.”

“AND? HE WAS JUST A FORK!”

—

You’ve laid in bed with Matt all day, and although you haven’t waisted any energy, you’re really hungry.

“Just order pizza,” you suggest, resting your head on Matt’s shoulder as he orders the food on his phone. “I don’t want pizza though,” he replies, scrolling through DoorDash in search of the next best option.

“Chinese food?” you ask, your stomach grumbling at the suggestion. “Neh, too greasy.”

“Okay, what about Cane’s?”

“Not in the mood for chicken,” he replies, exhausting all his options.

“In N Out?”

“We had burgers last Sunday,” Matt finds an excuse to turn down all of your suggestions. “Just get whatever you want,” you mumble, becoming hangrier by the second.

He stays silent for a while, searching relentlessly for something appetizing, but he can’t find anything.

“I’m just gonna order pizza,” he finally comments.

“Bruh.”

—

MASTERLIST

A/n:

Just a short story about a goofy morning with Matt. Enjoy, luv u. Longer stories coming soon, they are COOKING!

- L.A.M.B👼🏻💗

—

taglist: @nicksmainbitch @sturniololovers @mayhem-72 @worldlxvlys @gnxosblog @meg-sturniolo @creamoncreamoncream2 @mattnchrisworld @sanyi5 @lustfulslxt @whicked-hazlatwhore @tworosesblackthorn @mxqdii

note: if you want to be tagged in my fanfic related posts, you can access my TAGLIST and comment 💐

#teapartyanonreqs✨💗 #sturniolo triplets #matt sturniolo #chris sturniolo #christopher sturniolo #sturniolo #nick sturniolo #nicolas sturniolo #sturniolo fanfic #matt x reader #matthew sturniolo x reader #matt sturniolo imagine #matt sturniolo smut #matt sturniolo x reader #matthew sturniolo headcannons #matt x y/n #matthew sturniolo smut #matthew bernard sturniolo #matthew sturniolo x y/n #matthew sturniolo oneshot #matthew sturniolo fanfic #matt sturniolo x you #matthew sturniolo imagine #matthew sturniolo #Matthew sturniolo angst #christopher sturniolo fanfic #christopher sturniolo x y/n #christopher sturniolo x reader #chris sturniolo imagine #chris sturniolo x reader