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drippingmoon · 1 year

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A Year of Writing -- 2022

Welcome, welcome.

We’ve gone through another year now.

And I intend on tracing back my steps month by month. Feel free to tag along! Take a seat. Take a sip. Take a cat. And let’s cherish the entirety of 2022 together while it’s still here. And I do hope the good outweighs the bad for us all.

This is a feel-good, be-proud fiesta, so if you wanna hear a fellow writer cherishing their discoveries and writing journey, buckle up and I hope some — if not all — of these feelings pass on to you as well<3

First off, a million thanks to maguayans for hosting the event again!<3 She had a gorgeous idea for this year’s theme too, though I couldn’t make the most out of it personally. So in the first part we’ll tackle two of her proposed themes — then I’ll be talking about my two highlights for the year.

Word Count

Aquiver, Aglow — 217k

Aberration of Sunlight — 140k

I think I’ve learnt an important lesson this year, guys. Word count used to stress me out so much, I had to deactivate it. But even then, when I crossed that 10k mark, and no matter how justified it was... I made me depressed. Then I started working on Aberration. I said, well, this time I’ll take it easy, it really won’t matter how long it is. It’s not that I’d work less on it, or that it was less important to me than ‘quiv. But I just wanted to feel good, you know? To actually just enjoy it, instead of feeling guilty all the time. After that... I just gave up on my publishing expectations. Oh, I’ll edit both WIPs to the best of my ability, over and over again as always, but... if they stand proudest at 150k, I won’t force it further. Even if it means I won’t publish them because that won’t be good enough, yeah?

I’m not pretending they will be flawless, or that every salvaged scene will seem worth it at first glance. But it will be all I want to tell. Better than any thoughts of getting published... I’d rather just work on the two things I love best, in the only way I know.

YouTube Wrapped

Total: 13k minutes

Top artists: Borislav Slavov, HAEVN, BrunuhVille, Tom Odell, Aviators

Top song: Another Love by Tom Odell

Top tracks: Minefields by Faouzia and John Legends, Baldur’s Gate 3 OSTS: Down by the River, The Power and Wash My Pain Away by Borislav Slavov

My music personality: The Vibe Diver (you lead the charge in finding unexpected faves and stay loyal to what you love; Deep Cuts, Loyal, Chill)

And that was it for the first part! My top genres aren’t anything but Fantasy (and lately Sci-fi!) so I skipped those. Now on to the year, and how exactly it’s looked like:

January - June

Oh, these were hell lol. To say that uni as a whole — and especially the last semester — was absolute hell for me, is more than a bit of an understatement. But whatever, it’s done and over with, and I’m never returning to those days, HOO-RAY. But... this also fell in line with my going on a hiatus. I was mentally in a very bad headspace, and it just so aligned that for the first time in my life tumblr silence really got to me... and it wasn’t pretty. So I left. At one point, I guess... I didn’t feel so welcome on writeblr anymore. Not as a writer, at least. I still don’t think I’ve fully come back from that hiatus, and maybe never will. I'm basically still here for my friends, who deserve better.

No writing here; except for a notes draft I began during my two breaks. They dealt with Mezusa and Yles mainly (more about it in the ‘quiv section), and honestly? I needed them really back bad then, I’m not exactly surprised that even now, months later, my head is all full of “Catch me in your inwings?”

July

Ah. Ah. This is where the real fun begins. This is where I started taking back control of my life, and it was glorious. I began draft 4 at the very end of July, a few days after my bday, and ah.

This was when, very slowly, I started realizing I could possibly keep writing and rewriting ‘quiv all my life, and still fall in love with it every time, again. Over and over and over. Which is a pretty dangerous thought considering I do want it a completed story one day, but until then, the freedom. I have no words for how much this story means to me. But this year in particular, it’s reminded me that I am a writer. From the bottom of my heart, I do love writing, and it makes me happy.

Basically, starting from July, the remaining months turned 2022 into my very best writing year.

Draft 4 ran from August till September. There were a lot of little changes and whatnot, but I want to particularly talk about the biggest two, and my plans for the future. (which is looking particularly bright!!)

A little bit about my drafting process first. I’m a pantser through and through — I see an outline? No, I don’t, otherwise it gets my panties in a twist, I go mad, the writing goes stale, and everything gets driven straight into a tree. So I don’t do outlines, ever. So when I say I write a new draft, I rewrite the entire thing from finish to end, no skipping, no leaving anything for later, we’re doing it like we have to defend our thesis and we’ve forgotten all our notes. Very few, if any, scenes will repeat, unless they’re central events. Basically retellings of the same story lol. What’s this madness for, you ask? At the end of the drafting process (aka the mass rewrites until the plot feels natural and tight under my fingers and my characters guide me seamlessly because I’ve got them right, so not having an outline is vital because they do everything), all those drafts will come and fight in a giant reading session arena where I pick which draft did what best, and edit from there.

This is where ‘quiv is now.

Yles and Mezusa. Yles is far from being new, but I did her best and I did her justice here. That’s thanks to one character with an amusing evolution throughout all drafts: Mezusa. She started as a nameless blob of an angel character mentioned only once in draft 1 — as the tuba angel who got kicked off the choir (skylarks had made nests in her tuba). All good and fine. Then, at some point between drafts — without my knowing — she met up with Yles, and planned the biggest plot hijack I’ve ever experienced. And gave herself a name. And a plot. And a conclusion. I’m still mad about that (and incredibly proud shh).

So, who’s Mezusa now? An angel living in solitude in a cloud forest full of skylarks, who sings a song to Anne one night and asks her to come take her light. She’s a runaway from Heaven, and most angels know that she went mad, and that’s why she fled. She’s also got talons on her fingers (she couldn’t decide if birds got talons on their hands or feet and nobody provided a satisfactory answer), and a thickly smoky voice that, coupled with her word choice, sends a shiver down everyone’s spine. She’s also dying, and is very well aware of it. There’s corruption visible on her flesh, decaying her body by the day.

But this is not her story. She plays pied piper to Yles’s.

Yles’s chapter goes like this: she was blinded, thousands of years ago, during one of her visitations. Now she wishes to weave herself a new pair of eyes from the souls of their descendants, in a city that towers like a ghost over her life. It basically starts with Yles crashing through the gates all but wreathed in flames. But the thing is... she’s kept postponing the day of vengeance. Up until Anne tosses the shard of light Yles’s way, who can’t get into the starfields (angels haven’t been able to find their way there, since the Turning), so she can’t anchor Mezusa there (though she doesn’t know whose shard it is). And that’s when Yles begins to change. That’s also where Mezusa comes in. She’s forced to see why she’s hesitated so much, all while walking down the old roads her feet still know in that city made of metal, to the Citadel of Endurance.

They meet... and things change. Not that fast; Mezusa’s pretty mad at first because her shard told her Yles was about to die, cue her entrance. They fight a lot. Yles gets hurt a lot. And Mezusa... Mezusa offers her her taloned hand and gets her through the city, the memories, the pain. And she tries to teach her a lesson, because lessons are all she has to give now that she’s dying: when they’re not happy, when they’ve strayed from what they wished for desperately, their bodies listen to them. And they slowly start breaking down. Because nobody wants to suffer, and not eternally. And the body listens much more closely than they realize. So what does Yles actually seek in the Citadel?

(Yeah, that spoilers lmaooo)

In short, Mezusa starts to mean a lot to Yles. She begs her to return to Heaven, and they’ll try, together, to enter the starfields if Anne has abandoned them. She falls in love with Mezusa over the course of the chapters...

And Mezusa is dying. Now it’s starting to bother her a little. She isn’t hidden under the flocks of her skylarks, where it’s all warmth. She stays with Yles, who locks eyes with her, and tells her her dream as an angel has always been the same as Mezusa’s. And that she’s deeply thankful.

(she also refuses to let Mezusa give in to her death)

So what does Mezusa do? She gives a weak smile, says cheekily — but there’s fear in her eyes: “Catch me in your inwings?”

Aka: I think now I can find my way into the starfields if I have you. I don't want to leave you alone

I am not okay.

(One of her eyes is a hive-eye she can’t see through, half of her face looks like rotted honeycombs. She gave her shard of light to Anne so she could find her way to the stars after she died. It’s angel belief that, if they die away from Heaven, they’ll grope eternally in solitude and darkness, and they most fear the loneliness. Afterlife for angels is blind. They’ve always known what afterlife looks for them. It’s beautiful, but also cold.)

In case you were wondering how bonkers I was over these two, they made me write 13k in a single friggin' day. But that's not even the impressive part. So I started that notes draft earlier in the year, yeah? Yeah. It mostly had a scene or two sketched out. At most. And they changed completely. Meaning, I wrote 13k of spontaneous plot with a clear beginning and end, and tbh it was one of the most coherent things I've ever written.

I was possessed y'all wtf

Anne and Tyrone. Yep, this was to be expected; I can’t go through a wrap-up without losing my head over these two. The reason why ‘quiv even exists. I can’t call them parent-child, or even friends, and definitely not lovers. Dunno, I just put all my love into them, and it’s a thing without name. And you know what’s my very favourite part about rewriting? Some things, like the final arc, won’t really change, even with my system. Those scenes can’t be any other. But they can be better, and I’m always extraordinarily tickled pink to see how the build-up leads to a world of other feels. And the build-up between the final arc and the pre-arc really did leave me in tears this year<3333

Anyway, this is a spoilers minefield, so I’ll just leave you with the mental image of: Anne pulling Tyrone on a bed of feathers of her wing wrapped under him. His head rests on her leg, and she holds a hand to his forehead, wishing him sweet dreams while she’s telling the events as they’d happened in Imera’s time, and that he shouldn’t take them to heart. Not him.

What’s to come? Basically the frankendraft, and slowly, very slowly, the very last of edits. I still need to rework the kinks in Imera’s and Malchior’s bits (and bear in mind that the Yles and Mezusa bits are technically a draft 1), but at least it’s just two things this time, oh gods. With Malchior I’m gonna try a riskier thing... as in, he won’t be old friends with Anne anymore. I hope the payoff will be worth it, but hey, I’ve got all my other drafts to rescue me^^

So slowly, veeeery slowly, ‘quiv is coming to an end. Idk how to feel about it right now, other than overwhelmed lmao;( I am not ready at all

9 p.m. sharp after getting home, the closed door, a mug of hot cocoa with whipped cream to the fairy lights on my tables, and tap-tap-tap till 11 or sometimes even 12. That's what my life looked like for two months, and I honest-to-god can’t wait to go back to that.

I’m extremely happy to introduce my newest darling, the pride and joy of this writing year of mine. I didn’t expect to love another WIP after ‘quiv, and certainly not so soon, but here we are, and this WIP means everything to me, the other side of the coin.<3

Huge cheers to all the Halo: CE, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST OSTs and Grace by Lewis Capaldi for basically carrying me through them two months, and I highly recommend checking the OSTs if you’re craving great quality sci-fi songs and don’t know them; for those of you that do, you’re welcome for the nostalgia. Also huge shout-out to my nightfriend, for being the main catalyst why this year got turned topsy-turvy into the best<3 love you so much! I’m so happy to have had the chance to know you, both as a writer and a person. You’re incredible to me<3

What’s it about? (and forgive the blurb quality)

The universe has always been haunted by a story: a Beast of the Deep Night, a remnant of a black hole, the one being people can't steal from, as they say. It roams the Deep Night, and any astronaut who values their life knows to pay tribute in their heart, and to mind their actions. It's the Beast's realm. And they call the Beast the lambent guardian, taking back from humanity everything they take from the universe.

A foolish man, A. Holloway, goes into rosy space in search of immortality. Between the Beast and the war, it doesn't seem likely that he'll find it. Soon a new recruit joins the ship, and things take a strange turn: she's an oddball, that one. Laughing, but distressed, the crew starts betting if she's the Beast in disguise, come aboard their ship for judgement.

She smiles and never denies anything.

But that universe doesn't look the same now. Hundreds, if not thousands of years after Holloway, the world is ending. The Beast is rampaging, ships sinking in the night, and now it turns a planet into fire and brimstone. Humanity's had to give up on its dream of freedom, and what remains are cities of rust.

Those who have nothing to live for go between planets, to ferry supplies, while they still can.

Police Superintendent Madigan sometimes receives distress calls. There's no sending any help, ever; Command says, a ship sighted by the Beast is a ship that is never returning home.

Command is right. The world is dying, and they better not offer it more sacrifices. All those who go know the risk. All those who remain... better find a new meaning and hope they'll be left for last. One day, Madigan receives another distress call. He picks it up, without knowing that the boy on the other end didn't expect anyone to help. He merely wished to hear another human voice. But Madigan's fallen into a deep state of apathy. Cities rusted from within, sinking in flames. If it's ending, it doesn't matter what he does anymore. So Madigan steals a ship, and decides to give his one shot to humanity.

Soon, they'll be two back-to-back against the Beast, carrying all of hope on their shoulders.

[You know what’s fun? I’m a very baby sci-fi fan. It’s been, what, six months since I’ve read two series I’ve really enjoyed, and that made me stop a little. Because it seemed so wrong. I adored to bits Aliens, Halo, Gears of War, but usually... it's not my genre, and I found pieces written so clinically, I just didn't have anything to connect to. And I was never big on robots; they seem to me to mirror the way people still regard animals, but with more prestige, because they’re humanoids, you see? So it’s just not my world. Or wasn’t. I did a little more digging and... I think it’s the space horror that’s shaped my earliest years of my life. I’m definitely one of those people who need the Very Dark to appreciate the light stuff truly, and Aberration helped me explore that in spades.

(And, yeah, I’m aware Halo isn’t exactly horror. But the drop-dead gorgeous atmosphere of ODST does the trick for me; that mixture of loneliness and uncertainty that make you feel so small in the universe, which I absolutely wanted to pay a tribute to. But that failed in like... chapter 1 lmao;) only the jazz is kept (and I’m gonna hang to it with my teeth!) but even that is warped into a glitched, disturbed thing that resembles the Beast more.)]

This was my NaNo project, y’all! Aberration won Nano on November 21 at 55k, and became a completed first draft... exactly one month later?? On December 21. Even when I came home tired to the bone, it was the thing I most looked forward to; I always sat down and at least did par, and you know? It always cheered me up. It was such a healthy experience, so much that, I didn’t skip on any single day on those two months.

Aberration itself became an idea at the beginning of 2021, when I was listening to an Ori OST remake, and my head went instantly, if space had any single sound, this would be it. The Beast came very soon after.

Then it was my 1k story for my admission, and eventually it turned into the outline for the foolish man (Holloway’s) part of story. Everything in his parts was there, in that 1k original, and that’s when I knew I wanted it to be a book.

Meaning, the rest of it, the entirety of Madigan’s story which is the core of Aberration, came to me as some sort of mystical trance the very day before NaNo. Some details in Holloway’s too. I completely revamped the WIP, as, at that time, something felt missing, and finally it clicked for me. I wanted it to become something much darker, rich in a way like those three series felt to me, aaaand this also means that the light-hearted story about a Beast joining a ship and cherishing them got thrown out of the window lol:')

Instead, we got my pride and joy:< and since it was the day before NaNo, my brain went, heyyyy, what if...?? And I went, heyyy to you too, if I manage to come up with an intro by tonight, then we’ll do it.

And the rest is history^^

Who's Madigan? He's the easiest boss to boss around, a pushover like a doormat's never been, and that's until he starts really caring about something. And if you look deeper, you'll see that's exactly how he wants others to perceive him. So they won't ever be afraid to approach him because of his status. At his core, Madigan loves people, and he loves them deeply. His job is his life’s calling. He feels the happiest when he’s protecting others. He sure as hell would mind losing his life... but rather than losing his loved ones, he'd rather risk his own. People are too precious to him. Even so, he's mostly alone. Oh, yes, people respect him and his close colleagues smile fondly his way, his mantle is his everything. But at the end of the day, there's nobody waiting for him. And what's even worse, he doesn't even realize this, not until very late. And when he does, he doesn't think it's right for him to be that close to someone. They have others in their life already, and he only complicates stuff.

Also!! The structure is way different from ‘quiv, and we’ve got titled chapters which I’m awfully proud of, so we’ll be going through them for the final leg of this journey<3 and, and! You know what’s the best part of it all? I know exactly what goes on in each of them, by heart. *flails hands* I love them so much!!

Cracked Visor, Scorpion Grass — Act 1

Okay, this one is a huge mess, but I already know what I want it to become. And it did its job more than well launching me into the Aberration atmosphere, crisp with loneliness and desolation, and the main event of Madigan finding the broken helmet in a field of purple forget-me-nots, which makes him feel connected to humanity as a whole. It makes him decide to answer that distress call. He hears himself there.

Into the Blinking Red

This is where I got kicked out of my own story and plans again, and in the best way possible. Originally, Spica (or Hahn’s boy, until the 40k story marker lmao) was supposed to be just some mangled body Madigan finds on the ship at the end of that distress call, launching us straight into the horror.

Instead, he’s our one-armed best little soldier who... how do I even describe it? He refuses from the very beginning to ever leave Madigan behind, even with the Beast’s teeth snapping at their backs. Then they’re having each other’s back, bringing the other from the brink of death, worrying over their bed if they’re ever going to recover from their wounds. Then they’ve only got each other on a dark ship in cold, dead space, but they’re always trying to give the other hope, even if they don’t have it. Then they’re talking about space, humanity’s long dream of being free and instead caging itself away from the Beast and how much Spica’s mission means to them all, then little, very little by little... Spica recognizes Madigan as his hero, and Madigan realizes Spica’s become his loved one. And it’s too late to take it back, and the boy means everything to him

Aberration of Light

Ah, yes. The Holloway chapters, which are the ones in italics. What went wrong, you ask? Well, what in the world, except that I had an outline, like an idiot, and no lesson learnt:') :') :') from the beginning this made me feel like I was slamming my head into a wall, and everything bad that I have to completely rewrite stems from the goddamn outline

(otherwise, fun Beast mythology oh yeahhhh)

Nightfall’s Reflection

Enter Lieutenant Hahn himself, the dad, who rides in furiously, and the first thing he does is to unhinge his jaw and gave rise to a howl from the depths of his angry little soul: to demote Madigan, specifically:') but it’s all good, he’s a good dad actually, just thinks his Superintendent is a wet little sock and loves screaming at him. He’s also so loyal to the man he’d die for him. He’s also not pleased that the Beast’s bitten off one of his son’s arms.

Who Lays These Tombs in Ice

Ah, yes. One of the two Luitgart chapters, the magnate of ice. A planet that’s had half of its sunlit face scarred by the Beast, and is in no hurry to forget this. This was also when I pulled an all-nighter because I got possessed, for the second time this year it seems, by the new plot ideas I spontaneously got for the Luitgart arc. And boy. Boy. I’ve got to tell you. This is where the story takes a very dark turn into true horror that also extends a bit beyond the Beast itself and it gets to the point of no return, because, soon, our crew will be stranded on an icy planet around which the Beast’s looped itself:')

(In short, this is, perhaps, the most punchy arc in perhaps the entire book, because you do not expect it)

As for Luitgart... it deserves a little love. As does Hahn, who’ll be my new objective come next draft. Now, Luitgart. It doesn’t spin on its axis. Meaning, one face is always sunlit, and that’s where humans lived before the Beast struck. Its dark half is full of unforgiving ice. But the ruined landscape also has a big impact on its gravity, and that’s where things get a lot of fun, and with horizontal ice rain:<

We also get Madigan digging graves in the ice for frozen corpses, in spite of his broken ribs, because he can’t stop, not now, and do I love that man<3

Lemon-Dotted Dice — Act 2

So yeah, Acts 1 and 2 for Holloway are going to be rewritten completely, with the outline (thank god) thrown out of the window. Great news is, their Act 3 slammed me in the face with the exact solution, via a couple of plot twists I was not expecting and wtf they did they build themselves??

Bad news is, this makes the current summary moot lmao. But it’s what draft 1 is, so it had to stay. Great news is, I’m hyper thrilled for the new version<3

Remnant

This was where the plot started deviating from the outline, and it showed<3

Corpse Snow

Aka the second and final part of the Luitgart chapters. A whole lot of things go down in this 20k behemoth, and mostly? I don’t think anything will change. Not much at all. It feels strange to return to a WIP with plot, but strange in a good way, and everything in Corpse Snow somehow magically came out as I wanted to tell it. Or re-reading will tell? Anyway I can’t connect two braincells about this particular act without wanting to heart and cry vomit

You know what the sad thing is? It could’ve been longer. It should’ve been longer, Hahn included, but I got deathly afraid of that 20k at one point, and decided to cut some stuff out. I’m thinking of adding them back in draft 2, but I’ll sleep on it. I need to sleep on it, or else I risk losing some really good stuff.

And this is also the chapter when Madigan wakes up and sees clearly, wide-eyed, oh, Spica’s his loved one

[also gonna throw this out into the world before it can ever become a thing. There’s nothing romantic between them; Madigan’s exactly 43 as per one of his random rants, and Spica is in his early twenties. They’re got the most familial relationship out there and that’s it]

Wine in the Hanging Lights

</3

What Goes Around... — Act 3

Sadly this is where I’ll have to learn to shut up kindly, because the heavy spoilers begin. So I’ll just spoil you with emoji lmaooo:<

❤❤💞💘💖💗⛔❗⁉️💀👾❗➖🚫

Outreach

THIS. THIS ONE. HOLY FUCK. The plot twist it threw right into my face woke me up from a 8h zombie state of post-proofreading work, and I was pretty much swearing out loud the entire night. All praise Outreach, it solved all my outline issues<3333

Days in Darkness

Now, on the other hand, I was highkey looking forward to this chapter the most out of all. The gorgon (aka the ship Madigan stole, ahem, borrowed) is getting character development here as well, and it’s a beast:<

(It seems the smallest Act, yeah? Yeah, it was the longest)

Echo Terminal — Act 4

We little people on a loop system... heading for the end of the universe... heading for certain doom... lalalala nice background music... oh, someone loses a leg. Oh, someone dies again. A ghostly explosion around the gorgon... oh, I see the Beast’s fangs.

Where Have You Gone?

This does not mean what you think it does, I guarantee you. Also where we part with Holloway’s story, and why it matters for Madigan’s. How they connect.

Solgesis

One of the two log chapters, the other being Echo Terminal. They’re much shorter, but very... to the point. The plot twist from Outreach? Gets built and expanded here. And here goes in all my revamp from the day before NaNo.

Beads of Orichalcum

Nothing to see here, just a tonnuva righteous fury, parallelism like it’s nobody’s business, Madigan being highkey a badass finally, and we’re very very near to the end. Though it doesn’t feel so. Not at all. It’s back to the bleak atmosphere of the beginning, but now there’s a change: they have each other now. And there’s no separating them.

The End of the Deep Night

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

...on the other hand, in case you were wondering how possessed I was about this chapter and really, WIP, hear me out: I actually dreamt of those two and that became the very last scene of the book. Which, whoops, spoilers? They’ve got each other. Till the end. But that’s all I’m saying lalala...

Whew! Must’ve felt like another year. In reading, though, because for me it passed in an instant hahahaha. Or it would’ve, if tumblr hadn’t screwed me over and thrown me out of my drafts thus deleting everything I’d written on Aberration...

All that remains are a lot of heartfelt thanks! If you’ve made it this far and accompanied me to the bottom of the post, I’m whipping up a mug of the most delicious cocoa with whipped cream you’ve ever had, you more than deserve it and I love you<3

And HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

I hope to see more of you and your incredible writing. And I hope you also feel like writing is a part of you and... fuck drafts, fuck perfectionism, fuck everything lol. This is what makes us happy. For a visible reason. And each and every one of you can and does shine through your writing, and the love or feeling you pour inside. I believe in you, and there’s nothing you can’t do ❤🥂

#ayearofwriting #aquiver-aglow #aberration of sunlight #in case you need something to read #here's a behemoth

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seasteading · 3 years

Text

so you're missing a plot

over the course of my 3+ years on writeblr and some time on writing twitter, i’ve noticed that a lot of people can come up with characters and worldbuilding, but then get stuck on creating a compelling plot around those characters. so, here are a few tips that have helped me, and that i hope will help you too!

note: this will apply mostly to fantasy and sci fi, since that's what i write and what tends to have more plot-heavy storylines.

these are also all my opinions! you don’t have to listen to any of this—all of these are tips that i’ve used in my own experience, and what works for me won’t necessarily work for you.

tone

this is one of the first things you want to decide. even within the same genre, you’re going to have a lot of variety in tone and atmosphere. the kind of plot that works for a fun fantasy adventure romp might feel odd and out of place for a darker fantasy with an emphasis on political intrigue. to figure out what kind of tone works best for your wip in particular, you want to look back at your characters. writing is a massive investment of time and energy, so you want to go in a direction that’s actually interesting to you. this is the very first step, and will help you decide what direction you end up going, and will most importantly give you a hint towards what ending will best suit the story you’re trying to tell. if you go with a more lighthearted tone, then suddenly having a tragic ending won’t make any sense since it’s the equivalent of a bait-and-switch. the same applies for having a darker tone—a happily ever after where everyone lives and gets therapy won’t necessarily fit.

worldbuilding

worldbuilding is important of course, but it doesn’t need to be completely developed before you start coming up with a plot. in fact, you should try to avoid dumping all of your time into worldbuilding, and instead get the basics down before moving onto the plot. i’m sorry to say it, but you’re not tolkien. you will never be tolkien, and you don’t have to aspire to be like him either. you don’t want to write yourself into a plothole because something in your worldbuilding ends up conflicting with the story, so generally it’s good to have a little bit of wiggle room. sometimes you also run into a situation where the plot itself inspires an important piece of worldbuilding that makes the story richer and more interesting. your worldbuilding is there to enrich your plot and inform your character motivations, not the other way around. however, you do want to establish any rules your world has before getting into the plot, since breaking them can itself become a driving factor in characters and their arcs. this is especially common in fantasy, where a frequent premise lies in the fact that everybody can’t use magic while the protagonist can, or the other way around. this isn’t a plot quite yet, but it can be a good starting point.

character driven vs. plot driven

you will also need to decide the main focus of your story. character-driven writing is common in literary fiction and shorter works, and it’s focused specifically on the internal conflict within characters, as well as their thoughts and personal arcs. few external events are going to happen in character-driven stories, which tend towards more towards slice-of-life where not much really happens but you’re still invested due to the characters. plot-driven writing puts emphasis on (you guessed it!) the plot, and this is a lot more common for longer works. the two can and do certainly overlap, but most works tend to lean a bit more one way or the other, and you can determine this by asking whether you’re more interested in the characters as people or in what happens to them.

motivation

so now that you have an idea of the direction you want to go, how do you actually come up with your plot? no matter if your story is character driven or plot driven, you still need compelling characters, and one way to find your plot is to look at their motivations. every one of your characters should have something they want to achieve or to obtain. your character’s want is going to be their main driving motivation. something is wrong in their life—if it wasn’t, then you wouldn’t be writing this story—and they think that obtaining what they want will fix it. this can be a macguffin-style quest for an object/place/person, the desire to climb the social ladder, solving the mystery behind a disappearance, etc. at this point, i would recommend taking a look at media with similar character motivations to yours and dissecting them to see what works and what doesn’t. you want to be genre-savvy and know what tropes are common to the type of story you’re telling.

gay is not a plot

repeat after me. gay is not a plot. gay is not a plot. gay is not a plot. there should be something to your wip’s plot other than “they’re gay, what more do you need?” (see this post). a romance isn’t going to be interesting if the characters aren’t interesting on their own, and that requires them to actually have their own motivations which (see motivation) themselves create the basis for a plot! in that same vein, having representation shouldn’t function as your plot or your primary selling point. representation should be a given, and making that the only descriptor for your work essentially boils down your characters to just their marginalization.

retellings

i know retellings of fairytales, myths, and shakespeare’s plays have gotten really popular, especially as of late. retellings are a great starting point since they already give you a base off which to work with, and instead of having to come up with all of your concepts from scratch, it becomes a question of putting your own spin on them. these tend to require some knowledge of the genre and common tropes, which you should have regardless of whether you’re writing a retelling or not. here, instead of having characters and a world first and a plot second, you’re working backwards from an existing work to reinterpret the characters and world surrounding a common plot. the important thing to note is that just because you have a starting point doesn’t mean that your work is done—i’d recommend researching other variations of the story you’re retelling and cataloguing similarities and differences, what works and what doesn’t, and moving things around/restructuring them depending on the changes you yourself want to make in your retelling.

prompts

i actually wouldn’t recommend relying on generators and prompt lists for your plots, since they tend to be extremely vague and difficult to get invested in, since you weren’t the one to come up with them. prompts can be really good for sparking inspiration, though, and once you get an idea for a few scenes, you can build off of them to figure out what circumstances lead to each one and what the pivot points are. prompts are a useful tool, but shouldn’t be used as the basis for your entire story.

final thoughts

if you’re here that means you’ve made it to the end of this behemoth of a post, and hopefully something here was helpful! at this point you should be able to find a premise, but it’s important to note that a premise is not a plot. here is where the real work begins—interweaving your characters and worldbuilding with your storyline, figuring out if there are any holes in your cast or if there are a few darlings you need to cryogenically freeze for now. you don’t need to fill in all of your plotholes; that’s a problem for when you actually have a draft down and more material to work with. for now, focus on creating a storyline that’s interesting to you. most importantly, don’t try to force it. you don’t want to treat a plot as a trope checklist, but instead let it come naturally so it actually fits the story your characters are made to tell.

#long post #anyway #r.writing #writeblr #writeblr advice #again take all of this with a grain of salt AHSDFKJLHASF

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literaticat · 3 years

Note

What do you think are the top five YA and MG books to study for craft (fiction not non-fiction)?

Being that I am not a writer, I don't STUDY books... I just read them!

So I asked some of my brilliant clients who also TEACH writing to ask THEM this question and I got the following responses:

Jo Knowles says: "Usually when I suggest books to a student, it's after they tell me about the kind of book they hope to write, and I've seen their writing and have had time to think about "what's missing" from it, at least for me. Usually that's emotion. Or connection. Often their characters just don't feel "real" yet. So I end up usually recommending books that moved me deeply, or inspired me in some way, hoping it does the same for them. I give a huge range and try to make it as diverse as I can.

I AM THE MESSENGER is always on that list. Mainly because it can be looked at for so many of those perfect things, AND because it's almost a collection of short stories, as the MC tries to address each family/person he's meant to help in some way. They are all so moving and real to me. I also love recommending TENDER MORSELS because it deals with trauma in such a profound way, and can show students how powerful this sort of "fantasy" (I really hesitate to call it that), can be. But it really depends on the genre they are writing in. If realistic, that's one thing, if sci fi, another. So I don't know that I would have a top five. But for students writing memoir or biofiction, I usually recommend THE WATSONS GO TO BIRMINGHAM and BROWN GIRL DREAMING and FUN HOME and STITCHES. If something with fantasy, I would definitely include THE GRAVEYARD BOOK and TITHE. And if historical, anything by MT Anderson and also Christopher Paul Curtis. There are just so many more! But I really wouldn't just give a random list because one size doesn't fit all and I'd want to get to know the person, what their likes and dislikes are, and what they are aiming for themselves before I'd make a recommendation."

Martha Brockenbrough says: "Yes! What Jo says. I don’t rank books by best of, because that’s a lot of energy over something uselessly subjective. Instead, I think about the aspects of craft that matter most when it comes to determining excellence:

character

plot

setting

structure

point of view

voice

theme

To be excellent, a book really ought to be doing all of these things at a masterful level. But there’s probably one or two of those areas that will shine.

So, I love the characters and voice of Jaclyn Moriarty’s Ashbury/Brookfield series. She does multiple POV and even crosses genres with these books.

Holly Black is absolutely KILLER for plot, and the Curseworkers series are superb. The intersection of plot/POV is extraordinary in Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity.

For structure, LONG WAY DOWN is a book about an elevator ride and it is an elevator ride. He of course is one of the finest writers ever, as well. But I do love a structure that underscore the theme.

In every category, Rita Williams Garcia’s A SITTING IN ST JAMES is an absolute work of art.

But I do think Jo’s insight—find a book that does what you want your book to do—is key when you’re trying to write a certain kind of book. Any excellent book can show you remarkable craft, and one key to recognizing it is to note a spot in the book that makes you feel a particular emotion. When you feel something, then you analyze every word and preceding scene to understand what techniques evoked that important emotion.

That’s why we read. To feel something. How do authors do this? Well, that is a very long story..."

Linda Urban says: "Agree with Martha and Jo. My recommendations for mentor texts are usually specific to my students' needs or challenges -- what book makes you feel like you know the character in the same way that you want readers to feel they know YOUR character? What book moves time the way you want your book to move time? What plot twist surprised you in the way you want your plot to suprise readers?

That said, I have go-to books where I think the craft is stellar and also easy to discern. I use the first chapter of Jason Reynold's GHOST a lot for students who want to figure out how to establish character and stakes in from the get-go. I love SEE YOU AT HARRY'S for emotional whollop and unexpected plot twists (that are still within the realm of realism). I like Anne Ursu's THE REAL BOY for omniscient narrator . . . etc. etc. etc.

The point is, read a lot -- read books that feel like they do what you most want to do, like they'd be great neighbors on a bookshelf (even if they are for different age readers or different genres or forms) and learn from them."

#mentor texts #craft stuff #writing advice

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segasister · 3 years

Text

Simple Romance Writing Tips:

(Adapted from my twitter, but better organized)

You have two protagonists, not one. Both need focus and development. Both are agents of desire, not objects of it.

When it comes to perspective, both protagonists’ points of view are important. Remember: both are agents of desire, not just objects of desire. You can go with dual First Person POV or Omniscient Third Person POV. You decide what’s easier for you.

One character shouldn’t change for the other. Both should grow with each other. For example, while a rebellious character learns to become more sweet, their uptight partner needs to learn to become more relaxed. The best partners help you grow as a person.

Don’t end the story when your protagonists get together. It’s not only overdone, but it ends before the bigger story can begin.

You can build tension in a relationship without involving abuse (physical/emotional/etc.) or forcing a break-up (either temporary or permanent) between the couple.

That in mind, couples do have their struggles, from the mundane to the more more dramatic.

You don’t need high stakes to create a compelling story. You just need some conflict present.

Don’t forget to add in sweet moments as well (PDAs need not be overly mushy). Remind the audience why they’re together in the first place.

Grand gestures are, well, grand. However, the little things (like helping each other with tasks) can be just as romantic.

You know love languages? Use some combination of all five of them in your story. Every person expresses love differently, and you should reflect that. What are the five love languages? Words of Affirmation (“I love you.”), Acts of Service (Helping your partner put groceries away), Gifts (A stuffed bear won at a fair), Physical Intimacy (Cuddling on the couch), Quality Time (Playing video games together while a long distance apart).

Opposites attract, yeah. However, there’s no shame in having characters be alike in many ways as well. Hell, have your couple be different in some ways but alike in others. Just about every relationship, from romantic to platonic to familial, is like this.

There is concern with having your characters, “being defined by their relationships,” ie. having their only trait be, “X’s partner.” However, that shouldn’t happen if you write your character similarly to how they were when they were single. However, don’t forget that growth.

Don't have one character in your relationship revolve around the other (what, "only letting them be defined by their relationship actually means.") In real life, that could be a sign of one partner isolating the other from friends, family, et cetera, an abusive tactic. (More on that below.)

The above also applies to same-sex/polyamorous relationships. Just because it’s not straight, doesn’t mean you treat them different.

Just because you’re writing a story about abuse/bigotry/incest/etc. doesn’t necessarily mean you’re endorsing said things. It’s only endorsing if it’s not shown as a bad thing.

Want to avoid accidentally writing a toxic relationship? You can start by not writing the following power dynamics: Large age gap (adhere to Age / 2 + 7), Huge difference in life experience, Master/Boss + subservient, Celebrity + fan, Literal powers + little/none. Almost all of those can work if the one with less influence/experience/power has the opportunity to match that and eventually take care of themselves should things go south. If they’re not, they’re in an abusive relationship. Physical/Sexual violence need not apply.

One partner shouldn’t be a caretaker for the other. Sure, both must care for one another, but one partner shouldn’t do all of the caring. On the one hand, the one not doing the work is lazy. On the other hand, the carer could be doing this to make the other dependent on them.

If you do intend to write a toxic relationship, make sure it ends either with both partners maturing, either by seeking counseling or ending the relationship. This is especially true if you’re writing an abusive one. However, as in reality, it is a process. Take your time.

People heal from such relationships in different ways. Some choose to seek a new partner, some don’t. Some choose to devote their passion elsewhere (like career or family). What’s important is that they come out better than they were in the relationship. Some… don’t heal, and end up continuing the cycle, by being a victim again or by becoming an abuser. This could work if you intend on writing a tragedy. An abuse victim becoming an abuser themselves or ending in another abusive relationship isn’t a happy ending.

On that note, you can write sad endings. However, tragedy doesn’t necessarily have to end with death. Characters should leave the story changed, no matter what, but a tragedy has to end with them going through a negative change; any, not just them dying or losing a loved one.

Opposing that, writing comedy is hard. There’s a fine line between humor feeling natural and forced. Try to stay on the former side of that line if possible. I find it’s best to write humor by not trying to. You do you, but remember that humor is in the ear of the beholder.

On the subject of love triangles: Make sure both rivals have their own good qualities so it’s not one-sided/between two awful people.

Make sure it ends in a way that satisfies all parties. How you do so is up to you. (Don’t pair your leftover with the protagonist’s baby.)

Romance can be affixed to other genres as well. Slice of Life, fantasy, sci-fi, historical, etc.

The difference between Fantasy and Sci-Fi? Magic vs. Science. Both require the creativity to pull the genre off, but both can take place in a variety of settings. You can write a Pirate Fantasy or a Sci-Fi Western. Maybe you wanna to combine both Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Try it!

Do your research! If you’re basing your story on a time period in a specific place, do your research on what it was like then. Scientific accuracy also helps when it comes to research (for Sci-Fi). Even fantasy requires research, if you wish to include real world elements.

On that note, lore and continuity are not interchangeable. Continuity is making sure plot points remain consistent. Lore is making sure world building stays consistent.

Age is just a number. However, don’t pair teens with adults, or barely-adults with grown adults. The rule of Age / 2 + 7? That also applies here to ensure audiences don’t feel too queasy.

That being said, you are allowed to start the story with your protagonists as kids.

On writing minorities: don’t rely on stereotypes, and don’t write minority characters just to have them. They deserve proper development as well.

Don’t be afraid to have people of two different races together; just be careful that neither protagonist comes off as racist.

On that note, research the people and cultures you wish to write about. Be careful so as to not come across as using said people/culture as a token.

Don’t just focus on the physical/sexual aspect. Sure, physical attraction plays a part, but the personality of both protagonists are more important. How well they get along.

On the topic of sex: it’s entirely optional. There’s plenty of ways to show intimacy without having your characters engage in sex. Just have them enjoy each other’s company. You’re still open to if your audience is more mature; just don’t forget sex isn’t the only option.

Speaking from experience: you can have love without sex. But you cannot have sex without love. (That’s rape!) It’s a, “not every rhombus is a square but every square is a rhombus,” scenario. However, if you just wanna indulge yourself with your work, go for it.

There's a fine line between objectification and expressing sexual agency. It's okay for characters to show pride in that. It's okay for characters to take pride in their modesty.

Promiscuity isn't inherently a bad thing. Abstinence isn't inherently a good thing.

Play around with relationship dynamics (childhood sweethearts, enemies to lovers, etc.)

You want to write a particular romance dynamic? Go right ahead: just make sure it makes sense with the characters you're writing first. Also, some are harder to pull off than others.

When writing Enemies to Lovers, keep in mind it's not an instantaneous progress. Give the enemies time to stop being enemies before you can move on to the, "Lovers" stage. Otherwise, you'll be asking yourself the same question you ask when you see sitcom couples who clearly hate each other and are only still in it for sex/their kids: "Why are you together?"

Another popular dynamic: childhood sweethearts. Just be careful not to write them like siblings (have one see the other “like a sibling” so to speak) and you should be good.

Whatever dynamic you choose, however, don’t be afraid to experiment, bring something fresh to it.

There’s nothing wrong with having a niche, nor is there anything wrong with expanding your horizons and trying something new and taking a risk.

You don’t want to write romance? You just want your protagonists to be platonic? That’s fine.

It’s okay if you don’t have everything planned out ahead of time. It’s okay if the story strays from that initial plan. Go with it. Improvise. Adapt. Outlines help you keep on track, but your story should feel alive to the audience. Changes to the original plan are natural.

Write for YOU. Yes, it’s satisfying to hear feedback, especially positive feedback, but it’s important to write for yourself.

On criticism, be open to it, but there’s a difference between constructive criticism and just vitriol from the reader. Only the former is important.

On writer’s block: if you need to walk away for a bit, go ahead. Maybe an idea will pop in the meantime.

It’s okay to be ashamed of what you wrote in the past. That shows you’ve grown as a writer. It’s also okay to have unfinished drafts. They can be repurposed.

Most important when it comes to writing in general, not just romance: be happy in your work. You’re gonna have off days, but only you’ll know if it’ll be worth it in the end. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to move on to another creative field, or any other altogether.

Any other authors have any tips to share? Doesn’t have to be about romance; they can be about any part of the writing process! I will reblog this post with that advice and will tag you! Or you can reblog yourself.

#Writing #Writeblr #Writing Advice

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thelivebookproject · 4 years

Text

Talking Books With @libri-et-coffea!

[What is this and how can I participate?]

Hello!

I might start looking up ways to say hi that don’t involve hello, hi, or welcome, because this is only the eighth interview and I’m already tired of myself. BUT ANYWAYS, let’s go! Today we talk covers, reading habits, and unknown authors.

Important note: I haven’t changed or edited any of the answers. I’ve only formatted the book titles so they were clearer, but nothing else. Because I’m incapable of shutting up, my comments are between brackets and in italics, so you can distinguish them clearly.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Image description: a square titled “Know the blogger”. Name & pronouns: Anni, she/her; country: Germany; three adjectives to describe her: curious, calm & overthinker /end]

1. What type of cover do you like? Colourful, sober, etc.

I rather go for the minimalistic covers with maybe some stylized shapes and forms or single objects over the ones with people, regardless if they are drawn or photographed. I also tend to go for darker covers, it's just aesthetically more pleasing 😅 but what I really love about a cover is when it only makes sense in hindsight, when you've read the book.

[Personally, I like my covers colourful and cute! And the latest fashion of YA books and rom-com covers (see, for instance, the cover of The Hating Game) is lovely. But I like my classics with a more “sober” and minimalistic look because I feel something really colourful doesn’t match, haha]

2. Last book that made you question your intelligence because "oh no, I don't think I understand anything"?

Thankfully, that doesn't happen too often but when it happens, it's somehow always sci-fi. I'm thinking of The Martian or The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. Initially, I tried to follow the scientific explanations but gave up a few chapters in. It didn't stop me from enjoying these books, though, and I might have to reread them again because I probably understand everything better now.

3. So talking about sci-fi; do you prefer fantasy, sci-fi, or both?

Those are the two genres I read the most, but if I have to choose I'll pick fantasy. Mostly because fantasy worlds are usually even more different to our own world and there is magic ✨ I also just love all the different commonly found species like witches, vampires, elves, dragons, dwarves...

[Magic being a selling point, 10/10 hard agree. Why would I care for science when I can just explain what’s happening by saying “magic”?]

4. How did you get into reading?

I feel like I've been into reading even before I started school. My parents love to read, too (though we don't have the same taste in books), so they taught me how to read and always encouraged my reading. In my teens I haven't read as much as I used to but then I found the booklr community and I'm reading as much as never before 😊

5. Where do you usually read? In your bed, your sofa, the train, etc?

I love to read in bed, it's just so cozy, especially in winter! What's not working for me is reading on the train or other places where it's busy and loud. I need to read in private, especially when the book is so good I need to laugh or grin.

Free space to say/add/recommend anything!

I'd like to use this opportunity to recommend an author I don't really see here on Tumblr. Paolo Bacigalupi writes scarily realistic dystopias. He tackles water scarcity in California, Nevada and Arizona in The Water Knife. He talks about rising sea levels in The Drowned Cities. He thinks about what bio-terrorism would do to the world as we know it in The Windup Girl. He's combining all these topics with brutal action and morally grey but likeable characters. His books will make you think about stuff you take for granted, long after you've finished reading them.

[I definitely haven’t heard of this author before! Thanks for sharing a lesser known one]

You can follow her at @libri-et-coffea and on Goodreads.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Thank you, Anni! I had a great time with you.

Next interview: Tuesday, 29th of September

#talking books with #booklr #thelivebookproject #september 2020

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not-majestic-bluenicorn · 3 years

Text

Crescent || Chapter 6

Fandom(s): ATEEZ

AU: Treasure Hunters

Genre: Action, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

Relationship: Everyone x Everyone, Established Hongjoong x Yunho

Language: English

Status: Ongoing

Chapter WC: 3,455 words

Warnings: Character Death, Stabbing, Fighting, Blood, Aliens, War, Funerals, Kidnapping, Attempted Kidnapping, Mentions of Child Abuse / Child Work, Explosions, Murder Attempt, Robbery, Homeless/Runaway Character, more will be added.

Chapter Warnings: Robbery, Homeless/Runaway Character, Mentions of Abuse

Summary:

"Hey can I ask you a favor?" Yunho raised an eyebrow at Yeosang's question.

"I don't think you're in any position to be asking favors." Yunho scoffed, but paid attention anyway.

"Would you consider not handing me in?" Yeosang knew that was to ask a lot, but he might as well try.

"You have no shame, do you?" Yunho had to laugh, slightly taken aback by the bold question.

"Shame can only draw you back, and I try to only go forward." Yeosang shrugged, it was worth the attempt.

AO3

<< Previous Chapter | Masterlist | Next Chapter >>

Tagged: @angel0taiyo

San had left Jongho with Yeosang at the main deck while he left to explain the situation to Hwanwoong, who was in charge at the moment. The crew was just sort of staring at him while they focused on their own stuff, and Yeosang felt like a circus attraction. Of course, none of the normal crew members had expected something like that to happen. The soldiers, on the other hand, were all on high alert thinking maybe someone had figured out their true identities.

Jongho noticed none of this as he kept a close eye on Yeosang, observing him with curiosity as Yeosang sighed repeatedly, letting him know he was not very happy with this situation. He was sitting on the floor of the deck, hands tied behind his back being crushed by his back as he leaned on the rail of the deck. It was uncomfortable. Plus, he really just didn't want to be tied up like that.

"So... Why our ship?" Jongho asked finally, tired of only observing Yeosang as if he could get the information through some sort of telepathy.

"It's a very expensive model, only someone with fortune and power would be able to acquire it," Yeosang explained, not even looking at Jongho. His voice held a hint of annoyance. "Plus it looks brand new, either it is new or they pay a lot for maintenance."

Jongho hummed in agreement. He had also thought something similar when he had first seen the ship he would be working on. He had spent his whole life near ships, repairing them and building them, so he could recognize an expensive ship when he saw one. The difference was that he was not looking to steal anything when he first boarded it, and hadn't even thought much about who Captain Hongjoong was.

"And why are you stealing?" Jongho asked again.

"There are only two reasons why someone steals, they are either in need or they covet something, which one do you think I fall on?" Yeosang scoffed, getting a little on edge by the questions. Jongho didn't seem to be fazed.

"I'd say the first one," Jongho replied after thinking it over for a few seconds. Yeosang's eyes widened slightly and Jongho noticed. "Well, you felt a little weak when I was restraining you before, have you been eating properly? Plus... You don't look like a bad person." Jongho shrugged.

Yeosang stared at him for a few seconds before sighing and looking away. It was embarrassing, how a complete stranger could look straight through him and still be kind despite what he had tried to do. Truth be told, Yeosang didn't like stealing that much, he was just desperate. Sure, there was a certain thrill to it that he appreciated, but there were surely other better ways to feel like that, right? He just needed to get out of that planet.

"Will you tell me your name?" Jongho asked again. His voice was soft, like he had realized the change in Yeosang's demeanor.

"Kang Yeosang," Yeosang replied, voice small.

At that moment, Hongjoon, Yunho and Siyeon returned to the ship. Hwanwoong reported to them immediately, summarizing what San had told him about the situation. Hongjoong cursed under his breath and locked eyes on the prisoner, approaching him without hesitation. Jongho looked away as he did, he had never seen the Captain so serious and threatening.

As soon as he was close enough, Hongjoong grabbed Yeosang by the collar and hoisted him up, causing him to yelp. Jongho gasped next to him, this being the first time he saw his captain do anything remotely aggressive. Yeosang coughed slightly and looked at Hongjoong with a defying glare, not willing to back down even with his hands tied behind his back.

"Who else was with you?" Hongjoong asked, not wasting time.

"Other homeless people, I don't really know their names." Yeosang replied, voice hard and steady. The glint of something in Hongjoong's eyes when he said the word homeless didn't escape his eyes.

"How many came into this ship?" Hongjoong asked next.

"Only me." Yeosang didn't dare look away. Hongjoong did, however, as he confirmed this answer with the rest of the crew, who had already checked the ship for other potential stowaways.

"Did you take anything?" Hongjoong looked back at Yeosang, who still didn't seem to want to back down.

"He didn't." Jongho spoke this time, surprising both Yeosang and Hongjoong. "We found him shortly after he got in through the propellers' maintenance door, he couldn't have gone anywhere before we found him."

Hongjoong looked Yeosang in the eye, looking for something that would give him away as something more than a petty attempt of a burglar. When he didn't find it, he let go of his collar and turned to walk away. Yunho stopped him, if only to ask him for permission to conduct his own little interrogation.

"Just don't be too hard on him," Hongjoong warned, walking back to his quarters to discuss with Siyeon and San what to do about the fuel.

Despite the warning, Yunho took Yeosang to the hold, the most isolated area of the ship. They didn't really have any shipment of importance, and instead stored their non-perishable supplies there. He sat Yeosang down on a simple wooden share and then sat in front of him, face void of expression. Yeosang observed his surroundings and took a mental note on how no one would hear him scream if he did.

"What is your full name?" Yunho began with a simple question.

"Kang Yeosang." He answered easily. It didn't matter if he tried to keep his identity secret since he had already told Jongho anyway.

"Were you born here?" Yunho was testing him, seeing how much he was willing to share.

"Yes, I've lived here my whole life." Yeosang wasn't going to back down easily, though. He had walked into the wolves' den and he was going to own it up. If he got intimidated at that point, then what did that make him?

"Family?"

"Only my mother," Yeosang tensed up, this was crossing a territory he didn't like. "I don't see how that matters, though."

"Does she know you've become a wanted burglar?" Yunho raised an eyebrow. "Kang Yeosang, I heard your name whispered around the streets earlier."

"I don't think she would care if she knew." Yeosang scoffed. It was true, his mother probably wouldn't care. She had never cared about anyone else but his father, even though Yeosang had tried to be there for her even when his father had left. It hurt, but it was the truth. "Don't try to pull the 'your mother would be so disappointed if she knew' card, it won't work on me."

"Oh, I wasn't going to," Yunho chuckled. "Let's be real, that rarely ever works."

"Then why are you asking?" Yeosang was growing exasperated. The questioning seemed to be going nowhere and it was so slow he felt like losing his mind.

"I have my reasons," Yunho shrugged. "I want to know who I'm going to turn with the guards before I do so."

Yeosang seemed to freeze at this, his mask of bravery falling apart for a few seconds before his surprised expression turned into one of rage. He wasn't stupid, of course he had suspected they would turn him in with the police, but they had kept him around for so long he had started hoping that wouldn't happen. Yunho seemed slightly surprised at the change in his demeanor.

"Why are you so angry?" Yunho asked. "You're the one who tried to steal from us, it is only fair."

Yeosang closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The man in front of him was right. It was only reasonable that they turned him in, the guards had been looking for him anyway, but he couldn't help but feel angry. The other homeless people had been right, he had been crazy for trying to get into a ship that wasn't even a part of their original plans. He had been ambitious, but beyond that, he had been a fool for following his instincts.

"Not gonna answer that? Fair enough." Yunho clicked his tongue. "Why The Crescent, why this ship?"

"'Cuz I felt like stealing from this ship, okay?" Yeosang bit back, too pissed to even care about being proper. "I already told the Jongho guy that only someone rich and with power could afford a ship like this, especially one so new or so well maintained."

"So you have no idea who is on board his ship?" Yunho pressed further. Yeosang would have thought it was weird if he wasn't too mad at himself for his stupidity.

"If I knew I wouldn't be here would I? Everyone here is too well trained to be a good target of a simple burglar like me." Yeosang groaned, remembering how San had stood in front of him, posture perfect and calculated. "Pretty sure that San guy would have killed me if Jongho hadn't stopped him."

Yeosang raised his head, showing Yunho the faint trace of blood on it that had formed after the encounter with San. He could feel the dry blood uncomfortably clinging to his skin, but tried to not think too much about it. Yunho observed it with sharp eyes before nodding. He was a little bit surprised about San; he was cold, sure, but he had never exhibited knowledge on sword fighting. He would have to ask him about it later.

"Then you're nothing but a petty burglar caught in the act, got it." Yunho seemed satisfied with his answers and stood up to leave.

"Ouch," Yeosang chuckled, the insult getting to him a bit. "Hey can I ask you a favor?" Yunho raised an eyebrow.

"I don't think you're in any position to be asking favors." Yunho scoffed, but paid attention anyway.

"Would you consider not handing me in?" Yeosang knew that was to ask a lot, but he might as well try.

"You have no shame, do you?" Yunho had to laugh, slightly taken aback by the bold question.

"Shame can only draw you back, and I try to only go forward." Yeosang shrugged, immediately wincing slightly. His arms were starting to get numb from having them tied behind his back for so long.

"I'll send someone to look over you," Yunho replied instead, leaving the room.

Only after Yunho left, did the name of the ship sink into Yeosang's mind, making him gasp. What was going on?

Yunho went to join Hongjoong and the rest at the quarters after asking Mingi to look over Yeosang while he informed their Captain about it. When he arrived, it seemed like the issue regarding the fuel had been solved already, as Siyeon was taking Hwanwoong with her to go negotiate for it. Hongjoong briefed him about it, explaining to him that they had opted to buy enough to go to another planet and then refilling the tank completely over there.

"How did the questioning go? You didn't do anything to him, did you?" Hongjoong asked. His tone was a bit playful but Yunho could tell he was tense.

"I didn't do anything more to him than San or Jongho did." Yunho raised his hands defensively, excusing himself.

"San and Jongho?" Hongjoong raised an eyebrow, slightly worried. Only he would worry about the health of a burglar trying to steal from his very own ship.

"Yes, apparently San prickled him with the tip of his sword, there was a little bit of blood, but nothing much." Yunho explained simply, hoping the lighthearted tone would help calm him.

"San? That's unexpected..." Hongjoong mumbled.

"I agree, he does look scary sometimes but he still doesn't seem the type to do something like that." Yunho shrugged. "Anyway, we should go hand him over to the guards."

"Not yet," Hongjoong shook his head.

"What? Why not?" Yunho was surprised, he had thought they would be done with this quickly.

"I'm just not sure about it yet..." Hongjoong's voice grew quiet, like he was trying to hide something, but Yunho knew him too well.

"You're worried about his homeless status, right?" Yunho sighed. "Hongjoong, he tried to steal from you, that's a crime-"

"He tried to steal from me because he has the need to, which is very different!" Hongjoong protested, not willing to back down. "And who created that need? My family, Yunho."

"I understand where you are going, but I don't think this is where your sympathy should be going to..." Yunho's voice was soft, placating, he didn't want to anger Hongjoong.

"To whom should it go then? He's my people, and I don't feel comfortable turning him in when it is partially my fault that this happened in the first place." Hongjoong crossed his arms over his chest and Yunho groaned.

He knew Hongjoong was right and it exasperated him, because it would be far easier to just turn Yeosang in and keep Hongjoong safe like that. What if Yeosang wasn't who he said he was? What if he was trying to bring them harm? But Hongjoong didn't like to go the easy way, he liked to do what was right, like his brother had taught him, and even though it was obnoxious at times, Yunho loved him for it.

"Fine," Yunho conceded, sighing. "What will you do then?"

"I don't know yet, but I'll figure it out." Hongjoong smiled, walking over to hug Yunho. "Thank you, I love you."

"I love you too."

Wooyoung had spent most of that day going in and out of consciousness, trying to figure out what time it was wherever the crew was at the moment to see if he could catch them in their dreams. He hadn't managed to meet with anyone so far, but sleeping with the necklace provided an interesting experience. He had his first prophetic dream again, but this time with way more clarity and details.

He prepared to fall asleep again. He wasn't even tired, but eating dinner had helped make him feel sleepy. Plus, trusting himself to the necklace actually helped, almost like it lured him to sleep by itself. Wooyoung settled under the covers and closed his eyes. His breathing slowed down little by little, until eventually he couldn't hold any clear thoughts in his mind. The last thing he thought of before waking up in the dream realm was Yeosang.

When he opened his eyes, Wooyoung found himself in an old house. It was made of wood, and the floor creaked slightly when he began walking. At first, there was only the sound of his steps and of water flowing outside the home. He peaked through a window and found himself in a little town built around canals and with buildings so tall they covered most of the sky from where he was.

As he went further into the house, he noticed the sound of crying. The voice was high-pitched, but the crying itself was subdued and constant. When he tried to find where the crying was coming from, he heard Yeosang's voice speak to the crying person, trying to calm them down. Soon Wooyoung realized that the crying was coming from Yeosang's mother. He followed the voices until he was right outside of the room, observing.

"Mom, it's alright," Yeosang repeated, trying to get his mother to stand up from the floor. "Stop drinking, and stop crying about dad, it's not worth i-"

He was silenced by a slap. Wooyoung gasped, covering his mouth with both hands. Yeosang looked at him briefly but didn't say anything. The sound of the slap had been so deafening that for a second he hadn't been able to hear anything else but the echo of it. Yeosang's right cheek turned red almost immediately, resenting the hit, and in his eyes Wooyoung could see a mix of anger and sadness.

"Mom-" He began again, but the woman just wailed harder, hitting him on the chest repeatedly. "Mom, stop it."

But the woman just wouldn't stop. Sighing, Yeosang grabbed her arms and pulled her up delicately, hugging her tightly until she stopped trying to resist and just cried herself to exhaustion. When she was done, Yeosang guided her to her room and then returned to where Wooyoung was, still frozen on the frame of the door.

"So this is a dream?" Yeosang asked. His right cheek had begun to swell, and Wooyoung couldn't stop looking at it.

"Yes..." Wooyoung nodded. Seeing Yeosang like this, when in his previous dream he had been so confident, hurt him.

"That's good, it would be a shame to discover I didn't have the courage to leave..." Yeosang sighed, approaching Wooyoung, who looked shaken. "I'm okay, it's just a dream, silly." He smiled, but Wooyoung shook his head.

"Can I...?" He extended his hand towards Yeosang's cheek, who looked at him with curiosity, but nodded anyway.

Wooyoung placed his hand softly on Yeosang's cheek. The latter winced slightly upon the contact and closed his eyes, but Wooyoung shushed him softly as he focused on altering Yeosang's dream self, reducing the swelling until it was no more. He was so focused on tending to Yeosang that he didn't realize when the other opened his eyes and openly stared at him until their eyes locked.

"Ah, sorry." Wooyoung went to pull his hand away, but Yeosang grabbed his wrist and stopped him.

"It's okay, your hand feels really cool," Yeosang nuzzled his cheek against Wooyoung's hand, closing his eyes and sighing in relief. "Thank you."

"It's nothing..." Wooyoung mumbled, eyes trained on Yeosang.

A few minutes later, Yeosang had guided him outside of the house and had invited Wooyoung to sit next to him on the little deck they had outside the house, feet dangling over the water. They stayed in silence for a moment. Wooyoung focused on taking in the image of Yeosang's hometown, curiosity filling him as he wondered where Yeosang was from and how the place he had grown up in was like. As he wondered all of this in silence, Yeosang spoke.

"I found the ship you showed me," his voice was small, like he was unsure. "At least I think I did..."

"Really?" Wooyoung's voice came out louder than he had intended, a product of his excitement.

"Yes, The Crescent, they're anchored at my town right now..." Yeosang explained, but Wooyoung sensed something was wrong.

"But...?"

"But I am not on good terms with them...?" Yeosang chuckled, he was uncomfortable.

"How so? Have you met the crew before?" Wooyoung asked, turning to face him. Yeosang mumbled something but he couldn't catch it. "What was that?" Yeosang sighed.

"I tried to steal from their ship." Yeosang repeated, loud and clear this time.

"Oh..." Wooyoung said. "That is not what I was expecting."

"I can see that..." Yeosang groaned.

"Why?"

"Just because?" He didn't want to explain his reasoning all over again, especially not to Wooyoung, who probably had already a bad impression of him. "I didn't know it was the ship you told me to look for at first, I probably wouldn't have done that if I had known."

"Probably?" Wooyoung raised his eyebrows, and Yeosang winced. "Where are you right now?"

"In their hold, sleeping with my hands tied to my back..." Yeosang explained, and Wooyoung looked horrified. This was not how he expected his future boyfriends to treat each other. "It's not too bad, really, they've been really kind. The guy they left me with, Mingi, is quite sweet." Yeosang smiled, shrugging it off.

"And what will they do with you?" Wooyoung asked, hurried.

"Probably hand me over to the guards, I'll be prosecuted under charges of serial robbery and get out in a few years, maybe." Yeosang listed.

"Serial robbery?!" Wooyoung yelled this time, surprising Yeosang.

"I'm... sorry?" Yeosang looked sheepish, like he was genuinely sorry but didn't know how to properly apologize or react.

"You better be," Wooyoung stood up, grabbing his necklace.

"What are you doing?" Yeosang stood up right after him, slightly panicked.

"Well, the omen or whatever won't work if you're in jail, so I'm going to get your freedom back." Wooyoung huffed, focusing all of his attention on the necklace.

"H-How? You're just a dream? A figment of my imagination?" Yeosang asked, genuinely confused. Wooyoung glared at him and he immediately shut up, only then realizing Wooyoung was probably more than 'just a dream'.

"I'm gonna go see the captain of the ship." Wooyoung stated. His mind focused on Hongjoong, on his name and his face, on what Wooyoung had felt the first time he had dreamed about him.

"What?" Yeosang tried to ask, but Wooyoung was already gone.

#kwritersworldnet #kdiarynet #8makes1teamnet #kpopscape #ateez #ateez fanfic #ateez fic #ateez fanfiction #atz #kpop #kpop fanfic #kpop fic #kpop fanfiction #crescent #bluenicorn writes

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thewriting-corner · 3 years

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Over 1,000 followers. Wow. I never thought I’d get here. And because there are so many new people, I wanted to reintroduce myself for those here who have not had the once in a lifetime experience of meeting the Queen of Burnout herself. So yay for that. I suck at segues, I’m sorry.

I’m Lu, an 18 year old girl who has yet to grow up lol. I’m obsessed with superheroes (DC over Marvel, sorry), as you will (hopefully) see with my book some day. I write mostly sci-fi, though I dip my toes into contemporary and fantasy every once in a while. On this account I do writing advice, writing memes and book reviews so prepare to see me scream over fictional characters.

Some more basic info about me: I’m Catholic, from Latin America (I will not say from where) and I speak Spanish, English and German (though I want to learn at least three more).

My favorite books include the Renegades trilogy by Marissa Meyer (BEST read of 2021), The Yellow Note by MJ Padgett and The Black Reckoning by John Stephens. My current reads are basically a juggle between These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong, Ledge by Stacie McEwan and The Curse of the Night Witch by Alex Aster. Ironic as it is considering the genre of most of those books, I’m not a huge fan of fantasy.

And not as important BUT my favorite shows are Alexa & Katie, Brooklyn 9-9, Modern Family and The Flash. Also Supergirl but only up to season 4 because Lex Luthor?? Genius.

Right now I have two WIPs. One is about a 17 year old girl who discovers she can see the future and the other is about a 17 year old who travels through time to escape a man that’s trying to murder her before she murders him in 7 years. The first one is nearly finished with edits (fourth draft) and the second one is a first draft. [I watched a lot of Doctor Who, Jurassic Park and superhero shows (still do) so clearly I get my inspirations from somewhere hehe.]

Also, I LOVE giving writing advice (I mean clearly, I made a whole account for it) but if you ever need help with anything writing related, feel free to DM me. I might not always reply immediately but unless I’m super busy, I reply after a few hours :)

Lastly, I overshare a LOT on my Insta stories, however, I do not feel comfortable sharing personal information such as name, where I’m from and all that. If you find my personal account somehow, unless we’re close friends, please do not follow it. It’s uncomfortable.

I ALMOST FORGOT. I have a slight caffeine addiction. I love coffee. If there is one thing I relate to Lorelai Gilmore is coffee. But don’t be worried if you see that on my Insta stories. I promise I drink max 3 cups per day (excluding the Coca Cola intake oops).

But yeah. That’s me. A sci-fi obsessed teenager with barely any social life and a tendency to burn out. Nice to meet all you and thank you for 1k!

(And if you want to read more about my WIP I have like one or two posts on it)

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thesteadydietofeverything · 4 years

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Top 10 Games of 2019

This was an extremely good year for games. I don’t know if I played as many that will stick with me as I did last year, but the ones on the bottom half of this list in particular constitute some of my favorite games of the decade, and probably all-time. If I’ve got a gaming-related resolution for next year, it’s to put my playtime into supporting even smaller indie devs. My absolute favorite experiences in games this year came from seemingly out of nowhere games from teams I’ve previously never heard of before. That said, there are some big games coming up in spring I doubt I’ll be able to keep myself away from. Some quick notes/shoutouts before I get started:

-The game I put maybe the most time into this year was Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. I finally made the plunge into neverending FF MMO content, and I’m as happy as I am overwhelmed. This was a big year for the game, between the release of the Shadowbringers expansion and the Nier: Automata raid, and it very well may have made it onto my list if I had managed to actually get to any of it. At the time of this writing, though, I’ve only just finished 2015’s Heavensward, so I’ve got...a long way to go.

-One quick shoutout to the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy that came out on Switch this year, a remaster of some DS classics I never played. An absolutely delightful visual novel series that I fell in love with throughout this year.

-I originally included a couple games currently in early access that I’ve enjoyed immensely. I removed them not because of arbitrary rules about what technically “came out” this year, but just to make room for some other games I liked, out of the assumption that I’ll still love these games in their 1.0 formats when they’re released next year to include them on my 2020 list. So shoutout to Hades, probably the best rogue-like/lite/whatever I’ve ever played, and Spin Rhythm XD, which reignited my love for rhythm games.

-Disco Elysium isn’t on this list, because I’ve played about an hour of it and haven’t yet been hooked by it. But I’ve heard enough about it to be convinced that it is 1000% a game for me and something I need to get to immediately. They shouted out Marx and Engels at the Game Awards! They look so cool! I want to be their friend! And hopefully, a few weeks from now, I’ll desperately want to redact this list to squeeze this game somewhere in here.

Alright, he’s the actual list:

10. Amid Evil

The 90’s FPS renaissance continues! As opposed to last year’s Dusk, a game I adored, this one takes its cues less from Quake and more from Heretic/Hexen, placing a greater emphasis on melee combat and magic-fuelled projectiles than more traditional weapons. Also, rather than that game’s intentionally ugly aesthetic, this one opts for graphics that at times feel lush, detailed, and pretty, while still probably mostly fitting the description of lo-fi. In fact, they just added RTX to the game, something I’m extremely curious to check out. This game continued to fuel my excitement about the possibilities of embracing out-of-style gameplay mechanics to discover new and fresh possibilities from a genre I’ve never been able to stop yearning for more of.

9. Ape Out

If this were a “coolest games” list, Ape Out would win it, easily. It’s a simple game whose mechanics don’t particularly evolve throughout the course of its handful of hours, but it leaves a hell of an impression with its minimalist cut-out graphics, stylish title cards, and percussive soundtrack. Smashing guards into each other and walls and causing them to shoot each other in a mad-dash for the exit is a fun as hell take on Hotline Miami-esque top down hyper violence, even if it’s a thin enough concept that it starts to feel a bit old before the end of the game.

8. Fire Emblem: Three Houses

I had a lot of problems with this game, probably most stemming from just how damn long it is - I still haven’t finished my first, and likely only, playthrough. This length seems to have motivated the developers to make battles more simple and easy, and to be fair, I would get frustrated if I were getting stuck on individual battles if I couldn’t stop thinking about how much longer I have to go, but as it is, I’ve just found them to be mostly boring. This is particularly problematic for a game that seems to require you to play through it at least...three times to really get the full picture? I couldn’t help but admire everything this game got right, though, and that mostly comes down to building a massive cast of extremely well realized and likable characters whose complex relationships with each other and with the structures they pledge loyalty to fuels harrowing drama once the plot really sets into motion. There’s a reason no other game inspired such a deluge of memes and fan fiction and art into my Twitter feed this year. It’s an impressive feat to convince every player they’ve unquestionably picked the right house and defend their problem children till the bitter end. After the success of this game, I’d love to see what this team can do next with a narrower focus and a bigger budget.

7. Resident Evil 2

It’s been a long time since I played the original Resident Evil 2, but I still consider it to be one of my favorite games of all time. I was highly skeptical of this remake at first, holding my stubborn ground that changing the fixed camera to a RE4-style behind the back perspective would turn this game more into an action game and less of a survival horror game where feeling a lack of control is part of the experience. I was pleasantly surprised to find how much they were able to modernize this game while maintaining its original feel and atmosphere. The fumbly, drifting aim-down sights effectively sell the feeling of being a rookie scared out of your wits. Being chased by Mr. X is wildly anxiety-inducing. But even more surprisingly, perhaps the greatest upgrade this game received was its map, which does you the generous service of actually marking down automatically where puzzles and items are, which rooms you’ve yet to enter, which ones you’ve searched entirely, and which ones still have more to discover. Arguably, this disrupts the feeling of being lost in a labyrinthine space that the original inspired, but in practice, it’s a remarkably satisfying and addicting video game system to engage with.

6. Judgment

No big surprise here - Ryu ga Gotoku put out another Yakuza-style game set in Kamurocho, and once again, it’s sitting somewhere on my top 10. This time, they finally put Kazuma Kiryu’s story to bed and focused on a new protagonist, down on his luck lawyer-turned-detective Takayuki Yagami. The new direction doesn’t always pay off - the added mechanics of following and chasing suspects gets a bit tedious. The game makes up for it, though, by absolutely nailing a fun, engrossing J-Drama of a plot entirely divorced from the Yakuza lore. The narrative takes several head-spinning turns through its several dozen hours, and they all feel earned, with a fresh sense of focus. The side stories in this one do even more to make you feel connected to the community of Kamurocho by befriending people from across the neighborhood. I’d love to see this team take even bigger swings in the future - and from what I’ve seen from Yakuza 7, that seems exactly like what they’re doing - but even if this game shares maybe a bit too much DNA with its predecessors, it’s hard to complain when the writing and acting are this enjoyable.

5. Control

Control feels like the kind of game that almost never gets made anymore. It’s a AAA game that isn’t connected to any larger franchises and doesn’t demand your attention for longer than a dozen hours. It doesn’t shoehorn needless RPG or MMO mechanics into its third-person action game formula to hold your attention. It introduces a wildly clever idea, tells a concise story with it, and then its over. And there’s something so refreshing about all of that. The setting of The Oldest House has a lot to do with it. I think it stands toe-to-toe with Rapture or Black Mesa as an instantly iconic game world. Its aesthetic blend of paranormal horror and banal government bureaucracy gripped my inner X-Files fan instantly, and kept him satisfied not only with its central characters and mystery but with a generous bounty of redacted documents full of worldbuilding both spine-tingling and hilarious. More will undoubtedly come from this game, in the form of DLC and possibly even more, with the way it ties itself into other Remedy universes, and as much as I expect I will love it, the refreshing experience this base game offered me likely can’t be beat.

4. Anodyne 2

I awaited Sean Han Tani and Marina Kittaka’s new game more anxiously than almost any game that came out this year, despite never having played the first one, exclusively on my love for last year’s singular All Our Asias and the promise that this game would greatly expand on that one’s Saturn/PS1-esque early 3D graphics and personal, heartfelt storytelling. Not only was I not disappointed, I was regularly pleasantly surprised by the depth of narrative and themes the game navigates. This game takes the ‘legendary hero’ tropes of a Zelda game and flips them to tell a story about the importance of community and taking care of loved ones over duty to governments or organizations. The dungeons that similarly reflect a Link to the Past-era Zelda game reduce the maps to bite-sized, funny, clever designs that ask you to internalize unique mechanics that result in affecting conclusions. Plus, it’s gorgeously idiosyncratic in its blend of 3D and 2D environments and its pretty but off-kilter score. It’s hard to believe something this full and well realized came from two people.

3. Eliza

Eliza is a work of dystopian fiction so closely resembling the state of the world in 2019 it’s hard to even want to call it sci-fi. As a proxy for the Eliza app, you speak the words of an AI therapist that offers meager, generic suggestions as a catch-all for desperate people facing any number of the nightmares of our time. The first session you get is a man reckoning with the state the world is in - we’ve only got a few more years left to save ourselves from impending climate crisis, destructive development is rendering cities unlivable for anyone but the super-rich, and the people who hold all the power are just making it all worse. The only thing you offer to him is to use a meditation app and take some medication. It doesn’t take long for you to realize that this whole structure is much less about helping struggling people and more about mining personal data.

There’s much more to this story than the grim state of mental health under late capitalism, though. It’s revealed that Evelyn, the character you play as, has a much closer history with Eliza than initially evident. Throughout the game, she’ll reacquaint herself with old coworkers, including her two former bosses who have recently split and run different companies over their differing frightening visions for the future. The game offers a biting critique of the kind of tech company optimism that brings rich, eccentric men to believe they can solve the world’s problems within the hyper-capitalist structure they’ve thrived under, and how quickly this mindset gives way to techno-fascism. There’s also Evelyn’s former team member, Nora, who has quit the tech world in favor of being a DJ “activist,” and her current lead Rae, a compassionate person who genuinely believes in the power of Eliza to better people’s lives. The writing does an excellent job of justifying everyone’s points of view and highlighting the limits of their ideology without simplifying their sense of morality.

Why this game works so well isn’t just its willingness to stare in the face of uncomfortably relevant subject matter, but its ultimately empathetic message. It offers no simple solutions to the world’s problems, but also avoids falling into utter despair. Instead, it places measured but inspiring faith in the power of making small, meaningful impacts on the people around you, and simply trying to put some good into your world. It’s a game both terrifying and comforting in its frank conclusions.

2. Death Stranding

For a game as willfully dumb as this one often is - that, for example, insists on giving all of its characters with self-explanatory names long monologues about how they got that name - Death Stranding was one of the most thought provoking games I’ve played in a while. Outside of its indulgent, awkwardly paced narrative, the game offers plenty of reflection on the impact the internet has had on our lives. As Sam Porter Bridges, you’re hiking across a post-apocalyptic America, reconnecting isolated cities by delivering supplies, building infrastructure, and, probably most importantly, connecting them to the Chiral Network, an internet of sorts constructed of supernatural material of nebulous origin. Through this structure, the game offers surprisingly insightful commentary about the necessity for communication, cooperation, and genuine love and care within a community.

The lonely world you’re tasked to explore, and the way you’re given blips of encouragement within the solitude through the structures and “likes” you give and receive through the game’s asynchronous multiplayer system, offers some striking parallels for those of us particularly “online” people who feel simultaneous desperation for human contact and aversion to social pressures. I’ve heard the themes of this game described as “incoherent” due to the way it seems to view the internet both as a powerful tool to connect people and a means by which people become isolated and alienated, but are both of these statements not completely true to reality? The game simplifies some of its conclusions - Kojima seems particularly ignorant of America’s deep structural inequities and abuses that lead to a culture of isolation and alienation. And yet, the questions it asks are provocative enough that they compelled me to keep thinking about them far longer than the answers it offers.

Beyond the surprisingly rich thematic content, this game is mostly just a joy to play. Death Stranding builds kinetic drama out of the typically rote parts of games. Moving from point A to point B has become an increasingly tedious chore in the majority of AAA open world games, but this is a game built almost entirely out of moving from point A to point B, and it makes it thrilling. The simple act of walking down a hill while trying to balance a heavy load on your back and avoiding rocks and other obstacles fulfills the promise of the term ‘walking simulator’ in a far more interesting way than most games given that descriptor. The game consistently doles out new ways to navigate terrain, which peaked for me about two thirds of the way through the game when, after spending hours setting up a network of zip lines, a delivery offered me the opportunity to utilize the entire thing in a wildly satisfying journey from one end of the map to another. It was the gaming moment of the year.

1. Outer Wilds

The first time the sun exploded in my Outer Wilds playthrough, I was probably about to die anyway. I had fallen through a black hole, and had yet to figure out how to recover from that, so I was drifting listlessly through space with diminishing oxygen as the synths started to pick up and I watched the sun fall in on itself and then expand throughout the solar system as my vision went went. The moment gave me chills, not because I wasn’t already doomed anyway, but because I couldn’t help but think about my neighbors that I had left behind to explore space. I hadn’t known that mere minutes after I left the atmosphere the solar system would be obliterated, but I was at least able to watch as it happened. They probably had no idea what happened. Suddenly their lives and their planet and everything they had known were just...gone. And then I woke up, with the campfire burning in front of me, and everyone looking just as I had left it. And I became obsessed with figuring out how to stop that from happening again.

What surprised me is that every time the sun exploded, it never failed to produce those chills I felt the first time. This game is masterful in its art, sound, and music design that manages to produce feelings so intense from an aesthetic so quaint. Tracking down fellow explorers by following the sound of their harmonica or acoustic guitar. Exploring space in a rickety vessel held together by wood and tape. Translating logs of conversations of an ancient alien race and finding the subject matter of discussion to be about small interpersonal drama as often as it is revelatory secrets of the universe. All of the potentially twee aspects of the game are balanced out by an innate sense of danger and terror that comes from exploring space and strange worlds alone. At times, the game dips into pure horror, making other aspects of the presentation all the more charming by comparison. And then there’s the clockwork machinations of the 22-minute loop you explore within, rewarding exploration and experimentation with reveals that make you feel like a genius for figuring out the puzzle at the same time that you’re stunned by the divulgence of a new piece of information.

The last few hours of the game contained a couple puzzles so obfuscated that I had to consult a guide, which admittedly lessened the impact of those reveals, but it all led to one of the most equally devastating and satisfying endings I’ve experienced in a video game recently. I really can’t say enough good things about this game. It’s not only my favorite game this year, but easily one of my favorite games of the decade, and really, of all-time, when it comes down to it.

#outer wilds #death stranding #eliza #anodyne 2 #control #judgment #resident evil 2 #fire emblem: three houses #Ape Out #Amid Evil #games #video games #GOTY

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ajab-leher · 3 years

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Weird questions: 20, 45, 62 ?

20: preferred place to write

for practical purposes, i use google docs for writing. since i won't need to copy everything out if i want to post. but i use the phone notes app a lot too! that helps my creativity flow~~

45: which genre: sci-fi, fantasy, or superhero

fantasy!!!!! because magical elements are all i need to be completely invested in a universe! but superhero movies definitely come close enough.

62: seven characters you relate to?

OH THIS here we go!

1) jiang cheng (mdzs): everything about jc as a younger sibling, all the issues he has about proving himself, the bitterness he has felt. ALL OF THAT FEELS SO PERSONAL (even though my life isn't even a quarter as sad, thank goodness)

2) mu qing (tgcf): admiring someone with envy, bottling those feelings up, telling yourself they never thought of you as important, and then, leaving them alone.

telling yourself it's for you, because you're choosing for yourself and breaking away from being their shadow. BUT YOU MISS THEM SO MUCH AND IT HURTS

ok but i'd react the way he did too, if my feelings ever went that deep. but still, his entire struggle is very personal to me.

3) kim hana (a-teen)

she!!! this show has two seasons and i have such a hard time rewatching the first season because i feel so stressed for her. and just, kim hana feels like a reflection, and knowing her has made me realise so much about myself and my dreams.

seeing her happy gives me hope for myself.

4) hannah lee from 'everything i never told you' by celeste ng

not going to lie, this might be the only book that has made me THIS emotional. and everything about hana, being young and quiet and sometimes overlooked. and craving love and attention.

yeah, there's some or the other really wounded part of me that feels so much.

5) nico di angelo

he!!!! nico was the first proper gay rep i got as a kid and i read the book in the same year i had begun to question my sexuality.

and seeing him come out, get accepted, and also find happiness and support and also romantic love? YEAH that was such an important part of my childhood.

6) aristotle mendoza from 'aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe' by benjamin alire saenez

my friend made me read this book, and in the first read, i felt very strongly but didn't relate to any of the characters. BUT i reread this book, when i was in a lonely and unmotivated space the start of this year and!

his character, the things he said and the things he thought, they really resonated with me.

7) syd from i am not okay with this

i watched this at the start of quarantine when i was so ANGRY and VOLATILE and god she made me feel so seen. it's been really long since i've watched this show and i desperately want to again, but syd!!!!

ok it's oversharing hours in the last question, i'm so sorry! BUT nfvwjfbeh

#ask game

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mjmnorwood · 4 years

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[I.D. A header image of two pencils on a yellow background, with title reading ‘Writing a Mystery’. End I.D.]

I love mysteries. I confess to being a naturally nosy person, so a mystery is the perfect plot for me. And because I love to read them, I also love to write them! Here are a few tips I’ve learned over the years for making mysteries intriguing and effective.

Know your plot inside and out.

Mysteries are some of the most carefully-plotted stories out there, and they need to be. The audience will be considering how everything links into the mystery, so you can’t have any surplus plot elements. Mind-mapping ideas and making an outline is incredibly helpful (and it can also be useful to have a second, secret outline of what the culprit is doing to cover their tracks while the sleuth investigates).

It is also possible to pants a mystery (I know because I’ve done it), it’s just that after the first draft is done, you have to put a lot of thought into re-organising things to make your story as well-structured as possible. This can involve being pretty merciless with cuts, just to forewarn you!

Milk your clues for all they’re worth.

A lot of people think of mysteries as sequential. The sleuth finds one clue which leads to another clue which leads to another clue which eventually leads to a solution. However, they are in actual fact a lot twistier than that. To keep the reader on their toes, you want uncertainty and misdirection, and a great place to do this is with the clues. Throw in red herrings and ambiguous clues to keep the sleuth (and the audience) guessing. You’ll find that when your clues are working hard, you don’t actually need all that many—when you get down to it, most mysteries only have about 3-5 clues that are really significant!

Balance your resolution.

There are two routes you can go down when writing the suspects in a mystery: making the audience feel like anyone could have done it, and making them feel like no-one could have done it. Both of these routes are suspenseful, and you usually want to maintain them until the final deductions are made, at which point the most satisfying mysteries make the audience smack their heads as the clues fall together and they realise that only the culprit could have done it and think why didn’t we see this before? It can be hard to make this moment come at exactly the right point, but having a tight plot makes it so much easier (which is why the first point is so important).

Give your audience something other than the plot to be invested in.

An intriguing mystery is a great hook, but keeping the reader invested takes more than that. Interesting characters and settings are SO important—when you think about it, the most famous detectives (e.g. Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple) are memorable because they’re interesting personalities. And the side characters are just as important. Natural human curiosity is what draws us into a mystery, but empathy for the people involved is what really keeps us turning the pages to see how things turn out for them.

Remember mysteries can be more varied than you think.

When you think of a mystery novel, the first thing that comes to mind is probably a murder mystery, but you are not limited by this! It’s true that murders often feel like they have the highest stakes, but you can totally write mysteries about trying to discover a stolen watch, finding out who vandalised that expensive painting, figuring out who left that mysterious note, and a whole host of other possibilities! You also aren’t limited to 1930s country-house mysteries or fast-paced modern thrillers. Mystery plots work great in other genres too (in fact, mystery combined with fantasy or sci-fi is one of my all-time fave things!). And finally, you can play about with the traditional structure of information reveals and have the audience know things your characters don’t...

Reading list -

As with all aspects of writing, I think the best way to learn mysteries is to read plenty of them. As I said in the intro, they’re one of my fave things, so I have plenty of recommendations!

The Cadfael Chronicles by Ellis Peters. The mysteries in these books are wonderfully intriguing, and the historical setting is so well-drawn. The whole series is fantastic, but if you don’t want to commit to twenty books, I particularly recommend The Sanctuary Sparrow.

The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. Both the books and the TV miniseries are brilliant, and I think the character work is particularly fine in these stories. Mma Ramotswe is one of my favourite sleuths (and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni is the most wholesome love interest!).

The Provost’s Dog trilogy by Tamora Pierce. This is an excellent example of mystery woven into another genre (YA fantasy).

The novella The Mountains of Mourning by Lois McMaster Bujold. This also has mystery in another genre (sci-fi this time) and it shows that you don’t need a book-length mystery chock-full of clues to be interesting. TMoM is less than 100 pages, but still pulls off an incredibly well-done mystery (and makes me tear up every time!).

For my last recommendation (since this list is getting long...) I put forward The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton. This book is ASTONISHINGLY tightly plotted. I know ‘I couldn’t put it down’ is a cliché, but I really couldn’t put it down.

Like this post? Follow for more writerly content! It’ll be lovely to have you along :D

#writing advice #writing tips #writing help #writeblr #plot #mystery #writing #writers #writers on tumblr #writblr #writeblr community #long post #original

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mediaeval-muse · 3 years

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Book Review

A House of Rage and Sorrow. By Sangu Mandanna. New York: Sky Pony Press, 2019.

Rating: 2/5 stars

Genre: YA sci fi/fantasy

Part of a Series? Yes, The Celestial Trilogy #2

Summary: Esmae once wanted nothing more than to help her golden brother win the crown of Kali but that dream died with her best friend. Alexi broke her heart, and she vowed to destroy him for it. And with her sentient warship Titania beside her, how can she possibly fail? As gods, beasts, and kingdoms choose sides, Alexi seeks out a weapon more devastating than even Titania. Past lives threaten the present. Old enemies claim their due. And Esmae cannot outrun the ghosts and the questions that haunt her. What really happened to her father? What was the third boon her mother asked of Amba? For in the shadows, lurking in wait, are secrets that will swallow her whole. The House of Rey is at war. And the entire galaxy will bleed before the end.

***Full review under the cut.***

***Minor spoilers in the Character section.***

Content/Trigger Warnings: violence, blood

Overview: I really, really loved the first book in this trilogy, so I was somewhat disappointed when the sequel failed to live up to my expectations. Most of the things I loved about A Spark of White Fire were absent from A House of Rage and Sorrow: the gods were more withdrawn, there are no prophecies to avert, Esmae has chosen a side so there is no longer the view that both sides have merits (at least, not in Esmae’s mind). But by far, the things that most prevented me from loving this book was the pacing and chaotic plot structure, which I will explain in more detail below. Thus, this book only gets a 2 star rating from me.

Writing: Mandanna’s prose in A House of Rage and Sorrow is fairly similar to that of A Spark of White Fire. It’s fairly straightforward, without many flourishes or complex imagery, which can be good or bad, depending on your preference. However, because of the quick pacing in A House of Rage and Sorrow, Mandanna’s prose felt more sparse than before; because we whip through events so quickly, there is little time to establish the mood or feeling of a new location, or little time devoted to making Esmae’s emotions feel tangible. Instead, we get quick notes like “the hall is lined with bookcases” or “the ground is covered in snow.” I wanted a little more grandeur, especially in celestial places, and I wanted Esmae’s emotions to resonate a little more with the reader.

There is also a major change in that we are given Titania’s POV for several chapters in A House of Rage and Sorrow. While the idea is an interesting one, I ultimately didn’t think Titania’s perspective added much to the story. Everything Titania related could have been done from Esmae’s POV, and Titania herself didn’t have a strong enough personal arc to make me feel invested in her story apart from Esmae. I think it could have worked if Titania was doing more on the side, participating in events without Esmae’s knowledge, but for me, it seemed like this POV was included just for variety, not for any real plot or storytelling purpose.

Plot: It’s hard to describe the plot of this book other than “Esmae plans to make her brother suffer” because, at least for me, the structure felt somewhat chaotic. Events didn’t really build on each other until the last quarter or so towards the end, and the combination of a lot of twists without much foreshadowing or groundwork made the shocking parts of the story feel unearned. So much seemed to come out of nowhere that the story didn’t feel suspenseful; it was just one shocking thing after another, some of which seemed to be inserted for convenience rather than purposeful storytelling.

Also, because the pace moves so fast, there is a lot more focus on events than characterization, which made the plot feel empty because there wasn’t a lot of time to explore the emotional impacts of any given reveal. For example, Esmae doesn’t seem to grapple that much with Max’s secret identity, and nothing was shown to us that would have foreshadowed that reveal anyway (at least, I don’t think there was).

Moreover, a lot of things seemed to happen off-page and characters would tell us about them later, rather than the reader experiencing things through Esmae’s POV as they happened. As a reader, I felt like I was expected to absorb the significance of these events, but because I didn’t really see them, I didn’t quite feel like I could connect with them emotionally. For example, the stuff about Esmae’s father comes out of nowhere and happens off-page. The only reason we know about it is because Titania and Kirrin tell us (and other characters) about what happened. Also, there is a section where Esmae relates an encounter where she almost dies, but the suspense is taken out of the story because it’s told in a kind of flashback, so we already know that things turn out ok.

Overall, I would have liked a slower pace and more groundwork to be laid so that when the twists come, they are at least foreshadowed in some way. I also would have liked plot points to build on each other more clearly throughout the book, building up to the finale rather than the story floundering before finding its feet during the last quarter.

Characters: Most of the characters are the same as in A Spark of White Fire, but their motivations and emotions are little more unclear. Esmae is perhaps the most changed of all, going from conflicted in the first book to single-minded in this one. I can understand that to an extent, and I think a story about how grief and obsession with revenge can be the basis of an interesting story; however, I felt like Esmae didn’t emotionally progress in any way, and her arc felt somewhat static.

Sibylla, Esmae’s bodyguard, gets a lot more screen time in this book, and though I liked her as a character, I also think her arc could have been stronger. Sibylla’s journey was more about learning to accept and embrace good things in her life, and I think it could have been a nice counter-point to Esmae’s story, if the two arcs mirrored each other a little more.

The gods also had a little more personal drama in this book, and I really wish more was done to foreground Amba’s emotional journey. Amba is largely absent because she has to guard the prison where a great beast lives, so we don’t get to see her emotionally develop until the surprise twist with her towards the end. I would have liked to see Amba interact more with Esmae and for Mandanna to show us how the relationship between the two changes the way Amba feels about her godhood (or, at least, why Esmae is more important to Amba than her celestial family).

Other recurring characters had potential, but ultimately fell flat for me because of pacing. Max could have had a more interesting arc if his secret identity was foreshadowed more. Alexi’s regret could have been more potent (I almost wish the second POV was Alexi’s and not Titania’s) and his offer at the end of the book had been foreshadowed, rather than coming out of nowhere. The stuff with Esmae’s mother could have been foreshadowed more. Ultimately, everything moved too fast and characters felt like they were acting in service to a twisty plot more than fulfilling a personal arc.

TL;DR: A House of Rage and Sorrow suffered from poor pacing, flattened characterizations, and a chaotic plot structure. Because so much of what I loved about the first book was absent in the second, I ultimately felt disappointed, but I am looking forward to the final installment in the trilogy.

#book reviews

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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To Sleep In A Sea of Stars and the Importance of Optimism in Sci-Fi

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This article is sponsored by:

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is Christopher Paolini’s first foray into science-fiction, and the first of potentially many stories in the Fractalverse. The story follows xenobiologist Kira Navárez as a chance encounter with an ancient, alien artifact propels her into an epic space adventure across the vast expanse of the galaxy, in a fight for the fate of humanity. We talk to the author about the writing process, his sci-fi influences, favorite shared universes, and writing hopeful science fiction.

Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Den of Geek: What is it about science fiction that made you want to create within that framework?

Christopher Paolini: I grew up reading as much science fiction as fantasy. So for me, it was a very natural transition. My dad was and is a huge science fiction fan. My mom was a fantasy reader, so I kind of got both genres from them. And I just love the possibilities of science fiction, and I love how a lot of science fiction talks about the future of humanity, especially as we may be moving off this planet and exploring the rest of the universe. And I was also wanting a change from fantasy after working on The Inheritance Cycle for about 12 years, from 15 to 26/27. That’s a large chunk of one’s life to be put into one project. So yeah, science fiction felt like a very natural fit.

Which came first for you, did you already have an idea that you wanted to write in science-fiction? Or did you have the idea of a whole story in one book, then decide that science fiction would fit with that idea in mind?

I had the idea for the story first and the idea first came about in 2006, 2007. At the time, I wasn’t sure if it was going to be a self contained story or series, but very early on, I decided that yes, it was going to be a one book story. That became increasingly important to me the longer I worked on The Inheritance Cycle, because I didn’t finish that series until the end of 2011, and then I was touring for it mid to late 2012. So when thinking about what I wanted to do next, was like, “Well, I’d rather write a self contained story and then move onto something new.” And also I wanted to get that experience for readers of not having to wait for years and years for the next volume. The ironic thing is that it actually didn’t really take me any less time to write To Sleep than if I had broken it up and just done two or three novels.

Were there any things that you maybe didn’t want to get rid of or cut to make the story fit into one tome that you had to get rid of? If so, how did you deal with that?

No, I told the story of what I wanted to tell. I actually had a unique experience with editing with this book where my editors at Tor, along with the other changes I was making, general revisions and copy edits… They actually had me add about 30,000 words of material to the book as I was revising, which I’ve never had that experience before. So no, everything I wanted to put in the story is in the story. It’s a book that is stuffed to the gills with stuff, and hopefully readers will enjoy all of that stuff. With that said, there is lots of material within the universe and within that setting that I want to write about and have plans for that isn’t in this book. But this book itself has what it needs to have.

Do you have plans for, not necessarily a sequel, but other stories that take place within the same connected universe?

Absolutely. I mean, if people… At least in the hardcover edition of the book, they’ll see there’s the logo for the Fractalverse, not only embossed the cover, but also printed on an inside page and the Fractalverse is a setting that I’ve been working on for quite a long time. The idea is that any stories that I want to tell that aren’t explicitly fantasy can fit within the Fractalverse. So it includes the real world, the far future, the distant past. And even though some of those stories might seem a little disconnected, they will all tie together in the end.

What do you think makes a really good connected or extended shared universe?

Part of it would be theme and tone. I think about Star Wars or Star Trek or Babylon 5 or any of these big franchises, and usually there’s a certain feel associated with that franchise. You know that when you’re going to go watch a James Bond film, for example, or you’re going to go watch a Star Trek film or show, you’re going to get a certain something. So I think theme and tone is a big thing. I’m kind of in the same camp as Sanderson for this one, finding ways to tie in characters, or thematic things, or world events so that things really are interconnected on a deep level. It may not make much of a difference for any one individual story, but when you step back and look at the whole edit sets, you can see how all the pieces fit together.

What are some of your favorite extended universes, across all mediums?

The Cosmere by Sanderson would certainly be up there. Also the Dark Tower series by Stephen King, and how that ties into his other works. I’m not actually a fan of horror. I think that there are enough difficult things in the world already, without putting more of that in my head, but I really appreciate how the Dark Tower sort of ties together his other books, characters cross pollinate between his various stories. I think that’s pretty cool.

If you could choose any character from To Sleep in a Sea of Stars to put into another universe that you didn’t create, which character would you put into that universe and why?

My answer probably won’t surprise you. Gregorovich.

And what universe would you put him in?

Oh geez. Almost anything, almost anything. I would love to see him in… Actually, this would make him deeply unhappy, but the way it tickles my storytelling brain, I would love to see him in Battlestar Galactica and see him grappling with divisions between the humans and the Cylons, and him being sort of an inter median between human and cyborg or even full on Android.

Were there any tropes or things you wanted to explicitly avoid in your writing for To Sleep in a Sea of Stars?

My general approach was to try to treat every character with dignity and respect the same way I would want to be treated or anyone else would want to be treated, to not make a big deal about people being the other, even if sometimes they feel like they’re the other. And also, the thing is, I’m sure there’s still going to be prejudice and discrimination and all sorts of other issues in the future. I mean, humans are humans, that’s unfortunately not going to go away. But there’s no reason to highlight that or make it a major point of your main story or character, unless that’s something you want to grapple with in a deep examination of “how can we do better?”

I wanted to know about the rules you set for To Sleep in a Sea of Stars where: you wanted it to be realistic science, you wanted it to not completely break physics, and you wanted to disallow time travel. What was the reason and the thought process behind that?

The main point for me was that I didn’t want my spaceships to be time machines. Because if you look at the physics of a lot of faster than light travel in a lot of popular franchises, the math says that the spaceships really should be capable of time travel, which, if your story’s not about time travel, having your most popular transportation method allowing for that kind of wrecks your story. So I really, really wanted to avoid that. I really wanted a technical answer that I could wrap my brain around, which would give me a really solid footing for whatever I want to write in the Fractalverse.

What was the process of figuring out how to both be very technical, but also making it where a lay person could just read To Sleep in a A Sea of Stars and actually be able to follow along?

Well, that was very important to me. Having written fantasy, I definitely ran into challenges of info dumping and, and not wanting to info dump, and how do you convey large amounts of information to your readers in a palatable fashion? I definitely learned things when working on The Inheritance Cycle and I tried to apply them in this book. So the goal was to naturally introduce readers to this universe without overloading them with technical information. If readers want that technical information it’s in the appendices at the back of the book. So in some ways it’s almost like science is to science fiction is what magic is to fantasy, it defines the rules of what is possible in that universe. And it’s important for me as the author to know all those rules, but I don’t have to dump out those on the reader all at once.

Were there any habits that you had to break in the transition from writing a fantasy series, then going into a completely different genre and a different world?

Absolutely tons. First of all, I had an established approach style in a society that I had been working with for so long that it was really second nature. So I had to work very hard to come up with a cleaner, more modern style for To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, which I enjoyed. It actually gave me a lot more freedom in terms of the tools I had to write the book. And then also just the pacing of the book is different because To Sleep is a complete story from start to finish. That was actually a little surprising to me, because when you write a series, you really get to know the characters in a way that you just can’t in one book, because you have thousands of pages to live with them. So the pacing was different and that was also a challenge to get used to. On top of that, the fact that a spaceship does not go in faster in an emergency, unlike horses or people, where if you need to get from point A to point B faster, you can just sort of spur the horses on a little more. You can run, you can push yourself harder. Spaceships don’t really do that. Machines don’t really do that. So that put some restrictions on the logistics of moving my characters around, it was a fun restriction.

Are there any common threads between your other series and this new one?

There is a fairly significant easter egg from The Inheritance Cycle in this book that I’ll leave for readers to discover. And then there are my usual obsessions as a writer on display. For example, I find myself continually drawn towards stories of personal transformation, both physical and mental, and that’s on full display here. And a lot of questions of how the individual relates to society. What is your responsibility to people in general if society stopped caring about you as a person? Despite the fact that it’s science fiction, there is a very real ethic and physics to the story, as it proceeds, that people who are fans of that in my fantasy novels will find the same here and will enjoy that also.

If you had to choose for To Sleep in a Sea of Stars to be respectfully adapted into either of the following, a TV mini series, a standalone film, or a AAA game title, which would you choose and why?

I don’t know if it’s one film, but my gut says, a film. Simply because I would love for people to experience the story in one go, that was my whole reason for putting it into one book. I mean, a miniseries or TV show could do a wonderful job of it. But the pacing is different in a TV show and the beats and the emotions are different. So yeah, my gut reaction would be a film.

What are some of your favorite stories specifically set in space across all mediums— book, TV, film, comics, video games?

Well, video games. It would be the Mass Effect series, specifically if you’re playing with Commander Shepard, who is voiced by the amazing Jennifer Hale, who we were fortunate to get to read the audiobook. And she did an absolutely fantastic job with that. The Halo series, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, old school Star Trek, the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons. Dune by Frank Herbert, including the David Lynch film, which I have a soft spot in my heart for. Wild Seed by Octavia Butler. I know that’s science fiction, that’s not in space. I think those would be some of the big ones. Oh, a lot of Iain Banks’ sci-fi novels.

What job do you think you would have, in the To Sleep in a Sea of Stars universe?

Well, given that the To Sleep in a Sea of Stars universe includes the real universe, I have a feeling I’d have the exact job I have now, writing epic stories that people would hopefully enjoy.

If you could bring one thing from the To Sleep in a Sea of Stars universe into our real modern day, present day, what would it be and why?

If I had to pick one piece of human technology to bring, it would actually be the fusion drives from the spaceship, because that would allow us to access the rest of the solar system in a way that we can’t, and really start spreading. I mean, the solar system we have is huge. So that alone would really provide an enormous boost for us as a species.

If you had to convey what To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is about to someone or something that doesn’t communicate with language as we understand it, what vibes would you want to give off or what feeling would you try to express?

I love this question. Oh, I’m so glad you asked that. I would want to convey the same feeling that inspired me to write this book in the first place. And it would be a feeling of… A tingle down your spine, of awe and wonder, both horrible and beautiful at our place within the universe. At the fact that the universe even exists and that we exist, in a bittersweet ache, that things are never perfect, but we still have accomplished all we can. And there’s hope for the future.

That’s a really hard thing to combine into one word or one sentence. But I literally wrote this entire book to try and convey that feeling and hopefully to convey it in the very last scene, in the very last line of the book.

This is a really good time for this book, I was surprised at how delicate and hopeful it was.

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I want to write optimistic fiction, ultimately. I never wanted to leave my readers depressed when they finish one of my books. I’ve heard so many people over the years where Eragon got them into reading, or one of the books helped them, helped a person through a difficult time in their life. And it makes me think that, well, if they’d read the wrong book and the wrong time, it might’ve made life a lot harder for them. So I think it will be unlikely that you’ll ever catch me writing a grim dark fantasy or science fiction.

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is out now.

The post To Sleep In A Sea of Stars and the Importance of Optimism in Sci-Fi appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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gh0stbird · 4 years

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Okay Now Do The Rest

4. how did your elementary school teachers describe you?

Bright but argumentative. I was never afraid of pointing out things I didn’t feel were fair hfhddh

When we were learning numbers kids would often write 91 for nineteen, just flip them, y’know, and Ms. Potter yelled at the class for it. Baby Generiq went into it about how it was an understandable mix up because you do say the number first. In twenty-three you write the two first, so in nineteen it’s easy to assume you would write the nine first.

6. pastel, boho, tomboy, preppy, goth, grunge, formal or sportswear?

Tired.

8. movies or tv shows?

TV shows. Every book adaptation should also be a series not a movie. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

9. favorite smell in the summer?

Honeysuckle and sunshine

10. game you were best at in p.e.?

Floor hockey! My friend and I used to be brutal and swing at each other’s shins going after the ball. Also it was reminiscent of golf, which I competed in.

12. name of your favorite playlist?

I have an untitled playlist I cycle my current music in and out of, but Newton’s Third Law is my favorite named one!

14. favorite non-chocolate candy?

I don’t- I guess the yellow smarties. Don’t come for me they taste like lemonade.

15. favorite book you read as a school assignment?

I assume this means assigned book and not the reports we got to pick for ourselves. Ah, Night was good. Lord of the Flies was fine but way overhyped. Again, don’t come for me.

16. most comfortable position to sit in?

If I can tuck my legs into the chair I am sitting in that is ideal!

18. ideal weather?

When you know it is going to rain and you get to stay home

19. sleeping position? (Skipped on accident)

I reeeally like pressure, so either against something or on my stomach.

20. preferred place to write (i.e., in a note book, on your laptop, sketchpad, post-it notes, etc.)?

Phone notes and a notebook! Sometimes a blank document but I always find it strangely intimidating

21. obsession from childhood?

Warrior Cats, Percy Jackson, and Maximum Ride were my big three!

22. role model?

Aa I try to straw from people I want to copy, but there are talents I look up to. Rachel Chavkin is a brilliant director, and there are so many artists and authors I look up to and who inspire me.

24. favorite crystal?

Obsidian because it’s black like my hea- I’m kidding, I do love obsidian, but it’s Rose Quartz because it’s a very very pretty, soft pink and makes me happy.

25. first song you remember hearing?

The mobile above my crib played Imagine by John Lennon. My childhood room was themed after it as well!

26. favorite activity to do in warm weather?

Swim or sit in the sunshine. Ben and I usually go driving with the top down as well.

27. favorite activity to do in cold weather?

Walking through fresh snow is amazing, so are snowball fights and building snowmen.

28. five songs to describe you?

Oh fuck yes

Hurricane - Hamilton

The Reckless and the Brave - All Time Low

Almost There - The Princess and the Frog

All This and Heaven Too - Florence + the Machine

Facade - Jekyll and Hyde: A Gothic Musical Thriller

30. places that you find sacred?

I don’t typically find places sacred, but certain headspaces are very special to me, and time spent with loved ones means more than enough to be considered sacred.

31. what outfit do you wear to kick ass and take names?

A black blazer with a white button-down and a skirt.

32. top five favorite vines?

I am in Missouri (misery)

I love you, Bitch

I want a Church girl

Obama’s “I know because I won both of them”

I won’t hesitate, Bitch!

33. most used phrase in your phone?

“No worries”

34. advertisements you have stuck in your head?

That fucking PFI bandana boot sale I stg

35. average time you fall asleep?

Somewhere between 9:00 and three in the morning

36. what is the first meme you remember ever seeing?

Some girl doing bunny ears on her friend. I don’t remember what the caption was

38. lemonade or tea?

Both. Mixed together. It’s called an Arnold Palmer and it is my favorite drink

39. lemon cake or lemon meringue pie?

Lemon cake!

40. weirdest thing to ever happen at your school?

We duck taped out principal to the wall once. Also some kid broke their tray over another kid’s head at lunch one time.

41. last person you texted?

The family group chat, though Beau if Discord counts

42. jacket pockets or pants pockets?

I wear a lot of leggings so jacket pockets!

44. favorite scent for soap?

We had some Lily of the Valley hand soap that was amazing

45. which genre: sci-fi, fantasy or superhero?

Fantasy, I think! I’ve never done super heavy into the other two. Though I definitely don’t want to ignore sci-fi because two of my favorite stories are a little science-fiction-y

46. most comfortable outfit to sleep in?

A t-shirt and shorts

48. if you were a fruit, what kind would you be?

A banana. Generally accepted as a fruit and kind of just rolls with it, but is actually a berry

49. what saying or quote do you live by?

I fucking hate Hamilton-ing on main, but

“And when my prayers to god were met with indifference, I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance!”

50. what made you laugh the hardest you ever have?

That changes every time Beau and I play HetaOni together, but I have fucking lost it for at least five minutes the last two sessions.

51. current stresses?

I dunno, man, life? My hair could use a wash

52. favorite font?

Covered by your Grace and I’m a big Spectral baby. These are both google docs! I don’t know if that makes a difference.

54. what did you learn from your first job?

Patience is important when teaching material, but never be afraid to find another approach better suited to the person you’re tutoring.

55. favorite fairy tale?

Robin Hood!

56. favorite tradition?

My family does homemade Springfield cashew chicken for Christmas!

57. the three biggest struggles you’ve overcome?

Uhh lots of self-acceptance shit no one really wants to read

58. four talents you’re proud of having?

I can pop the joint at the center of my foot

That’s all

60. if you were a character in an anime, what kind of anime would you want it to be?

I sort of like my role as mom friend, so maybe I could keep that role in a sort of action-based anime that followed a group of friends

61. favorite line you heard from a book/movie/tv show/etc.?

“I am not the protégé to waste your time on; I'm complete!” Jekyll and Hyde: GMT

62. seven characters you relate to?

Haha

Lisa Carew - Jekyll and Hyde: GMT

Japan - Hetalia/Oni

Garnett - Steven Universe

Hfhddh that’s all I can say that aren’t my own characters

63. five songs that would play in your club?

I Don’t Like Clubs, but

Overwhelmed - Royal + The Serpent

Backseat Serenade - All Time Low

Go Big or Go Home - American Authors

The Nights - Avicii

Tempo - Lizzo

64. favorite website from your childhood?

Webkinz!

65. any permanent scars?

Yep - One from a bad bike wreck. My body rejected the dissolvable stitches so it’s a lot bigger than it was supposed to be

66. favorite flower(s)?

Lily of the Valley, daisies, Day Lilies, and Dandelions! I also love honeysuckles but I don’t know if those count.

68. worst flavor of any food or drink you’ve ever tried?

Accidentally drank rancid milk once!

69. a fun fact that you don’t know how you learned? (Haha, nice)

The fastest, free way to fill up your potions on Wizard101 is to play Potion Motion to level three.

70. left or right handed?

Right handed

71. least favorite pattern?

On myself, animal print

72. worst subject?

I’ve never been intuitively good at History, I do think it’s interesting though.

74. at what pain level out of ten (1 through 10) do you have to be at before you take an advil or ibuprofen?

I don’t like to take it until I can’t move without it.

75. when did you lose your first tooth?

Kindergarten? I had mono and then scarlet fever twice, so my baby teeth were pretty much ruined and they all fell out very fast.

76. what’s your favorite potato food (i.e. tater tots, baked potatoes, fries, chips, etc.)?

Curly fries!

77. best plant to grow on a windowsill?

Kalanchoe’s, it literally Window’s Thrill. These babies are fairly temperamental outside and love partial sun, so the window is the perfect spot for them. And! If you keep them happy! They’ll bloom! My personal favorite is the pink bloom.

78. coffee from a gas station or sushi from a grocery store?

What’s wrong with coffee from a gas station? Also I don’t like seafood.

80. earth tones or jewel tones?

Earth tones!

81. fireflies or lightning bugs?

Lightning bugs

82. pc or console?

PC!

84. podcasts or talk radio?

Podcasts - talk radios actually tend to get under my skin for n o reason

84. barbie or polly pocket?

Barbie, but let it be known I was brutal with mine. We did human sacrifices and the like.

85. fairy tales or mythology?

Mythology!

86. cookies or cupcakes?

Cookies, but I’m a slut for whipped frosting

87. your greatest fear?

Losing control!

88. your greatest wish?

A life beyond where I am now. Haha Stop chasing new down the hallway you’re so sexy haha

90. luckiest mistake?

Logged into Omegle in like 2015 and some rando asked me to join their Doctor Who roleplay. Luckiest moment of my gd life.

91. boxes or bags?

Bags! They’re easier to store

92. lamps, overhead lights, sunlight or fairy lights?

Sunlight! But in the late afternoon when everything is bathed in orange.

93. nicknames?

Mom is the most prevalent!

94. favorite season?

Fall into winter. Peak leaf crunch!

95. favorite app on your phone?

Discord or Notes

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fyrapartnersearch · 4 years

Text

Seeking Literate Partners!

Greetings! I go by Zibiqi, Z, or Dragon online, whichever tickles your fancy. I’m 19 years old and reside in the Central Standard Time Zone. I can’t recall exactly how long I’ve been roleplaying but it’s somewhere along the lines of six years, give or take. On top of that I write poems, short stories, and am currently in the process of writing a book or two, so I think it’s safe to say my writing skills are plenty developed for roleplay standards. Over the years I’ve explored this hobby on a rather narrow selection of platforms and am trying to expand that in hopes of discovering a different (or perhaps more suitable) type of partner. Below I’ve compiled the necessary and relative information that will hopefully be easy to navigate and understand. Hope to hear from you soon!

My Roleplay Style:

I write in third person as well as past tense, always have and always will. My replies average from 300 to 500 words a reply with a three paragraph minimum, but I can write more if my partner wishes and provides adequate material for me to work with. Also note that I heavily favor male characters for my own use and will not use a female unless I feel particularly inclined to do so. (On that note, please do not request for me to use one, for your request will be declined immediately.) My rate of reply averages at one reply a day, but I may reply more or less depending on the day, what I’m doing, and even the roleplay itself. I do have a trigger or two and those lie very closely if not solely within the limits of self-harm and suicide, in which I will not roleplay under any circumstances. (However, they are alright to mention/exist given they bear importance to the story or character.) On one last note, please know that I have no experience doubling, I’ve only heard of it. So if you ask me to do so, please keep in mind my inexperience, as I will not decline for I have yet to actually do it.

What I’m Looking For:

Age & Gender: Age does not matter to me as long as my partner can keep up with my writing style, unless there is romance involved, in which you must be 18+ to request. I don’t believe that a good story requires a romance sub-genre (for I do not roleplay romance as a main genre, please note) to be good or interesting. To me, it’s just spice. And as far as gender goes, you could be a toaster for all I care.

Co-Development: I can and will come with plots, but most of them will be incomplete. Don’t make me do all the work! If I wanted to do that, then I’d just write a short story on my own instead of roleplaying. Let’s collaborate and make our own, one-of-a-kind story.

Originality: There’s nothing I love more than an original character and an original story. I do not like canon characters, either playing them myself or playing against them. All of my own characters are original themselves, so I’d like to see some creativity in return. It’s more fun that way, don’t you think?

Fandoms: Though I don’t care to roleplay with cannon characters, I certainly don’t mind using other universes! I enjoy things such as Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Sword Art Online, and even The Legend of Zelda. Most of my fandoms span across books, video games, and a few fantasy shows and anime. There are far too many to list them all so if you’re interested in one in particular, just ask!

Out of Character Communication: I very much enjoy connecting with my partners even if its just the occasional hello. In these regards I like to have a second, separate chat from the roleplay to discuss things with, for if we need to discuss something related to the roleplay, having a second chat helps keep discussed details from being lost in the threads. But! This is, of course, completely optional and is not a must-have to roleplay.

Pairings: In the case that romance is involved (18+ required) I do prefer to roleplay MxM pairings. I will not put anything else out of mind because I’m fairly certain that this is an issue many fix with the “doubling” I have heard of, but in this case, again, please keep in mind that I am inexperienced with doubling.

Current Cravings:

I do have approximately three original plots that I am craving to find a “golden” partner for, as I have searched long and hard only to be disappointed with the results of my searches. Most of these plots are malleable and can be adjusted to suit both my and my partner’s cravings and preferences. Below I will provide a brief summary of each, and the rest will provided later! (Cravings are listed as of August 2020, for they may change later.)

Dragon Rider RP: Dragons cannot communicate with many species other than themselves, so they took on compatible companions who could speak for them while they spoke telepathically. Practically dragon riders, these warriors partner with dragons to protect the balance of the world. When the balance is threatened and the apocalypse can be seen on the horizon it’s up to a dragon-less rider to find the last of a rare species and fight alongside it to keep the apocalypse at bay and restore the balance—if it can even be restored. (My muse will be the dragon.)

Merfolk RP: Mermaids are real, and they live away from the world’s notice in the city they lost long ago: Atlantis. When the secret is out that they exist, the prince of the lost city himself ends up the center of attention. He cannot hope to survive without a friend in this world above the water. (Can go multiple directions, my muse will be the mer.)

Post Fantasy War RP: Strange, creature-like super-soldiers were created to win a massive war between humanity and anything that wasn’t human. With the war done and humans standing victors, the soldiers were no longer needed, and so were sentenced to their destruction. Though they were supposed to be mindless tools, that seems to not be the case after all when the hunt begins and something of an eighth of the massive army scatters into the wind like rabbits with dogs on their tails. Like many others, a soldier who had avoided capture for years finally finds itself in chains. The only way out is with a friend, but who would befriend such a magic-born creature as this? And should help come, then what?

Other: I also have an original creature that I would love to use as either an experiment in a sci-fi plot or an original god in a thriller or horror plot (I’m not entirely sure what the plot I have in mind would fit into but that’s close), or even something akin to a dark circus plot. In my google drive archives I have a multitude of characters who also come with their own plots so I literally have plenty of ideas, and my ideas can be combined with others to make something new and even more creative. (I enjoy trying to fit two characters together sometimes too and going off of that instead of a plot. It’s a different sort of challenge and oft provides a different kind of story.)

Contact:

Currently I am roleplaying out of three different platforms so feel free to use any of them, or even more than one if that’s what suits your tastes. The last of the three is an app that should be available to most phones and has been the place of my roleplaying for many years if anyone is interested in poking around.

Email: [email protected]

Discord: ZibiqiGodslayer04#6074

Virtual Space Amino: http://aminoapps.com/p/4nk4u1

#indie rp #oc rp #original #original rp #harry potter #harry potter rp #lord of the rings #lord of the rings rp #sword art online #sword art online rp #the legend of zelda #email #discord #amino #submission

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moariin · 5 years

Text

how to make your [fictional] world believable

EDIT: this is an old post, most of my excerpts are based on my first and rough draft but the point still stand!

Quite an ironic title, but lately a lot of my asks on here and Wattpad were questions regarding worldbuilding and how I do them. I’m grateful for every single one of them! But I’m not 100 percent certified person to give out advice, I just thought it will be cool to expand on this ask.

I also want to point out that this guide/advice can be also used in any genres (historical, contemporary, etc), fictional or real-world. Please note that this is based on my thoughts and ideas and so forth! And also this isn’t a full guide on how to get started on worldbuilding, but rather how to incorporate literacy devices and style to flesh out your world.