#I can share like a first draft of the Maud one but I want to approach it again after I reread Hollowpox and think abt it on a larger scale | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

writingmaidenwarrior · 1 year

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WIP Wthursday

I was tagged by @elshells and @writernopal

Rules:

In a reblog (or new post/w rules attached) post up to five filenames of your WIPs, not titles, file names

Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be something you wrote in the last 7 days (we're posting progress here. If you haven't made any, go make some and come back to post!)

After you've posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write 3 sentences in that file. If the filename is one you can't share from, write 3 sentences on it anyway and then 3 more on another to share!

That's it! You can invite others to join in or just post. If you tag me in your post, I will send you an ask request.

I only have two because I am highly chaotic with everything writing during the first draft

slice of life fantasy

The warmth of Maud’s hands vanished from her back, what made Feyre sigh. “I thought so. Those wannabe healers on the main street are just a bunch of self-absorbed pricks. They can be happy I put my axe to rest a long time ago.” Rhys snickered in a corner. “Axe? You were a warrior?” Slowly, Feyre turned around a bit. The broad smirk in Maud’s face already gave the answer away. “Are you really asking, love?” “I thought there was something about you.” “Smart one. Keep this. Once Rhys bandaged you up, you can leave for now. If you like to take the offer for the room, come back at sunset.” “I make sure, she finds her way”, Meir’s voice sounded off behind the panel. “Are you eavesdropping again?” Maud’s laughter boomed through the room. “Just wanted to check on my new friend.” “I missed the part where we became friends”, Feyre murmured, what made Rhys snicker.

2. werewolf romcom

The sensation of being watched crept over Mika’s back like someone running their fingers over her. Slightly, she shook her head to shake it off and returned with the opened beer bottles. “Here you go.” “Thanks, hun.” When the woman took the bottles, she accidentally scratched Mika with her long fingernails, but it felt more as she got hit by hot water. Her gaze went from the woman to her hand and back, but the woman already vanished in the crowd again. Thankfully, things slowed down a bit for a moment. She went over to Luke and signaled she would be gone for a moment, and went to the bathroom to investigate the scratch to be sure it was nothing more.

I tag @flowerprose @sunset-a-story @ashen-crest @druidx @sam-glade @cljordan-imperium

#writblr #writing #wynne writes #wip wthursday tag

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adamsvanrhijn · 5 months

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(i forgot that editing asks was broken and saved this to my drafts, where i now cannot finish it.)

so my take is actually that one in fact Cannot set john adams's surprise appearance aside because it is one of two (2) decisions within that episode (more to come hopefully?) that makes the whole debacle work narratively for oscar — as opposed to work narratively solely for the upcoming change in the brook + van rhijn family dynamic, which was the broader objective that required oscar losing the family fortune and which would have been served no matter the means of said loss. (the other decision is oscar's conversation with george which makes me want to die so i'm not going to go in depth on that one!)

but this is a great opportunity to share the conclusion of the maud post series i was writing about what i Did want to happen — and THE most important caveat i can give before sharing this is that i was operating under the real life assumption that john adams would not be coming back in season 2.

below content from past me 😌 (strikethrough and [brackets] are present me)

Especially after 2.06, with our first main instance of behavior from Maud that is notably out of the ordinary enough that it's worthy of comment from another character, I don't really think it's unlikely that this turns out just to be a scam that Maud was in on from the beginning. If we give the show the burden of proof to show that Maud is telling the truth, and that Maud's connections are not limited only to the characters we see on screen, it's easy to create a thread between her interactions that leads to her actions being ultimately to defraud Oscar.

To me, the narrative & character impact of a total scam (company is fake, takeover is fake, Maud and Crowther are fake/lying) is:

Oscar never had a chance with Maud to begin with (and by pursuing her lost time in which he could have been pursuing another girl)

Oscar expresses (some degree of) honesty and vulnerability with another person and has it used against him / is punished for it

Similar to what @likehandlingroses pointed out this morning, Oscar is doing what is expected of him by his social peers and superiors and placing his trust in them, and taking for granted that the information they give him is true and to his benefit without further critical thinking — and getting seriously burned by that. That could significantly impact his worldview and teach him the necessary lesson that his society is not invested in his well-being and safety, buuuuut it could also just put him in a position where he can abdicate personal responsibility. Everyone thought Maud was what he thought she was, so how much can he be blamed for seeing her that way?

Oscar loses money from a foolish and hubristic financial decision, and could have continued his life unaffected if he had stayed out of it

Oscar is seen, successfully, as susceptible to scamming by another person/group of people by tempting him with a pretty girl — this would follow 2.01, where we had narrative confirmation that Oscar is seen, successfully, as easy to deceive specifically by feigning interest in him as another man / likewise, Oscar is a genuine actual victim of another person/group of people for the second time this season

We do not know what was or was not true about Maud other than that her interest in Oscar was not intended to be genuine

This is the least telegraphed (as of 2.06) storyline of season 2 if not the show as a whole, and demonstrates a departure from the usual JFCU style — in that the story relies on the audience having outside knowledge to really predict what is happening

I really don't like the combination of the first two! I think that is a serious setback in Oscar's character development, and it pushes him in the opposite direction that he needs to go. Oscar does NOT need to learn the lesson that making himself vulnerable to others and approaching them in good faith leads to ruin. Everything about him screams that he already sees everything that way; this result confirms his world view and discourages him from taking any steps to grow as a person. It puts him back to his own square one and reinforces the beliefs that are making his life difficult. He can't let anyone know any truth about him or what he wants; he needs material wealth and power to be happy; he needs to be more calculated and cautious and second-guess the intentions of others.

I simply don't think Oscar has the emotional maturity at this time to independently get from point A to point B on how to care about and invest in other people without getting hurt in this kind of plotline. He thought he was paying attention to Maud and her circumstances; how could he pay more attention? And the only way it would matter if he had paid more attention is if it made him see the scam, but if he didn't know what to look for then he wouldn't have done that, so his hands were tied, etc. There's room to see error but not room for improvement. How does he know what he needs to do next time?

I do not see a narratively coherent path forward for him after that (other than perhaps a very unhappy, guarded attempt 3 at finding a wife or giving up entirely) (his whole life being ruined and losing everything he has both materially and immaterially is not narratively coherent for my purposes here), because this outcome doesn't really encourage him to think about what he does have control over and how he can change his behavior for genuinely different results.

3 & 5 are really the only points that genuinely interest me and that I can see serving the broader story, but I also don't really think they're exclusive to this outcome.

I just really don't think that (given the information I currently have) it is the most compelling way to serve Oscar's story and narrative, nor Maud's for that matter. If Maud is "just" a con artist, we lose the information that gave her depth and humanity because it becomes untrue, which reduces the dimension of her character. (As an audience member I care more about characters who have confirmed character traits and are not lying to me the entire time!)

As I said in the previous post, even if all the information we have been given [about Maud, Crowther, the railway takeover] is true and as it is shown to the audience, it is STILL a series of bad decisions from Oscar, and it can still lead us to the same place of Oscar becoming bankrupt — all roads lead to Van Rhijn family financial issues to create a power shift between Ada and Agnes — and potentially losing Maud.

But unlike "it was a scam all along and Oscar shouldn't have involved himself at all", it does so in a way that is:

An expansion of multiple concepts introduced but mainly glossed over in the previous season, such as illegitimacy

An alignment of Maud's motivations for her behavior with Oscar's: obligations to their families

An exploration of 1880s business practices - a portrayal of how shady methods of doing business today that throw many red flags to a modern audience was business as usual for robber barons and indeed critical to their accumulation of immense wealth

Justifying Maud's screentime that demonstrates her consideration and concerns about Oscar's motives and reveals that she is operating on a broader moral framework, and tying her actions in to the broader narrative themes around how and why women married at this time in American history — if Maud is only scamming him, the only narrative purpose of these scenes is to mislead, and I would rather have not had that and gotten to see something else either about Maud that better set up her intentions or see more of another plotline that didn't have as much screentime

Oscar making a series of social and financial choices that lead to an undesirable outcome, when he could have made different choices at any point with the possibility of a desirable outcome that would move him closer to his goals / what he thinks his goals are (rather than just the possibility of not having the undesirable outcome) — but because of both his greed and his fear of discovery, he was taking only the information that he wanted to be true, making assumptions based on it, and ignoring information that might make a more thoughtful person think twice

More specifically, he loses money from foolish financial decisions that he makes out of hubris, but he alone is responsible for sabotaging his chance to achieve his goals.

Oscar, again, ~making a series of social and financial choices~, that are in line with goals established for him in the first season — involvement and prominence in new money society — and that prove that at the current time he is unequipped to move within and keep up with the community he wants to be in, which plays by different rules. (This doesn't work as well if this isn't Actually a new money scheme with Actual new money stakeholders and is just generic fraud.)

Consistent with the style of storytelling we see in the rest of the show, where we usually have indicators of some kind about a character's true motivations from very early in their inclusion in the story (compare Maud to Turner, our primary schemey character, who was framed in a suspicious way from day one)

above content from past me 😌

rereading all this... honestly, i do have reservations about where oscar will go from here! as well as distaste for certain choices made, such as bringing in a female character who could be ~complex and interesting~ and reducing her dimension to be more of a plot tool than a realistic person. i do not vibe with maud as a disposable character and also i think that crowther and maud are both unrealistically good actors for this gig — people keep talking about anna sorokin and cassie chadwick and like, yes they were successful scammers but also we have evidence they were unliked and at least some people thought they were fishy social climbers. this could have been avoided by having literally Any scene before 2.06 give the impression maud might be deceptive. it means the plot is kind of an outlier in terms of the audience feeling like they're in on the story — i know a lot of people thought maud was scamming oscar, but frankly some of the most outspoken justification for that was not based on what we had seen in the story so much as. how those people feel about oscar (no shade to anyone on tumblr. lots of shade to people on other websites). it's just really not my preferred storytelling vehicle. (not saying it's bad or people are wrong for liking it. i specifically do not like it.)

but most importantly, i want oscar to stay on the show, and i don't want his life to effectively be over — that can be great fun in various alternate universes one might consider, but it would not work for me in the actual show. they have already set up the consequences for behavior like oscar's in this series, and those consequences are death (patrick morris) and impoverished ostracization (collyer/watson). i don't want either of those things for oscar, especially when they have greatly expanded his role this season and evolved his relationships with marian, ada, and aurora. (this could have happened with the alternative, though.)

HOWEVER. as i wrote in this other post, and also the oscar van rhijn lily bart parallels post, they averted the narrative consequence i was most afraid of resulting from this plotline by having oscar go to john pretty much immediately! instead of teaching him he can't be vulnerable and honest with Anyone, he instead remembers and prioritizes that he does have someone who, he thinks, might care, and with whom he can really be honest and himself. that changes the entire tone and clarifies the story they are trying to tell in a way that did not seem possible to me if john isn't coming back.

in addition to that the george thing successfully replaces item #7 in my second numbered list above, and if on the very off chance maud comes back we have a chance to get #4 and perhaps #2 and a negation of my rant two and a half paragraphs ago. inb4 maud shows up in 2.08 back from newport where her for real aunt was for real sick and she got scammed too or something. my only preferable alternative to list 2 #6 will be if they do list 1 #3 well, and i am hopeful that they will (albeit not yet Convinced they will) based on the scene with oscar confronting aurora.

and while i do not Want a social ostracization plot. i must admit i could change my mind about that if it involves john and oscar getting back together. but that means they need to stay on the show, which means oscar needs to retain relationships with other characters.

#oscar van rhijn tag #the gilded age spoilers #maud beaton tag #johnoscar tag

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clericbyers · 5 years

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“You wanna talk to Will?”

Will froze at the door and turned on his heel to face El, who sat on the couch with the receiver in hand. She eagerly motioned to the phone and there was muttering coming from the other end that Will couldn’t decipher from this distance. Whatever was said made El giggle and she once again motioned for Will to come over and answer.

It wasn’t that Will didn’t want to talk to Mike—and he knew who it was on the phone, El’s voice was always a little softer around the edges when Mike was on the line—but he also didn’t want to talk to Mike. Their conversations had started taking a different turn and Will wasn’t really sure what to do about it. He could definitely pinpoint that Mike started getting a little more flirty after he and El called it quits for good, but Will wasn’t as confident about these things and didn’t know how to respond.

All Will knew was that if Mike made another side comment about how he missed Will’s “sparkling green eyes” or mentioned in passing how he missed Will’s voice and wished he could wrap it around him like a blanket, Will would possible combust. Even with all of this, Will still nodded and took the phone from his sister. El clapped her hands together excitedly and curled her arms around her legs as she patiently waited for Will to talk.

“Hey, Mike,” he sighed though he couldn’t hide the excitement laced in his voice.

“Will! Oh great; look, I wanted to talk to you about something I’m working on for when you guys get back.” There was shuffling on the other end and the familiar sound made something in Will’s chest a little warmer. “I started working on a new campaign but it’s kinda just you with me as DM. We haven’t really played since you left so I don’t know if the others still wanna play.”

“I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t.”

“Girlfriends and all that.”

“Ironic.”

“I know and I’m sorry,” apologized Mike for the hundredth time even though Will had long since forgiven him. The wound was still sore but that argument did force each boy to look at each other in a different light. Will wasn’t sure what light Mike saw him in, but given they were still talking and still so close, he figured it was a positive one.

“It’s okay, Mike. We can play with just the two of us when the others are out.” Will leaned back against the couch and started twirling the phone cord around his finger. “What is it you wanna share though? I know you can’t tell me about the campaign.”

Mike huffed. “Oh, that. Well, I told you about how my mom and dad are getting a divorce and all that, right? Mom feels really guilty about the whole thing and how I’m being treated in school because of it, which really isn’t anything to worry about for her. Not a lot of high school kids actually care about her life enough to bully me about it despite what she seems to think. There was that one kid but he turned to something else pretty early on so it’s not an issue.”

Will smiled as Mike spoke on and on. Mike was a chatterbox when his mind locked on a certain topic and it could take forever for him to stop talking enough to get to the point. Maybe if it were someone else, Will would be more irritated about all the talking, but given he was a little more on the timid side of social interaction, he didn’t mind not having to talk. Plus, Mike’s voice was pretty soothing to his ears. One day, Will would have to ask him to sing on the line.

“Will? Are you still there?”

“What? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I’m here.” the brunette reconfigured himself on the couch with a cough. “Sorry; my mind got away from me.”

“That’s okay. It’s okay. I was just saying that my mom forced my dad to buy me a ‘sorry we’re getting divorced’ gift.” Mike snorted and Will couldn’t help his smile at the familiar sound. “It’s new Atari games if you’re down to play.”

“Always, Mike.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmhmm,” purred Will just enough to realize he was, well, dipping his toes into flirty waters. “I wish I could see you right now.”

Silence answered before Mike’s soft voice came through. “I wanna see you so bad, like I’m going crazy, I swear; I biked down to your old place a couple weeks back and saw people moving in already and I felt like such an idiot for thinking no one was gonna move into the house.” Mike paused. “I, uh, I also sometimes start drafting these secret letters as if I’m talking to you? Like at the end of the day I just sit at my desk and write a little. Is that weird?”

Will shrugged even though he knew Mike couldn’t see it. “It’s only weird if you never send it to me so now you have to start sending me your secret little letters.” Mike laughed and it sparked something in Will before he could stop himself. “Sometimes I turn on my supercomm and tune into our transmission line even though I know I can’t hear you from out here.”

“Will.”

And the broken tone in Mike’s voice then–the desperation and sorrow that bled through the line and coated Will with pain–brought tears to Will’s eyes. “Mike, I miss you.”

Those three words could never convey everything Will wanted to say to his friend but it would have to do. “I miss you, too,” Mike whispered hoarsely. They listened to each other breathe for a few minutes before Mike cleared his throat. “I gotta go; helping Dad move out the house has been a bit of a pain in the ass.”

“Okay. I, uh, we’ll talk later then.” Will turned to El and pointed at the device in his hand but she shook her head. “Bye, Mike.”

“Ha, yeah. Yeah. Talk later, Will.”

Mike ended the call first but Will found it hard to put down the phone. He missed Mike’s voice already and it hadn’t even been a full minute. Only El’s teasing managed to catch Will’s attention and bring him back into the present. “Mike, I miss you,” she cooed overly sweetly, giggling when Will’s glare hardened. “You sound lovesick! I heard that in a soap opera I watched with Joyce. It’s when you sound sad but happy about someone.”

“L-lovesick?”

“Yes! That’s you! And Mike. He is maud–made–maudleen?”

“Maudlin. He has plenty of reason though, I mean, Karen and Ted are splitting up. I totally understand what it’s like to have divorced parents.” Green eyes looked down at the phone in hand. “I hope he’s taking it well.”

El made a noise in the back of her throat and then suddenly gasped with understanding. “Oh my god!” she exclaimed with a hand at her mouth. Will turned to her with raised eyebrows and a bucketful of confusion on his face. “You’re in love with him!”

Will’s face would have burst in flames if he was capable of such a thing. “I–wait, what? No, no, no, I’m not. I can’t–I’m not in love with Mike, El.”

“You are.”

“I’m not. That sounds completely crazy.”

El pouted. “Friends don’t lie.”

Will groaned. “El, I’m not in love with Mike!”

“But you’re lovesick! You care about him. And your voice changes with him.” She started listing off points with a contemplating smile. “You talk about him with me a lot. You turn on the radio as if he’s gonna call. You spaced out and just listened to his voice. You care about how he’s taking things back in Hawkins.”

“That’s being a considerate friend.”

“Yes, you love your friends,” El cocked her head to the side with curiosity, “but Mike is different, right?”

Will looked off to the side. He couldn’t deny it, he hadn’t been able to deny it for months now, but he still refused to say it. Something about saying I love Mike aloud cemented the fact and Will wasn’t sure he could handle that. His face must have contorted because Will felt a hand on his shoulder and he snapped out of his thoughts with a quickness unmatched. Turning to face El fully, he raised his eyebrows for her to continue what she wanted to say.

“It’s okay to love Mike. I loved him, too. And he loves you!”

“Yeah, but not in the same way.”

El snorted. “He didn’t tell you what’s in the letters he won’t send you?” A smirk crawled onto her lips. “He tells me.”

“Tells you what exactly?”

The girl stood from the couch with a soft hum and started stretching. “I guess you’ll have to wait until you get a letter.” She gave him a wink. “Don’t worry; it’ll be worth the wait.”

#yams answers #yams writes #anon #byler #this got longer than i meant #this happens w almost everything i write tho so like #clown emoji #prompt? complete #otp: palaric

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iluvtv · 5 years

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Thank you, it’s my attitude that keeps me young...

Processing Russian Doll has not been easy. It took a week and a full rewatch for me to even begin to touch this beautiful program’s intricacies through type. The iterations and research I prepared for this post have been almost as vast and extensive as the show itself. Nearly a month later I decided to save the diatribes for casual conversation. Theories on how the show is a study of the Jewish allegory of Dybbuk or that the loss of characters throughout each life is mirroring the constant death of video game culture can surely be found elsewhere. Instead, I share a version of the draft I started jotting during my rewatch of this beautifully complicated story while sitting on the couch next to my own Mother, both of us quietly reckoning with the histories which brought us to that shared moment.

Writing, like experience, is a process. For many, this show has brought on personal reflections of their own existential crisis. Presently, a communal and varied reception is floating through our technological ether, acting as intellectual interpretations of such.

And so, in an unusual act of rebellion, I will let my work here act as nothing more than an experiment in my strange and frequently limited relationship with emotions. An armored sort of void that is not without its own challenges.

Like Nadia I sometimes might be written off as the abyss.

And yet neither of us are enthusiastic about or entirely unharmed by such descriptions.

I have no illusions of blowing any minds here with an overtly innovative (though so often it feels that way to me) analysis of Russian Doll, and if you want to avoid spoilers perhaps just stop now (though nothing I say here would ruin your own experience with the show). However, if you want to go exploring through some proverbial baggage with me — I have just too many thoughts, tangents and feels not to write anything at all...

But first:

Holy.

Fucking.

Shit.

I am at once moved, inspired, shaken and totally stunted. The vast creativity in writing and performance and imagery and music within these eight 24-minute episodes could debilitate many an artist. It's so easy here to rationalize giving up. There is no way I could ever create something as powerfully moving and detailed as Russian Doll.

This speaks to the intense fragility (so rarely acknowledged) which Headland, Lyonne and Poehler’s creation has provoked within.

This show, like it’s namesake which holds infinite women inside one another, is an onion. It can be peeled endlessly away— there is no core. The similes housed are so nuanced that solving them all would be a luxurious and laborious service. An intellectual’s ideal wank. Something future generations may hang their Philosophy dissertations on; much like the very pretentious characters which this show so cleverly mocks.

How very unusual, a narrative with notably distinct translations identifiable to everyone from the now aging homeless advocate of New York City in the 90’s to the Jewish millennial living in San Francisco currently participating in gentrification, to the middle-aged dad who never quite got over his suicidal tendencies, to the gamers and engineers entirely distracted with code. It is a glorious conglomeration of our own narcissism and the show’s creative genius which will allow us all to see ourselves here.

Twitter threads and articles debating such translations could distract our own heart for hours. In the end, though it is compassion which will leave room for growth and learning. In time we will not just slice the orange in half and find the ripeness in the fourth dimension but we will also discover another layer, or perhaps metaphors even the creators missed.

In part isn’t this some of the beauty of an increased number of minorities (ahem women) making art reaching the mainstream? The long-whispered narratives of silenced humans have become far more infinite and intricate than the stories we have heard before.

One might argue that the very notion that Nadia’s misfortune is provoked because she is “bad” defies a complex yet deeply scientific female perspective. It seems rational that a writer's room compiled exclusively of women would have enough experience in niceties to understand that no experience or person is entirely one thing. It is empathy whicxh allows us to view the sum of one’s parts. It is humanity which allows us all to persevere, coexist and most importantly notice that others are just doing the same.

And so there are moments in Russian Doll which speak to me so precisely.

The show’s playful exploration into Jewish Mysticism, which I once studied so diligently.

Nadia’s food choices, which I consistently noted before the subtle stitch of their relevance became obvious threads of the tapestry of her stories. The cottage cheese and roast chicken which is so spot on and terribly, neurotically Jewish. The fact that I noted her breakfast of cut watermelon in episode two as though it were a plot point -- which it did eventually become. My takeaways here so painfully reflect my own layered and tumultuous relationship with my body and moreover nourishment.

Nadia’s penchant for drugs and the ability to maintain her relationship to artificial mood enhancements. Through my lens of a similarly uncomplicated love affair with inebriation, I can’t help but find this characteristic terribly charming.

And oddly enough, Nadia’s clear choice of Emily over Anne. This one is tricky as I have zero memory of reading Emily of New Moon and yet I clearly remember loving it while Anne of Green Gables bored me. I know this sounds contrived but my mother concurred: I was a girl who loved Emily; couldn’t be bothered with Anne.

Then there are the less overt parts of Nadia. The painful side effects of what can be more easily spelled out. These are the elements of self I skip over (as did Nadia presumably) the histories of abuse and dysfunction, the draw towards said abyss and the imaginary, the solitude. Here we have a vibrant woman, unabashedly possessing an immodest thirst for life — an extrovert essentially, who somehow manages to remain on the peripheries. Again, this would be a perfectly apt way to describe me. Through silly, fun, terrifying, real and completely magical events however, Nadia is forced to reckon with both her past (and future) and come to terms with relativity.

I mean life is relative, right?

Watching all this forced a reckoning of my own.

People fade, plants and animals die, fruit rots and all the while Nadia battles with the existentialism turning 36 inevitably breeds.

(Speaking of invoked narcissisms I have for years threatened to throw myself an “I still haven’t gotten married or had kids so you never had to go to a bunch of bullshit showers but I’m going to have a huge double chai blowout” of my own. As the time approaches (14 months) this seems increasingly unlikely but the relevance of this age was definitely not lost on me).

Through all this sadness it is the small acts of kindness which somehow makes everything all right again and again. Very subtle pieces of humanity perpetuate life.

Relatively speaking.

Compassionate and honest interaction essentially induces a continued existence.

Alan says, “Our bodies can’t keep lying the way that our minds can”

And when Ruth mentions she heard the author of Emily of New Moon is haunting a house rather than the more familiar trope of Lucy Maud Montogomery’s suicide this makes me think the show is so much more about how you survive and persevere than how you fade.

As I slowly worked through these episodes (the first time) I wished hard that this show would offer hope and eventually it did just that.

But boy did it put me through the wringer through the process.

#dybbuk #russian doll #natasha lyonne #amy poehler #leslye headland #jewish fod #hey alma

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