#am i reading way too much into a stylistic choice? probably
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So in LotRO the ghost of Arvedui is just referred to as Arvedui, both in the UI and quest text. Same for Faramir son of Ondoher. But Isildur is consistently and constantly referred to as the Shade of Isildur, both in the UI and in quest text. What is the implication here.
#lotro#uh#black book spoilers#am i reading way too much into a stylistic choice? probably#but like#whats going on#is it... not isildur?#i mean it seems obvious that it is but like why are we differentiating here#hes the same person isnt he#its not like dying makes you different from who you were
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hey! i was just curious if i could use your art in an artist study? i looked over your faq and i didn't see any mention of it so i just wanted to ask. it's okay if the answer is now, no pressure :)
( ꈍᴗꈍ) sure, if you credit me! i would be incredibly flattered!!
now that being said, i would also like to share with you some artists whose work i've enjoyed doing studies of! i find it's very useful to "follow the money" with artists you like, and go along the chain of inspiration to see how ideas and styles can change from person to person.
vincent van gogh is my BIGGEST inspiration in terms of color and composition! his unique style of brush work is what he's best known for, but i recommend looking at his works holistically too, and seeing where the eye is led and how he plays with light, color, and mood. if you want to go further, he was very inspired not only by prior impressionists, but also by japanese ukiyo-e artwork— try comparing "starry night" to "great wave off kanagawa" and seeing the similarities in the grand, sweeping movements they convey.
i'm sure i've said this a million times, but genndy tartakovsky has probably my favorite cartoonist style. it's at its peak in samurai jack— opinions are mixed about the narrative quality of season 5, but if nothing else, the art direction is absolutely jawdropping. one of my favorite scenes is the bit in the tomb, where jack is hiding in a sarcophagus, because the music and visuals are paying homage to a scene at the climax of "the good the bad and the ugly"!
in a totally different direction from those two... i'm a huge fan of gil elvgren's pinup girls! i've had a few different pinup calendars over the years, and at the end of the year, i like to cut up the pages individually for mini posters— i've covered pretty much all my available wall space in his illustrations. i love it when artists don't feel the need to sacrifice expressiveness for realism; his girls are SO DARN CUTE and they all look like they're having so much whimsical, cartoonish, flirty fun!
here's a post where i talk about more inspirations!
here's a post listing some other tumblr artists i like!
i'm also just very heavily inspired by 50s-60s print illustration... things like advertisements, "clip art" (which you had to physically clip out of a book and paste onto the page), and of course, tv cartoons. one big trend i love with that "googie" art style is how incredibly limited the palettes were, and how efficient the economy of line was. as much as i love the bold, blocky, dynamic shapes of styles like tartakovsky, who takes insp
also, please remember i'm entirely self taught and am NOT an expert, so just be aware of that if you see any weird stylistic choices in my work... i admire the work of a lot of professionally trained artists, but that doesn't mean i have any training or real right to go around teaching people stuff. i'm just some guy from a big crazy family full of artists, only some of whom went to school for it.
okay, that got way longer than i meant it to, SORRY! here's a pic of my cat Carmen as a thanks for reading this far ^_^
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Hi, Hello, don't mind me, I just want to get my thoughts an theories for the Magnus Protocol out there. I haven't engaged much in discourse yet so perhaps some parts will be repetitive but there will be spoilers for tma.
I don't think we can apply Smirke's 14/15 to the world of protocol since it just doesn't make sense for Jonny and Alex to use the same system again but I have a feeling there is going to be a way to classify them and I have quite a feeling that it has to do with the alchemical symbols.
I only briefly skimmed the Wikipedia page for some of them but one thing I thought about was that the Symbol for Salt and Mercury are on the crest of the OIAR (and some in the background) and just like with the last cover, I am not going to dismiss any of this for stylistic choices.
I saw a post a few days ago talking about how salt stands for the human body and by extension flesh related horrors/body horror/etc etc and from what I've gathered, mercury stands for Spirit or mind or whatever and each of the main elements in alchemy corresponds with planets. (Do I smell a potential system for fear classification there, or do I need to do some further reading into the symbolism? 👀 Maybe both.)
So like Mercury is the Roman god of a lot of things but a lot of the time he is referenced for traveling and communication which leads me to associate him with technology and the internet as well since, interconnectivity, information travels fast bla bla bla.
I don't have any clue if the speed up arrow thingys in the crest mean anything alchemically but if it means something about combining technology and the human body/mind and we already have Norris and Chester who once were human and are now uploaded to the miracle box that is Windows NT. As much as I like the idea of JMJ error referring to Jon Martin and Jonah, I am not sure about the Jonah part because it could also very well be the case that some guy Alice mentioned from the people that "have gone weird" before, just somehow ended up part of the computer and it might happen to our beloved office staff too. (Perhaps not exactly since Alice would probably recognize their voices but maybe it's like the not them getting to you. I just noticed a hole in my theory and am trying to keep it afloat lol)
Let me know what you think and if you have more knowledge on alchemical symbolism
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hi ur writing is literally amazing can i ask u some stuff regarding it/how you go about writing/advice? feel free to ignore this if its not something youre comfy with
were u ever nervous to post fic? i just posted my first one and am like. super embarrassed (i also have a Guilt Complex that influences that lmao). if so, did you find it easier as you kept writing?
also how the hell do you write endings/get the motivation for them? youre really good at tying things together nicely at the end (or the occasional Leave 'Em Wondering) and im curious about your process for it. i can pretty steadily get up to the scene i started the fic to write but after that brain and motivation go honk mimimi
anyways thank you for sharing your work with the internet! i love reading your stuff its always a highlight in my day :)
Hi there, anon!
So first of all, I absolutely LOVE questions about writing, so please always feel free to send me any you may have! I'm such a nerd, I really love talking about the process and I'm happy to discuss it or share advice and so on!
Secondly, omg you're so sweet! Thank you, I'm so glad you like my writing!
Now then, lemme answer your questions! I apologize in advance for the LENGTH of these answers, but I seem to be incapable of writing about this sort of thing without it turning into an entire essay.
Yes, absolutely, I was extremely nervous when I first starting posting my fics. Some of that may have been that I hadn't written fic in a while and I was nervous enough about sharing, but I was extra nervous about messing up characterization. I wasn't used to writing for characters that I didn't create myself. I got nervous again when I started posting smut, too lol.
The thing about this type of anxiety in general is that exposure therapy really is the cure. It's like that for a little bit at first, but the more you do it, the more you prove to yourself that it's no big deal. Nowadays, I have almost no anxiety when I'm posting something fluffy and even most smut pieces are easier for me to post, too.
Another piece of this is remembering that the reason you write fic is for your own enjoyment. You're putting it on the internet on the chance that someone else might like it, too. But really, you have to focus on the things that make you happy. It's easier to deal with posting anxiety if you keep your focus on the joy of creation rather than the adrenaline of sharing. It's hard to do, but it gets easier the more you do it!
Okay, so endings! Uh, here's a fun fact about me, endings are my weakness lol. I have a lot of practice starting things and then never ending them because I absolutely get bored at a certain point. So I know exactly what you mean by the brain going to honk mimimi land.
For me, the trick was to write short stuff. Most of my fics are just scene length. This allowed me to get some practice with writing more endings because I didn't get bored when I was pretty much just writing one scene. So I found a couple things that I like to do for endings specifically, but then I also discovered a way to sort of keep my brain engaged while writing longer stuff.
It kinda all comes down to what you want to leave the reader with. That final paragraph or sentence can really deliver an impactful emotion. So you kinda have to think about what the rest of the scene is about, what specific feeling do you want the reader to have when they get to the end? If you're not sure, you can also frame it as what kind of feeling do you want to have at the end?
One technique I like to use is tying everything back to the beginning. I've used it multiple times, but it's probably most obvious in this Barbatos drabble. The first and last sentences are the same, but you don't have to be that blatant about it lol. That was mostly a stylistic choice. But if you look at the third paragraph and the last paragraph, they are parallels of each other, but they're different. What they convey is that something has changed by the end. So by repeating pieces of the beginning at the end, I'm deliberately illustrating what changed in the middle.
It's like thinking of the ending as a sort of summary of everything that happened in the middle of the story. If you're writing something longer, you can apply this to individual scenes as needed. But you might end up with an entire scene at the beginning and an entire scene at the end that do the same thing (rather than a couple of paragraphs).
Another thing I like to do is leave an implication of further action that isn't included. Something like "You wouldn't leave his room until morning." or maybe "You had a feeling something like this would happen again soon." Like this isn't really the end, but the rest is up to your imagination!
This is more specifically about the last paragraphs/scene/sentence, though. It's good to think of a way to recall the entirety of the story you just told, leaving the reader with the overall feeling you were going for.
But when it comes to longer stories, if you're finding you make it to one scene and then stop, well, that might be the end of your story. For this kind of thing, it really helps me to think about what the end game of the story is. For instance, in my longest fic, The Threads That Bind, I knew it was a Barbatos x MC love story. So the "end" couldn't happen until they had confessed their feelings to each other. A lot of other stuff happened before that, but it all contributed to that final plot point. And there isn't much story after that. The final scene is their confession. (There is a spicy epilogue, but that was just a bonus lol.)
So if you can decide before you even start writing what the goal is, you can write to that goal, filling in a bunch of cool scenes along the way. It doesn't have to be that you know exactly what happens or what the final scene is. When I started writing Threads, I had no idea how the confession was going to go. I just knew that Barbatos and MC had to end up declaring their love somehow.
But I tied that into the rest of the story with the theme of the threads. It was a visual anchor as well as a metaphorical one - magic let them see threads binding them together, but the feeling of belonging to each other was kind of the point of it all. So I was able to take that concept that I'd already used and incorporate it into the final confession scene.
NOW THEN all of this might also be easier if you're an outline type of person, but I most definitely AM NOT. Other writers swear by an outline and you'll probably find a lot of information on how to use one if you Google it.
But outlining for me is like pulling teeth, so I never do it. I write my first draft in a fever dream, with the end goal and a handful of ideas about overall themes and a couple things that I just think would be cool or fun to write. I spend a lot of time daydreaming about the story first, too, but I don't write anything down until I'm writing that first draft.
I could probably write a whole book on my methods for writing, but my biggest piece of advice for this kind of thing is EXPERIMENT.
The best part about writing is that aside from the basic fundamentals (spelling, grammar, sentence structure, etc), there are NO RULES. So if you're finding you're always struggling with finishing, try out anything and everything that might help you with that. Try writing outlines, try not writing outlines, try ending your story with the scene you were working toward, try thinking of a new scene you want to write as the ending scene. If it works, great! If it doesn't work, no problem! Just chuck it and try something else.
Sometimes the best thing for me to do is to ask myself what would be the most fun to write next? And then just going for it. My opinion is that you can always edit things later!
Anyway, I hope some of that helps! I'm sorry I really rambled quite a bit, but like I said, I love talking about this kind of thing lol.
Good luck, anon, and I believe in you!
#honestly you don't know what it means to me to be asked questions like these#and I'm so happy to hear that you enjoy my writing enough to ask me about my methods!#writing#writing advice#writing questions#anon asks#misc answers
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WAIT! did you see my submission that asked about the whole "show me your fear/how will i rule" flashback? i wanted to ask a lot what you thought. can you dig it up? i remember asking you if it gave nuance to what Dio thinks about his egotism. Seeing himself as so powerful, he's the "only" worthy being who could lead humanity. seeing it as a obligation of some sort. please i am really curious about your view.
I don't think I ever got your earlier ask so it’s good you followed up. Re: the "show me your fear" sequence in CDDH, if I'm being honest it made me cringe a little when I read it, like it came across as tryhard.
The best way for me to explain this is by comparing it to the anime scene where Enya says a lot of the same stuff:
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Here Enya does the talking, like she's Dio's hypeman. Dio? He doesn't say anything, and honestly it's kind of funny: she's there going on and on about the Joy of Fear while Dio's sort of just there, chilling in his bedroom with a bunch of naked women.
imo having someone else talk about fear while Dio barely acknowledges that we're doing a scene here is more in-character than the battle monolog in CDDH that you're asking about. That's the thing about how Araki writes Dio, and I think this gets lost sometimes: Dio doesn't usually go out of his way to impress you. An obvious early example is when young Dio's introduced in that boxing match but he's off to the side on the hill, nowhere near the ring, leisurely lacing his gloves. There's a lot of scenes like this, where Dio assumes this passive, unhurried posture (from not leaving Egypt to go after Jotaro, to turning his back to Hol, sitting down and reading a book during the 'Shooting Dio?!' chapter). He doesn't have to go out of his way to do much, instead people get drawn toward him. Once you notice this, it becomes a blueprint in terms of how Araki writes him.
I've have the same criticism with the scene earlier in CDDH where Kadono has Dio boastfully reveal to Kakyoin that he orchestrated Kakyoin's family's trip to Egypt (??).
Anytime he's got Dio taking that pro-active a role I think, no, Dio's too lazy for that. While it's all true that Dio's ambitious and plans for contingencies, he's just not going to go out of his way to lash out or attack. He just sort of waits. Araki says it this way:
“DIO is more of the reactionary type, so [if he'd beaten Jotaro and a new opponent appeared] he probably would have continued to take root in Egypt and wait for his prey to come to him.”
Going back to the CDDH "fear" scene you asked about, while the gist of what he's saying is consistent with Dio's character - he's always testing people's fears, limits and motivations - it still comes across as if it's written too in-your-face, like he's saying a bunch of stuff he doesn't need to say. Even the stylistic choice of putting Dio's dialog in speech bubbles bounded by thick, jagged black borders feels tryhard.
Please remember that Dio is a guy who got his minion to cut off his own head by saying very few words interspersed with a ton of ellipses.
This is what I mean about Dio being softer in approach/more passive in canon than in CDDH and in fanon. It's charisma that draws you in rather than him over-acting.
The other part of your ask about Dio seeing himself as the 'only being worthy of leading humanity' as an obligation also seems a little off. I don't think Dio feels obliged to humanity at all, only because Dio sees himself as a top-of-the-food-chain being and humans as prey. fwiw I still think Dio's primary driver is more along the lines of a top-level athlete in the sense that at some point he's competing with himself to 'transcend' his current peak performance level; ruling over humanity doesn't factor into this as much. ofc you could probably get away with headcanoning him as more interested in ruling mankind, but imo he'd do that for the ego-trip or as some sort of sociological experiment rather than through any perceived indebtedness.
#Anonymous#replies tag#jjba#dio talk#CDDH spoilers#also don't hate me here but I don't know that making an egotist character say he's got an obligation to rule over others adds complexity#more like it affirms the egotism trait#imo#long post
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tbf i think the grandma shit started because of my own fault. i think I felt so old compared to everyone that I said i feel like a grandma or something, or even told them to call me grandma in a "just call me grandma" kinda way and it stuck with a few of them haha
you know what, im kind of the opposite, I feel like my writing now is of a worse quality than back then. i think I got too used to writing just for myself so I got lazy and impatient and skipped over adding details and more descriptions and such
But for you, I think it would be a good way to see how much you've improved in your personal opinion! Though like I get churro chumps specifically was crack so maybe use something you took more seriously when writing for comparative purposes haha
omg that's me with soonyoung, he's my actual bias even if seungcheol is constantly tackling me and shaking his ass in my face to remind me how much he owns my ass, but anyway, yeah soonyoung is my precious babie. i just want to love and protect him, he's just a poor innocent little soul
also, sorry if these asks are annoying, I never know when to shut up or how to real social cues so feel free to stop responding at any point. i am very aware that I ramble and it's a lot at times
(double also i know this response may seem fast, I just happened to see that you had responded when I came online lol. triple also(I need more vocab) no idea why im still remaining anon when you can probably easily guess my user at this point but im pretending there is a valid reason for clicking anon)
that's interesting to hear you think your writing got worse! well, i can sort of understand that... for me, when i take a break from writing, sometimes it can feel a little difficult to get back into the groove of things... but i get what you mean a little about "writing for yourself." when you have no intention of sharing your work, sometimes specific details aren't necessary when your target audience is, well, yourself.
as for rereading my old stuff... i do actually reread a lot of my stuff, just not the ones from when i was like 16 LOL it's not because i don't wanting to read my "unserious" stories, it's more because i hate cringing at my old stylistic choices. i like to think ive gotten better at adopting writing styles that i think can make my stories flow smoother. but as a teen, i had trouble structuring my stories because i relied heavily on dialogue to move them. which... isn't a very sustainable approach LMAO but yeah churro chumps is still a story i will always cherish, because even after all this time... i do love me some sillay yoongay fanfics :3
i like soonyoung too :D he was my bias prior to seungcheol... it started with jihoon, then soonyoung, then cheol... leading me to accept my fate as a leader line fan lol but tbh ive gotten really into seokmin lately... something about silly guys is getting to me...
and never apologize for rambling :D i ramble a lot too!! im president of yap city, as they say... i was always the kid who got moved around the classroom bc i would NOT shut up, no matter who i got paired up with... oh woe is the mouth that yaps... anyway thanks for sending these in!! its nice to talking to ya anytime!!
#and yeah i think i know who you are LMAOOO but i think hitting anon is still a nice option#keeps u hidden from the masses... but its like we're having a secret conversation in public#like me talking to you in a trenchcoat. we exchange gummy worms in a dark alleyway. YEAH!!#Anonymous#answered
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The workshop thing wasn't great in that respect but it wasn't that bad either because it was so clear that people were jealous when they were being harsher than the professors, who did step in at points when it veered from critiquing stylistic choices into doing exactly what people who think tagging fics on that post is okay are doing. It didn't discourage me from writing but it did solidify my decision not to major in creative writing (this is probably also why I in particular was a target: it wasn't my major, it was a hobby, but I was as qualified as them and got as much praise as they did and even one time more than them on the very first exercise of my first workshop, which probably didn't sit right with them, but only fueled me further because I am nothing if not a creature of spite).
And that's the thing too: so many people can't grasp that there's a huge difference between "this isn't for me" and "this has a lot of issues". Which to preface, unless someone's asked you to beta for them keep your mouth shut. They're doing this for free. Exit out if there are too many errors or whatever (and errors isn't even exactly the word I want but I'm exhausted and didn't sleep enough last night). Not that those people SHOULD beta either even if they were asked, honestly, because they clearly do not have a grasp on what constructive criticism actually is or how it works. You don't need a workshop to learn that either, just basic human decency and Google.
But like anyways. In the workshops I read plenty of things I just Did Not Vibe With, but were objectively very, very good art and you could tell how much care the author put into them. Sometimes things just aren't for you and the author didn't poorly execute that concept, actually.
I ran into this a lot in Performance World, too, back when I was trying to get a singing/stage performing career off the ground. There are SO many threads of that part of my life I can relate to this discussion and it would take far too long to explain them all, but there VERY much was a culture of perfectionism. Jealousy and extreme competition were incredibly prevalent, lots of "stay in your box," lots of complaining if people didn't stay in their box. Even when we were learning (or doing community theatre just to stay in practice or build up a resume), the stakes always seemed astronomically high. Someone could do a passable or even genuinely good job; but if it wasn't good in the "right" way, then it was still seen as meaningless.
For courtesy's sake, I'm putting the rest of my thoughts under a cut, because. Well. This got long. As answers by me are wont to do.
There also was a lot of "pick a genre" and "this is the only MEANINGFUL type of music/art/etc." The opera crowd hated that I liked musicals and pop music because those styles were all "stupid" and "frivolous" and "simple" (which isn't. even true, no art form is a monolith, and what those words mean is going to be different for every person, but, you know). Everyone else hated that I sang opera because it was a "pretentious art form" and "boring" and "sexist/racist/etc." (Those first two are incredibly subjective, and plenty of modern opera works exist that seeks to not uphold those forms of prejudice.) There was "if you look like [x], then you can't do [y performance type]." "If your voice sounds like this, then you can't EVER pursue ANY roles outside of this small pool of stuff because you need to know your place; if you don't, people will think you're making Bad Art." And then you, at best, get shamed, and, at worst, can't make a living.
All of this, of course, was a matter of opinion. Most of it, like you said, boiled down to the fact that people were doing things that weren't, actually, bad or untalented or ineffective--they just didn't work for people. They didn't meet some arbitrary, subjective standard that had no real, concrete, actual meaning. But when people with any degree of power start taking their artistic opinions as immovable fact, we end up with...well, we end up with the current theatre climate, and we end up with whatever is happening in fandom communities right now. (Because just as there are some people who, for insisting on a lack of constructive criticism, should not be beta readers, there are some who should not be educators or directors.)
There were a lot of reasons that I eventually stopped performing publicly/on stage. But a big part of it was that I just didn't want to deal with that culture anymore. When I made the decision to walk away, I had gotten to the point where I'd started to hate singing. My primary form of expression, of catharsis, of solace, since I was eight or nine years old. And luckily, withdrawing from a professional pursuit of art has helped me get some of that back. But I see those same issues--that same negativity, that same judgment--starting to pop up in something that isn't even meant to be for money or a career or anything other than personal expression. I see so many people getting discouraged, starting to lose the love they had for that expression. My love of art was almost taken away from me, to the point where for a very long time I couldn't even do it for fun, alone, in the private comfort of my house. And if I can do anything to prevent that from happening to someone else, I sure as hell will.
I'm glad that you were still able to get some good out of that workshop, because that's not always easy to do when the people around you are acting like that. (And kudos to realizing that you didn't want to do this as a major/career, that's not always easy to do either.) And I know I've talked more about professional art, but this is so prevalent in the way people talk about community theatre, too. Being upset that a student production doesn't have Super Stellar Voices/Acting, ragging on amateur singers just for posting a karaoke video on their personal Facebook page, expecting Met-opera-level singing quality or Shakespeare-scholar levels of acting text analysis from a group of volunteers who are spending their precious few after-work hours to put on a musical, just because they want to share that story with people. I've seen lots of comments that it's not meaningful because it's "bad." When. I've done a lot of community theatre. Plenty of it is not bad, actually. If you hate it that much, you don't have to attend a production. (Just like how. if you hate a fic. you can hit the back button.) And even if it is "bad." It's still going to be meaningful to someone. Even in a "bad" production, at least ONE of the actors or crew members will have a good time helping create it. And at least ONE audience member is going to have a good time; whether that be because they simply love theatre, someone they love is involved with the production, or because they don't care about an arbitrary "quality" measurement. And I absolutely think the same thing is true of writing, and of fanfiction especially.
If, for example, someone goes to karaoke and screams "I Dreamed A Dream" from Les Mis extremely off-key and grating, because they're experiencing a shitty situation and just need some catharsis? I don't have the right to rag on them for that, I would be an asshole. If someone posts a cover for fun on YouTube of...I don't know, "Take On Me" and can't hit the high notes, but wants to pay tribute to a song they love, who the fuck would I be to take that away from them? So if someone writes a "silly" or "stupid" or oh-God-forbid "cringe" piece of fanfiction (which. AGAIN. do not have any concrete meaning because those are SUBJECTIVE TERMS) to get some feelings out or to talk about how much they love a fictional character. Well, I think if you call them names over that and try to publicly shame or harass them, then, quite frankly, you are engaging in pointless, cruel, and braincell-less behavior. And you can stay 10,000 feet away from me.
#mc13 lore#oh my god this is so long I'm so sorry#multi t(ASK)ing#amateur art#fanfiction#taking my life in my own hands by putting this in something other than just my ask tag but so be it#there have been a lot of productions I've seen or been in--both professional and not--where I thought the overall vision didn't#translate very well or I didn't enjoy it or I thought that the artistic choices people made didn't successfully do what it seemed like#they were trying to do. but you know what? I've never seen a production. not even of HEATHERS the show (which is my absolute#least favorite thing in the world). where there was not even ONE good moment. there was always someone whose voice I liked. or a line#delivery that I thought was executed well. or a joke I thought was funny or a passage that I thought was raw/emotionally resonant.#and I think you can tell where I'm going with this but: yes this is true of fanfic too.
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Weird questions for writers, 19 and 38!
This is a response to this post about questions for writers!
19. Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going?
Wow, so uh. Maybe this is a common origin story for writers my age, but I started out on Wattpad? It must have been about 2014-15 or so when I began; I have vivid memories of hopping off a flight and impatiently waiting to be driven home after vacation so that I could use my iPad to type the next chapter to my fic there, haha.
I started writing Pokemon fic, specifically of the X&Y Pokemon anime. I dunno if people here know this, but there used to be a fic genre there called "Ash gets betrayed by his friends" that was super popular, and I wrote a version of that too— it was my first fic (I named it "Heartbroken") and I made so many poor and melodramatic choices with it, but also i look back on it fondly. Some of the stylistic choices there survive in my writing there. Apart from that fic, I also wrote stuff for Star Wars Rebels, Percy Jackson, and Ranger's Apprentice (so typical YA stuff).
Why I started... well that's kind of difficult to answer, because I honestly I don't know. But it may have to do with that spidey-writing sense I get sometimes when reading or engaging with fiction, the desire for a story out of what I know.
There were a couple of major "incidents" that spurred me on the path of the fic writer: one was reading this AoT fic (tw graphic self-harm) and this Maze Runner fic (tw grief, suicide, psychological torture). Ok maybe this sounds bad on the surface but I am legitimately convinced that reading these at a young age made my writing style what it is today: a bit purple-prose-ish, slow and contemplative, chock-full of emotion and introspection, always, somehow, sad or angsty. (and they end up touching on the topics mentioned above, although most of the ones that do I don't publish.)
As for closer to the present... well, I really hit the ground running when I started writing Genshin fic. It's pretty much the beginning of my "modern style" (or stuff that I can read back through without cringing), and I want to keep developing that: writing sadness and grief and pain is deeply cathartic to me, and outside of lore studies, those are what I will be focusing on in the future. (...currently staring at the inordinate number of angst WIPs I have.)
38. What is something about your writing process YOU think is Really Weird? If you are comfortable, please share. If you’re not comfortable, what do you think cats say about us?
In all honesty, most of my fic is kind-of vent fic, just more verbose and coherent that what the name 'vent-fic' tends to evoke. I need to be in a really specific kind of mood to write angst/hurt/comfort (my staple), and for a long period of time, I was perpetually in that state, which made creating... not easier, maybe, but something else that spurred it on. I'm not like that now, but the emotional intensity needed to create and convey hasn't left me, either.
Putting it this way: i need to find or set myself into a Mood(tm) to find my creative juices. It's weird because I can and do write when I'm mentally fine, but sometimes the low mood makes things sharper and easier to convey. These days, I usually put on music to do this: not just any generic songs I like but specifically stuff I've curated from listening non-stop 1000s of times before I keep it on the "dopamine injection" playlist. Stuff like that speaks to me in ways that makes me feel probably far too much, and it puts me in the right (or wrong, I guess?) state of mind to pour emotion onto the page. Cause thats what it is for me: if I don't feel emotionally destroyed by what I'm writing then what even is the point?
In lighter terms: anybody is free to ask stuff in general, not just from the question list, in my askbox whenever. Please. I love talking about writing (why write when I can talk about writing)
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Ok, so here are some thoughts I have on the new UI
Disclaimer: Some of these are probably just me things and not real issues lol
- I don’t like placement of map in the top corner, when I play sso I tend to keep my eyes focused on the bottom of the screen to see jumps and what not, and with the new placement I have to move my eyes farther to see the map. This takes my eyes away from my horse for longer, and makes me lose track of where I am/I ran into a few things trying to look at the map lol
- I don't like the placement of the speed indicator at the bottom of the screen, but hiding it gets rid of dismount button and forces you to rely on the x key
- I find the character pictures in the corner a bit distracting, they seem a bit to big and look out of place
- why is the chat bubble wobbly/squiggly/whatever? it's a stylistic choice, sure, but it's like...not exaggerated enough to read that way. It's sort of awkwardly in-between a clean design and a more squiggly design, making it look unintentional and messy to me instead of a artistic choice. I lowkey thought it was glitched at first lol
- So like...why is it incomplete? Settings, notifications, toggle view etc still have the old ui design, I just don't understand why they would seemingly release it with major aspects of it (i.e. character sheets, settings,) still unfinished
- So it's definitely aiming for mobile audiences, but it feels lackluster on pc
- I don't like the sparkles whenever you gain (h)xp
- Roughly the place where the dismount button used to be is now shopping…idk I just don't like how the shopping button is in front of the inventory button, I definitely clicked on it due to dismount button muscle memory a few times, and maybe this is me putting on too much of a tinfoil hat but it feels like by placing the shop button more prominently than the inventory button, they're trying to remind players of it more or get people to accidentally click it so people eventually pay more for clothes or whatever
- I like the loading screen! Art filling up the screen, font is pleasing, running horse
- There's now 3 styles of UI in the game now; the new UI, the old, and the updated race UI
- Honestly I like the race UI better than the new UI, I would maybe like it if they based the new UI more off that
- I don’t like having to click to level up horse although I could see that being useful for character leveling up if you want to time screenshots
- I like the animation leveling up comes with though
- reins glitch😩 not UI related but can they fix the reins connecting to saddle glitch already lol
- Inspecting players only works like 50% of the time for me now
- I'm not a fan of how separated all the buttons are now
-The white text on dark background in the chat box hurts my eyes and makes it hard to read but that's probably a me thing, I had a concussion that messed up my eyes and made it harder for me to read some text on screens including light on dark - however I did see someone else in global saying they thought the text was too bright as well
- I like the shared moment thing! The interactions with your horse are cute and fun
- I don’t like the extra call for pickup menu, I can see it being helpful but I'd like maybe a toggle button for that, like a "don't show this message again" thing
- Why does the inventory default to opening so low on the screen now?
- I like how you can see the exact xp numbers without the character screen
- Someone already mentioned it, but the champ groups...you can't see past like the first 4 letters of someone's names, and the scrolling
Anyway, I think it's fine overall, it's not my taste but I don't despise it like I thought it might
#star stable online#star stable#sso#some of these are just me nitpicking or me wanting to click on as few things and move my mouse as little as possible lol
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fate/samurai remnants review (no story spoilers)
as it must be said, i was a newbie to this genre, so from my perspective, i cannot judge whether specific elements are a deliberate genre-adjacent choice or something that didn't live up to expectations. i played the game on the normal difficulty.
my basic score would be 7.5/10
platform adaptation: i play on pc, which had some issues. i couldn't change many keybinds, clearly designed to be played on a controller. frustrating at first, but not too bad after sometime.
performance: i5-9400F + GeForce GTX 1650 Ventus XS. i only encountered a few issues, first around 20 hrs my game crashed (as i was trying to use rogue caster to turn the enemy into a piglet for the first time) and later the game froze and stopped responding. no other issues.
minigames: fine enough, the carving one was the only one i struggled with, since the keys used for it are WASD. fun additions, nonetheless.
movement and camera angle: fine, i only disliked the autolock on enemies. movement around maps was a bit boring and sometimes a bit tedious; they have instant teleport for one mission but never utilise it after that, which i found a bit confusing.
sword equipment: felt very insignificant, i upgraded some parts and switched them around a bit but they didn't feel like a huge difference, this might just be on my inexperience with this type of game.
items: healing items work very straight forward, running around acquiring them was a bit of pain. magical items, etc. were a bit of a pain, mostly since their acquisition felt a bit random at times. not too bad, but it didn't leave a great impression.
autosave: felt like it only noticed story progression and nothing else, not a big deal but i wouldn't rely on it.
combat gameplay: pretty okay, i had some struggles in the beginning, but after that it was fine. not super interesting for most of the time, but it was fine. probably wouldn't play for the love of the game itself.
leyline control gameplay: really fun, i did not expect it to be such a big part, but i liked it. after a few playthroughs, it is inevitably becomes repetetive, but it was still engaging.
skill trees: i liked them, i like the difference between iori + saber + rogue servant trees, it feels well balanced.
maps: pretty cool, i like that they tried to make each visually different, but i feel like many locations were not utilised fully. i like that the digressions take part in different places, though this could've been expanded on.
logbook: the amount of reading surprised me. cool feature, especially the character bios and glossary. i wish it was accesible through the main menu though.
visuals: still arts, cutscenes and animated sequences were all good. the main visual look wasn't that uniquely appealing, but i understand that the scale and setting of the game doesn't give designers that much stylistic freedom. i also wish mob characters were visually more towards wataru rei's art, as the visual dissonance between the story characters and mob characters is vast.
dlc expectations: i wonder if there are going to be more endings, since there's no direct post-game, as it just ends and you need to start again. i hope this timeframe will give them ample time to work on something cool; i am unsure if it's confirmed for the dlc to bring a new character with it. i am much more looking forward to more story than playable characters, but i'll see.
should you buy it? depends, if you want to legally support more fate endeavours, sure. but for it's hefty price, i would wait for it to drop down. if you're only interested in the story, i think the game works very well in a let's play format, so you can read the story that way.
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Sarah Crossan's "Toffee"
Just wanted to write down some thoughts on a book I read today. I need to keep a reading diary for my Creative Writing module so I thought I might as well post it on here. A few light spoilers here and there, you have been warned.
20.12.2022
I've enjoyed Sarah Crossan's work for a while now, having read One and Moonshine a few years back. She writes in free verse which is really refreshing when you're used to prose. The book covers abuse, being a young carer, coming of age, dementia, and the free verse helped to blend between past and present. Dialogue never felt confusing even without tags due to the one-to-one nature of most scenes, which I enjoyed as a stylistic choice.
It was lovely to get to know the main character Allison, and the short "chapters" where she is asked about her facial burn give easy access to her character development, offering a sense of recurring structure to the book. I found it intriguing how she found comfort in becoming Marla's carer.
Whilst I am unfamiliar with the details, I believe Marla's dementia was handled with care and compassion. This book would probably be good to help people understand their loved one's condition. Some of the scenes spoke to my experiences of my own grandparents, which I thought was really nice. I liked the use of parallels between Toffee and Allison to help Marla and Allison bond and grow closer. The dancing scenes especially were lovely. I loved their friendship and gradual trust of each other. Marla was also super funny, which was great.
I liked the portrayal of Lucy. She was used to explore a number of topics, like superficial friendships, the isolation Allison has felt, plus a few ideas on the class divide. The contrast between her luxurious "white house" and Allison squatting/sleeping in a shed was very effective. Although exaggerated, it felt very familiar and spoke to the class divide present in Britain. This also made Lucy's actions around money and stealing later both more surprising / shocking, but also helped to contextualise them as out of boredom or apathy rather than desperation. Despite not seeing Lucy too much, she felt very real. The fluidity of the scenes meant Allison's time with Lucy and Marla blended together, giving an idea of the passage of time, which I liked.
Overall, the characters have entire lives away from the plot, which was great to see. Even Marla's son Dolan, with pretty unsympathetic actions shown in scenes, invited a sense of intrigue about his life outside of Allison's view. I enjoyed that characters seemed to have intricate family/friend trees that were tricky to follow in places as it made them feel more realistic. It also added to the sense of mystery surrounding Marla's past.
From a writer's perspective, I thought the decision to have Allison's phone stolen was a clever way of removing her agency for a bit, enabling some needed character growth. I also liked that upon getting a new phone, it took her a while to log back in to her old life. I also thought that having Allison use multiple names enabled the reader to see multiple sides of dementia, and the difference between Marla with Allison vs Marla with Dolan helped to drive these differences home. I did feel like the abusive background Allison fled from got a little cliché in places, but it was written really well, so I don't mind. The portrayal of social services (through both visits to Allison's home, and the care worker Peggy) felt similar to what I had read before from other authors but this worked well as these services share the same common problems across multiple areas. It's effective portrayal; it complemented the story's themes well.
I feel like I missed a few points in the story (how did Marla know Toffee, for instance), but that's probably because the book was such a page turner that I read it cover to cover in about two hours. On reread, I'm sure these details will become much clearer! Even if such areas remain foggy, Toffee was a fantastic read, and a sweet, heart warming story. Crossan handled the mature themes with an effective and compassionate lens without ever talking down to the reader. I would definitely recommend.
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Hey Quil!
There's literally so much to say here my dude. Like-I just physically cannot put into words as to how much I love what you do for this fandom.
I have never in my life, met such an incredibly talented creator like you. /gen
The way that you can put words down on a page is so elegant, it's a talent that is just simply unfathomable to me. You just kind of suck me in with your writing--I have to clear a time to read the next chapter of the wings au because of how deeply you're able to weave your words to pull me into the narrative.
The world that you've built in your head, and the ideas that you churn out onto the page are so very incredible. And that's not just about writing either.
Seriously!! When I found out you could draw my reaction was pretty much. Well I guess it's over now, Quil's over here, hoarding all of the talent and stylistic choices of writing and art. /lh
I remember vividly when I first saw the wings AU. I was actually on my phone, at school, in the hallway (no shame apparently) and I saw Shattered Upside Down on the list of things. And I read the description and I sat there for a minute and I went.
Huh. That seems kind of weird. And I clicked off of it.
Can I just say!!! How funny that is!! Like I think I've been this invested in two fics ever, and my first reaction to seeing this was "eh I'll pass" ?!?!?!
Past Tobi this is literally right up your ally. It is dystopianizing + dragonifying your kotlc. Why the fuck would you want to pass on it????
Anyway, it was only three days later that I came around and gave it a shot (after seeing the one chapter and the word count.) And let me tell you. I knew I was hooked.
I knew it.
I remember so well sitting in the dark, on vacation, excitedly stimming on my bed after the fourth chapter came out. I had the Wiggles from a story!!! This had never happened before. I'd gotten squirmy yes, but I had to stand up!!! Because whew this story was really fucking good!!!!!
And Quil. Quil I cannot tell you how much the wings AU means to me. Like as a story but as an idea as a whole. And ik we're getting to the ah ha moment, and I know this means that it's ending, and while I'm so sad to see it go I'm also really excited to see how you write a conclusion to this.
Anyway if you want to see my shitty doodles of the wings AU from like...omg over a year now. (Quil it's been over a year since I drew those) just let me know.
Anyway, enough talking about my lord and savior (Shattered Upside Down) /hj
Thank you so very much for inspiring and writing every day. You're honestly such a cool human being, and it's been so fun getting to see you create on here <33
Oh my gosh this is so incredibly kind of you I'm at a loss of where to start to try and articulate back how much this means to me and how much I appreciate it.
Hearing that my words just kinda suck you in because of how I weave my stories makes me laugh a little because it feels wildly out of proportion with my writing approach. I think I've said this before, but I basically don't edit like at all. Everything you read is what I first wrote; it is the first draft. So you saying is both greatly appreciated and also amusing because I'm just winging it
And thank you for the compliments on my drawing, as well! You're not the first person to say that (discovering I could draw later on), which is wild because there was a time in the fandom where I was foremost considered a fanartist compared to...whatever I am now.
I love that you clicked off the wings au because if I am being 100% honest...I probably would do the exact same thing. I think if I saw the wings au out in the wild, I wouldn't read it. I'd go "huh, I don't really like aus, and this is too long" and just move on. Because it's true! I don't really like aus (they're great! just not for me most of the time) or long fics, so if it wasn't my story I'd absolutely skip right past it without a second thought.
I'm incredibly flattered to hear you were hooked, like that is such an amazing thing to hear as a writer than someone is that invested in your story--and giving you the wiggles!! You are giving me the wiggles right now as I'm reading through this just in awe. I'm thrilled you think the story is good because it's truly expanded beyond what I ever thought it would be, which is terrifying, but also so excited to watch (I say as if I'm not writing it). And I can't believe you were reading it on vacation like please enjoy your vacation the wings au can wait
Tobi. I cannot explain to you how much it means to me that the wings au means something to you. I started this story purely self-indulgently after I started mindlessly associating characters with wings, making the joke "well no fandom is complete without a wings au" to cover up how invested I was getting in such a "silly" concept. Like really? A wings au? Could it get any more basic?
And while the story is starting to come to a close (there's a lot left to write but like timeline wise...we're getting there), I really hope that I can live up to the rest of the au and the expectations. I've known what I wanted the final message, the final hurrah to be since I started; it's all been working towards that, but I don't know exactly how we'll get there or what shape it will take.
I'm both terrified and ecstatic to see what the wings au will become and I just hope I can do it justice.
Also I would absolutely love to see any doodles you're comfortable sharing. Seeing art of the wings au always makes my day and I'm incredibly honored that my story inspired you to create something.
Thank you so much for everything you've said, I don't know how to explain my appreciation for this. I hope to continue creating things and sharing them and having fun with everyone here for as long as possible, so thank you for being so receptive and encouraging about it all, this seriously made my day <33
#kotlc#ten years of keeper#quil's queries#quil's queridos#xanadaus#you said alright lets take creator appreciation day and absolute explode quil#have had a wacky few days so this is just. so nice#I keep saying that but I'm at a loss of words. I am sending so many vibes your way do you feel them. the vibes. I'm sending them#long post
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🦋🎈📡 (and a kiss 😘)
Beijos para você! (I'm being so normal about not falling down a rabbit hole about tu vs você right now djksfjdasfjds)
🦋what are you most insecure about when you post a fic?
Are people gonna like it?? (Do people like me??)
Then once I wrangle my social anxiety brain worms back to their rehabilitation corner, I'm wondering about whether the things I was trying to communicate with the fic seem to be coming across to the people reading. Do my understandings of these characters ring true for other people? Did the things I thought were poignant or funny or hot actually feel that way to people who aren't me?
🎈describe your style as a writer; is it fixed? does it change?
I've been told more than once that I have a very distinctive writing style for smut. At first I just blushed my face off whenever I heard that, because oh my GOD I am publishing pornographic writing on the internet!!?!?!? and people are READING it!!?!???!!!?!??? Now that I've had some time to get used to it, I take it as a badge of honor, even when anxiety pokes through that maybe not everybody means it strictly as a compliment. You know what it's a style and it's fun and we're embracing it!
More broadly, my style has definitely changed since BoN first ate my brain. There are some elements of my older fics that absolutely make me cringe now, like the rapid-fire pov shifts (sometimes in the same sentence!) and the explosion of French pet names. No shade on those old fics, I'm glad I wrote them, and I'm glad the people who still enjoy them are enjoying them! It's just that looking back on my older stuff confronts me with how much less practice with writing fiction I had two years ago than I do now.
One element of my fic style that hasn't changed and I doubt ever will is my tendency towards complex, multi-phrase sentences. My professional life has required too much writing about legislative details; at this point it can't be reined in completely, even when I try.
A thing about my style I'm hoping will evolve in the future is I want to learn more from writers like you who are writing so beautifully and effectively in English as a second language. Using my high school Spanish to write anything more complex or poetic than "Booker piensa que Nile es hermosa y tiene razón" (Booker thinks Nile's gorgeous and he's right) feels impossible to me. But English has a much larger vocabulary than Spanish for a bunch of historical reasons, and I have access to several (but importantly not all) registers of that vocabulary for a bunch of personal as well as structural class-and-race reasons, and the significance of word choice as an element of style probably operates differently in a language like Spanish with its relatively smaller vocab inventory so that means other stylistic choices I'm completely unaware of are probably doing super cool things to express the layers of meaning I've been taught to lean on word choice to accomplish in English — this is an enormous area of comparative linguistics but one small example of the ways we can shift our writing styles to more effectively express our ideas to people with different linguistic frames of reference. All that's even more interesting given the staggering diversity of language experience among our immortal blorbos. I don't know what particular stylistic changes might be in the future for me along these lines, it's just a thing I'm thinking about.
📡why is writing and sharing your writing important for fandom?
I love that you asked this because it gives me the excuse to say fandom is important! It's part of our lives! Hobbies we do for fun and stress relief aren't The Most Important Thing In the World but they're still part of our lives and part of the world and therefore what happens in fandom matters! Nile Freeman is a fantastically rich, complex, well-drawn main character and she deserves tons and tons of fandom content about her, and I'm a part of that and so are you! Fuck yeah!
I also really cherish my part in building Jewish Booker. The overwhelming majority of Jewish representation in mainstream US movies and tv comes through filters: Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries being pushed into the entertainment industry by several European countries' discriminatory policies and that tradition carrying over in the US despite legal equality, Euro-descended Jews being model minority-ized by the post-WW2 US that very much did /not/ involve itself in that war to stop the Holocaust but chose to frame itself that way after the fact, lots of individual Jews' family trauma and internalized shame and fear of the next wave of antisemitism around the corner, etc etc. The result is most US media that includes Jews is made either by Jews who feel enormous pressure to represent our entire people in a way that's perceived as palatable and nonthreatening to white culturally-Christian people or more often by non-Jews who've absorbed decades of iterating carbon copies of what previous generations thought was palatable. US Jews invented comic books and the superhero genre and yet the first MCU property to have an explicitly Jewish character was the 6th tv show in Phase 4.
There just isn't much mainstream content about Jews in my country, one of the two places where most of the world's Jews live, made by Jews who uncomplicatedly like being Jewish and don't have big economic and cultural pressures on them to represent all of us in Certain Ways. Wow, I didn't realize this rant was building up in me until I started typing. Anyway yeah I get to be honest about what Jewishness means to me and what I think it would mean for Booker and share it with people through fandom with just a little teeny tiny bit of a filter (my own internalized stuff) compared to the many layers of mess that mainstream content has to go through before it reaches non-Jews all over the world who consume US media and who may or may not know many Jews personally.
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Hello friends!
As mentioned in last week’s post, the book club is doing it’s annual long read. In the month of June, we pick a longer fic, something we wouldn’t normally get through in the usual two week span, and let ourselves live inside it for the whole month.
We’re really in it now, dear readers, as we read chapters four through eight of Ballad of a Thin Man by chapscher. We gathered in our usual places this weekend to talk about these four chapters, and tease out the symbolism and the metaphor, as we follow along with Shane while he tries to resolve his surrealist nightmare into some kind of reality.
Rating: M
Summary:
He was far too tired for this. He couldn’t even clearly remember what Ryan’s rental car looked like. He told himself that Ryan was probably out parking somewhere and expected Shane to check them in; which was essentially how they worked whenever they filmed on the road. But Shane didn’t think he ever checked them in while he was quite this tired before.
He couldn’t even remember getting out of the car.
-
Shane finds himself in a strange hotel that lingers in the space between memories and the unimagined.
Book Club Thoughts
I keep growing fascinated with the not quite right world [the author] is building on here, it's unsettling in a way I enjoy a lot
I really love unreliable narrators, the way that you have to keep everything in mind, creating a web as you read along.
this fic is such a great Shane character study
there’s a lot in this about Shane trying to be more comfortable with his individuality. normally he’d face this kind of stuff with Ryan but he can’t
To me there’s a strong implication that Shane could get lost in this world without the idea of Ryan propelling him forward... which is much like we see him in his career.
I liked very much the device of having Obi sort of be shane's white rabbit
i think [Steven] may be the voice that shane associates with, like, logistical competence. the bones
I love love loved the forest of memory tree stumps
The visual imagery in this was top notch as per usual. The memory pools and surrounding forest just sounded so lovely but the ache of Shane's emotions was present too.
I loved how [the author] took us through the memories like a thematic journey through Shane's inability to communicate who he wants to be to Ryan while being so afraid to be without him to that moment of the both of them sort of arguing and the visceral imagery of the crash
i really like the description of the crash, personally. economical and effective.
Very great stylistic choices all throughout this fic so far
I am so fucking curious about those jellybeans.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO JOIN US FOR OUR NEXT DISCUSSION? CHECK OUT THE FAQ, AND SEND US AN ASK! IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR FIC RECS, PLEASE CHECK OUT OUR READS, NOMINEES AND BOOK CLUB REC LISTS!
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hiii 🍓🔪🦷🐚 and 🧩 (for the drama 💅)
✨ writer’s truth or dare! ✨
hi there nonnie !!! tysm for the ask!! i am so sorry for the late response but i hope that u see this and enjoy !! <3<3
🍓 ⇢ how did you get into writing fanfiction?
i have no idea anymore tbh lol. i can tell u that the first fic i ever wrote was an episode tag for the mentalist, and that i was probably was somewhere between the ages of 12 and 15???? but i don't remember the specifics that got me into it. i started reading fic (also for the mentalist) when i was like, 11, so, probably because after a year or two i convinced myself to just give it a shot and the rest was history. at the end of the day, though, it probably just comes down to an uncontrollable urge to put that blorbo into a situation!!
🔪 ⇢ what's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?
not for a fanfic, but i had to know SO MUCH about a limited model run of a special drag racing car that ford made in the early 1960s (only a few hundred made, very rare, etc etc) due to a personal writing project i started and then kind of abandoned when i was like, 16 lol. i used to know the production run numbers and engine size and the paint colors and everything by memory. it was ridiculous.
🦷 ⇢ share some personal wisdom or a life hack you swear on
if you love something, do it. even if you fear you won't do it well- if you love something enough, you love it enough to do it shitty. that's so much better than not doing it at all. learning to let go of my incredibly creativity-freezing perfectionism is an ongoing task that i am not even halfway thru, so trust me when i say i know how tough that rly is. but you always regret the things you didn't try more than the things you did.
🐚 ⇢ do you like or dislike surprises?
aaaaaah do we still mean in writing lol? or irl? i like a surprise twist or turn in writing quite a lot! i also love foreshadowing and being chased down by the narrative. there's no perfect right answer! as for irl, it depends, but i don't like to get scared or to have plans suddenly changed at the last minute. if it's a surprise outside of those circumstances, then yes, i do!
🧩 ⇢ what will make you click away from a fanfiction immediately?
for me it's either poor formatting (i.e. no paragraph breaks, no quotations, no commas, that kind of thing), or (and i hope this doesn't come off rude in any way bc i know we all make different choices stylistically and are all always learning and growing too!), and this might just be a me thing, but if the pov is from like. a god-mode position where the third person narrative knows what every character is thinking at the same time and it's not just switching povs or like. one character's prediction of another's pov. but like. idk what that is called. it just kind of breaks my immersion to the story i think, so i don't tend to vibe with it!
again, thank u so much anon !!! i hope u have a lovely day !! <3 tysm for stopping by my blog and taking time to send in an ask aaaa!
#star unasks#Anonymous#i hope u do see this im sorry it was so late !!!!!#lol but i hope i dont stir up ~drama~ on the last one#i feel like everyone has those weird pet peeves when it comes to formatting or style etc etc
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Black characters with white hair: the “Special Snowflake” Compilation
Is it problematic to give my Black MC white hair?
@roseoholic asked:
Is it problematic to give my black mc white hair? In my story, if someone dies and comes back to life, their hair turns white. Her origin is that she's a reincarnation of an escaped soul, and took the place of the stillborn fetus in her "mothers" womb. I am pretty flexible in her design still, so I am willing to change if it's a bad idea. Thank you if you answer! :)
I think we’re all aware that Black people can have white hair naturally, whether it’s due to
Aging
Hair that turns gray/white early in life
Albinism
Genetics - Black person (mixed race or no) who have very light or white hair.
Obviously, Black people can dye their hair white as well.
Photo above: Black models Diandra forrest and Nyakim Gatwech posing. They both have pale blondish-white hair. Source: Essence.
The question being asked is if it’s okay for Black characters to have white hair by conscious choice of the author.
Answer:
On its face, it’s okay to have Black characters with white hair. This is especially true if how the white hair comes about is a natural occurrence in your story that likely affects other races too. Motive is an important factor.
What is the reason for their hair being white?
That reason could and should be everything but to make them seem special or more likeable. This isn’t aimed at you specifically, OP, but there are creators who feel compelled to give Black characters uncommon, rare or unusual features due to an aversion to feature Black people with more common features (dark and brown hair, skin, eyes etc).
When aversion to Blackness is the motive, it shows.
It’s in the way the narrative exalts this character over other Black people in the narrative, treating them more favorably and giving them more of an arc over other Black characters. This is sometimes known as making them a “Special snowflake” which isn’t a term I particularly love, as it’s sometimes used to devalue real struggles people face. However, It does serve to categorize the trope. (See: TVTropes Special Snowflake)
Signs you’re treating your white-haired Black character better over other Black characters, aka the “Special Snowflake”
Stronger characterization and arc, more importance and “Screen time” than other Black characters (even when they’re not the main character)
Unique features are overemphasized and described at every chance (fetishized)
Better treatment in the story compared to other Black characters. They’re also less likely to face suffering and abusive narratives. Good things happen to them more than other Black people.
Shown to be more deserving of love, affection and romance over other Black characters; may have a love interest while others don’t.
Takeaway:
You can have Black characters with white hair. However, do not use light or unique features to exalt or set your character apart from your Black characters as “better.”
That is, not without an explicit social commentary, since yes these folks tend to be treated better by society and media in real life.
It also helps to have other Black characters with more common features who are treated well and have a fully developed character arc. These other Black people’s lives also should not revolve around just supporting white or the white-haired character, either.
Black Girl, Snow White Retellings
@morganadelacour asked:
Hi there,
I (a white woman) would like to write a re-telling of Snow White and make her a Black girl with white hair. Snow White would be under the impression, that her stepmother (a white woman) is evil, when in fact, she only tried to protect herself and Snow White from Snow White’s father (a white man). The story would be told from both perspectives, probably first from Snow White’s perspective, then from the queen’s. In the end, both women make peace, Snow White understands the queen’s actions and the queen apologizes and tries to make up for her actions that hurt Snow White. Do you see a problem with any aspect of this outline and/or are there certain things I have to keep in mind?
Thank you so much for all the work you do with this blog and for your efforts to educate.
@corbeaudelys asked:
I'm writing a science fiction variant of Snow White with a protagonist that has dark skin with white, 3C hair and brown eyes. I read a post that said magic white hair, dark skin, and European features was a bad trope; would it still be bad even if I made it clear that she has no European features and her hair's not magical?
See “Is it problematic to give my Black MC white hair?” which answers the core of this question. Motive truly is the main factor in if it’s okay or not, and the resulting treatment of that character and other Black characters that may exist in the story. I have a Black Snow White in one of my retellings, too!
The motive is clear here: you’re retelling Snow White with a Black girl and want to keep it relevant by assigning the white feature to hair instead of skin. It’s also a story where Snow White is intentionally meant to stand out as the “fairest of them all” so the exalting does have plot relevance.
As noted before, I would caution against making her beautiful to mean that other Black women are not beautiful or are unworthy.
I would like to make special mention that you can also do retellings where Snow White goes the other direction, and her compelling dark features make her the “fairest of them all”
Black woman dyes hair white, problematic symbolism?
@tlking-heads-moved said:
hi! i have a story with two black women protagonists:
1.) leader, strong and loyal, with very curly dark hair (usually pulled back)
2.) part of the group, elegant and refined, with light pink braids (or other protective styles).
Towards the end of the story, both of their hair changes styles, the second character dyes her hair white.
I am afraid that the character with the styled, pink/white hair will come off as “purer” or “better” than the character with the natural, dark hair, because of their personality + appearance differences. should I change either of their usual hair styles or their personalities?
These seem like stylistic choices. As the girl already had a pink braided style, hair color changes seems like something she likes to do and does not have to be symbolic of anything. Your use of color throughout the story could help avoid implications of white as more pure, if this is something you’d like to avoid:
See more about Color symbolism in our Color Symbolism Guide
Also, going from pink to white, which both have connotations of femininity and softness (according to a Western Lens) doesn’t come across as a stark difference. Without knowing the full details of these personality changes the girls undergo, I’m personally not getting that impression. Again, the full narrative will inform this and you may want to pay mind to your use of color throughout.
Now, do avoid making the dark-haired one a Strong Black Women character. You specifically called her strong, which doesn’t necessarily mean she’s a SBW, but please see our several related posts to ensure she is not one.
I hope this helps!
~Mod Colette
#Black#Black women#Black men#special snowflake#Black stereotypes#tropes#asks#tw stillborn#color symbolism#black vs white#guides#Black hair
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