Backstory is Revealed When You Need It, Not Before

                Recently I shared my first 30 pages with my writing mentor, and now I'm sharing her advice with all of you (This is part 2! Find part 1 here). She told me my beginning read very slowly because I was giving backstory before it was relevant in the story, rather than intertwining it with the action.

                What I mean by that is, I was giving a lot of exposition on my world just through my character noting it to herself. I worried that if I didn’t lay down the basics right away, when I did mention it later it would come as a bad shock to readers.

While that might have a logic to it, it's very slow to read just exposition on the world. To get these details through naturally and when they're relevant, while still conveying them in the beginning, we needed to create a conflict for my main character to react to right away.

This way, I could spend the first couple pages revealing the essentials of my world and main character without halting the pacing to a stop.

                Okay, consider these two examples:

Character A avoided the alleyways as they travelled to the store. The city was overrun by gangs who liked to lurk in their dark corners, jumping out at unaware passerby’s for coin or favours.

                Vs.

The back of Character A’s neck prickled as they passed an alleyway that swallowed all light. They were steps away when they heard a raspy voice, “don’t you know you gotta pay the fee to pass through our turf?”

                How this character resolves this conflict will betray who they are as a person. Do they cower? Do they fight back? Do they reveal they have connections to another gang, or the police?

                This little conflict, as well as establishing a vital part of your world and character, should in some small way connect to the bigger conflict up ahead, aka the inciting incident.

                In this example, this specific gang would probably be where the main antagonist is from—or the consequences of how they deal with this follow them into the inciting incident in some way.

                Backstory only when it’s most relevant, not to anticipate when it will be important later.

                Good luck!

I'm in the middle of Dressrosa and I'm feeling VERY NORMAL about Law

half-remembered landscapes from places you can't quite recall

Higuchi and Ranpo are just such interesting author-based characters in BSD.

I know it's weird to connect the two but hear me out...

So far, the only authors I can remember that don't have a known ability are Aya, Higuchi, and Ranpo. Aya and Higuchi will likely get an ability (latter has been confirmed to have one, at least) while Ranpo...probably won't? Though you never know.

But the reason I bring Higuchi and Ranpo together is because the latter is an author who is heavily implied to be the son of one of his IRL counterpart's characters. And meanwhile, the former is someone who has one of the real people in her IRL counterpart's life (that is to say, BSD Higuchi's sister) brought into the manga. Yeah, Tanizaki and Akuatagawa have their sisters be based off characters, and we also have Haruno based off a Tanizaki character, plus Fitzgerald's characters in the eyes of god story arc.

But I really think that it's interesting that Ranpo is the child of his own character. And that Higuchi is I think the only one with a family member that is based on IRL Higuchi's own family situation. That we might actually have a BSD character based on a real life person that wasn't a significant writer of some sort (to my knowledge, at least).

I don't really have a point with this, but it is interesting and aghhhhhhh Asagiri I'M BEGGING you to do something with Higuchi that doesn't involve Akutagawa! There's so many things about her and I want to know!

when roz walked into the crèche, they were confidently githyanki - they could wear the mask and mingle with those of faerûn, but they were gith first, and arriving at the crèche was like coming home. nevermind the bones of the temple it sat in, the orange suns on the wall and the marble hands reaching for the touch of dawn. none of it mattered, because below there was home.

and in those walls, there was a promise. once purified, they would find the simplicity of the life they had before they ever woke up on a ghaik ship, where all they had to do was look to a jhe'stil and do as commanded. no more scrambling for answers, no more being the terrifying exception to the rule. they would simply be themself again, safe among their people, secure in a role predefined.

but then the zaith'isk does not purify, and doubts they had pushed down for so long bubble back to the surface. one of the youths recognized them as an outsider from the way that they walked - "less directed," he said, and roz had to bite their tongue and keep from flinching. they ask questions and the ghustil echoes what lae'zel had said a half-dozen times or more since meeting; how could they not know these things? they should have paid more attention to their teachers. could they have ever hoped to belong, when they carried their years away from their people as some carried brands?

a single egg sits in a carefully curated pond, the last to hatch, and roz wonders if culling it is worth losing someone like ko'kuu if it means never giving rise to someone like them.

the inquisitor offers them simplicity. a command they are to follow and they are so grateful to be able to obey, and from their loyalty vlaakith springs forth in all her glory. they drop to their knees. they were never one to worship, they never could focus on anything so abstract as a god, but she looks down at them with golden eyes and sees them. they have killed people for so much less than ascension, and if they can please their Queen, then they will be worth something. they will have to have been worth something.

a voice they know all too well beckons them into a cave inside the prism, a confrontation to be had alone.

she stands on the edge of a sea of stars and she tells them their queen has a secret, and they want to believe they are being lied to but they don't think they are. it wouldn't matter, even so - vlaakith demands the death of the visitor, and roz must obey. ascension. belonging. all they needed to do was remain loyal and deliver a single blow.

the visitor offers them the sword they need to carry out their task, an act of trust entirely unearned. but whoever this stranger is, they wear her face, and seeing it now after gazing upon their queen, they wonder if gods and queens can even compare. mauna had seen them as a broken, beaten child and loved them. used them, of course, but that was part of the loving, wasn't it? they were made to be used, born to be a sword wielded by another, and mauna had been so sweet in the wielding.

they fall to their knees. grasping at the earth below, they scramble for purchase as the sky seems to explode out in every direction, too big, too abstract. gods, queens, crèches, temples, it all felt too big. for so long, they had only ever needed her. why did they leave? why couldn't they ever just do what they were told? why couldn't they be happy?

they leave the prism feeling like something had been ripped from them. or perhaps everything had been ripped from them, leaving a formless husk behind. once again, they have been reduced to nothing - roz'zith of nowhere, now named hshar'lak, a moment of disobedience destroying everything they thought they had.

but perhaps if they survive, they could find mauna. she knew how to sculpt them from nothing, and they knew better now. they would know to appreciate her this time, to do what they were told. they would only need to prove to her that they could still be useful to her. and after? it would all be so simple.

they push through the doors of the morninglord's temple and into the soft light cresting down on the ruins, bloodied but reborn. they have no people to return to, now. but they might have a person, if she will have them.

Rewatching "Navidad" and noticing right now that contrary to what I remembered, Esteban wasn't the only one who wanted to celebrate a traditional Nochebuena in the palace with just their family. Francisco did too! This is the very first Navidad since their reunion and Shuriki's defeat. Esteban has been waiting 41 (!) years for this day, and he probably thought it would never come. It must have hurt so much when his wish for a traditional family Navidad was immediately shut down by Elena and Luisa and (albeit a bit more conflictedly by Isabel) or that Francisco's agreement with his idea was disregarded.

It's especially intriguing to me, because ordinarily, you would expect Esteban to be all in on the exciting new Navidad celebrations. He can be stuffy and traditional, sure, but he's also extravagant and loves grand, elaborate parties. In this case, however, he vastly prefers a quieter, more intimate Navidad than something new and elaborate and exciting. He doesn't want fireworks or or parades or massive parties; all he wants is simple quality time with the family he spent four decades longing to somehow see again.

To borrow a few lyrics from "Let Love Light the Way," Esteban needs "nothing more than those [he] adore[s]" over the holiday. And it must rankle him so much to receive the seeming confirmation that this isn't enough for the others-- and I feel it could lend itself to the inevitable conclusion that he himself isn't "enough" for the others.

Personally, I feel like Francisco's desire to have their quiet, private Nochebuena celebration comes from a slightly different place than Esteban's. He's naturally a more traditional, reserved person, so he would always prefer simple quality time with his family than a grand function. Additionally, he did not perceive any time passing during the past 41 years, as Esteban did. So this particular Navidad would have less strong of a meaning to him as it did to his grandson who was all alone for four decades. I also do not think he would be fully aware of what this end of the Dark Times means to his grandson. But unlike the others, Francisco does seem to be genuinely trying to understand what Esteban is thinking and feeling.

And even knowing that Francisco can and will never fully understand, Esteban must have felt a little tiny spark of recognition and validation when Francisco too wanted to resume their regular Navidad traditions. These--and by extension, Esteban himself--may not have been "good enough" for Luisa or Elena. But for Francisco, the traditions were more than merely "good enough," they were his first choice.

scott appreciation week (day 4) → i think it’s my fault

― Andrei Tarkovsky, Journal 1970-1986

⬛⬛⬛ was seven years old when his mother died. He remembers being sad, mourning her sudden loss in the way children process death. He stayed by her bedside as she took her last breath, holding her hand and crying, begging her to stay. She loved him. She had spent her last moments making sure he knew that he wasn’t alone and never would be, as long as he could keep her in his memory. 

He remembers crying out as her casket was closed for the final time, lowered into the ground. Something snapped in him and he was begging her to stay again, begging them to not take her away. 

⬛⬛⬛ didn’t come out of his room for weeks afterwards. He sat in his room, cradling a photo of his mother in his hands. His father would leave food for him and he would eat it, never taking his eyes off the photo. 

So when his father came home after only two months of his mother being dead, ⬛⬛⬛ was not what one would call happy. Even though he’d started going back to school a few weeks ago, he wasn’t ready for someone else to take her place. Nobody else could ever be his mother. 

He got into an argument with his father that night. At seven years old, ⬛⬛⬛ decided that he couldn’t bear to live in a house with a man who could so easily replace the woman he claimed to love. He didn’t know where he was going but he took the clothes on his back, the photo of his mother, and some cash he’d been saving up and just walked out. 

He made his way to the bus stop and got on, thinking about where he would even go. He wasn’t sure he could make his way to his mother’s family on his own, as they lived on the other side of the country, and he definitely didn’t want to see his father’s family. So he stayed on the bus as long as the driver would let him stay. 

Eventually though, he did have to get off. It was sprinkling out, not enough to make him uncomfortable, but it was a sign of heavier rains to come. ⬛⬛⬛ made his way from the bus stop to a restaurant that looked like it was about to close, but still had the lights on and maybe they could give him some shelter from the rain, at least for a while. He stepped inside and stared at the workers cleaning up the dining room. They looked…concerned that a child his age was alone at night, especially in this part of town, one would say.

They asked him what he was doing out, if he lost his parents, if he was from the area. It’s not safe out here for kids like you, they told him. He doesn’t remember responding, but he must have because they shuffled him to the back of the restaurant to their boss and asked what to do with him. None of them could really afford to take a child in but he hadn’t told him where he was from or where his parents were. They suggested calling the police, but ⬛⬛⬛ started crying at the suggestion, not wanting to get them involved. I can’t go home, he told them, my father is a bad person.

The restaurant manager agreed to allow him to stay for a bit, giving him a meal on the grounds that he’d leave by the end of the week. ⬛⬛⬛ agreed, scarfing down the food like it was the best thing he’d ever eaten. 

Over the next few days, ⬛⬛⬛ bid his time by doing dishes, greeting customers, learning to read from the menu. The staff treated him kindly, but they felt distant, unsure of what to do with him, though by the time the weekend came, he hadn’t figured out where he wanted to go. A few of the staff pointed him towards an orphanage in town, but one of the cooks slipped him a one way train ticket to a few cities over, somewhere he could get out of that area, a note attached with directions on where to go to meet someone who would take him in. 

He held the ticket in his hand, scanning it as he walked through the station to the loading area, the note clutched in his hand. ⬛⬛⬛ was practically shaking as he entered the train by himself. A few adults asked if he was okay, if he knew where he was going. Yes, he said, I’m just not used to traveling by myself, but my uncle is going to meet me at my stop. That was a lie he’d rehearsed on the way there but they let him be. He had to fight himself to keep from falling asleep and missing his stop, but he must have succumbed to it at some point, as one of the adults next to him gently shook him awake as they approached his destination. He thanked them and hopped off his seat, getting ready to depart the train car and start his new life. 

He stepped onto the platform and was greeted by a bustling crowd. It was overwhelming to say the least, so many strange people just going about their day. ⬛⬛⬛ made his way to the staircase where someone came up from behind him, introduced himself as the person who would be taking care of the young boy. He could call him “Priest”, as his true name was of little importance. He asked if the young boy had a name, which the boy muttered under his breath. When asked to repeat it, he said he wished to give up his name, as he no longer wanted to be associated with the person who gave it to him. The Priest agreed with him and said they’d find a suitable name for him soon enough. There were many names in the world, but for now he’d be referred to as the Prodigal Son, or simply the Son for short. The Son found this amicable and agreed to the change. He remembers wondering what that meant, as he had never heard of the word “Prodigal” before, but he would come to understand it in due time. 

The Priest taught the Son many things, reading, writing, the history of Japan, things that he remembered being taught in school before his mother passed, but he also taught the Son many other things one would never find in a normal school. The Son learned the art of disguise, impersonation, how to manipulate his voice. Some day, the Priest had told him, he’d be called upon to use his gifts for the greater good. The Son, not knowing any better, accepted this and that his skills would be useful in the future. 

The Son went through many identities in his time studying under the Priest. His hair had been cut, extended, dyed and bleached, his eyes were a dozen different colors and none of them. He could mimic any voice after observing the speaker for ten minutes. He went by many different names, though he always came back to the Son. In due time, he forgot his father entirely, but he carried the last photo of his mother with him in his pocket wherever he went. It made him feel at ease, as if she were watching over him from the afterlife still, protecting him from the harsh realities of the world. The photo had faded with time, the wear and tear on it having almost removed her face entirely, but the Son could still picture it perfectly. It had been burned into his mind on the day he watched her take her last breath.

The Son started University at age 17, younger than many of his peers in Japan, and he graduated at age 20. It hadn’t been easy, but he had honed his skills and developed them on the stage, playing off his talents as being simply that, talent and skill, not something he had used to bring about political upheaval in the past and likely in the future. 

The Son had kept his distance at University though, going by another fake name and only attending the bare minimum of classes and extracurriculars that were required of him by the Priest. He had begun proper vocal training to learn how to sing, something that he had been told would be useful soon, though he had not been given the details, and further developed his voice by participating in several musical performances, though he still remained rather distant from the rest of the cast and crew, exchanging only the bare necessities of pleasantries and making excuses to get out of bonding time outside of scheduled practice hours. 

The Son was a lonely man, and he knew this. He knows this. He is a lonely man. He was about to turn 23 when the Priest finally told him about his newest mission. Do you remember your father, the Priest had asked over the phone. No, replied the Son, not more than I need to, anyway. So you remember you had a father, and he had another wife after you left, the Priest continued. The Son hummed in agreement, Yes I ran away because of her, you know this. Of course I do, but I just wanted to make sure, Anyway did you know he had another son with her? What do you mean by another son? I mean that you are an older brother, and your younger brother needs help. I do not want to speak to anyone else related to that man. Oh but you’ve been training to help your brother, haven’t you, he dreams of being an idol, someone who sings and dances on stage like you. Theater performances and being an idol are two different things. Yes, well it wouldn’t exactly be easy to get you to train to be an idol with no intentions on debuting, so we had to make do. Why should I help him? Out of the love in your heart for your own flesh and blood. I do not consider that old man my father, nor that boy my brother. He has a secret he needs to keep, something I’m sure you’re familiar with of course. What secret? All in due time, Son, will you help him or not? 

The Son refused to meet his brother in person for the first few months, preferring to instead communicate only by phone. He had been studying at Reimei academy, he told him, as part of the idol course. His mother loved idols, loved them so very much and it was the only memory he had of her. The Son understood his brother on that level. During their phone calls, the Son learned about his brother’s rival at the school, a boy by the name of Tatsumi Kazehaya who happened to be in the year above him. Tatsumi Kazehaya was perfect in many ways, something that his brother found infuriating. Why couldn’t he be like that? He lamented in one phone call. The Son told him that some people are simply born with talent, and Kazehaya was one of them. His brother relented and continued to update the Son on his progress. 

Despite the Son knowing his brother’s name, Kaname Tojou, his brother did not know his, instead choosing to refer to him only as “Onii-chan,” a word that grated on his ears. He was not a cute older brother to be looked up to and in fact he’d rather be doing anything else than be there, and yet. He stayed calm. Once Kaname debuted and got on his feet, the Son would fade back into the background as if he never existed. That was the plan, anyway. The Priest had told him that he would be free to do as he pleased away from his watchful eye if everything went according to plan. 

After a year of guiding his brother in the ways of being an idol, the Son wanted to see how he was progressing. Kaname hadn’t said anything about a performance, but since the Son was very good at keeping an ear to the ground, he had found out about a performance between Kaname and Tatsumi to be put on for the entire school. He wasn’t entirely sure what the purpose of that was exactly, but it would be a good time to gauge Kaname’s progress and how well he had followed the Son’s instructions. The Son made his way through the crowd, finding a spot near the front but not where Kaname could see him and he watched the empty stage, waiting for any sign of life.

The projectors came on and a video began playing, a video about the exact secret that the Son had been safeguarding even from his brother. It was a video about Kaname’s mother and how she had ruined the career of one of the best idols that had ever existed in Japan. The energy in the crowd was agitated, vibrating with anger as they waited for the two aspiring idols to take the stage. The Son wanted to run backstage, warn his brother of the impending danger, but could only watch in horror as the curtains raised and the crowd rushed forward. The Son looked on as the two young idols were yanked from the stage, a scream lost to the noise of the crowd, unable to do anything. 

When it was over, he had found himself in the hospital waiting room, pacing the length of it as he went over the potential outcome of the surgery. His brother had suffered greatly, that much was obvious to the Son as they loaded the two boys into the ambulance, but how much damage was done had yet to be seen. 

Someone approached the Prodigal Son while he was pacing and placed a hand on his shoulder, stopping him in his tracks. Thank you for coming home. 

Life is so cruel because Kino no Tabi is so good but I can’t even recommend the books to anyone because only the first volume was ever translated and it’s been out of print for presumably over a decade. Plus part of what makes it so good are untranslatable (into English) qualities of the Japanese language such as the general avoidance of gendering Kino. What other book has a motorcycle get into an argument with a dog

friends are currently debating whether 'lost in the citadel' or 'montero (call me by your name)' is the better solphisto song and here are the main points for each side of the argument:

"lost in the citadel works for both perspectives and their tragic yuri romance" (lines 'i need time to get up and get off the floor / i need time to realise that i can't be yours' given as main example) - jo

vs

"montero cos those two definitely want to f-" - james (perhaps better known as captain bhole)

I didn't log in on Tumblr for a week bc was busy in UNI hell and the second I came back, I heard about the data sold to AI mess and what the fuck am I supposed to do or to say lol...

Anyway, I must add that I'm not going, like, anywhere else. Am I tired of this situation? YES, trust me. I've already experienced art being stolen to be handed over to AI programs (I'm talking about you, DeviantArt) but I'm exhausted from moving from one social to another. The most fucked up thing is that even with a deactivated account, your stuff can be used to training Midjourney and shit, so… like, there's not a lot to do.

The thing that makes me mad is the way Tumblr handled this. By the way they wrote the announcement, it does feel like it has already happened, and the update was just a notice.

oswald is so hard to draw

ok i’m actually mad abt how little continuity dndads has rn like why are we doing memory stuff if we haven’t checked to make it consistent w what we’ve already said has happened ????

and also why are they seemingly determined to character assassinate ALL of the characters from s1???? up to and including the already dead ones?????

and ALSO what is even the plot anymore i feel like the world building has been so inconsistent and loosey-goosey and like that’s okay when it isn’t relevant to the plot but in this season where it IS relevant to the plot like. what are we doing???? who can or can’t travel between dimensions???? what are the limitations????

i’m just confused and annoyed i want it to be a fun show with a story that you can follow again but lately it’s been just a mess. still fun ofc because all five of them are just fun to listen to but like. i have not been able to make any sense of what the fuck is going on for like a solid 4 episodes now and i’m just disheartened about it. it’s gone off the rails but not in a hehehaha funny fun way.

one thing im noticing on the rewatch of lazarus that i didn’t really process the first time is how old everybody is in theory, especially shiv. he’s been aware of the loops for longer than presumably any of them except the boss lady wes, so mentally he could be god knows how old, and does that count? how does he measure his age, if he even bothers to?

in episode four when we get his backstory, the first thing you see is him as a toddler having learned to talk “overnight” bc he retained the knowledge of the loop that his parents didn’t -- but physically he hadn’t aged at all. so what does that mean for him as he grows up? by the time he starts taking advantage of the loops to win money on horse races he’s physically a teenager, but theoretically he could already be much older -- did he keep count of the extra months that he experienced? or did he consider himself reset to his previous age each time? was he stuck in puberty for longer than anyone else around him, still physically affected by hormone imbalances and mood swings long into (technically) his 20s?

when he’s recruited to the lazarus project, is he a young adult or a teenager? there’s nothing immediately youthful about the actor of adult shiv’s face but in a couple of scenes, especially the flashbacks to when things went wrong with rebrov, there’s these moments where he comes across as young compared to the rest of them -- if he was recruited to this paramilitary organisation when he was physically younger than 20, is that gonna stick with him and affect him the same way even he wasn’t mentally that young anymore? from what we see it seems like he went straight from living with his parents to doing this with no chance to live a real, normal life at any point either way. so he could theoretically be decades older than any of the other agents recruited later than him, but without any of their real world life experience.

which is especially interesting in contrast to george, like in the very first episode shiv insists that they’re not the same because he’s been aware of the loops since birth, and that means shiv is both incalculably older than george but also has never gotten to experience half of the things george has, like going to uni or interviewing for a job or being in a normal relationship

My humble ‘what if da2 was in absolution style’ offering bc i am feeling Very Normal about my favourite DA game

guys what if i want to make my own apollo justice game.