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reepiblog · 11 months

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Chat GPT couldn’t write My Immortal

So the fun thing about Chat GPT is that is the worst writer I have ever interacted with, but it is bad in a special unique way that a full decade of over-involvement on a bad fanfic forum could not have prepared me for. I legitimately think My Immortal is better written in most ways (except technically obvs). Maybe I just hate the feeling of getting thru several paragraphs and realizing I’ve read basically nothing, idk, but at least My Immortal is interesting and sometimes things happen in it. I can’t even prompt Chat GPT into giving me outfit descriptions that are as good as Tara’s! I’ve tried! So for shits and giggles I prompted Chat GPT to write like Tara. The best part was I phrased it like a question so it responded with “OMG!!111 I can totally do that for you!” But overall it did a pretty shitty job. I thought I would share anyway.

Part I

First I tried to get it to describe a character’s outfit, as mentioned. It started okish but without and of the characteristic bad grammar and spelling errors:

So, like, his outfit was, like, so edgy and gothic, it was like a total masterpiece of dark fashion. His go-to look was a black turtleneck, which hugged his rock-hard bod in all the right ways,

Chat GPT loves to just fixate on one aspect of the prompt you give it, so it couldn’t help but regurgitate a phrase I used in the most awkward way it could:

And OMG, let's talk about his pants, or should I say "pant-adjacent abomination"? LOL!

But eventually it became less Tara and more like a parody of gen Z:

The fabric, in all its darkness, flowed and draped in this super cool way, embracing the curves and angles of his legs. It was like fashion magic, I tell you!

But the best part? The lower part of the pants had all these intricate pleats and folds. They, like, embraced his leg structure and gave his outfit this rebellious and avant-garde vibe.

It was a fashion statement that screamed, "I'm unique, I'm fierce, and I'm ready to kick some serious ass!

The fabric had this rad texture, adding that extra touch of awesomeness to his ensemble. It was a fusion of practicality and personal style, showing the world that Gargoyle was not just a badass protector but a fashion icon in his own right.

As if Tara would ever use the word “avant-garde”. Or “vibe” for that matter.

It did end with my favorite touch tho:

It was a style statement that only a true goth queen like him could pull off with such dark grace.

OK Chat GPT, you got me there. It’s still wrong, but I like it.

Part II

Next I gave it a completely different prompt from something I’ve been working on. This one is like one of those Korean webtoons where people die and get reincarnated as their younger selves but Chat GPT took a couple creative liberties (surprisingly rare, but always a delight):

Wretch woke up, feeling soooo goffik and angsty. He sat up in his bed, his long, black hair cascading around his pale face. He looked around the room, which was still a dark and brooding place, just like he left it. But something was off. He felt strange, like he was trapped in a bad fanfiction crossover. He touched his long, silky hair, shocked to find it was no longer jet black but now a shimmering shade of silver. "What the hell?" he muttered to himself, his voice deep and mysterious.

He got out of bed and stood in front of the mirror, his black eyeliner perfectly applied. He gasped when he saw his reflection. Staring back at him was a much younger version of himself, no older than 10 years old. His face was chubby and innocent, so different from his usual brooding and menacing appearance. "How the f*** did this happen?" he mumbled, running his fingers through his hair, which was no longer slicked back but loose and flowing.

I’m not sure why getting younger changed his hair color, but ok. The My Immortal-ness of it is so obviously surface level tho. IDK if it is as clear when you ask it to pretend to be Stephan King or whatever, but here is it pretty clear it’s only picking up on a couple key traits.

The weird thing about this one is it must be getting some of its information about how to write this from parodies because the meta “jokes” don’t stop coming:

Was this some kind of twisted nightmare or a poorly written plot twist?

The realization hit him like a poorly spelled Avada Kedavra.

Umm, excuse me, but Tara would never. One thing I will give it tho, its extremely awkward use of swears, especially from adult figures, is very good:

Valorous turned to face Wretch, a look of confusion on his face. "Wretch? What's going on? Why do you look like a f***ing child?

Wretch scowled at Valorous, his dark eyes narrowing. "I don't know what the f*** is happening, but Verity's here, and I need to find her. This could be our chance to finally end this endless war and... maybe even find love or some s***," he said, his voice laced with a hint of doubt.

This also ends on a pretty good note:

But seriously, what the

Yeah, I agree.

#harry potter #my immortal #tara gilesbie #chat gpt #writing #creative stuff

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fortheloveofexy · 1 year

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🕯️ 💥 💞 (@stabbyfoxandrew's main)

I just noticed there are two 🕯 questions on the ask game. Not sure which one you meant so I will just answer both!

🕯️how do you think engaging with each other through tumblr, twitter, comments, kudos, creates healthy fandom experiences? How do you deal with that if you're not a social person/experience social anxiety?

I think that positive engagement with fandom can really be a powerful motivator. Part of it is the dopamine hit you get from making something good that a lot of people like, but I also think that even just the smallest positive interaction with others can really build friendship and community.

I have friends whom I've known for years now, and our friendship started because we both agreed Andrew is beefy and got very loud and passionate about it! I have friends whom I only got to know because I was a new fandom author in need of beta readers. Hell, I've made friends with people because we were excited to talk about the omegaverse!

I think the important thing with fandom interactions is to remember that there is a full and complete human behind every username, and that fandom-related stuff is only as serious as you want it to be.

🕯️was there a fic that was really hard on you to write, or took you to a place you didn't think it would take you?

Of all the fics I've written, More Than Words has been the hardest by far. I decided going into this fic that I wanted to incorporate a lot of elements and experiences from my own childhood into it, and that includes both good and bad experiences.

It has required that I examine memories and emotions I've long since tucked away, and that has been both deeply painful and extremely cathartic. Each chapter is emotionally exhausting to write, but it feels necessary to do so, both because I think it will help me process some shit and because I feel like it's a story that needs to be told.

💥find your least kudos'd fic - say something wonderful about it.

I'm gonna narrow this down to least kudos'd completed fic because I know there are some people who hold off on leaving kudos until a work is finished. So let's talk about And Baby, I'll Shut Up.

I'm actually quite happy with this one. It was a gift for my dear friend @halfpintpeach. I've never tried to write a fic based on a song before, so it was an interesting challenge to try an incorporate the lyrics and shape the themes of the song into a workable plot. In the end it's a very simple little fic, but I like the imagery and the prose quite a bit, so I'm happy with how it turned out.

💞what's the most important part of a story for you? the plot, the characters, the worldbuilding, the technical stuff (grammar etc), the figurative language

For me, it's the characters, always. I find that things like plot, worldbuilding and grammar cease to matter if your characters are not relatable, if not loveable. I love it when characters feel like fleshed out, real people, like friends I've never met and yet deeply know.

My technical writing is merely okay. I don't get too stressed about things like grammar - so long as it's readable and not distracting, I don't much care. I could spend ages perfecting it but really, it's not a big deal. The only thing I am really particular about is spelling, but that's because I personally find it distracting.

In my opinion, my prose is more serviceable than beautiful, and I'm okay with that. It's something I'd like to get better at in the long term, but honestly I think my prose being on the simpler side sometimes works in my favor, bc it means my writing is really approachable and easy to read.

It might not have the most interesting or stimulating turns-of-phrase, but I do think it lends itself to telling a story that just sucks you in. If prose is a window through which a story is viewed, then my window is floor to ceiling glass - its simple and unobtrusive, it does not stand out so it does not get in the way.

#asks #ask crow

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guysgreys · 2 years

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mainstees · 2 years

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dilfhakyeon-moved · 6 years

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So I'm a sucker for JackCrutchie and saw your amazing headcanons, got any ideas of how their first date would go (canon era)? No worries if you don't want to do this!

two poor boys ? on a date ? in 1899 ?

yes

two for sure

i’m so done with my writing but accept all these gays

Jack hadn’t wanted this, but Crutchie had insisted. ‘I’ll pay,’ he said. ‘We can afford it ! We deserve that, I thinks.’

That’s what he’d said - now it was the evening, after a long uneventful day, and at this point he was just waiting next to the lodging house, his foot tapping nervously against the ground. He’d hoped Crutchie wouldn’t be too late, but it seemed he was taking his time… oh, oh– maybe he should go get him ? Maybe he was in danger.

… No. He was getting anxious for no reason. Crutchie would be fine, they’d won the strike, they… everything was fine. Life was a bit better. Not perfect, but better, and they’d be just fine, everything… god.

“Hey, Jack !”

The light voice rang, getting Jack’s head to perk up in its direction.

Of course, it was Crutchie, but he wasn’t alone ; the confusion was obvious on Jack’s face. Why was… someone else there ? What was this about ? Was Crutchie about to–

“I’d thunk it’d maybe be dangerous if we went together,” Crutchie began explaining, a gentle smile on his face to maybe appease his now boyfriend. “ ‘Cause we’re boys. But if we’s three, then it’s less suspicious.”

Oh… Clever. Jack’s gaze went back to the third boy’s face, and he gave a nod.

“Well, uh… thanks, Dave.”

A smile was lying on the taller teen’s face, perhaps a bit absent-mindedly. “No problem. Just helping two fellas out.”

That was reassuring. With Davey there, they could always get out of a situation anyway, right ? And they’d earned that small, peaceful time. Even if they weren’t alone, that was fine. That was good enough, especially since they were going to go out in public. Not that they’d be looked at, but security first.

“Okay, let’s get goin’ !”

And they went ; but as they began heading to that bar thing Crutchie had chosen, Jack couldn’t help but notice the… sort of sad look in their friend’s eyes. Sadness ? No, he was miserable. He was hurting, and Kelly wasn’t blind.

But he said nothing yet, and the date went well.

After spending a whole evening flirting and cracking jokes, Jack and Crutchie pretty much staying the same as always despite the growing, obvious discomfort in their friend’s stance, they had to head home.

But Jack was… drunk. And drunk Jack didn’t make the best decision.

There he was, slinging one arm around Crutchie’s shoulders, his other arm around Davey’s - who flinched at that -, with a huge grin on his face.

“ ‘t was a good evenin’, wasn’t it ?”

He got a nod from Davey, and a sleepy hum from Crutchie. Good, good reactions.

“So, fellas, I’d got this thing I’d thunk about an’ it’s interestin’, I… thinks.”

“Youse drunk, ‘s always interesting,” Crutchie replied, with a sort of slurred speech too.

But they were both drunk, and neither of them noticed just how… flustered Davey had gotten, from that arm around his shoulders. They were busy being themselves, and being drunk, being gay. Well, maybe a bit more for Jack.

“So like I’s said it’s interestin’, Dave, listen… listen. I thinks that uh, we… the Heads o’ the Newsboys, their dads…”

The taller teen was anxious, sure, but also mildly concerned.

“… should be, all official dads, together.”

Crutchie giggled. “What’s that mean ?”

“Means like, I can… I can kiss both when I wants ! An’ they can do that too, an’ all…”

Clearly, only Davey wasn’t drunk, and only he was completely embarrassed. Perhaps not embarrassed, but he was at the very least on the verge of tears. This was quite overwhelming ; did Jack mean that ?

“I– Jack, I think that uh, you’re… drunk. A- and, you need to sleep ! Yes, sleep, um… you can both sleep over, I guess, like– like I’ll sleep on the floor or… with Les, I don’t know, but… I’ll give you my bed.”

He managed to stutter. Yes, that’s what good friends do… and he totally wasn’t head over heels for both his friends ! One of them who was now joking about dating him, aha… great.

“ ‘Dunno, David, that sounds cool to me. Ya got a nice face, you’re a good friend…” The blond to Jack’s side began mumbling, keeping his soft sleepy grin. “We could be official Newsdads.”

Fucking cheesy, God. Who would even think of writing or saying such bull ?

“Yea, right, Dave– Let’s be Newsdads !” Jack added.

Stop repeating that word, for Heaven’s sake.

“I think… I think that we should be Newsasleep right now,” Davey only muttered, cursing at himself. Newsasleep was so cursed.

Except they all woke up in Davey’s bed, and all cuddling too. Davey woke up last, to make things easier ; Crutchie and Jack simply had decided to keep lying down with him by his sides, sometimes exchanging a few words about a headache and a certain bedmate.

Is bedmate cursed too ?

Either way, that was how Jack and Crutchie’s first date had gone. Well, he could honestly be proud of himself ! He’d… saved the day, and nothing had gone wrong. He could pat himself on the back, and act like none of that drunk foolishness had happened.

“Your eyes’ open, Dave.”

Ah, shit.

“My head hurts, Dave. Kiss it better.”

Don’t be a whiny baby, Jack.

( Davey kissed his forehead better. )

“Hey, Dave, can I get one too ?”

Charles Morris, why ?

( Davey kissed Crutchie’s forehead better too. )

This was exhausting. He’d just woken up, and he had to go through these two boys’ shenanigans. Did he deserve it ? Absolutely not. This was slanderous.

“The offer still stands, Dave–”

“Look, stop sayin’ my name, I get it, you’re… talkin’ ‘a me.”

Frustration, embarrassment and longing all in one. He felt bad, because… hey, he wanted this, okay ? These two boys ? The lights of his life. Working with the newsies was fun, but it would’ve never been worth it without Jack and Crutchie’s smiles, jokes and all the good times they’d spent together. But they loved each other, was this fair ? Was he allowed to… join in ?

“You two’re together anyways, I… We can’t be three. This ain’t right.”

“Who says we can’t be three if we wanna be three ? Two ain’t any more legal,” Crutchie retorted, somehow more awake all of a sudden.

And poor David felt defeated. The two pairs of eyes were staring at him intently, and he just couldn’t say no. Not because it was physically impossible for him to, but because he just couldn’t bring himself to. He didn’t want to.

He wanted to accept.

“… Sure you’re not just feelin’ bad for me ?”

“Sure.”

“Sure ?”

“Just said it, punk.”

“Hey–”

“C’mon, Dave. We ain’t messin’ with ya. Crutch’s been talkin’ bout ya anyways, so…”

“I–”

“Please ! We’s a power trio.”

“I was gonna say yes.”

“Oh.”

“Cool.”

And that’s how it went. Then there was silence. Eventually, Jack and Crutchie kissed, then sat up. Each of them leaned in, one after the other, to offer Davey one too. And while Davey was much shyer than they were, there was no less love in his affections. They were all together now, and they were going to own it.

i had forgotten about my tag list i’m so sorry dhfkgjdfg

Tagged: ( y’all probably already saw it but like i wanna do it right )

@well-the-kids-do-too@racetrackcook@i-got-personality@imjusttheoutgoingsidekick@thatfancyclam@we-dont-sell-papes@ben-cook-can-cook@not-your-cigar@fuckinviral@jackhasdreams@racescoronas

#jackcrutchie #javid #davey/crutchie #what are they called #jack kelly #davey jacobs #crutchie morris #newsies #fanfic #what have i done #its full of bad grammar and bad phrasing and bad writing #but im french and sixteen and kinda tired now so #dont... @ me

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dopposhusband · 4 years

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I know you've posted a few of your AUs already, but do you have any more you'd like to share? They're usually so cute, so I just wanted to know ^^ Of course, you don't just have to post the cute and domestic stuff, but anything that comes to mind! But you don't have to do this at all, if you don't want to!

@yokairu I love AUs so much, but a lot these aren’t anything too drastic though so I hope these are still interesting to read!

💛 I made a post about it before, here, but I have an AU where Hifumi and I work as hosts together. I already have about two pages of a fic written about it but I’m not too sure if I want to make it a one-shot or a series.

💛 There’s also another AU I have with Hifumi with the same basic idea, however, I’m working at a rival host club that’s starting to slowly take the spotlight over his own. Their usual costumers have slowly started visiting us and not use to being second place, the hosts decide to send Hifumi to do some undercover recon. Well, at least as undercover as you can get with someone like Hifumi... He drags poor Doppo into it and the two show up on my shift, requesting me for the night since I was currently the popular pick. Our club is significantly different from Hifumis on the fact that his works more on realistic escapism while our focus is on otherworldly fantasy such as demons, living dolls, and other magical boys. My specific role is an incubus which included a very nicely stylized uniform with horns and sharp nails to boot! When Hifumi came his plan was originally to establish his host dominance by out-flirting with me and maybe riling up some of our costumers over the fact that THE GIGOLO was here. However, the plan started to backfire when I wouldn’t react negatively to it and it didn’t help that maybe, just maybe, Doppo was getting a lil crush on the me, the rival host. The next night, I would show up to his host club because I genuinely thought the reason he came was to support me rather than anything negative, so I came to support him too! - 🍛💜 I haven’t grasped the timeline for Hypmic just yet, so forgive me if this kinda butchers it. I originally thought of this AU after playing Long Gone Days which I really loved.

When the war had originally broke out extra soldiers were sent out to help Japan fight back the Party of Words in an attempt to prevent their spread. I worked as a combat medic and sent to the troops that needed it most, which just happened to be Rios. Luckily, it had been his though because I knew no Japanese and relied on the few people who knew English to help me with understanding orders. The first time I met Jakurai was after the raid on his hospital, I had originally defied my troop’s orders to help them, arguing that all medical areas should be considered neutral territory. Luckily, medics have become a vital resource so I was let go with just a harsh hit from the butt of my commanding officer’s rifle and left behind. When I awoke, I rushed to the targeted hospital with the plan on helping any civilians and doctors harmed, only to find my team downed. There I met the Doctor himself alongside Ramuda and I was flooded with panic on how these two could take out an army. I explained my situation to Jakurai since he was the only fluent English speaker of the two and he ended up looking over my head injury. I helped him however I could in return for what my team had done to his patients and promised not to report their involvement with my teams deaths. In the timeline of the main plot, I live with Rio, making medicine and soaps as he does the hunting and cooking. He also has to fight solo for all the raids we get on our base since he was the only one between us that had high enough qualifications to be granted one of the prototype microphones. After he officially became a member of MTC, Jyuto had finally told me that the war was long over. Realizing I was basically left behind in Japan, I asked Rio to teach me Japanese so I could make a life for myself outside of the woods. While I’m learning I essentially become a groupie for MTC, until we make it to the walls of Chuuoku and I run into Jakurai for the second time. Then the story can go a multitude of ways, I haven’t decided on a main path, but the ideas I had are: staying with Rio, reuniting with Jakurai, or getting picked up by my usual team and becoming a member of a division. Sometimes I play my daydreams out like visual novels so I always have this issue!! - Then I have a few smaller soulmate AUs The rule of this AU is that you can’t see color until you’ve made contact with your Soulmate. Doppo and I were up against each other in a rap battle, going pretty hard on one another. I was getting in his face, being a little more aggressive than I normally would’ve because of the adrenaline running though me. Just barely, I skid his hand right past his cheek and we were both hit with a sudden ray of color for the briefest of moments. Finding your soulmate is usually written as such a beautiful moment but in reality, and especially when you’re in the middle of a high stakes rap battle, it has a lot of strain on a person. I mean you’re seeing color for the first time and by the person who was just rapping about how you were a loser. It was a lot and we both ended up passing out, forcing the battle into a 2v2. (Alternatively, an AU in an AU where we don’t pass out and Doppo and I feel too weird to battle the person we just found out is our soulmate, so its just awkward)

Another one is ‘whatever you draw on yourself it shows up on your soulmate’. This one isn’t too elaborate just little scenes I daydream of Doppo and I writing messages between us. A small idea I had was that Doppo and Hifumi would be writing lil messages between them and suddenly I start writing too and they just realize they have a third soulmate.

#🌺🌸#💖💛#💛#💜#🍛#As much as I talk about AUs I sure didnt write a lot here!#Im sure Ill think of a lot more as the days go or Ive just forgotten some #A lot of them I feel really inspired for but Im just really lazy when it comes to writing #I lose a bit of confidence when Im writing because its hard to tell if its coming out good because as dumb as it is to say I like my writing #so im never sure if its good or im telling myself it is #I have a whole bunch of ideas dfsldjf #My Dice fic #My matenrou carnival date fic #My matenrou gambling win fic #beach day with matenrou fic #that gentaro fic #sjdlfjsdlfjlj brain full!!!#Sorry if this is hard to read spacing wise #Ive been trying to get better at formatting long text so it doesnt come out blocky but idk #Sorry for any goofs in phrasing or grammar I can have such a bad time explaining my thoughts sometimes

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mercurytrinemoon · 3 years

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Me debunking astrology generalizations and misconceptions or smth idk...

Squares and oppositions aren't pure evil.

I can't believe I have to say this because I thought ya'll have learnt the characteristics of every aspect but here we are. Nothing in astrology is black and white. And I saw some ridiculous statements (not necessary here on tumblr) that said things like "if your Venus squares someone's ascendant then you don't find that person attractive AT ALL". Or "Mars square Mercury people can't speak politely and have an annoying voice". Like????? First of all, that's ridiculous. Second of all, square in not "everything bad" just like trine is not "everything amazing". Squares bring tension, which leads to motivation, they’re stimulating; sometimes excitement or charisma; sometimes they can make you overdo things. I'm not saying they're oh-so-marvelous because the challenges are still there, but they're not as bad as people paint them to be. Squares happen between two signs that are in the same modality so they have a bunch of things in common. Besides, some of them (Sagi-Pisces and Gemini-Virgo) are ruled by the same planet so there's a special type of chemistry between those (especially when applied to synastry). Oppositions work in two ways, planets either meet in the middle - opposite signs usually complete each other and fuel each other up. And worse case scenario? Natally this means being pulled in two different directions; synastry-wise, you can completely miss each other like two passing cars - so there may be some misunderstandings but I don't think that's the end of the world... And, as per usual, may be mitigated by other positive aspects.

This is me debunking other people's attempts at debunking Sun sign compatibility.

Sun IS very important but when people ask about compatibility and go with Suns... and then someone tries to be a smartass and debunk the "compatible-incompatible" and does the same thing without even realizing it. Like, "oh I actually see a lot of Aries and Pisces having amazing relationships because *insert someting that is a total stretch and refers to their Sun sign traits*"... But you seem to forget that they're neighbouring signs... which means they probably have personal planets in those neighbouring signs... which means they're compatible not because of some made-up stuff that you're trying to come up with but because their other planets are compatible with each other. But you're still feeding into the Sun sign compatibility talk. (So like, what I'm trying to also say, yes, the entire synastry chart comes into play; Also, side note, everyone can get along on some level if they’re mature enough).

Planet in a sign is NOT the same as planet in the house.

There may be some overlaps in some of the sign-houses associations (like in the overall energy; like for example, it sort of makes sense that 3rd, 7th and 11th are referred to as “air houses” because they’re the most social) but in NO WAY there are similarities between planet house position and the "ruling" sign. That association started a few decades ago and some would say that NOT linking houses with signs is a purely traditional approach. But there’s plenty of professional modern astrologers with 20/30/40-year experience who still differentiate between sign/house position... because they know (and have learnt along the way) that there’s a huge difference.

I'll give you 3 quick examples: Gemini planets and 3rd house planets both may put emphasis on communication, mental stimulation and gathering data. But Geminis are often scattered in their approach, they may be easily distracted, may be indecisive, may be jack of all trades and talkative jokesters. They actually hate routines and dullness. "Spice it up" is probably a Gemini's philosophy. Now 3rd house planets may indicate you actually LIKE doing things on the regular - like running errands every other day in the mornings or going to that one specific coffee shop to pick up a snack. You may actually work in logistics or as a postman (especially if your chart ruler or MC ruler is in the 3rd). Planets in the 3rd talk about your siblings, neighbours or school experiences - like having Venus in the 3rd may point to positive experiences within those areas - something Gemini Venus has nothing in common.

Venus in the 9th can study at an art/beauty or fashion school (or even teach there if the MC is involved); can be very attached to spiritual and religious matters; can also find love in a foreign land. But imagine it being in Taurus - rather shy, needing those stable values to feel secure, being an exceptionally great student at that art school thanks to its domicile. Venus in Sagittarius on the other hand, likes adventure, things being shaken up from time to time, lightheartedness and exploration. But what if we flip the scenario and that Sag Venus is in the 2nd house. This can denote earing money through travelling and looking for ways to expand but in a financial matters.

Continuing with the Venus examples, having Venus in Aries is completely different than Venus in the 1st. What do people usually say about Venus in the 1st? That it makes the native charming, lovely, well-put together, with great manners, maybe beautiful, graceful, maybe a bit shallow. When in Aries? None of these characteristics fit, on top of that, it's in its detriment. Our poor gal Venus is uncomfortable and confused in Aries. She's like, "conquer? Swords? Selfishness? Obnoxiousness? Sparring? You're telling me to fight people? What am I doing here???"

And I'll leave you here with that cause those examples weren’t that quick lol and in fact, I could give you a 100 of those. Besides, this actually inspired a 3-page rant that I've already posted not so long ago that you can read HERE.

There's no such thing as "more accurate" astrology.

Both western and vedic are valid. Both can show you the same things. JUST KEEP THEM SEPARATE AND DON'T MIX THEM WITH EACH OTHER. And don't say things like "sidereal shows your soul" - omg I saw this statement soooo many times, who the hell even came up with this?! Actually, if anything, it's the modern western approach that "psychologized" (yea I just made up a word, you mad?) astrology while Jyotish still sticks to the very real "here and now", sometimes fatalistic predictions of how exactly your life is going to roll out... But hey, reach for hellenistic methods and they can tell you the same things, just with different tools. So no, they do not show different things, it's just their language is different.

If you say you don't identify with your chart then you're just reading it wrong.

This partially connects to the last one in some ways... Switching to a different astrology or different charts is not a solution. Learn how to read your natal. If you say it doesn’t describe you, I can guarantee you that you haven’t studied it properly. (Now this hasn't turned into a rant yet but I may actually do a whole-ass post on this because if I start elaborating on it now I'll end up with another 3-page essay).

Learn how and when to generalize. Also learn how to take generalizations.

I understand that you have to pick up on every single thing separately in order to put everything together. It's like learning a new language: first you need to learn individual words and then you need to know the proper grammar to create a full sentence. This is 100% understandable and necessary, but it's important to take the entire thing into consideration. And this goes for all branches of astrology, but I guess it's especially annoying with synastry. This, again, comes down to the very black and white approach. You know, like when you see those long paragraphs where people elaborate on all the intricacies of Venus-Pluto aspects or whatever as if that one thing was determining the entire relationship between two people. (Side note, no shade but some of ya'll should start writing fiction or poetry cause the amount of fluffy speech and waffle that I see floating around here on tumblr is insane sometimes). Why are you wording everything as a make it or break it type of situation? And on the receiving end - learn how to take *properly phrased* generalizations constructively. Example: it IS a rule that Aries is a competitive one, maybe you're not one of them (for many reasons) but don't make a fuss about someone saying this. It IS a basic rule that energies of the same sign in two people are going to get along (well that depends on the planets involved but I digress), if that, for some other reasons, doesn't apply to you, don't go yelling that it's bullcrap because you hate people of the same sign. You know? Like, learn the difference.

DON'T SCARE PEOPLE WITH ASTROLOGY.

I had a mini-rant on this one a while ago, but I think this deserves a constant reminder (and refers to the last point), I don't want to see any more posts that would say things like "xxx house placements will bring you suffering" or "stay away from people with planets in your xxx house" or, even worse, making a (completely untrue btw) prediction based on one single thing like "someone with so-and-so aspect is going to harm you". And you're so casual about it??? You know there are sensitive people in the world. Learn some ethics. Learn some counseling skills. Don't be ignorant. Don't throw these random stuff at people just like that. And learn some actual astrology cause most of these aren't even closely describing that particual aspect. LIKE WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.

Ok now I'm pissed again.

Studying astrology and believing in free will doesn’t go well together.

It's not just psychological and spiritual. It's useful to know that western astrology made it like that because there were still people threatening astrologers for using it as a divination tool. So they moved away from the predictive/deterministic aspect of it. Now, I'm not here to change anyone's beliefs cause that's a very personal thing that everyone should develop on their own. But once you start diving deeper into astrology you'd notice that there's a heavy emphasis on fatedness and things being predetermined. That includes both the good and the bad stuff and you should learn to accept that. And with the bad things specifically, let's not excuse it with some "oh that was an opportunity for growth". Like yea, maybe, occasionally??? But just acknowledge that sometimes things happen not because there was a deeper meaning in them... but because you have a Pluto-Mars conjunction in the 6th that makes an applying square to your chart ruler and you were going through a profection year where Mars was your time lord and it transited that chart ruler while making a conjunction with Neptune so you were attacked by a baby crocodile while swimming and it bit off your toe and you got a nasty infection and that’s it (I just made that up btw, I don't actually know anyone who was attacted by a crocodile). So like, sometimes shit just happens and there's nothing psychological about it. Also, I bet your free will didn't want to be attacked by that croc.

#thank you for coming to my ted talk #that was supposed to be short #i can never keep it short #you know how many ideas i had for that house-sign differences?!#i could write an entire book #also i may do a part two #some day #astrology #mercurytrinemoon

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winterhawk-olympic-bang · 3 years

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How To Edit Your Writing

Guest Poster: Chronicwhimsy

Here is our final Writer Workshop post, written by Chronicwhimsy. Have a read and then head over to the Discord Server where we have a channel for you to take part in a discussion based on the post, with chances to share your own ideas too.

Editing: a drive-by guide

Hi, my name is Claire, and I’m an editor.

(Hi Claire)

I’ve been asked to give a quick guide on tips for editing your stories, as I’ve been a beta/editor for various fanfic writers over the years. I’m a professional editor, working for a publishing house in the UK, and I offer independent freelance editing too, via my website. I’ll be on the Discord server answering questions this evening, but I’m also happy to chat to people either through my website or even if you wanted to drop me a line on tumblr.

The key thing to remember about editing is that the end goal is to make your story the best it can be, and make sure your initial idea comes across as clearly and purely as you first imagined it. It’s about ensuring that the lines of communication between you and your reader are 100% open.

To do that, you need to have finished your story, because you can’t fix something that doesn’t exist.

Then you edit.

What now?

So, you’ve finished your Winterhawk Olympic Bang Fic, and you’re wondering what to do next?

The very first, and most important thing you should do? Celebrate. I mean congratulate the hell out of yourself, pat yourself on the back, and have some cake. Finishing stories is hard. Getting through a first draft is one of the trickiest parts of writing, so you should be proud of yourself, and proud of your story.

Because in a short while, editing is going to make you hate both.

I mean that in the nicest possible way of course, but you absolutely are going to be thoroughly sick of this whole thing by the time you’re done, and you’re going to question everything you’ve ever written. You’re going to get a close-up view of all your narrative bad habits which will make you think you’ve never had any skill at all, and you’re going to re-read your work so many times that it’ll feel trite, old, uninspired. This is normal and it is your brain lying to you. If you remember nothing else, remember that!

“The writing itself is no big deal. The editing, and even more than that, the self-doubt, is excruciatingly impossible.” Jonathan Safran Foer

Don’t lose faith! Editors and editing exist for a reason, no first draft is perfect. You’ve done something amazing in finishing, and now you’re going to make it incredible.

Before You Start - Take a Break

You know the phrase “can’t see the wood for the trees”? It could just as easily be “can’t see the story for the words.” It’s never recommended to go straight into editing as soon as you finish writing, and part of the reason for that is because you’re too deep in the story to be able to assess it objectively, or to catch things that are missed out because you know they’re there, but the reader wouldn’t.

“Once it's done, put it away until you can read it with new eyes. When you're ready, pick it up and read it, as if you've never read it before.” Neil Gaiman

Most writers and editors advocate putting a story away for a month or so before returning to edit, so you’re looking at it with fresh eyes. Obviously, with a Big Bang (or other fic event) this sort of time is usually at a premium! Try and make as much space as you can while still leaving yourself time to edit.

If you really don’t have any time, one trick that can help is changing your location. If you write in your room, can you relocate to your kitchen? Or a café (if you can safely)? Could you print it out? (Printing Top Tip: if you do print it, try and do it double-spaced - this makes it easier on the eyes, and gives you room to make notes. Also, serif fonts can often be easier to read than sans serif fonts, as it gives stronger distinctions between different letters.)

The Filter System

I like to think of the editing process as a series of different filters which, when used one after the other, produce a finely-sieved finished product. Each filter stage has slightly smaller holes than the one before it, as you look increasingly closely at your work.

Filter 1: Structural editing

Does the story make sense? Is the pace okay? Do all the scenes work where they are, or would they be better elsewhere? Do some scenes need to be there at all? Is the characterisation consistent? Does anyone change names halfway through? Did you forget what time of year it was set halfway through?

Filter 2: Line editing

Is this phrase as tight as it could be? Have you repeated yourself anywhere? Does this sentence add anything or does it throw the pace off? Have you gone overboard with adjectives and similes? Have you been too sparse with them?

Filter 3: Copy editing

Is your style consistent? Did you start writing in present tense and switch to past tense? Could this scene transition be snappier? Are there any bits that you want to tidy up? Have you left any half-finished sentences because you got distracted before you could end it?

Filter 4: Proofreading

Is everything spelled correctly? Have you caught all the strange grammar mistakes?

Some of these things might be picked up by your beta reader if you have one. Different beta readers have different styles, and also they will work based on their relationship with you and what you prefer. Some may stick to proofreading and consistency-checking, others may be more confident to dive right in and look at structure, pacing and characterisation. Some may work through the process with you as you write, others may only look at the story when it’s complete so they can get a full overview. There is no right or wrong answer, and having a conversation with your beta about your respective styles at the start can help you work better together!

Filter 1 - Structural Editing

For this stage, you want to read your whole story through from start to finish, and resist the urge to tweak anything to begin with! You will want a way of making notes as you go through because as you do, you’ll make yourself a cheat-sheet to help you with your line edit. Things to keep track of:

Character name spellings

Character ages

Character relationships (drawing a relationship web can be very helpful to visualise this!)

The time span of the story - the date it starts, the date it ends.

As a subset of this, I find it can be very helpful to set up a spreadsheet with a timeline of what happens in the story, and who is involved. Doing this both chronologically for the characters and in order of how it happens in the story can help you keep track of what characters know when, and also when the readers find out certain information. You might have one of these from when you were planning your story (as detailed in Sara Holmes’ workshop). If you’ve kept it up to date with changes to the plot and structure as you’ve written, this will be super helpful.

At this stage, you’re looking to see if everything works as a consistent story. You want to check to see if it feels like it’s the right pace, or if there are bits where it drags or rushes through the action. Why is this? Are there scenes which aren’t adding anything to the progress? Could they just be referred to in passing, or removed entirely without impacting the story? Are there other scenes which need to be added to provide more detail and growth? Is there anything that you as a writer know that is essential to the story, but you forgot to actually put in the text?

“Crafty writers...don't allow Exposition to form Lumps. They break up the information, grind it fine, and make it into bricks to build the story with.” Ursula K. Le Guin

You’re also looking to see if the characters feel true to themselves all the way through. Do the relationships spark? Do they sound like themselves? Can you hear them in your head?

Some people recommend doing several structural edits, with a different focus each time. One pass to look at the pacing, one pass to look at the characters, one to look at the story arc. You’ll work out what floats your boat, but you will be re-reading this story a lot of times before you’re done editing - which is why it’s very important to write what you love and want to read! You’ll go through many stages of hating this story before you let it go, and that will be even harder if it wasn’t something you enjoyed in the first place.

Filter 2 - Line Editing

So you remember I told you to make all those notes during your structural edit? Here’s where you’re going to use them. Now’s the time to go through your story line by line and check that the details in your cheat sheet are correct all the way through the story. I’ve written a novel that I initially set in November, but by the time I finished it, I’d decided it was taking place in early May. I had to go back and fix all the dates and weather descriptions to make sure the action hadn’t actually been yeeted forward six months spontaneously in the middle of a conversation.

Arguably, the line edit will be the most painful part of editing. At this stage, you will be taking a fine-tooth comb to everything you have written, examining it to within an inch of its life, and casting judgement. You’re going to find every stylistic tic you have (for me, everyone is constantly quirking their eyebrows and smirking like they’ve got cramp in their facial muscles), and you’re going to get rid of them (a person only has so many eyebrows, and they can only quirk so far). Now is the time to kill your darlings - don’t hang on to anything unless you feel it’s really doing a job to further the story and the characters.

“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings.” Stephen King

If you have ever worried about the unbearable sensation of being Known, the line edit is where you will experience that with every word, and you’ll be doing it to yourself. This is when the doubts will really start to creep in and you will maybe feel like everything you write is unoriginal, derivative trash and unfit for human eyes.

Here I’ll reiterate what I said above:

This is a normal feeling, everyone experiences it when editing. E V E R Y O N E.

It’s a lie. No-one else will ever read your story in this state, no-one else will ever read your story this closely. Of course it feels obvious and uninspired to you - you wrote it. It’s your idea, and you’ve read it several times, it holds no surprises for you. (I may be projecting my feelings from every time I’ve edited something here, but…)

You’ll also be catching any ELEPHANTS or whatever your mammal of choice for placeholder text is that you’ve stationed throughout the story as a flag for you to come back and add in a name, or a food, or a song title later. You know, the things you decided were a problem for Future!You. I have bad news, the future is now.

Top Tip: if you have changed someone’s name halfway through, DON’T for the love of Mike, just do a straight find and replace to correct it. Because that’s when you suddenly find out how many other words actually contain names (Mark became Bill? That’s great, until your characters are going to the superBillet to buy groceries). Some word processing programmes have a “whole word” option which is your friend, otherwise ensure to put spaces either side of the word when you search. If you don’t, you’ve just made another horrible job for yourself...

Filter 3 - Copy Editing

Once you’ve made it out the other side of the Line Edit (and given yourself a nice treat to congratulate yourself because that stage is HARD), we get onto copy editing. This is basically the set-dressing stage. You’ve built the house, you’ve decorated the room, and now you’re just making sure every bit of furniture is in the right place for optimal feng shui.

Here’s where you go through and go, do I really need a dash here, or could I just use a comma? Could I use fewer commas? Could I go in and move all of @kangofu_cb’s commas around because I’m the sort of person who will come into your house and change how you hang your toilet paper or where you keep your ketchup.

Now is the time to be as picky as possible, like you’re an interior designer for the most demanding client in the world and the ornament must be exactly equidistant from both ends of the mantlepiece and facing precisely south-west. Things that may have just survived your line edit will be measured again, and if they’re found wanting, then they get binned.

“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” Mark Twain

Another thing you might like to do here is check that all your features and things are correct. Did you make a wild claim about the lifecycle of salamanders, or the average price of corn and then never go back to verify this? Take a second to just do that now. It may be that you decide it’s not a problem (I received one copy edit note saying that an idiom used in a book wasn’t recorded until 200 years later, and I made the editorial decision that no-one would care), but for bigger things you may want to make sure you’re accurate.

If you google it (as I just did, to make sure I was definitely giving you the right information), copy editing is often conflated with line editing, and that’s because in reality a lot of the elements of copy editing actually wouldn’t usually be done by the author, and are probably irrelevant to fanfic. The copy editor is responsible for ensuring the book has a consistent grammatical style in line with the preferences of the publisher (em-dash or en-dash, curly quote marks or straight ones, how you deal with acronyms, what needs to be italicised, etc. etc.), which isn’t necessarily required for fanfic. In reality, for fanfic I’d use this stage as a second, lighter line-edit to see where things can be tightened up in phrasing, as well as perhaps a preliminary proofread where you start to mark up any spelling errors.

Filter 4 - Proofreading

By this stage, you’ll be exhausted, and sick to death of the blasted thing. But the end is in sight! Now you’re onto the proofread. This is another close read, where you go through and check for spelling errors, typos, missing full stops, strange formatting stuff (which probably will be less of an issue as AO3 basically makes everything uniform anyway).

Before you even start this, change your font.

We’ve all been there, thought we’d caught every spelling error, every weird typo, only to spot six immediately after posting. That’s because after a certain point our brain becomes used to the font we’ve written in, and will automatically correct things that aren’t right. AO3 has its own unique formatting - colour, spacing, font - and the minute your fic appears on there in this new format you brain wakes up and is like “oh shit, yeah, that’s not how it should be.”

By changing the font before you proofread, you preempt this step.

Another thing to remember: it’s unlikely you will ever catch every mistake. Published books regularly go out with a smattering of typographical errors throughout the text - how many first editions of books are valuable because of misspellings that slipped through the net? You’re only human.

“Connie's other job was proof-editing which she did very badly. Transferring the author's corrections to a clean sheet of proofs was something Connie was unable to do without missing an average of three corrections a page, or transcribing newly inserted material all wrong... she put angry authors' letters about the mutilation of their books under the cushion of her chair to deal with later.” Muriel Spark, A Far Cry from Kensington

Often, spelling errors and things you would look for in a proofread are things that a beta reader will pick up as they go, as they’re the easiest things to spot, but it’s also worth looking over yourself for anything your beta might have missed.

Whether you decide to follow any or all of these steps, always do the proofread last.There is no point carefully spellchecking a chapter you are then going to delete, or proofreading the whole thing, but adding loads of new paragraphs later that either don’t get looked at or mean you end up having to proofread twice. That’s the only hard and fast rule when it comes to editing, and it will save you a lot of unnecessary work!

FREEDOM

And then, finally, unbelievably - you’re done. Your literary child is ready to leave the nest. Resist the urge to keep re-reading and tweaking. Instead, click “publish” and give yourself a nice little treat. You’ve earned it.

Miscellany and Disclaimers

These editing stages are ones that would be applied to a published novel. An author would probably do this several times - once on their own to get it ready for submission, then perhaps again with their agent, but the really heavy work would be done with their editor. The structural edit would be done under the advice of an agent or editor where the author looks at their comments, rejigs things accordingly, and lather, rinse, repeat until everyone’s happy. The editor would undertake the line edit, and the author would decide what they wanted to keep or change. The copy edit and proofread would be done in-house or sent to freelancers, with queries and changes wafted past the author for clarification or approval.

Self-published authors will often hire freelancers to help at various stages to get feedback and advice.

Very rarely would an author go from draft to final published piece by doing all their editing alone. Because it’s hard fucking work, and because your brain will get exhausted.

In light of that, you need to remember:

You’ve written a fanfic

The editorial standards of fanfic are significantly less stringent than published books

Editing by yourself is really hard work that many people are often paid to do for published books

No-one is paying you for your fanfic

Fanfic is supposed to be fun

Some published authors will edit and rewrite and edit and rewrite again and again. At a panel I attended, Joanne Harris said that if she didn’t rewrite her work at least five times she was being too easy on herself, while Joe Hill said he usually aimed for three rewrites - Joe edited as he went along, going over the previous day’s pages before continuing, where Joanne completed her manuscripts before editing. Elizabeth May has talked about her stages of drafting, starting with her Trash Draft, then her Clean Draft, and then rewriting and editing after that.

These are people who are writing professionally, getting paid for their work, and so the time they put in has monetary results. If you want to write original fiction, their advice is extremely valuable.

For fanfiction, it’s a large time investment for something you’re doing as a hobby for free. If I’m strictly honest, I’m fairly lax with my fanfiction editing. I do structural discussions and tweaks with my beta reader as I write, and then a spell check. I’m also aware that my fanfics aren’t narratively complex, nor do they seem as polished, rich and deep as some of the other works out there. That’s fine by me. You simply need to find the level you’re happy at, where you can still feel proud of your work but you’re enjoying the experience.

In the end - it’s all for fun!

Resources:

Online

Curtis Brown Creative: An Editor’s Guide to Editing Your Novel

Joanne Harris: Ten Tweets About Editing

Joanne Harris: Writing Resources

NerdsLikeMe: Beta Reading vs Proofreading vs Editing

Books

Stephen King - On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Ursula K. Le Guin - Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew

#winterhawk #winterhawk olympic bang #whob #writer workshops #writer workshop: editing #guest post #chronicwhimsy

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thechekhov · 4 years

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Hello! I was wondering if you had reference points, tips, or advice on learning Japanese the right way? I know some words and phrases from watching anime over the years but I know how the language is a bit complicated and with three different ways to write it, I was curious if you had a starting point for someone who wanted to start off slow and not jump in over their head? Thanks!

Heyo. So, I’m going to try to keep this brief because I know I can very easily go off on tangents.

Advice #1 is - although listening to anime dialogue is not bad for listening practice, I would severely recommend NOT using it as source material. Many times, the ‘phrase’ you may pick up from anime is going to be slang, impolite, or just odd. It’s anime dialogue for a reason - it’s not realistic, it’s a cartoon.

Now, where CAN you learn Japanese?

Well to be honest - start with online resources! How about Duolingo?

https://www.duolingo.com/learn

I have never used it personally, but I just went on there to see what they have available, and it’s actually rather decent! Good for drilling at the very least, and as a starter, it’ll get you the practice you need.

If you want to go deeper, I recommend getting something more solid - like a textbook! If you’re super into learning it, you might get quite far using a textbook and YouTube videos!

For textbooks, I recommend Genki. It’s the most digestible one for beginners.

I don’t have YouTube channels I know of, but if you know any, please comment!

Now... is Japanese really that difficult?

Ehhhh Yes and No? Depends on what angle you look at it from.

You’re right about one thing - Japanese does have 3 separate alphabets. The first of those three is Hiragana. It looks like this:

And good news - it’s phonetic!

What the heck is ‘phonetic’?

It means one symbol (letter) has one sound. So all you gotta do is memorize which sound goes with which symbol.

This isn’t difficult. You did this for the latin alphabet.

Katakana is ALSO phonetic, and it is much like hiragana. There goes another goalpost. No problem.

‘What about the third one???‘ you ask.

Yeah, okay, fine. That one is kind of a bother. That’s kanji. The difficult thing about kanji is

They’re difficult to write because there’s typically way more complexity to them

There’s like 2000 of them you have to memorize.

They all have multiple pronunciations.

Look at this smug motherfucker. He’s not even the worst one. Kids learn about him in like, first grade.

But honestly, you don’t HAVE to learn all 2000 kanji to say ‘I speak japanese!’. People can fight me about this, I don’t care. I don’t think you need to! I can recognize roughly the first 1000 with relative ease, but still struggle with the more high-level ones. And guess what? I can still say I speak Japanese. Because... I do.

You technically don’t need to learn kanji right away. Forget about them! Wait until you have a better grasp of the language. Use hiragana and katakana first. Then, once you have the basics, you can explore kanji. And there’s apps for that.

Now, you may have seen this ‘terrifying’ post going around on Twitter and Tumblr:

And honestly, although at first I was really amused by the mapping of english word order onto other languages, after a while people’s terror gets boring.

Japanese isn’t difficult because of its word order!

Yes, most languages have different word order. And yes, when you take many lines and cross them many times, you get scary-looking complexity. Or rather, the illusion of complexity.

But realistically, Japanese word order is more flexible than English word order. And - again people can fight me on this but - Japanese grammar is actually way more straightforward and clean than English grammar! If you want to complain about grammar, complain about RUSSIAN! OR FINNISH!! You have my condolences on that front. But Japanese? No way. It’s clean-cut and elegant.

Side-note: Japanese learners - DON’T come at me with keigo, I don’t care. Keigo (respectful language form in Japanese) is, like everything, a matter of memorization. Yeah it’s complex and full of weird arbitrary rules, but plenty of Japanese people still struggle with it. Which means it’s ok for YOU to struggle with it too.

And wow, okay, yep, I went off on a tangent...

TL;DR:

How can you learn Japanese?

Use Duolingo. Memorize hiragana and katakana alphabets. Supplement with texbooks and YouTube. Go to school for it. Go abroad. Find a buddy to practice with. There are apps to meet Japanese people who want to learn English, and you can do language exchange over text or voice.

Is Japanese difficult?

No. Kanji is difficult. Japanese pronunciation and grammar is relatively straightforward for English speakers. Sure, there will be difficulties. It’s a whole ass other language! But it’s not impossible. Not with the right attitude. :)

Happy learning!

#technogeekmituna #japanese #how to #japan #linguistics #language #hiragana #kanji #langblr #chekhov answers #long post

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imdreaminadream · 3 years

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The results pt 2 ~ “What about it makes you cringe?” Category 1

( - prologue. - part 1 - category 2 - category 3)

Okay so this is the results to the question in the quiz, What about it makes you cringe. In reference to the questionnaires core subject about smut fanfics.

Also quick psa there will be a part for the results for the other question - “In kpop fics, Korean words i.e. jagiya, seem to be a no no, would you like to elaborate why?”

Now note these particular results are going to be split into 3 posts because I decided to split the results into 3 categories. 1 - Writing Aspects. 2 - Personal Preferences. 3 - Genuine Problems.

>THIS POST IS CATERGORY 1<

DISCLAIMER BELOW. (please read that before continuing)

This is going to be a long post. The responses were very enlightening but please don’t take this as an attack. Consider this more as constructive cheat sheet to good smut writing or just ignore it if you don’t agree with it. Some of this did get a bit deep appropriate trigger warnings will be put on the appropriate posts but I’m not sorry it got deep fics can also affect real life as much as we wish it were something that didn’t mix in with real life, it does. I’m no official like sex guru or big-time writer, or what ever BUT I did add little advice underneath each answer, which are just a reflection of the people’s answers. Again if you don’t like the sounds of this don’t take it personal and click off.

Writing aspects.

Poorly written/typos – Nearly all of the people said that, poorly written, bad grammar and lots of typos made them cringe. Answers said that sometimes works are so poorly written it comes across as though the person writing doesn’t know how sex works. Now by poorly written they talked about, the plot being non sensical, choppy or lacking decent grammar, too many typos, using words in the wrong context, repetitive language. They also specified they understand not everyone’s first language is English but the least that can be done is proofreading of the works by them or someone else. And many people cried over the use of first person, they felt it brings them out of imagining the fic.

Language used – So they we’re talking about strange words for body parts especially genitals, and just weird terms and phrases in general. Regarding body parts, everyone mentioned that childish or full-on scientific names for genitals was the worst. Feedback suggests calling it a dick, cock – although some commented that cock sounded too vulgar, and pussy. Also referring to female’s arousal as juices was a common answer, to quote one of my fav answers “so none of that her juices coated my fingers’ Like bitch it aint orange juice.” Then for weird terms and phrases, no specific example was given but I’m certain they meant things that literally every man and their dog would not say, ever! Personal opinion here but, “you like what you see?” and “Your wish is my command.”, and “tongues fighting for dominance.” should die off. It’s overused and I’m sick of seeing it – pretty sure no one says that during sex in real life anyway.

So, to avoid it alls you need to do is use second or third person, proofread, and learn how sex works if you don’t know. Also, best way to proofread it to leave it a few days then come back and read it again – also there are apps like Grammarly that help with your writing too. (PSA I personally love proofreading work, because I’m weird like that, so if you ever want me to proofread drop me a message/anon.)

So, take a moment to consider what you are writing, again proofreading is very helpful, and just stick to the mature ways to say dick/pussy. Suggestion here if you can’t write it the mature way, stop writing smut fics because clearly you’re either not mature enough or uncomfortable (to be) writing smut.

Dialogue – Too much dialogue and not enough action cropped up a number of times. Also that the dialogue written is cringy essentially, Then there was too much dirty talk, and dirty talk that shouldn’t even be considered dirty talk which commented a lot in regards to dialogue. And although I think I wrote about this answer previously but weird words, exaggeration, and choppiness in the dialogue. (someone commented over use of buzzword but idk what buzzwords are.) May I also personally add that written fake stutters irritate the living day lights out of me just stop.

---- I actually did another questionnaire about this, it didn’t garner same amount as this one but it gained a good few responses. The answers should be available to see, if you want you can take a look at that to see more about people thoughts when it comes to dirty talk in fics. ----

Advice is, keep in mind when writing dirty talk what sounds good, to plausible, to terrible. Just think about what sounds realistic as well, draw on your own experiences or what you want to be said to you. Also, if you don’t find it sexy don’t write it for everyone else’s sake or to fit in with the trend, stay true to yourself but try to vary it up for each fic you write.

No build up – They talked about how some fics go straight to the dicking down, to action, with no build up or a bit of sensical plot, and it doesn’t work. Or if the characters haven’t even talked and suddenly, they’re down to fuck. They expressed it doesn’t make sense and doesn’t feel like the characters are even that interested, as though they’re fucking for the sake of fucking. This also ties in with some comments that said sometimes people fail to remember smut isn’t just about being railed, it is also about connections with people and making love so going straight to the fucking, fails to make the reader want to continue reading.

The solution to this is to reference history/tension or build up the tension between characters, or just set the scene a little bit before getting straight into it. Also remember no one is having sex without some foreplay and if they are it isn’t very good, so don’t let it be like that in your writing.

Lack of realism/inaccuracies – Okay so this was mainly in regard to sex, the way the body works and some scenarios. To elaborate, people said that there are just some sex positions and places to have sex that just don’t work. In example one person wrote how sex in a gaming/office chair doesn’t work well and they know through personal experience. So, for the readers it’s just super unrealistic that it happens, and it leaves the reader either fixated on figuring out how that is possible or cringing because they know it’s not possible rather than reading the rest of the fic. There’re also just some ways the body doesn’t work I’m not going to go through examples there are so many, but we all know what is meant. Also, I’ll mention that kinks also were apart of the lack of realism, I’ll talk more about that in the next post.

So, based on this the only thing I can say is keep it real and keep it accurate as possible. Like we know its fiction but consider how ridiculous some of the stuff you’re writing may be, how impossible it is. Just don’t be afraid to google things – you can actually freeze and delete your search history – to double check or educate yourself about. Or ask for advice, draw from experience, or maybe try it out yourself with or without your partner then reflect that in your writing.

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

END OF CATERGORY 1

(Feel free to discuss in comments, in my messages or send anons or anything like that if you want.)

Tag list

@nctsworld, @lauraneuuh, @jooniyah, @ceoofxiaojun, @lovemayble @hyucksie @myelle-n

- if anyone else wants to be tagged for the next parts let me know via anon or dm -

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mejomonster · 2 years

Text

Probably "bad" writing advice that I'm putting down because hey it reminds me to not give up:

Worse things than u will ever be able to write, have been published.

Write what you want to write

It's okay to have a first draft, to not be perfect the first time. You can cut and edit things later, just write

U want to write the stories u want to tell. Even if it's not perfect, at least if it's written out in any form at all, it exists in the real world where it can no longer get lost like in memory

That includes notes, headcanons, summaries, dialogue snippets, doodles etc. Anything that exists is a part of it that won't get lost anymore if you forget, and is worthwhile

There are written things that exist that did far less fact checking than you, and sometimes that's even the point lol. So if you don't know how exactly silk is made and have to gloss over it, or cant figure out the exact clothes in fashion in X year and just make a guess, worry about it later. There are tv shows where swords don't even remotely swing at yhe target and call them fights, where injuries don't remotely work realistically, and there's still people who love them. Forgive yourself if you want to write something like the xena nerve pinch or Vulcan neck pinch and have no idea how to make it remotely feasible. Just write ur dang idea.

Stop worrying about your writing style. Period. Stop it. Again: ANYTHING WRITTEN is better than it only stored in your head. U can always rewrite later. But if you don't start, its still easy to lose parts of the story cause they never get recorded.

Same goes for grammar: STOP worrying about it. 1 because I guarantee the little irks you keep being unsatisfied with, worse has been published. 2 because a majority of grammar errors can be fixed later. Tense can be fixed later. Awkward wording can be fixed later, punctuation and typos and weird phrases can be fixed later. Don't remember the word for boulder? It's OK just write Really Big Rock and move on. Later in editing maybe you'll remember the word. Even if you don't - I've seen messier things still end up beloved

If you don't know a word or the right phrase you want just make something up or settle for an awkward alternative or skip it. Don't worry about perfection until it's already written and exists. If you don't know what exactly to do for a scene? Write a summary, or a note of what happens, or just full on skip it. Maybe you don't need it. Maybe a summary is enough. Maybe it will come to you later. Just don't feel you need to get stuck on it.

Again. A summary is better than nothing. Notes are still an achievement. And for that matter, a wip is worthwhile even if it's never finished. The parts that are finished still mattered to you, and that's enough.

#rant #writing advice

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rigelmejo · 3 years

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notes to myself basically, on how i study languages (so far, there’s always gonna be better ways i don’t know of yet lol):

learn 500-1000 common words asap, read a grammar guide that provides overview asap - like the first 3 months. If a full grammar guide doesn’t exist that’s concise (hi japanese ;-;) find a basics grammar guide at least and read that (pimsleur, websites, genki, tae kim, youtube). Specifically within the common words, at least look at the ‘300 common word tumblr to say things’ language vocab list. That list is good for me starting some kind of active vocab/expressing ideas.

if its got a different writing system, look up the alphabet in 1st month (kana for japanese, cyrillic alphabet for russian etc, pinyin for chinese). listen to pronunciation guides, and write and/or mnemonics to learn those asap.

if its got characters (like chinese, japanese), learn 300-500 super common characters ASAP (first 5 months).

After month 3, learn up to 2000 common words (hi srs flashcard programs like anki and memrise, common word lists, graded readers), and up to 2000 characters. Not all these need to be done with srs flashcards/focused study, but get TO recognizing this many as soon as u can. Goal is get to this by month 8-10. But depending on how much i can overall understand without doing this, i may not learn All of these words by then (but ideally i should).

By 500-1000 words (and 500+ characters if needed), so after 3-5 months, start trying to immerse in what I WANT to do - so reading, watching (maybe listening, maybe games). I don’t have to do it much, but do it a bit to remember what I learned and also motivate myself to study more.

Months 5-8 somewhere between 1000-2000 words, start trying to write/say basic things to myself or on apps with others. Probably will be a mess, don’t have to do it much. Do it enough to have motivation to study more - see where I’m lacking skills. I may need more grammar explanation, or more vocab, or notice a big issue in my pronunciation etc.

Around month 8-10, around 2000+ words studied (although it may be less or more depending on what I’m comfortable with), ramp up immersion a lot. As soon as its mildly tolerable, ramp it up a LOT. Look up words when immersing as often or not often as desired, goal is to always follow at least the bare minimum main idea (and more details if possible/if I wanna put in the effort to look more up). Now I can start learning new words primarily from this.

Reading skills - during immersion do intensive reading to learn more vocabulary quicker, extensive reading to improve overall comprehension. Do SRS flashcards/focused graded readers/word-list prep for stuff I read as needed, to speed up how much vocab I learn (if I’m learning too slow for my preference lol). Ways to make extensive reading easier: read graded readers, read show subtitles in target language while watching show, textbooks built to increase info taught in context, read stuff I’ve read translations of first, read stuff I have prior context for (I saw the show/heard already with english transcript etc), Listening reading method, read extensively what I’ve read intensively before etc.

Listening skills - start extensive listening to audio (for overall comprehension improvement). Start intensive listening where I hear words and lookup definition and/or learn word pronunciation with explanations. So start listening to audio flashcards for building a base of learned words/phrases (chinese spoonfed audio files, japanese core 2k audio, japaneseaudiolessons.com, SRS flashcards if they have audio only ones too, Coffee Break French, audio for Francais par le methode nature etc). To make extensive listening easier: start with watching/listening to shows I’ve already seen subs for, shows in general (visual context helps), comprehensible input audio (like comprehensible input french youtube, Learn Korean in Korean youtube, Dreaming Spanish youtube etc), listen with a transcript then listen without, Listening reading method, listen to things I have prior context for like audiobook of something i read/audio drama of show i’ve seen. Do some shadowing (shadowing audio flashcard files is easy and reliable tbh).

Production skills (I am not here yet) - in general I’ve found making myself write more, talk more, to myself (like journals and practice convos) and to others, tends to improve my active vocabulary. Especially when I try to communicate about topics i’m bad at (so making myself look up those words and write/say them to put them back into active vocab). At this point I’m guessing more explicit grammar drill practice might help, people correcting me, shadowing a lot. Maybe practicing translating to that language/from it, to practice building active vocab? I’m not sure what will help most here tbh as I’ve never gotten far in this area. (For chinese, studying pronunciation more in depth and doing more listening/shadowing, and pronunciation apps, helped a lot with pronunciation itself but not active production yet).

---

i’m currently mostly just doing 8-9 for chinese right now - building reading skills, building listening skills. Varying what i do. For production skills i’m guessing there’s a ton of varied things i can do right now or later, i’m just not entirely sure what they’d be. i have not tried/troubleshooted those skills much before when studying. All i know for sure is the more i make myself use the language in Varied topics, the more i get an active vocabulary (aka writing journals, making self-convos, and doing language exchanges help in a basic way). No idea how to improve grammar though in ways that’d work well for me. so right now my skills lean heavier toward comprehension, less skill in any production. Studying chinese taught me a lot about how i learn listening skills though...which is valuable as i barely had practice learning HOW to study them when i studied french or japanese before.

troubleshooting wise - this is the rough trajectory i went through in chinese, that has worked okay for me. looking at it helps me see where i ‘slowed down’ my progress in other languages i studied.

for french - i did very LITTLE listening practice, and had few ideas of how to work on it at the time. Now I would probably do listen with transcript then without, and shadowing, to work on listening skills. And watching shows/videos with subtitles (if possible), then without subs. And very little speaking practice - same deal as listening, i did a little at some point realizing it was a weak area but not enough work on it. I also did very LITTLE production practice like language exchanges. i had few reasons to produce language, and so the few times i needed to i could mostly rely on super common words or look things up when writing. i know i’d need to do more to work on production. so i was very unbalanced - large reading comprehension, low pretty much every other skill.

for japanese... i did a lot in retrospect i wish i’d redone different. and i do it different now. i did not read/watch a grammar guide - and i still freaking need to (or at least get clear grammar exposure like nukemarine’s LLJ course’s tae kim portions). japanese has grammar i find very hard to figure-out through exposure so this holds me back a lot. and lack of immersion to both motivate me to study MORE and to practice reading/listening skills. ALSO lack of common words - i learned like 800 hanzi rough-meaning through RTK, and maybe 500 words in genki... and no wonder it wasn’t enough lol! i think nukemarine helped back years ago, because it forced me to study grammar and vocab, listening and reading, in a structured way (similar to how genki helped me in the very start before i quit using it). and japaneseaudiolessons.com helped because it made me practice listening and gave me comprehensible listening with definitions. that in combo with me really starting to immerse and TRY to read/listen at year 2+ is when i finally made some progress because i was doing things that work for me - finally. and now that i’m coming back to japanese, i’m starting to apply all those things again that were finally working.

---

anyone have any tips on how to improve production skills? Both active vocabulary, and how to both practice speaking/writing broadly AND how to fix grammar errors.

For active vocab and general writing/speaking I know just talking more/writing more helps. But I can only tend to catch grammar errors if I run it through a translator first to compare how the translator phrases it to how I did (which can create a LOT of errors if the translator is Wrong), or if someone corrects my grammar error (which relies on other people - and preferably a tutor since i dont want to bother people who aren’t paid to correct - so what can i do on my OWN?).

The big thing is with grammar, I can only think to either go through beginner courses Again from the start and do the writing drills and copy the patterns to internalize them? So I could correct my basic writing/speaking but not necessarily when I start speaking/writing creatively, unless I find textbooks/workbooks that eventually go into intermediate material (and of course finding textbooks/online exercises that provide correct answers so i can compare my attempts to the correct ones). Aside from either a tutor, or trying to find well made free online courses with exercises with answers provided, i’m not sure how to improve grammar production. If I write out sentences i read, would that internalize being able to ‘copy their grammar correctly’ when i write? if i shadow correctly said speeches/videos, would that help drill ‘correct grammar’ when speaking? (And be less boring then doing FSI speech drills). Basically I’m trying to find some ways (creative or not) to improve grammar in production. Improving active vocabulary seems pretty straightforward to me (make myself use it, look up words until they come natural to me - but if u got any other fun ways to improve active vocab i’d love to hear!). But I don’t know how to improve grammar when you are NOT in a class structure, have no teacher/tutor, and already have a base level of comprehension. As in like? I can read fine, but when writing I can’t tell if what I produce is grammatically correct or not - and again I can run it through a translator sometimes to try and ‘check’ but since translators make errors, my ‘corrected example’ isn’t always reliable to use as something to emulate for ‘correct form.’

#rant #may #may progress #language learning #grammar #any help or tips yall have for production improvement?

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jcisthebestfightme · 4 years

Text

BJYX Song #12: Heart Beats

BJYX Song Series List

Disclaimer: Nothing here is real. Nothing are words. I can’t actually write.

Another song from gg, but this time it’s going to be bittersweet. All the more bitter songs we’ve seen before were from dd so it’s time to change things up. The song I want to talk about is a song that gg sang during Our Song, “心動” by Shino Lin, which I’ve seen it being translated into “Tempting Heart” or “Heart Beats”. I personally like “Heart Beats” the best because the literal translation is “heart moves” but is a metaphorical phrase in Chinese meaning heart starting to yearnn/have feelings. I think “beats” best describe this motion metaphor while also can present the increase in heartbeat people feel when they’re in love.

When asked about “Heart Beats”, gg said he has always liked this song but he didn’t really understand the true meaning of this song until now. Now? Why now? This got me interested in the lyrics. Na Ying, his mentor also said that this song needs some wisdom to understand.

Really excited about this song actually because I liked gg’s version of this song before I knew about bjyx. I was just really touched by gg’s way of singing this song. So from a semi-unbiased view, we can say that gg put a lot of emotion into this song.

youtube

The overall message of this song is the singer really loving the other person. It seems like there may be some separation with the other person but it’s unclear. The singer is also trying to convey with the song how much they love the other person, regardless of whether they can be together or not. So I think the focus of this song isn’t the actual “plot” of what happen, but the love the singer is giving.

Another background information on this song, the person who wrote the lyrics is the same person that wrote “Brother and Sister”. He’s a gay artist that often write songs about unrequited love between homosexual relationships. I think “Brother and Sister” may be more fitting to that theme and this song may not necessary be specifically about unrequited love or homosexual love but it’s just an interesting tidbit about the lyrics writer.

Okay, let’s put on our bjyx glasses and depart. I personally think this song reflects gg’s feelings towards dd after their separation after filming of The Untamed. That was a time period where he wasn’t certain of his own feelings, whether it was character bleed from Wangxian, and whether they can even have a future together due to their career and environment. However, this song convey the feeling of love no matter what, and the very certain feeling of love in this song suits gg’s personality. It’s like “I love you regardless of what is happening around us.” It doesn’t mean they will be together forever, but the love that’s there is pure and strong.

有多久沒見你 (Haven’t seen you in so long)

以為你在哪裡 (Thought you were somewhere else)

原來就住在我心底 (Then I realize you were living in the bottom of my heart)

陪伴著我的呼吸 (Accompanying my breath)

The “haven’t seen you in so long” can refer to the literal separation, like after filming TU, or it can represent gg not thinking or facing this relationship directly. But then, even though he’s trying to not see dd or think about dd, he realize dd is always there in his heart, and he can never let him go. That may be his realization after his trip to Japan. Some people say it may be even after that, that gg decide to just be friends after Japan and they had a period of trying really hard to just be friends before getting together in 2019. Either way, this song tells us that there’s a moment of realization “f*** I can never let this person go.”

有多遠的距離 (How far was the distant)

以為聞不到你氣息 (That I thought I couldn’t smell your scent)

誰知道你背影這麼長 (Who knew your shadow was so long)

回頭就看到你 (That I could see you when I turn around)

I was perplexed by the second part for awhile. Usually shadows, especially metaphorically, are behind a person, which means the person is walking in front of you in order for you to see it. This gave me a sense of gg chasing after dd. However, it says “I could see you when I turn around” which means that the person is behind you. So why is the shadow in front? Scientifically, it must mean that the sun is also behind the person. From previous analysis, I’ve talked about gg comparing dd to a “star” and even the “sun” (yes, I know the sun is also a star, but in literature, it’s much brighter, hotter, and more intense than just a star). So here, gg is saying that dd is like the sun (or with the sun) standing behind him and projecting his shadow onto gg. In the song word, if someone is standing behind another person, it usually means they’re chasing after them. This means that it’s dd chasing after gg, which we can all attest to. But why is the shadow long? It’s because dd has now kept a distance. During their time of separation, gg has kept a distance from dd, and dd has also kept it to respect him. So here, dd is physically veery far away from him. However, his shadow is very long, because he’s shining very brightly, signifying that his love is very strong. So even though dd is very far away, gg can feel/see him immediately when he turns around.

過去讓它過去 (Let the past be in the past)

來不及 (It’s too late/Not enough time)

從頭喜歡你 (Love you from the beginning/all over again)

Here, it can be taken two ways. The first interpretation is that we should let go of the past and it’s too late to love you all over again, which means let’s just let this entire relationship go. The second interpretation is let’s let go of all the bad things in the past, there’s not enough time anyways so I want to love you from the beginning. Yes, Chinese is a lot more ambiguous in meaning than English, especially since grammar is basically nonexistent. I think the lyrics is purposefully ambiguous so it’s up to your own interpretation. I personally think it’s the second interpretation, just from the way the song was sang by gg and Na-jie. There is a “space” between “Too late/Not enough time” and “Love you all over again”, isolating “Love you all over again.” Since this line was emphasized on its own, it’s telling us that this is the main idea of this stance. So gg is saying that regardless of what happened in filming or during their separation, he’s now determined to love dd from the beginning. The word “beginning” is also telling us that gg wants to create his own story with dd, a story that’s independent of that of LWJ and WWX.

白雲　纏繞著藍天 (White clouds tangling around the blue sky)

This line further supports my theory that the stance above is the second interpretation. The 藍天 “blue sky” and 白雲 “white clouds” are the same words as the now very famous motif “LTBY” that has shown up 5+ times in WB post/clothing/videos between gg and dd. We still don’t know the exact meaning of their “blue sky white cloud” but I have a feeling it’s a very warm, positive feeling, almost like how they think of “summer.” Since this line is a metaphor right after “Love you from the beginning,” we can infer that it’s a positive feeling using to describe the “love” so it must be the second interpretation.

I also find it interesting that it’s not just a static “blue sky white cloud.” Here, thee “white cloud” is tangling around, actively moving around, the blue sky. This first reminds me of the white cloud pattern on LWJ’s clothing. The WWX-centric theme song also talks about how WWX thinks of the pattern to remember LWJ. However, I think that gg will want to try to separate his relationship with dd from Wangxian so it’s probably not directly related to LWJ. I think that the white clouds tangling signals that it’s grabbing onto the blue sky and never letting go. Whether it’s gg trying to grab on to dd or vice versa, I don’t know. It may even be that they’re both clouds, tangling around each other and the blue sky just represent the giant world they live in.

如果不能夠永遠走在一起 (If we can’t be together forever)

也至少給我們懷念的勇氣 (At least give us the courage to reminisce)

擁抱的權利 (The right to embrace)

好讓你明白 (To let you know)

我心動　的痕跡 (The trace of my heart beats)

I’ve said before that this song is bittersweet so it mentions separating. But I also think that it’s trying to convey love that is there right now and forever, regardless of what may happen in the future. We can see from this part that gg desire to be together with dd, wanting to have memories with him and “have the right to embrace him” (I take this second part as having the physical right to touch someone in a lover’s way). He wants to do these things to let dd know that he also loves him back. These are “trace” or “evidence” of his love. This song is another perfect rebuttal for people that say that gg doesn’t love dd back as much. Gg is just more cautious publicly and probably less openly expressive because of his maturity but we can see here that he desire to show all of his love to dd if he can. (I personally think that he’s already extremely “naked” about his feelings from his songs actually.)

Also when gg sang “If we can’t be together forever,” I sense in his tone of anger mixed with sadness and defeat. To me that represent that yes, he understand not every love will last forever but he will be very heartbroken if he has to let this one go. Afterwards, when he sang about “courage to reminisce”, the tone is very strong and undefeated, almost like he really wants to have this courage to do so. The part about “right to embrace” is full of yearning and longing.

總是想再見你 (I keep wanting to see you again)

還試著打探你　消息 (Still trying to get news/updates about you)

原來你就住在我的身體 (Then I realize you were in my body)

守護我的回憶 (Guarding my memories)

The last part of the song is separation, and the person the singer loves no longer being there and became the memory. You can tell how sad and defeated gg sound when singing this part. Even though it may be hypothetical, the thought of separation is still painful to him.

Edit: When I heard this last part again, for some reason, it reminded me of ggdd’s reconciliation after not talking in late 2018. I feel like this part can be use to describe gg’s perspective. The feeling of realization that I can never let you go, that I will still keep trying to hear about you and want to see you.

This is a very interesting song to analyze because the way the song was sang is very important. Feelings and tone from how someone sing a song is hard to analyze objectively so I encourage everyone to go listen to it yourself and draw your own conclusions. But I think this is definitely a song where the emotions matter more than the words being said.

#yizhan #bjyx #heart beats

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wolf-stark · 3 years

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You ask I deliver — both tfatws asks in one!

tfatws weekly ask 1

i finally saw ep1!! i wont be able to see ep2 until thursday at the earliest but i already have some Thots on this ep. here are the ones I remember

first is, and i'm so sorry for this, a grammar lesson. an appositive is when you stick an additional phrase in between commas, dashes, or the like. i actually just used one! the "and i'm so sorry for this" in the first sentence of this paragraph is an appositive. thing is, most english speakers don't normally use them when they speak, only in writing. so i'm always on high alert whenever i hear somebody in tv or movies use one. (it's generally a marker of bad screenwriting). anyway there was one right in the beginning of the episode. the white army guy yelling at sam wilson said "first lieutenant Torres, our intel officer, will be helping on the ground." yeah so. the writing of this series started out on the wrong foot for me. but the rest of the episode was obviously tons and tons better (every interview i see with malcolm spellman makes me love him more and more)

the contrast between the opening minutes (falcon action sequence) and the rest of the ep.... i would 100000/10 rather watch a series with just sam and bucky dealing with life. i dont give a single crap about the flag-smashers or any of that. i just want sam, sarah & fam getting their boating business back on the ground & yeeting racist dickwads, bucky going through therapy and making amends, sam and joaquin being bros, sambucky homoerotic tension, etc.

the cinnamontography! wandavision mostly used cinematography to signify era n stuff. tfatws doesn't have wv's premise to go off of, so here's some tricks i noticed:

with sam there's obviously all sorts of shots with the captain america iconography next to his face, but he hasn't totally claimed it. there's the mural of steve rogers in the background; there's sam staring into the shield like it's a spectre of steve's face; there's sam looking into the exhibit, the shield and sam separated by glass and a layer of camera focus. steve is a constant spectre, always there, an idea, a symbol himself. sam's relationship with this iconography is distanced. he is separated by glass exhibit walls. by painting canvases. he doesn't yet feel worthy to take on that iconography. this whole thing was pulled off quite well but also a bit on-the-nose if only in quantity. there's just sooooo much fancy iconography stuff

speaking of the exhibit, there's something that i get real pissy about. it's when like, there's an action going on you're supposed to be paying attention to but the cinematographer is like,,,, hey! check out this location! or this headline! or something! there was a lot of that in the exhibit. the camera was like, you could focus on sam and rhodey's convo (which was fine but could have been so much better with an extra like 10 minutes of deep character study talk) but noooo you want me to look at the symbol for the united nations and read all the text about bucky who hasn't even showed up yet. shut up i know the lore and ill watch the shot-by-shot breakdown yt vids you don't have to make the shot this long jkdsalcjklasejf

my fav trick was with bucky and the therapist. i had seen a clip of the scene with bucky and the therapist beforehand and i thought the cinnamontography was super obnoxious, but then i was like, oh duh. the shots frequently change the distance between the camera and its subject. sometimes it's uncomfortably close and sometimes it's really far. a clear allegory for the duality of therapy, esp for bucky! therapy is an invasive process wherein he is ruthlessly examined, picked apart, and berated for his trauma (this therapist is crap in every way btw, "mean therapist" works for greg house and greg house only). so the camera goes close. it makes the viewer claustrophobic like bucky. but when he's like "no i haven't had any nightmares" the camera suddenly goes really far. we see bucky as this tiny head in the center of the bottom of the frame. we are distanced from him. he has pushed us away. we cannot see him. he lies because he is vulnerable. so yeah, amazing work there. the therapy scene was hard to watch on purpose!

did bucky slip a note to yori inside the dollar bill? bucky stop making me emooooo. the suuper awkward fake smile has me 😭 (veteran trying to adjust!)

mark my worrrrds when sam asks someone y the govt picked john “white bread” walker they’re gonna say “we needed somebody everyone can get behind....someone uncontroversial, someone everyone can see themselves in” like that exact racist dog whistle

tfatws weekly ask 2

just saw ep2 so im taking advantage of the 2 seconds i can be on tumblr without worrying about tfatws spoilers before new episode drops

when isaiah said "your people put me in prison for being a hero" and bucky thought "your people" means hydra. 🤦‍♂️

speaking of racism, the interplay between sam being Black (anti-Black racism) and sam being the Falcon (negrophilia, "can i take a selfie w you as i deny you a loan?") and the intersection between the two (j*hn lichrally called sam "steve's wingman"! he takes the crypto out of crypto-racist in like 2 seconds!) !!!!!!!! a Black celebrity's Black experience, the separation of man and identity!!!! (thinking about vanessa bayer in snl in that skit "beyonce is black" telling her black friend "you're not black, you're...my girl!")

after sam gets racially profiled by cops we see j*hn standing in front of cop cars cinematic parallels turns out j*hn is racist who knew

this therapist sucks major ass but she got bucky and sam together in the same room and ready to collaborate...that's something ig. it was lichrally couple's therapy she said she used her miracle exercise with couples sambucky antis get blended

bucky says "he was wrong about you so maybe he was wrong about me"...that's not how people talk. when therapist asks bucky, the guy who doesn't talk at all about himself, "y do you hate sam", the last thing bucky's gonna do is actually connect his hatred of sam to his own self-worth issues. bucky generally refuses to talk about himself, so why would he talk about himself in the one context that nobody ever links back to their own neuroses: hatred of other people? one thing human beings hate most is admitting we're wrong. admitting you hate someone because of your own issues? that's a major therapeutic step. bucky would absolutely have to be prompted to do that. even like one or two lines of dialogue more would have set up that line better. but in terms of the actual thought? an amazing way to take the sam/bucky relationship. bucky bases his self-worth on steve believing in him, and if steve is wrong bucky has no self-worth, so 1) he has to develop self-worth disassociated from steve's assessment of him and 2) he has to love himself before he can love sam, and 3) he has to realize that sam giving up the shield is a sign of sam's humility not his unworthiness.

conversely, we don't get into why sam hates bucky? yeah sam has the right to hate a guy that has tried to kill him (albeit while brainwashed) multiple times, and now shows up in his life just to bash him but. everything happens so fast i cant follow their relationship

in fact i dont feel like i understood much of anything. like y did bucky and sam go on that mission together? how connected are sam/bucky/joaquin with the government? doesn't bucky just want to retire now? literally what is everyone doing/feeling and why???

if battlestar becomes a knowing commentary on the black best friend stereotype i'm gonna party, but i dont expect much of that

the interplay between man and symbol. captain america is obviously a symbol. the shield is obviously a symbol. but steve rogers? the. man behind the cowl? he too seems to become a symbol. a paragon of a good guy, so good he's unreachable. steve was just a guy stop idolizing him the last thing steve would want is to be idolized

as the resident musician/music nerd on mcublr, 1) that captain america rally music slaps, but 2) re: the song at the end of the ep, if you're just gonna rip off mozart's lacrymosa then at least play mozart's lacrymosa. we wont blame you the lacrymosa slaps (if you dont know what im talking about go on yt and search it up youll recognize it fo sho

look i love enfys nest as much as the next guy but if tfatws is gonna get erin kellyman to play another innocent little gurl blackmailed into the fakeout-villain position (her text seemed to suggest as such) then 😡 like why can't women just....be evil? young, freckly, innocent-looking women? girls are not untouchable pure objects but full of rage and resentment just as much as anyone can be

bonus ep1 comment: bucky says about that senator whose car he hijacked, "she continued to abuse the power i gave her." fictionaldarling on yt say that he says "i" because he can't disassociate himself from his winter soldier persona which begets endless and senseless guilt. like dude. can i not be emo for like 1 second.

OKay. First off, as much I enjoy your sending it to me, what made you decide to send me these??

TFATWS WA #1

Don't worry about getting this to me as early as possible. I usually don't watch the episode right away.

1. Cool writing lesson.

2. Everyone wants a comedy show [like Friends] about the MCU superheroes.

3. Cinematography is always a beautiful thing.

4. Sam definitely has to carve his own Captain America status for himself, outside of Steve's ya know everything.

5. They have to do that for people who was just now tuning in because they're in love with Sam Wilson or Sharon Carter.

6. I think the therapist was taking a 'tough love' approach for Bucky, because she likely has some very strong opinions about the literal assassin she's been assigned to give therapy too. She did not choose to talk to him, she was assigned that make that clear in the second episode.

And, Bucky isn't lying when he said it wasn't a nightmare. It wasn't a nightmare, it was a resurfaced memory. So, technically he wasn't lying - and yes, the camera does move away because while he's saying he didn't have a nightmare, he's not expanding on what actually happened - so, he's still pushing the therapist/us away.

7. Bucky, and Steve, have/had a TON to adjust to.

8. Yeah, I agree that will be the bullshit line they give. If they ever actually talk about it.

TFATW WA #2

Yeah, always got to take advantage of avoiding those spoilers lmfaoo.

1. Honestly, that line was double meaning. Both about White people and Hydra [which is made up of mostly white supremacists/nazis] So, the line is gesturing to both White People in general and Hydra assholes together. I think the terminology is “double edge sword”??

2. This whole paragraph structure confused me, ngl - so I'm going to answer it the best I can. I do like that they're not ignoring the fact that Sam being Black is 1000% the reason he's not the Official Captain America - because the gov't is racist as hell.

I also like the little lines about how they point out little things about Sam's Falcon persona, like that kid calling him 'Black Falcon' specifically and Sam's response show the split between Sam and Falcon itself.

John is a dick for calling Sam the wingman of Steve Rogers. Sam was a hero all on his own before Steve asked him to join up again. [Side note, it's lichrally??]

3. Exactly, the parallel of Sam being profiled and surrounded while just on the street and John being surrounded by fans and being able to spring Bucky with apparently only a few sentences shows a Loooooot

4. Honestly, at this point I wonder if she's not actually a therapist and is just an agent assigned to assess Bucky outside of an Official Building. I do know, however, that her 'look at each other and speak' exercise is actually a real therapy practice. It's just a little slower.

5. Actually, I think he would've blurted that out. That whole line. I don't think Bucky hates Sam. I think they could've done the scene better, but I think that had Sam prodded him/the therapist been more annoying Bucky would've lost control of his emotions and blurted out the whole "If he was wrong about you, he was wrong about me" but I feel like the writing for this show is just... not there. Sometimes you blurt shit when you get overemotional and I think that was what Bucky was supposed to be like.

6. I don't think Sam hates Bucky, I think he doesn't trust him though. I do wish they'd talked about that though. The whole 'talk to each other' scene should've been a LOT longer and a LOT slower.

7. Sam and Bucky's relationship is being fast tracked because they don't really know how to work the relationship out, writers-room-wise. Bucky is technically retired, but I feel like he's trying to live up to Steve's expectations and doing what Steve would've done and we all know that if Steve was there, Steve would've jumped on that plane with Sam. It looks like Sam/Bucky/Joaquin are a side-team based from Military services but as Sam says they're all free agents so...?

8. Sadly, They seem to just be propping up to be another stereotype.

9. Captain America is a symbol. Steve Rogers is a man. But now Steve Rogers is an idol because of all the shit he's been through and honestly, it's not a bad thing he's become an idol for people - it's using Steve as a reason to make White Bread Walker the next Captain that makes Steve's idolization so fucked.

10. I don't know anything about music so I have no opinion here, sorry.

11. Enfys?? Also, I think they did the whole Innocent Girl Thing as side commentary for Bucky lowering his guard about seeing a young girl rather than a guy.

12. Bucky is the Winter Solider. The Winter Solider is Bucky. That is how Bucky will always see it because although he was brainwashed, it was still him and he remembers all of it. When you have constant memories of something 'someone else' did, you tend to not be able to pull the two personas out of each other. I want Bucky to take up the title, White Wolf instead of Winter Soldier. Honest.

This is all my opinion, I’m honestly a little disappointed with the writing of TFATWS so far so... I’m not really optimistic about this.

#Asks

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singofsolace · 4 years

Text

Fic Titles Meme

I was tagged by @bedeliainwonderland Thank you so much! This was a lot of fun to do.

1. How many titles are you happy with?

I’ve published 39 (!) fics on Ao3, and I’d say I’m unhappy with the titles of about 7 of those... which means I’m happy with 32! I think that’s a decent percentage.

2. How many are…not great?

A good number of my fics are song titles, which means that if someone doesn’t know the song in question, they might not understand how it relates to the fic. Even if they do know the song, sometimes I think I could do better when picking the proper lyrics to use. So... I’d say at least a handful of the song titles I used are... not great.

3. How many did you scramble for at the last minute?

Almost all of them! I write the story before I pick a title, which means that I’ve usually finished filling out literally everything else on Ao3, and then I just sit and stare at the title box for a very long time. (Hence some of the “rushed” song titles).

4. How many did you know before you started writing/creating, or near the beginning?

Only three of my fics had titles before I started writing them: Sir, Spare Your Threats, boil and bubble, and to bed, to bed, to bed! The reason Sir, Spare Your Threats came so easily to me is because that is my favorite Hermione monologue, and the fanfic is meant to loosely follow the plot and characters of Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale, which I believe is one of the best plays ever written. (Hamlet... new phone, who dis?)

boil and bubble and to bed, to bed, to bed!, are also borrowed from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which I usually refer to as the Scottish Play. Clearly, I’m only certain of my titles when Shakespeare is involved.

5. How many are quotes from songs or poems?

A whopping 17 of my fanfic titles are from songs or poems! I don’t know if I should be embarrassed by that or not. The poem titles are a lot more subtle, I think, than the lyrics... but some of the lyrics are just so fitting, I can’t be mad at myself for them.

6. How many are other quotes?

Technically a great miracle happened there comes from the four sides of a dreidel. While I am not Jewish, my neighbors growing up were, and we went to their house every morning because their mother was supposed to “watch’ me and my siblings until the school bus came (I put “watch” in quotes because we were largely unsupervised. it’s a miracle we ever made it on the bus). Anyway, whenever Hanukkah came around, we would play dreidel for hours and hours. I was notoriously bad at it. So. I guess that counts as a “quote?”

7. Which best reflects the plot of the story/content of the fanwork?

This is a really hard question! I feel like a lot of these questions are meant for people who have less than 10-15 fics published. With almost 40, it’s really hard to narrow this down. I think should’ve worshipped her sooner was a great choice for my Five Times + One Zelda fic.

8. Which best reflects the theme of the story?

before that, and colder comes from a Margaret Atwood poem: “Marriage is not / a house or even a tent // it is before that, and colder:" This fic explores the ramifications of the Caligari spell being cast on Zelda during her honeymoon, so I thought it was extremely fitting.

9. Which best reflects the character voice of the story/pov of the fanwork?

laissez les bons temps rouler ! This one got some flack for the title having extremely poor Parisian French grammar, but that is because this phrase is used almost exclusively in New Orleans in the context of Mardi Gras. Since Marie LaFleur canonically lived in New Orleans for long enough to consider herself part of the “Fourth Ward” (the French Quarter, I believe), I assumed that would mean that she’s participated in many Mardi Gras celebrations, and would’ve said this phrase at least once. It translates to: “let the good times roll.” (word for word from French to English... hence the poor grammar, since French generally has a different sentence structure.)

10. Which is your favorite title?

just to sit outside your door. I’m soft for some Hozier, what can I say? The full phrase is: “I slithered here from Eden just to sit outside your door.”

I tag @saturn-silk @bainelland @anneofgreengaybles @jyou-no-sonoko19 @alexusonfire @its-a-goode-day @hb-spellman @allaboutthatgillybox @paradox-n-bedrock @asterleaf

#zelda spellman #madam spellman #spellwell #zarie

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kutemouse · 4 years

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Hey, can i request angsty drabble with jimin? It's like jimin tell yn that he doesn't love her anymore, and she just breaking up and jimin regret it? Sad ending please :( I'm sorry for my grammar :((

Of course! You’re my second ever requester, and I got so excited when I saw this come in :D I hope I did your request justice! It’s kind of a long “drabble” as well, I apologize, but my writing is always detail-filled so *shrug* This is just how it comes out. Let me know if like and honey, never apologize for your grammar, you are perfect the way you are :)

Disclaimer: I pulled this gif off of Pinterest, so I didn’t make it. I did crop it, though.

Age Recommendation: 16+

Warnings: Swears? I don’t think there are any but just in case, ANGST with a sad ending :( Jimin being a jerk-face, regret.

Word Count: 1,378

Summary: Jimin mourns the loss of a relationship that should’ve been something more.

Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ

It’s Crazy (Jimin Drabble, tiny bit of Fluff, Angst)

Jimin’s POV

It’s crazy how relationships work.

We weren’t always like this. When I first saw her, she was sitting outside of a small restaurant in Paris, sipping on a glass of wine. Drinking at eleven in the morning? My kind of girl.

You were the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. Besides the wine glass, I noticed the way your eyes slid over the pages of the book you were reading, devouring it like it was the last book on earth. Purple glasses were perched on your nose, matching the purse that hung over the back of your chair. Your skirt modestly hit your knees, but your tank top showed off the gorgeous skin of your shoulders. I couldn’t resist going over to say something.

You recognized me, of course. I wasn’t surprised, with the way my face is plastered all over the internet, but I couldn’t help the twinge of disappointment that ran through me. It was cute how you pretended not to know who I was, though.

I asked you out, and although at first you were cautious, you gave in after a few days of texts and a phone call or two. Taking you to a lavish restaurant was a mistake. You grew apprehensive when you saw the prices on the menu, even more so when I asked you to relax and just let me take care of it. Clearly, you weren’t the kind of girl that cared about that sort of thing.

The next date went better. Just a local cafe, with regularly-priced drinks and plates of food. You were finally able to relax, and talk, and laugh. God, I loved your laugh. The way you scrunched your nose as you giggled tipped the scales, making me fall hard for you.

When the three weeks of my vacation were up, I was already calling you my girlfriend. We talked about you moving to Seoul to be closer to me, but even I knew the distance would be difficult no matter what. Still, you were strong. You knew who I was before we met, and therefore, knew the life you were agreeing to. The separation was hard, but it was made easier by nightly video chats and a constant stream of texts.

After six months, you moved to Seoul. I remember picking you up at the airport and swinging you around, peppering your face with kisses as you laughed. I was so happy, then. Everything seemed right… until it wasn’t.

As the months of our relationship went on, the sparks between us cooled off and we grew more comfortable around each other. You wore less makeup and more leggings, there was a drawer of your stuff at my place, and we started spending nights in rather than going out. I didn’t mind this, really. It was nice being able to be more myself around you and not have to try so hard. Unfortunately, that was exactly the problem… Both of us stopped trying, and our relationship suffered because of it.

More time passed, and you ended up moving in with me. It was great, because for the first little while, we entered that honeymoon phase again. Something new and exciting… but that didn’t last long. As each day passed, I realized that girl that I met a year and a half ago, who I fell so hard for on that cafe date, who used to make my stomach flip over itself, who used to make my heart feel full just by looking at me… was no longer that special.

We barely tolerated each other, constantly fighting over stupid stuff and snapping at each other. Our relationship took a turn for the worst. It wasn’t bad or anything… but it wasn’t good, either. And no matter what we did, no matter how many times we tried to change or make it right, the relationship we both used to treasure was on a steady decline. We started saying “I love you” less, replacing it with phrases like, “Goodnight,” or, “See you tomorrow.” Neither of us questioned it or brought it up. In the back of our minds, I think we both knew where things were heading. After all, a relationship ultimately ends one of two ways. You either break up, or you stay together.

Finally, the day came where you said those dreaded words. “Jimin… Do you even love me anymore?”

We were sitting on our couch, and you were looking at me while I refused to look anywhere but at the ground in front of me. “No,” I muttered after a few minutes of silence. “I don’t.”

Despite this confession being nothing new, I still remember the hurt in your eyes that caused tears to well up and trickle down. I slept on the couch that night, listening to you sob. I could practically hear your heart breaking, but I could no longer keep lying to myself and, more importantly, to you. This wasn’t working anymore.

A week passed, and you had found a new place and were moving out. “It’s for the best,” you said, hands shoved in your jacket pockets, looking anywhere but at me.

I nodded in agreement. I didn’t want to hurt you anymore. Being gone for months at a time, the late-night practices, the long hours at the recording studio… I knew it wasn’t easy on you. I wanted to stop the pain.

Another year passed, and I began seeing pictures of you on social media with another guy. He wasn’t a celebrity or anyone special, but you seemed happy. I noticed the way you scrunched your nose had come back… too bad it was no longer just for me.

It was our last concert of our tour, which we chose to end in Seoul. We were singing Mikrokosmos and waving goodbye to all our fans, when my heart nearly stopped. There you were, smiling up at me, singing your heart out. He was behind you with his arms wrapped around you, swaying you both in time to the beat, smiling and laughing as he leaned down and kissed your cheek.

I pretended not to see you, keeping a taut smile on my face as I waved goodbye to the rest of the crowd. So this is what our relationship has come down to. We’re just… nothing. Complete strangers. Our lives will never intertwine again, and even if they did, it would never be the same. Every kiss, every night together, every trip has boiled down to absolutely nothing but memories. Did it even really happen?

I felt disappointment roil through me the same way a thundercloud rolls over a sunny sky. How did I let things get to this point? How did I ever let you go? I kept pushing you away in the name of stopping the hurt, but I never gave a thought to my own feelings. I lied back then. I loved you. I loved you so much. Part of me still loves you. We should’ve ended up getting married, not as complete strangers.

As the stage lowered and we waved goodbye to our fans for the final time, I locked eyes with you and watched your sharp inhale as you realized I was looking at you. As if of its own accord, my hand reached out and I gave a little wave just for you. You gave me a half-smile and waved back. The only difference is, I was trying to say hello. I didn’t want to be strangers anymore. I wanted you back in my life, back to the point where you felt comfortable enough around me to eat as messily as you wanted and to wear whatever you felt like. You, however, were saying goodbye. For the last time. For forever.

I came to that realization as the stage hit the ground and staff swarmed me, offering me towels to wipe sweat away and bottles of water. I’d never have another chance. Our lives were on two completely different paths. It would never be the same.

Waving everyone off, I walked towards my dressing room, numbness taking over as my subconscious tried to protect me from the pain. So this is what regret feels like.

It’s crazy how relationships work. Or rather, how they don’t.

Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ

Part Two→

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