#me absorbing a lot of shows this week so i don't run out of characters to make and inspo to implement here and there later | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rukafais · 6 months

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Ruka, I just wanna express my condolences for the Drizzt fandom being such a pain on here. Made me realize that I got lucky just finding the books randomly in a store and picking em up because they looked cool. Absolutely 0 background info or interaction with the fandom, just purely immersing myself in the series for weeks and sharing some highlights with friends. Hope the haters leave you alone and you can just keep enjoying the series for what it is.

Honestly that was close to my experience once I finally got to reading them and not just absorbing What People Knew About Them, I tore through all the books without looking them up at all or stepping into the fandom even a little bit haha, which means I got to get through them all without watching people dump on them near-constantly like Drizzt is the worst series ever made.

It's part of why I love them so much, because when I finally got to sit down and read the damn things my opinion completely reversed, that's how hard they won me over. The books are full of love for their characters, their setting, and are respectful of the reader's time, and I do love them for that.

Which, uh, was a double nasty surprise when I went to look for cute fanart and found a tag filled with weird circlejerking about how much everybody hates Drizzt and the author (what is with the weird fucking ad hominem btw, like you can't just say you don't like the writing style, the author is also responsible for everything wrong with drow and dnd).

Like I hadn't already absorbed a shit ton of jokes by osmosis about how Drizzt is a mopey bitch who's so sad and tragic and brooding and also found out that was...a total fucking lie actually, so it wasn't a great atmosphere to run into and did not endear me to a lot of the community here :/ It's improved massively of course, but the fact that intensely negative people have been running the show for as long as this site has existed is fucking dumb actually.

ALSO PEOPLE KEPT LEAVING SHITTY COMMENTS ON MY CUTE FANART POSTS IN THE TAGS WHICH WAS REALLY ANNOYING ACTUALLY I DIDNT LIKE THAT VERY MUCH. I ENJOY THAT PEOPLE ENJOYED MY EARLY FANART BUT I DID NOT ENJOY PEOPLE LEAVING DISPARAGING COMMENTS ABOUT HOW BOOKS I HADNT READ SUCKED.

But honestly it's fine. I can handle a few weird comments even if they annoy the hell out of me (and are often demonstratably completely wrong, like cmon if you're going to be an asshole at least be correct about the stuff you like), I don't like it when people leave weird comments on the stuff of people who are just starting or clearly enjoying the books because it's so out of pocket but all I can do is write or draw to counteract that effect and clean up the tag a little.

I feel worse for the people who have loved this series from childhood honestly. There's so much negativity surrounding Drizzt and I can't imagine how exhausting that must be to never have a place to talk about a series that means a lot to you because the general accepted opinion is that you hate it, the series sucks, and everyone is in some sort of bizarre love-hate orbit because The Author Loves Me Not and His Characters Are Wasted On Him, He's A Hack.

So yeah, hope you continue to enjoy yourself with it too anon :)b

#rukamemes

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emerulynn · 2 years

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for the ben 10 ask: 23 and 20

20. disability (mental or physical) HCs Gonna do physical only or else this post will be too long

Ben: tbh I think Ben's all kinds of messed up so here's a prominent one. Ben suffers a lot from chronic pain and fatigue so whenever he's not feeling well enough to fight he just pumps sugar into his veins. Smoothies are a favourable option most of the time but they don't work as well anymore so he goes to Monster/Red Bull/energy drinks in general for a stronger dose. When energy drinks aren't working for him anymore he switches to caffeine. Why isn't he dying or has at least exhausted all of himself in his 20s you may ask? Well he is and has and he's running on life support, the life support being the Omnitrix so he’s still somewhat functional. But the Omnitrix doesn’t render him Hercules so he’s almost always tired and hypersensitive at the same time, making him more prone to panic attacks or just hyperventilation. Azmuth ships him to Galvan Prime for checkups every once in a while.

Rook: Physically Rook's very healthy, sure his diet does change as he picks up some of Ben's eating habits but not a lot and he always keeps himself in check. I like to think when Rook was at his low at some point during his quarter-life crisis he had a breakdown, disconnected, locked his doors and starved for like a week or more until he fainted and the health tracker he himself installed alarmed Ben of his location. It never really had a significant long-term effect on his health tho. Not a disability but Rook definitely has scars all over, the small cuts are easily hidden under his fur but the bigger ones just can't go unnoticed, he’s kinda conscious about it in not-the-best way.

Gwen: Gwen would probably be the healthiest one out of the team. In my hc, Gwen locks herself in her human form with the rings (see this post) because she’s afraid of the calamity she can cause but she’s still essentially a condensed humanoid block of mana under her human dressing, what kind of physical disability can she not heal immediately fr. However, as soon as Gwen embraces the fact that she’s a physically untouchable vessel she becomes especially careless of her mortal body. Bleeding fingers are easily patched, broken bones are just as easily healed. She was careless to the point she doesn’t keep her human body fully human anymore and just bleeds mana if she was ever wounded (think Sayaka from Madoka Magica kind of carelessness and numbness lol). After a certain accident, she made the mana leaking out of her wounds look like blood tho (kinda came full circle). Another way to keep herself grounded.

Kevin: I’d say Kevin’s pretty physically healthy too considering how he’s an Osmosian. I’m running out of ideas so uh Kevin probably got one of his limbs cut off when he was unarmored and got a prosthetic in place (ofc he made the prosthetic himself). The prosthetic also has absorbent properties and a place to keep different materials/minerals so it’s kinda like a handy weapon for Kevin to be not too dependent on having to find something to absorb. The material is not an Osmosian tho so it takes much longer to fully transform itself into the loaded material (think of "that one time Kevin involuntarily got turned into taydenite" slow), the process can be sped up with electricity/idk some kind of sci-fi energy but Kevin would avoid that most of the time. That’s all I can get out of my system for now, feel free to let me know if u want me to do other characters too yk see what kind of misery i can bestow them 😈

23. My BROTP Ben x Kevin, which is kinda odd bc if I see their dynamic in any other show I would be begging them to kiss lol. I always see Ben and Kevin as brothers (anh em kết nghĩa in Vietnamese kinda) and want them to stay that way most of the time. But like I'm very easygoing with ships in general so I'm quite ok with everybody being best platonic pals and everybody being each other's lovers at the same time (not too comfortable with incest tho haha) so I don't have any problem with Bevin fan content.

#eme rant #ben 10 #thank you for the ask this was real fun to do #rook blonko #ben tennyson #gwen tennyson #kevin levin #ask #my aus

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chamomileteainabuttercup · 2 years

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For the ask game

🦅 Do you outline fics or fly by the seat of your pants?

👀 Tell me about an up and coming wip please!

🤩 Who is your favorite character to write?

thank you!

🦅 I mentally outline fics in the form of daydreaming about them for a couple of days until I want to write them down. This is not very effective but there's only so much a woman can fight her own brain, especially for something I'm doing just for fun. On rare occasions I have managed to bullet-point the key details of a scene or interaction but I tend to be thinking about these things when I can't write (eg driving in the car) and then when I can write, well, I want to just write what I've thought about. I never have a plan for an entire plot and the few fics I've finished, I only thought of a satisfactory way to end them by happy chance. So it's mostly a pants thing.

I run out of steam on longer fics because the comments die off and they're such a huge part of what stimulates the development of the story in my mind, plus the feeling that no one is paying attention any more. I don't regard this as some injustice or insult, nobody owes me the response I would enjoy, it's just clear that what I'm putting out is not getting picked up and the energy I have for that idea fades. Then another one comes along. I don't know whether outlining and having a conclusion planned would change or fix this but for the above-mentioned reasons I don't think I can pull it off anyway.

👀 The only things I have officially "in progress" (as opposed to tacitly abandoned like Just Business, Nothing Personal, alas) are Wrought Iron, the Mandalorian/Book of Boba Fett Bobadincobb farrier domestic AU (and I know my steam on that is getting low which is sad, it might end up in the abandoned pile) and the Stranger Things 4 Steddie fix-it canon divergence which I called Rock Steady only because I couldn't think of a title and defaulted to a pun. I've been really enjoying writing that but it has only one posted chapter so far with very little engagement (it's been up a week or so and has 168 hits) so I suspect it's not what many people reading that ship want, or it's too much the same as what lots of people are writing - Eddie Munson survives his injuries, the ending of ST4 is softened (for Max's sake if no one else!), Eddie and my dearly beloved Steve Harrington have the opportunity for the undercurrent of attraction between them to develop.

Two cakes, yes, but there can be a glut on the market of a particular flavour of cake. Elements of people getting their lives back together following a disaster, a tight friend group expanding/absorbing a new member, recovering from the physical and mental trauma of a near-death adventure, learning which after-effects will heal and which are just a part of life now, supporting each other and growing closer, teenage/young adult starting independent life/failing to launch goofiness, internalised homophobia causing hesitation, panic and will-they-won't-they, and also intermittently worrying about maybe becoming some sort of vampire.

A theme that I wasn't expecting it to develop but that I think follows from what we've seen in the show, ever since in ST2 we saw that even before Dustin picked on him for help, Steve was still carrying the bat with nails in it in the trunk of his car, is Steve's sense that what he may want to do with his life is limited by the need to stay at his post, as it were, and be a guardian. If your life is developing into a vigil against a villain you can never be sure is vanquished, how do you look to the future?

🤩 Whoever I'm writing currently, really! I regularly switch POVs in romantic/smut fics because it's satisfying to know what both/all sides are thinking, particularly when neither is sure what the other is thinking and both are inwardly freaking out about it. In the current WIP, Eddie is great fun because he's a weird nerdy bogan with an off-colour sense of humour, and Steve is a little bit more of a challenge because of the delicate balance of depicting his intellect. Steve's kinda dumb, Steve doesn't think he's dumb which is part of his dumbness, Steve does nevertheless have common sense and is gradually becoming more introspective. I love him a lot so it's hard to do him justice, and I want to show him a good time.

#ask box meme

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ninja-knox-ur-sox-off · 3 years

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How are you able to write several thousand word chapters? Please, tell me your secrets. I require the power for my writing /genuine

ASLKDMFAOWE Buckle up everyone, it's time for never before seen back-stage content looking into the writing habits of KNOX *cracks knuckles*

1. Read a lot of books

Seriously, you'd be surprised at just how much reading alone can help you with writing. For me, it's like I inhale words, my brain absorbs them, and then I can type out a remix of those words to create something of my own. Any time I'd lose steam when writing I'll just pause to go read a specific writers work (inhaling the words) and then go right back to writing. It's kinda like a recharge for me. When I run out of words, I just gotta read to pick up new ones

2. Avoid interruptions

Getting interrupted is a huge problem when writing. With the specific fic you're probably thinking of, I had a lot of free time that week, which I spent most of writing that. I went outside, sat on the driveway and just... wrote (and read) for hours, uninterrupted because I removed myself from where people could interrupt me

Interruptions also include notifications from phone, (turn those off,) people coming up and talking to you, and bright colourful shiny things on the ground

3. Make sure you got food and water

Have a water bottle near you, eat something before you start. If you feel yourself slowing down or your brain getting fuzzy at all, or the words won't come up right, go eat something, a real meal, pause, inhale an apple. Get your brain off of survival mode so it can create better

4. TAKE BREAKS

Every hour or so just get up and move locations if you can. Or pause to just run from one area of the house and back. Movement makes your body have energy. Make sure you can breathe so your brain gets oxygen. Do a little dance wiggle, wave your hands, spin around, very calmly walk from room to room backwards if you feel like it, (watch out for tripping hazards,) just get moving for a bit

5. Start with a success

Do a little something, a project, make your bed, wash some dishes, do something that is a small success before writing so it gets your brain in a good mood, and makes you feel like you can accomplish things. Seriously, this helps HUGE

6. Write about something you like

Writing about an idea or character that fascinates your, or gets your brain working is a great way to get the words flowing honestly. That ones pretty obvious

7. Let the words Mcfreaking FLOW

Got a scene that's coming out as a jumble of nonsense? That's cool, just keep going. Got a part that doesn't make any sense? Whatever, keep moving. Keep that momentum, don't stop. FEEL FREE TO DART AROUND. Have an idea for the next scene suddenly? Make a couple paragraph breaks so you have some space between it and the current scene, viciously type that scene down

I can't tell you how many times I'll dart forward, then immmedeatly go back to the previous scene and keep writing like I'd never stopped. It's keeps the creative flow going and allows your brain to make connections and continue in success. Best way to tie scenes together when you're stuck is to just move onto the next one

8. Let your brain do what it wants

90% of what I write I basically just come up with on the fly. I have a general idea of what I want, and then I just start writing. Sometimes I'll outline, sometimes I don't, sometimes I just have a note that says "This person gets hugs" and all the between stuff just happens

Watch what your brain creates and write it down. I'm essentially a scribe for the scenes I watch take place in my head at this point honestly. I don't really ask myself "what would happen next" usually cause I'm just watching it happen rather than coming up with the stuff

Just write the dumbest craziest stuff. Get wild, get whacky, don't be afraid to

9. Give that sweet sweet inner monologue

If you want your stuff to be more wordy/have a higher word count, don't be afraid to show what the character is thinking! Have their thoughts racing, have them seeing a small candy wrapper on the ground, and being distracted by it for a moment as they think about the last couple of minutes or a conversation they had. Describe their thoughts and their expressions to get a feel for what they're feeling, give them things to interact with outside their own thoughts, describe the area around them as they notice it, change the weather so you have more things to describe

You could say

They were excited to go outside.

or you could say

A day outside! Finally! After two weeks indoors confined to bed, the cast was finally off and they couldn't wait to get back to climbing trees and racing through the forest and splashing through the river. They missed the cool water and the sunshine.

Being indoors wasn't all that bad, it hadn't been too incredibly dull with their friends there to help them, but nothing could really compare to the breeze on their skin and the grass on their feet.

They could barely stand still, practically dancing in place, hopping from one newly healed foot to the other, hands flapping and a smile on their face that they didn't even bother biting back, even as it stretched wider and wider into a grin.

The little bubble of excitement built in their chest until their heart was racing and they just wanted to jump up and down and take off outside--

And suddenly bOOM. TONS MORE WORDS!

10. Switch up locations

Your brain likes new things! Find a spot that is new, change things up a bit. Go outside and write, sit on the couch sideways, sit on the floor, write standing up, sit in a tree, lay down on the concrete driveway, (out of the way of cars,) sit on the stairs! Sometimes a change in scenery is all you need to get your brain working

I'll sometimes go through several locations per paragraph every time my brain stalls I'll move positions and then suddenly I can write again. Sometimes your body and brain just get restless! Especially if it's used to darting between writing, social media, texts, and back again

Sometimes it's also good to have a designated spot to do writing however, but if you have one of those, make sure when you're in that location all you do is write. That way, whenever you sit back down there, your brain will be hardwired and ready to write instantly. That only works if writing is the only thing you do while sitting there usually lol

11. Music/no music

Sometimes music is great, sometimes it's not. Don't be afraid to turn off your music to let your brain go, or turn on some hype music to get you excited. Sometimes I'll do study music, or I'll pull up a dubstep workout mix, and sometimes it'll be silence. Don't be afraid to mix it up, what works for you one day might not work another and that's okay!

AND THAT, MY FRIEND, IS WRITING WITH KNOX, THANKS FOR VIBIN WITH ME

Just take care of yourself! Remember to refuel both mentally and physically, take breaks and give yourself little rewards. Roll up them sleeves, find a place, get some snacks or candy to munch on to help you focus, and tappity type away, my dude!

#Writing tips #Writing advice #Knox rambles #asks #anon #long post #THIS WAS SUPER FUN TO WRITE ACTUALLY AKSDMFOWE #GOOD VIBES #HOPE THIS HELPS A LI'LL!! <333 #This reminds me of why I love writing so much honestly #SMDKFOAGHO;W WOOOOOOOO

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brawltogethernow · 4 years

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So, I don't think I've ever asked you this... what IS the whole point of the Spider-Sense? It really seems like something that only exists for writers to ignore or work around when they want to inject Legit Tension into a story.

I’ve thought about this power so much, but never with an eye to defend its right to exist, so I needed to think about this. The results could be more concise.

Ironically, given the question, I have to say its main purpose is to ramp up tension. But it’s also a highly variable multitool that a skilled creative team can use for...pretty much anything. It does everything the writer wants it to, while for its wielder always falls just short of doing enough.

I went looking through my photos for a really generic, classic-looking example to use as an image to head this topic, but then I ran into the time Peter absolutely did not reimburse this man for his stolen McDonald’s, so have that instead.

A Scare Chord, But You Can Draw It

That one post that says the spider-sense is just super-anxiety isn’t, like, wrong. It’s a very anxious, dramatic storytelling tool originally designed for a very anxious, dramatic protagonist. I find it speaks to the overall tone of the franchise that some characters are functionally psychics, but with a psychic ability that only points out problems.

Spidey sense pinging? There’s danger, be stressed! Broken? Now the lead won’t even KNOW when there’s a problem, scary! Single character is immune to it? That’s an invisible knife in the dark oh my god what the fuck what the fU--

Like its counterpart in garden variety anxiety, the only time the spider-sense reduces tension is in the middle of a crisis. But in the wish fulfillmenty way that you want in an adventure story to justify exaggerated action sequences, the same way enhanced strength or durability does. Also like those, it would theoretically make someone much safer to have it, but it exists in the story to let your character navigate into and weather more dangerous situations.

For its basic role in a story, a danger sense is a snappy way to rile up both the reader and the protagonist that doesn’t offer much information beyond that it’s time to sit smart because shit is about to go down.

Spidey comic canon is all over the board in quality and genre, and it started needing to subvert its formulas before the creators got a handle on what those formulas even were, and basically no one has read anything approaching most of it at this point, so for consistent examples of a really bare bones use of this power in storytelling, I’d point to the property that’s done the best job yet of boiling down the mechanics of Spider-Man to their absolute most basic essentials for adaptation to a compelling monster of the week TV series.

Or as you probably know it, Danny Phantom. DON’T BOO, I’M RIGHT.

DP is Spider-Man with about 2/3 of the serial numbers filed off and no death (ironically), and Danny’s ghost sense is the most proof in the formula example of what the spidey sense is for: It’s a big sign held up for the viewer that says, “Something is wrong! Pay attention!” Effectively a visual scare chord. It’s about That Drama. And it works, which won it a consistent place in the show’s formula. We’re talking several times an episode here.

So why does it work?

It’s a little counterintuitive, but it’s strong storytelling to tell your audience that something bad is going to happen before it does. A vague, punchy spoiler transforms the ignorant calm before a conflict into a tense moment of anticipation. ...And it makes sure people don’t fail to absorb the beginning of said conflict because they weren’t prepared to shift gears when the scene did. Shock is a valuable tool, too, but treating it like a staple is how you burn out your audience instead of keeping them engaged. Not to go after an easy target, but you need to know how to manage your audience’s alarm if you don’t want to end up like Game of Thrones.

The limits of the spider-sense also keep you on your toes when handled by a smart writer. It tells Peter (everyone’s is a little different, so I’m going to cite the og) about threats to his person, but it doesn’t elaborate with any details when it’s not already obvious why, what kind, and from what. And it doesn’t warn him about anything else-- Which is a pretty critical gap when you zoom out and look at his hero career’s successes and failures and conclude that it’s definitely why he’s lived as long as he has acting the way he does, but was useless as he failed to save a string of people he’d have much rather had live on than him.

(Any long-running superhero mythos has these incidents, but with Peter they’re important to the core themes.)

And since this power is by plot for plot (or because it’s roughly agreed it only really blares about threats that check at least two boxes of being major, immediate, or physical), it always kicks in enough to register when the danger is bearing down...when it’s too late to actually do anything about it if “anything” is a more complex action than “dodge”.

Really? Not until the elevator doors started to open?

That Distinctive, Crunchy Spider Flavor

The spider-sense and its little pen squiggles go hand in hand with wallcrawling (and its unique and instantly identifiable associated body language) to make the Spider-Person powerset enduringly iconic and elevate characters with it from being generic mid-level super-bricks. Visually, but also in how it shapes the story.

I said it can share a narrative role with super strength. But when you end a fight and go home, super strength continues to make your character feel powerful, probably safer than they’d be otherwise, maybe dangerous.

The spider-sense just keeps blaring, “Something’s wrong! Something’s wrong! God, why aren’t you doing something about this!?”

Pretty morose thing to live with, for a safety net! Kind of a double edged sword you have there! Could be constantly being hyperattuned to problems would prime you for a negative outlook on life. Kind of seems like a power that would make it impossible for a moral person to take a day off, leading them into a beleaguered and resentful yet dutiful attitude about the whole superhero gig! Might build up to some of the core traits of this mythos, maybe! Might lead to a lot of fifteen minute retirement stories, or something. Might even be a built in ‘great responsibility’ alarm that gets you a main character who as a rule is not going to stop fighting until he physically cannot fight anymore.

Certainly not apropos of anything, just throwing this short lived barely-a-joke tagline up for fun.

One of my personal favorite things about stories with superpowers is keeping in mind how they cause the people who have them to act in unusual ways outside of fights, so when you tell me that these people have an entire extra sense that tells them when the gas in their house is leaking through a barely useful hot/cold warning system that never turns off, I’m like, eyes emojis, popcorn out, notebook open, listening intently, spectacles on, the whole deal.

It also contributes to Peter Parker’s personality in a way I really enjoy: It allows him to act like an irrational maniac. When you know exactly when a situation becomes dangerous and how much, normal levels of caution go out the window and absolutely nothing you do makes sense from an exterior standpoint anymore. That’s the good shit. I would like to see more exploration of how the non-Parker characters experiencing the world in this incredibly altered way bounce in response.

It’s also one of many tools in this franchise hauling the reader into relating more closely with the main character. The backbone of classic Spidey is probably being in on secrets only Peter and the reader know which completely reframe how one views the situation on the page. It’s just a big irony mine for the whole first decade. A convenient way to inform the reader and the lead that something is bad news that’s not perceivable to any other characters is youth-with-a-big-exciting-secret catnip.

Another point for tension, there, in that being aware of danger is not synonymous with being able to act on it. If there’s no visible reason for you to be acting strange, well...you’re just going to have to sit tight and sweat, aren’t you? Some gratuitous head wiggles never hurt when setting up that type of conflict.

Have I mentioned that they look cool? Simultaneously punchy and distinctive, with a respectable amount of leeway for artists to get creative with and still coming up with something easily recognizable? And pretty easy to intuit the meaning of even without the long-winded explanations common in the days when people wrote comics with the intent that someone could come in cold on any random issue and follow along okay, I think, although the mechanic has been deeply ingrained in popular culture for so long that I can’t really say for sure.

It was also useful back in the day when no artists drew the eyes on the Spider-Man mask as emoting and were conveying the lead’s expressions entirely through body language and panel composition. If you wiggle enough squiggles, you don’t need eyebrows.

Take This Handwave and Never Ask Me a Logistical Question Again

This ability patches plot holes faster than people can pick them open AND it can act as an excuse to get any plot rolling you can think of if paired with one meddling protagonist who doesn’t know how to mind their own business. Buy it now for only $19.99 (in four installments; that’s four installments of $19.99).

Why can a teenager win a six on one fight against other superhumans? Well, the spider-sense is the ultimate edge in combat, duh.

Why can Peter websling? Why doesn’t everyone websling? Well, the spider-sense is keeping him from eating flagpole when he violently flings himself across New York in a way neither man nor spider was ever meant to move.

How are we supposed to get him involved with the plot this week???? Well, that crate FELT dangerous, so he’s going to investigate it. Oh, dip, it was full of guns and radioactive snakes! Probably shouldn’t have opened that!

Yeah, okay, but why isn’t it fixing everything, then? Isn’t it supposed to be why Peter has never accidentally unmasked in front of somebody? ('Nother entry for this section, take a shot.) That’s crazy sensitive! How does he still have any problems!? Is everything bad that’s ever happened to characters with this powerset bad writing!? --Listen, I think as people with uncanny senses that can tell us whether we are in danger with accuracy that varies from incredible to approximate (I am talking about the five senses that most people have), we should all know better than to underestimate our ability to tune them out or interpret them wrong and fuck ourselves up anyway. I honestly find this part completely realistic.

*SLAPS ROOF OF SPIDER-SENSE* YOU CAN FIT SO MANY STORIES IN THIS THING

The spider-sense is a clean branch into...whatever. There is the exact right balance of structure and wishy-washiness to build off of. A sample selection of whatevers that have been built:

It’s sci-fi and spy gadgets when Peter builds technology that can interface with it.

It’s quasi-mystical when Kaine and Annie-May get stronger versions of it that give them literal psychic visions, or when you want to get mythological and start talking about all the spider-characters being part of a grand web of fate.

Kaine loses his and it becomes symbolic of a future newly unbound by constraints, entangled thematically with the improved physical health he picked up at the same time -- a loss presented as a gain.

Peter loses his and almost dies 782 times in one afternoon because that didn’t make the people he provoked when he had it stop trying to kill him, and also because he isn’t about to start “””taking the subway’’””’ “‘’“”to work”””’’” like some kind of loser who doesn’t get a heads up when he’s about to hit a pigeon at 50mph.

Peter’s starts tuning into his wife’s anxiety and it’s a tool in a relationship study.

It starts pinging whenever Peter’s near his boss who’s secretly been replaced by a shapeshifter and he IGNORES IT because his boss is enough of an asshole that that doesn’t strike him as weird; now it’s a comedy/irony tool.

Into the Spider-Verse made it this beautiful poetic thing connecting all the spider-heroes in the multiverse and stacked up a story on it about instant connection, loss, and incredibly unlikely strangers becoming a found family. It was also aesthetic as FUCK. Remember the scene where Miles just hears barely intelligible whispering that’s all lines people say later in the film and then his own voice very clearly says “look out” and then the room explodes?? Fuck!!!!

Venom becomes immune to it after hitchhiking to Earth in Peter’s bone juice and it makes him a unique threat while telling a more-homoerotic-than-I-assume-was-originally-intended story about violation and how close relationships can be dangerous when they go sour.

It doesn’t work on people you trust for maximum soap opera energy. Love the innate tragedy of this feature coming up.

IN CONCLUSION I don’t have much patience for writers who don’t take advantage of it, never mind feel they need to write around it.

#spiderman #peter parker #spiderverse #spidey #marvel #danny phantom #one day you'll see what i'm doing with it in the project i'm collabing on w/ my brother and then you'll all be sorry and hopefully impresse #mirrorfalls #asks answered #essays

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faebriel · 3 years

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ok ok I'm insane and couldn't pick one so have two (no need to answer both if you don't want to)

“You talk to him.” Not kindly, but he does.

“I’m used to him,” he shoots back. “I’m the only person who is.”

That makes Niki feel something, some uncomfortable tug in her chest. She mentally kicks herself. It’s not jealousy, she reminds herself, because despite the near-cliff jumping and the long nights without food and the nuclear fallout that has punctuated her last few months, being jealous of Tommy would be the least reasonable thing she’s allowed herself to be, maybe ever.

“You don’t believe me,” Tommy says flatly. “You never - eugh.” He cuts himself off with another ragged sigh, running a hand down his face. “Look, Niki, it’s - we were all together in Pogtopia, right? But I was there first. With him. And you didn’t see the start of it, it was horrible, and I’m glad no one else saw the beginning of it either but it was still just so shit and he kept saying all these terrible things about Tubbo and Fundy and you and,” he takes a shaky breath, “then, when I died, I saw him.”

Her breath catches in her throat.

Well, the voice in the back of her head whistles. If you were still wondering about all this afterlife bullshit, if you want to know where you’re going after your third life, here you go.

and

“You didn’t even - this isn’t about L’Manberg, Wilbur!” Niki shouts.

And then he stops, breathing hard, and he looks at Niki the same way he does whenever her voice is being drowned out in a crowd - the way he does when he wants to hear her, when he wants to know what she has to say.

“What else is there?” he asks.

Niki freezes. Stock still, unable to move, unable to breathe, ice threading its way through her gut, her chest, her shoulders, chilled down to the bone. With slow-dawning horror, she can feel hot tears welling up behind her eyes, sitting in her throat, threatening to spill over into a sob. She swallows - to keep her cool, to stay calm, to keep it together -

And then, something in her chest just snaps.

“You said you’d come back for me!” she cries, and her voice hitches on the lump of tears at the back of her throat and god, she sounds absolutely pathetic. Wilbur’s face softens immediately, which somehow just makes her feel even worse. “In Manberg. When Schlatt put me in prison, and you and Tommy were in Pogtopia, you said you’d break me out when it was safe. I waited for weeks , Wilbur. It was… it was horrible.”

“Niki…” a kaleidoscope of emotions flicker across his face, and he seems unsure which to settle on. “We got you out though, right? After the festival.”

“You looked for the button first,” she says quietly, and he stills.

Her sniffling sounds embarrassingly loud against the quiet background of night.

thank you sm!!! i’m gonna put these under the cut because they got a little long sorry (tw for discussion of suicidal ideation)

to preface: tommy is kind of the accidental but incredibly necessary invisible support beam for niki and wilbur’s making amends in bitter. niki cannot accept wilbur’s actions and apology without first acknowledging her own actions and making steps towards an apology, because otherwise it kind of falls flat? in that ending scene niki finally gets what wilbur is feeling and wilbur finally gets that someone else knows how he feels (it’s not perfect 100% yet, but…. that’ll get explored later)

onto the actual snippet! “tommy talks to wilbur - not kindly, but he does” was very important to me! tommy has stuck by wilbur ever since pogtopia, but the tragedy is that he is not equipped to deal with wilbur’s issues, and it shows. wilbur’s first stream after revival depicts this really clearly, where tommy tails wilbur around the whole time but insults him, is still stuck on calling him the villain, physically fights him at some point, etc. on one hand this isn’t healthy but on the other hand tommy is actually around, which is more than can be said for basically any other ally wilbur has had on the dsmp, maybe excluding his dad, who literally killed him lmfao.

this whole issue is exacerbated by the fact that tommy believes that he is the only person who properly understands wilbur, the only person who gets what happened to him, and feels like wilbur is generally his burden to bear. he failed to stop wilbur from both 1. hurting other people and 2. killing himself after the pogtopia-manberg war - and he doesn’t trust wilbur not to do either of those things again, so he’s stuck hovering around wilbur while wilbur is inadvertently setting off his own trauma and feeling responsible for any way he might fuck up and hating that but not wanting to leave. tommy’s memory isn’t perfect and he isn’t a perfect narrator, what he remembers from pogtopia the most were the scariest parts and that’s understandable but it means he’s holding wilbur to the worst expectations of behaviour (and he does so very vocally). the others showed up later, sure, but in tommy’s eyes he’s the only one who saw wilbur’s descent, and by the time they showed up wilbur had already changed irreversably. tommy tries to rationalise this by splitting the ‘different wilburs’ apart from each other in his head (he does this in canon too - there’s one quote from like late 2020 where he says he and tubbo need to keep on going for who wilbur used to be, not who he became, even though they’re,, the same person), and no one challenges that perspective, so he just keeps doing it even though it’s not healthy for him or wilbur.

and then limbo happened and, oh geez, THAT didn’t help jhfaskjjfsa

tommy is on a bit of a knife edge with niki in this fic. niki’s in this state of “ok, he’s annoying whatever, i’m moving on”, but all tommy knows is that she tried to kill him that one time, disappeared off the face of the map, joined a book club with two people who definitely do not like him, and now is just acting weirdly mellow and polite. she is not someone he wants near wilbur bc what the fuck is she gonna do? what is he gonna do? who knows. he’s frustrated that niki doesn’t seem to acknowledge how he’s feeling (especially bc once upon a time she would have been someone he trusted to acknowledge them - they were friends, they fought together) and he’s taking a big step by telling someone about his concerns here, especially bc tommy doesn’t really like talking about them at all. he wouldn’t be saying absolutely anything to niki if he didn’t truly believe she should stay away from wilbur, even if he’s wrong about him. (sometimes i think i write tommy as a little too emotionally mature here but it all goes out the window when wilbur’s brought up. idk if that balances it out)

ok onto niki: this is the first she has actually heard of limbo! she’s only just come around to the fact that resurrection is possible at all. death is kind of a touchy subject for niki both in general and re: wilbur in the fic - she’s coming off of a period in her life where suicidal ideation was, uh, a big thing (whether you want to read that into canon or not is subjective, that’s just the angle i went with in this fic). the sudden existence of a life after death, miserable as it is - and whether she really believes in such a place, when it only exists in tommy and wilbur’s words - that is a lot of information for her to absorb all at once. death is a weird connection point for tommy and niki here, coming right off of the fact that they’ve just acknowledged each other having those problems - tommy, out of, yknow, altruism, would very much like to keep niki out of that place, and niki is quietly reckoning with the fact that that is where she would have sent him. the concept of limbo from the perspective of a character with no experience of it, even secondhand, is so interesting to me like what kind of eldritch location would you feel like you’re living in asghjkl

(also - i gotta be honest the jealousy angle here but mostly when she’s talking later about dream not deserving wilbur’s companionship kinda came out after this post came across my dash while writing. whoops /j)

fun fact, this is the very first snippet of bitter that i ever wrote! all the way back in may!! this is like the moment of the fic - it's where the miscommunication that niki and wilbur have been having is shattered entirely - and so sticking the landing was uhhh kinda important to me lol.

wilbur's entire being in this fic is basically consumed by L'Manberg - he equates his self worth to it entirely. in his eyes, everyone (rightfully) hates him because of what he did to L'Manberg, because L'Manberg was corrupted and he himself with it, etc. niki tries to tell herself this, and while it definitely does form part of her issues with him, it was the betrayal that causes her this much pain - that he seemingly brushed her and their friendship off entirely when he supposedly left her for dead in manberg. because here is what we as the audience know: wilbur couldn’t leave niki in trouble when he heard her life was in danger, even when he was trying to find the button (pretty much the only thing he sees himself as having left at this point) and so he returned. here is what it looks like from niki’s perspective: wilbur told her to wait in manberg until it was safe to come to pogtopia, laid the place with TNT, went to blow up the place, and only returned when he couldn’t find the detonator (and then the first thing she saw him do in pogtopia was encourage the pit behaviour but that’s not what we’re talking about asdfgh). that is massive miscommunication and it’s been brewing between them for months - to make a quirky little reference to the title, niki has been carrying that anger with her so long it's gone bitter. it was never just about l’manberg with niki - not that anger, not her and wilbur’s friendship (hence the little flashback earlier in the fic, bc niki’s relationship to anarchism and statehood or statelessness juxtaposed with her friendships with wilbur and eret - she loves l’manberg bc she loves wilbur, but she loves eret too and those national ties don’t undermine that - is Real Interesting to me) - so when wilbur asks what else there could possibly be (because in his mind, what else could she have bothered staying around for?), she just fucking breaks.

“Niki freezes. Stock still, unable to move, unable to breathe, ice threading its way through her gut...with slow-dawning horror, she can feel hot tears welling up behind her eyes” - prose discussion time! heat and cold are two big throughlines in this fic - particularly for niki, cold is what she is. admittedly when i started with it i mostly wanted to subvert hot = angry and cold = dead but i kinda ended up enjoying this take on it for what it is instead of just as a subversion (also i like the idea of revived people running hot, their bodies r working hard to keep em going). she’s holding onto her feelings and refusing to deal with them, she’s frozen over. descriptions of cold are key to niki’s mental state throughout the fic - cold weight on her chest, feelings of frostbite when she and wilbur hug the first time, ice cold water during the dinner scene, waking up in the cold flat, etc. this was an attempt at describing a more visceral feeling of like, when you’re really mad and you can just feel the adrenaline running through your veins. always felt more cold than hot to me. when she starts to cry, the facade she’s been putting on is finally thawing out and cracking the ice she’s buried her feelings under. (also gives an excuse to write warm comforting hugs towards the end /hj). it’s a loss, it’s catharsis, it’s a whole mess.

and ofc this is all news to wilbur and he feels terrible, because as unintentional as it was, he really really hurt her - because the destruction of l’manberg fucking sucked but above all else wilbur hurt the people he loved because they loved him so much and not in spite of it, because they cared about him so deeply and his death was a massive blow to them. this hasn’t even dawned on him, because how could it? he respects deeply niki (lowkey respects her opinion more than his own at this point) so he has to listen, because it’s niki (“and he looks at Niki the same way he does whenever her voice is being drowned out in a crowd - the way he does when he wants to hear her, when he wants to know what she has to say” - because he does), and what she says fucking floors him. in his eyes, he failed her by putting her in danger and then by destroying her home - the idea that she valued him and their friendship so much flies entirely over his head until this moment, and he is forced to re-evaluate the mindset that has motivated him since… basically since pogtopia! the way i write wilbur is like… yes, he’s one of niki’s closest friends and he’s more aware of her insecurities and issues than most (which is why he does always take the time to listen to her, etc) but he does over-idealise her a bit. tbf, i think he does to some extent with everyone (calling tubbo strong on the anniversary stream, for example). also the fact that he really wasn’t around for niki’s lowest moments as a character! he still thinks of her the way she was in l’manberg - confident, steadfast, respected - and this moment shatters that for him as he realises exactly what effect he and his death had on her and everyone else, not just by his actions, but because they loved him and cared for him so deeply.

sorry that this got horrifically long!! and thank you so much for sending snippets in <3333

#ALSO SORRY THIS TOOK TWO WEEKS. LMFAO #asks #thespoonisvictory #dvd commentary #< i have successfully coerced a discord server into doing the dvd commentary on a regular basis and it is the BEST thing

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ifuckinglovestvincent · 5 years

Text

Switching Lanes With St. Vincent

By Molly Young

January 22, 2019

Jacket (men’s), $4,900, pants (men’s), $2,300, by Dior / Men shoes, by Christian Louboutin / Rings (throughout) by Cartier

On a cold recent night in Brooklyn, St. Vincent appeared onstage in a Saint Laurent smoking jacket to much clapping and hooting, gave the crowd a deadpan look, and said, “Without being reductive, I'd like to say that we haven't actually done anything yet.” Pause. “So let's do something.”

She launched into a cover of Lou Reed's “Perfect Day”: an arty torch-song version that made you really wonder whom she was thinking about when she sang it. This was the elusive chanteuse version of St. Vincent, at least 80 percent leg, with slicked-back hair and pale, pale skin. She belted, sipped from a tumbler of tequila (“Oh, Christ on a cracker, that's strong”), executed little feints and pounces, flung the mic cord away from herself like a filthy sock, and spat on the stage a bunch of times. Nine parts Judy Garland, one part GG Allin.

If the Garland-Allin combination suggests that St. Vincent is an acquired taste, she's one that has been acquired by a wide range of fans. The crowd in Brooklyn included young women with Haircuts in pastel fur and guys with beards of widely varying intentionality. There was a woman of at least 90 years and a Hasidic guy in a tall hat, which was too bad for whoever sat behind him. There were models, full nuclear families, and even a solitary frat bro. St. Vincent brings people together.

If you chart the career of Annie Clark, which is St. Vincent's civilian name, you will see what start-up founders and venture capitalists call “hockey-stick growth.” That is, a line that moves steadily in a northeast direction until it hits an “inflection point” and shoots steeply upward. It's called hockey-stick growth because…it looks like a hockey stick.

Dress, by Balmain

The toe of the stick starts with Marry Me, Clark's debut solo album, which came out a decade ago and established a few things that would become essential St. Vincent traits: her ability to play a zillion instruments (she's credited on the album with everything from dulcimer to vibraphone), her highbrow streak (Shakespeare citations), her goofy streak (“Marry me!” is an Arrested Development bit), and her oceanic library of musical references (Kate Bush, Steve Reich, uh…D'Angelo!). The blade of the stick is her next four albums, one of them a collaboration with David Byrne, all of them confirming her presence as an enigma of indie pop and a guitar genius. The stick of the stick took a non-musical detour in 2016, when Clark was photographed canoodling with (now ex-) girlfriend Cara Delevingne at Taylor Swift's mansion, followed a few months later by pictures of Clark holding hands with Kristen Stewart. That brought her to the realm of mainstream paparazzi-pictures-in-the-Daily-Mail celebrity. Finally, the top of the stick is Masseduction, the 2017 album she co-produced with Jack Antonoff, which revealed St. Vincent to be not only experimental and beguiling but capable of turning out incorrigible bangers.

Masseduction made the case that Clark could be as much a pop star as someone like Sia or Nicki Minaj—a performer whose idiosyncrasies didn't have to be tamped down for mainstream success but could actually be amplified. The artist Bruce Nauman once said he made work that was like “going up the stairs in the dark and either having an extra stair that you didn't expect or not having one that you thought was going to be there.” The idea applies to Masseduction: Into the familiar form of a pop song Clark introduces surprising missteps, unexpected additions and subtractions. The album reached No. 10 on the Billboard 200. The David Bowie comparisons got louder.

This past fall, she released MassEducation (not quite the same title; note the addition of the letter a), which turned a dozen of the tracks into stripped-down piano songs. Although technically off duty after being on tour for nearly all of 2018, Clark has been performing the reduced songs here and there in small venues with her collaborator, the composer and pianist Thomas Bartlett. Whereas the Masseduction tour involved a lot of latex, neon, choreographed sex-robot dance moves, and LED screens, these recent shows have been comparatively austere. When she performed in Brooklyn, the stage was empty, aside from a piano and a side table. There were blue lights, a little piped-in fog for atmosphere, and that was it. It looked like an early-'90s magazine ad for premium liquor: art-directed, yes, but not to the degree that it Pinterested itself.

Coat, (men’s) $8,475, by Versace / Shoes, by Christian Louboutin / Tights, by Wolford

The performance was similarly informal. Midway through one song, Clark forgot the lyrics and halted. “It takes a different energy to be performing [than] to sit in your sweatpants watching Babylon Berlin,” she said. “Wherever I am, I completely forget the past, and I'm like. ‘This is now.’ And sometimes this means forgetting song lyrics. So, if you will…tell me what the second fucking verse is.”

Clark has only a decade in the public eye behind her, but she's accomplished a good amount of shape-shifting. An openness to the full range of human expression, in fact, is kind of a requirement for being a St. Vincent fan. This is a person who has appeared in the front row at Chanel and also a person who played a gig dressed as a toilet, a person profiled in Vogue and on the cover of Guitar World.

The day before her Brooklyn show, I sat with Clark to find out what it's like to be utterly unstructured, time-wise, after a long stretch of knowing a year in advance that she had to be in, like, Denmark on July 4 and couldn't make plans with friends.

“I've been off tour now for three weeks,” she said. “When I say ‘off,’ I mean I didn't have to travel.”

This doesn't mean she hasn't traveled—she went to L.A. to get in the studio with Sleater-Kinney and also hopped down to Texas, where she grew up—just that she hasn't been contractually obligated to travel. What else did she do on her mini-vacation?

“I had the best weekend last weekend. I woke up and did hot Pilates, and then I got a bunch of new modular synths, and I set 'em up, and I spent ten hours with modular synths. Plugging things in. What happens when I do this? I'm unburdened by a full understanding of what's going on, so I'm very willing to experiment.”

Coat, by Boss

Jacket, and coat, by Boss / Necklace, by Cartier

Like a child?

“Exactly. Did you ever get those electronics kits as a kid for like 20 bucks from RadioShack? Where you connect this wire to that one and a light bulb turns on? It's very much like that.”

There's an element of chaos, she said, that makes synth noodling a neat way to stumble on melodies that she might not have consciously assembled. She played with the synths by herself all day. “I don't stop, necessarily,” she said, reflecting on what the idea of “vacation” means to someone for whom “job” and “things I love to do” happen to overlap more or less exactly. “I just get to do other things that are really fun. I'm in control of my time.” She had plans to see a show at the New Museum, read books, play music and see movies alone, always sitting on the aisle so she could make a quick escape if necessary. But she will probably keep working. St. Vincent doesn't have hobbies.

When it manifests in a person, this synergy between life and work is an almost physically perceptible quality, like having brown eyes or one leg or being beautiful. Like beauty, it's a result of luck, and a quality that can invoke total despair in people who aren't themselves allotted it. This isn't to say that Clark's career is a stroke of unearned fortune but that her skills and character and era and influences have collided into a perfect storm of realized talent. And to have talent and realize that talent and then be beloved by thousands for exactly the thing that is most special about you: Is there anything a person could possibly want more? Is this why Annie Clark glows? Or is it because she's super pale? Or was it because there was a sound coming through the window where we sat that sounded thrillingly familiar?

“Is Amy Sedaris running by?” Clark asked, her spine straightening. A man with a boom mic was visible on the sidewalk outside. Another guy in a baseball cap issued instructions to someone beyond the window. Someone said “Action!” and a figure in vampire makeup and a clown wig streaked across the sidewalk. Someone said “Cut!” and Clark zipped over for a look. It was, in fact, Amy Sedaris, her clown wig bobbing in the 44-degree breeze. The mic operator was gagging with laughter. It seemed like a good omen, this sighting, like the New York City version of Groundhog Day: If an Amy Sedaris streaks across your sight line in vampire makeup, spring will arrive early.

Blazer (men’s) $1,125, by Paul Smith

Another thing Clark does when off tour is absorb all the input that she misses when she's locked into performance mode. On a Monday afternoon, she met artist Lisa Yuskavage at an exhibition of her paintings at the David Zwirner gallery in Chelsea. Yuskavage was part of a mini-boom of figurative painting in the '90s, turning out portraits of Penthouse centerfolds and giant-jugged babes with Rembrandt-esque skill. It made sense that Clark wanted to meet her: Both women make art about the inner lives of female figures, both are sorcerers of technique, both are theatrical but introspective, both have incendiary style. The gallery was a white cube, skylit, with paintings around the perimeter. Yuskavage and Clark wandered through at a pace exclusive to walking tours of cultural spaces, which is to say a few steps every 10 to 15 seconds with pauses between for the proper amount of motionless appreciation.

The paintings were small, all about the size of a human head, and featured a lot of nipples, tufted pudenda, tan lines, majestic asses, and protruding tongues. “I like the idea of possessing something by painting it,” Yuskavage said. “That's the way I understand the world. Like a dog licking something.”

Clark looked at the works with the expression people make when they're meditating. She was wearing elfin boots, black pants, and a shirt with a print that I can only describe as “funky”—“funky” being an adjective that looks good on very few people, St. Vincent being one of them—and sipped from a cup of espresso furnished by a gallery minion. After she finished the drink, there was a moment when she looked blankly at the saucer, unsure what to do with it, and then stuck it in the breast pocket of her funky shirt for the rest of the tour.

A painting called Sweetpuss featured a bubble-butted blonde in beaded panties with nipples so upwardly erect they actually resembled little boners. Yuskavage based the underwear on a pair of real underwear that she'd constructed herself from colored balls and string. “I've got the beaded panties if you ever need 'em,” she said to Clark. “They might fit you. They're tiny.”

Earrings, by Erickson Beamon

“I'm picturing you going to the Garment District,” Clark said.

“There was a lot of going to the Garment District.”

As they completed their lap around the white cube, Clark interjected with questions—what year was this? were you considering getting into film? how long did these sittings take? what does “mise-en-scène” mean?—but mainly listened. And she is a good listener: an inquisitive head tilter, an encouraging nodder, a non-fidgeter, a maker of eye contact. She found analogues between painting and music. When Yuskavage mourned the death of lead white paint (due to its poisonous qualities, although, as the artist pointed out, “It's not that big a deal to not get lead poisoning; just don't eat the paint”), Clark compared it to recording's transition from tape to digital.

“Back in the day, if you wanted to hear something really reverberant”—she clapped; it reverberated—“you'd have to be in a room like this and record it, or make a reverb chamber,” Clark said. “Now we have digital plug-ins where you can say, ‘Oh, I want the acoustic resonance of the Sistine Chapel.’ Great. Somebody's gone and sampled that and created an algorithm that sounds like you're in the Sistine Chapel.”

Lately, she said, she's been way more into devices that betray their imperfections. That are slightly out of tune, or capable of messing up, or less forgiving of human intervention. “Air moving through a room,” Clark said. “That's what's interesting to me.”

They kept pacing. The paintings on the wall evolved. Conversation turned to what happens when you grow as an artist and people respond by flipping out.

“I always find it interesting when someone wants you to go back to ‘when you were good,’ ” Yuskavage said. “This is why we liked you.”

“I can't think of anybody where I go, ‘What's great about that artist is their consistency, ” Clark said. “Anything that stays the same for too long dies. It fails to capture people's imagination.”

Coat (mens), $1,150, by Acne Studios

They were identifying a problem with fans, of course, not with themselves. It was an implicit identification, because performers aren't permitted to critique their audiences, and it was definitely the artistic equivalent of a First World problem—an issue that arises only when you're so resplendent with talent that you not only nail something enough to attract adoration but nail it hard enough to get personally bored and move on—but it was still valid. They were talking about the kind of fan who clings to a specific tree when he or she could be roaming through a whole forest. In St. Vincent's case, a forest of prog-rock thickets and jazzy roots and orchestral brambles and mournful-ballad underlayers, all of it sprouting and molting under a prodigious pop canopy. They were talking about the strange phenomenon of people getting mad at you for surprising them. Even if the surprise is great.

Molly Young is a writer living in New York City. She wrote about Donatella Versace in the April 2018 issue of GQ.

A version of this story originally appeared in the February 2019 issue with the title "Switching Lanes With St. Vincent."

#st vincent #annie clark #gq #interviews #shakespeare citations #christ on a cracker #lmao

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kitty-bandit · 7 years

Note

I hope you don't mind me asking, but how do you get over writer's block?

Oh, man. The question that everyone wants answered. XD

Writer’s Block is hard. Sometimes it feels like you’ll neverget through it. But I’m here to tell you that you will. Even if you think it’simpossible, there’s always a way around it. I’ve got a few things that I dowhen the Block™ strikes. Hopefully, it can help you as well.

One of my most common types of Writer’s Block is where I know what is supposed to happen in ascene, but I can’t get myself to write it out. Maybe the words are just notcoming or I’m hella distracted. Either way, that wordcount is still stuck whereit was at, and I end up wasting a whole night doing nothing.

First, get rid of distractions. Turn off the TV. Close yourbrowsers and messengers. Use software that keeps you honest, if you have to.(There are programs you can use that will turn off the wifi to your deviceuntil you’ve either completed a task or have spent so much time on it. I don’tuse them, but they can be extremely helpful for some people.) Find a quietplace you can write. It might be your room, office, the library, a coffee shop—whereveryou feel most productive. Put on some music or white noise. Some people canwrite to music with words, but I prefer using nature sounds or musical scores.(I’m particularly fond of the Skyrim Soundtrack and my nature CD Echoes of theLoon.)

Next, look at the scene that you want to write and plot it out. Now, I don’t just mean ageneral idea of what should happen, I mean you figure out what the charactersare doing point by point. Figure out dialogue, parts of the setting you want todraw attention to, what exactly the point of the scene is, how the charactersare standing (Sitting? Laying?), what they physically do in the scene, theiremotions. Basically, it’s like writing the scene as barebones before actually writing it. (I wouldn’t takemore than 30 minutes on this part.) It may sound like doubling the work, but ifyou are seriously stuck on a scene, it’s the best way to get around it. Onceyou’ve gotten your notes written, then you can go ahead and use that templateyou’ve created to actually write the scene. This has gotten me unstuck SO MANYTIMES. It’s a miracle.

Now, if you’re having issues with a story in general, as innot knowing where to take a scene or figuring out plot points or just beingUNINSPIRED, I have completely differentadvice.

First off, I want you to take a break from writing. Maybejust a day, maybe a week. I know you’re thinking, “But I’ve been unproductivefor so long already!” but hear me out. Whenever I’ve been worried about writingand unable to get words in, I spend the whole time that I’m not writing worrying about the fact that I’m notwriting. What I want you to do is take time for YOU. Do not think aboutwriting. Watch your favorite show/movie. Read a book. Go exercise. Take a walk.Go to the park. Hang out with friends. Bake or cook. Go out to eat at a new restaurant.Do something other than writing! Personally, I will take the day to knit andbinge Netflix or I’ll go out with my husband and do a Pokemon GO run in thepark. Just get away from your story and chill out.

Something you may not think will help, but really does—CLEANYOUR SPACE. Whether that space is your apartment, dorm room, bedroom, house.Clean it. Get rid of clutter. Wash your damn clothes. Do the dishes that havebeen piling up. If your living space is orderly, it will cause you 100% lessstress. Trust me on this. Just take a night to get your space in order. A cleanspace is less distracting. Plus, the sense of accomplishment really helpsmotivate you to do other things. (If you can clean the house, you candefinitely get that story written!)

Now, I mentioned reading a book earlier, but I’m going to reiterateit here. READ. You should be reading if you want to write well. When you readstories, you absorb the craft. Read good books, bad books, fanfiction, newspaperarticles, scholarly journals. Basically, read everything. Seeing how sentencescan be crafted differently, seeing how some things work and others don’t, isvery important. Write down what you like. Write down what you hate. Trust me—thiswill help you immensely.

If you’re still stuck on ideas, check prompt blogs forsomething to stimulate you brain. Another option is to try consuming a newstory in whatever media you prefer (books, TV, movies, whatever). New stories willinspire you to create your own works.

One thing that is overlooked a lot is simple communication.Talk with some of your friends or family or writing group if you have one (basicallywhoever you trust) about any ideas you have that you can’t work into a storyquite yet. When you bounce ideas off other people, it helps your own ideasstart rolling around in your head. The ideas grow, gain momentum, andeventually, you’ll have a story! Plus, it’s hella fun to do!

Okay, I think I’ve rambled on long enough. XD I really hopethis helps out, Anon!

#personal #reply #anon #writing #writer's block

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