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winterhawk-olympic-bang · 3 years

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Let’s Get It On

How To Write Sex

Guest Poster: CB

Here is our second Writer Workshop post, written by CB. 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.

So Your Characters Want to Bang

Welcome to my Ted Talk on How To Successfully Write Pornography! We’re going to cover a few bases here (first, second, third, and home base, to keep up with the metaphor), but feel free to reach out if you have any questions either on the Discord server or here on the Tumblr. If you take a look at my body of work you can see that a significant portion of it is explicit fic, which I’m told is a struggle for some folks. Apparently my CPU is 80% porn.exe, so I’ve got a bit of a niche. Additionally, I’ve got a medical professional background that includes a very specific nurse certification in sex-related shenanigans, so if you’ve got questions, I’ve got answers.

When I decide to write porn (or when my characters decide it for me), I have a few basic things that I keep in mind in order to make sure the story stays on track, the character arcs fit with the scenarios, and that everything doesn’t start to feel too formulaic. I’m going to share my methods and maybe you will find something that helps you out or inspires you to give writing explicit fic a try!

The Mechanics

Let’s start with the basics. Fictional pornography can start to feel, well, a little bit formulaic, especially if you read or write a lot of it. There’s a standard formula of kissing, rubbing, fingers, dicks (or other bits), everybody comes, the end! There’s nothing wrong with sticking to the basic formula, especially your first time (ha!), but here are some thoughts on how you can make sure you’re getting the specifics done and done well, and how to avoid feeling like you’ve written the sexual equivalent of an English essay.

Lubrication. It… really doesn’t matter exactly what kind of sex your characters are having, you can’t go wrong with lube. Getting things wet and slippery is half the fun and also twice the enjoyment. Sometimes characters decide to get it on in unfortunately risque locations, and lube may not be readily available - here is a nice list of MacGyvered lube solutions you may find helpful in that circumstance. That being said - if you are writing anal sex of some sort, lubrication is an absolute must have.

Preparation. Otherwise known as foreplay. Prep is and can be sexy! Everyone involved wants to have a good time, some preparation is required! I don’t just mean fingers in the butt (although that can be important too, we’re gonna get to that), but just generally building up the level of arousal over time adds to the dynamic you’re trying to create between two characters. Even if it’s fuck-or-die, sex pollen shenanigans, just talking about how hot the character feels for it is still a form of preparation/foreplay. Specifically speaking to buttsex - the amount of prep your character needs is heavily dependent on the circumstances. For your consideration - is this a first time sex situation, or does your character regularly bottom? Are they pressed for time, or is this a long, drawn-out affair? There is not (despite what fanfic writers would have you believe) a certain number of fingers that you have to insert into anyone’s anus that makes them ‘ready’ for sex. A person who regularly bottoms may not need any fingering at all, in fact, but they are still going to need lube. (See point 1.) If your character has never bottomed before, they’re going to need more time and patience than a character that does it a lot, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they need more and more and more fingers. It just means they need a partner with consideration for their comfort. And lube.

Coming. People (and thus, characters) don’t often come at exactly the same time. Frequently someone comes first. The other person may not come at all! They don’t have to! If it’s important to you, that’s fine. But it can be fun to play with the dynamics of one character coming and the other character not, because they’re caring for the first character, or because they want to wait and enjoy the burn for later, or because of whatever other reason - which brings us back to character and story dynamic. Also, playing with this particular dynamic can make your pornography feel a lot less formulaic. Character B didn’t come because they wanted to wait and savor the feeling, and maybe in a few hours or days, Character A gets to really have a good time paying them back with a truly spectacular orgasm. Maybe they just really wanted to see their partner fucked out and happy, and coming really wasn’t that important to them. Maybe they’re sex-postive ace, or maybe they take medication that makes sex and orgasms hard to achieve, but they still enjoy the intimacy. It’s up to you (and your characters!), but it’s not necessary for both people to come for the scene to be satisfying.

Penetration. Penetration is not the end-all-be-all of sex. Penetration isn’t even required for something to be considered sex. Some people never want penetration, and that’s okay. This is a good time to consider your characters’ boundaries, a good way to involve consent, and a good way to consider what kind of bedroom dynamic your characters are going to share - even or especially if it’s completely different to the dynamic they share outside the bedroom. Is penetration necessary or important to the characters, the story, or the development of the relationship? Even if you just want to write it, that’s fine, but considering your characters’ perspective and feeling will give the act more depth and nuance.

Expectations (and subverting them so that whatever you’re writing feels fresh and different). Like I said before, there’s a certain amount of ‘this is what’s going to happen’ expectation in fictional pornography. A series of steps that you can pretty much guarantee is going to get you from point A to point F in the sexual alphabet. One of the biggest ways that you can make your sex scenes feel more intimate, more character-driven, and more unique is by subverting those expectations and doing something different that fits your dynamic better or isn’t “the norm”. For example, in a recent fic I had a character fantasize about what it would be like to have the object of their affection on their hands and knees - but when it came time for the sex, said character flipped the script and climbed on top instead! Fictional pornography isn’t real, and people don’t necessarily want realism in their fiction, but adding some realistic elements (oh no, I’ve lost the lube!/it turns out I don’t like this one thing can we try another thing/a hilarious thing has just happened) can be fun and unexpected, and make the reader more invested in your story.

So You Want To Add An Explicit Scene

You’re writing a lovely enemies to friends back to enemies to lovers arc and the time has come to do the do. I’m excited for you! I’m excited for your characters! But now you want to know how do I add this to my story organically? How do you make this feel like a natural progression of the story, how do you segue from fighting Doombots to sweating it up in the sheets?

The trick, in my experience, is to build up to that moment way before you get there. You have to lay the groundwork for attraction before anyone takes off any clothes. Does Character A get distracted during the fight by staring at Character B’s biceps? Was that an absolutely beautiful sniper shot at an impossible angle and it was so good that Character A’s breath literally catches in his chest and he nearly gets hit in the face by a robot fist? Did someone else in the battle have to remind Character B to pay attention to the fight? Is it movie night and Character A doesn’t even know the plot of the film because they’ve been too busy staring at Character B’s face in the light of the television screen?

A little pining goes a long way, but you have to establish attraction before your characters can act on attraction. It feels jarring to your readers if the characters hated each other two paragraphs ago and now they’re fucking in a public space. Even if it’s hate sex, you gotta have the POV character hate how attractive they find the other character. Then you just need an inciting event - one character takes off their shirt because it’s ripped from the fight, or they bump into each other in the communal kitchen and that hot line of their bodies pressed together sparks a kiss - and then you’re off and running!

The exception to this might be an established relationship Plot What Plot fic, but even then, you’ve probably got an idea that sparks the actual sex - include that in your fic!

Help, This Is Moving Way Too Fast!

Oh no, the pacing is off! It happens to the best of us, don’t worry. You get in a hurry (just come already, oh my god!), and you push through to the end and then on re-read or in beta, you find that the whole thing just feels flat and rushed. It started off so well, and then you lost something somewhere in the middle.

The way I combat this is by focusing on how the characters feel and/or how they react to what’s happening.

Someone’s mouth is on someone else’s body - how does the POV character feel about this? If they’re the recipient, is this the hottest thing that’s ever happened to them? Are they afraid to let go and enjoy it? Are they 404 Error: Brain Not Found? Play around with it. Does the non-POV character say something unbelievably hot/romantic/sappy/hilarious? What kind of mood are you trying to set? This is a character interaction as much as dialogue is, so you’re still working with the back-and-forth of two people who are communicating, but with their bodies. (And words too, to be honest). If the scene is too rushed, slow it down with some internal dialogue, external dialogue, or something emotional (like a realization or an acknowledgement - oh no I love them/oh no I don’t hate them/they always take good care of me). If the scene is too long (to be honest this rarely happens, but it can), consider whether you’ve added too much dialogue or other extraneous interactions that have slowed your scene and taken attention away from what’s happening.

Help, It Sounds Like A Medical Exam

This is nearly always a terminology problem.

I’m not here to tell you what words you can and cannot use in your sex scenes. Everyone feels differently about acceptable terminology (though we have all laughed at dick euphemisms). And that’s not even getting into writing fics with trans characters or different gender identities. Personally, I tend to use cock/dick for penis, and I avoid specifically naming parts for vagina-havers because I’ve never found a good one that I liked that I felt flowed smoothly in my own writing. So this one is more nebulous because it’s a personal choice you’re making about what words do it for you and what words don’t. It’s also, again, about your character’s perspective. If you have a character who prefers certain terminology, that’s the terminology you use.

Here’s what I can suggest. Don’t focus as much on the parts of the body you’re writing, and focus much, much more on the sensations you’re creating. There is a mouth on your POV character’s penis - how does that feel to them? Is it: hot, tight, wet, is there something happening with the tongue, are they sucking really hard, are they going really deep? Alternatively - is the non-POV character enthusiastic? Are they into it? Is how into it they are super hot to the receiving character? Are they sloppy but determined? Beyond the physical sensation, how about emotional reactions? Has your POV character never had this before, or has no one ever treated them with such tender care? Is it the best blowjob they’ve ever received? The worst? (This can still be hot - can the POV character give them careful, precise instructions on how to do it better? Does the non-POV character find THAT extremely hot?).

Keep in mind that you’re not writing technical directions for the characters in your scene. (Unless you are, because you’ve discovered Gentle!Dom!Bucky, who is telling Praise!Kink!Clint exactly what to do.) You’re writing a scene that conveys something emotional to the reader. Is it a sexy emotion? Yes, yes it is. It might also be a sad emotion, or a happy one, or any of the range of human emotions, really, but the point is that readers probably know how the sex works mechanically, what you’re trying to do is give them feelings about it.

Speaking of Feelings

Let’s talk a little bit about motivation. Yes, even sex scenes need motivation. Not to be the prima donna actor over here, but ask yourself: Why am I writing a sex scene?

Generally speaking, well-written sex scenes are better received if they accomplish a goal. Writing a sex scene well is easier if you have this goal in mind before you ever sit down in front of your computer.

Does this scene advance the story? By this I mean: is this an emotional resolution, does it convey something about the characters’ relationship that cannot be conveyed in another venue or does it better express that aspect of their relationship, does it have meaning beyond the immediate gratification of an orgasm or add to the fic in some way?

Does this scene advance the relationship? Is it a big step for one or both characters? Are you showing vulnerability/trust/compassion/concern/etc? Is it an emotional milestone? Is it an expression of love that one of the characters can’t make with words but can demonstrate physically?

I’m going to pull some very specific examples from my own work, helpfully crowdsourced and reviewed by a trusted friend so that I can talk more clearly about what I mean.

Russian Red: if you haven’t read this one, it’s a story about Bucky wearing lipstick and then giving Clint a blow job. That’s it, that’s the fic. When I put it like that, it doesn’t sound all that exciting, really, and maybe it doesn’t even sound like something you’d like. A man wearing lipstick may not be your thing!! That’s okay! (And as an aside, people enjoy reading/writing things that they have absolutely zero interest in in real life, and that’s okay! Fantasies are weird like that, and a normal part of human sexuality, and we aren’t judging anyone for their kinks here.) But this fic employs very specifically some of the points I’ve made so far, so I want to talk a little about it, especially foreplay and emotional investment.

Bucky wearing lipstick in this fic is not about Bucky at all. It is explicitly about fulfilling a fantasy for Clint. In fact, later in the fic, Bucky has a moment of insecurity about it because he had what he thought was a great idea, and in the moment of truth it becomes a bit of screaming panic because what if the whole thing is stupid!!!! We’ve all had that moment. So readers can relate. But also - throughout the course of the fic it becomes something that Bucky also enjoys and finds sexy. So there are multiple motivators: emotional satisfaction for Bucky because he’s doing something for Clint, physical satisfaction for Clint because he is getting his fantasy fulfilled, and then the added bonus of Bucky finding the whole thing unexpectedly hot means that he is also satisfied by the encounter. I have created an emotional need that is satisfied through porn.

Emotional investment (also known as the character is putting in work). Bucky goes through a lot to make this fantasy happen. He has to tell Natasha what he’s doing for one thing, which is uncomfortable. A little bit of character discomfort makes the payoff at the end better, because your reader is invested in your character having a good outcome! It also shows that Bucky cares about Clint more than he cares about the mild discomfort/vulnerability of asking Natasha about lipstick for a mildly kinky thing he’s doing.

Foreplay - the more invested Bucky gets in doing this thing for Clint, the more he starts to find it hot and exciting, the more like foreplay it becomes, which means the payoff in the end is that much better. (Revisit the point on preparation from earlier!). There is a lot of build up from the moment Bucky puts the lipstick on (tactile sensations, memories tied to lipstick, etc.) to the moment he leaves the very first red imprint of his mouth on Clint’s skin and realizes oh shit, this is hot.

This fic is very, very close, tight third-person POV. Keeping the POV so close and tight means that your reader is very much in your POV character’s head - the reader is getting their experiences (emotional, physical, tactile senses) but they’re only able to interpret the other characters’ motivations and reactions through the lens of your POV character. It’s trickier writing, but it means the reader is more connected to the character and therefore the porn. Also, it means that the reader is much more in tune with the non-POV characters’ reactions, which means incoherent mess is just that much hotter.

Personal Security/Security Failure: So these fics are… their own claim to fame in fandom. Gentle!Dom!Bucky and Praise!Kink!Clint have sexy, sexy adventures. The first fic is their first meeting, the second one is fondly known as Circus Spanking. If you haven’t read them, that’s the basic summary, but please mind the tags if you choose to explore this series. Here we’re going to hit on consent, which is important and sexy, and vulnerability/trust.

Again it’s very close, 3rd person POV, which means you’re very much in Clint’s head when he’s a wrecked, incoherent mess. In the previous fic Bucky was watching the incoherency happen, which is very hot. In this fic the reader is experiencing the incoherency. There’s also a lot of buildup in the first fic of Clint experiencing this inexplicable attraction to Bucky, and the confusion he has that Bucky is equally attracted to him - so like foreplay, you’re building it up before they ever take their clothes off.

Consent. If you are dabbling anywhere in the kink neighborhood I cannot express to you how important it is to include explicit consent. Please get a kink sensitivity reader. Don’t surprise your audience with dubious consent - make it clear and explicit from the start, even if it’s consensual nonconsent (which is a tag, but can also be addressed early with a line like ‘this is something they’d talked about previously’). But also! Consent can be sexy! It can be fun! It doesn’t have to be a drawn out contract of hard limits and detailed diagrams (though I have seen that done and done well!). Consent can be as simple as checking in with a partner if they’ve gone quiet or seem so wrecked they can’t express themselves. Consent can be one character telling another exactly what they’re going to do to them (hot hot hot!!), asking if they’re okay with it, and then doing exactly what they said.

Vulnerability/trust. Just like with the previous fic, vulnerability adds a sense of emotional intimacy that can be super hot. If you’re writing kinky fic, vulnerability and trust go hand in hand, and show how deeply invested characters can be in each other - and that they respect and care for one another as well. One character making themselves vulnerable to another with the understanding that the other character isn’t going to take advantage of that trust can be supernova hot if you employ it correctly. The key here is making sure that the character in the position of power respects the vulnerable character’s boundaries. Security Failure in specific sets up an emotional need (increased trust) that is fulfilled physically by the porn that follows. Clint needs to trust Bucky more, and Bucky needs to know that Clint trusts him. Clint making himself super vulnerable in this fic lets both of these needs be fulfilled.

Interactions outside the bedroom compared to interactions inside the bedroom. In this fic, I chose to have these mirror each other - Bucky is in control of himself and in command of the situation in all of their interactions, so before they ever get naked you know what to expect from the dynamic. What can also be fun, however, is subverting expectations, so that how characters interact outside the bedroom is very different from how they interact inside the bedroom - so this is another time when knowing what your characters want/prefer is important motivation for your writing!

Character moments in your porn - there’s a scene in the first fic where Clint (this is all Clint POV) thinks about how much he likes performing a certain act, because it makes him feel good and useful. It’s a very short interaction but it tells you a lot about the character - it tells you he likes to be useful, that he likes to be considered good (hello praise kink!), and it tells you he has low self-esteem which makes you want to wrap him up and a blanket and tuck him in and tell him how good and useful he is, but you also want Bucky to wreck him. Your characters still have characterization, even during porn. In the second fic, we see character growth that mirrors growth within the relationship, but there’s still room to grow because Clint is still uncertain and insecure, and the fic helps advance their relationship to a new level of trust. Through porn.

Communication, communication, communication. Especially in kink fic but honestly in most porn - your characters have to communicate with each other! It can be nonverbal, but you’ve gotta make it clear to the reader.

The Big Finish

Everyone came (or maybe they didn’t), now what CB?

Oof, good question.

To be honest, endings are the hardest (ha!) part. And luckily, we’re going to have a Workshop specifically about how best to accomplish them! But as far as sexy scenes and how to wrap them up and move on, I like to use resolution of whatever need I was trying to meet, and then open the next scene with something that demonstrates a new level of intimacy/relationship dynamic/etc. if it’s part of a larger storyline, or just fade to black if it’s a one-shot.

I hate to keep beating a dead horse, but this also depends on your motivation for writing your sex scene. If you were trying to accomplish something with the story, then you need to somehow demonstrate that goal has been met - are they more comfortable around each other now, are they happier to show off their relationship to their friends, are they finally admitting they’re in a relationship? If you were trying to accomplish something with the relationship itself (which, as you can see, may go hand in hand with the story), then how can you show that? Does the one who usually leaves finally fall asleep in the other person’s arms? Is there a big flowery declaration? Does someone crymax? Does one partner tenderly clean the other partner up with a warm cloth and snuggle them into submission? The world is your oyster! Do what feels right for your characters and the journey you’re taking them on!

And don’t forget the lube.

#winterhawk #WHOB #winterhawk olympic bang #writer workshops #writer workshop: smut #guest post #kangofu-cb #cw: sex mention

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scripttorture · 3 years

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I’m not sure if you’ll be comfortable answering those, but with recent police brutality in the U.S, I want to write about police torture of protestors and protestors’ feelings. I have a wheelchair user Latina girl and a blind Black trans man. They will be arrested together after the trans man tries to talk down a cop (inspired by a real video) and I wanted them both to be tear gassed. I have experience with police brutality, but was not arrested.

Part 2- How do they arrest blind people and wheelchair users? I understand mobility aids are usually taken away. Does this apply to canes for blind people? Also, I was going to have them in holding for 1 day with no treatment for their eyes after being tear gassed. Is this realistic or do you think police should pour water on them? I was going to involve the arrested characters all going on hunger strike, which might cause the police to transport them to booking faster. Does this sound okay?

‘Comfortable’ feels like the wrong word for all of this subject to be honest. I don’t think I could do this if I was comfortable, I am incandescent with rage. I am furious that the world we live in is still infested with this pointless, preventable brutality. Yes I am essentially a ball of rage and ferrets.

And a portion of that is about the fact it only really makes the news when it affects wealthy countries. Seeing the response in Kenya and Nigeria to these movements/events in the West has been… interesting.

Let’s start off with some definitions here because I think that will help as we discuss the story idea.

Realism in the context of these discussions doesn’t necessarily mean ‘this would happen to 100% of people in this situation.’ If we’re talking about torture techniques used and treatment of particular groups in society then it’s less a case of ‘does this happen or not’ and more a case of ‘how often does this happen?’ ‘how likely is this?’

Most modern torture is ‘clean’, which means that it doesn’t leave obvious external marks. But you do still get incidents (including in rich Western countries) where scarring torture occurs. They just a lot rarer.

And, continuing this example, if a writer came to me asking about writing a scarring torture in a modern setting I’d warn them about the implications that can go with that. I’d talk about how survivors of clean tortures are dismissed and belittled. I’d talk about how the harm clean tortures do is downplayed. And I’d say that while there’s nothing wrong with wanting to use a scarring torture in a story, when we do it’s important to be aware of the context: that scarring tortures are rare and that they’re not ‘worse’.

Everything you’ve described for your story is possible and it’s the sort of thing that’s more common in the country and time period you’ve chosen for your story.

I’ve found it difficult to get hold of larger studies focused on the US. A lot of the statistical analysis I’m seeing focuses on mental illness or doesn’t draw a distinction between mental illness and physical disability. That can be pretty common when you’re looking up stuff about disability. It can be a helpful approach in some respects, showing how the disabled population broadly is discriminated against. But it also masks things that affect particular sub sections of the disabled population by lumping everyone in together.

The Prison Policy Initiative has a page here you might find helpful, but most of these articles focus on mental illness and low IQ. Solitary Watch has a frankly horrifying list of cases in a prison where the disabled were routinely denied treatment and left in neglectful conditions that amount to torture. (The list includes a blind man denied a cane for 16 years.)

Based on individual cases I’ve read I’d say that what you have planned is realistic, in the sense that it is possible. Similar things have occurred in America.

In the absence of clear statistics on the number of disabled people in custody in the US, let alone how they’re treated, I’m finding it difficult to say how common this would be.

Part of the problem is a lack of consistent standards or definitions across the country. This is from a Reuters investigative piece on deaths and abuse in US jails: ‘Seventeen states have no rules or oversight mechanisms for local jails, according to Reuters research and a pending study by Michele Deitch, a corrections specialist at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. In five other low-population states, all detention facilities are run by state corrections agencies. The other 28 have some form of standards, such as assessing inmates’ health on arrival or checking on suicidal inmates at prescribed intervals. Yet those standards often are minimal, and in at least six of the states, the agencies that write them lack enforcement power or the authority to refer substandard jails for investigation.’ (Emphasis mine, full article series can be found here. It contains video footage of torture (beating), some graphic descriptions of racist abuse and miscarriage.)

What this means for you is that there’s massive variation between jails in the US. The variation affects everything from the structure of the jail itself, to staffing levels, to workplace culture, to oversight, to provision of medical care. Basically some jails are a lot more abusive and dangerous then others.

It’s also difficult to identify problem facilities because, as the Reuters article points out, a lot of the relevant statistics aren’t released to the public. Reuters came up with their statistics by examining jail records and reporting of deaths or abuse in local newspapers over a period of several years.

In some of the accounts from US prisoners I’ve read people were allowed to keep wheelchairs. In others they were taken away.

The cases where wheelchairs were taken were generally reported as part of a wider pattern of torturous neglect. I do not have enough evidence or cases here to say that that’s always the case: I don’t think this proves that prisons or jails which take mobility aids always neglect disabled prisoners. Because I don’t know whether taking a mobility aid, in and of itself, would be reported if it wasn’t happening alongside prisoners being left lying in their cells for days, unable to eat or clean themselves.

I’ve tried my best to read about disability generally over the years. Because I live in the UK most of what I know about disability is based here. I know about attitudes in Saudi, where I grew up and a little about Cyprus where my family is from.

Based on what I know about disability generally I’d say that when mobility aids and canes are taken away neglect and abuse are more likely. And I think that would include being left in a cell, having been tear gassed, with no water.

In terms of physically arresting people with disabilities, well there are problems with abuse of disabled people the world over. I’ve heard stories from a lot of different countries about people being ripped out of wheelchairs, being tackled, being dragged. Unfortunately a lot of people are taught to doubt disability and to treat obviously disabled people with contempt.

But you should remember that I read about the worst case scenarios. My knowledge is focused on abuse and ideas about what encourages or discourages it. Which can skew the perception of how common these things are. (I really wish I could find some decent statistical data here, the absence is maddening.)

I think part of the way to approach this is to break it down and figure out how many groups these characters are being passed between. I don’t actually know how the booking in process in the US works. (I’m sorry but the nature of the blog is that I’ve got a lot of broad knowledge, I’m not an expert on every police system in the world.)

The standard of treatment could easily vary between the people making the arrest and the people actually holding the prisoners.

And all of this means that I think you’ve got a lot of leeway here. There’s a big range of things that are possible here. So there’s scope to choose how bad it’s going to be.

You’re already doing that to some extent with the way you’ve planned this out and thought it through. That’s good, it’s important to work within your limits and focus on the elements you’re interested in.

There will be real cases similar to your story that went a lot worse and there’ll be cases where things went a lot better. No one story can capture everything and that’s OK.

I think these characters will probably be acutely aware that things could go very badly for them. They’ll probably have heard stories about people of their race, disability and gender being abused or even murdered by police. Use that in the story. Try to bring some of that fear and rage and defiance into the story.

I’m not sure what kind of cultural weight hunger strike carries in the US. I can link you to my masterpost on starvation which outlines the physical and psychological effects of hunger.

I also want to leave you my masterpost on solitary confinement, because I’m aware that US jails and prisons often put vulnerable prisoners straight into solitary.

It’s really clear just from your question that you’ve already put a lot of thought into this and done a fair bit of reading. Keep going.

You’re probably going to need sensitivity readers. It’s also probably going to take a lot of time, editing and re-reading to get this story as good as you want it to be.

And it’s going to be hard. Researching this stuff is incredibly exhausting. For the love of gods take breaks. I’ve got a guide to researching difficult topics here. It can be hard to follow the advice there, hell I struggle to sometimes, but you can’t let this stuff poison you.

I hope that helps :)

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#writing advice #tw torture #tw racism #tw police brutality #tw transphobia #tw ableism #disability #clean torture #tear gas #pepper #America #American National Style #jails #abuse of prisoners #prison systems #blind characters #paralysis

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taww · 3 years

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Review: Furutech DSS-4.1 Speaker Cable & DPS-4.1 Power Cord

Furutech DSS-4.1 Speaker Cable & DPS-4.1 Power Cord

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My first couple decades as an audiophile were relatively frugal. I bought a pair of used Merlin TSM speakers out of college that I used for 16 years. I rolled my own DIY speaker wire and bought $400 Sony and Onkyo CD players that I modified. My amplifier was a defective review sample that I repaired and got for pennies on the dollar. But after years of self-restraint, I started to slide down the slippery slopes of system upgrades. It started innocently enough with some used pieces... an Ayre integrated here, a Cambridge Audio streamer there... then came DAC upgrades, followed by nicer amplifiers, which naturally necessitated a better preamp. But things really took a turn for the crazy last year (I blame pandemic cabin fever) when speakers were upgraded to Audiovector SR 6 Avantgarde Arreté, which then led to the Gryphon Essence preamp and amp. Along the way I picked up the excellent Audience Au24 SX cables which, combined with Audience powerChord SEi's and a hodgepodge of other wire from Cardas, DH Labs and Mogami, have held me over. But with the system now scaling new heights of resolution and realism, the cable upgrade itch needed scratching... which leads us to the Furutech DSS-4.1 speaker cables ($395/m bulk; $3,138 as tested) and DPS-4.1 power cord ($480/m bulk; $1,458 as tested). While that might seem pricey for wire, they’re positioned to deliver the kind of ultra high-end performance associated with far more extravagant products. Could they deliver on that promise in the new TAWW reference rig?

DIY Ultra High-end??

Furutech is a Japanese cable and accessory manufacturer known for their fanatical attention to material and construction quality. Their AC power components are particularly acclaimed, and the distinctive NCF-series AC plugs and outlets can be found on the finished products of many other high-end marques. Similar to how manufacturers like Dynaudio used to sell raw drivers to other manufacturers while also building complete loudspeakers, Furutech seems perfectly content with anyone in the industry using their parts while they also sell finished products. The enterprising audiophile looking to construct or upgrade their own gear can find Furutech components readily available for purchase, though be warned - there are apparently a large number of knock-offs being peddled as genuine Furutech on eBay and other online marketplaces, so you'll want to stick to an authorized distributor. Fortunately for us in the States, we can turn to reputable online stores such as Music Direct, The Cable Company, Douglas Connection or any number of authorized dealers. The very friendly Scot Markwell of Elite A/V Distribution, Furutech's US distributor, provided the units under review here.

The DSS-4.1 speaker and DPS-4.1 and power cable represent the very highest-end Furutech wire you can buy in bulk - anything fancier requires factory termination. The two are effectively the same cable design, with the DPS version adding the requisite third conductor for grounding. I got a heads up to the remarkable properties of the power cord from my late friend Marty DeWulf a couple years back. Marty had been quietly consulting with an electrical engineer specializing in high-voltage power line transmission to construct his own power cords from scratch, and had reached a point where he felt his DIY concoctions outperformed the dozens of pricey high-end cords he had tried over the years. Marty sent me a number of development prototypes and I can attest that the cord was indeed superb and elevated the performance of most every amp I had at my disposal. Marty was feeling pretty happy with his effort until Scot @ Elite AV sent him some Furutech samples to try out, including the DPS-4.1. Sure enough, the DPS-4.1 performed at a different level from anything else Marty had tried before, including his own creations, and recalibrated his expectations for power cords - it was that good.

I later picked up the DPS-4.1 cable myself, along with the Furutech e-TP80 power distributor he praised, and confirmed their high level of performance. My appetite was whetted and I got in touch with Scot about kitting out the new reference rig with Furutech speaker and power wire throughout. This includes DPS-4.1 power cords on everything save the DAC, a GTO-D2R power distributor (review forthcoming) and DSS-4.1 speaker cables. All my samples were terminated with Furutech’s top-shelf rhodium-plated connectors - NCF plugs on the power cords, locking bananas and spades on the speaker cable. For the Gryphon Essence power amp, I had a 1.5m DPS-4.1 power cable made with 20A connectors. Since the Audiovector SR 6 speakers have tri-wire terminals, Scot also provided bare-wire jumpers made from the same PCOCC copper employed in the finished cables.

Using Furutech's PCOCC wire as tri-wire jumpers

Buying the Furutech parts and assembling the cables oneself can yield a considerable savings vs. finished cables, and most enterprising DIY'ers should be able to manage the job. However proper termination is critical to performance and safety, especially for the power cord, so if you're in any doubt, ask a dealer such as Douglas Connection to terminate them for you. Excluding any such labor, the retail cost of my 2.5m set of DSS-4.1 speaker cables with CF-202 bananas and FP-201 spades is $3,138. The 1.5m DPS-4.1 power cable with the FI-50/50M NCF plugs runs $1,458. High-end prices to be sure, but as you'll see below, I'd have no hesitation using these in systems that many would kit with far more costly wire.

The massive IEC connector is gorgeous and fits surely, but will put some stress on your jacks

Handling-wise, I'd call both on the lighter end of "garden hose," neither supple nor particularly stiff. At 19mm (0.75") thick for the speaker cable and 17mm (0.67") for the power cord, they're substantial but manageable. They'll bend easily enough into gentle curves, but the power cord will put strain on the chunky plugs if not given a good amount of clearance so don't expect to cram it into tight spaces. The speaker cable comes with an attractive woven sheath; the power cord has a purple PVC jacket, but my cables were clad in a silver Techflex sleeve for a more finished look. Both have 11AWG conductors which should allow for plenty of current flow in a typical run, and the speaker cable's capacitance is rated at 51.7pF/m (15.6pF/ft) @ 1kHz. This is an exceptionally low figure - for comparison, Kimber Kable 8TC is rated at 346pF/m, while Cardas Clear is a whopping 912pF/m - nearly 18x the Furutech! The tradeoff is a higher inductance of 0.7µH/m, but at typical lengths the effect of this should be benign.

Furutech DSS-4.1 Speaker Cable

Before we begin: since it’s impossible to say what any one component sounds like in isolation, I made most of my comparisons of the Furutech DSS-4.1 to my current reference cable, the excellent Audience Au24 SX ($3,300/2m pair). I also had Cardas Clear Light, DH Labs Q-10 Signature and a few other things on hand, but given that the Audience is the best of what I had available and is closest in price to the Furutech, most of my comments are relative to the Audience.

The best way I can describe the sound of the Furutech cable is "wide open." Compared to other cables I've had at my disposal, swapping in the Furutech sounds equivalent to the visual effect of renovating your living room from normal-sized windows to floor-to-ceiling glass. Suddenly everything feels more open, airy and illuminated. Notice that I didn't say "brighter - there’s a difference. The Furutech allows more sonic light to pass into your listening room, so when the music is brilliant and luminous, your room is suitably illuminated. But once the sun sets, that wall of glass becomes as pitch black as the night sky - and so the Furutech can be quiet and dark when called for.

In less fanciful terms, the Furutech gives the feeling of extremely wide bandwidth with no attenuation of energy or dynamics across the frequency spectrum, particularly at the extreme highs and lows. This helps it unlock more of the capability of my recent system upgrades - the top-to-bottom dynamics of the Audiovector speakers and ultra-wide-bandwidth of the Gryphon separates. In the lower frequencies the Furutech is a big step up in bass energy and resolution, transmitting more of a recording's energy and tone in the bottom three octaves. Note that this is different from having “big” or “warm” bass - similar to my illumination vs. brightness comment above, those denote colorations that constantly tilt the perceived spectral balance in a certain direction. There is no lower frequency hump or resonance here that could sound favorable on first listen but get a little monotonous in the long run. The Furutech simply allows what’s present in the signal to be transmitted more unimpeded than I have heard before in my system. This gives music tremendous “surprise” factor - it can go from ethereal to thunderous in a heartbeat. And this applies not just when used on the big Audiovectors; it's also a quality I heard on a scaled-back system with the Silverline SR17 Supreme 2-way monitors.

The top end has a similar level of transparency and dynamism, revealing all sorts of harmonics and textures as well as the air and ambience of the venue with striking transparency. Triangle, cymbals, trumpet, violin, and harpsichord are a few examples of instruments with complex high-frequency structure that sound exceptionally realistic via the DSS-4.1. At first, I felt the treble of the Furutech was a bit coarser vs. the Audience, which I have always found to be notably smooth and natural. I initially ascribed this to break-in, and gave the wire a couple hundred hours with a 4 ohm dummy load to try to burn it off. It improved, but it still had a bit of lingering grain. With time, two things became apparent: this cable takes a REALLY long time to break in - things kept getting smoother and smoother over the next couple hundred hours - and the Furutech simply refuses to cover anything up. Once I made the substantial upgrade to the Gryphon Essence combo I realized that grain was mostly endemic to my previous components, which were no slouches themselves - we’re talking all Class A discrete electronics from Pass Labs and Valvet. That just shows you the level of resolution the Furutech brings into play.

Once integrated into a system of even higher caliber, the Furutech sounded close to invisible, with great openness, clarity and detail from top to bottom and little discernible artifact. That said, at some points I did adjust the top end a bit by moving the Furutech's connection to the Audiovector speakers from the tweeter terminal to the midrange terminal. When connected to the tweeter terminal as per Audiovector recommendation (and my standard practice with other cables), things could get a hair bright, and some of the aforementioned coarseness would pop up now and again. Again, the Furutech was just telling it like it was, because later after further improvements to the system (a dedicated 20A power line, IsoAcoustics Gaia feet, breaking in the latest firmware on the PS Audio DAC), the top end sweetened and I was able to return the cables to the tweeter terminal for best transparency. In my system's current state, the Furutech brings out a top end that's wonderfully sweet, extended and natural.

A few other standout aspects bear mentioning. One is the sheer size of the soundstage, both in width and depth. I'm not sure exactly how components that have no effect on actual channel separation can affect the perceived width of the stage so much. Maybe it's a phase thing, maybe it's low level resolution that helps with ambient retrieval, maybe it's dynamic capability to bring out instruments that tend to be at the edges of the stage... whatever it is, the Furutech is able to convey a stage of substantial depth, width and dynamism. Another standout is the Furutech’s ability to convey dynamic contrasts. This is a quiet and fast cable that responds adroitly to the most minute changes in dynamic character, conveying both the undulations of a quiet melody and the surge of an orchestral climax with great color and intensity. Finally, the midrange is wonderfully dense, pure and harmonically complete, with great solidity in the lower range. Unlike many audiophile cables that provide lots of detail and speed at the expense of fullness or balance, the Furutech can better most comers in the "hifi" aspects while bringing out all the natural warmth of a great acoustic recording. Baritones, grand pianos, french horns and celli have never sounded better.

By comparison, the Audience Au24 SX is still a wonderful if more midrange-centric cable. Its slightly laid-back perspective and silkier treble are appealing for a variety of systems, particularly those on the forward side of neutral. There's a roundness and sweetness to the midrange, but at the expense of sounding a hair more congealed, bunching instruments together on a narrower stage. It also isn’t quite as responsive to quick and subtle dynamic contrasts, and the top end isn't as realistic and extended. Prior to hearing the Furutech the Audience was actually one of the best cables I had heard in many of these regards, so we're already talking about a very high level of performance here. And compared to something like the Cardas Clear Light, the Furutech was far more resolving while having a warmer, purer midrange and a sweeter treble.

The DSS-4.1 is an exceptionally transparent, balanced and complete speaker cable that can bring greater levels of realism and naturalness to a commensurate system. It delivers the type of detail and energy one would expect from an ultra high-end wire, but in an honest and unforced manner that draws one to the qualities of the source material and music without distraction. The net musical result is music has wider variation in color, texture, nuance and ultimately emotional impact - or as another reviewer put it, "expressiveness is their strong point."

Furutech DPS-4.1 Power Cord

Remarkably (or perhaps not?), virtually all the qualities that the DSS-4.1 exhibits as a speaker cable also shine through with the DPS-4.1 as a power cord. My longstanding reference is also an Audience cable - the moderately priced powerChord SE-i ($930/6 ft). It’s an incredibly consistent performer that imparts greater body, dynamics and life to most any component vs. a stock cord, not to mention a good number of aftermarket ones.

Compared to the Audience powerChord, again, the Furutech felt wide-open, more transparent and better balanced. The powerChord was a bit meatier in the mid bass and slightly sweeter on the top end - certainly more forgiving, but a little filtered compared to the Furutech. The Furutech also had a much wider and better-spaced soundstage; I won't say "twice as wide and 3x as deep" or anything with such false precision, but it certainly felt significantly bigger, with a lot more air between instruments and a stage that consistently spread beyond the width of the speakers. On pop mixes, this exhibited as stereo reverb and hard-panned effects that popped much more distinctly. Compared to the Audience and anything else I had on hand, the Furutech allowed whatever was plugged into it to transmit more recorded nuance with a sense of effortless transparency, particularly at the frequency extremes.

But like any cable regardless of quality, the Furutech wasn't the best match for everything I had on hand. I found the Audience cable more competitive with the PS Audio DAC; the Valvet A4 Mk.II monoblocks have a bit of upper midrange shine that was slightly prominent with the Furutech; and with the Class D Legacy i·v2 amplifier it was actually the very affordable Audience Forte that clicked better than the rest. But otherwise, the Furutech really shone with the majority of preamps and amps I tried, especially anything Pass Labs.

With the Gryphon Essence preamp, switching from the Furutech back to the Audience wasn’t a huge let-down by any means. And at first blush, the Audience sounded a bit more dense and focused than the Furutech, particularly in the lower midrange. But a few notes into Billie Eilish's "iomilo" [Qobuz] I realized what I was hearing as density was actually a bit of congestion, and the soundstage was quite a bit narrower than with the Furutech... everything sounded a bit more congealed around the center image of Eilish's voice. With the Furutech, the Gryphon preamp was able to eerily float effects around the entire space of the front of my living room, with percussion flourishes sprinkled throughout the track twinkling in ethereal fashion. With the Audience, everything lost some luster and became more confined between the speakers, and the frequency extremes lost some speed and impact. The DPS-4.1 cable really unleashed the wide-bandwidth capabilities of my system, maximizing both the epic bass depth, power and control of the Gryphon electronics as well as the purity and extension of the Audiovector's AMT tweeters. None of this is meant to beat up on the Audience, which costs about half as much as the Furutech and remains one of my favorite cords, but rather to elucidate how a cord like the Furutech can further elevate the performance of a system. At some point, I'll have to get around to trying Audience's latest models, such as the Studio ONE powerChord (closer in price) or the FrontRow (though that one costs 3x as much as the Furutech).

Testing the DPS-4.1 with the Gryphon Essence stereo amplifier was a bit trickier due to the need for a 20 amp IEC connector, so I special-ordered one for this purpose. Once set up, the Furutech rewarded me with incredible detail, an ultra-wide and deep soundstage that extended far beyond my walls, deep and impactful bass response and a heightened sense of purity - the "blackness" between the notes. Transients were immaculate, with perfectly clean attacks and decays - not excessively sharp, not softened, but just natural and energetic. This helped create the sense of greater macro and micro dynamic range; lots of subtle shadings and nuances in the music became clearer, while sudden transients were more explosive. There was a greater sense of both calm and energy with everything, where quiet moments felt finer and more delicate, while pops of energy in the performance burst forward with an effortless impact more akin to the live event. Separation, pitch, and articulation of bass notes were made more exceptional as well. It brought out the more rarefied capabilities of ultra high-end gear like the Gryphon - that ability to hear every element of a performance distinctively, yet perfectly integrated into the overall fabric of the music. All these qualities came to the fore listening to complex, dynamic material such as Strauss Don Juan [Qobuz]. I was struck by just how much clearer a window the Furutech gave into the dense, at times cacophonous orchestration, while making tranquil moments such as the idyllic oboe solo even more delicate and nuanced. The overall performance of the Gryphon + Furutech pairing was exceptional.

One combo where the Furutech power cord worked even better than the speaker cable was with the Pass Labs XA30.5 amplifier. With the DSS-4.1 speaker cable, there was a bit of a tradeoff where the enhanced resolution revealed some of the shortcomings of the amp vs. the more refined (and expensive) Gryphon Essence. However the DPS-4.1 power cord was dynamite with the Pass, helping maximize its dynamics and balance out its midrange warmth with bottom-end impact and top-end extension. The Pass Labs XP10 line stage also never sounded better than with the Furutech cord, with improved dynamics, soundstaging and clarity. The lack of noise and grain further strengthened the quietness, purity and sweetness that many find so endearing of Class A gear. The outstanding synergy with the Pass Labs components makes the Furutech DPS-4.1 cord about as no-brainer a recommendation as I can make for any Pass owner.

Conclusion

The Furutechs were remarkably consistent in their sonic impact. Both the speaker and power cables impart a wide-open feeling, with striking resolution at the frequency extremes, powerful low-end response, highly agile dynamics, super low noise floor and no readily-discernible coloration. They are extremely fast and clean without curtailing any sweetness or richness intrinsic to the music. Both cables are a tad more forward than my Audience reference wire, the Au24 SX speaker cable and powerChord SE-i power cord. There’s a hair more upper midrange energy and treble resolution that will require care with some systems, though it’s less prominent than, say, something with silver or silver-plated conductors such as DH Labs Q-10 or Nordost Valhalla. And the power cord in particular took the extension and resolving power of my system to a different level. They both strike me as reference-caliber cables, exacting enough to round out a tweaked-out $100k system, yet balanced enough to elevate something more modest, with plenty of headroom to grow into more ambitious gear. In particular, if you have a system with significant extension at the frequency extremes, they’ll help extract the most out of those capabilities. And as well as they work with my reference Gryphon separates, I absolutely love how they elevate Pass Labs gear, enhancing their intrinsic warmth and musicality with greater clarity, dynamics and precision. They'll be staying in the system for the long haul as a TAWW reference cable. Very highly recommended!

#review #hifi #audio #audiophile #furutech #speaker cable #power cord

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lostinthewinterwood · 3 years

Text

Worldbuilding Exchange 2021

Hey there friend!

Apparently you share some of my taste in obscure novels with gaps in their worldbuilding—impeccable, truly. I’ve got some expansion on all the tags I’ve requested below, though if you want to just get started feel free to ignore all that; some of them are distinctly longer than others, but don’t worry, just because I didn’t use as many words for any given prompt doesn’t mean I want it any less!

Anyway, thanks for writing for me! And if any of you lovely people are inclined towards treating, I will happily accept treats in any medium for any of the fandoms, including media I didn’t actually request there :D

General DNW

· non-con/dub-con;

· explicit sexual content;

· incest (incl. adoptive/chosen family);

· a/b/o;

· mpreg;

· non-canonical permanent major character death;

· complete downer endings;

· hurt no comfort;

· heavy angst;

· on-page deliberate self-harm*;

· on-page suicide;

· gore;

· graphic physical trauma;

· character bashing;

· cringe comedy;

· fic-as-writer-soapbox;

· setting AUs**;

· unrequested identity headcanons;

· romance as the main plot.

*I don’t include things like, say, punching a wall in a fit of emotion under this. However, something like cutting would not be appreciated.

**This doesn't mean that I'd expect you to hew very narrowly to what we know for sure in canon; after all, this exchange is for worldbuilding. However, for this exchange I'd prefer not to have anything that fundamentally alters the character of the world--eg elements like a/b/o, or things like a post-canon zombie apocalypse in a canon where that doesn't really fit in with the established tone/genre/world, that sort of thing.

General Likes

– I really like plotty fics

– A focus on family and/or friendship, especially characters realizing they’re not nearly as alone as they think they are, and just generally characters who like each other and enjoy spending time together

– Found family; families of choice

– Character studies

– Worldbuilding (obviously lol)

– Canon-divergence AUs and missing scenes; things set pre- or post-canon; wriggling into canon and poking at it to see what it spits back at you, if that description makes any sense at all.

- for a list of unconventional media/formats I’ve requested before, along with some commentary on them, please see my fic in a box letter.

Mother of Learning - nobody103 – in-universe meta

Any or No Characters (Mother of Learning)

Kirielle Kazinski (Mother of Learning)

Original Character(s) (Mother of Learning)

Original Eagle Shifter Character(s) (Mother of Learning)

Xvim Chao (Mother of Learning)

Zenomir Olgai (Mother of Learning)

fandom-specific dnw: romantic and/or sexual Zach/Zorian; physical parental abuse within the Kazinski family; significant exaggeration of canonical emotional neglect/abuse/general family dysfunction

WB: aranean languages (Mother of Learning)

So, we get at best a very vague description of the aranean language in canon; I’d love something that somehow expands on this! A brief grammar? Some other kind of profile? An attempt to turn their idea-morphemes into words, or outline what they are more explicitly? Up to you!

WB: Folklore and Literature (Mother of Learning)

Over the course of the story we learn plenty of things about the world and about their magic system; we learn a lot less about specific cultural things that aren’t directly relevant to the plot, and that includes folklore and literature—they have novels, we know that much, but that’s about it. So tell me more!

WB: how language and gesture and mana interact to form spells (Mother of Learning)

For all that the novel tells us about many different spells, we never really get to see the mechanics of spellcasting, or the underlying form of the mana—tell me how it works! And there’s also the fact that when you know the spell better you can cut parts out; how does that work in combination with all of this?

WB: Ikosian as spell language: how comprehension affects outcome (Mother of Learning)

Unless I’ve embarrassingly forgotten how canon actually goes, they use Ikosian (possibly a more specific dialect? I don’t remember, I’m sorry) for their incantations, but iirc they don’t speak that day to day, and even if they do not everyone does—so, you know, how does comprehension of the incantation affect the outcome of the spell?

WB: Oral Traditions (Mother of Learning)

If we don’t get much of literature, we get less of the oral traditions of… well, anywhere, tbh. So tell me more there! If you’re looking for something more specific, I’d love to hear about witch, Khusky, morlock, or shifter traditions, but really anything would be great.

WB: the development of unstructured magic and shaping exercises (Mother of Learning)

We know that way back in the past, human magic users were less adept with unstructured magic; now, if they want to be, they can be very good indeed with it. How did we get from Point A to Point B? How did that develop, who discovered all this?

WB: the Winter Mountains (Mother of Learning)

There’s very little to be heard about the Winter Mountains in canon; all we really know is that the eagle shifters flew off there, and the place is Very Dangerous. So… what are they like? How are the eagle shifters doing out there? What else lives there?

Mother of Learning - nobody103 – in-universe meta, fanart

Any or No Characters (Mother of Learning)

Kirielle Kazinski (Mother of Learning)

Original Character(s) (Mother of Learning)

Zenomir Olgai (Mother of Learning)

fandom-specific dnw: romantic and/or sexual Zach/Zorian; physical parental abuse within the Kazinski family; significant exaggeration of canonical emotional neglect/abuse/general family dysfunction

WB: Architecture (Mother of Learning)

We get a little bit of the architecture in Eldemar, mostly in Knyazov Dveri, but not too much of it; I’d like to see more of it, and from anywhere in their world really.

WB: Artistic Traditions (Mother of Learning)

If we only get a little bit of the architecture, we get less of the art—we know that they have carved doors and Kiri does pencil sketches, and realism is a style they have (or Zorian wouldn’t be thinking about how realistic her drawings were without any hint of that being unusual were she not nine) but what else can you tell me? What does their art look like; where do these traditions come from; is there some art that’s respectable and other art that isn’t?

WB: Clothing and Fashion (Mother of Learning)

Now. We get a bit of architecture, less of art, and approximately three lines in the whole 800k about clothing, and none of it very specific, so you’ve got pretty much total freedom here—show me what’s going on!

WB: how language and gesture and mana interact to form spells (Mother of Learning)

See above section—I just thought this would lend itself well to art as well as meta!

The Rhianna Chronicles - Dave Luckett – in-universe meta, fanfic

Antheus Northstar | Serenir (Rhianna Chronicles)

Any or No Characters (Rhianna Chronicles)

Arwenna Songsinger | Arwenna the Wise (Rhianna Chronicles)

Eriseth Arwensgrove (Rhianna Chronicles)

Original Character(s) (Rhianna Chronicles)

Original Male Eldra Character(s) (Rhianna Chronicles)

Rhianna Wildwood (Rhianna Chronicles)

Worldbuilding tags:

WB: academic magic and spellcasting techniques (Rhianna Chronicles)

We don’t see a whole lot of traditional spellcasting that actually works—mostly we see Rhianna’s attempts, which tend not to go all that well, lol. Other magic we see is primarily from people who know what they’re doing and aren’t explaining things in detail. Show me some that actually works! How is it different for schoolchildren and old archmages? What are the rules and mechanics—they don’t make sense to Rhianna, but clearly some things work and some things don’t, so there’s something going on there at least.

WB: Eldra magic (Rhianna Chronicles)

Since our main Eldra character is Eriseth, we don’t see much of their magic—tell me about it! How does it work? How do they channel it, what do they use it for?

WB: Eldra society (Rhianna Chronicles)

Again, we don’t see a lot of Eldra society—we see a few characters outside of their social group, and the one meeting thing, but not a whole lot of their day- to-day life. What’s it like? What’s the role of men in their society; we know they don’t do magic, so what do they do?

WB: Wild Talents and wild magic (Rhianna Chronicles)

To be fair, we do know a fair amount about how wild magic is worked from canon; I’m interested in going farther—go deeper into things! What can or can’t be done? Why are some people wild talents—how does this happen?

WB: Wizardly College (Rhianna Chronicles)

We only see Wizardly College through Rhianna’s eyes; she doesn’t get all that much of a look at it, either. So tell me more about it! What’s it like if you’re actually involved, not just a visitor?

The Farwalker's Quest - Joni Sensel – in-universe meta, fanfic

Any or No Characters (Farwalker's Quest)

Any Storian(s) (Farwalker's Quest)

Ariel Farwalker (Farwalker's Quest)

Ezekiel Stone-Singer (Farwalker's Quest)

Misha (Farwalker's Quest)

Original Character(s) (Farwalker's Quest)

Scarl Finder (Farwalker's Quest)

fandom-specific dnw: works that rely on knowledge of later books in order to make sense--i'm not gonna care all that much about spoilers? but i haven't read 'em, so.

WB: Essence and the Trades (Farwalker's Quest)

In some ways, Essence—or at least how it’s presented in relation to humans—seems kind of like an inborn specific magical talent, but in other ways it isn’t; Zeke’s tree talks to him, and then later the stones, but the tree talks to Ariel too, if only a little. Scarl was a Storian before he was a Finder; Ariel’s feet drag her where she needs to go, but she can also learn the basics of Finding and could have been a Healtouch if she’d not messed up the plants. So how closely are they tied together, Essence and the Trades? How much of an affinity do you need? How much can you make up for lack of affinity with desire and skill?

WB: Folklore and Fairytales (Farwalker's Quest)

We know a fair amount about the history of this world as people know it, but less about their folklore and fairytales—they have trees that talk and telling darts and Essence and ghosts, they definitely have folklore about those, or other things too. Do they tell children stories of what lies outside the village? Do they have spirits or Good People who may or may not actually exist? Who tells these stories—is this still a Storian’s job, or is it the purview of anyone who knows them? Did there used to be more, before the Forgetting?

WB: ghosts and how they work (Farwalker's Quest)

Misha’s dead, has clearly been dead for quite some time, and he can do a weird assortment of things—can other ghosts do them? He’s the only one we really see, so we don’t know if he’s special or not. And how common are ghosts anyway—how do they come to be? What’s up with them, overall?

WB: how Tree-Singer Abbey came to be (Farwalker's Quest)

Clearly, Tree-Singer Abbey is very old. If I had to guess, I would say it must have been made either before the Blind War or right after the sight came back—but most likely, given that it contains the Vault, it’s from before. But Essence, as far as the characters know, wasn’t discovered until afterwards; nor were the Trades. So who built this abbey, up there in the mountains, with all the trees? Why build it there in the way they did? Was it never widely known that it was also the Vault, or was that forgotten somewhere along the way?

WB: the nature of trees (Farwalker's Quest)

…so. What is up with the trees, anyway, and have they always been this way, or did the used to be normal trees? How sentient are they; how much can they move; what are they like, especially among each other? Zeke’s tree tries to catch him, so we know they can move on their own; is that typical? Can they do it whenever they want, or only under duress? Idk man, I just want to know more about the trees, y’know?

Star Split - Kathryn Lasky – in-universe meta, fanfic

Any or No Characters (Star Split)

Darci Murlowe (Star Split)

Lana | The Prima (Star Split)

Max Lasovetch (Star Split)

Original Character(s) (Star Split)

Original Umbula Character (Star Split)

Vivian (Star Split)

fandom-specific dnw--all of this is for the narrative level (not addressing it is fine; having characters who believe or do these things is fine): eugenics apologetics; segregation portrayed as good for society/the people living under it; infantilization of disabled characters; portrayal of low-prestige dialects as being "bad grammar" versions of higher-prestige dialects

fandom-specific note: the “setting AU” dnw is here amended to “surface-level setting AUs” and is expanded on as follows: This is a pretty loose dnw for this fandom, given that the canon leans very hard on the line between straight scifi and science fantasy; it acts like it's grounded future dystopia, speculative but not fantastic, but... well. Based on canon events, I can't fully consider it as such--so as long as you keep the surface elements more or less the same, no matter what the underlying justification for them is we'll be good. Is your explanation Aliens Did It? sweet, go for it. or anything else in that vein. this world is your oyster.

WB: "tears in the mind"/ancient word memories in masked chimeras (Star Split)

Okay. Okay. So. Most of this book’s worldbuilding is plausible, you know? If not real-world plausible, at least future scifi dystopia plausible, right? But. The word thing. There is no reasonable connection as far as I can see between the genetic condition of masked chimeras and having sudden, unexplained epiphanies about the meanings of words—since the relevant aspects of language are arbitrary, and Darci doesn’t have any particularly detailed knowledge of Modern English (being herself presumably a speaker of Future English, although I have to assume that Future English is surprisingly similar to Modern English given the time scale since the poetry fragments she’s reading don’t seem to have needed any translation for her to understand them, which would generally not be the case with Modern vs Old English—and that is the time scale we’re dealing with here—anyway, let’s move on), there’s no way for her to come up with this? So please, just, explain how all this works to me?

Really don’t feel you need to stay within the scifi world conventions here lol, especially since this element pretty much… doesn’t.

WB: disability in the Bio Union (Star Split)

We don’t see much of how disability works here—Darci doesn’t seem to consider herself disabled, and there’s no other character who could really be interpreted as such. Given how very eugenicist the Bio Union is, I have to wonder how they deal with disabilities they can’t engineer out of existence—tell me how it works!

WB: divergence/difference between Genhant and Original dialects and mannerisms (Star Split)

So we can see the effects of a long-term social separation here; the dialects used by Genhants and Originals seem fairly different. Darci observes that Originals’ grammar “might not be as good” but obviously that’s her perspective, being a kid who speaks the prestige dialect; the grammar within their dialect would be no better or worse than Genhant grammar in their speech. And the Original dialect seems to also include more specific nonverbal communication; if they’re talking less, but (presumably) communicating similar amounts, then they must either be able to convey more information in the same amount of time through their speech, or their dialect includes informal signed elements—Vivian doesn’t seem to parse it as such, but although Darci observes less dialogue from the Original kids, Vivian’s conversations with her uncle aren’t presented any differently than Darci’s conversations with other Genhants. A tragically unused opportunity, in my opinion.

Show me how these two dialects differ, in more specific ways, rather than just telling me they do! Tell me about potential miscommunications! Is there a lack of documentation of the Originals’ dialect due to its low status? How does this affect scholarship on it? Are the hand gestures elements of the language in some way, or are they nonlinguistic?

WB: growing up as a Laureate's umbula (Star Split)

So… how does this work? They try to replicate the childhood as closely as possible, but obviously it can’t be perfectly done. Do the kids grow up knowing they’re clones, that they’re meant to be Important Person The Second, Just The Same, or is that hidden from them? What happens if a Laureate’s umbula decides they don’t want to follow in their predecessor’s footsteps; what if they want to forge their own path in life? Is that allowed? No one forced the Laureate into being what they became, after all.

WB: growing up as an Original (Star Split)

Things that are not entirely clear in this book include the answer to the question of how much of the high degree of segregation we see is socially and economically enforced, and how much of it is legally enforced. This is interesting—clearly, the original divergence was economic, with the wealthy being able to afford genetic enhancements and the poor not being able to afford them; however, it strikes me as slightly unrealistic that there would be no Originals in Genhant schools or at non-scholarship Genhant summer camps, etc, if there was no segregation on a legal level. Of course it would be more difficult for Originals to become wealthy enough to afford these, but the fact that none of them seem to have reached that level is very revealing; that tells me there’s far less social mobility than we have in our modern society (which isn’t very mobile, much as we may like to think otherwise) or there’s legal discrimination and segregation keeping things this way or both.

…and with all that being said, I’d love to hear something about what it’s like to grow up in the underclass of this society. We see most things from Darci’s point of view, and she, being a thirteen-year-old who’s basically comfortable in her own life, doesn’t really see that much. What’s it like, being raised as an Original? What sort of expectations do Original parents and schools have for their children? What sorts of jobs do they typically do? Do they go to university? Can they go to university? Are there summer camps for them, or do they only get to do things like that on scholarships? What’s it like, being the Scholarship Kid due not only to your family’s finances but also your very genetics? How does that change your dynamic with your other Original friends, when you got a scholarship and they didn’t—what do they think about that? I’d assume they have less obsession with Genetic Predetermination, since they don’t get a map of their probable life at conception… how does that work, in this society that runs on genetic predetermination for so many things?

#exchange letters #worldbuilding exchange #requested: mother of learning #requested: the rhianna chronicles #requested: the farwalker's quest #requested: star split #requested: art #requested: fic

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heathtrash · 4 years

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2, 10, 12?

2. Is there a trope you’ve yet to try your hand at, but really want to?

FAKE DATING. fake dating. f a k e d a t i n g. i need to do it but i have a feeling i’m first going to incorporate it into something else rather than write a fic that’s straight up fake dating but undecided as yet

10. Which fic has been the easiest to write?

bit of a weird question bc it depends a lot on length (i.e. sprint vs marathon) and also genre (serious romance vs humour/crack). i put way more effort into serious romance bc i gotta Make It Realistic. i find crack super easy to write when i get the inspiration for it

discounting shorter fics for a min, my honeybroom (hecate/miss honey crossover) multichapter A Taste of Honey was both easy to begin with and harder later, both because i planned it and had a clear idea of what i wanted to write in each chapter. my hicsqueak slow burn A Clock With No Hands was hard to begin with, then seemed to flow right out of me like a river, but then got kinda hard again. idk. the easiest one to write (probably because it’s humour and i’m a massive nerd) was my “Hecate Starts A Dungeons & Dragons Club” fic, Taking the Initiative bc i wrote all 6733 words in one single day - although i intended to write more and then. didn’t. so idk if i can count that one bc i have found subsequent inspiration very hard and had more Important things to write

of my short fics under 6k, my hackle ficlet A minute before midnight was written the fastest bc i wrote it on the evening of new year’s eve. i wanted to produce four fics for the winter warmers and had really wanted to do hackle but christmas got in the way. it’s definitely the fic i spent the least amount of effort on, ever, along with Raspberry and White Chocolate, my hicsqueak university AU ficlet (also the second thing i published after the first chapters of No Hams??) - both of which are still surprisingly popular???? my starbroom crack fic The Star of My Sky was also one of those minimal effort fics but no one liked it :’)

drabbles are another thing entIREly bc they can take a lot of kerfuffle to get them exactly 100 words (and then AO3 counts words differently than scrivener) but i’ve always found i can get those done relatively easily, like from concept to finished. i feel like i can’t really count those bc they’re teensy though

12. Is there an episode above all others that inspires you just a little bit more?

i guess some of my inspiration for No Hams came from the two (2) where pippa shows up and (a lot less so) those broomhead episodes from 98, and the five seconds of darkside we had in The Best Teacher. idk really it’s not really any particular episode? my fics tend towards realism and domestic moments with some plot to hold it together. i don’t think i’ve ever watched an episode and thought “wow i gotta write a fic following on from that episode”. more like, i get inspired when a backstory thing is revealed or from reading between the lines i guess

no spoilers but i’d like to say 4x06 gave me ideas but it literally just confirmed, EXACTLY WORD-FOR-WORD, what i thought about a particular thing. in fact in the fic i started about thAT (i’m sure you can guess what it is if you’ve seen my gifsets recently) i already wrote that

ask meme

#heathtrash writes #ask meme #emiline-northeto

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alwaysspeakshermind · 5 years

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Top 5 Anti-Varchie Arguments & Why They Make No Sense

#4: “Varchie’s boring/predictable, love at first sight is so cliché(d).”

Love at first sight is so clichéd? Okay, sure, I’ll allow that.

I’ll even agree.

But think contextually for a sec: love-at-first-sight is so clichéd as opposed to what? The utterly original, never-been-done-before uniqueness of best-friends-to-lovers that Barchie and also Bughead, why do people who say they want to see a friends-to-lovers relationship keep forgetting Bughead’s in that category? represents? The novel concept of enemies-to-lovers that is Cheryl/Toni (and Veggie if you squint)? The dated-in-the-past-but-sparks-still-fly (Falice, Tom Keller/Sierra McCoy, Fred/Hermione) or misunderstood-outsider-falls-in-love-with-“perfect”-America’s Sweetheart (Bughead, and also Kevin/Joaquin, Kevin/Fangs)?

Come on.

Whether it’s your cup of tea or not, a trope is a trope is a trope. There are only so many combinations possible when it comes to romantic dynamics, and since fiction and reality have both existed for a really long time, there’s no one trope that hasn’t already been done a million times over. So…what’s the point of harping on this particular one? Or any other trope just because it’s not your personal favorite?

Yes, Love At First Sight is the bread-and-butter of many fairytales and/or Disney movies. But it’s by no means alone in that regard.

Best friends/childhood friends-to-lovers has been a longtime staple of books, TV shows, rom-coms, and musicals (Harry Potter, Kim Possible, 13 Going On 30, Phantom of the Opera, and Lion King all say hello), and so has enemies-to-lovers (27 Dresses, The Proposal, You’ve Got Mail, Tangled, etc.). I’m not even going to bother touching on the sparks-still-fly/loner-loves-”good” kid thing, because the first is the golden goose for Hallmark, Lifetime, an a billion-and-one romance novels, while the second is YA fiction in a nutshell. And if you’re one of those “I can’t help it, friends-to-lovers is my crack” kind of people, it might be worth noting that “Love At First Sight” is plenty of other people’s crack. Also, if your complaint against a trope you find overused is a valid argument, so is someone else’s. Childhood-best-friends-to-lovers may feel newer and unique to you, but it doesn’t to everyone. Some people are as tired of it as you are of Love At First Sight.

And even if your claim is that “love at first sight’s not realistic/there’s like zero basis for it in the real world/it’s the exception not the rule,” that claim also extends to Childhood Best-Friends-To-Lovers and Enemies-To-Lovers.

In the real world, the Best-Friends-To-Lovers thing is about as common as Love At First Sight, with the latter maybe being a bit more common, since the overwhelming majority of people tend to notice attraction within the first fifteen minutes of meeting someone and the overwhelming majority of childhood best friends grow up thinking of each other as a sibling. (Important distinction: when childhood best friends do grow up, fall in love and get married, they don’t tend to take until high school/college to figure out how they feel. They’re typically aware of it from puberty/slightly before puberty onward, and it doesn’t change because they already know everything there is to know about that person...they know if they’re attracted to them; they know if they’re not.) And both those tropes are more common in everyday life than enemies-to-lovers since, in truth, most people don’t want to have anything to do with the antagonistic person who made their life miserable.

So realism/unrealism? Kind of a shifting-sands argument. Especially within the context of a show that puts an ex-“gang” member in as sheriff and deputizes other “gang” members, one of whom is named Sweet Pea, of all things. I mean, if you truly feel morally obligated to reality-police Riverdale, there are far more pressing issues than the likelihood of two teens meeting each other one time and deciding within five minutes that “This is The One” (which is not even how it happens except for Archie, but still).

What it really comes down to is not the trope itself, but how well the trope is executed.

In other words, it’s not what you’re given...it’s what you do with what you’re given. Every trope has been done many times before. Like it or not, that is an undeniable fact. Arguing that something has little-to-no value purely on the basis of its commonality is in essence weighting originality (theory) over style (practical application). To illustrate why this kind of thinking is a critical mistake, let’s put it this way: weighting originality over style is like saying Riverdale Season 3 is better than Riverdale Season 1.

...Which, as even the most casual of Riverdale viewers knows, is not the case.

Is S3 more ambitious than S1? Yes. Does S3 contain more jaw-dropping plot twists than S1? Absolutely. Are there some damn fun episodes in S3? For sure. But guess what? S3 also contains far more plot holes, inane plot “twists” and contradictory developments/sheer why-are-you-trying-to-make-fetch-happen-with-this-storyline moments because S3 goes so hard for shock value/the unexpected, that it effectively lapses on execution and winds up with a more creative, but ultimately less-compelling finished product than S1. Moral to the story? Creativity is good, but devotion to creativity at the exclusion of all else is not. If a few predictable elements aren’t mixed into an unpredictable world (or vice versa), everything ceases to shock. On Riverdale, because things are always so wild, the biggest surprises are usually when things unfold normally/don’t go haywire.

Now.

Me personally, I’ve shipped every trope at least once. I’m in the habit of making myself set aside all preconceived notions when beginning a new show/book/movie, because I never know what, if any, ship I’ll go for. Historically, I’m about 50-50 on Childhood-best-friends-to-lovers—sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it. Enemies-to-lovers—usually, I dig it, sometimes it’s a big, fat no from me, dawg. Love At First Sight however, I am overwhelmingly prejudiced against. And when I say overwhelmingly prejudiced, I mean that as a rule, I flat-out hate it. I find it stupid. It annoys me. I roll my eyes and make jokes.

But, here I am. Writing a bunch of long-ass Tumblr posts in defense of a fictional relationship that makes a direct play on the Love At First Sight trope.

So why are Archie and Veronica my huge exception?

Well, for one thing, their relationship kicks off in a manner that is highly evocative of the comics. The instant Archie sees Veronica, all of time (for him) stands still. The one solitary thing he’s aware of from the moment she steps into Pop’s and he looks up is her. No matter what he’s doing, he ends up looking at her, and after a very short amount of time, the same goes for Veronica (though of course, she tries to play it cool). Regardless of how I feel about the cheesiness of the trope, the execution of the scene is fricking cute.

For another: it actually is an unusual trope, and I was surprised to see it used.

Don’t get me wrong, the whole see-a-person-across-a-crowded-room deal is a cliché and it’s a million percent been done to death. But the funny thing is, Love At First Sight is such a clichéd cliché that it’s hardly ever used nowadays. By virtue of its extreme clichédness in fact, it has accidentally and ironically become fresh again because the second someone suggests it, someone else inevitably goes, “Nah, that’s too clichéd, we can’t do that.” In all honesty, I can’t remember one TV show or non-90s-Disney movie I watched in the last ten years where that trope was used over any/all of the other tropes available. I actually intended to make a list of the books/movies/shows I know of that have used the friends/enemies to lovers trope for comparison purposes, but it was getting so long with just the books section I ended up going, “Haha, no,” and scrapped that plan. (But for the record, almost every single Jane Austen novel is on that list.)

So, in summary: Love At First Sight clichéd? Yep. For sure.

Too clichéd?

Nope.

Certainly no more, and arguably less, than the other tropes Riverdale’s many ships adhere to. So if you’re not nonstop complaining about those other ships on the basis of the overdone/predictability factor, it shouldn’t be an issue that Varchie’s relationship is built around a recognizable trope that has been out-of-use by most everyone except Disney for a good while now. (Besides, some tropes are considered timeless for a reason.)

And seriously, if we’re going to go down the Disney path, let’s stop a second and recall how many Disney Channel shows/movies in the last decade utilized Best-Friends-To-Lovers and Enemies-To-Lovers. Or hey, what about Nickelodeon shows? Or maybe cop/CSI/civil service-type shows where best friend partners/partners who hate each other eventually fall in love?

Again, a relationship is not automatically made “boring” because it falls within the parameters of a well-known trope, and “predictable” does not automatically mean “bad.” If that were truly the case, no fictional relationship from probably the 18th century onward would have any popularity and/or critical acclaim. And if you try to argue that that’s just how it is for you personally: predictable/clichéd = boring, you should probably keep in mind that when measured by those standards, every single other ship on Riverdale is, by definition, boring.

Every.

Single.

One.

Not just Varchie.

So if you really are passionate about Riverdale not focusing on a “boring, predictable, clichéd ship instead of an interesting one,” you might want to take a break from griping about Archie and Veronica and start examining exactly how original those "interesting” ships you’re touting actually are. And if that’s not really what you mean, if you don’t really buy into the line you’re selling (i.e., you’re just using “they’re so boring” as an excuse to disguise the fact that you don’t like Varchie because they prevent your preferred ship from happening), you might also want to consider just being honest about that.

Because when you build your argument around a point that encompasses more relationships than just the one you’re criticizing, it makes you look like you’re either extremely clueless in not realizing that your complaint also applies to your ship/other ships, or else a giant hypocrite.

#varchie #archie x veronica #riverdale opinion #my opinion #my post #rant #I'm calmer now #so we're trying to remain relatively tactful here

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etherrorist · 5 years

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Unimportant opinion on siege

This is a 1k word rant so you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to

Ok before you start reading - I just want to remind you that this is just my opinion and you are free to disagree ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ This is just what I think. Also I mentioned some operators below in a questionable light so if you like that op don't get @ me, I have nothing against new ops, it's not an attack on your favourite character or anything.

Amount of Operators + lore and gameplay

I feel like I’m losing interest in the game the more ops are in the game. The new ops’ bios are more sophisticated and we know more info about their backgrounds and personalities but there are just too much characters to even care about them anymore. If you have 20 characters you can keep track of which one has what kind of personality and stuff, but if you have 50 characters they’re all just unimportant in that crowd. They’re all special on their own but when you look at them at once you might just be overwhelmed by all this. It’s not only about bios and lore, it’s about the game too. Imagine starting playing siege now, and having to remember maps, operator names and what their gadgets are. Might be easier for some people, but for ones like me it’s a nightmare since I can’t even remember my classmates names irl after 4 years of going to the same school together. Maybe I’m just stupid, but I think it would be hell to start playing the game with 100 characters already in it and you need to know at least the gadgets and ops names to callout. To be honest, I’d prefer if they stopped adding more operators to the game and focus on the ones that are already there. Add more personality to the old operators instead, make them more interesting, like with the Thatcher video they did. Make a lore events maybe, tell us some story like outbreak did. I know I’m stressing the lore too much already, but hey, every game with characters in it will need personality for them. In Team Fortress 2 for example, it’s just a team vs team shooter game like siege (well, it has different mechanic but you get what I mean) there are only 9 characters and their personalities are really developed, it’s easy to remember each one of them and like them. Even a shooter game needs good characters okay? If you have just gray boring soldiers you’ll get bored sooner. And by adding so many new ops, even if they have rich story behind them they all get gray and boring in the crowd. I won’t say no one would read all ops bios and remember what are they like, but I know I wouldn’t. And I know that the more characters you have, the harder it is to include all of them in events/videos and such. You have a favourite operator? cool, now think that you have less and less chance of seeing them in a vid/event everytime ubi adds new children to their game.

Operators Gadgets

I think Ubi mentioned somewhere that they have ideas for around 100 ops gadgets, but their gadgets are starting to look unnatural, too futuristic or repetitive. Just look at sledge’s simple hammer and Mozzie’s auto hack spider, wth. I remember when Lesion first came out, I was really sceptical about invisible traps. I said something like “What next, invisible operator?’’ and boom, two seasons later Vigil joins the game. It started really realistic, like (i assume) what the game was going for, but now it starts to get more and more like some kind of sci-fi game. Hacking cams, phones, hacking drones, invisible traps, fookin laser sights, holograms.. what else, maybe add a jetpack. “But Eteerr” you say, “the base ops’ gadgets are not completely possible in the real world either” WELL they’re not, but still, they were simple. I might act like a grandpa yelling at kiddos’ technology now, but they were simple and I’d accept just a little bend in the ‘realism’ here. But they weren’t so unreal, they weren’t some electric claws that can stick to the ceiling, they weren’t holograms closed in a little cube. I get that without adding all those futuristic weird gadgets there would be less ops, but I already ranted on that in a paragraph above. Next thing is that the gadgets repeat. Let’s just look at Ash and Zofia, they’re almost the same except Zofia has some extra concussion grenades. In my unimportant opinion ubi could just give Zofia’s weapon to Ash as a weapon choice, like changing normal weapons. It would save ubi time and money making models, writing character profile and all this stuff, but just add another gadget variation to choose from, the game effect would be the same, but there would be just less characters and less mess. Same as Lesion traps could be given to Kapkan as a variation, Kaid’s claw to Bandit etc. I know it wouldn’t work for all of the ops but I just think it would work better if ubi let us customize gadgets instead of working on new ops and get their butts to work on better events. Events Their events suck. Outbreak was the best one of all we had so far, but it’s still shitty when you look at it closely. It had some story, but it wasn’t even clear what was happening. (or maybe it’s just me, I’m stupid) I liked the new game mode that went with it, the new models and map were really good, but I think it just had a lot of wasted potential. They had a chance to actually make an interesting story, and the only interesting thing that happened there was jager crashing his ass and had to be evacuated. I don’t know, what if they’d make Jager infected and go on with the story? Include some character interactions, other than just talking in an elevator? Seriously, sometimes I feel like fans would create better stuff than ubi. The Halloween event was a total trash. It was as lazy as it could be, it reused models from outbreak to make spooky ghosts, it wasn’t anything special but just a casual game with less operators and was played on one, slightly edited map. I must admit that Rainbow is Magic event was fine to play for me, because I love plane and they even let Bandit be in in the event but I can’t let myself be blinded by that cute pyroland vision and pink happy colors. The event mechanic is based on the same thing, one edited map, less ops to play and it’s just a casual game except of that. Plus all events have boring challenges. Destroy drones, destroy gadgets, kill people, headshot people.. On halloween event doing the challenges for those stupid event packs was pain and I have no clue why I even bothered wasting my time on playing it and getting those crazy numbers of kills or destroyed whatever-it-was. Maybe they thought that the challenges for packs should be harder to get, I don’t know? Then make them harder but don’t make them tedious. Finding and destroying 40 drones on that event feels like eating a tomato soup for an entire week, and at the end of the week you feel like you’d throw up. Okay, maybe not with this event, because this event has just 1 of those challenges but Outbreak and Halloween one felt like the soup metaphor. Ubi could just make the challenges event related, like for example shoot the flowers on the Rainbow is Magic one. Or split them to few parts of the challenge, for example destroy 10 drones + destroy 10 gadgets. Would be less tiring if you ask me.

Game modes

I see they’re trying to make events with less ops and stuff to make the game more interesting, or show you how pro league bans ops, or just different than the casual matches, but it turns out just more annoying. If you already have so many ops, why won’t you make other game modes to play, for example attackers vs attackers, on an open field - just like the ghost war mode in Ghost Recon Wildlands, or defenders vs defenders, with two biohazards or bombs where one team has to attack the other and at the same time look out for their own base. Or heck, even let the teams mix up and allow defenders + attackers vs defenders + attackers. Ubi has so many operators in the game already that there would be no problem with having more game modes without double operators in the match I believe. Or even if not a permanent game modes, those would make better events than playing casuals on one map with challenges that make you sick. Ubi come on, you can do better than this.

Ok rant over thanks for reading it all if you read it all, if it would be a game you’d get an achievement for it but it’s not so I guess you can just have my congrats

#rainbow six siege #r6s #rainbow 6 siege #rant ignore it if you want

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rosecorcoranwrites · 5 years

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When a Plot Hole is Not a Plot Hole (or, at Least, When It Doesn't Matter)

Much like 45 million other people, I have recently viewed Bird Box. I also watched The Ritual and re-watched A Quiet Place. All of this got me thinking about the horror genre, yet again, but it’s too soon for another “Thoughts on Horror” post. Thankfully I also watched a Youtube video about world building in the Divergent series, which gave me an idea for a more far-reaching analysis not just of horror, but of genre and plot holes in general.

A Matter of Genre

The fact of the matter is that Bird Box, A Quiet Place, and Divergent have gaping plot holes (The Ritual doesn’t. The Ritual is great… but freaking horrifying, so watch with caution). These plot holes, however, are only a problem in one of those stories, and this is due to genre, and I will climb onto my genre-soapbox for as long as it takes for people to realize that different genres work differently, and need to be read or watched differently.

Let’s step back a minute, and I'll explain what I mean. In my senior year of high school, we read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. My class loved it, not least because it was a welcome break from all the depressing literature foisted on us throughout our high school career. I was also a student aid in another class that read the same book and got to eavesdrop on their class discussions. I sat in the back, filing papers, and heard the students say they didn't like the book because, quote, "It was so unrealistic." The Little Prince? Unrealistic? You don't say! I'm not sure I have ever heard a more idiotic critique of a book. Yes, The Little Prince is unrealistic. It's a children's-book-esque fantasy/fairytale about a prince from another (tiny) planet who's in love with a rose. It's not supposed to be realistic!

A similar phenomenon happens when people—both Christians and atheists—treat the entire Bible as one genre. It's not! It contains poetry, myth, history, genealogy, letters, biography, parables, apocalyptic visions, and law codes. If you read poetry like you would read a law code, or a letter the way you read a myth, you're probably going to miss out on most of the meaning.

Back to my point, different genres require different ways of being read or watched. There are varying amounts of belief one should be required to suspend. Fantasy requires more suspension of disbelief than sci-fi, because the audience needs to accept that magic and magical creatures exist, whereas sci-fi only needs them to accept that humans have advanced to some future scientific point. Both genres, however, need internally consistent world building, no matter what other wonders we are shown. Otherwise, the audience will be taken out of the story, and the point of these genres is to immerse the readers or viewers into a believable, if fantastic, world. If magic works a certain way, it always needs to work that way. If smaller spaceships can’t use FTL, then no little ships should be shown using FTL unless you make a point of saying they have some new type of FTL drive. There is some wiggle-room in this, since "fantasy" and "sci-fi" are big labels that cover a lot of things. Fairytales or magical-realism stories tend to be a little looser about what is and isn’t allowed. These stories still shouldn't break their own rules, but they also don't have to explain themselves as much as other fantasies. Sci-fi that bleeds into fantasy, such as that which incorporates time-travel, other dimensions, or robots with kokoro still needs internal consistency, but don't need to be as scientifically accurate as hard sci-fi.

On the other hand, genres which rely on audience reaction can get by with much less in the way of tight world building and well-thought-out backstory. The two genres to which I am referring are comedy and horror. Obviously, these can intersect with fantasy/sci-fi, but taken as their own thing, they are a different species of genre altogether. They rely not on immersing the audience into a believable world, but on eliciting a reaction from the audience. A comedy is only a comedy if it's funny and horror is only horror if it's scary. Those are the requirements. Thus, a comedy or horror doesn't need unassailable world building to be a successful comedy or horror. Comedy, in particular, often relies on pointing out or playing with plot holes in whatever genre it's in. Horror, on the other hand, often focuses on the scary situation at the expense of backstory and world building.

Plot Holes in Horror

Thus, we come to Bird Box, or A Quiet Place, or Signs, or any other horror that, frankly, doesn't hold up if you think too much about it. People critique these movies by asking things like, “Why doesn't everyone in the world just blind themselves to be immune to the phantoms?”, “Did no one else in all of society think to use sound against the creatures?”, and “Why don't the aliens wear waterproof suits?”. These are valid criticisms for sci-fi or fantasy stories, but… these stories aren’t really meant to be sci-fi or fantasy. They are meant to be horror. Specifically, survival horror. For this genre, backstory is utterly irrelevant. In survival horror, a person or group of people are put into a deadly situation and need to use their wits and whatever they can find to survive it. The end. That's it. Are Sandra Bullock, the family in The Quiet Place, and the family in Signs put into a deadly situation? Check. Do they attempt to survive it? Check. Is it scary for the audience to watch? Check. All three movies pass the survival horror test. They aren’t trying to be good sci-fi/fantasy; they’re trying to be good horror, and do a pretty good job.

As a side note, I’m not some Bird Box apologist. Of the four horror movies I’ve mentioned in this post, it’s my least favorite. But the issues I take with it are not with the world-building (unlike some critics, I thought the rules regarding the phantoms were fairly well spelled out), but with the choices on how to induce horror. (SPOILERS INCOMING: SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU CARE) From the beginning, we know the rest of the people in the house don’t survive because only Sandra Bullock and the two kids are alive in the current time; that undercuts most of the tension in the house. Also, I thought the first phantom-acolyte they encounter, at the supermarket, was horrifying, as he appeared to be stuck forever in his place, doomed to coax unsuspecting souls to their death. One character even commented, “How is that guy still alive?”, so I wondered if he even was, or if he was sort of an undead thing controlled by the phantoms. Scary! Unfortunately, the rest of the acolytes (aside from the one in the house, who we knew John Malkovich would kill because how else would Sandra Bullock and the kids be alive in the future? The structure of the narrative seriously undercut the tension!) are pretty much your run-of-the-mill murderers in any post-apocalyptic movie. Not scary! Finally, I took issue with the last few minutes, after their boat capsized; I felt it was unnecessary for them to run around in the woods. It would have been scarier if she reached out of the water to feel a person’s foot, making the audience think it’s an acolyte, until he taps a cane on the ground and it’s revealed he’s blind. But, I digress. I don’t mind that the story has a few plot holes; I do mind that it wasn’t as scary as it could have been.

Plot Holes in Dystopia

Where, then, on this spectrum of genre does dystopia fall, and why do so many YA dystopian novels seem to fail? Could not "dystopia" be a sort of parable, requiring little explanation and thus little scrutiny, in the same way that comedy and horror and fairytales can get by on little to no explanations of what, exactly, is going on? Yes. I'll say it again, yes. I think dystopias absolutely could get a pass on world building... if they wanted to. The problem with books like Divergent or Hunger Games is not that they explain too little, but that they explain too much. If they simply set up their messed-up situations—everyone is sorted into a Hogwarts House faction, innocents must fight to the death for the enjoyment of the rich—and left it at that, I think it would be fine. The problem arises when these authors, usually in subsequent books, attempt to hash out the reasoning behind these horrible societies which... kind of couldn't arise for any real reason, or if they did, wouldn’t last very long. The explanations we are given don't make sense, or are at least are very, very full of holes and inconsistencies.

To be fair, other dystopias also offer explanations for why the world is the way it is, but they don’t dwell on it. 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451 offer lip service for how society got so bad—whether that’s due to government rule or human complacency—but then move on. We don’t need to think too hard about how Eastasia or Eurasia were formed; we need to care that the government keeps switching which one we’ve “always” been at war with. We don’t need to know who’s running the world in Fahrenheit 451, because they’re not the ones who caused Montag’s wife to O.D. or who hit Clarisse with a car or who made Beatty hate books; the society of that book is twisted because individual people are twisted. Though they contain sci-fi elements, these stories are not sci-fi books. They are much closer to horror, in that their events are supposed to provoke a sort of cautious fear in the audience. The idea is that this could happen here, and maybe it’s already happening.

Again, YA dystopia’s could do this, but that’s clearly not what they’re going for. If Hunger Games was only a nod to the dangers of media and decadence, I could get behind it. Instead, it decided to become a story about revolution, with a somewhat Chosen-One-esque figure. It went the sci-fi-fantasy route, following the epic story of a hero who attempts to save society. If Divergent only concerned itself with the idea that humans are sorted into groups based on a single personality trait… well, I would still think that was pretty silly, but I could see a skilled writer making it work. It goes beyond this, though, into this whole backstory involving genetic engineering and human experimentation. It’s a sci-fi. And because both of these stories have decided to be sci-fi, rather than only dystopias, they fail. Because sci-fi stories require a somewhat believable backstory and set-up and current world building, and the worlds of Divergent and Hunger Games could not happen, or at least would not happen like that, even if there were rebellions and mutations and human experimentation. There are too many inconsistencies and plot holes that strain belief, and sci-fi needs to be somewhat believable.

With that, I hoped I’ve converted some of you to my genre-focused cause. Before you criticize a story for having a plot hole or being unrealistic, first consider the genre. Consider what the story is trying to do, and if it does it well or not. The plot holes might not be as big of a problem as you thought.

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zerendiipity · 5 years

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Ling Chao - filled with you and i

i’m sorry that it’s been a long time since i posted something !! first i had midterms, then i had a big writers block. i’ve been trying to write different things to get out of my writers block so i have a few wips. i hope i can finish them as well as i did with this one!! tbh, i thought i wouldn’t like it as much but i think i do !! i hope you enjoy it too!!

word count: +1.8k (1.843)

—”I’m still hungry so I’m gonna go get something else, I’ll be right back!” —Ling Chao said as he got up from his seat to go buy something to eat, but you stopped him before he could leave.

—”Wait! Buy something for me too? Maybe something sweet.” —He nodded and you handed him some money. Then, he left towards the cafeteria.

You two had a little more than an hour free before your next class, so on days like this both of you would sit under one of the big trees decorating your campus, resting your backs on the trunk of one of the biggest ones that faced the big garden that some of the botany biology majors and others took care of. Spring was already around the corner so the different plants growing and the flowers blossoming were great inspirations but also could be great models for art majors like you two.

After finishing the quick sketch you had been doing, you smiled proudly at the result. Definitely, practice had its rewards and you were definitely seeing them on the realism of the flowers you had drawn and the person you drew holding them. Suddenly curiosity took the best of you and you glanced over at the sketchbook Ling Chao had left behind before he went to the cafeteria with the silent promise that you’d take care of it while he was away, although he’d only take around five minutes if there wasn’t a lot of people there.

He had closed it before leaving, so although you were really curious, you debated over if you should take a sneak peek at what’s inside. Most artists didn’t like people looking through their sketchbooks without permission. Some didn’t like people looking at them while they used them. Both you and Ling Chao fit into both categories, but even nowadays, as close as you two were, you never looked at what each other was drawing.

And for that same reason, maybe he would get a little mad if you looked at it, right? You decided that you wouldn’t even look through everything, but instead go to the page he had been using. It would only take a second, so he probably wouldn’t even know. Once he returned and went back to what he was doing, you could simply compensate the guilt of seeing his art without his permission with looking over his drawing and, trying your best to sound like you totally hadn’t seen it before, say ‘oh! that looks really nice!’ and that’s it. Nothing wrong about that.

You opened the sketchbook around the last few pages instead of the first ones, because as you had planned you weren’t going to look at any of his finished works or sketches without permission, you would try to find the last page he had been using right away.

And when you did… You were shocked, to say the least.

Instead of the same flowers you had been drawing, or any of the plants filling the beautiful garden in front of you, what you found were a few sketches of someone who for some reason looked a little bit like you. Okay, maybe you were pretty sure it was you, especially thanks to the unfinished sketch of a girl who casually wore your same clothes and had the same hairstyle and was seen drawing on a notebook from a side profile view.

There was nothing wrong with him drawing you. Probably, to other people it could be pretty creepy to have someone staring at you, although a little bit less awkward when you know it’s because they’re trying to draw you, and even less when you know the person doing so. You didn’t exactly feel that awkwardness. He had been doing the same thing as you; looking at something in real life to try and portray it in a drawing and learn from it.

But you felt… Perhaps something similar to embarrassment. No matter how close the two of you had grown to be, you felt a little bit shy, and also a little self-conscious.

‘I didn’t really put much care into my hair this morning. I didn’t wear make-up. And we just ate- If I had something on my face, he would have told me, right?’ You kept asking yourself useless questions like that while putting the sketchbook closer to your face, looking for anything bad on you that he could have seen and then replicated on the drawing. But there was nothing. There was nothing bad about it. Realizing that made you feel a little bit shier.

Your phone vibrated and you put the notebook away from your face, grabbing your phone and reading the notification displayed on the screen.

“(1) new message from didi 🌻: “i’m sorry i took so long, there was a lot of people !! i’m going back now”

As soon as you finished that, you quickly but carefully closed his sketchbook and left it where it was. You even spent an extra 5 seconds making sure it was placed in the exact same position it was when he left. And then, you used the remaining time to go back to your previous pose and stare at your drawing like you had never stopped doing so, adding some finishing touches to it. About two minutes later, he came back.

He gave you your food and you two went back to what you were doing before. Or did you? You were actually just wondering if Ling Chao was still drawing you, and if he would ever show you what he did. If he kept it as a secret, since you had found out, you wondered if you would feel a little anxious wondering why wouldn’t he tell you about it. When Ling Chao was done with his drawing, you stopped drawing too and closed your sketchbook to talk for a while. Your break felt short spending time with him and soon you were going back to your classes. The next one you had now was art history.

Although you didn’t hate the class, you were feeling pretty bored and felt like doing something more practical. You felt tempted to stop using your notebook to take notes of whatever the teacher was saying, which you weren’t even paying attention to as much as you tried to stay in focus, and just take out your sketchbook. You looked to your right where a few seats away, Ling Chao was sitting and submerged in whatever he was drawing in his notebook. You two probably felt the same way at that moment.

You repeated that thought in your head. Does he really feel the same way as you did?

Hoping that he did and that his feelings would be hidden behind his drawings of you, you looked at him for a few more seconds before you looked down to your notebook and started sketching that picture of him.

You kept raising your head every few seconds to take a look at him, at the pose he was in. His upper body slightly leaning forward to see what he was drawing better and from a closer perspective. You took a look at his face, trying to portray the focused expression he had. His eyes never left the piece he was working on, and his lips were tightly pressed together.

Every once in a while you’d have a hard time. Overall, the drawing was going well, but you’d stress over trying to get some parts to look as similar to reality as possible. You didn’t really care about it being completely realistic, you just wanted it to resemble him. If anyone saw it, they should be able to know who the person in the drawing was. And although you probably would feel embarrassed and wouldn’t want anyone to find out you drew Ling Chao, your heart’s beating sped up a little, shaken over the sudden feeling of wanting him to see it and to be able to also see the feelings behind the illustration.

So focused on your work, the last time you were going to raise your head to compare the sketch to the real-life version of it, you realized Ling Chao wasn’t sitting there anymore. In fact, most people weren’t sitting anymore and some had even left the classroom already. You looked back at his now empty desk. He had even had time to pick up his stuff, so exactly how long ago had the class ended?

Then, something inside you made you look over your shoulder, and when instead of the profile view of him you had been staring at while drawing you found your eyes meeting directly with his, everything around you seemed to stop. Time stopped, every single movement stopped, every sound or noise stopped, probably your breathing or your heart beating stopped. God, it even felt like the rotation of the Earth itself stopped.

Even without looking away from you, you knew he had seen it. Even before answering the last question he threw and letting him have his way, you knew he had most likely already seen enough to figure out everything about those sentiments you had tried so hard to put onto the paper.

—”(Y/N)... Can I see your sketchbook?” —

But it made you feel powerless to still not be able to tell what his feelings were. It felt like your vision was slightly blinded, like there were things that you couldn’t see, and he had an advantage over you because now he would be able to see everything. That kind of thing… You didn’t want that.

You released the breath that you had been holding in, and then took another deep breath.

—”Only if you’d let me see yours too.” —

You got up from your seat, taking your sketchbook in your hands and closing it, waiting for him to take out his from his backpack before both of you exchanged them. You shared a final look before finally opening the first page.

Spending almost the same amount of time looking at each page, you turned the first page. After stopping to look at the next one, both of you turned one more page. It went on until you got to the last page he had filled. It was the same one you had seen previously, but a new sketch had been added.

This time, you didn’t even think about it twice. The person he had portrayed… You naturally acknowledged that it was you.

After turning that page and finding that the following ones were blank, you closed the sketchbook. Soon enough, he did the same thing with yours. You two looked up again and although your eyes met the same way as before, the vision was different.

It was like you could see even better than before. It was like you could see anything, including the feelings the both of you held.

The feelings behind the sketchbook filled with drawings of him, and the feelings of the one filled with drawings of you.

#idol producer #oner #idol producer scenarios #oner scenarios #ling chao #didi #idol producer imagines #oner imagines

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antivanbrandy · 6 years

Text

this is... very long. read more at your own risk xD

honestly that addition to that post is really shaking me up because like, holy shit, this is something i have been beating myself up over for a long time. and in before any assumptions, no i do not begrudge these kids their skills or their success, it’s awesome they’re doing so well, and yes i support them, and no i don’t see them as competition! but i am absolutely my own hardest critic and i am constantly disappointed in myself, constantly disappointed it’s taken me 30 years to even start to find the right paths let alone head down them, it’s taken me twice as long to be half as skilled. i don’t have to be competing against others to feel let down by my own lack of progress

it never occurred to me before that i didn’t have a fraction of the readily available resources or support systems of today during my formative art years

i lived in a very strict household. there were two sets of rules there; the ones for everyone else, and the ones for me. i wont go into the guts of it, save to say that my stepfather saw me as competition for my mother’s affection and got satisfaction from taking it out on me

anyway, back on track: even in my earliest memories, i was constantly drawing. all day, every day. but my mother was poor and we didn’t have much. i drew what i could remember of the characters in the disney movies i’d seen, and i had two on vhs, aladdin, and the beauty and the beast. i watched them over and over and drew my lil heart out, but had no real references

when my mother met and married my step father in the mid 90s, the vhs’s were taken away. i was no longer allowed to watch movies, i was not allowed to watch tv. we didn’t have the internet at home, and we had no books. i wasn’t even allowed on the front lawn on my own, so when i say i had no references to draw from, i’m not exaggerating. but i kept on drawing, kept on trying to draw those characters i loved from memory. i did my baby best

in the early 00s i made a new friend at school, and she introduced me to anime. i fell in love with it. she would tape card captor sakura and digimon and bring them into school so i could watch them (we would get to homeroom an hour early and use the tv and vhs player in the room before the school day began). my art style turned into a lanky spiky terrible tryhard anime mess, but i was living. i continued to draw my little heart out, and fill my days with escapist self insert daydreams about my fave animes

this entire time, through both the disney and anime phases of my life, i was going through roughly an entire 500 sheet ream of printer paper every month to two months, as that’s all i had to draw on. i’m not exaggerating when i say i drew a lot. every spare moment i had was devoted to it, and i had huge folder upon folder upon folder full of my drawings

it didn’t affect my grades btw, i was an A&B student

a year or so into this anime phase, i got my first job, and used my pay to buy myself one of those terrible ‘how to draw manga’ books every other payday. i poured over every detail in them, absorbed them like a sponge. they were all i had to reference, all i had to grow from

bloody fucking hell, if i could only go back and slap those damn books out of my stupid, desperate, impressionable little hands, i would. they were poison. they taught me terrible clunky, wildly incorrect habits and practices. they helped crystalise so many bad anatomy habits that i am still to this day trying to unlearn. there’s no doubt in my mind that they, and my naive lauding of them, helped me stagnate and lost me years of potential progress

my parents wanted me to draw realism, but didn’t seem to understand that to draw realistically i needed to... you know... have references to draw from. i was not allowed to draw them, and i was not allowed to leave the house, and i was not allowed to buy any more books. they saw my inability to pull photo-realistic portraits from my ass memory as a personal slight against them

early-mid 00s i found deviantart through the school’s internet and got my first taste of community among artists, and i was instantly enamoured. i didnt have any art friends at school, it was just me. but suddenly, there was art at my fingertips! i made friends, made small progress toward improving. and then my stepfather found out, stormed into school, and demanded they block my access to the site. they did

i was banned from drawing at home. he took my shitty how to draw manga books away and was set to punish me if i drew. i was also at this time being threatened with being pulled out of school and sent somewhere ‘i had no friends'. i was barrelling towards graduation and my part time job took up most of my free time after school and on weekends, and i no longer had my fun hobby and stress relief outlet in drawing, or my art friends on deviantart. i drew when i could, like in a friends school diary, or on receipt paper at work, but my stepfather had a way of knowing everything and punishing me for all of it (this goes well beyond the art thing, but like i said i wont get into the guts of it because it's bleak as shit)

i left home less than six months after i graduated high school, and i had a brief foray into drawing cutesy gory horror themed stuff, but by then i was so used to not drawing that i just... stopped. i was working myself into exhaustion, going to uni, learning to manage living out of home, partying with friends, and juggling it all with my first serious relationship. finding time to draw felt impossible, and because my entire post-stepfather childhood consisted of me having everything i showed interest in derided and taken away, i was used to just... doing without. i just shut down and lost interest to protect myself, because pining is terrible

i all but stopped drawing for about six years. the occasional geometric pattern doodle while i was on the phone, or an eye. no proper drawings

in the end, the thing that got me back into it was when skyrim released in 2011. and it was hard. i knew i didn’t want to draw anime or kitschy cute horror stuff any more, that i had to find my own style, but it was so difficult to develop. i was in my mid 20s at this point, my shitty habits and expectations felt fixed and i didn’t know where to start. i gave deviantart another shot, but it didn’t feel like it fit any more, everyone i knew there was gone i couldn’t find my place. i met some friends, moved over to tumblr. bought my first tablet for my 25th birthday. bought some anatomy books, loomis and hogarth, but to this day i’ve not read them properly. tried to follow artist’s whose style’s i admired. i finally had access to tools and support i needed to improve

six years later, i’m still struggling. it seems insurmountable sometimes. i know i’ve made progress in that six years, but it feels... too little too late. i struggle with wanting to quit every day, and even now i only draw once or twice a month. the amount of art behind me could fill several landfills, they do make a sizeable chunk of at least one. but the road ahead is so overwhelming, and so long. i don’t know where to really start to get better. i know i should study realism, but at this point, even though i now have the tools, the references, at my fingertips thanks to, y’know, being an adult with internet access, i feel trapped by that little girl who kept getting all her attempts to improve shot down. i still feel like that silly little girl who wasted time and money on learning bad habits and bad anatomy. i feel held back, which is foolish, but i do

to wonder what i could have become with access to all this back when i was a teen? with a little support? i can’t even imagine tbh

but realising that i still managed to make it this far despite being cut off and isolated from any kind of community during my formative art years is comforting, in its own way. the thought of where to go from here is still so daunting, but at least i have access to the means for the time being. and who knows? maybe one day it’ll all click, and i’ll be able to make sense of the mechanics of all this. a girl can hope

#long post #like.... really long post. best to skip i reckon #tbd///#Reggie waffles to no one in particular

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scripttorture · 4 years

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Sorry for the multiple asks. In Harry Potter, Neville Longbottom's parents were tortured to what I assume is catatonia by the cruciatus curse. Is this a realistic portrayal of the effects of torture, or does it involve some degree of magical handwaving? If realistic, then would you mind suggesting some avenues, both grounded in reality and more fantastical, by which their condition may be helped?

So I had a long answer written out for this and then it got eaten and I’d deleted my backup (both of them) and don’t you just despise technology sometimes? Join me as I scream into the void.

Once more, from the top-

No need to apologise for multiple asks. They are in fact encouraged. I’d rather you looked for answers to your questions then assumed you already know the answer. Thank you for coming to me. Thank you for taking an interest. It really does mean a lot to me to see people engaging with the subject. :)

It’s been a long time since I read Harry Potter. From what I can remember I don’t think the books handled torture survivors well.

I think this particular portrayal landed smack bang in ‘torture makes victims passive’. It was also pretty explicitly using that misconception about torture survivors being unable to live full, happy lives or make any kind of recovery.

You could make the argument that these are magical, rather then the effects of torture. But I don’t think Rowling did any work to show that was the case. From what I can remember the stuff that’s actually in the books just suggests the curse causes pain and… that’s it.

Which doesn’t stop you from trying to make a bad portrayal better.

@scriptshrink is the mental health professional in the family and may disagree. From what I can remember I don’t think the description of the Longbottoms in the books was exactly catatonia. It seemed more like a combination of catatonia and late stage dementia to me.

Which creates a bit of a problem for a narrative arc if you want to treat these characters in a more realistic way. Because catatonia is easily treated now with drugs and late stage dementia is… there’s basically no effective treatment. There are things patients can be given to slow the progression of dementia but what they’ve lost is gone. (I’ve spent quite a long time around people with various forms of dementia and I’m going to cite experience as my source there).

The reason that’s an issue for a narrative is that there really isn’t a middle ground between ‘take this pill to recover’ and ‘there is no treatment at all’. And that’s not on you, it’s on the source material.

So, suggestion time: I do have a few different ideas depending on what you want from a recovery arc and how you want to characterise Wizard culture in your story.

Let’s assume that (like catatonia) this fugue state survivors of the curse are in is easily treatable. What happens when you take it away? When survivors are present, not dissociating and remember what happened to them?

Well suddenly you get confronted with an actual torture survivor with all the loud, messy, complex mental health problems that implies.

And if you don’t know a lot about mental health? Then it looks like you went from someone who is calm and ‘at peace’ to someone who is incredibly distressed and obviously in pain. It also means you went from someone biddable and ‘easy to handle/care for’ to someone who is exponentially less likely to put up with shit. Someone who demands explanations, cries hysterically, has panic attacks or flashbacks.

With that sort of big visceral difference- A culture that doesn’t know how to deal with mental illness might well decide survivors are ‘better off’ in that fugue state.

Because it would probably be easier to take care of a quiet, unemotional drone then to deal with trying to help someone with severe, complex mental health problems.

With that kind of cultural background the dementia-like state might actually be the result of the treatment survivors are given. Because they’re ‘better off this way’.

This would give you a much more traditional recovery arc in your story but by its nature demands a narrative discussion of how mentally ill people are treated by society. Which may not be something you want in the story.

The other main suggestion I had was to treat this fugue state and this unrealistic depiction of memory loss as if it’s part of the curse itself.

The cruciatus curse is supposed to be designed to cause the maximum amount of pain, so why not factor lasting generational pain into that? Stripping away important, foundational memories with longer use of the curse seems like it could be an additional terror tactic.

‘It doesn’t matter if they survive. It doesn’t matter if you rescue them. You’ll never get them back.’

In that kind of scenario you’d probably end up with a different recovery arc, one that’s as much about magic as mental health. And I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing when you’re explicitly dealing with something magical.

If you wanted a plot line involving some kind of magical quest this would be a really good fit. I think it would also work well with a more… straight forwardly heroic story? There’d be less of the cultural and moral arguments that are naturally brought up if you’re talking about cultural attitudes to different medical treatments. It would also be a good pick if you want to lean into the intelligence/research skills of some of the canon characters: a combination of cleverness and compassion resulting in a breakthrough that saves the day.

I’ll finish off with a short general discussion about writing torture survivors realistically and writing them in fantasy.

I’ve got a post on the common long term symptoms of torture here. And I’ve got a post on what memory problems look like in survivors here.

We don’t have a way to predict symptoms. Different individual survivors get different sets of symptoms and we’re not sure why. Because of that variation I think that it’s best to treat symptoms as a writing choice.

Pick symptoms based on what you think adds to the story and creates interesting narrative opportunities. If a symptom emphasises the themes in your story, creates good opportunities to show the readers something about the characters or makes for interesting conflict then it’s a good choice. Conversely if a particular symptom doesn’t appeal to you or you don’t want to write it for any reason, feel free to choose something different.

I stress realism and writing survivors realistically. I don’t do that because I think fiction ‘must’ be realistic. I do it because the ways we choose to break with reality matter.

And right now most of the ways we choose to be unrealistic tacitly support/condone torture.

The majority of the time that’s not the author’s intention. I certainly don’t think it was Rowling’s intention here. (I’ll admit I haven’t been keeping up with her string of controversies but I don’t think active support for torture was ever among them.)

But these tropes keep getting repeated. Partly because finding accurate information on torture is hard. It’s difficult to search for. It often costs money. A lot of it just isn’t translated (I’m actually saving up to get a bunch of core texts translated into English when the plague is over.) And oh boy do not get me started on the lack of inter-disciplinary communication because I will go off like an unplanned quench of an NMR’s super magnets.

These are issues that hamper academic researchers to a huge degree. It’s no wonder they impact non-specialists trying to make sense of this mess.

Having said all of that: I think that we should make space for metaphor and fantastical elements in our fiction.

The issue is passing off tropes that are unrealistic and harmful as if they’re fact.

I have significant issues with portraying torture survivors as passive objects. I think it really hampers general understanding of torture and ethical treatment of survivors today. It encourages people to think that real survivors are ‘faking it’ because they don’t look like the passive objects we see portrayed in fiction.

That said, if a story explicitly states that what it’s doing is magical and unrealistic, it should be less of an issue.

I do not think that’s what Rowling did in this particular portrayal. I think she presented a curse that the audience was supposed to read as only causing extreme pain and she linked that to the idea of pain turning people into passive objects. You can remove the magic from this scenario and it’s unmistakably torture apologia.

But I can imagine alternatives where a fantasy story could separate these things out. It would be hard work and require a lot more focus on the curse itself.

Say you have a fantasy story that takes one of the non-Western approaches to ideas about human souls. Particularly the idea that our memories and experience constitute a separate spiritual part of ourselves.

Magic that stole and imprisoned that portion of someone would, by the logic of the magic system, create something a little like this catatonia/late-stage-dementia symptom set Rowling presents. And I think if that was presented, divorced from ideas about pain and what suffering ‘should’ do to people- Well it’s no longer really talking about torture. It’s talking about a fantastical scenario.

We’re not really used to thinking through the implications of where we break with reality. But it does get easier with practice.

I hope that helps. :)

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Disclaimer

#nobodystormcrow #writing advice #tw torture #tw ableism #writing recovery #writing survivors #fantasy ask #Harry Potter #effects of torture #torture survivors are not broken #attitudes towards torture survivors #pain #catatonia #dementia #mental illness #memory problems #cultural attitudes to survivors

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dramallamadingdang · 6 years

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Lately, me=long text posts. Sorry. :)

This post is for @immerso-sims, mostly, but also might be of interest to people who use Almighty Hat's age mod that makes lifestage lengths proportional to the 3-day length of Sim gestation. (So, basically, 4 Sim-days=1 real year because real pregnancy is roughly 3/4 of a year long.) I'm mostly making a post because the reply got too long and I didn't want to reblog. :)

The overall goal of Hat’s mod is to make a Sim's lifetime relatively realistic in that that lifestage lengths remain realistically proportional. So, you don't have toddlers who are toddlers for the same amount of time that they're infants when toddlerhood ought to be roughly 3-4x longer than infancy, or teenhood that lasts twice as long as childhood when, realistically, it ought to be roughly the other way around, if you figure childhood starting at age 5, when most kids start kindergarten, and teenhood being 13-18.

Anyway, the issue we were talking about a little was the elder lifestage transition which, with this mod in, happens when the sim is “only” 184 days/46 years old. Now, granted, this happens after the Sim has had 112 days/28 years of adulthood, so at that point you might be very ready to move on. :) But the thing is that Sims can then possibly be an elder for a very long time after that, depending on how many aspiration "bonus points" they get at their adult-to-elder age transition. And by "very long," I mean 200+ days of elderhood, about twice the length of the very long adult lifestage.

It does take patience and a lack of things going screwy with the neighborhood -- which, let’s face it, things tend to happen with that even if you do nothing “wrong” -- but it you make it through a couple generations, you start to notice that a significant percentage of your population is slouchy, shuffling, gray-haired things that, although they may only be 50 years old, look like they're about 1 day away from the grave. :) This happened in a neighborhood I played a while back, where I made it to the second born-in-game generation being in their teens before that computer died on me. So, I had a lot of shuffling elders from the founding and first born-in-game generation kicking around. It just seemed kind of...off. Granted, this is likely because my Sims tend to be very happy pixel people, in general, because I play according to their wants, so they get lots of those age-transition bonus points. One can affect this with mods that alter how aspiration points are accumulated and how quickly they decay. I tried some of those mods, in fact, but ultimately didn't like them. I guess I like my happy, mostly-platinum pixel people. ;)

Anyway, Hat's reasoning for the relatively early onset of elderhood in her scheme is simple: 1) Female Sim elders can't get pregnant, at least not without alternate pregnancy controllers, so elderhood ought to hit about the time that women enter perimenopause, which is usually in their mid/late 40s, at which point it's very unlikely that a woman will get pregnant without artificial hormonal assistance. Also, it's apparently very hard to stretch ACR's fertility curve past that age, for folks who use ACR and allow it to dictate how many babies a couple will have. And 2) For real humans of both sexes, age of death varies widely. Some people die relatively young from a massive heart attack at 50 or from cancers or other health issues. Some people live to be 100. Which is a 50-real-year/200 sim-day difference. For this reason, it makes sense to have a 200+-day-long elderhood, to reflect these real-life possibilities, for those striving for realism. If you don’t have pretty-much-permanently-happy Sims, you would possibly see that range of death ages. But for me? Not so much. Most of mine seemed to be the living-to-100 type. :)

But even if that wasn’t the case...I don't need quite THAT much realism in my game. :) Really, I just want more time with my pixels, so that I can do things like let them have true days off that aren't dedicated to frantically skilling so that they can get those 2 skill points they need for their next promotion. The pixel has plenty of time to get that promotion and still make it to the top of their career, so they can take a day or 10 and just sit at their current job level for a while and do purposeless-but-fun things on days off. At the same time, I don't want a neighborhood where the largest percentage of the population is young-but-very-old-looking elders. And while, yes, I could do things to make elders look less-old-looking in my game (non-gray hairs in the elder bin, clothing that uses the adult body meshes, etc.), A) I don’t want the CC and B) Even if I had it, I probably wouldn’t bother because then the young-looking elders with that elder voice is kinda...strange, probably because I’m a very aurally-oriented person.

So, I've often thought about fiddling with the age of elder transition in Hat's mod, but what put me off was the thought of also having to alter its accompanying modded ACR controller, to adjust the fertility curve accordingly. So, I reread Hat's notes about doing that before I went to bed, and kinda went "Eh, I don't think so." But then, when I woke up, it struck me that I don't really HAVE to mess with the controller.

As it is, fertility is cut off for females at around age 46 (Hat said that it actually ends a few days after that), which is about where it ought to happen, IMO. I looked it up and, according to the Mayo Clinic, the median age of the start of perimenopause is 47.5. I mean, yeah, some insane women these days are birthing babies at 50, but generally speaking they usually need some sort of hormonal intervention to do so. It doesn't often happen naturally that way. So if you leave the ACR controller as-is but push back the elder age transition to, let's say, 70/280 days instead of 46/184 days...You suddenly have middle age, which is something that I've kind of wanted in the game. You basically have me, in fact: Through menopause and therefore infertile, and, yes, with a lot of gray hair if I'm not assiduous about coloring it, but not (yet) heavily wrinkled and hunchbacked and decrepit with a scratchy, grandma-sounding voice. Yeah, such female Sims could get pregnant if you use the manual/Maxis way, but since I rarely do that...? (And if I wanted to, I could, and call it “hormonal intervention.” ;) ) So, this actually makes sense to me. In fact, I could even make Sims in that stage look middle-aged. Give them some graying hairs, put a few wrinkles on their face, perhaps dress them a little more conservatively because most middle-aged bodies ARE a bit gravity-challenged so most of us don't run around in midriff-baring tops and short-short skirts, but we're not yet shambling and decrepit. Do that and then, when the elder transition does hit, it's not quite so shocking and sudden a physical difference.

So, basically lop off 100 days from that possible elderhood with Hat's mod and make a (sort of) functional middle age out of it. In turn, this makes the "adult" stage more like a "younger adult" stage, when they'll focus more on raising young children, if they have kids, and maybe not hitting the top of their career until that middle age which, again, would be more realistic than a pack of 25-year-old CEOs and whatnot.

So, tl;dr: I'm going to fuss with Hat's aging mod to push back the elder transition while leaving the modded ACR controller as-is, thus creating a quasi-functional, infertile (for females) “middle age.” I'm going to start up a little testing neighborhood and toss in some testing Sims to check the fertility percentages and whatnot, see if it works like I'm hoping it will.

Also, immerso, I’ll put together a list of the “supporting” mods I have, hopefully with links. It’s actually not that many, especially because a couple of them affect Freetime things, which you don’t have because Mac. (Gah, I don’t think I’d like playing without secondary aspirations. :( ) And of course, if you do decide to play a neighborhood with this mod, I can share the tweaked aging if it works like I hope, since no SimPE for you. :)

#iCad's crazy-ass ideas #only this is a different one than the college thing #or the downtown thing #my body might not be fertile anymore #but my brain is lately

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sicsemperserpent · 6 years

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Lauren Addy: Waking Up Running

“‘Fail faster’... The truth is, you are only going to get to the place you want in life by doing, and by doing, you're going to fail, especially in the beginning. So rip off that band-aid and get those first failures out! Know what it's like and learn to recover.”

[Auto by Lauren Addy]

One of the most passionate and kind artists we’ve had the pleasure of interacting with, Lauren Addy’s art is a child’s delightful imagination given life. On some level, all of her work takes the realism of life and warps it to some degree with a cartoonish touch. But rather than making a shadow of the real thing, Lauren’s work springs right off the page and into your heart as powerfully as any photorealistic image. The features she exaggerates or stylizes never feel cheap, but rather imbue the level of emotion appropriate for the desired effect. It was a wonderful process we enjoyed getting to know better.

“To me, life is animated. Reality has so many exaggerations that it's all cartoony in my head. When I lean one way or another [with my work], it's really about the feeling of the piece. My ‘Jelly Lady’, for example, needed more of a realistic touch because the thought of something like her existing added to the horror. Think of it: you're alive and paralyzed as she slowly digests you, and everyone can watch it happen because she's transparent.”

[Jelly by Lauren Addy ]

“The opposite of that spectrum is ‘Overload’ which is a self portrait of how I feel when I've overtaxed my brain. The cartoony style lets me exaggerate the noodliness of the arms, and made the frothiness of the opened head more funny than horrifying.

[Overload by Lauren Addy ]

If these two pieces don’t show the breadth of Lauren’s skills, we don’t know what will. Both pieces provide a very distinctive mood, and while both are animated to some degree, we can see purpose and decision where it comes to how heavy a hand to use. With such an expert touch at conveying thought and meaning, you’d expect that Lauren has been drawing her entire life. You’d be mostly right, though you might be surprised about the journey.

“ I've been drawing [since I was little]; it was a way for me to get my anxiety out. However, when I was a kid, ADHD and medicating for it was all the rage and the medication completely took away my creativity. I stopped drawing. I got into math and science and went to College to be a geneticist. In college I stopped taking the ADHD medication and noticed my interests taking a dramatic turn. Freshmen year I cared less and less about my major and doodled more and more during lectures. It was like I was waking up from a coma. I broke down and realized I hadn't been me in a lifetime and I was only in my 20s. My skills in art were bad. REALLY bad. But I couldn't stop. I remember the day I switched my major to art and I've been drawing and painting ever since. It took me a long time to come to terms with my creativity coma, but I don't regret it. It's made me truly value and respect my process and the process of others.”

[Harry Hart by Lauren Addy ]

From the finesse you show in your work, it’s hard to imagine a place that you could ever have been that bad, Lauren. Though with a motto like “fail faster”, it’s no wonder you’ve been able to find the kind of mastery in your work that we can see here. It sounds like you already have a good idea of where you’ve come from to get here, but we’d just like to take a moment to commend you again. Your story is absolutely an inspiration.

While a lot of Lauren’s work is piecemeal, we did notice some recurring characters and themes throughout Lauren’s portfolio. We wanted to know a bit more, so we took a chance to explore the world of Unit 418 a little more closely.

“Unit 418 was inspired by a perfect storm of a few things. I am a huge fan of 1984 and the silent film Metropolis by Fritz Lang. This story embraces a lot of details of these two worlds; the undercity workers supporting the upper city [in Unit 418], for example, comes from Metropolis. [Additionally], when I was growing up, I went to school in Europe and became fascinated with the Holocaust. It wasn't a happy fascination, more of a curiosity of what drives a people to commit such atrocities to another people? I came back to the States to finish school and noticed how incredibly divided all the social groups were...and what scared me was how similar it was to how things like the Holocaust started, the complacency and normalization of it all. I began writing Unit 418 in 2016 when all of those previously mentioned things came together in a script writing class I had taken on a whim, and haven't stopped writing since.”

[Lineup by Lauren Addy]

The original idea for this world was an art deco cyberpunk kind of style, but it morphed as I wrote it. The country is called Anemoi and it has been under civil war for almost 300 years. Most have forgotten what they're even fighting for, and for some, that they're even fighting at all. The story focuses primarily on the City State, Central, which is completely surrounded by war. The citizens of Central, however, would tell you the war has been over for generations due to how sheltered they've been. Due to Centrals finite amount of citizens, they began manufacturing super soldiers to fight for them. Central also has an underground slave labor force that do all the hard labor that keeps Central running without a hitch. The city has a ‘democratic’ government with very heavy religious ties to a group known as The Eternal Following. The twist is this religion is based in technological growth and artificial intelligence.”

If Anemoi, Central, and Unit 418 interests you as much as it does us, you’re in luck! Chapter 1 is already available and chapter two is well under way. If you’re eager to know more, join Lauren at CONvergence this July, or check her out below!

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Unit 418 Homepage

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akemilena · 6 years

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Interview with Fujiwara (General Producer of Tsukipro)

From LiNK vol. 002

“I seek realism and friendliness”

Fujiwara-san, who launched Tsukiuta and has been involved with all the Tsukipro series after that. We asked her, the producer, who is also participating as the story’s draft writer in “Proani”, what was she aiming for with this anime, and what plans does she have for Tsukipro from now on.

It’s been 5 years since “Tsukiuta” started in 2012, but could you tell us your feelings again?

Lately I have the feeling that time goes by really fast. The first 3 years it was only developed as a CD series and it had quite a narrow scope, but in 2016 “Tsukiuta” was made into an anime, the stage play started, and because of it the scope got suddenly really wide.

Now, the amount of talents belonging to Tsukipro has increased and it got many developments including a smartphone app and live-action programs. Did you expect it to become so huge?

At first I really didn’t even imagine it. “Tsukiuta” started just because I thought “I want to do this!” and presented a proposal to my boss. At that time, I was the only person in this project. Even after it actually started moving and more people joined, we were just 3 people. That’s why, for a while after it was in motion, I did many things alone. Of course, there were illustrators and music producers and so on, but I was doing can badges and such by myself. In a corner of the company (laughs).

Like a side job (laughs).

That’s right. I was making can badges and posters alone while side glancing at popular titles and dreaming “I wish we could become like that someday”. That’s why, when the amount of people helping started to grow, and the number of followers on twitter also increased, and, like the situation right now, we got an anime, I felt really grateful.

Then, were you surprised when this second anime project got decided?

If you compare it to when “Tsukiuta THE ANIMATION” got decided, I was somewhat calmer, as far as pure surprise goes. Also because when the first anime finished airing, I thought “I want to do the next one” so it felt more like having passed one objective.

I see. “Proani” is centered on the succeeding units of “Tsukiuta”, but did you have an image of what you wanted the anime to be from the beginning?

The four units that are the center [of this anime] have a shorter history than “Tsukiuta”, so of course they are less known. But I think their music and their charm as they grow as units is really good. And for that, first of all we need people to get to know them. “Proani”’s objective is to become at least a cause for people to touch the project.

Like an introduction, that “These kids are also a part of Tsukipro”.

Yes. Because when it’s an anime, the chances of people seeing it will increase. Then, if you listen to the music, I’m sure you’ll get to understand the charms of all these very individual boys. We’re making music that we purely think it’s good, so first something like “Please listen to our music for a bit” or “Please look how our children work” (laughs).

The units and the talents have all very rich personalities, right.

Until now, it’s been progressing as a drama CD series, and the talents already have their personalities very defined, so the moment it became an anime, we had as a major premise that they wouldn’t waver.

The fans that have been following it since the drama CDs would feel uncomfortable if their images of the characters were off.

An amazing amount of people are involved in the production of an anime. But the people we directly talk to are just a few who are in the center, and there are many more people beyond them that also work on it. And among that huge amount of people, we had to make sure that the personalities of the talents wouldn’t be off, no matter what. For that reason, this time, while acting as the producer, I’m also involved in the story’s draft.

Is there something inside you that is absolute about their personalities?

Yes. Inside me, the talents exist very actively, and I have clear things like “He would never do this gesture” or “In this moment, he would act like this”, and so on. But that doesn’t mean that I’ll give something very concrete in the draft, I’m just giving the plot to the staff like “This anime’s image is like this”, and I’m leaving the way they are going to express it to the professionals. Though as a result of letting them express quite freely, there are times I ask for corrections. But I think my duty this time is how to express the talent’s personalities in the anime without them feeling off, so I decided not to give in, and talked a lot with the staff.

Tsukipro’s talents grow old every year, so their process of growing and their history in the drama CDs until now is important too, right.

Of course we’re taking care of the talent’s personalities that have been written until now, but I thought that the amount of people who see this work for the first time will be bigger [than the ones who already know it], so we made it so people can enjoy it even without that previous information. It’s episodic, so you can watch it just casually. And of course, for the people who know them from the drama CDs, we’ve included small references here and there, so if you notice them you’ll cry, or laugh even more. I’d be happy if people who have known them thanks to the anime would want to investigate further and listen to the CDs as well.

So you can enjoy it just as an anime, and if you listen to the drama CDs it will be even more fun.

That’s right. But it’s not like “listen to the past series no matter what!”, I would just like everyone to enjoy it in their own way. “Proani” too of course, but all of Tsukipro’s works are generally made with that feeling in mind. There are some people that will continue following and pouring love into the series they like even if their lifestyle becomes more difficult. I also think that is wonderful too, and I’m grateful, but I think I would like them to have fun with our works. There’s no need to follow them all from 1 to 10, so I want it to be a story where you can comfortably enjoy just the parts you like.

Enjoying it freely is what’s more important.

Yes. Actually, the entertainment contents we make, like the anime, is something that you don’t essentially need to continue living. You can live your life even if you don’t know it, but if you do, your life will become at least a bit richer. That’s why I think that it’s kind of wrong if following the things you like makes your life harder, or it’s emotionally painful. I want it, most importantly, to be fun, no matter how far you go. How would you call it, like “food at home”.

Food at home?

Probably other idol things tend to be a special being, like “Today I’m going to eat steak!”, or “I came with a dress in accordance to the restaurant”, like getting fired up and going to eat out. But in the Tsukipro series, the daily life of the talents is always written, so it’s something more familiar.

Certainly, they’re very friendly and close.

They even go just normally to the konbini to buy tea in the anime.

And they go to eat stand-up soba restaurants too (laughs)

That’s right (laughs). That’s why, I’d like people to see them as another human being living in the same world, a close presence. This is the basis. This is also the reason that we write their daily lives, so people can enjoy it comfortably.

So you want them to be an existence which is part of daily life, which can be enjoyed without hesitation, like the food at home.

Exactly. And that’s how we’re conveying the life-sized form of the talents.

A lot of realism is also felt from this work. Actually, the anime has the same time axis as reality, and we see the same enterprises and places that exist in the real world.

That’s something I was particular about too. I wanted to depict the way the talents live their daily lives as realistically as possible, so I got permission from the places and companies that appear. So that when you go to visit that place, you can think “he was here”, or “he was eating that”, and feel a bit happy fantasizing about it. So when the talents go shopping around the city, you can go to the same places and eat the same things. If people could get involved with the work with that close sense of distance it’d be ideal.

And precisely because it’s written so realistically, it gives our imagination much more room.

If people’s daily lives could get even a bit more fun thanks to this, it’d be wonderful. Like, you can dream. Even though you know it’s the anime’s world, just thinking “maybe he was here” or “maybe we just passed each other”, makes you kind of excited, doesn’t it?

So precisely because it gets closer to the customers’ daily lives like that, people can enjoy it comfortably. That’s the most important thought.

Yes. Because following it every day gets tiring, so if someone loses interest, they can get away from it once, and when there’s a new talent that seems interesting they can come back again. I think that much is fine. I’d be happy if people can enjoy it and love it freely and lightheartedly, for a very long time.

Do you have any objectives you want to fulfill with Tsukipro, or any forecast for the future?

I’m thinking of introducing a new unit every year. Tsukipro still doesn’t have any comedians or actresses, so there still are a lot of slots to fill. I want to touch many more genres and increase the talents. And each one of them, like I said earlier, that “could actually live” in an extension of daily life.

So you’re saying we could see comedians debut from Tsukipro.

This could seem like we’re straying, but if you’re not too focused on the types, you could run into new encounters and new things that you didn’t think of, so I’m going to run around intentionally. Someday we might see not only anime, but dramas or variety shows made with Tsukipro talents too (laughs). I want to be at least that free.

Understood. Looks like “Proani” and “Tsukipro” will get even more fun.

That’s right. But first of all I want everyone to enjoy “Proani”. It’s expressed as a “music-daily life anime”, and that being the case, only for the opening there’s already 4 songs, and all the endings make 12 songs. I think you can enjoy the music even if you don’t know the talents’ background, so first I’d like people to enter from that, and then become interested in the ones who sing. And on the contrary, for the people who already know them, they’re singing songs that could have a different impression from the unit, so you could discover a new face of them. I’d be happy if you can look over them as they challenge new things.

Translation index

TL notes:

Hello hello! I’m back with a wonderful interview with our God and Savior the producer of Tsukipro! This is from a magazine which has a feature on tsukipro of no less than 70 pages!!!!! I’m also preparing a post with the highlights of the rest of the interviews (because there’s a LOT) but I just needed to translate this whole one. I think it’s very important for us fans to see what’s behind the things we love, especially if they’re made with so much care as Fujiwara-san has!!!

It was a truly amazing read and I hope I can convey the very caring way she talks about it. Please excuse any awkward and repetitive-sounding phrases... I hate japanese (nonexistent) word order...

Thanks for reading!

#tsukipro #proani #tsukiuta #tsukino production #idk about u but i owe this woman my entire life #bless her

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maladaptivereverie · 6 years

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Madd Asks!

This was created by @maddcastle so go check them out!

1. Do you use a repetitive motion to stimulate daydreams (rocking, pacing, etc.)? What is it/are they? Can you daydream without repetitive movement?

I typically pace or rock in a chair. I can daydream without doing this but most times I can’t control myself and have to pace or rock.

2. Do your daydreams get violent? How do you feel about them? How do you respond to them?

My daydreams tend to get violent very often. When it first happens, I don’t really notice however I will snap out of it and feel pretty uncomfortable. Unfortunately, I typically can’t stop it and am left to the mercy of my violent daydreams

3. When are your daydreams the happiest?

My daydreams tend to be very happy immediately after I come home from school or being with other large groups of people. It seems that the more time I have to daydream, the less happy they become

4. Do you daydream in first person perspective? Do you have a parame/avatar?

While I do have a parame, I don’t daydream in first person.

5. Do you have (a) linear daydream(s)? How long has it/have they been running?

I have a semi-linear daydreams. I’ve been daydreaming about the same group of paras for about six years now. The best way to describe what I mean is to give an example: I have my main group of paras who are just trying to make something of their life. Sometimes I’ll think of something interesting but I don’t know if it will fit in that universe so I jump to another. Then I take whatever happens in that universe that I liked and put it back in the original one.I’m not sure if that made any sense but yeah...

6. How did you discover you had madd? How do you feel about it?

I just so happened to come across a blog that talked about it and when I read more about it, I had never been so relieved in my life. It made me so happy to see that there were other people who understood how I was feeling. Up until that point, I had felt so much like an outcast and so strange about the fact that I spent hours of my day pacing and daydreaming about made up people. SO I guess in short I was excited.

7. How do you feel about your characters/paras? Have you ever fallen in love with them?

I love them. All of them, even the most terrible ones. They just hold a really special place in my heart. And yes, I have fallen in love with the,, one in particular now.

8. Do you know any other MD’ers personally?

No. None that have told me anyway.

9. How did you feel about it before you knew what maladaptive daydreaming was? Did you think it was something everybody does or that you were unique?

I thought I was so strange for spending all day creating these ‘movies’ of sorts in my head. I knew that I had a problem, though. I just didn’t think anyone else had this problem.

10. What most influences your daydreams? Realtime events? Books? Movies?

Literally anything. Any type of media I consume causes me to daydream. I don’t think one stands out.

11. If you have a parame, please describe them. Are they much like you? How do you feel about them?

My parame is me but cooler, less socially awkward, and actually has talent that they use. I wish I was them and it probably wouldn’t be hard to change myself, however, I just daydream about it instead.

12. Do you have favorite paras? Why are they your favorites?

Two of my paras, Kimber and Nic, are my favorites. Nic is one of the first paras I made. He’s the one I daydream about when I wanna laugh or feel better (or put all my trauma onto). Kimber is the one I’m probably strangely in love with. She’s the one I turn to when I’m stressed or feeling lonely. They’re my favorites because I can daydream about them easily and use them as emotional crutches.

11. How old are the majority of your paras?

They tend to age with me, so right now between 16-20.

12. If you could give your paras any advice, what would you tell them?

Don’t keep secrets that could hurt people.

13. Do your paras appear in a style other than realistic? For example, like anime or in the style of a video game?

It’s sort of a style like Avatar the Last Airbender. I think that’s the best I could describe it. Anime inspired with bits of realism

14. Do you have OCs?

I consider my OCs to be different than my paras so yes. My OCs are characters I can actually make a story out of.

15. Are any of your paras adopted from existing fiction? From real life?

Not adopted but adapted. Most were based on characters from other media. Mostly anime and books like Pokemon and Percy Jackson

16. Where do you get names for your paras?

Sometimes it’s just the first thing I think of but behind the name is where I get a lot of my names from.

17. Do your paras have tragic backstories? Will you share a few?

Yes but it depends on the universe. One example I can give you is Leandra. In this particular universe she witnessed her baby brother’s death which she felt she had caused because of her inattentiveness. Since that they she’s been hesitant to become close to people and aggressively protective of her surviving brother.

18. Are any of your paras deceased? How did they die? How did you feel?

Again, depends on the universe. Most times I’m too affected by it to make it permanent though.. Usually they die by accidents

19. Are your paras human? Mortal?

They are all humans

20. Have any of your paras ever completely disappeared/vanished from the daydream world? Is there a story behind it or was it an unconscious occurrence? Do you think they might return? Do you want them to?

Yes and it’s always an unconscious decision. I would like for them to return and I’ve tried to force it but it’s no use.

21. Have your characters commit crime? Have they been to jail? Are they legally innocent? Are they socially innocent?

Not usually though I have a separate universe just for this. They’ve done illegal things but it’s like under-aged drinking and stuff. And they haven’t gotten caught so...

22. Do your paras often find themselves in dangerous situations? How/why? Do they go looking for trouble? Does trouble look for them?

Yup because they’re all my dumb, irresponsible children. They don’t think and they get involved and stuff they weren’t prepared for.

23. What do you associate with your paras? Colors? Smells? Words?

Colors. It’s incredibly hard for me to associate with a para if they don’t have a color associated with them.

24. Has a para ever broken your heart? Have you ever broken theirs (through a parame)?

Not romantically or anything. Just watching them do incredibly dumb stuff breaks my heart though.

25. Has a para ever made you physically cry?

Yes because I’m an emotional wreck.

26. Do you act out your daydreams? Do you speak to/through your paras out loud?

Yes, most of the time actually. I even try to imitate they’re accents which ends badly. And on more than a few occasions I’ve injured myself through acting because I’m clumsy.

27. Have you ever been caught daydreaming?

Yes, but they didn’t know that. I just play it off rather than explaining.

28. What do you most dislike about being a maladaptive daydreamer? Are there things you like about it?

I hate not being able to control when I daydream. I hate that no matter how tired I am, if I haven’t daydreamed, I physically can’t rest. I do like the fact that I can provide myself with entertainment and even curb my loneliness if only for a few hours.

29. Briefly describe a daydream.

A good example of my daydreams would be a group of paras sitting around at someone’s house or in school joking with each other, which will morph into something violent and/or sexual, which will in turn shift into them getting involved into some sort of gang war (for lack of a better way to describe it). and then back to the group.

30. Do you daydream to music? Is music a necessity to daydream? Do you wear headphones? How loud do you keep the volume?

Yes but it’s not a necessity. Sometimes if I have music I can’t daydream but that’s not often. I keep my headphones incredibly loud. Maybe about two or three notches below max.

31. Do you have models/faceclaims for your paras?

Yes. I spent an entire week on Pinterest looking for faceclaims.

32. Does daydreaming energize or exhaust you?

Depends on the subject matter. Happy daydreams will energize me but darker ones tire me (doesn’t stop me from daydreaming though).

33. Do you think there is a pattern/correlation between your daydreams and how you daydream them? For example, are your daydreams more violent when you’re lying down?

I have more sexual daydreams lying in bed (not purposefully). At school I have daydreams about them being there with my parame (not me myself).

34. Do you have distinct daydream triggers? Do your daydreams come and go as they please?

No. Anything can cause me to daydream. Even sitting here writing this I’ve had to stop to daydream a few times.

35. Does your mood affect the amount of time you spend daydreaming? Or their intensity?

When I’m in a bad mood I daydream more and often more intensely,

36. Have you ever had daydream block? How did you feel? How did you break it?

No. I’ve never had it.

37. Have you ever had abusive paras? If it is not too sensitive to share, will you tell us about your experience with them?

Yes, but often I try to stop daydreaming about them. They pop up occasionally, which is very distressing, but I do everything in my power to stop daydreaming about them because they typically target my main group of paras.

38. Do your paras directly affect you in thisverse? Do you only interact with them in fictional scenarios or do you find yourself reaching for them in realtime, too? For example, do you converse with them mentally when facing a difficult situation?

I talk to them in boring or stressful situations. Or sometimes I use them to give myself advice or talk myself through a situation.

39. Do you only daydream fantasy? Do you dream about thisverse?

I combine both. For example, I have my paras react to real life events.

40. Do you do research for your daydreams? How much? How often? How deep?

Yes, all the time. Anytime I think of something I don’t know much about, I research. I go pretty deep too. Sometimes I spend more time researching for a daydream than actually daydreaming about it.

41. What was your first maladaptive daydreaming experience? Do you remember it? How did you feel about it?

I can’t really remember though it may have been imagining a child who accidentally murdered someone at a park.

42. When did you know what you did was different?

When I started high school and realized I didn’t really know how to interact with new people. Everyone I had gone to middle school with, I’d known before I developed MaDD, so I couldn’t really tell. In high school, however, I was the new kid who didn’t know anyone so I began to rely even more heavily on my paras.

43. Do you ever daydream through the perspectives of paras of the opposite sex? How is it?

I couldn’t tell you a difference if I noticed one.

44. Do you experience any confusion between fantasy and reality? Does daydreaming leave you in a haze or in a dazed state?

Yes, but it has to do with my thoughts. I have trouble distinguishing between me and my parame’s thoughts. If I’m shaken from a daydream I’ll be very dazed but stopping organically I’m fine.

45. If you have a parame, do you experience any dysphoria because of them?

No, I look very similar to my paame

46. Do you ever rewind your daydreams and re-daydream old material?

I think 90% of my daydreams are just me repeating the same ‘story-lines.’

47. Do you remember your daydreams in detail?

No. I only remember how it made me feel or what changed, Not usually exactly what happened.

48. Do you edit your daydreams? To what extent? How often/how much does your brain block you from controlling things?

I try but I’m pretty much at the mercy of my mind. I can’t really change much that doesn’t want tot change, no matter how much I want it to.

49. Do you get excited when you see or hear a para’s name in thisverse? When you see someone who looks like them? When you see something you associate with them?

Not really. If anything it makes me sad and come to terms with the fact that my paras aren’t real.

50. How might you describe maladaptive daydreaming to someone who does not experience it?

I’d say that for me it’s excessive, immersive daydreaming that is often times uncontrollable.

Well, thanks for reading if you made it this far. I don’t really know anyone so, please feel free to do this as well.

#actuallymadd #maladaptive daydreaming

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