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beltransadie · 1 month

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Small tidbits about my Still Into You 2ha animatic

Coz it's April, exactly one year from now was when I started completing it and I'm in the mood now. + I don't think I made a proper one + it won the twitter poll

Check it out if you're interested... or not! I just want to dump my thoughts and fun facts that I thought of while making this.

To preface this, check them out if you haven't seen it yet: (Still Into You & Please Don't Leave Me)

If you've been hanging around my blog for a while, it's kinda evident that I did post a promo post for Still Into You back in January 2023. And that first part does have an in-depth explanation about what it covers (which is from the start to the first chorus).

If you're wondering why: TL;DR I can't work on An Act of Kindness coz I was back home from school for vacation and I thought of the idea during a trip.

Anyway, I ramble. Time to get to the actual discussion.

(spoilers!!) The Actual Discussion

Making the rest of Still Into You, unlike Mo Ran's feelings for CWN, was actually just straightforward. I already knew that it'd cover the rest of the book, given that I intentionally focused heavily on book 1 while making part 1.

Like part 1, part 2 was that type of animatic that just naturally flowed during the storyboarding and rough sketch process. The whole animatic is divided into three phases which covers the following: Book 1, Book 2 and 3, and lastly the Epilogue.

Book 1 I've already discussed in an earlier post here but I did find this interesting tidbit I wrote to my cousin:

Anyways the discussion:

Yeah I really wish I have a funny image to put here. I'm really enjoying looking back at my stuff and seeing my initial plans though.

Order at which I made each part.

One thing of note (and actually a common oversight I experience while doing storyboards coz I don't do timings) was that I storyboarded the frames when the vocals started and forgot the timings in between.

So I kinda had to fill the parts between part 1 and 2 last-ish? (don't really remember the proper timings).

Oh, oh! And another fun fact:

Still Into You Part 2 (Rough Draft)

Part 2 was initially done on my tablet in CSP so there's a whole different and rougher version of it. (pls lower the volume if you're wearing earphones)

Funnily enough, this took me like one sitting to finish and a whole lot of sessions to clean up. I do like this process though given that, around the time I drew this, I started leaning heavily into animation and prioritizing getting my thoughts across without care for cleanliness. (Something I felt held me back too much while making Please Don't Leave Me).

In fact, there are some obvious frames that I didn't really bother polishing up (mostly because they're too hard for me or they just flash by quickly). A glaring example is this frame from the third part:

Another fun fact about the scene where TXJ shows CWN the plant he's been raising is it's actually inspired off of a doodle I made for someone in the Two Lifetimes CSE back in April 16 2023.

I just really think that it's super adorable for them. Mo Ran in the the epilogue section alternates between TXJ and 2.0.

Aside from the plant, TXJ also appears in this frame which is inspired from one of the extras. Another silly intentional decision I did is to have him pour alcohol onto a cup and drink from the bottle.

Meanwhile 2.0 appears here:

The one on the left is also from (you guessed it) an extra! It's based from an offhand mention that CWN makes in one of them. (Let me know what your guesses are haha)

I kinda just jumped into the 3rd half of the song, huh? I hope my ramblings aren't too much! I just wanna let it flow naturally.

Returning to the topic of the storyboard, I really only had a rough idea of what I wanted for the 3rd half. The references to the extras and even Goutou's appearance just came when I was already putting it into frame. Like, this was what I initially had in mind for the 2nd chorus to the end.

I think one of the notable differences is that I initially planned on doing the half MR half CWN screen transition the same way i did with chorus 1 and 2 but decided against it. In retrospect, I think it fits a lot because both aren't divided anymore.

Something about the second verse + chorus of the song

Like in chorus 1 and chorus 3, this section of the song takes on a darker tone since it covers book 2 going into book 3. It's a lot to talk about so I'm gonna select a couple that I personally like that's worth mentioning and leave the rest to the viewers to guess.

Also sorry not sorry for those who got spoiled by the animatic lmao.

The confession scene

Another fun fact: The confession scene in Still Into You and Please Don't Leave Me are intentionally connected through the color palette.

It's just that Still Into You takes a dump at how it treats it. Yes, the stick figures are intentional. It adds to the funny and tbh Still Into You really is just a feel good animatic. The comedy also serves as a whiplash to the angst hell that is the chorus 🥰.

(Insert obligatory CWN running at a tree meme here)

My Favorite 2ha Moment

Gotta insert my favorite chapter here (ch 184) which I think is one of 2ha's peaks because it resolves CWN's doubts about MR's feelings all this times.

And I'm just soo glad I could incorporate it in an animatic because it's so important to me. AND Like, 'yknow, I think it echoes the song very well because guess what MR tells CWN then?

“It has always been you."

That one frame before the chorus

There's like this moment before the second chorus starts where MR tells CWN something. I wanted it to echo ch 207 where MR felt the pressure of having to reveal that he actually is reborn and has memories of his past life.

If this were animated I'd have had MR match the song and tell CWN "I'm still into you".

Anyways, here's the frame before it zooms in. Physically it's still at ch 207, but I wanted the shadows to imply what happens next which is the chorus.

Other Bonus stuff

Ran out of stuff I wanna gush about so Imma talk about cut content.

XM and the MHX twins are supposed to have more frames (I didn't include it because it felt like it had too much energy)

2. Ling'er and the village ranwan visits during farm arc is also supposed to make an appearance

3. I forgot to animate the butterflies

4. I was supposed to polish the sequence at 2:41 - 2:51 at one point.

5. Fuck ow

6. CWN was supposed to glomp MR at the reunion scene

7. You and I

anyways go watch it

#2ha #erha #ranwan #danmei

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weirdly-specific-but-ok · 3 months

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starting a tag game for writers

Hi, it's Asmi! Okay, so, I've seen so many people afraid to start/continue writing because they're afraid it'll be garbage. And it's so sad how much joy and creativity is getting lost because of that fear. I've written utter shit before, and looking back on it is actually hilarious, and also, it's a reminder of how far I've come as a writer.

I really, really want people to be less afraid of the written word and of creating, and to get rid of that aura of mystery and elitism that often covers the writing process. Writing is messy and it's hell and it's torture. And it's amazing.

So here's the tag game:

Give me three lines/paragraphs that you've written that you love [fiction, non-fiction, from different works or the same, from completed stories or poems or WIPs, from yesterday or ten years ago] that you love. If that seems hard, even one will do. It doesn't have to be perfect. It can just be something silly that gives you joy.

And give me three lines/paragraphs that you've written that you dislike and find shitty. Anything at all as long as you wrote it. If you think it's ridiculous or absolute fucking garbage, even better! That's the point of this game. To see that we all write good things and bad things. Yeah? You can do this. And remember that both these categories are subjective.

I'll start. It's not as scary as it seems, I promise.

Things I've written that I find shitty:

The first man grabbed him by his collar, pinned him against the wall of the cave in which they were standing, and spat, “It doesn’t matter what you’ve done before. If the Queen’s not in the graveyard tonight, King Baza’s going to plan a most delightful execution for you. And even if he doesn’t, you being his nephew and all, I will arrange an accidental blowing up of your house when you are, tragically, inside.” [discount wall slam scene courtesy of 2016 Asmi, you're welcome]

“Overreacting?” said Dextor in disbelief, staring at Jay like, ‘What is wrong with you, dude?’ [sigh. my serious-scene-writing left a lot to be desired.]

“Don’t go,” I said, fighting tears. “Please, don’t leave me, too! You’re all I have left.” Strange thoughts for a child, but I meant every word. She looked at me with anguish. “I am sorry, Phil. Believe me, you are all I have, too, and this hurts me more than it does you. You’re like my son.” [I'm hysterical rereading this melodramatic shit, which was NOT the intended effect]

Things that I've written that I love:

He dropped the books onto a nearby chair and pulled her into his arms as he’d been longing to do all day, the smell of blueberries and hair product and her. The books she was holding were pressed against his chest, and he didn’t care. Why did he need to love the stars when he could love her, why did he need to look up at the sky for answers when they were right there in his arms? [I love this because when I first wrote it, I thought it was romantic, but I realised later that the boy, Ant, is aroace, and it doesn't change a thing about this scene, except that their love is platonic]

"Maybe being happy is the best that we can do. Maybe that’s more than most people manage, anyway.” They stood in front of the entrance, over puddles that reflected all the broken skyscrapers and the colours of the street and the grey-yellow sky. “Whatever you do with your parents,” she said. “Don’t let your guilt get in the way of doing ballet. It’s not wrong to be happy. It’s not.” [This is from the book I finished and I published, and I just really like this paragraph. It's not my favourite, but it makes me smile.]

The last you may leave wherever you please, wherever it is birds land to die. [A line from a poem I wrote in 2022, I like the rhythm]

(It took effort to find ones that I wanted to share, oof. If you find this difficult just know you're not alone. I usually like my writing, but turns out it's hard to take something you created and go hey, look, I'm proud of this. But we can do it.)

Alright, of course anyone who sees this is welcome to join, and tag the writers you know so we can all be uh writerly together :") but to start it off, no pressure tags @howmanyholesinswisscheese, @1800ineedshelp, @queermarzipan, @thescholarlystrumpet, @madfangirlontheloose.

Oh, and also tagging @neil-gaiman, @dduane, @drchucktingle just because maybe if you see this and join in, new writers will find comfort in knowing their role models have ups and downs, good and bad days too :")

Have a lovely day, everyone, and keep writing.

#asmi #weirdly specific but ok #writing #tag game #writers on tumblr #writerblr

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traegorn · 5 months

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I need to stop doing this to myself.

(A Rant Where Trae Has Written Too Many Books This Month)

So since most of you started following me because of Witchcraft or podcast stuff, I realize a lot of you don't know how much fiction writing I do.

Primarily what I've published are comics. The big one is UnCONventional (which ran from December of 2009 to December of 2019), but I also did a steampunk comic called The Chronicles of Crosarth (which I put on hiatus in like 2018 intending to come back to... but I haven't, and I make no guarantee that I will even though over 650 of the 800 planned pages are done). Crosarth is... fine? The art isn't great in either of these, but UnCONventional carries itself with the humor.

But that's all old stuff. You may be like "Trae, what have you been producing for the last four years," and the answer is "not a lot." I got major creative block with the pandemic. Peregrine Lake, the "Northwoods Gothic" comic I was supposed to launch in 2020 (which has some characters from UnCONventional in it) didn't materialize when I said it would. What storytelling energy I had went into Stormwood & Associates and The Meatgrinder (my two actual play podcasts), but that was it.

And then 2023 happened, and the juices started flowing again.

Peregrine Lake is moving forward -- but with me just doing the writing. My urge to draw has not returned, but my urge to write has. A friend of mine, Ethan Flanagan, is drawing it, and I've written the first year of comics. It likely won't launch any time soon (the artist I'm working with is busy as hell so we want to get a shit-ton of the comic done before we launch it -- we have like the first month and a half of the comic ready?). But yeah -- it's happening. I hoping for Spring, but we'll see.

The other thing though is that I've started writing, like, novels. I've always had like twenty ideas in my head, so I figured I'd give it a shot. I decided to start with the idea I cared the least about (in case I fucked it up): A queer urban fantasy story.

In the last month and a half I've written complete drafts of two different novels in this setting, and am halfway through another one... and have another one outlined.

I, uh, had some ideas.

If you're asking yourself "Hey Trae -- what the fuck? That's a lot" you need to know a few things that aren't obvious. At one point in college, in 72 hours, I produced over 40 pages of text between three research papers. All were for 300 level courses, and I may have disassociated while writing them because I frankly don't remember most of it. But, like, they were decent papers.

One of those papers is in Google Scholar.

Anyway, yeah. I haven't been sleeping great because I've been obsessively writing, but you might ask "Why didn't you just write one and get it ready to publish?" That's a great question. Because I wrote a book, and when I was 3/4 of the way through it I realized something very important: This book would make a great sequel to a book I haven't written. I've been writing book two in a series where I haven't written book one yet.

Well fuck.

So I finished that draft, and I went and wrote book one. Now that book? That book I'm getting ready to publish. I expect to have it out in January. Part of my editing process involves setting what I think is a completed, good, revised draft down for a couple of weeks and then returning to it with fresh eyes. We're in that waiting period right now.

But I still had a bunch of energy.

So the first thing I did was a revising draft on book two (the one I wrote first), but I finished that. And had more energy. And more stories in this setting kept popping up.

So I started a third book. And I'm halfway through the first draft of that book. But then I realized yesterday... shit, this isn't book three.

This is book four.

I need stuff to happen before we get to this story.

So now I've outlined the actual book three, and am working on literally both of these books at once (I'll take a break for Christmas and then go do a final edit on Book One).

And... I'm just like... why am I like this?

I need to stop myself for a few days and get more sleep.

#writing

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hms-no-fun · 1 year

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I hope this ask doesn't come off as rude at all-- and I apologize if it does!-- but as an aspiring writer, I'm honestly really confused by some of the early choices in Godfeels, and I'm curious if I'm just not "getting it". I saw some posts about it pop up in the tag (and they WERE very shitty and rude about it :/), but I'd love to hear your explanation/take on June's big character change immediately post-realization, and especially the... "Trickster Arc", I guess it could be called? The former I get to some extent, but I'm really curious about the choice to do all THAT so early in the story with the trickster candy.

Seriously love your work, your narration is honestly a big inspiration to me in terms of how meta it gets and how close it gets to communicating directly with both the main character AND the audience!

no rudeness detected at all! this is a great question, in fact it’s one i’ve been kinda hoping someone would ask because i’ve been thinking about this stuff a lot these last few months. but i get the sense that you’re at least a little new here, so uh, yeah, hello, when people ask me interesting questions i tend to answer at great length. so strap in for that after the break lmao. also as a note, there will be some spoilers for all of godfeels here but please don’t let that scare you away, they’re all contextless and, if anything, might honestly make the rest of the story *more* enjoyable as a result.

as far as "getting it" goes, i've talked at length about the how & why of the violence in godfeels in multiple places so i'll try to avoid rehashing that too much here. but one thing i want to emphasize right off the bat is that i never intended godfeels to be an ongoing thing. you talk about the trickster arc happening “so early in the story” but when i wrote godfeels 1 i didn’t plan on writing more. i didn’t even plan on making john trans! my idea of what the sum total of godfeels 2 would be when i started writing it wound up being completely different from the finished work. i didn’t plan to make this thing so long. i didn’t plan for june to accidentally on purpose kill her friends while drunk and then retcon it. i didn’t plan on turning the whole thing into a space opera. it all just happened to me, man. i kept writing because i kept finding more interesting things to say. and it’s important to specify that when i started gf1 i hadn’t written fiction in years. i think if you jumped ahead to godfeels 3 part 1 chapter 8, no matter how you feel about the content we’d at least be able to agree that in the years since 2019 i’ve become a much much better writer. if you want more insight into how my process has evolved, i’ve written so so so much about it, too much maybe even, in the #sarahposts tag.

anyway, now i want to talk about june's "big character change." the extent to which her trickster arc makes sense or feels in character seems to vary wildly from person to person. what always bugs me about "ooc" as a criticism is that godfeels starts six years and change after the end of homestuck. let's remember that the protagonists of homestuck were sixteen when the comic ended. now i want you to ask yourself if you as you were at 16 would think that you as you are now was "in character." or vice versa! probably not, right? it doesn’t even have to have been six years. i was STILL sixteen when i started to get embarrassed of who i was at sixteen!

that should be all i need to say, but it isn’t. and it doesn't really get to the core of the issue anyway. i am not nor have i ever been interested in writing "a sequel to homestuck,” even though it has kind of just become that anyway. godfeels has always been about the meaty existential drama you can tease out through the complicated character dynamics of these fucked up traumatized gods. godfeels has always been my way of analyzing the themes and ideas of homestuck, the existential ramifications of the mechanics of SBURB and the classpects and retcon (let’s remember that i wrote godfeels around the same time that i took over hosting duties on the perfectly generic podcast). godfeels has also always been about me and my trauma. i even used to joke that june was my self-insert character, though i've seen that line repeated unironically by enough people who haven't read godfeels that i've stopped saying it. because it's not true! june is very, very different from me... i just happen to see my life reflected in her eyes.

to immediately rehash what i said i wouldn't, june eg8ert arose out of my frustration with most versions of the june egbert headcanon particularly in the summer of 2019. let's call her "hairclips june." hairclips june is always smiling, usually with smiling friends, she's wearing hairclips and has nonzero tit and is A Woman Now. as i said in my video, while i don't begrudge anyone their comfort food, this simply was not my experience with coming out as a trans woman. and of all the characters, i’d always identified most with john. also i thought, you know, these kids are SERIOUSLY messed up, every single one of them has died multiple times, they've seen things and done things no one should ever have to. and retcon! god, what a mindfuck retcon is.

those are the primal ingredients of godfeels. what if june came out and everyone wasn't chill about it? some folks say that's out of character and, idk, i guess that's arguably true. but i had friends who were very vocal trans allies who’d been in queer relationships who still stopped talking to me after i came out. let me tell you i spent a lot of time fucked up in the head over how "out of character" that was for them, to the extent that i blamed myself for their reaction because surely they couldn't be so out of character. to which one might respond, well, why do this as a homestuck fic then? why not just do my own original thing instead?

and i guess the answer is that i didn't want to and i still don't, really. it's not just about the characters for me. i like the rules of the homestuck universe. i find it interesting how it mechanically reflects being a fictional narrative. and, you know, maybe it's easier for me to process violent intrusive thoughts through a character who is capable of acting on those thoughts and then immediately undoing them consequence-free. retcon is, in fact, sort of the perfect mechanism for exploring violent intrusive thoughts because it lets us play out the fantasy without lasting diegetic harm, such that we can just focus on the existential and moral questions of the phenomenon itself. and like, yeah, that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. but isn’t it still just as valid a topic to explore in fiction as anything else?

like em or not, people have intrusive thoughts. people have violent impulses. sometimes they even act on them. the unpleasantness of a phenomenon shouldn’t dictate whether it is acceptable to depict in fiction-- if anything, we ought to take our instinctive desire to look away as an urgent invitation to look closer instead. as i’ve been wont to say for years and years now, “problematic” implies a problem to be solved. that which is human is inherently complicated. to pretend it’s all good or bad excises humanity from the equation, or at least flattens the range of acceptable humanity. all of which is my extremely soapboxy way of saying (as i’ve said a million times by now), yes, godfeels june is problematic. that is in fact what godfeels is about.

there's an extent to which i think this can be blamed on how rooted we are IN june's perspective in gf1 and 2. i don't think people really appreciate the fact that godfeels 1 is john threatening to commit suicide and almost going through with it. that's the context in which her friends react poorly to her coming out; i mean, she's literally sleeping on rose's couch because everyone's so worried about her! i think that, by being completely within june's perspective for all of these events, we don't really get a good sense of the interpersonal dynamics at play (probably because i didn't even really understand them myself until later). instead we just see people who should know better acting like dicks.

i think whether or not june’s trickster arc is canonically palatable to you depends very much on whether or not you've had a dear friend disappoint you so much that you're no longer on speaking terms.

but if we want to reel this back from the abstract philosophical, maybe it’s enough to say that we just have different interpretations of these characters? they’re not monoliths, you know. different people see different things in different characters. some folks get a lot out of hairclips june and that’s okay. maybe i was a bitch about other people’s headcanons back in 2019 when redditors were calling me and my friends abusive pedophiles for liking vriska, but i gave up that fight when the redditors got what they wanted (to harass a group of queer creators offline and out of their jobs). if someone wants to woobify gamzee, whatever man, go right ahead. that ain’t my cup of tea and i personally don’t think that’s very in character either, but that’s why i don’t read it. it ain’t for me and that’s fine. i like homestuck BECAUSE these characters can mean so many things to so many people. is this variability not precisely the thing that makes the postcanon era so interesting?

i have my idea of who these characters are based on who they were in the comic and i work very hard to keep them in character, but i also don't want them to be trapped in amber. i want them to grow and change and become different people, because homestuck itself is obsessed with inescapable absolute archetypes (ie the ultimate self, or the captchalogue system) and i enjoy troubling that. i enjoy swimming in a sea of weird problematic dilemmas. that’s what’s fun about fiction for me, you can think about and write about all the most difficult and even fucked up things you like, and it definitionally cannot cause real material nonconsensual harm to another human being. and yet we get so tied up in the question of harm anyway! maybe that makes sense when talking about marvel movies, but this is fanfiction we’re talking about. this is HOMESTUCK fanfiction. if i were to go on twitter right now and post “homestuck is good” i’d end the day with at least five comments saying “lol no it’s not.” SOME OF THOSE PEOPLE WILL HAVE HOMESTUCK AVATARS. there are few things as cringe as liking homestuck even among people who like homestuck, so who cares? i like homestuck, i like the epilogues, i like hs2, and i think a pretty gargantuan majority of this fandom are subliterate babies. that’s why i don’t engage with them or make much of an attempt to bridge the gap. i think godfeels and its cool little fandom is all the better for how much work it requires of the reader to “get it” as it were. i wish more people would give it a chance, or at the very least not immediately throw me and a lot of my friends under the bus at every possible opportunity, but what can you do? i just write. people will react how they will react. what matters to me is that it stays true to itself as a work, and that it grows with me and my audience and my collaborators. trying to backpedal or soften the edges would just ruin the whole thing, likely alienate my current readers and inevitably invite even more bad faith readings. no thanks!

some folks stop reading godfeels after june's trickster arc, and i can respect that. if you get to that part of the story and don't like it, chances are you're not gonna like the rest of it! and in that sense, i guess you could say i “chose” to have june’s trickster arc happen so “early on” as a litmus test for the reader. as annoying as it can be feeling like i’m constantly having to address this exact issue, i vastly prefer it to a bunch of people hate-reading something that wasn’t made for them. but again, i didn’t know this was “early on” when i wrote it, because i didn’t plan it to happen. i didn’t intend for june to go on a killing spree, she just did it and i as writer decided, you know what? this is way more interesting than what i had planned. and then dirk became the antagonist because, oops, june coming out fucked up all the schemes he has that play out in the homestuck epilogues. and i guess in THAT sense, the palatability of godfeels depends on whether or not you liked and/or tolerated the homestuck epilogues and homestuck^2. these, too, are not for everyone. but godfeels is not a replacement for them, as some folks like to claim (god bless them). i’m not interested in rewriting homestuck or fixing its sequels. ok well that’s not entirely true, i think the epilogues did jake REAL dirty and that’s become a big focus of mine going forward. but even then, i don’t pretend the epilogues didn’t happen. in fact if you’ve read all of 3.1, you know just how cosmically important they end up being.

but this is, i guess, kind of the crux of the issue for me. june’s trickster arc happens very early on in the story, yes, and that’s deliberately challenging on a lot of levels. june spends a great deal of time being challenged by it herself! but folks who stop there (if they even make it that far) often act like the whole story is grimdark wish-fulfillment violence or me airing out my irrational hatred of Boys (????), and that's just not true. i don’t give a shit about that. we get to june's trickster arc at around the 25,000 word mark, out of the current grand total of over 400,000 words. her violence is functionally the prologue, and she spends the entire rest of this story suffering the consequences of those actions. so if i am frustrated with this line of questioning, a lot of it comes down to the fact that if you just read the rest of the story you’d see that i have in fact had all of the same thoughts you’ve likely had. i know people who think i did dirk dirty in gf2, and i actually kind of agree! which is why dirk comes back and has a difficult, complicated relationship with his past self. people complain about certain characters being ooc, which i can certainly understand because when i started godfeels i really did not have a great grasp on them! but also, if you kept reading godfeels you’d know that the tension of whether or not someone is cosmically “in character” is a huge running theme of this story. june’s friends react poorly to her coming out in part because it seems out of character for her! hell, phenomenologically how *could* june be in character after coming out when she barely even knows who she is yet? her whole thing in gf1 is that she doesn’t know who she is anymore! just realizing that you’re trans changes you, changes how you see the world, how you relate to other people. or it did for me, anyway. risk, dare, X, angel dirk, and silverbark are all sorts of caught up in this question. and if you’ve gotten to the end of 3.1 you’ll know about the concept of denexustic radiation:

and that’s just the tip of the metaphysical iceberg. all of which is to say that this is a feature, not a bug. so it’s always very funny to me when people drop out so early on only to complain about the very same problematics that i’ve spent three years and 400,000 words exploring.

BUT. but. yeah godfeels 1 and 2 are messy. the gf3 prologue is very messy. it’s a serial narrative that has changed shape multiple times over the years, and barring a bit of polish on gf1 around when i started writing gf3 i generally refuse to go back and rewrite things. there’s a lot i would do differently today, but if i had done it differently then the story as it is today would not exist. and i love this story! i might look back on gf2 and feel like it’s rushed and messy, but i know that it was the best i could do at the time. it’s a reflection of who i was as a writer then. i live with the ramifications of that for the same reason i don’t delete the old videos on my channel from before i came out/learned what communism was: because i don’t like to pretend that the present was always present. i’m a different person now, a different writer. i made mistakes, i learned, and i changed. i will continue this process for the rest of my natural life, as will you.

ultimately i guess my answer here is that godfeels is a flawed work written by a flawed person, and the extent to which readers relate to it seems to have a lot to do with how much their flaws overlap with mine. i get lots of people telling me my characters are in character. i get people telling me they’re more in character than some canon! and it’s not that i weigh those comments as more valuable, i just see it as an indication of who my audience is. i’m not writing for people who want more hiveswap, and i’m certainly not writing for people who dismissed hs^2 out of hand. i’m just writing for myself and my friends, and it just so happens that some people seem to get a lot out of it.

i’m gonna close out here by actually finally directly addressing your question with what i think you were ultimately hoping for: some writing advice.

the rules don’t exist. there are things that can make some art better or some art worse but they are not universal. the rules are fake and if you hold every story you touch to those rules, you’re gonna have a bad time. a story is not static and it is never truly yours. you discover it. sometimes you can expand it or alter it in ways but, at least in my experience, doing so more often than not just kills the whole thing-- or at least demands a complete reconceptualization. all of which takes time, and we live in a world where taking time to get in touch with and hone your craft is considered sort of a bad economic decision. but art is what it is and it does what it does and we can either play with it or we can put it in a cage.

what i like about making art is that i am not entirely in control. i have my plans, my schemes, my ideas, but the fun of writing is just putting a bunch of characters in a room together and seeing what they do. quite often they do things i would never expect, that are far truer to their character than i anticipated. my experience has always been that the more you outline a story before you write it, the harder it is to actually write that story. when i know everything that’s gonna happen on a moment to moment level, the whole thing falls dead on the page. but obviously you need to know SOME things! and i’ll say that from the inception of gf3 back in december 2019 to now, very very few of the broad strokes of my plans have changed. if you’ve read all of 3.1 you know there’s a very specific timeline at play in the backstory of a group of characters we’ll be spending a lot of time with in 3.2. there are no questions or mysteries or whatever else i’ve introduced to this story that i did not have at least the sense of an explanation for. but these are simply bullet points that dictate the endpoint of a path and suggest something of the moral/philosophical/emotional arc that needs to occur in order to get there. the real meat of it comes out in the act of writing itself, and that’s what i’m here for. it’s a gamble that doesn’t always pay off, and it does mean that i have almost 80,000 words of material i ended up rewriting or cutting sitting in a doc somewhere, but that’s worth it for me.

if art is to be relevant, it must have the capacity to make an audience uncomfortable. if art is to be essential, it must have the capacity to demand a strong reaction (positive or negative) from everyone who sees it. if art is to be true, it must have the capacity to reflect the disquiet contradictions of simple existence that we desperately wish to ignore in our daily lives. that doesn’t mean everyone has to or should read difficult art, or like it, or make it. but it has always existed and it will always exist, and i think it is essential for writers and critics alike to learn to stop themselves from mistaking a common storytelling method for THE storytelling method. and frankly, most of the art i love most in this world is art that i didn’t particularly like the first time we crossed paths.

and lastly, never forget the inarguable truth that the audience bears quite a lot of responsibility in this equation. you are never, as a writer, inflicting anything on your reader, because your reader can always opt out at any moment they wish. if something doesn’t work, yeah, that’s a problem you can fix. art is a conversation in that way, or at least ought to be. but at the same time, art has no obligation to be perfect, or smooth, or easy to consume. the rules are fake. they exist to be broken. the pursuit of perfection is a dead end. just make shit

okay this one has gone on QUITE long enough lmao i hope there’s something useful in there for you somewhere and uhhhh i hope you enjoy the rest of godfeels if you haven’t already read it!

#sarahposts #godfeels #homestuck #writing advice #problematic art #transgender writing #june egbert #homestuck epilogues #homestuck2 #trickster arc

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freestyle-crocodile-trashpile · 2 years

Text

Stolen

Summary:you originally from rise accidentally get teleported to the 2012 universe by leo and while your there steal Donnie from April.

April is pink Splinter is slanted your bold and Casey is normal

Type:scenario:Donnie x male reader

Version:2012(with a little rise)

You were just relaxing in the lair when you heard the twins going crazy over somethin.

"What's going on over there?"

You looked towards donnies lab

"That's a great question y/n, who knows those two are a wild duo"

You nodded agreeing before standing up to go check it out. When you got there leo had opened a portal and trying to get Donnie to send shelldon through it.

"Come on Donnie it come be so cool"

"Yeah or complete DISASTER"

You started to walk over to them.

"Hey wh-"

Before you could finish leo had pushed you through. Now it was on accident but you couldn't tell. It just felt like leo pushed you bit he actually elbowed you. You fell quickly surprisingly. You landed on your face. When you looked up you seen April, Cassandra, and splinter. And you seen your in the dojo ir also looked different

"Oh hey guys, how's it going. Cassandra you look different, did you get a haircut"

They looked different yes but you could tell who they were.

"Cassandra? Nah my names Casey"

"Oh Casey? Mm, I really am in a different universe, can yall remind me to kill leo when I get back"

They all looked at you weird

"Yeah don't mind me"

You stood up and dusted yourself off.

"You are you?"

You looked up at splinter a bit shocked.

"The names y/n"

They all nodded, still confused.

"What are you doing here?"

"Well I don't have a reason Leo kept elbowed me I here"

"Leo elbowed you!"

Everyone looked towards Mikey who was standing in the door way with his brothers behind him.

"Leo, what did he do to you"

"I didn't elbow him, I've never seen him in by life"

"Mikey, it was a different leo"

Mikey looked at you, and smiled.

"Oh, well anyways I'm-"

He looked at you terrified.

"Let me explain"

After explaining what happened and answering all questions asked, they sat up a room for you. April wasn't to pleased with you there so she ignored you. After a couple months of being there you started to realized April and donnie were dating but April was horrible to him, so like any good friend you took the matter into your own hands. Your mission, make the cute need fall in love with you and take him from April. He deserves better. And you did just that. A month of takin care for Donnie, doing nice things for him, helping him,listening to him, etc. You went the whole mile. And he fall in love but felt bad since he was dating April. And you could tell, so one day you ask him out completely ignoring the fact he was dating April.

"Hey Donnie quick question"

You sat on his desk in front of him to gain his full attention. You could tell he got frustrated by the act. But his small nod let you know to continue.

"So i was wondering if you'd like to go out with me"

"But what about April?"

You smirked, knowing your plan was gonna work.

"Break up with her. I mean who's stopping you?"

Donnie stopped and thought about it. You couldn't see his face so you couldn't tell what he was thinking.

"Okay"

You smiled, and watched him stand up. Following him, you watched as he went to April who was talking to Casey in the kitchen. You only followed Donnie to the doorway of the lab so you couldn't hear what they were saying. But you could see April's face change, and you knew Donnie broke up with her. You chucked and walked back into the lab and sat back down were you were I the first place. You heard Donnie open the doors and come sit down in front of you.

"I did it"

Donnie looked up at you smiling a little.

"So about early?"

"Yeah, I'll go out with you"

You smirked and knew April was currently getting mad.

"That's great"

You leaned in, and gently grabbed donnies chin. You felt his breath hitch, as he looked from your eyes to your lips.

"May I?"

Donnie nodded, a bit faster than you expected. You leaned In and kissed him. It wasn't a short kiss, it wasn't steamy either. But it was long enough for April to see. And that's why you did it. You had some experience with kissing so you weren't bad. But when you heard the door open you opened one eye and looked over. Seeing April you deepened the kiss just a little. And you heard the door slam. You kept going for a hit second before pulling away. Donnie was very flustered and couldn't look you in the eye. He was breathing heavily too.

"Sorry, got carried away"

"I-its fine"

You hummed and looked towards the door knowing full well April is storming home right now all pissed off.

A/n:I hope yall enjoyed

#tmnt #tmnt donatello #tmnt imagine #tmnt x male reader #tmnt x reader #rottmnt #tmnt 2012 x reader #tmnt 2012 #teenage mutant ninja turtles 2012 #tmnt 2012 x male reader

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wrenreid · 1 year

Text

Just Acting

i thought this gif was funny💀

Chapter Nineteen

You've been back home for a couple days now. It's been nice to be able to relax and be away from the LA noise. Sure, Philly's pretty big, but it's different from the angel city's chaos. And of course you love filming the show, but it feels good to have a break.

Basically all you've done since you got to PA is watch movies with your family, try to cook with your mom, text with Jess, and sleep.

You miss your little routine of talking to Jess almost every morning while you get your coffee, but being home with the cold weather and your family and the fireplace in the living room is comforting. LA weather in the winter is strange; it's either chilly or still hot. It wouldn't feel much like Christmas if you were still there.

Your phone rings as you get ready to go shopping with your sister. "Hello-"

"Just friends huh?" A deep voice says in your ear.

"What?"

"Just friends. That's what you think we are?" Matthew asks and you can practically see his obnoxiously attractive head tilt.

"You watched the interview,” you say, pointing out the obvious.

"Yeah."

"What was I supposed to say, Matthew? That we're friends with benefits or some shit? Look, it was cool while it lasted, but I can't do this anymore. I'd rather have a real relationship with someone who actually cares for me than whatever the hell we're doing here."

"Y/n-"

"Be mad at me all you want, but we're not twenty. This was doomed from the start anyway." You hang up, setting your phone on the bed not so gently. You sigh audibly, dropping your body to the bed too.

"Y/n, hurry up!" Lola says from the bathroom in between both of your bedrooms.

You get up reluctantly and finish putting on your sweater. You're wearing an off-white sweater that's perfect for the cold weather, black jeans, and cute boots. You leave your hair down and natural and put on a smallish amount of makeup.

After you're done getting ready, you meet Lola downstairs and grab your mom's car keys. "I'm driving, I don't trust you downtown."

"Rude. I've been driving for 2 years."

"Yeah um compared to my 18, I think I'm good driving.”

The two of you go to the mall downtown to get Christmas gifts. You both get gifts for your parents and other people. You decide to get everyone on the cast small presents and you plan to make cookies for the crew members when you get back to Los Angeles. Lola and you split up to shop for each other.

You're not entirely sure what you get your sister since you haven't been around much lately to know what she's into.

You go to a few places before finally finding something she may like. You got her a new pair of airpods and a digital picture frame for her college dorm. When you get home, you plan to put pictures of you and Lola, her and her friends, and your family in there. It'll be good for her to not have to bring frames to college. Hopefully Lola will appreciate it.

You don't plan on telling her about what just happened on the phone with Matthew. You're not even completely sure what happened. Why was he upset that you said you guys were just friends? Sure you slept together a few times, but you weren't like a couple. Not at all. He's a childish, mood-changing actor who just wanted you for sex. Maybe that's all that you wanted him for too. It's over now, so it doesn’t matter.

Whatever type of stupid childish thing the two of you had going is gone. You're not getting any younger, and maybe you aren't ready to settle down, but you sure as hell aren't going to continue a friends with benefits relationship, and with your coworker at that. It was a childish decision that neither of you should've made.

Why does it feel like I lost a friend?

Could you really consider him a friend? You guys fought and butted heads all the time. But recently, you’ve had a strange understanding with him.

You shake the thoughts of Matthew out of your head and get back into the car with your sister and the things you bought.

At home, you both hide the presents in your rooms and head downstairs to watch another Christmas movie with your parents. Your mom is forcing you guys to watch a Hallmark movie. You've never liked the corny unrealisticness of every single Hallmark movie. Especially the Christmas ones.

You sit through it though for your mom's sake. Lola pops some popcorn and you share a bowl while curled up on the couch with a blanket.

A part of you wishes you could stay home forever. See your sister every day and be with your parents. But Lola's going off to college this fall and your dad won't stay quiet about his opinions for long. And you're working on the biggest and best project you've ever done and may ever do in your life.

When the movie's over, you head up to your room and lay in bed. You stay awake for a bit, staring at the ceiling of your childhood bedroom.

You wake up to the sound of distant talking coming from downstairs. You get up and head down to the kitchen. The smell of syrup and bacon hits your nose, causing your stomach to growl a bit. You see your dad putting cooked bacon on plates that are already full with pancakes and eggs. Your mom is at the other counter, pouring a mug of coffee.

"Merry Christmas... Eve."

You smile at your mother, and Dad hands you two plates of food to set at yours and Lola's spots at the dining table. Lola comes down soon after and pours herself a cup of coffee, still half asleep.

It was always a tradition for you guys to eat breakfast together on Christmas and Christmas Eve. Normally, you and Dad would cook it and your mom would decorate cookies with Lola to hand to neighbors and friends. But traditions change as time passes.

You sit down with your iced coffee and take a bite of your breakfast. You've always been more of a waffle person, but pancakes are good too. Your family doesn't talk much at breakfast since you literally just saw each other before you went to sleep.

It's Christmas Eve which means the agenda for today consists of hanging the last two ornaments on the tree (you and Lola get new ornaments every year from your parents) and preparing for tomorrow. You'll also be watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas (a tradition you started at the ripe age of 12) and going downtown to see the decorations.

After eating, your mom hands you and Lola little bags. "Okay go ahead and open them."

Your ornament is a miniature clapperboard. You smile. “Awh I love it! Thank you."

Lola's is the mascot of the university she is going to next year. Both of you hang them up, and then you all lounge around the house for a while.

Lola and your dad go grocery shopping so Mom can cook Christmas Dinner tomorrow. You always have a honey roasted ham, potatoes, vegetables, and some type of dessert.

"Merry Christmas guys!!" AJ texts on the cast group chat. A chain of Merry Christmases come from everyone.

When Lola gets back home, you and her hang out in her bedroom. She talked about this girl she met a few weeks ago and how she has a crush on her but is scared to make a move. Oh teenage problems. You sort of missed those.

"You've always been so bold, it's weird to see you unsure of yourself," you say.

"It's just that... well my gaydar definitely goes off with her, but what if I'm wrong?"

"Just talk to her. The worst that can happen is you lose a friend, and if that does, she wasn't worth it anyway,” you tell her honestly.

She nods. "You're right. When I see her next, I'll tell her how I feel."

A part of you always knew your sister wasn't straight, but you wanted to let her come out on her own terms. She told you she was bi before she told anyone else, five months before she even told your parents. Both of you weren't sure how they would take it, but their reaction wasn't bad. They know she's the same kid she's always been, and she's their daughter so they need to support her. It took a bit for them to accept it fully, but they came around.

You were happy that your baby sister got to be herself around your family, at least the three of you.

"So how's your love life? Still dry as hell?"

"Damn that hurt. Well other than what I told you, pretty much... accept that one guy I dated for like a month if that. He was just so... I don't know."

"Boring?"

"Yeah pretty much,” you nod.

“What about Matthew?”

You swallow. “I’m not getting into details of sex, because ew, and that’s all it was.”

As soon as the sun started to set, you all got ready to go downtown. You throw on a pair of black leggings, boots, and an oversized hoodie to beat the cold.

The decorations downtown were always super extra and pretty. Christmas lights were displayed in different designs and on different buildings throughout the area. You guys also always loved to see the rich peoples' decorations in their front yards. It's crazy what people spend their money on, but it makes for a good sight.

"Y/n?" You turn around to see your old friend from high school.

"Conner! Hey!" You give him a small hug.

"Wow, it's been years. How are you?"

"Doing pretty good. How about yourself, what have you been up to?” You ask.

"Me too. I just moved back here last summer to run Dad's business,” he says.

"Oh really? That's cool."

"Yeah. I heard you're a big LA star now, huh?" He bumped your shoulder.

You chuckle, blushing. “Something like that. Man, it’s been so long.”

"Yeah it has,” he nods. “Hey, do you want to catch up later, if you get the chance before you leave?"

"Yeah I'd like that," you smile. He gives you his new number and says goodbye. You catch up with your family again.

"Ooh new love interest alert," Lola said, wiggling her eyebrows.

"Oh shut up, we're just old friends catching up."

"Sure, sure."

At around 8:40pm, you and your family head home to get into your pajamas and watch the annual movie. You eat dinner on the couch while Dad pulls up How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Jim Carey’s version of course, on Netflix. This movie was one of your favorites as a kid and you still love it to this day.

You curl up with your sister on the couch, occasionally fighting over who gets more of the blanket.

chapter twenty

tags: @pauline5525mgg @theintimatewriter @lilibet261 @greysviolets @jazzymariexoxoc @one-sweet-gubler @thatsonezesty13 @necromaniackat @awhoreforspencerreid @sebs-oxygen @scarredelirium @bts-sugaplum @awesomeness1679 @preciousbabypeter @yazzyu @cynbx @r3idsp3ncer @1010lizz @tiredbut-here @skulzombiw @lena-1895 @eevee0722 @danis-stuff-is-here @kylakins88 @daydreamingqueen1 @regulus-black-223048 @virginmusicloverr36 @inlovewithcharmers @kylakins88 @f-me-reid @matthew-gray-gubler-lover <3

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shearlin · 2 months

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Word count: 2395

Chapter 6: Wind

First || << Previous || Next >>

A day late but it's here!

This is a silly chapter, a tiny break from having angst in the first section :) I really like it. It inverts the formula of the previous chapters but I think it turned out okay.

A bit of a behind the scene update: I... might have scrapped 5k words of the 9th chapter because I didn't like how it was turning out. I've planned out and locked a new outline for it, but yeah I am really slow to write something new (that's the reason I've prewritten this fic before posting it excluding that last chapter, because 9 weeks is plenty of time, right?) and I hope I will be able to finish it on time, but... yeah :/

Anyway, Wind chapter is here! Enjoy :D

Barely a day has passed and Legend was already fed up. Worst part? He only had himself to blame.

He was justified as far as he was concerned. Not only was Ravio clearly going through his stuff and renting his adventure gear - again - they also only had a half an hour or so to spare to make a detour to his house and allow Legend to swap his gear and for all of them to restock potions and arrows at Ravio’s shop. They were in the middle of pursuit of a group of monsters. Who knew, what would the horde do if they let them get too far ahead or if the chain would be able to go back to his house once they finish the job.

The standard argument he had with Ravio almost every time he returned home after the merchant decided to move in, about whether the rental of his old gear was a good idea or not took him… more than they realised.

So he kind of… shoved everything in sight into his bags and stormed off.

Well, not everything everything. He had a very good and clear reason to pack every single item he did and to leave those he didn’t behind.

If he could just remember what those reasons were now, that would be great.

So here he was. In another Hyrule, a day later, in the middle of the clearing where they made a camp to rest in for a day or two after the hard battle, trying to sort through the haphazardly grabbed items and somehow make his bag manageable again. He swore to every deity he knew the name of, if he would reach for one thing only to take out something completely different that was in its spot one more time- he was going to lose it.

“Need a hand with that, vet?” Four asked, keeping his distance outside of the circle of chaos around the other hero, doing impressively well to hide his amusement at the situation.

Four, among the others, tried to appeal to his reason when he was stuffing six-adventures-worth of items into his pouches. Only the fear of possible retaliation from the man with an entire arsenal in his back pocket stopped the ‘I told you so’s from spilling out.

“Do not touch my stuff,” he growled in response, putting all his seeds with the slingshot and the seed shooter - I never use scent seeds. Why do I still keep them with the rest? - and fishing out yet another shovel from the pile on the left, from between the different rods and canes. He knew he wanted to bring a backup to avoid the awkward situation from a week ago, when they were lacking in the equipment department but by Din this was an overkill.

Maybe they had a point. Maybe talking with Ravio distracted him too much after all…

“Why do you even have this many shovels? And why did you brin-? The question died on smithy’s lips at the murderous gaze Legend sent his way. “I’ll umm… I’ll be over there if you change your mind.”

With that, Four retreated to Sky and Hyrule on the other side of the camp, the three of them watching the whole ordeal from a safe distance.It didn’t mean he was left alone. Oh no. Far from that.

Read the rest on Ao3!

#linked universe #linkeduniverse #linked universe fanfic #lu fanfiction #linked universe legend #lu legend #linked universe wind #lu wind #my writing #a piece of heart

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killersfool · 7 months

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Guitar Lessons | JOSH JENKINSON

It's late on a Saturday afternoon and I've just finished recording my violin part for Inhaler's new song. I'm sprawled across the sofa. Both of my legs are hooked over the arm rest and my head is crushed against an assortment of different pillows. Eli and Ryan have left as it's getting pretty late. Rob is packing up his things at the opposite end of the room.

"This sounds grand, Avani." Josh has been listening through the final take. He's tapping his ringed fingers along to the tune, dreads shifting with each bop of his head.

"Thank you." I play around with the bow of my violin. I thank it for actually working with me today. I've been so nervous lately whilst helping them with the album. Josh had called me a few weeks ago, remembered me from our music class as the only violinist. I was so glad to hear from him again. I'd always looked up to him as a brilliant musician.

Rob zips up his bad, slings it over his shoulder then gives us a wave. He seems to be in a rush. Normally, he has a smoke before he leaves but now I can hear the echoes of his fast footsteps speeding down the corridor.

"It's getting late, isn't it?" I remark, checking my watch. It's just gone 11pm. Josh has been walking me home after each session. We're usually the last people left here. I can't really be bothered to move anyway. It's nice to hear Josh picking notes on his guitar. I can only see the back of his head from here, the muscles in his arms flexing as he plays.

"I've just got to finish these parts then the song is done. Thank God. I didn't think we'd ever finish." Josh continues playing around on his guitar. He's testing out ideas. He hums every now and then, searching for some kind of melody. I find it incredible how easily everything comes to him. He's flicking guitar pedals on, turning up the speakers.

"I don't know how you do it," I admit.

He swivels around on the chair. He's smiling. "What?"

"Guitar confuses me a lot."

"It's not too bad."

I scoff. "Right."

"No, honestly. Do you want me to show you something?"

"Sure?"

I almost jump when he plonks himself beside me. He pulls the guitar strap over his head, places the guitar gently on my lap. I awkwardly grab onto the instrument. He laughs to himself at the sight. He grabs the neck of the guitar, positions it so that it's not about to wack my face. He then grabs onto one of my wrists, brings his hand up to the first few frets. His fingers are cold and his grip is so very careful. I take a look at his face. His eyebrows are furrowed, he's completely concentrated of the placement of my hands.

"Okay.. now..." He's whispering under his breath. I love the warmth of his voice. I've learnt to enjoy the tone of it. Each time he speaks, I'm drawn to the sound.

He begins pulling my fingers around and presses them down on the strings. I just let him work his magic. He's wearing a black shirt. The top two buttons are undone. It's a nice sight. His boots are clacking upon the ground. He's breathing softly. It's so very quiet in the room.

"Here. That's a C." He motions down to my other hand to strum the chord. I do it. One note at a time until it creates the entire chord. He proudly smiles.

"You should properly give lessons." I play the chord over and over again. It feels nice to know I can actually do something on the guitar.

He shakes his head, kicks his legs up on the other armrest, his boots just beside my head. "I'd be shite."

"No, you wouldn't. I'd pay for lessons."

"Oh, yeah?" He raises an eyebrow.

"Mhm..." I hold the guitar up. "Show me something else."

I suddenly realise just how silent the room is when we're both looking at eachother. He's planning—I can tell by that glint of wonder in those soft brown eyes. He fiddles with his bracelet. His eyes are gliding across my frame. I don't think he's really looking at me. He's zoned out, lost in his thoughts. He kicks his boots next to eachother beside my head. I'm still strumming the C chord. I'm sure it's annoying him. It's annoying me, to be fair.

He then, out of absolutely nowhere, grabs me by the waist. The touch is unfamiliar and I almost squirm at the randomness of it. He somehow picks me up and drops me flat down on his lap. I'm now sat on top of him, guitar still on my legs, his hands resting on my waist. I want to say a word, ask him what he's doing but my mouth doesn't want to work with me. Instead, I keep silent and let him do whatever he's doing.

He leans forwards slightly. My back presses against his chest. He then puts his head over my shoulder. He smells like bloody heaven. Cinammon and digestives. I'd brought a whole pack of chocolate digestives to lighten the mood, he enjoyed them a bit too much. He's also extremely warm. I've been pretty cold in this room and his warm chest makes me forget I'd ever been cold at all. He's never been this close to me. I always thought he was too shy to even come near me. This is different.

"Here, take this." He passes me a dark blue guitar pick. I take it in my hand. The sudden words leaving his mouth fall so very close to my ear. He then notices me shifting around. "Is this alright? I'm sorry." He's always been one to apologise about everything.

"No, Josh, it's fine," I reply. I'm smiling to myself. He holds the neck of the guitar then moves my right hand down. He positions it in a manner so that he can move it around to pluck the notes. His hands are a lot colder than his chest, that's for sure. He's breathing more now and I can feel each exhale land onto the back of my neck.

"You okay?" I ask. He's still trying to fix my hand into the right position. I turn slightly so that I can actually see his face. His cheeks are a whole lot pinker than they'd been before.

"Yeah.. yeah.." He pauses his motions to look at me. He smiles. He has the sweetest smile. "You're so beautiful, Avani."

I turn away from him now realising just how interesting the wall can be. There's something about the way he said those words. So low, so honest. He has a vice grip over my heart. I manage to reply a quiet, "Thanks."

He starts to play the It Won't Always Be Like This solo using me as his pick. It really isn't going as he planned. It's a complete mess. By the end of it, we're both laughing like crazy. He's resting his head on my back as he laughs, his hair is rolling along my shirt. I place the guitar on the ground and lean against his chest and close my eyes. He wraps his arms around me as if this is a normal thing. If anyone saw us together like this, they definitely wouldn't think we're just friends.

"That was terrible," I say, trying to fill the silence. He tightens his grip. His arms are against my stomach, his cheek now against mine. "Should we go home?"

He seems to ponder the question. "In a bit. Can we just...?" He pulls me even closer until my entire body is against his. I curl into him like I'm a dog nesting in its bed.

I guess recently I've been trying to force myself to not look at him for too long or act in any way suspicious. Maybe my talent crush on him has evolved into something more. Especially now, head on his chest, heartbeats thumping in my ears. He plays around with my hair, seemingly marvelling at the softness with each touch.

"D'you want to go out for coffee someday?" The sudden confidence of his words makes me lurch up to face him. He's nervously biting down on his lip, scratching the back of his neck. "I mean, if you want. Like, I'm not forcing you to or anything—"

"I'd love to." I plant a gentle kiss on his cheek to interrupt his trail of thoughts. He blushes.

#josh jenkinson #inhaler imagines #inhaler oneshots #inhaler band #fanfic #fanfiction #elijah hewson #robert keating #bobby skeetz #ryan mcmahon

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manonamora-if · 4 months

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Retrospective 2023 (2)

See Part 1 for the Retrospective Infographic

2023 has been a rollercoaster of stuff, with some very high-highs, and some pretty low-lows. Things have been pretty busy this year, then got busier and weirder. I didn't manage to do things I wanted to do, ending up doing a lot of different things instead. This year was kinda the perfect storm to do all those new stuff and experimentation I've published.

It's been good, it's been bad, it's been ugly, and it's been cool. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Long post ahead - breaking here.

Goals for 2023

Last year, I made big-ass post about what I hoped to achieved during those next 12 months. The main one being: Get things off my desk and shelf it for good! The goal was to finish WIPs and remasters of "completed" projects.

And I... somewhat did that? But also... did whatever. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Taking the list of the "plan":

Goncharov Escapes! was: re-written, re-coded, and translated (to French). The new version also now includes music!

La Petite Mort was: re-written, added content, and translated (to English) for this year's Ectocomp. It just need one more or two things tho

The demo of P-Rix - Space Trucker is now playable on mobile! (and the template based on the game is out too)

The Trials and Tribulations of Edward Harcourt didn't get just one but TWO updates last year!

A bunch of templates! 5 to be exact: 3 focused more on visuals (Sci-Fi, VN, Title), and the other 2 more on code (Setting, Charac Creator).

So... what's extra? Well... a lot. Maybe too much...

A lot of new titles under my name: DOL-OS, The Rye in the Dark City (wip), The Roads not Taken, À la Campagne, Entre-d'oeuf coquilles/An Eggcellent Preparation, Collision, Intersigne, Clarence Street 14, The Dinner, In the Blink of an Eye, Tower of Sleep, and Dévoiement. From bite-size to full large game, that makes TWELVE new thing this year! I... may have gone a bit overboard with this...

Aside from the template, I've also worked on the SugarCube Guide, a guide that covers all markup, macros, functions, methods, and APIs of the SugarCube format. From the basics to the very advanced code ~ Which will receive another update when the 2.37 comes out for real.

After the @seedcomp-if, I continued to organised more IF events: Neo-Twiny Jam, Single Choice Jam, Orifice Jam, Bring Out Your Ghost, Bare-Bones Jam, ShuffleComp... and helped out other events (the IFComp, y'all!).

I've been a tad less active on the Tumblr front lately, mainly because I've hung out more on the Forum or the @neointeractives Discord. But I've been plenty active reviewing games, especially since last May (@manonamora-if-reviews). The count is over 300 now...

I made a zine?????

So yeah... A LOT this year. (and there would have been more had I not gotten sick...)

2023 Achievements and Milestones

There were probably a bunch of itch/analytics milestones this year, but... I've tried to stay away from numbers as much as I could, because I realised it was a source of anxiety. I want to make games for fun, not worry that I haven't achieved a certain play level by a certain date. So I've even edited my itch's dashboard to hide it all. (I'm still updating the analytics sheet once in a while tho) And anyway... nothing will ever be as popular as CRWL, even when I'm trying to push other - and much better imo - games down everyone's throats.

Some other stats on itch:

22 [total] games on itch (incl. the experiments & demos) we're getting closer to my goal of 1 game/birthdays

9 free-to-use prompts

7 free-to-use templates

3 coding guides

1 zine

I also participated in 22 different jams and comps, almost always using one game for multiple jams at once (I'm crazy, but not that crazy). I ranked pretty high on multiple jams, which I am really happy about, and got some amazing reviews and lovely comments. A bunch of my games from 2022 were nominated for the IFDB Awards (and two were mentioned in the Top50 IF too)! (maybe next time I'll get a spot too !)

But the major thing coming out of it all was winning a big competition too, with DOL-OS at the start of the year. Holy shit, did that make my year. I really wasn't expecting it because so many of the games that year were incredible! This was such a confidence booster! I think that's my biggest achievement this year. (I just finished the puzzle I won too, and that was loads of fun) I am so so so proud of that game, especially after releasing the remaster.

Some non-numerical achievements I'm happy about:

I continued experimenting this year, with non-linear stories (DOL-OS), shorter and more kinetic content (Neo-Interactive jam entries), and... well... a thing. The experimentation included trying out other programs to make game too!

Speaking of the thing... I've made a monster of a Twine, creating a bad (oh so bad in convention) parser... which I still haven't finished fixing. I talked at length about here.

I've made an actual proper parser game, following the conventions of the medium... and enjoyed it a lot. From creating puzzles to solving the puzzle that was coding it. It didn't rank super high, but it got some good reactions! Making a parser strangely helped me playing them, and appreciate them more.

Has it been a lot of stuff? Yeah... it feels a bit like a lot...

Some 2023 personal things

Like last year, I've continued to struggle with feeling like I was not doing enough during the year (or the month, before doing the monthly dev logs). Not enough words written or progress made. It was a pervasive thing last year, and I've been working on myself to feel less so, especially with all I've been doing anyway this year. But it's still there.

I think I recently found one of the reasons I've been feeling this way: not working on or finishing the WIPs I started with back in 2021 and in 2022, not making substantial progress that would warrant an update... It's been especially hard when seeing other authors churn out updates left and right and I have little to nothing to show for. Maybe that's why I've been compensating with all the new little projects and jam entries throughout the year (and half-way through 2022). I mean... there hasn't been a month where I didn't publish something new, whether it was an update, or a new game, or a template/guide, or brought out a whole-ass remaster of a game.

And by working on those other little things, I think I found myself in some sort of cycle, where the time spent on those new things is not spent on the WIPs, and I start feeling bad about it. But when I open the file, with all that pressure I put myself, nothing gets written or fixed. So I distract myself with a different thing... and I end up not making any progress on the WIP. It sucks, because I want to see those WIPs done. I want to finish those stories. But it's been hard. Who'd have thunk it??? I'm a stupid human being after all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I know breaking that cycle will happen... when I work on those darn WIPs. I just need to push myself to get there... But I also want to enjoy what I am writing too, because the quality of the writing really sucks when I force it... So silliness has been happening in the meantime.

Will it continue like this? In the near future, most likely. Hopefully not to the extend of the past year and a half. At best, I'd want to have 1-2 updates on a bit WIP, 1-2 new medium-sized games, and a handful small silly experiments, during a year.

Not that I owe anyone an explanation, but anons being nasty about the whole no-progress thing - essentially why @crimsonroseandwhitelily was offline for a whole while, or why I haven't answered many questions lately.

Also gonna take this moment to not address the very personal stuff that happened IRL, even with the very insisting messages I got. I was tempted to go on a whole tangent about what's been going on, but I'm a bit paranoid about my privacy on the internet (and with the anons wilding lately, I've become more careful), and I don't really want IRL to flood this space either (more than it has anyway - considered leaving a few times tbh). I like this specific corner to not be about IRL, to have it as an escape and spend some time just not having to think about it. So yea... you can ask all you want, I'm not going to answer. But it's been a time... I'm coping by being here damnit. Maybe you'll get an(other) autobio game about it one day xD

Here's to a more peaceful state of mind (and inbox) next year...

2023 is OVER officially

And what a fucking year this was. It's made me even more excited to see what 2024 has in store for me.

I want to learn more, for sure. I think I reached a bit of a plateau with SugarCube, where the only thing I feel I haven't tried yet is some sort of RPG adventure/combat system. Or diving further in JavaScript/jQuery (it's inevitable...). Or have less of a spaghetti code... Though it didn't really start as a conscious effort, I'm glad I tried different IF programs and Twine formats this year. It helped me think more about IF game structure and coding. It really pushed me to grow and appreciate the variety there is in IF outside of Tumblr. It did reinforce my love for Twine, especially SugarCube xD

I know I've complained about having done a lot but also not feeling I did enough, but strangely this year has also been pretty fulfilling. Having achieved things I didn't think I could, mess around and create unmentionable bits of code that should not have seen the light of day, learned how to handle new formats, met and talked with a bunch of cool and knowledgeable IF peeps, and just tried to do some good for the community.

I would love to be as fulfilled in this new year too!

I was shocked with all the good things I got in 2022, but I didn't imagine it would be even better this year. How much I got out of this year. How much I got done. How much I learned. How much I grew as a person and a creator. I'm glad I stuck around another year.

I'm really lucky I was able to have the year I had, to be surrounded by such lovely people, to get such positive return on stuff, to be in this community, to have the friends I have, to still be here.

So, thanks for sticking around too, and partake in my silliness :)

#manonamora #retrospective #2023 #year in review #games #indie dev #assets #twine #interactive fiction #interactive games #I can't tag all the projects anymore #because Tumblr has a limit of 20...

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askthestans · 1 year

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Dear Stanford Pines.

As Stanley has Stanleymobile as his own personal transportation, do you have any plans for vehicles of you own? Or, prefer using public transport? Rather come up with a completely different solution like portable portal?

Stanford: Well, my real Earth driving license - before Stanley started getting ones made in my name - expired over thirty years ago, and my licenses to operate hoverboards, starships, mass relays, and teleporters are useless for obvious reasons.

Normally, I'd be fine just walking everywhere to keep in peak shape, but sometimes the occasional trip outside of town is necessary. I'd ask Stanley to drive me around, but ever since the Ireland incident...

Stanley: Ford, that was almost a year ago! 'Sides, I was gonna rob 'em eventually anyway. Hittin' that stumpy drunken jerk with our car was just makin' my job easier. It's not my fault he looked like a traffic cone with all that carrot hair.

Stanford: We went to Ireland to study leprechauns, Stan. Not steal from and turn them into roadkill.

Stanley: Maybe you went for nerd studies, but I followed along for the whiskey. And the pretty green hills to stare at during hangover recovery.

Stanford: Really? Because I seem to remember that somebody had the chutzpah to not only steal the dead leprechaun’s wallet, but drop it in front of his family while I was trying to apologize to them for your first thievery attempt at their pot of gold, and because somebody dropped my pistol into the ocean while drunk the night before, we had to desecrate a historical castle by stealing old bricks from it to fight said leprechauns off with.

And then, when we ran out of those, you tripped me so that they could maul me instead because, as you so eloquently put it, “Sorry, Sixer, but you’ll be thankin’ me later!” as you hurried towards the ship with the gold and not me.

Even better, we then spent the night in jail when the authorities realized who’d disturbed a castle wall, the cell of which just so happened to have a resident banshee who screeched for hours.

Stanley: Oh, Mebh! Minus the creepy wailing, that gal sure knew how to spin an entertainin' story! Too bad she didn't get to marry that medieval Lord McCrane or whatever his name was. But I liked her gumption. Best prison buddy I've ever had, and that's includin' Rico. Was the first time I realized maybe not all your supernatural creep buddies are so bad.

Stanford: She murdered that lord’s wife in cold blood, Stan.

Stanley: Yeah, reminds me of when I drove that hippy's van - y'know, the one who swiped Carla from me - into a ravine. She agreed that I was perfectly in the right for that. Asked me if I wanted her to find him and finish the job, even. I had a hard time sayin' no, but I did the right thing and said-

Stanford: You merely shrugged. Merely.

Stanley: Hey, if that jerk gets his soul sucked out, serves 'im right.

Stanford: Also, would you like to tell our internet friends what you sacrificed me to the leprechauns for? Why I got covered in bite marks, and why my sweater was ripped away in tatters and I had to run back to the ship shirtless with a leprechaun hanging off my rear with his teeth that left a rainbow imprint there for a week afterwards?

Stanley: It was for the gold, we already covered that.

Stanford: What did you spend the gold on, Stanley?

Stanley: *shrugs* I promised Mabel I’d get her some fancy yarn made of real wool. What’s wrong with that?

Stanford: Yes, two coins of the gold went towards that. The other hundreds of pieces went towards you buying rounds for a whole tavern the next night. You got drunk again. You puked. On my... trench coat.

Stanley: Pfft, you had tons more anyway-

Stanford: Nobody defiles my trench coat!

Stanley: Yeesh, I did you a favor, Ford. You’re lucky nobody barfed on it before that just lookin’ at it.

Stanford: *sighs* Anyways, I’m never trusting Stan behind a wheel ever again. I’ve been working on a mini-portal device based on some blueprints I sto- I mean, borrowed from my good friend Rick Sanchez. Once that’s up and running, I’ll have to test it.

What do you say, Stan? Want to help your old brother out by testing a teleportation device? I’ll make sure it goes right to Ireland, to a very specific spot where a very angry family of leprechauns are still waiting, and have already gotten a taste for Pines gluteal meat.

Stanley: Oh, come on, you wouldn’t actually do that to me, would you? I apologized, like, a million times!

Stanford: Of course not, Stan. I am a man of science, and I understand that petty, precisely planned and enacted at the most inconvenient of times revenge is a silly human folly that one should strive to surpass.

Stanley: Oh. Well, good. Oddly, specific, but good.

--- ONE WEEK LATER ---

*Stan is walking down the Shack hallway towards the kitchen. Dipper, Mabel, and Ford are already there, Ford having made them breakfast.*

Stanley: Tell me you made some for me, too?

Stanford: *turns around from the stove* I’m afraid not, Stan. You’ve got a big day ahead of you. You won’t have time to eat, remember?

Dipper: Is it shoplift-for-Summerween day already?

Mabel: Wait, I know! It’s National Grunkles Day, isn’t it!?

Stanford: No to both. Stanley, care to take a guess? It involves a certain show of yours.

Stanley: *face scrunches in fear* Wait, I thought The Duchess Approves’ reboot wasn’t ‘til next week?

Stanford: No, it’s today. Which is why I made sure to finish this last night.

*Ford pulls out a small device and, with a pistol-quick draw, causes a swirling teal portal to open up in the floor. Through it, rolling green hills and a group of red-haired, gnome-like creatures can be seen a little ways off.

Ford trips Stan as Stan looks to peer inside. Stan’s yelling can be heard as he falls in and hits ground.*

Stanford: Wait, Stanley! Look back up! Take my hand and I’ll get you out.

*Stan reaches up back to the portal, but just as he almost reaches Ford’s hand, Ford pulls it away.*

Stanford: My trench coat is beautiful.

*Stan screeches as a horde of leprechauns catch sight of him and take chase. Ford stands back up with a cat-like smile as he looks down upon sweet, sweet revenge, then takes his current trench coat by the collar and pops it out smugly.*

Hey, kids?

Dipper and Mabel: *look on in stunned silence*

Stanford: Now that I know this portal gun works and we have a few hours until Stan’s favorite show is done airing, care to help me find the Mothman? I have a particular dimension full of acid-vomiting, murderous bear-scorpions I’d like to send him to.

#stanford pines #stanley pines #sea grunks #well sea grunks sort of because Ireland hijinks #gravity falls #the moral of the story today kids is don't cross ford #or sass his trench coat fashion #because you'll end up mauled by supernatural creatures #askthestans

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oldtvandcomics · 5 months

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To get some positivity in this tag: Let me tell you about my recent bustrip to Prague! While narcoleptic. It was really great, and a bit tricky, and I think we can use some stories of disabled people doing fun things.

Background story: I was visiting my grandmother, and took the bus both there and back, because it's different, and because I really wanted to actually see some more of the Europe I spent my life running there and back through (we live in the West, my Grandmother in the East). On the way back, I spent two nights in Prague. It was a highly anticipated part of the trip, as I still kind of miss the city after my one year there. It was also the most tricky part of the whole thing to manage.

You see, my bus arrived at 6.00h, and check-in at the hotel was at 15.00h. Which is a good nine hours between the two.

I am pretty much guaranteed to fall asleep every three to four hours.

Rest of the story under the cut.

For those not aware of the weather right now in Eastern Europe: It's COLD. And SNOWY! So when I arrived at the bus station, my first reaction was pretty much "Nope!", and I went into the bathroom to put on an extra layer of clothes. I was fine after that.

You can walk from UÁN Florenc bus station to the Old Town pretty easily, which I knew because as I said, I've been there before. So I walked there, and stopped to buy myself some breakfast in a big supermarket at a metro station. After that, I went the usual way down to Old Town Square and the clock, and continued on to Charles Bridge.

At that point, it was still only between 7.00h and 8.00h, so of course there was close to nobody on the streets, only the people who had to be there. And snow. Lots of snow. Charles Bridge. People. Charles Bridge, normally black with age and full of tourists, was WHITE! And almost completely empty. I was there at sunrise. It was impossible to describe beautiful.

Pictures don't do it justice, but here are some. The river. People. The river was damping!

And yeah, this is Old Town Square.

I usually don't get this magic-place-feeling from Prague, because the people cover it up. Which is actually one of the reasons I like it, they cover up some of the useless noise in my brain, too. I'm more functional in a big city.

Anyway. This was clearly an exception. It really felt like walking in a wintery fairy tale. The only thing missing was a ghost.

After that, I went to the hotel, and dropped off my backpack. I like to travel with a light luggage, which made moving around earlier possible. And hotels are fine keeping luggages locked up in some room before check-in and after check-out.

I then took the tram number 22 direction Nádraží Hostivař. This was planned. One, I know the line, and know that it passes by two big shopping centres. Two, I know that I always fall asleep on any moving vehicle, and public transportation is a reasonably safe place to sleep.

Which is exactly what happened, I woke only when I was at the second shopping centre. So I went and looked at some shops, and bought myself a gift of three ice bear figurines. I sometimes like to take pictures of these plastic figurines, and the snow triggered that. I'm very sorry that I didn't have my actual collection with me. But the bears did a wonderful job, too.

This was behind a random tank station, where there was a table with benches where the snow was still completely untouched. So I played a little around there.

Then I took the tram to the other shopping centre, fell asleep again on the way there, looked a bit more at shops, had lunch in the KFC on the top floor and finished my book, then it was already time to take the tram back to the hotel. I fell asleep during that trip again, then I went to the hotel, checked in and got my room. All in all, I had managed to survive those 9+ hours without any greater discomfort, which is, honestly, better than I'd expected.

The end. Here are some more bears from the next day.

City wildlife. <3

#I hope I'm not getting too off-topic here #but sometimes I do wish that the narcolepsy tag on here wasn't just pain and suffering #not that pain and suffering aren't part of the experience!#but so is joy #Managing the time between my arrival and the check-in was the most difficult part of this trip #and I did it! I did it well!#this was a success experience #one that nondisabled people might not understand #I mean what I did wasn't exacty the typical tourist activity #but it was the right one FOR ME #also helps that I already knew the place I was going to #personal #holiday trip #Prague #actually disabled #narcolepsy #actually narcoleptic #positivity

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leslutdepointedulac · 25 days

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13 Book Tag Game

Tagged by: @bubblegum-blackwood Thank you! 💞

1) The last book I read:

The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice. I'm currently doing my annual re-read of TVC from start to finish but it's taking me longer than last time for some reason.

2) A book I recommend:

Loveless by Alice Oseman. Ik it's not the only book out there to explore asexuality and being aromantic as well, but it's the first one I personally read and I think it's a really good example of it.

3) A book that I couldn’t put down:

A Dowry of Blood by S. T. Gibson. Predictably, it's more vampires lmao. I wasn't initially sure about how I would feel reading something in second person, but it actually works really well imo. I really love how it's told by one of Dracula's brides; I can really get into the characters, and understand her situation.

4) A book I’ve read twice (or more):

So many of my books I've read several times, but one in particular is Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver. Actually just the whole Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series. I grew up on them, and I've read the whole series several times over. I like that it's set six thousand years ago, because I don't think I've personally ever read anything in the fantasy kind of genre in that time period. This series has a special place in my heart.

5) A book on my TBR:

I have too many. I think one that I do really want to get to though, is Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. I've wanted to read it for a few years now, and I've had the book since last year but I haven't gotten round to it yet.

6) A book I’ve put down:

Normal People by Sally Rooney. I got it as a birthday present from someone in my family a few years ago, and when I saw what it was about it didn't sound like my kind of thing but I figured I'd give it a chance. Yeah, it wasn't doing it for me lmao. I was bored tbh and the lack of speech marks around dialogue was confusing me. Overall it just wasn't my type of thing anyway and I only got a few pages in before I put it down.

7) A book on my wish list:

I've been really wanting to get a copy of the Grimm's complete fairy tales. I know some of how a few of the fairy tales originally go, but I've been wanting to read them all properly for years now.

8) A favorite book from childhood:

War Horse by Michael Morpurgo. I read this book religiously as a child. I would read it and then as soon as I was done, I'd read it again. I'm honestly not sure why, but there was clearly something about it that resonated with me, even as a kid. I actually still have the same copy I owned as a child, I don't think I'll ever get rid of it. It's very special to me.

9) A book you would give to a friend:

The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. Idk what you want me to say lmao. It's LOTR, everyone should read it. I know it's a trilogy, not just one book, so I am cheating a bit here, but it's too good not to mention. It's fantasy at its finest, what can I say.

(I was gunna say Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice, but that's obvious coming from me and I don't want this whole thing to be overrun with TVC lmao.)

10) A book of poetry or lyrics that you own:

I won't lie, I don't actually have any of either, I've never really been interested in things like that. It's just not my thing.

11) A nonfiction book you own:

Buried by Professor Alice Roberts. I haven't actually read it yet, but it goes into looking at burials from centuries ago and how people would have lived in different periods of time, based on burial sites.

12) What are you currently reading:

The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice. Again, this is because I'm doing my annual re-read of TVC, but it's taking me an unusually long time to get through it this time round.

13) What are you planning on reading next?:

Apart from moving onto The Tale of the Body Thief by Anne Rice, I think the next thing I want to get to is Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu. I've never read it before (Ik don't shoot me), not because I didn't want to, but just because I never got round to it. But I got it recently so I'll be reading it soon!

Tagging: @desertfangs @teethingpains @cinnamonclove but no pressure of course ❤

#tag game #my vampire chronicles

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goodluckclove · 1 month

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I've never really written anything serious at length at all. All I have this one story I want to get into and write every page, because I am so attached to the characters and world I've designed. Yet, I can't find myself doing so because of that attachment. I feel as don't have anywhere near enough experience to ensure I do the world that I'm so invested in justice.

I've thought doing other writing projects to learn and gain that experience, but I just can't bring myself to care about the practice beyond "if I throw random words on this page, maybe my future words for will be as cool as I want them to be"

I've got one thing I want to make and only thing only, but how do I get to the point of making that thing if meaningful practice seems so difficult?

Okay so I hope you're prepared because we definitely need to have a conversation about this as I cannot properly get into the whole deal without you being able to respond and tell me your thoughts right goddamned now. Still, I have a few pages I need to write so I can give you some insight now to consider before I try and force you to talk to me.

Different people create in different ways. Some people, I think, can direct a story from start to finish in their heads, turn it into a step-by-step outline, and use that as a guide to complete a book exactly as they planned and enjoy it. I've heard this happens so I have to assume it does, but I have never and will never be that type of person.

I love Songbird Elegies. I am absorbed in the world I created and the people that inhabit it. My Spotify algorithm is fucked because I pretty much only listen to the massive playlist I made for songs I associate with the series. At the same time, I know my own creative process enough to understand that if I get too attached to the specifics of the story it'll only harm my ability to write it productively.

There was a point where Edgar's abusive mother was supposed to find him in New Orleans and arrange to meet at Cafe du Monde. The main two get there, unsure what they'd find, and it's revealed that Scott has secretly contacted all the other Birthrights Edgar met in Bluerose to meet there too and offer emotional support. I loved the thought of Edgar, someone who has felt alone for the entirety of his life, suddenly being in the middle of a massive web of unconditional support at his most terrified.

Yeah that scene will never happen. It's on a completely different path now.

I don't want to be one of those people to sort of waggle their fingers and say how your characters have a life of their own, but also I do have a history of psychosis so like fuck it I think I'm allowed to say that. I think a lot of writers have similar experiences, and maybe some of them to the intensity that I do. I don't hear Edgar's voice in my head without my wanting to, of course, but by the time I started book two I had enough of a sense of his character to be able to listen when he said I do not want to be a few hours from where I was abused for decades anymore. It's my story, but I've done this long enough to know when to pass the reigns for a while.

If you create an entire world in your head and you get too exact, there's no room to explore. And exploring is the best part of writing, in my opinion. When I needed to practice I didn't do it by throwing unrelated words at the wall, I did it by trying to write the idea I had and adjusting it until it either worked or I lost interest for the time being. Legitimately, 13 novels in, this is what I had before I started Blind Trust:

"What if magic was like...a disability? But it was supposed to help the already disabled. But it gets appropriated by primarily neurotypical wizard-types - somehow. And some guys...fall in love...yes."

Less than a year later and that is roughly fifteen percent of the current plot. And it kicks ass.

Anyway that's how I roll and it works for me. I love my characters desperately and usually get a sense of my protagonists that boarder on the delusional. Those are my qualifications to say that the best thing someone with a mind like me could do is focus less on every detail and more on the potential that comes with the people and the premise.

And write your thing, man. Give it a shot. Experiment and don't panic too hard if your plan doesn't work. It won't be perfect at first which is good because then it could become even better.

Get ready man, we're definitely talking about this more one-on-one.

#writeblr #writers on tumblr #on writing #writing #writing community #actually writing #writing asks #writing help #writing resources

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mycupofrum · 1 year

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I'm super intrigued by js_fem medicine 👀

Thanks for the ask @gracelesslady23! js_fem medicine is a random name thrown together with different elements of the fic which is also just a rollercoaster ride of genres mixed together (romance, drama, angst, hurt/comfort etc.). Set during the first wizarding war, friends to lovers, idiots in love, porn with plot, fem!James, male!James, idiot!James (romantically, he's still brilliant otherwise), hot!Sirius (that's a given but let's say it out loud anyway), gay panic, f/m, m/m, Jily past relationship.

So, basically James thinks he's definitely straight, but the problem is he wants to have sex with Sirius. Good thing there's Polyjuice Potion to solve the issue. As for the medicine... not to give away too much but relates to hurt/comfort towards the end. This is the strangest, silliest and randomest thing I've been writing in a while, kinda nervous to share it with people. 🙈 Snippet under the cut!

For a while, they sipped their beers in quiet, thinking about everything and nothing all at once. The times were dark, and sometimes you had to forget about the past and the future and only focus on the present.

Sirius was snapped out of his thoughts as James murmured something he couldn't quite make out, except for the word sex.

"Prongs, are you horny?"

"No...well, yes, but not in the way you think."

"Yeah, well. I'm sorry that Lily left you, mate. Maybe we can spend an evening in a muggle bar soon and find you a one-night stand."

"That's not what I meant."

"What did you mean, then?"

"Well…do you know when sometimes...or well, there's something that's been on my mind lately."

"Just spill it out."

"Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have sex as a woman?"

"Um, not really," Sirius murmured after a few seconds of confusion. Sometimes James was able to surprise him completely with the way his mind worked, which was why Sirius loved him so much. Secretly.

"Well, okay, maybe it's crossed my mind once or twice, but I didn't think to do anything about it," he then confessed. "To be honest, I've experienced what it feels like to want to mate as a dog, and that's quite enough. Can't recommend it."

James cast a sidelong glance towards Sirius and grinned slightly. "You haven't told me anything about that before."

Sirius returned the smile. "Let each animagus look after their own needs as they see fit."

"Right you are, Pads."

Sirius finished his drink, then looked at James's empty bottle of beer, which he passed to Sirius so he could float their bottles onto the table.

"Go for it if you want to experience what it's like to be a woman. Of course, making the potion takes time, but we can look around to see if the Order has any remaining at the headquarters."

Then Sirius frowned in wonder.

"Who were you planning on turning into?"

"Actually, now that you mention it, I sort of kept the leftover Polyjuice Potion from yesterday to myself. Once you left the drink on the table, I took it from the headquarters."

James had pulled out a familiar-looking hip flask from his jacket pocket and was already twisting the cap open.

"James…?" Sirius spoke softly. "You're not planning what I think you're planning?"

James shook the flask, then cast a brief glance at Sirius.

"Cheers," he said before taking a hefty swig of his drink and grimacing.

"What – hey!"

At that moment, James's short, untidy hair grew longer, smoother and more wavy, while his body shrank and gained curves where none previously existed.

After a while, there was a pretty, dark-haired woman sitting next to Sirius on the couch – the same one that Sirius had turned into on their undercover mission the day before. They had been told that the real person was a half-blood witch who had fled to France with her family.

Sirius took a deep breath. "So you just decided to go for it."

"Yep," James said in a higher pitched voice.

"And you'd like to... Wait a second. Who were you planning to have sex with?"

"Well, I mean…with you?" James blinked intently, removed her glasses and appeared satisfied once more.

"Wait, so... You thought that we could... And you already turned into a woman before even asking for my opinion."

Sirius wasn't easily left speechless, but if anyone could make it happen, it was James. This time, Sirius had to take a little break to process his friend's eagerness to act before thinking things through. Usually he didn't mind but Merlin, this was something completely different.

James shrugged, a little embarrassed. "I thought you liked women too? You do like a little variety every now and then, don't you?"

"James, this is more about you being you, regardless of your body, and me being me."

James looked down at the floor, tucking her long hair behind her ear. Sirius wanted to swear. Why did James, even in a different body, appear so appealing to him?

Sirius took a deep breath to settle himself before speaking.

"I had no idea you'd want to sleep with me."

James appeared relieved for some reason.

"Of course I do. I mean... shit, Sirius, you're the most gorgeous person I know. I just happen to be attracted to women. But if I wanted to be with you as a straight person, I'd have to be a woman because you're a man. So, now that I'm temporarily a woman, we can do this. And besides, I'm really curious about how this works from the female perspective. I mean, I've got boobs, isn't that strange?"

James stopped babbling as she felt her body all over, staring at her own breasts.

Once again, Sirius was unable to think, let alone speak. James had said some things that didn't make any sense, but had she also just called Sirius gorgeous?

James interpreted Sirius's silence in her own way.

"Oh shit, did I go too far? You don't want to sleep with me, is that it? Sorry, mate, I didn't know that. I just assumed it wouldn't be a problem for you since you like all kinds of people. And we're best friends, so I thought this would be just one more thing for us to try together. I would never ask this kind of favour from anyone else."

Sirius was still staring at James, who was biting her lower lip uncertainly. Even as a woman, she managed to be utterly James.

"You really want to have sex with me?" Sirius wanted to make sure that at least one thing about this crazy situation was completely clear.

James sighed in relief and smiled. "Yes, Sirius, that's exactly what I want. I thought this matter was already settled."

"So, it's perfectly fine for you, but as a woman?"

"Well, that's what I said." James let out a chuckle. "I'm young and open for new experiences. And this way we can keep things, um, straight."

Sirius raised an eyebrow, pleased to see James blush.

"Not that there's anything wrong with other preferences," James persisted. She raised her hand as if to ruffle her hair, but realised it was no longer short and hastily lowered her hand.

"My point is that I'm a woman for the next hour and I want to have a good time. So, what do you say?"

Sirius admired James's superior skills in all things magical, but his closest friend's logic fell flat when it came to romance.

It was just too bad that Sirius was even worse than James because he deliberately threw away his sanity.

"All right," he murmured, clearing his throat.

"Really?" James's dark eyes twinkled with delight.

"Be careful what you wish for, James. I'll show you the time of your life."

#tag game #wip game #prongsfoot #bambibelle #idiots in love #my writing #prongsfoot snippet #snippets

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nephiliminality · 10 months

Text

Angstember Prompt 6: Secrets

Yeah, I'm still doing these! This one took a while because it turned into a 17k word multichapter (oops) and also it's my third attempt at the prompt, which I've really struggled with. One of the other attempts might surface as a different prompt fic later, the other is definitely dead (but never mind, I had fun trying to write it).

In this one, Crowley gets a visit from the former Lord Beelzebub, who has been ousted in a coup. Ze wants Crowley's help fixing that, and ze has some useful leverage: ze knows he isn't really immune to Holy Water...

This fic is finished apart from editing and I'll be posting the chapters over the next couple of weeks or so - it'll almost certainly be my last Good Omens fic before S2 lands. It's pretty light and fun considering the subject matter (I'm not sure it really counts as an angst fic), and it does end happily (well, for most of the characters anyway).

Gen fic, T-rated for alcohol and swearing. CW blackmail, authoritarianism, minor character death.

[AO3]

Excerpt

It was a pleasantly mild Tuesday in September, and Crowley was idling along the A40 at an uncharacteristically modest speed. He would rather be going much faster, but he was trying not to disturb the small pile of packages behind him on the back seat: most of them contained delicate, cream-covered pastries, fine wines, or cheeses so pungent the car would disown him if he spilled any. Aziraphale wanted a picnic, and he was going to get a picnic to remember.

At least, hopefully. The light spots of rain flecking the Bentley’s windscreen didn’t bode well. Still, picnic or no picnic, there would still be wine, and there would still be Aziraphale, now Armageddon was off the table and they were finally, completely on their own side.

Crowley overtook an ancient Fiat, because modest speed was one thing but there were limits, and counted his lucky stars that the traffic was tolerable today. Then a flashing in his rear-view mirror caught his attention and his heart sank. Those were definitely the lights of a police car behind him, and they definitely wanted him to stop and have a chat about something. Wonderful.

Crowley muttered a curse last heard in Mesopotamia and pulled over into the next lay-by. It figured. The one time he hadn’t even been speeding. He muttered to himself and hoped that speeding ticket quotas hadn’t been one of his ideas.

Bless it. Normally he would turn the police car’s engine into something amusingly unmentionable and leave them in his dust, but Aziraphale had been very keen on avoiding miracles until they were sure that Heaven and Hell really were going to leave them alone. Crowley couldn't blame him for the caution. They had only reached their agreements after the trials because neither side knew what they were dealing with; if the secret got out they would both be hauled back in and permanently dealt with faster than you could say ‘gotcha’. Crowley hadn’t heard anything from Hell since the trials but they weren’t likely to have calmed down about it all. Still, these cops were taking the piss and very much deserving of some kind of retribution, and he didn’t need to use miracles to put the fear of Crowley into someone.

The police car pulled up behind him and the hazard lights came on; the driver climbed out and strode purposefully towards the Bentley. Crowley tapped his fingertips on the steering wheel, fleshing out an improvised revenge plan he was rather proud of already, and waited for the officer to reach him. Their gait seemed vaguely familiar, but then humans were all pretty similar in that respect. Normal human skeletons only had so much range, after all.

The officer reached the driver’s side door and knocked gently but firmly on the window. Crowley turned to look at them, smug grin already in place… and then his revenge plan evaporated from his mind, leaving only dregs of highly concentrated terror. That was a very familiar face. One could say, quite literally a painfully familiar face. Certainly he expected it to result in imminent and considerable pain.

The window rolled down of its own accord and several fat blue-tinted flies flew in, settling on Crowley's shoulders like very very tiny henchmen. The officer's teeth were bared in the kind of malicious grin that not even airport security guards could comfortably achieve.

“Do you know how faszt you were going, sir?”

Crowley stared back, speechless and motionless. So that was that, then. Hell had broken its word already, had decided they could safely be eliminated after all. He hadn’t dared to hope that they could actually win against their former sides, but he had thought they would get a little longer.

He had been so cocky, so stupid. They hadn’t even left London. Why hadn’t they left London? Avoiding miracles didn’t count for much if you stayed right where they last found you. Why hadn’t he taken them both to the other side of the planet or something?

Crowley tried to compose himself, plastering on a polite smile. Self-recrimination could wait until the more immediate problem of survival had been taken care of. “Lord Beelzebub,” he gulped. “What a surprise.”

Beelzebub glowered at him through the open window, far too close for comfort. “Get out of the car, Crowley. Or I’ll set fire to it.”

Crowley climbed out of his car meekly, since there didn’t seem to be much choice, and briefly considered bowing before thinking better of it. At this point, genuflection would probably be counterproductive. He glanced over at the police car – which was parked with its rear end sticking out into the road just enough to endanger and infuriate other road users – then back to Beelzebub. “How’s Hell?” he mumbled, a pretence at civil conversation. There had to be a way out of this, if he could only buy himself a little time.

“Hellish,” Beelzebub replied. Ze took off zir hat with one thickly-gloved hand, letting out several more flies, picked something unidentifiable off it and smeared it on the roof of the Bentley. Crowley’s indignation made a valiant effort to override his terror, but his terror had a considerable size advantage. He gave his car a discreet reassuring pat and mentally promised to make it up to her later, provided he survived this. Beelzebub put the hat back on firmly. “Though I’m no longer Lord Beelzebub,” ze said. “Thanks to you.”

Crowley’s jaw dropped. His brain went away for a bit to process that news, then came back and slapped him in the face with the second half of the sentence. Beelzebub, no longer in charge of Hell, because of Crowley. “What?” he protested. “How is it my fault?”

Beelzebub fixed him with an unimpressed look. “You defied Hell, survived your well-deserved execution, dictated terms to both sides, and walked out. In front of ten million witnessez. What did you think would happen?”

Well, when ze put it like that. He’d feel proud if he wasn’t so scared. There wasn’t really a safe way of saying ‘I didn’t care and still don’t, you were trying to execute us for Someone’s sake’, so he kept his mouth shut.

“It’z chaos down there now,” Beelzebub continued bitterly. “Lucifer is off sulking somewhere and the troops are revolting. Half the Dark Council was thrown in the Lake. I barely got out with my wingz intact.”

“And you’ve started a new life in the Metropolitan Police?” Crowley said, trying to sound casual while anything but. Ze hadn’t discorporated him on the spot, which could only mean ze had something worse in mind. Like… oh Hell. Like keeping him occupied while one of zir remaining loyal minions went after Aziraphale.

“Worried about your angel?” ze said, as if reading his mind. “You should be. Unless you cooperate, of course.”

Of course, thought Crowley desperately. Anything you want, anything at all, just leave him alone. Please. “Cooperate on what?”

“A little assignment. You’re a twizty little bastard and I have a job for you. Do it well, and perhaps you and your angelic bed warmer get to live.”

Beelzebub pulled a small bottle from zir pocket, an elegant gold-capped crystal phial which gave off a faint ethereal glow, and Crowley realised why ze was wearing such thick leather gloves. He also realised, too late, that he’d flinched. Beelzebub grinned like a crocodile.

“I know you tricked usz, Crowley,” ze said coldly. “I know this stuff will still kill you. I'm the only one who knows. For now.” Beelzebub leaned in and made eye contact with a stare that could bore through a wall. “Help me get my job back, and maybe I won’t tell Hastur.”

#writing #my writing #good omens #good omens fanfic #angstember

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