I’m Capricious. I reblog lots of writing posts. I blog about my WIP Link ‘Blooming Under Night’ to fuel me to keep working on it. Intro Post General Tags Mainblog Here
Tagged by @nkta-ink
(took ... a while - to get to, but right now I’m itching to try it out)
Bea: 4/10. Just barely below dead average. If you actually started to cuddle with her, it’d be super cute, and all around a great time. But that’s not viable to happen because she’s pretty averse to being touched by strangers. She’s generally in ‘Nope, nope, nope,’ mode when it comes to acquaintances. And if you’re a friend - she’s liable to feel more awkward than anything else the whole while.
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Abby: 7/10. If the name of the game is to cuddle, then you better prepare to get cuddled. She’ll take it as a challenge, and you WILL feel loved and supported. If, of course, she’s the one in need of a hug, it’s because she failed stoically, and will take the consolatory popcorn and a movie with plenty of soothing ice cream like the reward she rightfully deserves after such an unwarranted loss.
Rylee: 9/10. He is the King of Cuddles. His body is perfectly suited for the activity. Pudgy and soft in all the right places, yet firm and solid to make you feel safe and protected. He takes your comfort very seriously, almost too seriously, and will be by your side with a crashing hug instantly if full on Mama Bear activates. Fortunately, his common sense keeps him mostly reserved and at bay, else-wise, you only have to say ‘get off, get off, get off!’ half a dozen times before he actually believes you (most usually succumb to the embrace before that point).
Derek: 1/10. Hug at your own risk. The actual act of cuddling with Derek would be, once again, quite nice I imagine. His easy going attitude and mischievous penchant for fun would create the ultimate take on lighthearted physical contact. Be it lazing across your lap, snatching you up in a quick breathtaking squeeze, or mindlessly fiddling with your hair while lounging. But be warned. This level of intimacy is like the mythical holy grail. Covered with traps and dangers along the way - one wrong move, could literally kill you.
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Pieter: 5/10. He’s hard to get relaxed enough, but otherwise decent.
Dee: 7/10. Not much practice, but she knows how she would want to be cuddled and pointedly works her way towards your personal preferences from there.
Patrick: 8/10. Very relaxing. Very comfortable. Very chill. Very fun. He’s not even thinking about it and slowly you aren’t thinking about whatever might be troubling you either.
Francis: 3/10. Stiff. She doesn’t see the point. But at rare moments, she’ll latch on tight, maybe uncomfortably so, and if you’re not pure evil, you’ll wait it out and let her, 100% willingly.
Alice: 8/10. A super great time. Very cuddly in general. Her smile alone practically invites you to open your arms and fall into a hug, or so it feels. Sometimes she just looks that way, but really her thoughts could be anywhere else.
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Thatcher: 6/10. The feeling is there, but in practice it never turns out as well as hoped. He wants to give All The Hugs, but refrains because its almost always more uncomfortable than he initially imagined. Still, he knows that one day ...
Rani: 2/10. Serviceable. You’re basically her inanimate pillow, hers for the twisting and squashing and molding to her needs. It doesn’t even occur to her that you might be uncomfortable, so be prepared to state your needs clearly.
Alyssa: 10/10. They have magic. They must have. They MUST HAVE. You feel trapped under a wild, sleeping, wolf. How does something that dangerous feel this blissful?
Superheroes as a genre is something I’VE personally never considered in novels, which means there’s tons of potential there I’ve never even noticed. Thinking it over, my mind is drawn to the Morality and Ethics of the genre. When there’s a hero and a villain, someone wins, someone loses, and in my opinion, creating any story with that dynamic has to face some tough questions. Still, that’s not much different than any other antagonist.
Superheroes usually bring to mind a modern world, not an old fantasy setting, or even a futuristic one. Somehow, they also usually end up in large cities, with tall buildings and lots of crowded urban populations. Never in suburban towns where getting to the crime in question is much less glamorous.
So much of superhero stories have to suspend disbelief, and yet I end up loving them time and time again. And that’s because of three key factors, two of which are like any other story:
1. Characters
2. Relationships
3. & COOL POWERS
So hey, point one to novels - they don’t have visual effect budgets.
Absolutely! And I think you did mention what some would consider, including myself, the most important part of a Superhero story.
Character.
One has to know the character inside out. The secrets they hide, the lies they tell, the pain within, and their reactions to situations.
It’s extremely easy to fall short on character, and character arcs, something we should definitely go into more detail, some time. But unlike regular characters, it’s harder to insert change in them, and chances are they change a lot less of over time than others, or even their arcs takes a loop, and they end being the person they were at the beginning, trying to become better, yet again. And the worst a writer can do, is shove the growth down the character, to where it becomes inconsistent. And unlikable.
.
So to end of on another point
The plots are also a lot trickier. With so few superhero stories around for inspiration, it’s a lot easier to get into a rut while plotting.
If I were coming up with my own superhero story - yeesh I don’t know what I would go with either. A lot of it would probably depend on what inspired me to try the genre out in the first place.
• Maybe I might feel inspired by the notion of incredible people inspiring others - and so I’d delve into what makes these nigh mythical characters human. Their mistakes and quirks, and what doesn’t come easy to them. Somehow when you have SuperHeroes, all these details become so much more important. They’re supposed to be the good guy, the winner, the one who’s RIGHT at the end of the day. ‘Perfect’ people are boring, and can often be irritating at times. Superheroes are just so susceptible to falling into that. Which, conversely, is probably why it’s probably so satisfying to flesh them out. That very contradiction - giving these HEROES, these Supers, issues, especially ones that any other ‘average doe’ deals with - it’s engaging. Well, usually at least. It just helps ground them. And when they’re already so far from reality, making them real can feel bizarre and interesting.
• Or I might just want to write the shenanigans of some ridiculous personalities with overpowered capabilities. The absurd becomes common, and allows for some really great humor. Oh, and who can write humor without considering ANGST. YES. Heh. But that drama. Who doesn’t like when the tone dramatically shifts towards the end? Shifts to something much darker, much deeper, much more meaningful to everyone - all before leveling out back to lighthearted jokes as the protagonist wins their battle, and can slip back into their everyday status quo, now just a bit more grown.
• Or, maybe it’s the promise of twisting expectations that could draw me in for a spell or two. The hero is actually the villain, playing the entire world towards their advantage, leaving the bad guy to save the day despite everyone believing the worst of them. Maybe the story is from the sidekick’s viewpoint, and maybe they outshine the hero, or maybe they don’t. Maybe the entire narrative takes place from the perspective of a few oblivious city folk who look out their window at another high stakes battle, but hey - what do they care? Marcus just overloaded the printer and guess who has to fix that, just GUESS.
It seems like there should be infinite possibilities, but I think as with any story, once you start building, you start pinning down rules, and characterization, and the unending freedom does start to go away. But you also start sculpting a world that offers a greater experience as it’s defined with more, not less, detail. It’s a trade off either direction.
Okay, I won’t go into my ‘Batman rant’, but when you brought up the dark and gritty: the Dark Knight - and I thought of ‘perfect’ characters. Maybe some wouldn’t see Batman up there on the same list as people like Superman or Captain America, because he doesn’t seem like the same light or bright type of superhero. But there’s been a post on how Batman is all but a Mary Sue if you consider it from the right angle. That fuels the idea that the ‘perfect character’ isn’t always the same for everyone. A bit like you said: that what people expect out of their superhero is different for everyone.
I might say that ‘perfect’ is the wrong word for it then. These are trivial nuances, other important because pinning down the exact root help tear out the weeds. But it probably comes down to relatability more than anything else.
Other than that, the other idea that sparked in my mind was making sure to - as a superhero story in specific - to have a good handle on the hero before AND after they put on the mask. I have no idea why this is so hard - I genuinely don’t. There’s probably a reason. I wouldn’t know. Because I haven’t tried my hand at this type of story yet. But a common issue with superheroes, is that they aren’t the same with and without the cape. I definitely think you’re right that a writer needs to know their character inside out in order to not have this type of discrepancy.
Superman - strong, confident, and bold
Clark - unassuming, cautious, and awkward.
I don’t know why ALL the major stories don’t focus on whatever that man’s real character is. Some of the better adaptations of his story have shown that both version are kind, are both by-the-book ‘boy-scouts’ or rule followers, and that they appreciate things that come along with the homier aspects of a small town and not the big city.
Batman. The reason why this even occurred to me at all is because NO one I’ve ever seen has shown Batman and Bruce Wayne to properly be the same person? Sometimes maybe they excuse Bruce Wayne to be a facade for the real person Batman. Or the other way around? But both are one man, so why does it always feel like the audience is dealing with two?
Batman - brooding, violent, and intense.
Bruce Wayne - flighty, cheery, charismatic.
A better perspective would show that they both have strong morals or ideas - Batman is a vigilante, but Bruce Wayne has a lot of work with charities. They both care - Bruce Wayne taking in orphans, and Batman training them to become Robins. They both have intense emotions.
This is never shown though. Everyone wonders ‘who is the man behind the mask?’ So often there is none. It’s just a separate person, devoid of their alter ego. And even when the discrepancies are smaller, so many heroes come across like they change personalities when they done the disguise. I for one want to be able to understand how this character goes from person A to person B. I don’t mind if it’s different - I lot of the time the issue could be that putting on a ‘mask’ helps someone let go of previous inhibitions. Villains allow themselves to go on rampages, but Heroes let themselves take confidence and save others. That’s great - that’s brilliant - but it’s never shown. Or said. Or considered in most superhero stories.
I’ve hear that idea pop up in the french cartoon Miraculous: Tales of Lady Bug & Cat Noir. Still, it’s fan explanation. Well placed details, and easy to infer - but it’s never addressed.
This type of thing doesn’t have to be I guess, but I’m always doing a mental double take, considering where that change comes from. Wondering if the writer even knows. And in cases like Batman movies and Superman stories - a lot of times they don’t.
Becoming a superhero changes a character. The experience alone makes them different from anytime before they might’ve been going around and saving people’s lives in a mask. But if a character is serious in their day to day lives, then become goofballs in the mask, or the other way around - it’s at least worth looking into why that is.
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And I think that’s all I’ve got in me on the matter of superheroes. I knew there was a rant in me somewhere, but I didn’t actually think I’d find it - nice.
Honestly, I think about this a lot sometimes. But does anyone else have a repetitive notion throughout their writings?
Mine is the fact that my characters often don’t have parents or have bad relationships with their parents. Or with at least one parent. And I have a hard time debating whether this is because of my own personal relationship with my parents.
For me, I feel like I go the absent/dead/abusive father route fairly often. Like you, it likely stems from real life experience. My own father was not a good person and I haven’t seen him in nearly two decades (and don’t plan to see him ever again.) I’m trying to break out of that and create better and more likeable dads.
This is a given after my last habit, but nearly every family I’ve ever written has been matriarchal, with a badass mother and grandmother. (And yes, my mom and grandma are/were pretty damn epic if I do say so myself. #Mama’s Girl )
I’d like to see what habits other writers tend to fall back on, so Ima tag all of you.
@silver-wields-a-pen, @illthdar, @authorified, @cadewrites, @mvcreates, @newdivinities, @angelolytle, @clawhee-writes, @pens-swords-stuff, @lefoxwriting, @lamppostdiaries AND ANYONE ELSE WHO SEES THIS
(And hey, if you’d like to be in my random things tag list or would like not to be in it, let me know! <3 )
Looking back at my earliest works, there was a focus on family dynamics. There was a certain amount of self-insertion, not gonna lie. There was a power struggle in my head in my teens; a lot of resentment, anger and feelings of parental abandonment despite having two parents at home. The result was a lot of toxic characters and situations that I’m absolutely not proud of but need to own. They helped me understand the issues and how to cancel my subscription.
The heroes of those early stories were young women, often conned or trapped into their circumstances, resorting to any and all means necessary - not to break out of the cycle, but to succeed in their roles within that social structure. The end was very bleak, no matter how you cut it. Conformity despite rebellion that turned them into monsters in their own right. Still, there was a sense of power there: the women knew what they were doing and took ownership, and accepted their fates with dignity.
Late teens and young adult years saw the introduction of male heroes, though there was a theme with them as well. Loving and compassionate, they tended to be naive and too forgiving of toxic in their lives. The men and women of this time had the first signs of rebellion against the earlier logic. Gone were the social structures - they were the enemies in these tales - and so were the parents. A study of if characters were truly better without them. The endings were better - at least they were free - but it was a dead end further down the road.
Thank you for the tag, this is indeed something to think about.
My earliest works had self-inserts due to my teenager brain and my need to not feel like a looser.That improved thank to my best friend and a giant boost of confidence from her.
I haven’t written for almost six years before I started again this past November. But before that I did, and still do, RP and looking at my characters, I’ve got: a predominance of male characters, trauma or some sort of mental health issue.
I am working on the first one, although I still feel like I have better control over my male characters than the female ones. The trauma/mental health stuff, I still do it and frankly, I like using it. I’ve always liked psychology, but did not pursue it in college. Which I still regret in a way. By writing about my characters’ mental health it gives me the opportunity to learn psychology on my own. I am not saying I am an autodidact in the field, but I want to go towards that. The trauma bit helped me realize some of my own fears and understand myself better so I am going to keep exploring that are as well.
Another pattern is tight friendships which recently evolved to found families. Until high school I didn’t have close friends, or friendships that lasted for more than a couple of years. Then my now best friend appeared and we are tight knit, solid and I love that!
Can I just …. sign this? I basically got everything you mentioned. This is kind of creepy and really awesome at the same time!
I scratched the self inserts from my earliest works, though. And I started out writing fanfiction with many, many slow burns. Still do, actually. For me it’s important that whenever I insert a relationship, it needs to be built naturally, no “omg he’s hot” at first sight and then jumping to the conclusion that this must be true love. So yeah, slow burns are always recurring.
Also my cast usually is, whether in fanfic or original work, a Bunch Of Idiots. I’m drawn to a bunch of characters who appear to share one brain cell and nothing more. On that note, I always have some complicated character relationships.
And something else each and every one of my works has is a “home base”. A home which remains still standing, something where the characters can relax, can breathe in between Horrific Plot Points, develop relationships … think Normandy (Mass Effect) or the villa Auditore (Assassin’s Creed). I think that’s because I never really had a place to call home which actually felt like home, so that’s why I’m giving one to my characters. Even if it’s just a glorified cardboard box they share with their friends, they got a home.
What about you guys? @tayluinwrites @farrradays @cawolters
Thanks for the tag, hmm, this is something I’ve tried to analyze a bunch of times.
Complicated parents, distant siblings, dynamic relationships —all that is bits and pieces from my real life, and I tend to explore it over and over.
Partly to decipher it, partly to encapture it.
But. The themes like: nature, dreams, moral, religion, mortality and the concept of fate, is more my philosopical mind taking a stroll along the pages.
I also like my characters to discover certain hidden shards within themselves, an emotion or a broken memory, and give them that falling feeling of ‘eureka’, that pushes them closer to either doom or retribution.
Lastly, I think it’s always natural for the creator to create the same piece, again and again, with different tools, in different settings.
I find myself reaching for the same words and draw the same lines —almost manically. And I think it’s an artistic quest to make our inner thoughts known in the most precise way. And we have to do it over and over, to get it right.
The journey takes difirent routes, over the mountains or below the ocean, but the final destination never truly change: do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?
So many great insights and reflections from writers here! @cawolters I think you’ve captured that concept in such brilliant intensity.
I find that in my stories, I see a lot of:
Girls who will not be told how to be girls.
Love is love is love is love, let’s normalize all the love.
Explorations of unhealthy vs. healthy romantic relationships.
Many different ways of communicating between people, all of which is imbued with meaning (pace, interruptions, repetitions, body language, posture, motion, etc.)
Coming to terms with parts of yourself you might not want to deal with, but probably should. Self-actualization is exhausting.
@madammuffins @mvcreates @elizabethsyson @kaatiba– I’m interested in your take on this!
Thanks for the tag @vhum! This whole discussion is very cool. For myself, I tend to write a lot of:
monstrous/strange women
soft, gentle, kind, big men
non-verbal communication—a lot of sitting next to each other quietly, gentle comforting touches, attentive listening. basically the things i want and value in my relationships
anger! different types of anger displayed in different ways, stemming from different reasons, dealt with differently depending on the character or situation! i was a really angry kid growing up, and some of that anger feels like it never went away and just turned…frenetic, or sad. so i like to explore it. it’s part catharsis, part curiosity, part me just wanting to explore traits that seem inherently negative but don’t have to be. sometimes anger is good and healthy
jealousy. i dont like being a jealous person but i am, and i like to explore it for the same reasons i like to explore anger. i suppose these are larger themes but they crop up in uh. almost everything i write.
what about you guys @the-ichor-of-ruination, @the-real-rg, @vviciously, @hyba, @farrradays, @tracle0, @pinespittinink, @nectareouswrites, @writing-and-nutmeg?
no parents present/mentioned, or if they are, there’s usually only on the child is close with
at least one depressed-on-main-but-working-towards-recovery character
i have a tendency to use death to end a lot of 1st books. At least three 1st books i have planned right now end with the death of a prominent character, I’m trying to change that though haha, mix it up a bit
queer relationships and characters. I don’t see enough of them in mainstream media, and if there’s one thing I know how to write it’s an awkward & bumbling wlw (spoilers: its because I am one) so fuck yeah I’m going to include them in my wips
i also lovemorallyy grey characters, regardless of whether or not they’re considered “good” or “bad”, i love exploring motives and backstories that throw everything people have done into question
I’ll tag @i-rove-rock-n-roll @pinespittinink @goose-books @writingwitherebus @thekeyten @pen-and-sword-writing and @capricious-writes!
nkThis is cool. I had a chance to think about something along these lines the other month.
- I know that in pretty much all of my stories, I end up accidentally falling into an unusual emphasis on a side character. My protagonists stay my protagonists, but a secondary character, or even a tertiary one, shows up and gives hints to the reader that they’ve got this huge story, entirely of their own, going on in the background. And it never affects my MC, and the MC usually never ends up really caring - but it’s wide open for the reader, a bit like a mandatory bonus chest. I find I can’t ignore them when they come up, because I find myself on the periphery of other’s ‘stories,’ and I know I have things going on, but I’m not the protagonist in their narratives. So I pay homage to that feeling.
- There’s always magic/advance tech/ both/a mixture in my stories. And usually that helps make any environment possible, or anything possible, or any trope/genre. Because I always want to mix espionage with knights, or space adventures with pirate fights, or monster battles with a night-on-the-town, or everything all at once. Making them all an AU would be the reasonable way to go about that, but instead I make a reality where they can end up in those crazy settings on demand. Don’t even really try to either, it kind of just happens.
- I usually write about two really close people who have a sibling-like relationship even though they aren’t always related. I like the dynamic, but it calls back to my sister being my only super close relationship my entire since the start. I think now that I’m an adult, and as I get even older, that’ll fade away, and I’ll write about other types of relationships, and that’ll reflect me as I experience more than that singular dynamic when it comes to who I consider ‘close’ to me. Story ideas I’ve been coming up with the last year since I went to university already have been, and it’s interesting to see.
tagging @candy687 @bookenders @nkta-ink if anyone’s interested
what’s so funny is that now, after certain situations with them, vivian frequently uses that bedroom voice with benji when she wants something to go her way/etc. and she doesn’t even know it’s happening.
It’s honestly really important to me to have my main female characters to be in “traditionally female roles” a.k.a. a healer, a spy, a princess and an oracle and yet still be allowed to be dynamic characters who have individual power and agency. Because I see so much reductive discourse when it comes to female characters with people acting as if it’s the roles they are assigned that are inherently degrading rather than just being a part of a sexist narrative that hates female characters to begin with.
There is nothing inherently bad about being a healer, a healer is legitimately important! It’s respectable and vital and without it, society would collapse. Equally, I feel the same way about spies who are not less honourable or important than soldiers and princesses provided they are allowed to exercise political agency rather than being a prize to be won.
We definitely need more representation of female characters in “traditionally male positions” which I also have though they happen to be more secondary. I just think saying that the job/roles women are assigned are the problem is looking at it from the wrong perspective. Women suddenly being all knights and generals or sailors doesn’t mean anything if the narrative is still sexist and these women are elevated as being exceptional examples of their gender in comparison to those silly, dumb women who knit and makes salves.
In the redraft of Post-Script, we finally hit the point where we’re going to have a major shift away from the original draft.
Up until now, we’ve just been rewriting and refining the letters so that they’re better and more streamlined by trimming the fat.
But from now on, we’re introducing a major character who just… didn’t exist when we were writing the original draft. They’re so incredibly important to Bishop and their existence is going to change our outline in a massive way.
It’s just so incredibly wild to think that they didn’t exist last year. I hadn’t created them yet. It didn’t even occur to me that they would be in Post-Script until @decantae mentioned it to me and now the plot thickens. Literally, there’s an entirely new plotline.
That i finished not one draft, but two drafts of my WIP hollow!!! AND that I can see a marked improvement in my writing since high school :) it’s great to see that im growing and learning!
8: What is your biggest challenge?
I think just the act of writing. I go stretches of days without writing, and then I’ll do like 2k in one day. I’d like to get in the habit of writing daily!
9: How would you describe your writing style?
Oh god, this is one of the things I never know how to answer!!! I know I use lots of commas and em dashes. I like to describe people; I love Donna Tartt and how she really captures snapshots of people so they feel real, and I try to emulate that!!! But I don’t quite know how to describe my style. If anyone wants to read some of my stuff, let me know lol
sometimes i remember that benji was technically a problem child in kindergarten—not because of how she is—but because she was a notorious back talker and wanted to fight all the kids but had the appearance of a cut in half pipe-cleaner so she just called them cuss words instead.
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