Your dialogue is stiff because everyone is being too honest
Great dialogue can come from radical emotional honesty. But in most real conversations, people
dodge questions
answer indirectly
lie (badly)
change the subject
crack jokes to avoid serious answers
lie (convincingly)
say half of what they mean
tell the truth but get so anxious/angry/defensive others now think they're lying
If your dialogue feels unnatural, it might be because everyone is saying exactly what they think, or articulating their thoughts too well. Try letting characters hide things instead.
canon is what happens in the text. e.g. merlin tries to poison morgana
a headcanon is a fact that you have personally made up as an elaboration of canon. it is your invention. e.g. i think morgana and gwen had a teenage lesbian situationship before the events of canon. or, i think modern morgana would love evanesence.
an interpretation is how one reads the existing text. it is not an invented fact nor is it a headcanon, it is a reading. e.g. i think merlin tries to poison morgana out of misplaced self-hatred. or, i think that one line was delivered with suppressed malice and shows a nuanced relationship.
fanon is the general fandom’s accepted headcanons and interpretations that elaborate or recontextualize canon. e.g. merlin is a badass waif and morgana is a bitch.
these are all different words with different meanings.
Obi lies on his side on a soft castle bed. Outside the window the stars wheel silently overhead, the moon casting a softly knowing glow. He can still feel the warmth against his fingers of a figment of his imagination.
It was just supposed to be a sweet little romance between a sweet, smart woman and a handsome prince. A short little wish-fulfillment shojo thing, maybe a couple of volumes, something to keep food on the table while he finished the pitch for the story that was supposed to be his real job. He was going to get his ninja drama established in a major shonen magazine and it would run for at least ten years. It would make his career.
It would have. He has to believe that. Because someday people are going to realize he has no idea how romance works beyond the most basic of fairy tales, and they’re going to metaphorically ride him out of town on a rail. He is not qualified for shojo.
He’s lost without a map, writing by the seat of his pants. And yet right now even that is not his most pressing concern. That would be the fact that his heart is beating out of his chest. He didn’t know you could even have a panic attack inside a hallucination, or a dream, or whatever he’s been stuck in. He’s a side character in his own story, they’ve passed up all the plot he already wrote and have moved on into the unknown, and he can’t deny any longer that he’s fallen in love with his own protagonist.
He’s such a cliche, and it hurts too much to even be offended about it.
The balcony scene could have been perfect. Out in the beautiful moonlit scenery, she would pine for her distant royal love. Her prince, of course, would be pining under the moon for her as well. A symbol of love, binding them together from miles apart- the symbolism would have been fantastic. And the shading, the delicate outline of her profile backlit by the moon- But no, every beautiful image has been wasted on an upstart nobody who wasn’t even supposed to be there. He had to have his existential crisis on the same balcony, and instead of pining for the one far away, she reached out her hand to the one who was there.
She’s supposed to be in love. She’s supposed to be focused on that. She’s not supposed to be so caring, and thoughtful, and earnest- He’s never even thought about what his ideal woman would be like, and only now does he realize he’s been writing her all along.
So he’s the one who needs to focus, to keep his eye on the prize and not let himself be distracted by impossibilities. As long as the prince keeps his hand on the leash, they can keep this plot on track. And maybe when he wakes up from this long, long dream, he’ll have another arc or two to keep it running.
He just has to remember this all when he wakes up. Maybe he’ll even throw in a ninja as a second love interest, just to keep the prince on his toes.
Maybe it's naive of me, but whenever I see portraits like this, with just a father and daughter, it restores my faith in humanity a little. Because people seem to love this idea that fathers never loved their daughters in the past and only saw them as bargaining chips for marriage or whatever, but look at the guy in the first portrait on the left, he loves that little girl! And the dad trying to do his work while his daughter bothers him with an Old Timey Barbie. The man teaching his daughter geography, his expression is so soft! The way the man in the last portrait holds the little girl's hand! And none of these are incidental, these aren't photographs, someone (probably the father) paid good money and sat down for hours so that they could have a painting of themselves and their daughter. Probably because they loved their daughter.
From left to right: 1795 Michał Jerzy Mniszech with his daughter Elżbieta - Marcello Bacciarelli; Christopher Anstey and his daughter Mary Ann by William Hoare 1776; A Musician and His Daughter by Thomas de Keyser 1629; The Geography Lesson (Portrait of Monsieur G. and His Daughter), 1812; Jean-baptiste Isabey And His Daughter; Portrait of a Young Girl and Older Man by William Harrison Scarborough
(this is probably somewhat related to my other favourite genre of painting, Husband With Multiple Kids Making Come Hither Eyes At His Wife)
oh I love those! People being people is one of my favourite kinds of paintings and an important reminder that people in past times were not all that different. There were dads who loved their daughters fiercely. There were fathers who happily looked after their babies too. The German reformer Philip Melanchton for example had a cradle in his office. His wife was busy organising a household for 20 people- she was out and about, he mostly worked in his office, it made sense for him to look after their babies too babies while she dropped by at snack time.
in fact often if it was kind of safe dads had the babies in their workshops for just that reason as we can see in these paintings:
The left is “the busy father” by Theodore Weber, the right one is “At the china repairer’s “ by Wenzel Tornoe. All dads who are actively involved in childcare and a painter who thought it was a cute topic rather than anything ridiculous.
That ‘comment on your a03 work’ email hits like a line of cocaine every time. unmatched dopamine increase. shoutout to everyone who leaves a comment on fics. you deserve the world
man sometimes friendship really is just "I saw this and knew it would give you psychic damage. please respond with agony" and then they do. and it's great
None of that "Oh no they bomb-dropped all the episodes in a week 1 month ago, I'm late!" "The tag hasn't been active all week is the fandom dead?" "I only got a hundred shares the first hour no one cares about my art"
Slow down
Take a deep breath and slow down
Fandom is YOU. And me and everyone. If we doodle stick figures for a show that ended 30 years ago we aren't "late" or "doing too little", we're playing dolls in our own time and having fun with works of art that mean a lot to us
You can literally watch and engage with something that aired in 2004 as if it aired yesterday
If the tag hasn't been active for 14 months guess what? If YOU post there, it isn't dead. Literally you can talk about anything you want whenever you want there is no weird law against watching things that people aren't actively talk about
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