Y'all, I am so fucking close to finishing this next chapter of aiasa. There's like two and a half sections that I need to fill in, and they're like difficult emotional conversations that need genuine attention, which is why it's been taking me so long. But then I'm done, and Donnie will have been properly tortured or whatever. I'm so close >:(
But alas, from the distance, finals approach steadily.
Here's a Dandadan fic I've been working on for a little bit.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
It centers Turbo Granny and a lot of the bitter feelings she holds towards Okarun. I hesitate to call it dark, but it's definitely uncomfortable as it deals with the themes of sexual assault present, but not really tackled, by the anime/manga.
Here is something I worked on in collaboration with @mildlycuriousdragon and QuantumSuplex as a part of a Valentine’s mini-Bang. It’s been a bit since I’ve worked on digital art, and I’m pretty happy with it all things considered.
You can find the lovely fic this was made for below :) As well as additional art on mildlycuriousdragon’s page.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Hi @onlyhalfghost!! I'm sorry to get this to you as late as I have. But, I really hope you enjoy it!!
This is part of the @phandomholidaytruce Truce event. If you haven't, I'd encourage others to take a look at the incredible works that have been submitted as part of this!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/4
Fandom: Danny Phantom
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Danny Fenton & Valerie Gray
Characters: Danny Fenton, Valerie Gray, Danny Fenton Clones
Additional Tags: Clones, Identity Reveal, minor existential crisis, Ambiguous/Open Ending, post and pre-Danny Fenton/Valerie Gray, (this relationship is not the focus of the fic by any means), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Pre-Episode: s03e11 D-Stabilized (Danny Phantom), 2025 Phandom Holiday Truce, Canon-Typical Violence
Summary: Valerie fought off Phantom, which was normal, except he turned up almost immediately afterward unharmed but with a warning about doppelgängers, which wasn’t.
Or: Vlad’s up to his little cloning games again. Danny runs into Valerie and finds out that she’s been chasing Phantoms, too, which would have been great—if it weren’t just the beginning.
Happy Holiday Truce, @non-parsimonious! I hope you enjoy your gift.
If you don't mind a more technical ask, do you have a process for deciding how to develop themes in your work? Like, after getting a general idea, how do you go about deepening the metaphors/symbolism and keeping your themeing consistent?
i don't mind at all, i love talking about this kind of thing.
i think this often takes different forms depending on the length of the work in question—a short story really only has room for one Major thematic exploration, whereas a full novel or even a series of books can layer in multiple distinct themes. i'm primarily a short fiction writer so that's where my perspective is coming from.
i think generally, my process could be described as:
have an initial idea
answer the initial questions that idea poses
^ these answers should reveal the core theme beneath the idea
now that you know the core of things, engage with secondary ideas/themes/motifs and how they are intrinsic to/influenced by/inextricable from that core
[a longer work might explore tertiary ideas/themes or introduce a second Major theme]
draw your metaphors, symbolism, feeling, always from this core theme; be preoccupied with it; return to it; turn it over and over in your hands
for example: if your core is grief, it holds hands with loss, (lack of) ownership, helplessness, devotion, desperation, time, love—symbols might be a leaking faucet or objects often slipping out of a character's hands, metaphors might evoke anything but will be most effective if they're a reflection/representation of the core theme
keep iterating on these ideas until it's edging on too concentrated, and then pull back, wrap toward the piece's conclusion
in the revision phase, spend time making sure the piece is thematically consistent AND fresh, never repetitive in a way that drags. revision is in my eyes the most important part of the writing process.
a lot of this comes down to having a "feel" for it as an author—if you practice enough, there's a sense of harmony to themes and metaphors and etc. that work together, and a sense of discord if something doesn't fit or strays too far away from the core of things. it's hard to describe! i had an original piece recently that was by and large about Change (holding hands with Memory and Transformation of the Self), and one of the sections strayed too far into Communication, which on the surface seemed connected in the sense of "if i change too much i won't understand/be able to communicate with [my current peers] anymore" but in practice it centered the communicative aspect rather than the change aspect, so it had to be cut entirely.
let me know if this does/does not answer your question or if you want me to elaborate on any part—i'd be happy to
Oh, thank you! This is really helpful and absolutely answers my question! :)
The first work of yours I read was Autonomy and Worse Things, and I really enjoyed they way you described Danny's ability and how his reactions to it shaped his handling of said ability. It lingers in almost every scene and neither he nor the audience is allowed to forget what he did (what he can do) or the responsibility he feels toward Amity Park—the clash that arises from those factors.
There's a similar attention in All Myths Where You Can't Go Back—obviously, the whole point is the group pretending everything is normal until they never will be again—but the bittersweet reminder that Danny has places and people that care makes the inevitable change bearable.
Oh, and I really loved total seafloor eclipse (all of the fusion fics :)), the idea of being two parts that meet only briefly, is such an interesting concept. To be someone who knows they are made from hatred but being so excited by existence to refuse to let it define the limited time they have.
All this to say, I really admire your writing. And your use of theme/metaphor/symbolism is consistently a stand out in your work, such that I've been trying to integrate pieces of it into my own writing as I experiment. Your process explanation gives me a lot of ideas of how I can approach editing in the future, plus framing/planning. Thank you, again, and I hope to see more of your work in the future :)
this really means a lot to hear. somehow i'm always surprised when people say they like my work. i know people must read it because i see the hits and the bookmarks—but comments, and direct interactions like this, are special reminders that those are people behind the numbers. thank you. :)
now that i know which of my works you're familiar with, i'll give specific examples to go along with my process from up there—hopefully that'll make it easier to see in practice? even just reading my own description above i feel like i'd have a hard time figuring out how to implement it haha...
for "All Myths Where You Can't Go Back:"
this piece was written explicitly based off of artwork by five-rivers, so the idea wasn't wholly original, but i think the process works about the same.
the art depicts fenton lying in state + phantom chilling nearby, with obvious ghost king au themeing, and sad humans contrasted by happy ghosts. the questions that arose from that were:
what led to these circumstances?
why the emotional dissonance between the two parties?
what are the consequences of this situation?
answering them led me to that danny's coronation is a net positive for the ghosts, but essentially a funeral for danny himself, one that he's not coming back from. this revealed to me a main/major theme of:
Change & Loss Are Inevitable / Things Will Not Stay the Same Forever
which is wordy, but it can't really be simplified further—it's not just change, it's the loss inherent in change. it's not just moving forward, it's that you are leaving things behind. maybe in my original post i would have worded it as Change, holding hands with Loss and Grief? hmm. anyway.
the nature of how i chose to frame this story—that everyone is trying really hard not to acknowledge what's about to happen—meant that some of the secondary ideas i chose to engage with were Denial and Connection (the former being the coping mechanism for the changegrief, the latter being everyone's last desperate attempts to keep what is about to be lost). this led directly to the motif of the snake (which on its own doesn't really scream The Theme, but how the characters react to/engage with the snake works to emphasize The Theme).
when it came to the aspect of "things won't stay the same forever" i tried to deepen that sensation by hinting here and there at the idea that danny has been in a sort of stasis since the accident: he doesn't remember his own death; the things he learns after it (e.g. his friend's hobbies/the specifics of) he can't really hold onto; he hasn't physically grown; his antagonism with valerie never evolved beyond an uneasy truce because he never moved to change it. so here another secondary idea is Stasis/Stagnance—a narrative idea that nudges and emphasizes why "things won't stay the same forever" is not only unavoidable but necessary; you can't go on like this.
another kind of natural addition to the theme soup here is like... Memory? What Lingers? once something goes away you don't forget about it, it lingers in your psyche, weighs on you. grief stays and life grows around it, etc. so the cigarettes as a motif were pulling on that: an addictive substance that danny specifically got everyone into. something that's gonna stick with them after he's gone, something that will remind them of him forever, even if they manage to quit. but there's also the more directly shown moment in All Myths, where danny shares The Last Cigarette with his people—representative of him as a "substance" they can't get another hit of; they've used it all up/it's gone forever. but the addiction, the craving, lingers.
the scenes with each of danny's living leading up to coronation day are my "be preoccupied with it" / "keep iterating until it's edging on too concentrated" of this piece. each one is designed to have a little painful twinge to its ending, something that evokes the loss that's about to occur, doesn't let the reader forget. it's a repeated strategy, but i don't use the same line every time, try to let the particular painful thing be a little different with each instance, reflective of the person or the situation at play. this is the keeping things relatively fresh part.
the actual coronation (which is almost like a full half of the fic lol?) was heavily, heavily influenced by fiveriver's artwork—i needed to include every character and justify the little scene-setting details, so it ended up being pretty lengthy. if i were writing this piece without basis, i think it would have turned out very differently, so this wasn't so much part of my usual subconscious process as it was a challenge to do something unfamiliar while maintaining the energy the first half built up. i don't know that i fully succeeded in that, honestly—but some techniques i tried were:
making things kind of dreamlike—the vibey-ness of it delays the urgency of The End that the front half of the fic built up, but doesn't get rid of it entirely
exploring danny's own relationship with the Theme—since we're acknowledging things directly now, i finally had the opportunity to allow the reader a look into danny's true feelings on the whole thing, and his perspective kind of embodies the theme/brings it to the forefront: he has kind of known for a very long time now that this had to happen/things had to change. and now there's no delaying any longer.
emphasizing the Funeral of it all—if this had to be drawn out (and it did have to be), then i can use the drawn-out-ness to my advantage and make it somber and agonizingly slow like the funeral procession it is
all that to say is that the coronation is where the iterating stopped, and everything that had been built and explored was being focused toward concluding the story, leaving things at an emotional place where you can be released from the narrative. the Change occurs. everyone survives it—it was never going to kill them, anyway. they just lost something. they just have to move on from it. and they can revisit, remember, long for—but they'll never have it again.
and that's it!!!! the process and the story is over!!!!!
this isn't one-size fits all Writing Advice and i don't mean it to be, but it's how i think when i write (although most of the thinking is subconscious! kind of cool to think about it directly like this), and i do hope it's useful to you in some way. it was fun to get to talk about it!! thanks again for the ask, non-parsimonious :)
This is genuinely so helpful and I will definitely being using this as reference as I work on future projects. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you going into detail :)
If you don't mind a more technical ask, do you have a process for deciding how to develop themes in your work? Like, after getting a general idea, how do you go about deepening the metaphors/symbolism and keeping your themeing consistent?
i don't mind at all, i love talking about this kind of thing.
i think this often takes different forms depending on the length of the work in question—a short story really only has room for one Major thematic exploration, whereas a full novel or even a series of books can layer in multiple distinct themes. i'm primarily a short fiction writer so that's where my perspective is coming from.
i think generally, my process could be described as:
have an initial idea
answer the initial questions that idea poses
^ these answers should reveal the core theme beneath the idea
now that you know the core of things, engage with secondary ideas/themes/motifs and how they are intrinsic to/influenced by/inextricable from that core
[a longer work might explore tertiary ideas/themes or introduce a second Major theme]
draw your metaphors, symbolism, feeling, always from this core theme; be preoccupied with it; return to it; turn it over and over in your hands
for example: if your core is grief, it holds hands with loss, (lack of) ownership, helplessness, devotion, desperation, time, love—symbols might be a leaking faucet or objects often slipping out of a character's hands, metaphors might evoke anything but will be most effective if they're a reflection/representation of the core theme
keep iterating on these ideas until it's edging on too concentrated, and then pull back, wrap toward the piece's conclusion
in the revision phase, spend time making sure the piece is thematically consistent AND fresh, never repetitive in a way that drags. revision is in my eyes the most important part of the writing process.
a lot of this comes down to having a "feel" for it as an author—if you practice enough, there's a sense of harmony to themes and metaphors and etc. that work together, and a sense of discord if something doesn't fit or strays too far away from the core of things. it's hard to describe! i had an original piece recently that was by and large about Change (holding hands with Memory and Transformation of the Self), and one of the sections strayed too far into Communication, which on the surface seemed connected in the sense of "if i change too much i won't understand/be able to communicate with [my current peers] anymore" but in practice it centered the communicative aspect rather than the change aspect, so it had to be cut entirely.
let me know if this does/does not answer your question or if you want me to elaborate on any part—i'd be happy to
Oh, thank you! This is really helpful and absolutely answers my question! :)
The first work of yours I read was Autonomy and Worse Things, and I really enjoyed they way you described Danny's ability and how his reactions to it shaped his handling of said ability. It lingers in almost every scene and neither he nor the audience is allowed to forget what he did (what he can do) or the responsibility he feels toward Amity Park—the clash that arises from those factors.
There's a similar attention in All Myths Where You Can't Go Back—obviously, the whole point is the group pretending everything is normal until they never will be again—but the bittersweet reminder that Danny has places and people that care makes the inevitable change bearable.
Oh, and I really loved total seafloor eclipse (all of the fusion fics :)), the idea of being two parts that meet only briefly, is such an interesting concept. To be someone who knows they are made from hatred but being so excited by existence to refuse to let it define the limited time they have.
All this to say, I really admire your writing. And your use of theme/metaphor/symbolism is consistently a stand out in your work, such that I've been trying to integrate pieces of it into my own writing as I experiment. Your process explanation gives me a lot of ideas of how I can approach editing in the future, plus framing/planning. Thank you, again, and I hope to see more of your work in the future :)
This is from the fanfic "And it all starts again" by Non_Parsimonious on ao3,It really is such a good fanfic, it's in progress and I was planning to make a comic about it but I'd better do it later,Because I really wanted to upload something about this fanfic as soon as possible.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Unfinished Bonus Doodle (That was meant to be a Chapter 2 reference-):
I finally made some fanart about one of my favorite 2012 fanfictions of all time, "And It All Starts Again" by Non_Parsimonious !! 😭🫶✨
There were so many scenes I wanted to draw as well, like most of the emotional arguments we get in this fanfic, but I had to take a break (Especially since I couldn't even finish one of them- 💀 Lmao),, ! However, if you do see this, Non_Parsimonious, I really hope you enjoy it !! I was really trying to do your story justice-! 🥲✨
I tried my hand at giving the humans different hair looks to imply a small jump in time like in the fanfic (Maybe they're around 19-20 years old now?), so hopefully that translated well-! I also added excerpts from the chapters I was referencing to entice people to read this fanfiction, because the writing is phenomenal- I'm not kidding, this feels like the 5th Season we should have got (Or maybe a movie, that would honestly be better imo-). The character dynamics, the growth of the character, giving the characters more depth / interests (i.e. Mikey pursing chemistry-), like?? 🗣️🗣️🗣️
I strongly suggest you read this fanfic if you have free time ! It's super good ! ✨
HOLY SHIT!!! I'm so upset I didn't see this earlier, OHMYGOD this is incredible!!!! Oh I love the way you draw them :) especially the scene from Road Trip I think It's one of my favorites. And Karai and Leo's fight too! You can feel the tension of the moment. And the little PPE on Mikey, Donnie, and Casey!! Oh, it's precious.
Your other work is also phenomenal. I love the way you draw the turtles. I can see the inspiration from the original show but mixed with your personal flair to make them just so pleasing to look at it. You also give so much attention to the humans, who I feel get ignored a lot of the time (I'm guilty of doing that). Karai especially looks cool as shit! I love how expressive all of their eyes/eyebrows are :)
Gosh this is kinda surreal, I can't thank you enough for this. I'm so glad that you enjoyed my work enough to make art for it :D Multiple pieces too!!
answering a couple questions i got on this post since i realized ppl genuinely wanna know:
tl;dr:
israel lets very, very little aid get into gaza. even the UN can't get in as much as they want to. funding individual families, gazan led initiatives, and mutual aid collectives operating out of gaza ensures gazans can provide for themselves and pay for the extremely expensive aid that is available.
with all the civil infrastructure destroyed by israel, the situation on the ground has devolved into unrestricted capitalism, driving up the price of aid (that should be free!). this makes it more urgent for people to have funding for daily survival.
the post linked above has examples of how donating to individual families can help a lot. if you want to help more than one family at a time, there are many gazan-led initiatives focusing on rebuilding their infrastructure and distributing aid fairly that are worth donating to instead of large charities that already get the majority of donations.
as i mentioned in the last post: @/careforgaza on twitter is a nonprofit started by gazans, it's been endorsed by multiple palestinian journalists.
the sameer project is a collective organized by diaspora palestinians offering emergency shelter to gazans.
ele elna elak is a project aiming to bring water, food, shelter, etc. to gazans and has been promoted by bisan owda.
and the municipality of gaza itself is fundraising to rebuild water infrastructure.
all of these organizations are active inside gaza right now and are being run by gazans. if anyone knows of other gazan-led mutual aid projects, nonprofits or charities feel free to link them in the notes! hope this helped!
long answers under the cut!
if you wanna donate to a charity that's absolutely fine, but the thing is most charities (and even the UN!) are unable to make it into gaza in the first place, leaving aid rotting at the egyptian side of the border or subject to israeli settler attacks
not to mention, charities and nonprofits also maintain a paternalistic colonial relationship with the indigenous people they are trying to help, determining what aid they need for them instead of returning power to them and letting them make their own choices
i'm not here to say that one option is better than the other, just that they achieve different things and are equally legitimate. there's an attitude among people who question the legitimacy of these gofundme campaigns that somehow the people promoting them are telling them not to donate to charities. nobody is stopping you from donating to charities. we are just asking that you do not dehumanize the very real gazans in your inbox just because their method of asking for aid is more direct and risky.
unfortunately that's exactly what has happened. because israel destroyed all of gaza's more formalized infrastructure, it seems that organized crime and rampant inflation has taken its place. aid is supposed to be free, but in order to save for evacuation or the cost of living, people have started selling them at an inflated price. and aid that is truly free attracts intense, large crowds that are dangerous to navigate.
this was posted on abc a few days ago
it's pure, unrestrained capitalism. i've had multiple palestinians describe this situation to me confidence. that's why everything's so expensive now. why people have to rent out tiny plots of land for their tents to sit on, why my friend @siraj2024 still has to buy tarps to cover the broken windows of the overpriced bombed out apartment he rented, and why a bag of flour can cost a thousand bucks in the north.
even before israel closed and then bombed the rafah crossing, the egyptian hala travel agency was only allowing people to cross the border if they paid a hefty $5000 USD per adult / $2500 USD per child bribe. it denies doing this, but the hundreds of stories from palestinians say otherwise.
with regard to the economy, here in america we saw something similar happen in the wake of hurricane helene and milton. the podcaster margaret killjoy describes how she saw dual economies rise after asheville was fully cut off from the rest of the country - some people offered each other supplies for free in a sort of mutual aid honor system, and some people required payment when they lent supplies because they themselves needed to buy stuff for their families. these dual economies exist in gaza too. and this means they all still need money to survive.
plugging gaza soup kitchen for those with the means to donate! it's another gazan-led initiative currently providing food, water, classes for children, and medical care across the north and south. you can donate through their website or their gofundme, or follow them on instagram for news about their projects
please also consider taking a look at dahnoun mutual aid (instagram link), another ghazzawi-run initiative doing great work using very little funds! they're currently distributing winter clothes for young children, as well as food and water, infant formula, tents, and cash. they've also got a chuffed
a whole bunch of gazan mutual aid projects and nonprofits. if the decision of which individual fundraiser to give to feels too daunting, or if you just want to help as many people as possible in one go, these are great initiatives to support.
care for gaza - focuses on providing food and essential supplies. donate here or here.
connecting humanity - securing internet access via donations of virtual sim cards (esims). if you can't afford a whole plan yourself, crips for esims is a communal pool that will use your donation to purchase and maintain esims
gaza soup kitchen - provides food, medical care, and classes for children. also has a gofundme
glia gaza medical support initiative - provides medical care through field clinics and tents at hospitals. donations can also be sent through their website.
ele elna elak - provides clean water, food, clothing, and shelter. they also have a gofundme
life for gaza - raising money for the gaza municipality to repair water and waste management infrastructure
taawon - partners with local civil organizations to provide food, water, medical care, shelter, and basic supplies
the sameer project - running various initiatives providing tents, medical care, and necessities. they have their own encampment project focused on sheltering families with children, sick and disabled members, or members in need of perinatal care
islamic relief worldwide's gaza emergency appeal - provides food, water, hygiene kits, medical supplies, and psychological support
baitulmaal - provides a variety of necessities, including food, water, shelter, and medical supplies
gaza mutual aid fund - distributes food, hygiene products, water, and other essential supplies, including financial support. run by @/el-shab-hussein's amazing friend Mona. updates can be found on her instagram.
hygiene kits for gaza - provides hygiene supplies including menstrual products, wipes, and toothbrushes/toothpaste
anera - provides a variety of necessities, including food, water, hygiene supplies, medicine, blankets and mattresses, and psychological care
palestine children's relief fund - provides supplies and support with a focus on children. also has an initiative for lebanon
dahnoun mutual aid - provides water, food, tents, baby supplies, financial support, and other necessities. updates can be found through their instagram
certainly this is not an exhaustive list, so please feel free to add on other projects or organizations that i didn't include. and as always, please take the time to donate if you can and share. it truly makes all the difference.
ok last thing. but what people fundamentally need to get through their heads is the significance of gaza fundraisers not being the same as like mutual aid when you're helping someone get groceries, because it is a genocide. there is insane deliberate scarcity and prices are unmanageable, because there is nowhere nearly enough for everyone, so only people who can pay can eat. and what positioning individual fundraisers as the only course of action does is quite simply give a tiny percentage of random people whose fundraisers take off the ability to pay those prices while thousands of others can't. and every one of those thousands of people without a fundraiser is suffering through the same inconceivably horrific reality. it is giving a few completely desperate people out of hundreds of thousands a slightly more favorable position in a horrific war economy of imposed scarcity. and what grassroots community kitchens do is try to mitigate in some small way that inconceivable hierarchy of who can pay and who can't, by stretching ingredients as far as they can last to cook meals at large scale and give them out at no cost. and obviously people are still going to send money to their friends and families because this is hell what else are we supposed to do but please just think about that before promoting endless individual fundraisers as somehow the most ethical way to help
Operation Olive Branch has a spreadsheet dedicated to mutual aid, local distro, community kitchens, etc. in Gaza.
This is a good place to start if seeking to donate to a community resilience action. Just contact the group(s) directly to make sure they are still active. Life in Gaza and Palestine is full of uncertainty.
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