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[nerdarchy-blog]

Play Your Next 5E D&D Game as a Broken Pact Warlock

It’s okay if your #DnD warlock experiences cognitive dissonance after striking an eldritch pact. Buyer’s remorse won’t stop these warlocks from unlocking magical mysteries #staynerdy

Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted pick up on a conversation started during a live chat about the concept of fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons warlocks with broken pacts between their Otherworldly Patrons. The three ways Dave and Ted approached the idea of a Broken Pact warlock represent very different and very cool perspectives for this discussion. If they’d stuck…

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[stevenpartridgequill]

I’m interviewing with Nerdarchy!

Going live with @nerdarchy-blog in less than an hour! I'm so excited! Come join us on YouTube talking about storytelling, whether it's on the page, or at the table!

[stevenpartridgequill]

Happy #4thofjuly, everybody! In this trying time, it's important to remember: freedom isn't free, and while all Americans aren't equal yet, we can work on it... together. https://www.instagram.com/p/CCPFoWKAT4Y/?igshid=135pvcdjcag7z

[stevenpartridgequill]

Going out with the most beautiful person in the world. Can't believe it's been 8 years since we said, "I do." I love you with all my heart, MJ! https://www.instagram.com/p/CCEp26ugCgp/?igshid=11gk8v851dwdf

[stevenpartridgequill]

Check out this fantastic art of #Brai'sa from the #WordWalkers #dnd #stream! @wintry_art is such a skillful and talented artist! I have such fond memories of this campaign and would love to return to it at some time. @amelias.hart is such a great GM! https://www.instagram.com/p/CB57oSQAsyl/?igshid=1l52p180lwoib

[stevenpartridgequill]

Chillin at the fireside with friends, and yes, I'm a big dude wearing a speedo. https://www.instagram.com/p/CBemBYBAGdf/?igshid=nka374mnm5pz

[stevenpartridgequill]

Came out to the lake to celebrate end of quarantine with friends. Got a fire going, and it's just so lovely to see everyone!!! I love my chosen family so much!!! ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜 https://www.instagram.com/p/CBelpYJgYH0/?igshid=ipwcmzrl1wd2

[stevenpartridgequill]

Can't wait to see the tan lines from this summer! LoL But seriously, I am enjoying my #staycation so much!!! https://www.instagram.com/p/CAiSXYJgHb8/?igshid=oxulxxkdghr7

[stevenpartridgequill]

Just got my video done, EARLY, even! I'm #feelinmyselftoday! https://www.instagram.com/p/CAdNFMtB0MP/?igshid=1svweyx5tisw9

[ruth-westside]

How to Train Your Mule

Ruth learned the hard way that mules really need breast collars. 

Also you can blame @rebecawolfforest for the idea of Ruth having suspenders in her wardrobe.

[star-anise]

When I was younger and more abled, I was so fucking on board with the fantasy genre’s subversion of traditional femininity. We weren’t just fainting maidens locked up in towers; we could do anything men could do, be as strong or as physical or as violent. I got into western martial arts and learned to fight with a rapier, fell in love with the longsword.

But since I’ve gotten too disabled to fight anymore, I… find myself coming back to that maiden in a tower. It’s that funny thing, where subverting femininity is powerful for the people who have always been forced into it… but for the people who have always been excluded, the powerful thing can be embracing it.

As I’m disabled, as I say to groups of friends, “I can’t walk that far,” as I’m in too much pain to keep partying, I find myself worrying: I’m boring, too quiet, too stationary, irrelevant. The message sent to the disabled is: You’re out of the narrative, you’re secondary, you’re a burden.

The remarkable thing about the maiden in her tower is not her immobility; it’s common for disabled people to be abandoned, set adrift, waiting at bus stops or watching out the windows, forgotten in institutions or stranded in our houses. The remarkable thing is that she’s like a beacon, turning her tower into a lighthouse; people want to come to her, she’s important, she inspires through her appearance and words and craftwork.  In medieval romances she gives gifts, write letters, sends messengers, and summons lovers; she plays chess, commissions ballads, composes music, commands knights. She is her household’s moral centre in a castle under siege. She is a castle unto herself, and the integrity of her body matters.

That can be so revolutionary to those of us stuck in our towers who fall prey to thinking: Nobody would want to visit; nobody would want to listen; nobody would want to stay.

[shieldmaidenofsherwood]

#it’s so so important to remember that representation is not one-size-fits-all#what is empowering to one person might be exhausting and oppressive to someone else#some people need stories about having the strength to save themselves#some people need stories about being considered worthy of being saved#some people need inspiration for their independence while others need validation that they don’t have to be able to do everything themselves#before you lash out against something PLEASE stop to consider:#is this inadequate and/or damaging representation?#or is it just something I don’t personally relate to? [X]

[thelootwagonteam]

[stevenpartridgequill]

Going live on YouTube in a bit. Gonna try some snacks from Japan. https://www.instagram.com/p/B-cgLiXA3RO/?igshid=nvu9wr4jtzhn

[stevenpartridgequill]

So thankful for the person who has been there with me for the past 8 years. I'm so thankful for my soulmate, my love. #love #valentinesday #valentinesday2020 #bipride🌈 #bisexualcouple #holdinghands https://www.instagram.com/p/B8jPvZvgfPT/?igshid=ghuou5da95iv

[fozmeadows]

on fanfic & emotional continuity

Writing and reading fanfic is a masterclass in characterisation. 

Consider: in order to successfully write two different “versions” of the same character - let alone ten, or fifty, or a hundred - you have to make an informed judgement about their core personality traits, distinguishing between the results of nature and nurture, and decide how best to replicate those conditions in a new narrative context. The character you produce has to be recognisably congruent with the canonical version, yet distinct enough to fit within a different - perhaps wildly so - story. And you physically can’t accomplish this if the character in question is poorly understood, or viewed as a stereotype, or one-dimensional. Yes, you can still produce the fic, but chances are, if your interest in or knowledge of the character(s) is that shallow, you’re not going to bother in the first place. 

Because ficwriters care about nuance, and they especially care about continuity - not just literal continuity, in the sense of corroborating established facts, but the far more important (and yet more frequently neglected) emotional continuity. Too often in film and TV canons in particular, emotional continuity is mistakenly viewed as a synonym for static characterisation, and therefore held anathema: if the character(s) don’t change, then where’s the story? But emotional continuity isn’t anti-change; it’s pro-context. It means showing how the character gets from Point A to Point B as an actual journey, not just dumping them in a new location and yelling Because Reasons! while moving on to the next development. Emotional continuity requires a close reading, not just of the letter of the canon, but its spirit - the beats between the dialogue; the implications never overtly stated, but which must logically occur off-screen. As such, emotional continuity is often the first casualty of canonical forward momentum: when each new TV season demands the creation of a new challenge for the protagonists, regardless of where and how we left them last, then dealing with the consequences of what’s already happened is automatically put on the backburner.

Fanfic does not do this. 

Fanfic embraces the gaps in the narrative, the gracenotes in characterisation that the original story glosses, forgets or simply doesn’t find time for. That’s not all it does, of course, but in the context of learning how to write characters, it’s vital, because it teaches ficwriters - and fic readers - the difference between rich and cardboard characters. A rich character is one whose original incarnation is detailed enough that, in order to put them in fanfic, the writer has to consider which elements of their personality are integral to their existence, which clash irreparably with the new setting, and which can be modified to fit, to say nothing of how this adapted version works with other similarly adapted characters. A cardboard character, by contrast, boasts so few original or distinct attributes that the ficwriter has to invent them almost out of whole cloth. Note, please, that attributes are not necessarily synonymous with details in this context: we might know a character’s favourite song and their number of siblings, but if this information gives us no actual insight into them as a person, then it’s only window-dressing. By the same token, we might know very few concrete facts about a character, but still have an incredibly well-developed sense of their personhood on the basis of their actions. 

The fact that ficwriters en masse - or even the same ficwriter in different AUs - can produce multiple contradictory yet still fundamentally believable incarnations of the same person is a testament to their understanding of characterisation, emotional continuity and narrative. 

[earlgreytea68]

So I was reading this rumination on fanfic and I was thinking about something @involuntaryorange once talked to me about, about fanfic being its own genre, and something about this way of thinking really rocked my world? Because for a long time I have thought like a lawyer, and I have defined fanfiction as “fiction using characters that originated elsewhere,” or something like that. And now I feel like…fanfiction has nothing to do with using other people’s characters, it’s just a character-driven *genre* that is so character-driven that it can be more effective to use other people’s characters because then we can really get the impact of the storyteller’s message but I feel like it could also be not using other people’s characters, just a more character-driven story. Like, I feel like my original stuff–the novellas I have up on AO3, the draft I just finished–are probably really fanfiction, even though they’re original, because they’re hitting fanfic beats. And my frustration with getting original stuff published has been, all along, that I’m calling it a genre it really isn’t. 

And this is why many people who discover fic stop reading other stuff. Once you find the genre you prefer, you tend to read a lot in that genre. Some people love mysteries, some people love high-fantasy. Saying you love “fic” really means you love this character-driven genre. 

So when I hear people be dismissive of fic I used to think, Are they just not reading the good fic? Maybe I need to put the good fic in front of them? But I think it turns out that fanfiction is a genre that is so entirely character-focused that it actually feels weird and different, because most of our fiction is not that character-focused. 

It turns out, when I think about it, I am simply a character-based consumer of pop culture. I will read and watch almost anything but the stuff that’s going to stick with me is because I fall for a particular character. This is why once a show falters and disagrees with my view of the character, I can’t just, like, push past it, because the show *was* the character for me. 

Right now my big thing is the Juno Steel stories, and I know that they’re doing all this genre stuff and they have mysteries and there’s sci-fi and meanwhile I’m just like, “Okay, whatever, I don’t care about that, JUNO STEEL IS THE BEST AND I WANT TO JUST ROLL AROUND IN HIS SARCASTIC, HILARIOUS, EMOTIONALLY PINING HEAD.” That is the fanfiction-genre fan in me coming out. Someone looking for sci-fi might not care about that, but I’m the type of consumer (and I think most fic-people are) who will spend a week focusing on what one throwaway line might reveal about a character’s state of mind. That’s why so many fics *focus* on those one throwaway lines. That’s what we’re thinking about. 

And this is what makes coffee shop AUs so amazing. Like, you take some characters and you stick them in a coffee shop. That’s it. And yet I love every single one of them. Because the focus is entirely on the characters. There is no plot. The plot is they get coffee every day and fall in love. That’s the entire plot. And that’s the perfect fanfic plot. Fanfic plots are almost always like that. Almost always references to other things that clue you in to where the story is going. Think of “friends to lovers” or “enemies to lovers” or “fake relationship,” and you’re like, “Yes. I love those. Give me those,” and you know it’s going to be the same plot, but that’s okay, you’re not reading for the plot. It’s like that Tumblr post that goes around that’s like, “Me starting a fake relationship fic: Ooooh, do you think they’ll fall in love for real????” But you’re not reading for the suspense. Fic frees you up from having to spend effort thinking about the plot. Fic gives your brain space to focus entirely on the characters. And, especially in an age of plot-twist-heavy pop culture, that almost feels like a luxury. “Come in. Spend a little time in this character’s head. SPEND HOURS OF YOUR LIFE READING SO MANY STORIES ABOUT THIS CHARACTER’S HEAD. Until you know them like a friend. Until you know them so well that you miss them when you’re not hanging out with them.” 

When that is your story, when the characters become like your friends, it makes sense that you’re freed from plot. It’s like how many people don’t really have a “plot” to hanging out with their friends. There’s this huge obsession with plot, but lives don’t have plots. Lives just happen. We try to shape them into plots later, but that’s just this organizational fiction we’re imposing. Plot doesn’t have to be the raison d’etre of all story-telling, and fic reminds us of that. 

Idk, this was a lot of random rambling but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. 

[nianeyna]

“fanfiction has nothing to do with using other people’s characters, it’s just a character-driven *genre* that is so character-driven that it can be more effective to use other people’s characters”

yes!!!! I feel like I knew this on some level but I’ve never explicitly thought about it that way. this feels right, yep. Mainstream fiction often seems very dry to me and I think this is why - it tends to skip right over stuff that would be a huge plot arc in a fanfic, if not an entire fanfic in itself. And I’m like, “hey, wait, go back to that. Why are you skipping that? Where’s the story?” But now I think maybe people who don’t like fanfiction are going like, “why is there an entire fanfic about something that could have happened offscreen? Is anything interesting ever going to happen here? Where’s the story?”

[earlgreytea68]

Yes! Exactly! This!!!

This crystallized for me when I taught my first class of fanfiction to non-fic-readers and they just kept being like, “But nothing happens. What’s the plot?” and I was so confused, like, “What are you talking about? They fall in love. That’s the plot.” But we were, I think, talking past each other. They kept waiting for some big moment to happen, but for me the point was that the little moments were the big moments. 

[meanderings0ul]

This is such an awesome conversation, but I think there’s even another layer here that makes ‘fic’ its own genre. And it is the plot.

Everyone who’s experienced in reading fic has their little ‘trope plots’ we are willing to read or even prefer in order to spend time with our favorite characters. We know how it’s gonna end and we genuinely don’t care, because the character is the whole point of why we’re reading. And that is unique. That’s just not how mainstream media publication does things.

But there are also hundreds of thousands of fics people might call ‘plot driven’ and they have wonderful, intricate plots that thrill their readers.

But they’re not at all ‘plot driven’ in the same way as other mainstream genres.

The thing about ‘plot’ in fic is that it tends to ebb and flow naturally. There’s not the same high speed, race to the finish you’d get from a good action movie. There’s no stop and start of side plots you get in TV genre shows. The best fic plot slides from big event to restful evening to frantic activity to shared meals and squabbles and back, and it gives equal time and attention and detail to each of these things.

Like @earlgreytea68 said, “There’s this huge obsession with plot, but lives don’t have plots. Lives just happen. We try to shape them into plots later, but that’s just this organizational fiction we’re imposing. Plot doesn’t have to be the raison d’etre of all story-telling, and fic reminds us of that.”

Fic plot moves at a pace similar to the life of whatever character it’s about. Not the other way around. There’s a fundamental difference in prioritization in fic.

I think this only adds to the case of ‘fic’ as its own, distinctive genre. Stylistic choices of writing that would never work in traditional, mainstream fiction novels work for novel-length fic. Fic adventures spend as much time fleshing out the little moments between romances and friendships as they do on that plot twist. The sleepy campground conversations are as important to the plot as the kidnapped princess, because that’s how the characters are going to grow together by the end of the story. It’s not a grace note, it’s not a side episode or an addition or a mention - it’s integral and equal.

That’s just accepted as fact by fic writers and readers. It’s expected without any particular mention. And it gives a very unique flavor and pace to fic that makes a lot of mainstream stories feel like stale, off-brand wonderbread. They are missing something regular fic readers take for granted (and it isn’t just the representational differences, because we all know that’s a whole different conversation). There’s a fundamental difference in how ‘fic’ is written, detailed, and paced that is built on its foundations as a ‘character driven’ genre.  

And it isn’t only action/adventure/mystery plots that have this difference in fic. Those ‘everybody’s human in today’s world’ AUs, those ‘friends to lovers’ slow burn stories have it too. They have a plot, but it’s the life - the grocery shopping, the dumb fights and sudden inescapable emotional blows, those moments of joy with that person you click with, managing work and family and seasons - that’s the whole plot on its own.

And that’s almost impossible to explain to someone who hasn’t really experienced fic as a genre, who’s used to traditional person A and person B work together/overcome differences/bond to accomplish X. In fic accomplishing X might be the beginning or the middle, not the end result of the story, and A & B continue to exist separate from X entirely. X is only relevant because of how it relates to A & B, not the other way around.

Fic is absolutely its own genre and it has a lot to do with plot. I’ve been calling this ‘organic plot’ in my head for months, because I knew something felt different about writing this way, how long fic plot ebbs and grows seemingly on its own sometimes. ‘Dual plot’ could be another option, maybe, though the character plot and life experience plots aren’t really separate. Inverted plot? Hm. I’m sure a good term will develop over time.

[earlgreytea68]

OH MY GOODNESS I LOVE THIS. 

I was always fond of saying, about my own fics, that my plots show up about two-thirds of the way through, because it takes me that long to figure out where I’m going, and then I would lol about it, because, ha, wouldn’t it be great if I organized it better. 

And now I read this and I’m like, WAIT. YES. THAT’S WHAT’S HAPPENING. IT’S BEEN HAPPENING ALL ALONG. I NEVER REALIZED IT. The idea that the primary importance is the throughline of the characters, and that’s what we’re following, and the plot is what’s dangling off the side of their story, that is SO IMPORTANT. You’re right, that usually we’re told as writers to construct stories from the plot outward. “Here are the beats your plot needs to hit, here’s the rising action to the climax to the falling action, now make sure your Character A makes this realization by Point X in order to get your plot into shape for Point Y to click in.” It’s *such* a plot-centric way to write and I am *terrible* at it. And I’ve always said, whenever I sit down to “outline” a story, like, How do you this? How do you know where the characters are going until they tell you where they’re going???

But it’s not that I’m “bad” at this, which is what I’ve always thought, it’s just that I’m coming at it from the opposite angle. I can’t plan the plot before the characters because I’m sticking close to the characters, and the traditional “plot” is secondary to whatever’s going to happen to them. And that’s not a wrong way of writing, it’s just a different way of writing. And it’s wrong of me to be thinking that my stories don’t get a “point” until they’re almost over. THEY’VE HAD THE POINT ALL ALONG. What happens when they’re almost over is that the characters come to where they’ve been going, and then the traditional “plot” is what helps shape the ending. The traditional “plot” becomes, to me, like that epilogue scene after the biggest explosion in an action movie, where you’re told the characters are going to be okay. I spend the entire movie telling you the characters are going to be okay, and then my epilogue scene is tacked on “oh, p.s., also they saved the day.” 

[conversationswithjohnlock]

Oh my. Yes.

“Like @earlgreytea68 said, ‘There’s this huge obsession with plot, but lives don’t have plots. Lives just happen. We try to shape them into plots later, but that’s just this organizational fiction we’re imposing. Plot doesn’t have to be the raison d’etre of all story-telling, and fic reminds us of that.’”

“I was always fond of saying, about my own fics, that my plots show up about two-thirds of the way through, because it takes me that long to figure out where I’m going, and then I would lol about it, because, ha, wouldn’t it be great if I organized it better.”

I’ve always identified with authors who say, “… so I thought I knew what I was doing, and then he made me write this whole other thing, and I was like, no, that’s not the story, but he kept saying YES, THIS IS WHAT I’M DOING NOW!”

Maybe these are character-driven authors, as opposed to, for example, Anne Patchett, who I heard speak once, and when an audience member asked her if her characters change things as she’s writing, she said, “Hell, no. I have a plot and I make my characters do those things, because I’m the author.”

Of course, she also said that she based Easter (in State of Wonder) on a dog because she neither knows nor likes children, but I digress. She’s a plot-driven author.

I am not. None of my stories have been outlined or plotted in advance. I am constantly swinging by the seat of my characters’ pants (or tail feathers). I though it meant I wasn’t following the rules, or that I hadn’t really learned how to write the right way yet, but maybe it just means I’m a different kind of writer.

And I see this is my life, too. I want to hear about my friends’ feelings, about their friendships and relationships and love interests and how they fell in love or what it felt like when they broke up, and I’ll cry with them when they’re sad and be thrilled with them when they’re happy. I don’t really usually care about who got a promotion at work, you know?

What a fascinating, important conversation.

[zaan-zaan]

Beautifully expressed.  I think another difference that comes from tv shows is that there is no single vision or voice backing the stories.  For example, with Star Trek DS9 - there is the founder, Gene Roddenberry, then the show’s producers, the show’s writers, the actors, and individual screen writers who submit scripts.  All of these fingers in the pot dilute the continuity - sometimes to the point where you have characters acting wildly out of character (usually in the service of plot, from a writer who does not often write the character).  Fanfic allows the space to develop a coherent emotional narrative - after first defining the core reasons they believe the character acts as they do in canon.

[corisanna]

Wow, this is excellent food for thought. I see myself in all of this and hadn’t quite pulled it together in words.

I think a sub-focus would be on relationships– getting strong characterization on multiple characters then throwing them together to see what happens. I think this is why crossover fic fascinates me. Finding similarities and differences that click or clash and watching the fallout, then adding variables and doing it again. And again. Using them as foils. Having complex, nuanced relationships. What I find when talking with readers of my major crossover is a lot of “ok ok so I know you haven’t even mentioned this person in the story yet but how would [protagonist] react to meeting [obscure character from other canon]?” It’s not just the characters but the relationships between them that draw us in.

earlgreytea68 I can’t plan the plot before the characters because I’m sticking close to the characters, and the traditional “plot” is secondary to whatever’s going to happen to them.

conversationswithjohnlock I’ve always identified with authors who say, “… so I thought I knew what I was doing, and then he made me write this whole other thing, and I was like, no, that’s not the story, but he kept saying YES, THIS IS WHAT I’M DOING NOW!”

Maybe these are character-driven authors, as opposed to, for example, Anne Patchett, who I heard speak once, and when an audience member asked her if her characters change things as she’s writing, she said, “Hell, no. I have a plot and I make my characters do those things, because I’m the author.”

See, I do have overarching plot. I have a rough outline and have been following it for almost five years. But my route through those points keeps getting recalibrated like a GPS after you make a turn that defies its directions when the characters disagree with the plot in the moment. I call this “character rebellion.” If I try to force them to adhere to the plan, I get one of two things: “character strike” (in which my sense of the character shuts down and I can’t write anything until I do what “they” want; perhaps a subtype of writer’s block?) or horribly wooden writing that feels wrong. My story is ridiculously long because the characters keep detouring into some complex interpersonal stuff. And the story is better off for it. The characters have upped the ante on the original plot many times. And my readers keep getting more hyped over how the characters will react to things.

Once I get to the point where “the characters write themselves,” I have to let them take the wheel sometimes or I will crash my story into a brick wall. I honestly cannot fathom forcing them into boxes. I don’t get into a lot of new fiction, especially TV, because I often run into contradictions or there are jumps that skip reasoning for altered behavior/attitude. Consumers who aren’t as character-focused may acknowledge that and move on, but I sit there going “how? how? how? how? how?” to rationalize it. And thus a fic is born. And thus a fic gains traction when other people had the same reaction.

Some of my favorite compliments on my stories are the ones in which people either analyze my characterization or say I changed their perception of a character who wasn’t paid much (or consistent) attention in canon. Stuff like “wow, her irrational actions suddenly make sense with that context" or “yeah I guess I’d be a bitter asshole, too, with that background.” I am obsessed with characterization right down to facial expression and tone of voice. It’s fascinating.

I know I would write the same way if I did original fic. I wonder if any publishers realize there’s a market for this kind of stuff?

In any case, this thread makes me feel better about meandering.

[chizuu-deactivated20200817]

i genuinely hope anyone ages 13-15 on this website (or, god forbid, younger) stays safe and keeps their private information secure and really private 

please, if you’re really young on tumblr, try not to get swept up in the discourse and the tremendous amount of arguing with strangers that goes on here. i know you probably feel mature for your age but this website, like, really psychologically affects youth, and i encourage you to be cautious about your interactions with people on here

 please, kiddos, stay safe

[chizuu-deactivated20200817]

additionally, for my young, non-adult followers,

depression memes about wanting to die aren’t a healthy coping mechanism and can lead to worsening symptoms of your own mental health if overindulged in

you are not garbage. or trash. i know these terms are popular on here, but you shouldn’t be calling yourself that. you have everything you need inside of you to become your best self, even if it’s hard to see that

seriously, really don’t trust adults who want to date you. don’t trust adults who call you hot, flirt with you, ask you sexual questions, or ask you for nudes. (that last one is VERY illegal, also, please get help from a trusted non-creepy adult if this happens to you)

the opinions of complete strangers who aren’t interacting with you typically aren’t worth it. move on, use the block button. it’s not worth engaging with people who are going to make you feel awful or unsafe

take breaks from tumblr if it’s getting really stressful for you. talk to friends if you’ve got em, play a videogame or do whatever it is that can take your mind off the massive amounts of Hell on this website

recovery is good. it’s really, really good. if you’re having mental health issues, please seek out help if you can, or ask a trusted adult or friend for guidance. you are not alone. don’t let this website make you feel like you are

[stevenpartridgequill]

Reality told us we would fail, but again and again we fought. We persevered. We rose.

Tomi Adeyemi, (via her fantasy novel, Children of Blood and Bone)