#about diz

[dismalzelenka]

My fatal flaw is that I can't take any articles about cognitive behavioral therapy seriously because my brain always replaces CBT with cock and ball torture :V

[dismalzelenka]

100 Days of Writing, Day 25

for @the-wip-project

That mood boards and graphic headers aren't as terrifying as I've always found them, and I'm not terrible at making them myself like I thought I'd be.

That somehow over the course of the last year I've figured out how to find sort of a rhythm of a plot. I practiced that mechanic building the individual arcs of The Place Where I Belong, but recently I've written two short multi chapter fics (Lonely Sons and Daughters and Collision) that honestly wouldn't have existed had I not found this rhythm and figured out how to drive a story forward. Maybe this is second nature to some people, but definitely a character-first sort of writer, and plotting is HARD for me. So this kind of felt like a level up in a way. Finally being able to complete stories, that...feels really fucking good.

The entirety of the TPWIB universe sort of spun out of control and unraveled itself on its own like this complicated AU tapestry over the course of the last few weeks. It's been cool to experience. I've finally built enough of the AU outside of the story that it sort of exists and lives and breathes on its own, and that's really exciting to me.

That I HELLA SHIP MALCOLM HAWKE AND WARDEN COMMANDER CLAREL. I will die on this garbage barge and I'll do it with a smile on my face.

I broke my fandom hiatus and tumbled into a wonderful community of people. Some of you I feel as though I've known my entire life, and I really honestly credit this sense of community for driving my writing lately. It's so much easier to be inspired for anything when people are actively cheering you on, and the fact that I've found that is. Well. I'm not gonna cry or anything but I love you guys a lot. Thanks for being there for me. I lied I'm getting a little weepy eyed. Diz is an emotional creature ok.

I'm somehow capable of cranking out 10k words in 24 hours if my brain really gets revved up. Collision literally got drafted, edited, and posted in a single day, and I'm still reeling over how the fuck that happened. 😂

In conclusion, thank you @barbex for running this event. I've learned so much more than I ever dreamed I could, and I've grown as a writer just from thinking about a lot of these prompts, and I'm so grateful to have that opportunity. Happy quarter mark! Here's to 75 more amazing days of self discovery ☺️☺️☺️

[dismalzelenka]

100 Days of Writing, Day 24

for @the-wip-project

Firstly, I'm double posting these today because yesterday I got overtaken by the most manic handers muse I've ever experienced and spent literally the entire day writing and neglected everything else. Oops.

Anyway.

I'm the kind of person who just sort of absorbs inspo from around me wherever I can find it. It's kind of shitty sometimes, because occasionally bad things happen and my brain's first response (sometimes I wonder if it's a weird knee jerk defense mechanism I've developed) is to distance from it a little and be like "ok but how can I work that into a narrative theme" while the rest of me is beating at myself with a rolled up newspaper like dude this is NOT THE TIME.

So in reality there are way too many things to name. But in terms of general themes, I mentally break down a lot of the things I read if I think they're really good and try to pinpoint the things about it I find appealing, and then I try to find an excuse to work it into a WIP somewhere as soon as I can so I can seal it into my memory.

The only big specific thing that is coming to mind though is from songs. Oh boy. SO much of my writing is built around music. Yea I'm one of those people. So, fun fact about Diz: I took a film scoring class in college and barely passed it because I am Very Bad at being a student, BUT one of the things I learned in it was the difference between diagetic and non-diagetic music.

(Lots of links and examples below the cut btw. Definitely check these songs out if you haven't heard them. They're great.)

If you're unfamiliar with the term, diagetic music is music in the score that is an active part of the scene. If it's playing from a jukebox in the scene for example. That Dawn Will Come scene from Inquisition, that's an example of diagetic music. As opposed to ambient music that sets a mood but isn't an active part of the scene. This doesn't actively translate to writing obviously as the music isn't actively playing, but loosely speaking:

I've done this before in Your Arms Feel Like Home: the mages at the big protest in Kirkwall stand in a circle around the memorial garden and sing Will the Circle be Unbroken and I used the version from Bioshock as inspo because it was just super great. And I don't think I'd learned to embed in ao3 yet, but that's the song and sound that I had in mind.

Recently I also did this in Lonely Sons and Daughters when I talked about the modern version of the Joining the way the Ferelden branch does it, and I incorporated the song Sons and Daughters (from where the title is taken) by American Spirit because I heard it and was like JESUS CHRIST THAT'S PERFECT. So in the scene they all beat the drum beat on the tables and sing it after the new recruits drink from the cup.

I also took the words from Arsonist's Lullabye by Hozier and made them a bit canon for The Place Where I Belong. I write Malcolm Hawke as this like, dramatic and larger than life person (almost definitely a Leo) who always has Iconic Quotes that his recruits always rib him for but admire anyway. (I based that on a band director I had in high school actually.) The line about never taming your demons but always keeping them on a leash became one of those sayings that he said a lot to Hawke as she was growing up and learning how to control her magic.

Shit, the entirety of The Place Where I Belong is literally built around a Faunts album called Feel.Love.Thinking.Of. So much of my writing wouldn't exist without these songs propelling them through the ether.

[dismalzelenka]

100 Days of Writing, Day One

Write about what your motivation is to write at all. What got you started? What keeps you going?

For @the-wip-project.

I started writing at six years old. It wasn't very good, but I learned how to read early and devoured stories and knew I wanted to make those stories too one day. My dad actually used to have me dictate my dreams as a kid and he'd write them down for me in a little notebook. My first fic I wrote was a rambly as hell one paragraph Pokémon Crystal self insert I slapped together when I was ten. I wish I still had it. It was precious.

Writing is kind of RP for me, in a way. I've rambled about this to people before, but all of my OCs get fed little pieces of myself before they take wings and become their own people. Solona has my poor impulse control and penchant for spectacularly awful decisions. Journey got my gender nonconformity, neurotic anxiety, and caretaker complex. I have a couple others that don't really exist in the public sphere, but they've also inherited parts of who I am. It's like I've created this little sandbox and I get to play make believe in them, and in that sense I don't think I've changed much at all from six year old me who made stories out of my dreams.

What keeps me going changes periodically. Right now, in this moment? I want Journey, Anders, and Nate to have their happy ending together. I've also told myself I'm not letting myself boot up MELE until this longfic is done, and I miss my space dinosaur husband. And I have several spicy scenes in the scene queue that I've accepted I need to actually write if I want to read them. Wild concept, that. 😅

[dismalzelenka]

About Me tag game!

I got tagged by @kunstpause! Thank you, my friend!

1: Why did you choose your url?

I decided around 20...14? 15? Right around when I transitioned, I think. Anyway I decided that with my real life name change, I wanted to reinvent myself in fandom spaces. Which, at the time, was mostly just my fanfiction dot net account. So I decided to just make a new one, which meant coming up with a new name, and I literally didn't think about that until I was sitting at the account creation window like SHIT NOW WHAT.

So there I was glancing around frantically for inspiration. And the pro choir I was in at the time was doing a Lent series featuring the Jan Dismas Zelenka Miserere in D minor. Zelenka is one of my favorite Baroque composers, and my potato brain was like hahah Dismas sounds like Dismal and THAT PIECE DO BE DISMAL so I cackled at my stupid pun and typed dismalzelenka into the username box and haven't looked back since.

2: Any side blogs? if you have them, name them and why you have them.

@projectdizposition is my hilariously inactive barely put together blog I made in a hypomania fueled frenzy a few years ago when I was like I AM DEFINITELY GOING TO PRACTICE COMPOSING MORE USING FAN MATERIAL and then did like two short pieces and never touched it again. I might start posting the fandom covers I do on there, but for now it's kind of dead so don't look bahaha

3: How long have you been on tumblr?

I genuinely do not remember. I think I made one back in 2012 and never got on it and forgot both the username and password? I did a lot of drugs back then during my idiotic and misspent youth so my memories are. Woof. Not clear. I made a transition related blog in 2014, and I think I deactivated it for trauma reasons. Maybe deleted it. I don't really remember that either.

The current one has been around since I catapulted myself into the Dragon Age fandom in December of 2017. I've been a brightly burning trash heap ever since. 😊

4: Do you have a queue tag?

I tried to but I could never keep in my memory what it was and kept having to go back to old posts to remind myself and eventually just gave up lmaooo

5: Why did you start your blog in the first place?

So I could wake up every morning and lovingly gaze upon pictures of Anders. I'm a trash can trash man and I own this, ok?

6: Why did you choose your icon/pfp?

I recently updated all of my fandom pictures to be of Blitzkrieg Bop, my Very Photogenic Cat who loves to pose for pictures and is very good at it. Purely because I felt like it.

7: Why did you choose your header?

hahahaha it was a ridiculous Skyrim mod glitch and it just so perfectly encapsulated my general mood and also the constant mood of the character in question that I had to make it public.

8: What’s your post with the most notes?

A Solstice blessing I posted around Yule really blew up. I didn't expect people to like it so much but it made me happy to know it brought joy to so many people. The next highest one is my "the Amells are a walking shitpost" meta post 😂

9: How many mutuals do you have?

Gonna be honest, I don't even know how to start looking for this information.

10: How many followers do you have?

1057, but I never bother going through for porn and spambots so the actual count is probably much lower. I can never be arsed to care enough to put forth the effort of cleaning it up.

11: How many people do you follow?

878? I don't ever go through that either. I probably should soon, but. 🙈 It sounds very stressful.

12: Have you ever made a shitpost?

I am in fact a walking shitpost. Shitposts tumble forth from my void on a daily basis. Sometimes I fear it is the only language I speak with any measure of fluency.

13: How often do you use tumblr each day?

Probably too much.

14: Did you ever have a fight/argument with another blog once? who won?

Y'all, listen. I am a Grade A WEENIE. I am a walking Pisces stereotype. I hate confrontation with a burning passion. If someone tries to start a fight with me, I make one (1) attempt at a civil conversation and then I block, because my mental health is not worth that shit. I have to yell at people in real life enough for work things, I do not have the energy for it in fandom too. Please be nice to me. I am fragile. 🥺

15: How do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?

Please Do Not. I hate this shit. Why does anyone think guilt tripping someone into reposting their content is going to do any bit of good in this world?

16: Do you like tag games?

I am a cat, and tag games are my catnip. Tag me in literally anything.

17: Do you like ask games?

I do! As you have probably surmised at this point, I am a Very Wordy Boy. Especially when I get to talk about my characters. I'm like Maes Hughes with the photos of his family in his wallet. HAVE YOU SEEN MY CHILDREN TODAY? That's me. Let me show you my children.

19: Do you have a crush on a mutual?

I have a crush on several of you motherfuckers. Stop being so goddamn attractive and cute. It's woefully distracting and I'm probably in love with you.

I have no idea who to tag, because from what I've seen just about everyone who I could tag has already been tagged so I'm just throwing my usual tag list on here and hoping it catches the very specific intersection of people who both haven't yet been tagged and would like to do this. Feel 100% free to ignore it if this sort of thing does not appeal to you. I love you pls don't hate me I am Very Scattered today. 🥺

@laraslandlockedblues @ladymdc @sasshole-for-rent @dalish-rogue @hollyand-writes @charlatron @midnightprelude @noire-pandora @cartadwarfwithaheartofgold @queen-kass-the-writer @a-shakespearean-in-paris @blarfkey @wardenari @jentrevellan @decimdraws @zuendwinkel @becauseanders @ashalle-art @hobo-apostate @simper-fi @kagetsukai @schoute @catherea @jarakrisafis @musetta3 @sharkapologists @ellie-effie @morganlefaye79 @kittynomsdeplume @inquisitoracorn @kita-lavellan @silvanils @barbex @ocean-in-my-rebel-soul @lunar-shards @corylion @nivenor-krosis

[ends-of-terra]