#dubious advice

[soapflavouredsoup]

honestly i work by telling myself to just suck it up when it gets hard and honestly it works wonders. just suck it up mentality. just shhh. just lock in mentality

[tokkibean]

mediocore take: those stupid character-building scenes > structured plot. like, your story is about the characters!! no matter how plot-driven you're still exploring this world through your characters. and plots aren't meant to restrict you

like we literally Create plots out of thin air so that we can write about these tiny little people running around in our own worlds - like the plot exists to organise those Stupid Scenes and Ideas into something coherent enough to put together

i mean yeah obviously you still need a plot, but for what its worth imo those Stupid Scenes are super important as well

[das-feuerrad]

When the crowd doesn’t get your dark humour, just keep going

[just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi]

Is there a typical length you try to aim for with your whump drabbles?

I personally like 1,000-2,000 words, but I find it’s more important to say all of the things that I want to say. I’m not going to leave something out because I think I “have too many words.” 

But I’ve also been punched in the g u t by drabbles that are only like 300 words long. 

Just say what you want! I put the word count up there sometimes if I want to warn people that this will be a little long or such. 

[welcome-to-the-petting-zoo]

I know some of you guys have ADHD so I figured this was the place to go. My mother just sat me down and says she thinks I have ADHD, but I've learned to cope with it so it's less noticeable. I thought she was being silly but then I looked up a list of symptoms and so much of it sounds like me. Stuff I've wondered about/struggled with my whole life, suddenly explained. Shouldn't I be happy to know this? But like. I'm just crying a bunch. I feel really conflicted and confused :/

Hey lovely,

First and foremost, I am so sorry to hear that you struggle. Believe me, I can relate to your conflicted feelings so hard, it breaks my heart to know you're going through it all.

Okay, let's address the question from the point of why it might be that while you feel like you should be happy for the explanation, it actually just makes you miserable. As I see it, acceptance is a key element.

You've lived your whole life with these issues. If you do have ADHD, that means you were born with it and regardless of when or if you get diagnosed, your life has been challenged and altered by your symptoms from the get go. You learned to cope with them and internalised them as parts of your personality and the way you experience the world around you.

And now, as a young adult, you're presented with the possibility that these experiences might be caused by a clinical condition, something that is nameable and quantifiable and that is a serious "accusation". And no matter how well you learnt to cope, pinning a label to your way of being you, and accepting the reality of disability is a hard pill to swallow. If you choose to seek an assessment and you get a diagnosis, that's going to bring a whole new context to your life. It might feel validating, knowing that your struggle is acknowledged and that there is a reasonable explanation to it, but it also solidifies the fact that it's going to be a lifelong one and that you'll always have to live with your symptoms, because your condition is chronic. And that can be a very scary and disheartening thought.

You might feel like this explanation brings more trouble to your table, that on top of the things you already have to deal with, now you get a whole new disability and that it's just "yet one more way to be fucked". That is a very valid feeling, and it might be that you don't want to add more labels and more diagnosed issues to your already unfairly harsh list.

But I encourage you to think about it in a way where seeking professional help might also equip you with a new "toolbox": a skillset that helps you manage your life in a way that's more suited to your needs, and the possibility of accommodations, therapy and even medicinal treatment that might help alleviate some of the more troubling symptoms. You'll likely learn a lot about yourself in this new context and you'll be able to integrate the parts you deem "bad" about your disability into the picture you have of yourself. Just things that are parts of you, not bad things, just ways of you being you.

I know it's scary, and you're of course allowed to be sad or confused about it. It's not like you got this new revelation that'll now magically fix everything, it's not going to "cure" you and you might even feel like having it is no help at all. But I also believe that over time your perspective and feelings towards the question might change and you might find that pursuing a diagnosis and treatment for ADHD is the way to go.

For now, I'd say, sit with it for a while. Allow yourself to feel your emotions, whatever they might be, and try not to pressure yourself to feel any certain way, just let the concept sink in and see where you are once it has.

I wish you the best of luck with it, and if you ever need some dubious advice or just a bit of love, we at the Petting Zoo are happy to provide! 💜 You got us in your corner and we'll cheer you along the road, wherever it may lead.

- your ex-Fox, now proudly presenting as Hound

[small-quiet-room]

dear hank and john: a dubiously aesthetic moodboard

[lazywitchling]

hey do you have advice for when you find a magic resource that is 80% good and useful, 15% iffy, and 5% just completely weird? i don’t mean iffy and weird as in racist or TERFY i mean like. “this dragon oracle card symbolizes you will be filled with the light of christ” and “dragons from the ninth dimension will rebirth the world into a golden age just like atlantis.” like do i just redo the card correspondences??? this is the dragon oracle by diana cooper btw

Yep, I absolutely do have advice.

-gently picks up the guide book-

-tosses it in the trash-

BAM. It’s YOUR oracle deck now!

(Nah but seriously, get yourself a notebook or just some pages, go through the guide book and the deck, take note of what you like, make fun of what you don’t. Make your own meanings for cards, keep the ones from the book, combine your ideas with the book... just mix and match until that deck is totally and thoroughly YOURS. It’ll work much better for you than whatever Light Of Christ Atlantis bull the guidebook wants to feed you.)

[not-poignant]

How does dialogue research usually work?

I have written about this before! I also call them cheat sheets. They’re particularly handy for fanfiction. One of the biggest things I see in fanfiction is that because the author has done no dialogue research, the dialogue patterns fall into the author’s ‘default’ which is still very readable and very enjoyable, but doesn’t always feel very authentic to the character. Sometimes it’s really only a handful of things to keep in mind (where the cheat sheet comes in handy) that becomes all the difference between ‘this story is cool’ and ‘your characters sound really authentic / even if they’re doing something radically different / are in an AU.’

These days I use word documents instead of pen and paper, especially for lengthy projects. With a movie, it’s easier to work with pen/paper, and Stardew Valley was the same. With Detroit: Become Human, especially because I am writing for so many characters, I need a word document.

Things to pay attention to re: dialogue research:

* Specific word/language quirks. Hank is more likely to say ‘goddamn’ and ‘Jesus Christ’ than he is to say ‘fuck’ (though he uses this liberally too.) In editing, I often take out a lot of his ‘fucks’ and replace them with blasphemy.

Connor is less likely to use contractions, he will always prefer to say ‘I will’ over ‘I’ll’ and ‘going to’ over ‘gonna.’ Also notice what characters do and don’t say. Do they use manners? Do they omit standard ‘thank you’ and ‘pleases.’ Do they swear? Do they use idioms? Hilarious metaphors? Are they creative? (Hank called Connor a poodle, it was great and I wrote it down, lmao). Etc.

* Styles of conversation. Kara is a people pleaser and even once she’s Deviated, her speech patterns all centre around centring and caring for someone else, even if she’s scared for her life. Therefore, Kara will never just gossip about some really rad dress she saw in a store that she loved, unless you’re taking her extremely outside of herself. But she might say ‘Oh! I think this dress really compliments that suit you have, Luther, don’t you think we’d be good together?’ She will always circle her dialogue around another person. In Eversion she does this every time around Luther, Hank, the kids she looks after at school, Connor, even Sumo.

* Physical body language when speaking. This includes eye contact, position of the arms and legs, whether a character likes to be seating or standing, are they animate or passive.

* Volume and tone. Are they loud or soft? Do they use a lot of emphasis? Or do they not? Are they wry and quietly sarcastic, or are they earnest and is their voice full of emotion? I’ve started doing a dialogue/cheat sheet for Bungou Stray Dogs, and Dazai’s voice is pretty much only emotive in two different scenarios: When shit-stirring, or when he’s genuinely calling out to someone in alarm. (And thirdly, when he’s being petulant). And even then, his voice is very flat (or bored) when he’s say, talking to Chuuya or other characters. People can write him as very emotive in fanfiction dialogue, giving him exclamation points, making him be emotional where he’s really not at all in terms of tone and volume. Unless he’s teasing Kunikida or Chuuya, Dazai is - volume and tone wise - a straight shooter with a flat tone of voice. Fandom tends to reduce him to a singsong Chuuuuuuyaaaaaa~ and forget who he is most of the time.

This isn’t necessarily a huge problem, many people remember him at his most emotive, because they are some of the funniest, most dramatic, or most entertaining scenes - so you can still get a good story out of that. But I just like to be very loyal to dialogue patterns whenever I can be. And I can tell when someone isn’t doing that. (Most people aren’t fussy over this).

* Amount of dialogue. Connor actually speaks very little in the game, overall and he’s usually only reporting on cases. We get to see when he’s having difficulties because of changes in his LED or the ‘dysfunction’ moments. He almost never talks about his own feelings on things, except - in very careful ways - to Amanda. And even then, he does so safely, in ways  that are designed to protect and separate him from potential Deviancy. So in Eversion you’ll notice that Connor - when in conversation with others - normally only speaks in single sentences each time, unless he’s talking about a case or a different subject or another person.

Dialogue research is also sometimes when you’ll see a show doesn’t have very good writing, a lot of the characters in DBH don’t actually have distinctive verbal styles, so you have to go to body language instead, and make inferences. 

I also make cheat sheets to a point for my OCs. This is why Gwyn is more likely to say ‘okay’ than ‘all right’ (Augus is more likely to say ‘all right’), and why Eran has fairly formal speaking patterns that are earnest, whereas Mosk is informal and deceptive.

Finally, how to use a cheat sheet? Write your chapter, go back with the cheat sheet in mind and see if your character has done any of the things on the sheet. They don’t need to do all of the things. But they should have at least done some of them, if they had dialogue. Or read the cheat sheet before writing a chapter, and keep a handful of things in mind. After a few chapters in a multi-chapter story, you’ll remember those things anyway.

But it never hurts to go back and double check. Many authors (esp those who aren’t dialogue focused) will eventually subtly make the dialogue more comfortable for their own internal speech patterns, and that will very often take at least some of the characters further away from their more authentic dialogue stylings.

Dialogue is something I pay attention to innately anyway, and it’s always been that way. It’s one of my primary focuses in my writing and that works for me. But actually sitting down and researching dialogue (even for only one episode) will strengthen anyone’s writing. Especially if the characters you’re writing get so much of their character from the way they say things. And it’s so delightful to say, read an extreme AU and get an instant feel for the character in this new world and scenario, just from their voice and dialogue alone.