I Find Your Lack Of Faith ✨Distuwurbing✨ @wolfs-writing-den-old - Tumblr Blog

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Upon remembering the difference between a main and a secondary blog on tumblr- and upon remembering that the latter can’t be made into the former 🫠 I think I’ll be transferring everything over to an actual main blog for writing/fandom stuff tomorrow.

Hopefully I’ll be able to steal my user back from myself successfully!

#WolfsRandomRamblings

coffee-loving-dragon

🌙Morrígan the Phantom Queen🌙

#ac rogue #this is absolutely badass #what a fierce Phantom Queen!!!

lazerswordweilder

Vader but after learning he has a son goes ‘the last time I chose Palpatine over my family it was the biggest mistake of my life’ so instead of fighting and chopping Luke’s arm off, they (Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, and C3PO) show up and there’s an actual dinner and no bounty hunter or stormtroopers and Vader’s sitting in the chair and not looking at them, through the force Luke’s getting ‘mental breakdown’ vibes and they all collectively go ‘hmmm something’s wrong here’ and sit down while Vader just stares into a plate of food he cannot eat because the medical care he’s given was crap.

And eventually Han starts making jokes and it prompts the most awkward conversation/small talk in the history of ever, and after lapsing into more awkward silence Vader just blurts out ‘you’re in the rebellion.’ and Leia’s about to start the whole ‘denying even though he knows she knows he knows thing’ but she can look into peoples souls and decides the best answer here is yes.

And so as they wait to get jumped (since when did the empire need confirmation they were the bad guys?) or are contemplating weather there was poison in the food, Vader just goes ‘what if I wanted to join the rebellion?’ and he’s just not really doing good enough to be embarrassed or awkward about that, but everyone else is gawking at him.

And even the non-force sensitives can tell that this isn’t a bluff and Vader’s actually had something crazy enough happen that he’s genuinely considering defecting.

And by this point the Death Star has happened and Leia’s very confused and starting to verge on her own (probably smaller than Vader’s) breakdown, Luke is slowly filling with hope, Han is pondering when the hell kind of situation he got himself into- and then C3PO breaks the silence, with some nervous comment

And it makes everyone in the very tense room to break into laughter and get that ice broken and emotions temporarily decreased enough to put personal feelings aside, they decide this could be a HUGE asset for the rebellion if he’s not lying (and they don’t think it is)

And so cue what they assume is going to be the most awkward hyperspace trip ever but in reality Vader’s in the worst mental state he’s been since Mustafar and doesn’t even feel up to insulting this absolute hunk of junk that should not be flying and seriously why do they trust this ship-

lazerswordweilder

The millennium falcon metaphorically reeks of upset and Leia absolutely refuses to comfort literal Darth Vader, and Han’s still kinda scared he’s going to get sold off to that bounty hunter who he definitely spotted on cloud city and absolutely does not paid enough for that, they figure he doesn’t know wookie (is there a different name? Sorry) so Chewie is out of the question, which leaves Luke and 3PO

Which is how Luke ends up being the one forced to comfort (aka get to mildly calm down so he hopefully doesn’t transition into strangling people instead of moping) Vader, Vader, passed out on a bed with presumably soft covers he can’t feel, is holding onto a very frayed very old rope called common sense, and decides now is not the right time to spring the father thing on Luke.

Luke, oblivious to Vaders thought process and past/situation immediately chooses the wrong topic “So, why did you decide to defect?”

Vader, who despite not choosing the worst possible time to reveal his relation to Luke, is still Anakin, and immediately replies “I think he killed my wife and I’m stupid.”

Luke, stuck between regretting everything and being very curious asks for more details and Vader explains how the Emperor lied about when his wife died, and Vader thought he killed his wife by strangling her and he’s so so sorry, but he thinks he actually didn’t kill her and she survived but then Palpatine used her life force to save him which means he killed his own wife anyways-

I like this because it means that not only do we get to see Luke believing in Vader despite not knowing he’s his father (you know Vader’s going to forget about it, but when it does get revealed, he’ll have already processed what Vader had done (or started to process depending on when the reveal is), which means he’ll have already come to a conclusion that won’t be bias.

allthingswhumpyandangsty

wishing I could freeze time so fanfic writers could write all of their slow-burn enemies to lovers and gay porn and fix-it fics and all of their WIPs and prompts without having to worry about life and other responsibilities

#🫡

rogue-centric

yes, yes, i love my boys, but let's not forget they are problematic and flawed and that's ok !

*Dusts off this blog since it's been inactive for. Eons*

Oh also - new blog @wolfs-writing-den

Do you like werewolves? Do you like Assassin's Creed- specifically the 2014 masterpiece for the ps3, AC: Rogue? Have you ever wondered, man, can Shay "I make my own Luck" Cormac be any more of a Hot Mess™️? Are you of the opinion that Haytham Kenway needs a bit more 🌈 in his life?

If you've said oh worm yeah! to any of those, you've come to the right place.

I present: In the Winds that will Howl - the slightly angsty slightly gory, but still plenty fluffy, Shaytham AU where one (1) Irishman gets turned into a werewolf (summary below!)

Mumford and Son's Babel Album has me by the throat for this one, lads.

#wolfswritingagain #assassin's creed #assassin's creed rogue #werewolf au #shay patrick cormac #lmao get legal named bish #haytham kenway #in this house we don't like Liam O'Brien #no real reason #he's just a dick in this man LOL #In the Winds that will Howl #Shay's a werewolf #AND a Hot Mess #a girl can do both <3 #posted on ao3 #shaytham #ac rogue

sidacer

An old burnt photo

Also tried to color it, but it doesn't look very good so far:(

wren-clouds

The Tragedy of Anakin Skywalker is that he was always in a box someone else put him in. Watto said you are a slave. Qui-gon said you are the chosen one. You are a Jedi, you are a general, you are a good person. And when he knew without any doubt that he was no longer what people told him he was, he had to find new boxes. You are a sith. You are a servant. You are mine.

He spent his whole life being defined by people around him. And then along came Luke. And Luke didn't say 'you are a good person, come back to the light where you belong.' Because Anakin by all rights didn't belong in the light. No, Luke said 'you are my father. There's good in you." Luke said 'you have done great evil, but you can still change.' Luke said 'I do not excuse your villainy but I believe you can make your own choices.'

And that--that--is what got through. Not 'here is another box you must fit into' but finally, after his whole life, someone told Anakin 'you decide who you are.' And Anakin decided he was a man who loved his son.

libraryfordyslexics

This is the absolute saddest type of art in Star Wars but like also the deepest. When I see Echo with Fives’ helmet. Rex with Jesse’s helmet. Luke with Vader’s helmet. Ragnar with Paz’s helmet. Omega with Tech’s helmet. Crosshair with Tech’s helmet. Numa with Waxer or Boil’s helmet. Ahsoka with the 332nd orange painted helmet. Fives with Tup’s helmet. Etc. like there’s something so powerful and sad about the keldabe between somebody and the helmet of their fallen loved one. Crying rn.

thatgirlonstage

Ao3 subscriptions are so fucking wild to me. Every time I write my silly fanfictions and post them 124 people get an email just to let them know that this idiot is posting their fanfictions again. I send 124 people an email every time I write smut. Imagine sending 124 physical letters out just to be like “hello everyone, I put some guys we made up in our heads through the horrors again.” Absolutely absurd. I am kissing all of you on the lips.

redn1ghtcrawler

Have a sad anakin /suitless Vader.

a friend asked me to make a print out of this xD Never did any prints before.

trashy-music

I am thinking of starting a series about Anakin's story throughout the legends and the canon order.

I know the character is written differently in both the orders. So it will be interesting to read that.

(Also this would help brush up my critical reading.)

I know some might be thinking...... Whoaaa!!! Do you really want to spend all your time doing this rather than I don't know finding a job ??

The answer is yes. Anakin as a character gives me life and makes me die on the inside.

So let's see how this goes.

lualuadraw

they're unreliable narrators

Friend brought up a good point the other day, about how dragons usually have an extended life compared to humans… and I started thinking… >:}

As the perfect hybrid between the two, Anakin might not live as long as a full dragon but he’d live A Lot longer than normal humans.

Idk yet if I’ll apply this to the current fics… but it could be a neat lil one shot.

The opportunity for ✨Angst✨ tho… heheheh

#WolfsRandomRamblings #star wars the clone wars #that one where anakin is a dragon #draganakin!au #obi wan kenobi #anakin skywalker #star wars fanfiction

mylordshesacactus

Hot take: Actual literary analysis requires at least as much skill as writing itself, with less obvious measures of whether or not you’re shit at it, and nobody is allowed to do any more god damn litcrit until they learn what the terms “show, don’t tell” and “pacing” mean.

mylordshesacactus

Pacing

The “pacing” of a piece of media comes down to one thing, and one thing only, and it has nothing to do with your personal level of interest. It comes down to this question alone: Is the piece of media making effective use of the time it has?

That’s it.

So, for example, things which are NOT a example of bad pacing include a piece of media that is:

A slow burn

Episodic

Fast-paced

Prioritizing character interaction over intricate plot

Opening in medias res without immediate context

Incorporating a large number of subplots

Incorporating very few subplots

Bad pacing IS when a piece of media has

“Wasted” time, ie, screentime or page space dedicated to plotlines or characters that are ultimately irrelevant to the plot or thematic resolution at the cost of properly developing that resolution. Pour one out for the SW:TCW fans.

The presence of a sidestory or giving secondary characters a separate resolution of their personal arc is not “bad writing,” and only becomes a pacing issue if it falls into one of the other two categories.

Not enough time, ie, a story attempts to involve more plotlines than it has time or space to give satisfying resolutions to, resulting in all of them being “rushed” even though the writer(s) made scrupulous use of every second of page/screentime and made sure every single section advanced those storylines.

Padding for time, ie, Open-World Game Syndrome. Essentially, you have ten hours of genuinely satisfying story….but “short games don’t sell,” so you insert vast swathes of empty landscape to traverse, a bunch of nonsense fetch quests to complete, or take one really satisfying questline and repeat it ten times with different names/macguffins, to create 40 hours of “gameplay” that have stopped being fun because the same thing happens over and over. If you think this doesn’t happen in novels, you have never read Oliver Twist.

Another note on pacing: There are, except arguably in standalone movies, at least two levels of pacing going on at any given time. There’s the pacing within the installment, and the pacing within the series. Generally, there’s three levels of pacing–within the installment (a chapter, an episode, a level), within the volume (a season, a novel, a game), and within the series as a whole. Sometimes, in fact FREQUENTLY, a piece of media will work on one of these levels but not on all of them. (Usually the ideal is that it works on all three, but that’s not always important! Not every individual chapter of a novel needs to be actively relevant to the entire overarching series.)

Honestly, the best possible masterclass in how to recognize good, bad, and “they tried their best but needed more space” pacing? If you want to learn this skill, and get better at recognizing it?

Doctor Who.

ESPECIALLY Classic Who, which has clearly-delineated “serials” within their seasons. You can pretty much pick any serial at random, and once you’ve seen a few of them, you get a REALLY good feel for things like, for example…

Wow, that serial did not need to be twelve episodes long; they got captured and escaped at least three different times and made like four different plans that they ended up not being able to execute, and maybe once or twice they would have ramped up the tension, but it really didn’t contribute anything–this could have been a normal four-episode serial and been much stronger.

Holy shit there were WAY too many balls being juggled in this, this would have been better with the concepts split into two separate serials, as it stands they only had four episodes and they just couldn’t develop anything fully

Oh my god that was AMAZING I want to watch it again and take notes on how they divided up the individual episodes and what plot beats they chose to break on each week

Eh, structurally that was good, but even as a 90-minute special that nuwho episode feels like it would have worked a lot better as a Classic serial with a little more room to breathe.

How in the actual name of god did they stretch like twenty minutes of actual story into a four-episode serial (derogatory)

How in the actual name of god did they stretch like twenty minutes of actual story into a four-episode serial (awestruck)

If you’re not actively trying to learn pacing, either for literary analysis or your own writing…honestly? Just learn to differentiate between whether the pacing is bad or if it just doesn’t appeal to you. There’s a WORLD of difference between “The pacing is too slow” and “the pacing is too slow for me.”

“I really prefer a slower build into a universe; the fact that it opens in medias res and you piece together where you are and how the magic system works over the next several chapters from context is way too fast-paced for me and makes me feel lost, so I bounced off it” is, usually, a much more constructive commentary than “the pacing is bad”.

And when the pacing really is bad, you’ll be doing everyone a favor by being able to actually articulate why.

mylordshesacactus

Show, Don’t Tell

This is a very specific rule that has been taken dramatically out of context and is almost always used incorrectly.

“Show, don’t tell” applies to character traits and worldbuilding, not information in the plot.

It may be easier to “get” this rule if you forget the specific phrasing for a minute. This is a mnemonic device to avoid Informed Attributes, nothing more and nothing less.

Character traits like a character being funny, smart, kind, annoying, badass, etc, should be established by their behavior in-universe and the reactions of others to them–if you just SAY they’re X thing but never show it, then you’re just telling the audience these things. Similarly you can’t just tell the audience that a setting has brutal winters and expect to be believed, when the clothing, architecture, preparations, etc shown as common in that setting do not match those that brutal winters would necessitate.

To recap:

Violations of Show Don’t Tell:

A viewpoint character describing themselves as having a trait (being a loner, easily distractable, clumsy, etc) but not actually shown to possess it (lacking friends, getting distracted from anything important, or dropping/tripping over things at inopportune moments.)

The narration declaring an emotional state (”Character A was furious”) rather than demonstrating the emotion through dialogue or depicting it onscreen.

A fourth-wall-breaking narrator; ie, Kuzco in The Emperor’s New Groove directly addressing the audience to explain that he’s a llama and also the protagonist, is NOT the same! This actually serves as a flawless example of showing rather than telling–we are SHOWN that Kuzco is immature and egotistical, even though that’s not what he’s saying.

A fictional society or setting being declared by the narrative to be free of a negative trait–bigotry, for example–but that negative trait being clearly present, where this discrepancy is not narratively engaged with.

(For example: There is officially no sexism in Thedas and yet female characters are subject to gendered slurs and expectations; the world of Honor Harrington is supposedly societally opposed to eugenics, yet “cures” for disability and constant mentions of a nebulous genetic “advantage” from certain characters’ ancestry are regular plot points that are viewed positively by the characters and are not narratively questioned.)

A character declaring that their society has no bigotry, when that character is clearly wrong, is not the same thing.

The narrative voice declaring objective correctness; everyone who agrees with the protagonist is portrayed as correct and anyone who questions them is portrayed as evil, or else there is no questioning whatsoever. For example: in Star Trek: Enterprise, Jonathan Archer tortures an unarmed prisoner. What follows is a multi-episode arc in which every person he respects along with Starfleet Command goes out of their way to dismiss the idea that he should bear any guilt, or that his actions were anything but completely necessary and objectively morally correct. No narrative space is allowed for disagreement, or for the audience to come to its own conclusion.

NOT Violations of Show Don’t Tell:

A character explaining a concept to another character who would logically, within that universe/situation, be the recipient of such an explanation.

An in-universe explanation BECOMES a SdT violation if the explanation fails to play out in reality, such as a spaceship being described as slow or flawed in some way but never actually having those weaknesses. Imagine if the Millennium Falcon was constantly described as a broken-down piece of junk…and never had any mechanical failures, AND Han and Chewie weren’t constantly shown repairing it!

Information being revealed through dialogue, period. Having your hacker in a heist movie describe the enemy security system isn’t “telling” and thus bad writing. Having information revealed organically through dialogue is what “show” means.

The “as you know” trope is technically a Show Don’t Tell violation, despite being dialogue, because it’s unnatural within the universe and serves solely to let the writer deliver information directly, ie, telling.

Characters discussing their own actions and expressing their motivations and/or decision-making process at the time.

The existence of an omnipotent narrator, or the narration itself confirming something. Narration saying “there was no way anyone could make it in time” is delivering contextual information, not breaking Show Don’t Tell.

Keep in mind that “Show, don’t tell” is meant to be advice for beginning authors. Because “telling” is easier and requires less skill than “showing,” inexperienced authors need to focus on getting as much “show” in as possible.

However, “telling” is also extremely important. Sometimes, especially in written formats, the most appropriate way to deliver information to the audience is to just say it and move on.

Keep in mind that a viewpoint character in anything but…a portal fantasy, essentially…is going to be familiar with the world they’re in. Not every protagonist needs to be a raw newcomer with zero knowledge of their new world! In most cases, a viewpoint character is going to know things that the audience doesn’t. Generally, the ONLY natural way to introduce worldbuilding in this situation is to just have the narration point them out. (It makes sense for Obi-Wan to have to explain the Force; it would make no sense for Han to explain the concept of space travel to Luke, who grew up in this universe and knows what the hell a starship is. So, if you’re writing the novelization of A New Hope, you need to just say “and so they jumped into hyperspace, the strange blue-white plane that allowed faster-than-light travel” and move the hell on.)

For that matter, in some media (ie, children’s cartoons) where teaching a moral lesson is the clear intent, a certain level of “telling” is not only appropriate but necessary!

The actual goal of “showing” and “telling” is to maintain a balance, and make sure everything feels natural. Show things that need to be shown, and…don’t waste everyone’s time showing things that would feel much more natural if they were just told.

But that’s not nearly as pithy a slogan.

mylordshesacactus

(Reblog this version y’all I fixed some really serious typos)