Tag: long post

On Writing Prompts and Learning to Get Out of Your Own Way

So on Fridays I sometimes attend this writing prompt group in the city. We’re given a prompt, 15 minutes to write, some people read aloud what they wrote, then there’s wine and snacks. After there’s a second round with a new prompt, and those who didn’t read before get a chance to go.

One thing that happens consistently at these is that I write almost twice as much as everyone else, about 400-500 words on average. The reason for this is two-fold, first that I type on a laptop (just to get the basic mechanical reason out of the way), but second is because doing a lot of these kinds of prompts taught me how to get out of my own way. 

When you’ve only got 15 minutes to write, you don’t have a lot of time to shoot down your own ideas. You have to pick one and just go with it. For example, one day the prompt was “mirrors”, which made me think of the island of Murano in Venice and how once any apprentice who stole the secret of how to make mirrors would be punished by death. So I wrote a little intro to what could have been a larger historical novel about a Venetian boy who gets apprenticed to one of the mirror-makers on the island in the 16th c. 

And y’know what? It wasn’t that bad! In fact, the organizer of the class pulled me aside and asked if I had brought something from outside the class there to read, which would have defeated the purpose of the writing session. I was both angry and flattered. No, I had not written outside class, how would I have possibly known what the prompt was going to be in advance? But I was flattered because the length and quality made him think it couldn’t have possibly been written on the spot. 

I told the teacher no, I just like to do prompts like this in my spare time. As my followers here will know, when I feel blocked I’ll sometimes solicit Bagginshield story prompts and write out short fills for those. I usually spend about 20 minutes on the first draft because the point is not to get bogged down. 

To this, the teacher responded, “Weird.”

Which, dear reader, actually kinda pissed me the fuck off because this guy was a writing teacher and he called the fact I fill writing prompts for fun “weird” but anyway. 

My point is, I never would have written about that Venetian apprentice without the prompt, but I also wouldn’t have written about him, or as many words as I did, if I had second-guessed myself. I was missing dates, facts, I was making basic research errors about the era that a historian would have caught. Without the time limit and the need to get something down, I would have worried about my own authority on the subject, about how my audience would receive the story, about my character, and the biographical details of his life, to the point where I never would have written anything at all.

But you know what? The story was really well received by the group! And most of them didn’t know enough about the era to question the small errors, but just appreciated the story for what it was. All of those issues can be fixed in the second draft anyway, and that kind of “inner editor” worrying is what stops you from writing the draft in the first place. Of course, I don’t always remember this lesson, it’s part of why I’m writing this now, to remind myself. 

The lesson though is that you’re actually probably a better storyteller than you realize. You have good instincts. You have worked hard to get to where you are. Just let yourself write the first story that comes to mind. Write it quickly and don’t agonize over every line, put down the most natural line that comes to you as soon as it occurs to you, and the one after that. Write for exactly 15 minutes, so that you’re not giving up too much of your day on a dead-end idea, but rather an exact amount you can control. Don’t worry about the audience, because if it’s not good, you haven’t lost too much time and energy. You can just bury the piece (and if you come back a day later, maybe you’ll discover it’s not nearly as bad as you thought). Do a bunch of these and you’ll not only have a folder full of story ideas you can draw upon for a rainy day, they’ll also have a nice seed of work already completed. And if you don’t come back, you’ll have learned and grown as a writer, free to experiment without worrying about wasted effort. 

on fanfic & emotional continuity

svengooliecat:

earlgreytea68:

the-pen-pot:

earlgreytea68:

nianeyna:

earlgreytea68:

fozmeadows:

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. 

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. 

“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?”

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. 

As someone who’s fic writing tends more towards the plotty, I still think that it’s very true to say fanfiction is a genre apart from others and is based almost entirely on the characters and their responses. The stories I write are only interesting because of how *those particular characters* are reacting to what’s happening. That’s where the ideas come from. It’s not “I have a story and now I need some characters” but “I wonder what John would do if he discovered Sherlock was an Omega after having lived with him for almost a year” etc. etc.

And as an aside, that’s part of why moving towards original writing is so challenging for me, and my approaches aren’t working. I don’t know the characters. I haven’t invented the characters yet, and until I invent the characters, I’m not going to give a rat’s ass about how they’ll react to stuff.

As a fic writer who struggles the same way, what I find is to give yourself the freedom you have in fic. You’re right, seldom does a fic writer write a story in the abstract and then plug characters in. Fic writers write the story for the characters. So, with original fiction, the thing I’ve started doing is starting with the character. I have an idea for a character, and then I just spend some time with that character. If I give that character room to breathe, that character finds a plot, and that’s the best kind of original writing. It might take “longer” to get to the “story,” but I think that’s true, because it would definitely take me longer to hammer out some kind of plot and then force a character in it. I just have to recast the work getting to know my character as every bit important writing work as doing an outline. 

Defining fanfiction as its own genre totally makes sense. I think that’s why I liked The Captive Prince trilogy so much. Pacat’s writing style resembled that of some of the best character/plot driven fanfictions–except it was original work and it blew my mind because I was not expecting such awesomeness (and fanfic tropes like enemies-to-lovers, Canadian bed trick, hidden identity, etc.) in a published novel series. It made me wonder why it never occurred to me to write my original work like fanfiction. Perhaps all this time I never took fanfic as seriously as I should have.

Fanfiction doesn’t allow us to hide behind stock characters. We might have much lower standards for plots–they don’t have to be complicated, just solid–but when we write our characters we fall in love with them all over again, and it shows.

Logan is a Western, and it Changes Everything

rickthaniel:

Logan makes every other superhero film in the past fifteen
years look like a cheap parlor trick. For two hours and twenty one minutes, it
locks you in and makes you watch a movie that doesn’t work the way it’s supposed
to. It’s uncomfortable and messy and it doesn’t satisfy. Wolverine’s claws are
uneven and his kills are ugly. People die with no last words, no proper sendoff
and no closure. Logan provokes
visceral reactions time and again, not because it’s violent, but because it’s
painful, and everything else now looks plastic by comparison.

From
the top, let me say I hope this doesn’t come across as some edgy rant arguing
for more gore and profanity in superhero films. That’s not my point. I should
also confess that I have no experience with the X-Men comics, or with comics at
all for that matter. I’m not arguing that The
Avengers would have been better with a few more fucks given. All I’m saying
is that Logan changes things, and the
rest of the genre needs to take notice and adapt.

I
expect words like “raw” and “gritty” will be thrown around a lot in discussing Logan. I’m hesitant to use that
vernacular because it’s the same language people use to describe The Dark Knight, and the two really aren’t
that comparable. They both step outside the box of contemporary comic book
movies, but where The Dark Knight is a thriller, Logan is a western, and therein lies the
difference that makes Hugh Jackman’s final outing so important.

In
the modern Hollywood superhero archetype, the greater message to the audience
is apparent to the characters. Superman is a symbol of justice and goodness,
and he understands that just as well as we do. In The Dark Knight, Batman represents the basic human struggle between
morality and chaos that thematically pervades throughout the whole film. Both
forces are at work in Bruce Wayne, and The Joker and Two Face bring that inner
conflict into the spotlight. And Batman gets
this. He understands he’s a symbol in some broader thematic picture.

In
a western, Batman doesn’t get it. We get it, and therefore we have certain
expectations about how Batman is supposed to act and how the plot is supposed
to go. Batman doesn’t see the deeper significance of his circumstances, so his
actions don’t match our expectations. He doesn’t stop to consider what he’s supposed to do in a narrative sense.

The Dark Knight
is clean. Maybe that’s controversial, but it shouldn’t be. Yes, Rachel dies. Yes, Harvey
Dent succumbs to The Joker’s twisted social experiment, and yes, Batman takes
the fall when he shouldn’t have to. But that all makes sense. It fulfills the
thematic ends we anticipated when we bought our tickets. We understand what Batman
and Joker represent, and we’d be shocked if the movie ended happy. In the end,
we get what we paid for. It’s clean. It satisfies.

Logan does not satisfy. It isn’t clean because no part of it
understands the rules it’s supposed to follow. Professor X insists on being
crass, pathetic and generally wrong about everything, despite our presumption
that he’s meant to be kind, strong and wise. Characters die in the middle of fights,
dazed and confused with no forewarning, no tidy arc or epiphany and no greater
thematic significance. And when they’re buried, Logan offers no words to explain why. It doesn’t resolve the major
plot points revealed in the film’s third act. It refuses to give us the
explanations we demand. Hell, the whole crux of the plot is that Wolverine’s
powers have stopped functioning properly. He doesn’t work the way he’s supposed
to.

I
also expect Logan will see a lot of
comparisons to last year’s Deadpool. After
all, the two films mark the first two consecutive steps in Fox’s ongoing
experiment in R-rated superhero movies. The difference is that Deadpool puts a filter on the
established tropes of the genre, while Logan
takes a filter off.

At
no point while watching Ryan Reynolds bloodily slice up extras and spout crude
one-liners did I see Deadpool as some
new norm. It doesn’t feel natural, it feels off. In a good way mind you, but
off nonetheless.  Logan, on the other hand, makes everything else feel off. Suddenly,
every prior film Fox, DC and Disney have ever put out in the genre looks fake.
Where’s the ugliness? Where’s the pain? I’m not asking Chris Hemsworth to start
decapitating people in Thor: Ragnarok,
but looking back now I can’t help notice all the lines, all the actions, all
the moments that felt stiff and unnatural. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has
always been primed and focus-tested, there’s no revelation there. The Hollywood
blood was visibly coursing right beneath the skin, and everyone accepted it.
But now Logan has cut an adamantium
gash and the Hollywood is spilling out, impossible to ignore anymore.

Hugh
Jackman’s Wolverine holds a pedigree as old as the contemporary superhero film.
Tobey Maguire’s masked debut in Spiderman
made such a huge splash upon release in 2002 that lots of people forget it was
preceded two years by the original X-Men.
Long before Robert Downey Jr. became an idol for American children, Hugh Jackman
and Wolverine laid the early groundwork that would become modern comic book blockbusters
as we know them. The X-Men franchise built the foundation for the genre’s
multibillion-dollar card tower, and in one breath James Mangold blew the whole
thing down and showed us all what a façade it was.

Up
until now, superhero flicks have been Hollywood’s Top 40 pop hits. Sure Batman
might switch into a minor key and Deadpool slapped a parental advisory label on
the cover, but they still played on the same stations. Logan composes in a whole different time signature. It’s new and
different and feels unnatural, and it can’t be ignored.

numenor:

ok so like ive been thinking,,,, where does this hobbit movie fanon thing come from that dwarves are Super Good at dealing w/ mental illness?? like in the movies the dwarves’ literal response to the gold sickness is “hey thorin :/ that’s .. not entirely cool but we’re not gonna do anything about it.” like. they had no plan to help thorin, at all, they just sat around and waited for him to pop out of gold-sickness. and you can make an argument for hobbits dealing badly with mental illness (see frodo’s choice to ditch shire life because he could never quite fit back in with his physical/emotional scars) but dwarves? ?? idk man

IMO if I had to guess… it’s wish-fulfillment on the part of the authors, which is pretty rampant in any fandom and often has nothing to do with the observable canon. Another possibility is that discussions of LGBTQA+ lifestyle with an emphasis on genderqueer and trans* became more common on Tumblr around 2013, the same time as the Hobbit AUJ came out (at least, that’s when I observed it becoming more of a common topic). This rise, combined with Gimli’s comment in The Two Towers that dwarf women and men are indistinguishable (which is backed up by Tolkien and Pratchett), led to widespread headcanons that dwarves were far more accepting of gender and sexuality. At the same time it was also a common trope for AUJ fics regardless of ship that Bilbo came from a more rigid society with regards to gender and sexuality, and found freedom in the ability to express his true self around the dwarves. Given that being understanding of sexuality, gender, and mental illness are often intertwined on Tumblr as values, it’s possible that when giving dwarves an understanding culture towards gender and sexuality, mental illness crept in too.

However, I would say I agree, I think at least as far as PJ’s movies go, they have a lot more in common with the Klingon culture with its fixation on physical prowess if anything. The closest in-movie example I can see of dwarves dealing with mental illness would be their treatment of Bifur, but that could be argued that dwarves are good at dealing with battle-related injuries like amputation, missing eyes, or embedded axes to the skull. Btw, it’s worth noting this is totally divorced from Tolkien’s actual works, where Gimli isn’t nearly as gruff or buffoonish, and is noted for being a steadfast and supportive friend who I think would be much better at dealing with mental illness than his movie counterpart.

As I’ve noted in a bunch of my dragon sickness meta, such as this one, the dwarves really, really do suck at helping Thorin with his dragon sickness. Even Dwalin who arguably does the most to snap him out of it still calls Thorin “King” when what Thorin really needs is a friend. Balin basically admits defeat from the beginning. There seems to be a pervasive culture where even mentioning that the king may be ill is taboo. No one seems to have done anything about Thror for similar reasons. Maybe it’s limited to monarchs where their word is law so their mental illness can’t be treated or even acknowledged, but given the physically-focused nature of the dwarven culture portrayed in the films, this is my very long winded and rambly way of agreeing with you that while it’s up to the author in fanfic, as very good case can be made that dwarves are really inept and uncomfortable with dealing with mental illness.

It’s a very interesting point you raise!

nourgelitnius:

the-roci:

i-just-like-commenting:

Somebody posted about how we in The Expanse fandom need to express our feel freely, so here are some I’ve been having over on Facebook, but haven’t complained about there.

Somebody on their promotional team has basically been going full “thank you Miller for saving Earth” all over their channel and it irks me every time I see it, because have you checked with your writers, guys? Over and over for the last five episodes – hell, more back into last season! – Miller has expressed the attitude that he is so done with Earth. He’s a Belter, and while he may not have Diogo’s pride in that (after all, he can’t help where he was born), he certainly has a lot of contempt for Earth and how they’ve treated Belters nonetheless.

Miller didn’t save the the Earth, he saved Julie. And Julie saved Earth. Because Julie was an Earther and loved Earth and just wanted to go home, she didn’t want to destroy it. But the protomolecule needed to “continue the work” and so it wouldn’t let her change their course. What Miller did by merging with her was give Julie the strength to steer Eros to Venus and save Earth.

Julie is your hero. She was the engine driving that asteroid. Miller was only her helper.

Thank you Julie.

Thank you, Julie, indeed.

Oh definitely, like I think they did it because Miller was the better known character who had more screen time (so maybe the marketing team just didn’t know better?) but that was all Julie there. Julie is the savior, Miller is the sidekick who doesn’t give  a fuck about the cause just getting the hero to her goal. I mean, I will say I think even if he didn’t care about Earth as a political unit he IS concerned about the massive loss of life, they did stress that one reason he killed Dresden was because Dresden would almost certainly kill a lot more people someday. But that was absolutely Julie who saved the day, and he just helped her. Even the most fanatical Miller fan should be able to acknowledge that.

Describe your writing process in three words or less.

tallysgreatestfan:

random-nexus:

tygermama:

stylishbutdefinitelyillegal:

letslipthehounds:

kaelinaloveslomaris:

th3rm0pyl43:

ellyah:

thattranshotguy-alex:

eileentothestars:

fixyourwritinghabits:

the-last-dark-unicorn:

thelotusflowerbloomtwice:

moonrose91:

tea-lace-roses:

journaling-junkie:

allthegoodbooksaretaken:

yeahwrite:

erikadprice:

writerfan2013:

holyromanempress:

ninjacookiexd:

ryttu3k:

thatpersonrightbehindyou:

glitchboygirlidek:

periegesisvoid:

jewishzevran:

turbomun:

under-the-bed-tales:

octoblets:

prismportrait:

frankpanioncube:

papyrusthegreatskelenton:

older-and-more-determined:

demmyguard:

ask-shadowknight-of-the-stars:

smollizardandrobot:

therealshootingstar:

toastyhat:

fatal-blow:

g-g-freak:

cameoappearance:

thegladhatter:

casketscratcher:

blackcrowcalling:

“Well, fuck.”

“USE THE SPOONS”

“oops okay nevermind”

“throw things together”

There we… are?

“Just fake it”

“Someone should cry.”

“I’m very tired”

“Ok gotta scribble…”

Okay, which ship?

“goodbye, lettuce friend.”

“This is shit”

“Writers block why!?”

Undergrads will SUFFER

Long winded, commas

“Where’s the eraser”

How do ending

DONT STOP ME

what middle?

fuck fuck fuck

Not enough smut

needs more plot

LOUD FRANTIC SCREAMING

So much sin

Stream of consciousness

Peril solves everything

who did this

Hmm… okay… well…

Wasnt expecting that

Need. More. COFFEE!!!

“So how do you feel about me breaking your legs? Oh. Gonna do it anyway”

Fuck. Fine. Assholes.

This is garbage…

“Satan please help”

idfk don’t judge me

“There.  Good enough.”

“I’m gonna cry.”

“At 3 A.M.?”

“Caesar or Cicero?”

Eh, that works.

Didn’t expect that.

Not enough spoons

how?
process?
words?

Why 2am, Muse?!

unpopular opinion anxiety

Make them suffer.

Julie Mao and Joe Miller in the AU of your choice (my AU queen) in which they actually get to meet and hit it off

nourgelitnius:

Who made the first move;

Julie. But I get the feeling that Miller kinda made the first mood by sticking by her. He decided that it was his job to protect her from whatever she couldn’t protect herself from, and he stood by that decision. And because of that, and only because of that, Julie was able to see the good parts of Miller, watch him as he grew, and fall in love with him. Then she realized if anything was going to happen, she was going to have to take the first step.

Who said ‘I love you’ first;

Miller. I mean, come on. Miller. 

How often they fight;

More frequently in the beginning, but while it tapers off and they learn to communicate better, they still fight at times.

Whose big spoon/little spoon;

Miller is the big spoon. He seems like a cuddler. I feel like he would seek her out in the night and just…latch on. At first it’s a bit of adjustment for her, used to sleeping alone or only with partners who weren’t over affectionate. But she learns to love it.

What their nicknames are for each other;

I can see Miller starting to call her Jules in that lazy way of his. I think Julie would call him Miller for the longest time, and because of this, using his first name becomes more of an endearment than anything. Used only when she is trying to really get through to him or when they are have private moments.

Whose the better cook;

Neither of them can cook for shit. Julie can at least heat stuff up without ruining it. Miller has spent so much time with alcohol as his food pyramid, that all he ever did was eat out. Why cook when you can go down the street to the local kiosk or bar? 

Their song;

I don’t think they would have a song, so much as they love discovering each other’s taste in music. Miller typically would be lightly judgmental of some of the more trendy stuff that Julie listens to, but he’s learned to not say anything about it if he doesn’t want her going silent and deadly on him. She can hold a grudge to last a millennium. 

Miller probably only has one or two albums that he actually intentionally listens to, and Julie has learned to be a little weary when those come on. She calls them his blue albums as he only puts them on when he is feeling down on himself, facing a truth about himself he doesn’t like.

Who remembers their anniversaries;

They do a pretty good job of remembering them equally, but I think they would creep up on Miller more than they would Julie. She is methodical and keeps her calendar up to date. Miller doesn’t even have a calendar in so much as something to put reminders in.  

Their favorite thing to do together;

Sit in each other’s company. Julie loves to watch as he peels back the layers of cases and mysteries. Miller loves to see her planning activist activities and will give her tips on how to deal with the local police and not do anything stupid.

Who ‘wears the pants’ in the relationship;

Julie can be the stronger one at times, the one more willing to take action, but there is no clear pants wearer in the relationship as neither likes being told what to do or really consulting the other. Thus the point of many of their fights in the beginning. 

How they would get engaged;

Not entirely sure they would? Miller’s already been married once, and I am sure he would love to marry Julie, but he doesn’t feel like it’s needed. As long as he gets to keep loving her, that’s all he cares about.

For Julie I see her viewing marriage with more hesitation. She grew up in rich social circles that often used marriage as a bargaining tool, as the rich have done since the dawn of time. She knows that she chose Miller, but she can’t shake the feeling of how she felt about it when she was younger, when she realized romance and respect weren’t a the the root of those relationships.

What their wedding would be like;

If they did marry, it would be small. And a diplomatic endeavor. OPA friends in the same room as a couple police officers and the crew of the Roci and a Marine. The kind of mob style wedding where weapons are left at the door and politics are banned. 

But she would have a simple dress, her hair pulled back, he would wear a vest and a button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The reception would be loud and the alcohol would flow in some little private room at the back of a bar. 

How many kids they’ll have;

I can see Miller entertaining the idea of kids. He likes the concept. Loves Julie. But he knows his age and thinks about what it would be like to leave Julie with a kid when he finally dies. But I think the longer they are together, the more Julie realized that she is not her family, the more she takes to the idea of having a kid. 

It’s making up with Clarissa that helps her finally decide. Even then they only manage one kid, it’s enough. Miller can’t get enough of the kid. Talking to it like it were an adult and talking out his cases with it. 

At one point, in the middle of the night, she finds him holding the baby, telling it about oceans and rain. What it must feel like to be devoured by a such a thing. 

That’s when she finally feels free of Julies-Pierre and like she can breathe.

ADHD ASK GAME by adhdcomorbid

I love those ask games so I made one for us ADHDers.

1. Are you a fast talking hyperactive or a pacing hyperactive?

Fast talking

2. Are you a doodling daydreamer or a window gazing daydreamer?

Doodling

3. Do you like hand stims, foot stims, or mouth stims the most?

Hand stims

4. Are you a planner person or a phone reminder person?

Phone reminder

5. Do you hyperfocus on productive things or irrelevant things?

Irrelevant things (like this hell site)

6. Are you a multitasking ADHDer or an overhwhelmed ADHDer?

Overwhelmed

7. 504 or IEP?

8. Diagnosed or Self Diagnosed?

Diagnosed late in life

9. Are you a 5000 tabs person or blank tab trying to remember why person?

5000 tabs

10. Are you a self-hate when rejected or extreme rage when rejected kind of person?

A bit of both

11. Are your family do yoga people, eat clean people, or put down the phone people?

The latter

12. Which were you called the most in school: lazy or irresponsible?

Lazy

13. High stim or Low stim seeker?

High stim

14. Comorbid conditions?

Probably some light social anxiety and depression that has been a bitch to train myself out of as best I can.

15. Which have you been told more often: meds are cheating or meds are street drugs?

Street drugs

16. Not social to mask symptoms or overcompensating to mask symptoms?

Both, I go through ups and downs of wanting to be around people.

17. Reading hyperfocus or reading impossible?

Reading hyperfocus

18. Do you parents believe it exists?

Not really, but they definitely have it too which may be why.

19. Diagnosed late or early?

Last year, so very late

20. Ever wonder how much of you is your personality and how much is ADHD?

I do wonder how much better I’d be at work without it

asgardian–angels:

pazithigallifreya:

avelera:

pazithigallifreya
replied to your post “On the use of “Mahal” as an Dwarven exclamation”

(I think the peak of Meneltarma was being used to worship Eru *prior* to Sauron’s arrival, though. I’ll have to double check)

Hmm, I think you’re right. But I do seem to recall some mention that Eru didn’t want worship, and even that worship was based on some kind of corruption and misunderstanding of Eru because the Men wanted physical immortality like the Elves had? It’s been ages since I read that part of the Silmarillion, and Numenor was never really my focus. Certainly Sauron came and corrupted the Numenorean worship and soured them towards the Valar so they thought they could seize immortality by force. 

Hmmm… I’d have to go dig the Silm out and read, and… I’m kinda totally lazy today. But I’m pretty sure at first it wasn’t seen as something corrupted, but rather something that was abandoned when Sauron arrived. I seem to recall reading somewhere that the ancient Numenorians seem at least vaguely inspired by Judiasm, prior to their contact with Sauron, when everything went to the dogs, more or less. I might have dreamed that up, i will admit, because I don’t remember all the details of it.

@asgardian–angels you’re sort of the Silmarillion buff around here? Have you read this more recently?

whooo boy it has also been a while since i’ve read the silm, but the akallabeth was one of my main interests. 

the meneltarma was considered a hallowed place devoted to eru, and they went up there on special occasions to pay respects, if you will. they never talked up there, just felt the vibes. at the base of the mountain they had the tombs of the kings. they swore fealty to eru and to respect the ban of the valar, but i don’t think there was open worship there. they certainly had a weird obsession with not dying, that was something which sauron did not start but merely played off of. they took an interest in, and a jealousy of, the valar, and felt that they deserved everlasting life, etc etc. they were super afraid of dying. they made up for it by becoming indulgent pricks who filled the void in their lives with riches and corruption as they grew older and more fearful of death. they become hostile towards other civilizations, attempting to gain power through force, again something to take the place of the immortality they really sought. they were just desperate. sauron came along and really did not need to do much. by getting under ar-pharazon’s skin, he was able to convince him and most everyone else – apart from the few faithful – that they deserved immortality, the ban was unjustified and an attempt to keep them from their true inheritance and from becoming too powerful, and that they could find redemption from the shackles of mortal existence by worshipping melkor. let it be known here that in no way did he try to get them to worship HIM – sauron purposefully directed the attention away from himself, that he is just a spokesperson for the one true god. in that way, it did turn into probably the most organized religion that existed in arda, a full on evil cult that had people sacrificed on the altar and turning on their people and breaking all alliances, and it lasted far beyond the fall of numenor, into umbar and beyond. sauron did actually start a religion, melkorism lmao. i don’t think the numenoreans ever worshipped eru to begin with, no. a lot of their ties with the valar and that realm were begrudging and soon kings stopped paying tribute upon the meneltarma altogether, way before sauron came along. sauron only infiltrated numenor during the reign of its last king.

i hope that helped, not sure lol there’s quite a bit more in unfinished tales if i had the time to look it up. but i think basically, no real organized religion in middle earth, except for the cult of melkor. that was active worship, manipulation on sauron’s part because he convinced the numenoreans that melkor would bring them immortality and that eru was a lie the valar told them to keep them from sailing west and claiming what they deserved.