hi i am cal, they & them, and this is my second attempt at an introduction because my first one was not doing it for me. i’m currently attempting to get back into writing, and maybe make some friends along the way. please send me wips, asks, tag games, messages, prompts, anything. interaction is difficult so some direction would be helpful.
My problem with heterosexual romance novels (which I am reading under duress due to my coworker book club but find somewhat entertaining cuz they're not something I normally wld read) is that whenever the love interest is an asshole the author also makes him all dommy dom. when what I really want is for him to be thoroughly put in his place. All of these shithead Christian grey knockoff guys in these books would be excellent brat material but nobody cares what I want. Nobody cares what I want
of all the iterations of the Damaged Character, i'm such a total sucker for what i call the longest con. yes! please! god! DO IT, make your ENTIRE LIFE into the world's most elaborate undercover operation, seal up every chink and crack and opening, make them ALL THINK you're evil and dissolute and louche [looks piercingly at Laurent VI of Vere]—make them fully believe you're just a shallow pretty playboy who might also be a sociopath [stares at Fei Du]—let the entire town be convinced you're an unhinged serial killer who's just too smart to get caught [gazes at Lee Dongsik and tries not to sob]. THEY'RE ALL WRONG ABOUT YOU, especially the ninnyhammer who to his complete horror is falling ineluctably in love with you, but DON'T DROP YOUR STORY, whatever you do, however tormented and devastated you are, because you're SO CLOSE to your revenge—
Katniss *thinking about the Mockingjay pin*: Wow this was Madge’s aunt’s, what a precious and valuable family heirloom, it must have been special to her, I’ll treasure it forever.
Maysilee *thinking about the Mockingjay pin*: this bird is ugly and stupid I’m literally never going to wear this.
We don’t talk enough about how fanfiction writers love to give character large amounts of non-specific paperwork they hate doing
say more pls
Yeah sure why not.
So most stories take place when Events are Happening, and this means that no matter what kind of job the characters have, they’re probably not too focused on them. Fanfics, on the other hand, often show the down time. Which means that the writer has to figure out what the hell these characters do in their jobs. Unless the characters have a job the author understands or knows well, the author is often at a loss for what to have the character doing.
So they sit them at a desk and give them paperwork. What is the paperwork for? Rarely specified. It is Paper Work for the characters Important Adult Job they have and they need to read or sign it or something. And there’s always a line about how Character Hates Paperwork. Doesn’t matter if Character is a Mafia Boss or a General or a Diplomat, here they are in an office trying to get out of Doing Paperwork.
There’s also a sense of, like, humor and mundanity that comes with it. Like the examples above, it always particularly stands out to me when a dangerous individual is griping about some paper they need to sign or something. The less you can picture Character doing paperwork, all the better to force it upon them. If Character is saddled with Paperwork, they’re usually now concerned about the physical damages their motley crew causes, because damage = More Paperwork.
Anyway I just think it’s fun or funny, Sephiroth doing paper work and Sawada Tsunayoshi doing paper work and this just in, Tony Stark is doing paperwork. Sorry, Phoenix Wright can’t play right now. Yeah, it’s paperwork.
A very non-exhaustive list of actual paperwork they could be completing/reviewing/approving, in no particular order:
Your Royalty or Nobles in your feudal society should be doing this constantly unless you want to show how they're losing the kingdom and about to be usurped or overthrown.
petitions, speech-writing, complaints, requests, assignations, disputes, judiciary forms, declarations that need signing off on, matters requiring the Royal seal, matters requiring a royal endorsement, pardons, judgments, invitations, rebuttals, census data, crop yields projected or actual, livestock records, water rights, Sumptuary laws, taxes taxes taxes...
solid point there!
even when the royalty look like they're just fucking off to have fun, they're doing Socially Mandated Fuck-Off and Have Fun Time
Tournaments? Gotta show you're manly and virile through sport, or the nobles will supplant you. Feasts? Gotta show you're wealthy through conspicuous consumption, or the nobles will supplant you. Patronizing the arts? Gotta show you're cultured and erudite, or the nobles will laugh at you behind your back and probably supplant you.
Lawyer here. Here’s some more mundane/modern ones for you:
And if you want to get into modern military, the forms are numbered, and people will refer to them by either their actual name, or the number. (Have you filled out the 4187 for this? Yes, I filled out the personnel action form.)
The military has so many forms.
If you want to add a rage level, there’s the Regular Paperwork and then the special hell of Fuckup Paperwork.
Cause there’s the invoice, and the follow up invoice and the we are about to have a problem follow-up invoice.
There’s the incident report and then the I swear I yelled at that worker about this don’t be mad at me if they do it again second warning documentation
The requisition form and the it has been six months now get me the fucking thing or you’re gonna hear from Cindy escalations form.
Paperwork has layers and protocols and backups.
May I add: GRANTS.
If your character is any sort of lawful do-gooder or works for anything charitable or non-profit, they'll always need to deal with grants.
Grants are when a government, organization or rich person say "I have a large amount of money and I want it to be spent on this cause I care about". And everyone who is attached to the cause has to write an essay about why they deserve it including
And THEN if they get the money, they've got to keep track of every item on that list and write a report AGAIN when the project is done explaining how according-to-plan everything went.
If they're a Batman sort and they're giving away money, then someone has to read through two hundred copies of the above.
Grant writing and management is a full time job that's NOTHING but paperwork and emails, but is also necessary for most nonprofit and charitable organizations.
The biggest compliment ever is when someone sees your creative work and says that they’re now inspired to go out and create something, too
There was an interesting thread on Bluesky dissecting Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's relationship
TL:DR - It seems like Gaiman has been exaggerating the level of closeness between them for YEARS
Quote of the day
For a more technical term, desires about our desires (e.g. be less impulsive, more selfless, etc.) are called "second-order desires." If you have good second-order desires in place, you can trust them to produce good likes.
If you guys are like me, and you struggle a little with describing locations, can I suggest…
as a lifesaver.
There is a WHOLE SERIES of these!! Amazon has like half the series under Ackerman, Angela and the other half under Puglisi, Becca, but both authors worked on all of them. The Emotion Thesaurus has done SO MUCH to help me improve my writing of body language and such too. And they’re each like $5-6 for the Kindle version with quick links in the table of contents and everything. I cannot recommend these enough, they’re super special awesome.
An example of how this has helped me was in this section here; the first photo is the first draft and the second is the final version of this scene. I mostly used The Emotion Thesaurus for this; the emotion being conveyed here is relief and relaxing after suppressing stress for a long time, but S himself isn’t really aware of his own emotional state here and I could not use those words to describe what he was feeling inwardly. So instead I used what he feels in his body and his surface rationalization, and it just reads so nicely this way imo.
These are also on Zlibrary for people who do not want to support amazon.
Honestly, I need to see more of the “MC does not so great thing in a worse situation in order to survive” trope. Like listen—the thing about people doing things to survive is that survival is not always moral, and yet in media I see characters like this villainized or the MC always gets to do the moral thing.
Here’s the thing: a lot of times, our options don’t include the moral thing. So let your MC choose between one bad thing and another. Let them decide which one they can live with.
if you push buttons on a keyboard, letters will appear on the screen. and with that power you can do anything
i think it was cruel to give lightning mcqueen a foot fetish, as he lives in a world where all feet are wheels. he has nothing.
sorry i wasnt talking to you i think