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Tags: challenge: secret santa, fanfic, rating: g

My RPing mojo is highly interrupted but I'm back.

Sorry for such a long hiatus--but exams and the holidays kicked my ass. I think I might even go back to sleep right now... I'm so out of it.

But I wanted to say hi and angst that I missed the I has flavr/unicorn dual event day. I really REALLY wanted to do that.

Anyway, good to see you all. Consider Yuuki and Sora to be back now. IM me if you wanna plot (or leave a comment here)--elementalhoshi

♥Tai

I can't figure out how to embed this, but if you click here, there's a short video clip about a lion, a tiger, and a bear who were raised together and all love each other. It's super sweet.

Meanwhile, over at ZooBorns, the Boise Zoo has a new baby cotton-top tamarin! Seriously, click the link. Is that not the absolute cutest monkey face you ever, ever saw? And watch the video! She squeaks through the whole thing! I want to cuddle her. <3

Tags: animals, linkage, video
Current Mood: dead of cute
Current Music: Us - Regina Spektor

I got Adobe Photoshop for Christmas and I am sooooo freaking happy ;; -- see Seren's new icons for proof XD

From Saturday Dec 26th until Wednesday Dec 30th, I will be on vacation with my family to go visit my grandparents (now you see why Janelle hasn't come back from her hiatus yet).

Re: bar, here's the game-plan due to holidays
- On my way down, I get the Reopening log written. Shouldn't be too hard.
- Sometime while I'm down there, I post the log and you all can spam it while I'm still on vacation
- Once I get back, I get to spam you all with reply tags! ♥

If any of the employees from Smoke's would like to ICly arrange for some sort of event on that opening night, or if any players would like to arrange something OOCly, please plot it out here~

While I'm gone...
- Smoke will be busy prepping for the bar opening since we'll assume he didn't get much work done while stuck in the Chewbacca!fursuit.
- Seren will be mulling about her newfound abilities. Youth and Handmaiden are free to reference it as she'd like to start training with at least one of them every day now - *if* Jackie and Eileen are okay with that, of course ;) We can handwave a log or two between Seren and either of them, or a log between all of them, but either way Seren will make an entry about her "mulling" period upon my return!

Take care everyone, and happy holidays!

Tags: hiatus, plot bunnies

Words that should not go together: Pyramid Head and fluff.

ETA: Also? Warning for "yucky monsters" in a Silent Hill fic? Er...

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Current Music: MAY'S - Happy Christmas

Old fandom is kind of old, so this might have been said before...

You've decided to write a fanfic with some elements of Alex/Bob and Alex/Chris. That's great! I like Bob a lot, and he doesn't get as much love as some of the other characters do, since he didn't appear in the actual show, just in some supplementary materials. And it looks like you might have actually read said supplementary materials before writing about Bob, which is more than I can say for half the freakin' fandom. Good job.

It also looks like you've decided (correctly) that if Alex and Bob had hooked up back when they knew each other, it wouldn't exactly be the healthiest relationship. Also great! The reason I like the pairing is because it can get so dark. Bob is not a very good or even a very stable person-- especially when it comes to Alex. In fact, Bob has done some pretty terrible stuff.

BUT... while you got it right that Bob is not the best choice for a romantic partner if you're looking for a healthy relationship... that does not make every other person in this canon a good boyfriend. Possibly better, but still not good. Especially if they are Chris, who also does some pretty terrible stuff, becomes Alex's main enemy, and racks up the highest body count on the show (which eventually includes, depending on how you count it, Alex himself).

Sure, write Alex/Chris if you want. I like that pairing, too. A lot of people like it. There would probably even be some sweet, fluffy moments in the relationship where they felt positively toward each other and were decently happy-- there are moments like that in every relationship, no matter how screwed up the rest of it is. Maybe, under a different set of circumstances, you might even be able to argue that they could have a decently happy life together. I've seen some good AU-ish fic where getting closer to Alex made Chris question and then stop what he was doing. Stranger things have been written and it can be pulled off while staying vaguely in character.

But it's wildly out of character to write these people as they currently are and in the situation they're currently in to be having a healthy, idealized, everything-is-perfect-except-that-I-felt-more-passion-for-my-ex type of relationship, when in canon they spend 99% of their screentime trying to manipulate the hell out of each other and plotting each other's demises. I just don't get it.

gah, these names are so stupid, but initials don't work...

Current Mood: geeky

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Dear Specific You,

I'm not saying your idea is unsalvageable, but... ( Self-harming kinds of triggers? )

Just a thought.

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Tags: challenge: secret santa, fanfic, rating: g, universe: marvel adventures

Look, concrit is good. I love concrit, it is a glorious thing.

But there is a time and a place for it.

We're a pretty fringe fandom especially the fic side of things and concrit just kinda doesn't exist here. We have pretty awesome writers, beta readers are ubiquitous, but concrit exists only in theory. There has been much hand-wringing and attempts to try and provide safe spaces for it to happen with varying degrees of success. But in general it's hard to find.

You want to bring more concrit to this fandom? Brilliant. I think it's wonderful and could really add something.

But anonymous holiday fic exchanges? Not so much the place.

It's like secret santa. Everyone stands around and opens their presents and everyone's happy. I don't care if you think it's the tackiest sweater in the world, I don't even care if it IS the tackiest sweater in the world. The recipient liked it and mentioning all the things wrong with just comes off as really rude.

You want to give concrit on this piece of writing? At least wait until the author reveal, or until they repost it under their own name, send them a private message, something like that.

It doesn't matter if it's the most insightful piece of concrit in the world, you made the author look inadequate and the recipient feel awkward. And that's no fun for anyone.

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Tags: challenge: secret santa, fanart, rating: pg, universe: 616

Moonlight crossover writer - Josef's surname is Kostan. Not Konstantin. (Where did all those extra letters even come from?)

It took me about three seconds to check that on imdb. If you can't be bothered to do enough research to even get the character's name right, I shudder to think how you might have butchered his characterisation.

Current Mood: Bowl of petunias...

I've seen this in a few different fandoms and it's confused me every time, why do some writers think that sex will cause a person to speak another language even if they don't speak that language?

Example: Giovani has an Italian name, his grandparents came to the US from Italy, he wears Itlaian suits, he loves Italian food, he says "Ciao" and calls his girlfriend "bella". [He probably speaks a bit of converational Italian, has some food related language and knows some terms of endearment.]

How does that translate to him lapsing into Italian whenever he's in bed with someone? I understand he's extra sexy when he speaks Italian but the dude speaks English (not Italian); he's fluent in English (not Italian); he thinks in English (not Italian).

Now this of course varies by character but I've seen it even when canon out right says that someone doesn't speak their ancestral language. [Even in canons that have a running joke about how poorly the character speaks when they try.]

Good morning, and happy heathen-based Winter ritual! I made you a present.

Those of you reading my series of Fireborn review posts may be curious to get a game going yourself. So here's something you can throw in to give your players some social intrigue in the mythic age! There are several "epochs" (mythic-age settings) during which supernatural creatures such as dragons are trying to manipulate the major human powers from behind the scenes while disguised as humans themselves. In particular, the Atlantean age has a more courtly feel to it, and this sort of labyrinthine and subtle social negotiation fits right in:



Click the thumbnail for the full print-resolution image (PNG, ~250k), and print it right from your browser, or right-click and "Save Target Link"/"Save Link As..." to your computer. If I've done it right, which I'm not sure I have, this should be a print-ready PDF at standard 8.5x11" size.

Gamers not playing Fireborn will find it can be easily used in any courtly setting with slightly archaic language (anything from AD&D to Victorian-style urban fantasy), and even adapted with minor changes to modern games such as Vampire: The Masquerade. Strike all the references to "nonhuman" etiquette and it even makes a great set of challenge-responses for secret societies set in fully human games. It could be really cool for LARPs too (if you try it, let me know)!

Made with LovelyCharts, a nifty free online flowchart creator.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: fireborn, multimedia, roleplaying
Current Location: ~/brainstorm
Current Mood: creative

I know this is totally YMMV, because people keep writing it, but what the hell.

It's been said here before regarding dialect accents: Don't write them out. Write accurate phrasing, yes, absolutely. If a word is completely different — ach, perhaps — that's fine, but take it easy and lay off the apostrophes. I can figure out that Rose's pronunciation is closer to sumfink than something, but it takes me at least twice as long to read and translate her dialogue if it's rendered quasi-phonetically, and that makes me annoyed, which makes me like your fic far less. I shouldn't need to pause every time Carson Beckett speaks to read his words aloud three times at an attempt to figure out what he's supposed to be saying. I know the fandom; I can manage to remember that they don't have RP or Broadcast American accents and adjust accordingly.

We've been there, we've ranted that.

But the one particular "dialect" rendering that will make me flail so hard for the back button that I'm accidentally emailing China?

Small children.

Small children mangle words. I get that. I even get that some people find it cute. I found it cute when my friend's toddler gave us lello for yellow and something I can neither remember nor render (but consistent) for helicopter. People can end up with special names because of this process — see Beezus Quimby, or one particularly crackish explanation for how Rodney McKay might once have been called "Marty" by his sister. But when the point isn't to explain a particular special name or make the kid unintelligible, writing in that alternate pronunciation is really annoying, at least to some of us. I don't need to see "Unca Wodney", for example, to understand that a small child might not have mastered the consonantal clusters or unusual 'r' of modern American English. I really, really don't. That doesn't give me a warm glow of affection; it gives me the burn of saccharine overdose indigestion.

I get that some people like it or don't care. I get that the writer wants the reader to go awwww. Just know that there are some readers who will instead be going "... ewwww" and downgrading what may be an otherwise acceptable or even good fic.

how I name my characters is my choice alone, my choice. I have given the issue much thought, and contrary to you I happen to know the whole story so whether I have aptly/cleverly named them or not is not for you to say. At all.

So stop the eff bitching about my "artistic wrongdoings" and stop demanding I swap names around (*) because they "just don't fit that way" and while we're at it, stop giving me "plot advice", too. And really, stop mailing me letter after letter each other chapter I post. Or even better, get the hell off my back. SHOO! GO AWAIII!

*breathes*

//
Sorry. Just had to vent at the annoying brat. I'll go now formulate a less angry yet very short answer.
(*) for the record: I have a prophet spilling prophecies in the story. His name is Logan. I also have his best friend being supportive. His name is Eli. And yes, there's a reason for those names. *g*

Current Location: stuck on my sofa
Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: some Christmas jingles on the radio

You know what? Most normal people don't break up with the boyfriend/step-brother who they're supposedly in love with out of the blue one night because 'I want to find out if I'm really bisexual. Even though I broke up with my girlfriend for you, a man'.

Ok so maybe one in a thousand people would do that. But one would not then start to fall for another man after speaking to him for merely 2 minutes 24 HOURS AFTER BREAKING UP WITH YOUR BOYFRIEND/STEP-BROTHER WHO YOU ARE APPARENTLY STILL IN LOVE WITH! THE DUDE YOU'RE FALLING FOR SPECIFICALLY BEING SOMEONE WHO YOUR EX-BOYFRIEND/STEP-BROTHER WAS HITTING ON ONLY MOMENTS BEFORE!

And just to add insult to injury, one does not usually get down right indignant when the person YOU broke up with gets a little bit cranky when you're flirting with the person THEY WERE TRYING TO USE AS A DRUNKEN REBOUND FUCK!

Ex-boyfriends/step-brothers do not then go falling into into the arms of their sometimes cruel, over controlling ex months later just because he fucks you and then suddenly confesses that he's been pining over you all these months but for some reason decided not to tell you. But it's ok because the whole time he loved you and let's just pretend it never happened.

And let's not repeat the process another time a year down the line. And then 3 years later. Because really, WHAT KIND OF STORY IS THIS?!