Cheers to 1 year of royed art
I am so not normal about them
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
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@angelselene
Cheers to 1 year of royed art
I am so not normal about them

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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How to make Warrior Outfit of Withered Leaves (cr็ฒ่ฑ่ดด่)
@xelbleedsglitter I think you'd like this one
okay okay i can close some tabs i don't need this google image search of "pear trees"....well you never know actually

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btw if you're on this site it is your duty to reblog any post that has been prophecied to reach 10k notes. let's all annoy op
#this post deserves #10k notes #perchance.
ehh no actuallly it does not
Unfortunately for you, Tumblr is a site where the opinion least regarded on deserves notes is the original poster, sooo
@walmart-the-official
well. it's been over a month and we're not even at 1k yet, so I think I'm safe. perhaps ๐
....nate I'm really sorry I laughed at you for having posts with thousands of notes. don't do this to me
pick one
your ship goes canon
your favorite ao3 writer drops 100k of your ship + your favorite trope
i am. so sorry if i have ever used the phrase โi have an au whereโโ and led you to believe that there is an actual fic out there for you to read rather than, at best, a post where i explain the concept, and at worst it is simply something that lives in my brain
if it helps i also wish there was a fic
@picimadar @necroticfoxstorm --I feel like you're the victims of this with me the most
every day I salute those brave fanfiction writers who came before me who went "you know what'd be fucked up? this" and then shared the result publicly online. this one's for you. *writes another vivisection fic*
just wanna say i am a big fan of this trope specifically

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You know the. You know the Femme Fatale "I grew up with 10 brothers so I know how to fight" character?
That's
That's Roy Mustang
Just the opposite.
Roy "I grew up with 10 sisters so I know how to disguise covert information reconnaissance as flirting" Mustang.
"I grew up with 10 sisters so I know how to weaponize my sexual charm to disarm others and win favor."
Roy led every higher-up to believe he was just a fuckboy and a manwhore in this for his own ego and that they shouldn't view him as any kind of violent revolutionary like "no sir I'm just a slut."
Roy Mustang.
I'm surprised I didn't say this in the original post but to specify: Roy Mustang grew up in a brothel, specifically he grew up adopted by a woman running a brothel where, specifically, all the women there are in the business of covert information reconnaissance by playing escort to important politicians.
Which. is an absolutely batshit primary character backstory to mention once, late in the series, and then immediately move on from.
And actually Hiromu Arakawa did it so well that every single fan interpretation of Roy Mustang for the FMA03 anime treated him as an honest to god man-slut. Bought his whole act hook line and sinker.
And you do, in fact, need to get further into the manga/Brotherhood to realize he is just acting like a slut because surely a true and honest hand-to-god slut like this guy wouldn't be overthrowing the government.
โLiving weaponโ covers a lot and all of it is hot
โstabbing crying killing hotโ has a fantastic ring to it
This reads like Captain Picard having trouble at the replicator.
This reads like Captain
Picard having trouble at
the replicator.
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
A once-in-a-lifetime shot โ the moon perfectly framed by a rainbow. Caught at just the right time. ๐ ๐
Sourcing the photos as taken by Mark Ham on Instagram, according to one of the replies.
Happy Pride month to the moon

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@angelselene
Starting another thread because last one was getting long. Again. And I have things to say.
I finally, finally, finished my first full chapter! (Woo-hoo!!)
...Which is actually Chapter 52 because I continue to be insane and write out of order. I started writing the chapter on May 18th and finished today, the 24th. That... was significantly longer than I was expecting it to take. Of course, the chapter is significantly longer than I was expecting. (I should have known better. As you've no doubt ascertained, I R Verbose.)
For some reason, I decided to write my first chapter and my first ever erotic scene at the same time. Mostly because it looked reasonably simple in my outline. It didn't seem plot heavy, just a good establishing shot for where their relationship stands/where they stand with each other at this point in the fic. Not a particularly important sex scene - not the one where they first sleep together, not the confession chapter or the aftermath chapter. Just a nice, low-stakes porn-fest. Maybe 2-5K in total.
Ha.
Ten thousand five hundred and eleven words later... I have a sprawling, emotionally complex, surprisingly tender character study on Roy 'He Fell Harder' Mustang. Only about 2K of it is even technically porn! The first quarter is silent and seductive body-worship while the last half is pure domesticity! #couplesgoals.
I am Roy Mustang taking the Alchemist Exam levels of naive, apparently.
More after the cut because Jesus Christ this got long:
Ten thousand five hundred and eleven words later... I have a sprawling, emotionally complex, surprisingly tender character study on Roy 'He Fell Harder' Mustang.
๐คฃ Okay, one thing about writing/updating weekly means I have a 2k minimum per chapter, which means that I'm *very* conditioned to chapters of a certain length. It's very rare for me to have a single chapter balloon like that (if I do, it's usually because it's a particularly kinky sex scene. ๐). After having at least one fic updating weekly for the better part of the last five years, I've got a really good internal sense of how long 2k is, and when I need to start wrapping up a scene.
I freaking love Roy and Ed being soft with one another, and having a remarkably healthy relationship. There's so much about their world and their lives that's so fucked up, I love their relationship being a surprisingly wholesome juxtaposition to that.
Roy cultivating an upper middle class accent to the point that it actually becomes his real accent totally tracks. 100% something he would do. I love finding happy accidents like that.
And I realized half way through that I'm almost entirely against the 'describe someone rather than use their name' habit a lot of writers of slash get into because it's hard to figure out which "he" they're talking about.
These are called "epithets" and they are a *bane* in fanfic. They mostly come from the fact that if you're writing a scene with two people of the opposite sex, you can go *literal pages* without having to use either character's name because the "he" and "she" are such clear markers. So when you come to slash fanfic specifically (though I wouldn't be the least-bit surprised if this habit bled over into het fanfic too), where both of your characters have the same pronouns and you can't use that shortcut, using their names a lot can feel very repetitive.
What is *usually* actually happening is that using their names all the time highlights that you're using repetitive sentence structure (e.g. every sentence in a paragraph starts with "[character][verbs]"), and by using an epithet and having the sentence start with "the [adjective] one" *feels* like it's changing the sentence structure and it feels less repetitive.
It's not. It's a crutch at best. There is some high-level use of epithets that make sense, but they're usually things that mark out your character as singular or a unique *role* they have (e.g. referring to Roy as "the colonel" would make sense to reinforce his military role), but *in general*, my recommendation is to avoid them. Using their names all the time will feel repetitive--especially in the beginning--but they become invisible to your readers like said/asked, and they avoid confusion.
Once upon a time, I did some editing for a small slashy trashy (affectionate) publisher, and, unsurprisingly, a lot of the authors came from the school of fanfic to write original. They must have brought the epithet habit with them because avoiding epithets was *literally* in our style guide. ๐
If you feel like you're using their names too much, look at your sentence structure, because that's probably what's actually repetitive. I usually check this when I'm writing by making sure I don't start 3 paragraphs in a row the same way. It's a really easy gut-check, because that first word is so noticeable, and I've done it that way for so long, it's something I can actively and easily adjust as I'm writing.
Btw, the more characters you have in a scene, the worse the epithet problem can become. One of my friends--who has much higher tolerance for it than I do--once came crying to me because the use was so overboard, that they referred to the "blond man" in a scene where there where multiple blond characters present. Easy whoops to make when you become over reliant on epithets. I'm pretty impressed you naturally avoided them considering they are basically a staple of most fanfic.
I've spoken to you more than anyone else in 30 years of fandomโฆ combined. 10/10 would actually recommend!
I've ended up with some irl friends out of fandom. It can be a wonderful place to make connections. ๐๐๐
Having not written since high school and never finished anything (ever, in my life), I honestly don't know what my weaknesses and strengths will turn out to be.
I've kind of always written, but I rarely posted anything until right before the pandemic (I had a few fics on FFN back in the day, but that's it). I just wrote for myself because I had a fic that got relatively popular but I totally wrote myself into a corner with it, and GW had an embarrassment of riches in terms of high quality longfics that got finished, so I somehow internalized the idea that I *had* to finish things. I felt so bad about abandoning it (b/c I still can't figure out how to work it out to the end I wanted), that I just... didn't post again for like... 17 years. ๐ Pretty much always wrote but didn't post.
When I started posting again (right before the pandemic started was a weird coincidence of timing), I made a promise to myself that if I started posting, I *had* to finish it. Since then, with weekly update schedules, I've overwhelmingly finished nearly every longfic I've started posting (and the outliers tend to be shorter longfics, like less than 5 chapters--I've learned that those, I need to write all the way through before posting b/c without a schedule, I just crash on momentum). But even going back to high school, I was always told that my dialogue was my strength.
I'm so excited that you hit such a huge sure of inspiration. I hope the outlining will help you along the way as the initial rush peters out. Finishing things is literally the hardest part. The more you write, the more you develop the "muscles" for learning how to anticipate what will and won't work, and suss out the details that make the story come alive.
Do you also skydive without a parachute? Deep sea dive without a depth gauge? Go spelunking without a map? You scare me (positive).
๐I am a lazy homebody who does none of that. But I don't (typically) set out to write long, Plot-heavy fics where I *need* to know more than the general shape of what's going to happen. 50-100k of idiots in love trying to figure out how to make their relationship work? All day every day. Add capital-P Plot to that? And I'm usually fleeing in the opposite direction. Wreckage started as just "how would a group like the BAU react to RoyEd?" My GW/MCU crossover is "What if Duo Maxwell was Tony Stark's bio kid?" (I'm a fucking sucker for "bio family found" fics, and I have Feelings about how awkward that would likely be, so...). I've got other novel-length fics that are "Can I believably make this character fall in love with someone who is a genuine monster of a human being?" and "can I believably take this victim-to-lover setup and have them overcome it to have a happy ending?" Those are usually my plot bunnies. The relationship is the core plot, and then other plotty things that happen are... subplots at best? Incidental at worst? They are things that happen that force the characters either together or to adjust the relationship in some way.
There are definitely places where I can find things that would have been better written if I wrote everything ahead, and it'd be a lot easier to go back and add in details that will make later payoffs be even better, but I really struggle to write long-form without some kind of external accountability (like a posting schedule). I'm so impressed by people who can not only pre-write a whole dang novel-length fic, but who have the self-control with posting after. I've had one 50k fic I wrote entirely before I began posting, and it's the one I would absolutely forget I had to update the most because I wasn't live writing it. ๐ With fic, I have successfully defeated "perfect being the enemy of good," because if I try to make it perfect, it will never be finished, so putting it up as I go along is how I get a complete, if not perfect, project.
I'm just gonna have to read it, aren't I.
I did say I had to handwave some things to make it work. ๐ It's a monstrosity (the whole series is over 500k). Focus on your fic first. It will be there if you get bored/curious.
You want to read what I got so far? I'm considering posting the unedited version.
*grabby hands*
I am 100% procrastinating by writing this and not the fic. Shame shame shame.
I decided to try my hand at Actual Chapter One and it is kicking my ass... while wearing Izumi's house shoes. I've not written even 500 words of Ch1 in three days compared to how the words just poured out of me for Ch52. This is probably partially because my outline for this chapter is basically "Ed has nightmares" and I have no idea how to write nightmares and partially because I have even less idea how to write a genius ten year old before the trauma digs into his psyche but during the traumatic event itself. But i kinda need these first few chapters of set up because it changes his and Roy's dynamic in a subtle but important way. :sob:
More after the cut...
I've not written even 500 words of Ch1 in three days compared to how the words just poured out of me for Ch52. This is probably partially because my outline for this chapter is basically "Ed has nightmares" and I have no idea how to write nightmares
Aside from the obvious fact that the writing isn't always going to flow effortlessly, when it's this much of a problem, try taking a look at it. Sometimes, it's writerly instincts knowing that something's wrong. Sometimes, it's because you're bored (in which case, it's a safe bet your audience will be too). It could be because you're heading in the wrong direction. I love this interview between Daniel Greene and Mary Robinette Kowal about writer's block (it's queued up to the beginning of the relevant 3-minute part), because I love how Mary Robinette approaches writer's block like a diagnostic tool.
From my side, if you were asking for actual help with it, I'd tell you to not write the nightmare itself. Dream and nightmare sequences are super common in writing, but I don't (personally) tend to find they actually serve the narrative, but they're super common and writers love them. This kind of rug-yank matters more when writing original (where you're working to make readers care about your character) than fic, where people are reading specifically because they *already* care about the characters, so you can do it in fic more-so than I'd say in original.
In the case of writing nightmares specifically, I like the old horror trick of "never showing the monster." Your audience's imagination of the horrors are often better than anything you can come up with yourself, so less is typically more. It's also not the strongest opening because you're bringing in the reader, and then going to tell them almost immediately that everything they're being introduced to isn't real, and therefore, doesn't actually impact the narrative--beyond leaving the character dreaming a little sleep-deprived. Try starting with having Ed wake up shaken from the nightmare, maybe have a few lines of ideas or images from the nightmare (supposing it's related to Truth, white hands, infinite eyes, so many, many hands... for example), but the effect of the nightmare is probably a lot more important and informative than the nightmare itself is. If you're struggling to write it, skip it. There are times to push yourself through something that you need to write, and there are times where you can just *not write* the thing that you're not enjoying. I think this is the latter.
I love this interview between Daniel Greene and Mary Robinette Kowal about writer's block (it's queued up to the beginning of the relevant 3-minute part)
Watched the vid earlier and loved it. The diagnostic thing is really interesting. Probably something I'll try going forward. I also put the two mentioned books in my wish-list... because reading a new book is something it have time for. >.>
if you were asking for actual help with it, I'd tell you to not write the nightmare itself.
Yeah, i figured that out on my own. Ended up banging my head against it for a couple days before scrapping everything I had so far (not much at all) and decided to come at it from a different angle. I initially wanted to show the aftermath of Ed's encounter with Truth - and really lean on the trauma of it all, hence the nightmares - and drop hints at how it had gone down differently to canon without actually showing the encounter itself but... It totally wasn't working.
Instead, I decided to just show the encounter itself - because it really did go different - and that worked out so much better. Once I got into the groove, I managed to add details that pushed the horror aspect of the Gate farther than in canon. Like, I've been hinting at how I came up with two separate ways to make that whole experience worse for Ed (one hinted at in this chapter, one not going to be revealed until later) and then while writing I came up with a third. This boy is going to need a wheelbarrow to carry around all the trauma I'm dumping on him.
After scrapping my first attempt, I banged out 3507 words today and have now officially written two (2) chapters of this fic. Woohoo! (Future me is going to hate me during second draft)
I also went back and combined a couple of the first chapters of the fic in my outline, changed who the pov was for some of the scenes, so the beginning of the fic looks far more streamlined than before. I realized that I just didn't have enough to say for a couple of those chapters. That I was setting myself up to rehash canon scenes for no other reason than to add one or two tiny little details that won't pay off for 40 chapters.
Not worth it. Not when I'm able to slip that detail into a different scene. So that worked out.
It's amazing how much just talking through ideas with an interested and informed fandom friend can help.
Are we fandom friends now? I've never had one. I would like to be. Gotta admit, I'm constantly a smidge terrified I'm bothering or otherwise harassing you with my long exchanges. But I'm having too much damned fun to stop.
โฆ I admittedly draw the line at things like "greenette" and "pinkette."
Oh, god. The Naruto flashbacks. I didn't need that. Begone.
Fic I have Opinions about characters and characterization. Original stuff, it's on the author to sell me on.
I agree to a certain extent. Most of my grace is for grammar. A little is for characterization. Even less for plot. I swing back and forth between being a canon purist and accepting - or even liking - fanon content. There's a few fandoms I read in where characterization that's completely opposite of the source material is absolutely rampant and sometimes that can be fun if well written but sometimes I want to strangle the author instead. (Best Uncle/Brother Jiang Cheng comes to mind, as well as Woobified Obi-Wan Kenobi) I'm a big fan of the back button.
I never considered how visual media as the source material actively changes peoples writing styles but it makes so much sense when you explained. That's really cool.
The Specificity of Names is something I love ... but I tend to be very specific about how people think about other people in my fics. Also how they address them aloud. Ed would 10,000% think of Roy as The Bastard. The "would Roy think of Ed as 'the blond man'?" is a good way to think about it, at least if you're doing a close third person limited POV.
Specificity of Names is such a neat way to describe that! I kinda love it. Yes, I'm trying to be very intentional with how the pov characters think of others. It really does deepen the reader immersion and gives so much good insight without having to exposition it. I think its funny that how Ed thinks of Roy can be used as a key to read the evolution of their relationship whereas Roy's thoughts on Ed reinforce his tendency to compartmentalize his life. Two completely different sets of information being given to the reader using the same method.
I seem to have Ed call Al "Al" as well as "Alphonse"? I'm pretty sure he does both in canon (it's been a while). I'll go back and be more deliberate with it come second draft.
"would Roy think of Ed as 'the blond man'?" - Absolutely fucking not. That's pretty much what had me tossing epithets out the window early on. That said, I kinda had to use a bunch for chapter one because what the hell do you call God, The Universe, The Truth, The One, The All, and You? Especially during their first encounter, before Ed has settled on how he refers to it. That whole thing is also going to be overhauled in post production.
Eh, Roys and Eds in narrative are fine. There's a tendency in writing to overuse direct address (calling someone by their name) in dialogue (we address people by name to their face far less than most people realize.
I mostly meant as action tags rather than in dialog. Roy did this. Then Ed did that. Roy did the other and then he did something else as well. You've read 52 by now. You probably saw what I meant by "dropping the subject after the first sentence of a paragraph". I'm calling it a grammar sin but writing style win. I do have Roy calling Ed by his name a couple times but he also uses Ed's name (or at least call sign) a lot in canon, so I'm going with it. Had to look up what a gerund was. Learned me something new! That was fun.
I'd be curious to see what would happen if you put it back up without backdating it
After editing it a bit, I may well try reposting it. Not something I'm too worried about right now. And because it's set so soon after Castiel was introduced, I'm not sure if modern readers would like my interpretation of him, or of how I predicted the Rightious Man plot line to go. (I was completely wrong and I'm mad about it, wasted opportunity for good Jesus-rose-from-the-dead comparisons).
because I use sprinting a lot to write last minute. I mentioned deadline pressure works well for me? It does in sprints too. ๐. Because I'm so used to doing minimal editing, I have 1000% posted a chapter with one of those notes still in there.
What's sprinting? Also, that is hilarious. XD
I think everything I saw was just spelling errors. Anything I would have usually said was "continuity" I can't actually say because it's only the one chapter I've read and I don't have broader continuity, just my assumption of where this chapter was in the story from what you told me.
There's no real continuity issues but there are several sentences and paragraphs I want to rewrite to be less clunky. I also want to go back and tighten up the 3rd person POV - edit out the "Roy thought/wondered/considered" etc. Sometimes it's necessary for clarity, but often it just puts unnecessary distance between the reader and Roy and I can feel it on reread. Better to just have him do the thinking than tell the reader he is thinking. We've discussed my use of the epithet "the boy" for Ed and when/why I use it. Used too often and I feel like it would lose it's power so I want to go back in and edit out all but one or two instances of it per chapter. In the first draft, i put it everywhere I think it could work well and second draft is where I will axe all but the most effective use.
I assure you, you are not going to guess where this fic is going, much less where it's come from. Remember, that chapter was number 52 in my outline. They have had so much ground to cover before this. Shit has happened. Their worlds have been thoroughly rocked, and not necessarily in a good way. The whole point of the fic was to break them, after all. ;P
And for some reason, I thought it was their first time sleeping together.
Yeah, I got that. :) They have 100% done penetration. They're actually doing pretty much everything back-asswards. Fucking before kissing, fucking before oral, exclusivity before officially dating/being together, Ed all but moving in before the confession... Insert Will Smith They're a little confused, but they got the spirit meme here.
I've been talking at length about what I've figured out about Roy, his motivations, his background, shit like that. And a lot of it was because I was actively writing in his POV at the time. But even more is because so much about Ed's :waves hands: everything is so plot relevant that it counts as major spoilers. Any time I want to write about him it comes out as Ed [redacted] and [redacted]. Then he [redacted] with [redacted] while [whoo boy, is that redacted]! ๐ญ
I want to talk about this! I want to tell you all the shit that went down with Truth that makes it so different from canon. What changed. Why. How that changes Ed's experience afterwards. How that changes Ed's trauma responses. Why his morals broke under the pressure. How that leads to him [motherfucking redacted]!!! Why Al is still in his body. How him having his body changes so much about the story in general and Ed in particular. Just, so fucking much. It's juicy. It's all so juicy. It's a well seared filet mignon. I have a feast and yet I cannot invite anyone to my table.
After scrapping my first attempt, I banged out 3507 words today and have now officially written two (2) chapters of this fic.
I don't have to scrap often, but when I do, I usually find this happens too. Follow the writerly instincts. Even if you haven't written much, if you read a lot, you pick up a lot of these.
Description: [A video of a woman riding a galloping horse bareback while holding a large rainbow flag.]
i felt like these tags really added to the experience, thanks @cynderxdustypaws for your knowledge
This is one of the most powerful images I have ever seen, and I will reblog it every single time because every single time it brings tears to my eyes.