CARNALHAUS

i’m lucia carnalhaus and this is my art blog. mature themes ahead.

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far gone and out is all i’m posting over there for now, and it’s still ongoing ! i just picked up chapter 6 the other day and im planning on starting that.

i might post some things there in the future, but likely just oneshots instead of any actual canon writing material. i have a vague plan to write out some individual kilian & co x “reader” oneshots as a sort of writing exercise. we’ll see.

i use times new roman (size 11) with double spacing. its the same way i was taught to format essays in school (but i think they recommend size 12 font). its the easiest for me to write with and read, but when i write on my laptop i do zoom in to about 125% or 150% because its easier for me to focus on the paragraph im writing.

i wanted to ask 1. what inspires you to write and the process you go through with writing (for ex. if you have any specific media or maybe writers you take inspiration from, if you take inspiration from real life events, if you need to watch a movie/read a book before writing to get in a flow, etc.) and 2. how you managed to create an audience that loves your work and is actually invested in it. i would like to do the same thing in the future, be able to publish my story and have people fall in love with the characters.

much love!!

trying to answer very so many writing asks i had buried…

for the first question: life ! much of my inspiration comes from my life, and just being out and about. i’ve always been a person who’s had too many thoughts that bleed over to the point of sudden fiction. some of my best inspirations are things which have nearly nothing to do with what i’m making (allegedly). i’m barely home, i try and spend the most time away from home as possible. this is why most pieces and stories start in my notes app on my phone. as an example let’s look at some of my inspirations for the 2003 chapter of american tradition, taking place in atlantic city:

i grew up visiting a small beach house by the lagoon in tuckerton every summer, where i could see the ferris wheel in beach haven all the way across the bay. my bathroom had a specific smell, and i thought of it like a buffer portal between home and the beach, because it held all the sand and had soapy sea air. it’s very curious how important scents are in preserving memories.

i have a small fascination with the former racehorse “ruffian,” one of the best racehorses who ever lived, who ran until her hoof broke off—and then kept running.

my family used to co own a restaurant, which was actually a haunted mansion. the mob used to frequent the speakeasy in the basement, and drag bodies out to the delaware through the revolutionary war tunnels. i visited that mansion thrice or so.

whales, as mentioned in my last post. i became very fixated on whales all the sudden and i’ve always found myself very curious about the ocean. i used to visit the museum of natural history in new york growing up. my favorite was the dark, dimly lit diorama of a sperm whale fighting a giant squid. then, the giant blue whale hanging from the ceiling. i found false killer whales very interesting, mostly because they’re not killer whales at all, and yet they’ve been reduced to a completely unrelated species. they have a tendency to strand themselves en masse, the highest totaling 835 individuals. they’re social animals, that’s why.

during a day at the mall, my friend and i met a very grating group of boys. we drove about an hour away to seaside heights (at night, in the off season where it was still cold cold cold). down the boardwalk, we saw those boys again.

all this to say, inspiration is very fickle. my writing process varies depending on what i’m doing. when i’m writing far gone and out, i always do the same thing: i lock myself in the dark room in my house nobody goes in (i like to call it the david lynch room because of how it looks), i sit down with a redbull, or a convoluted coffee order, and i write to my writing playlist which mostly consists of creepy jazz. because it’s a very location dependent story, i keep a bunch of tabs open with photos and google earth addresses so i can get a better feel of descriptions. every story has a different vibe and thus a different method, but this one seems to work for some other things i work on. sometimes i like to watch a mood-setting movie while i eat my dinner on my writing break. for fgao, i recall watching lost highway more than once. my favorite part is writing until im sleep deprived, which i definitely do not recommend, but with the main character im writing, i find its the time i write the best. flow state if you will.

hi hi

writing is always a hard thing to answer ! my thinking even more so. so so scary. for much of my time on the internet i never considered writing seriously. i did it passively, but really i only wrote down blurbs and sentences that wouldn’t leave my mind. after developing stories more and more, it sort of weighed on me: i need to get all of this out onto paper. to do such things, it’s wise to be more mindful of sentence structure, story structure, balancing prose, things like that. now, im not much of a reader. i never have been, because im so picky. im slowly changing that though, and getting through my ridiculous collection. it certainly helps and i very much recommend reading as many things as you can get your hands on. while drunk in my friends john wayne themed basement the other night, i decided to flip through a book on gunslingers, and focus my eyes enough to read a chapter on “blood and salt,” cowboys feuding over salt mines in new mexico. i like to read when im drunk, or hungover. one time i spent an entire day cooped up in my room researching whales. these were my notes:

before that, instead, i watched a lot of book criticisms in my free time, and listened to what the readers were saying. it’s a good middle ground, sort of. i might not have been an avid reader, but i listened to book analysis and criticism by readers, and it inspired me to think a lot more about what i’m putting onto paper. it helped me put into words some things i do and don’t like about reading and writing.

i’m far from an expert when it comes to writing, but i will say that to a certain extent—no matter how good the concept of your story may be, bad writing (narratively or practically) will completely kill it. it’s wise to be humble and realize your own criticism may apply to you, and that’s just fine. i’ve found that ego gets in the way of many stories that could be very great. stories can be very personal, yes, but it doesn’t make you exempt from anything. that certainly does not make anything good, inherently. that mentality will make your art suffer until it’s a pitiful inbred looking thing to be frank. school yourself into taking dislike with dignity. too much pride will make anything suffer, and in my opinion, it’s better to learn when to kill it instead of letting it devolve. this is all to say don’t take criticism on writing as a personal attack, because i can guarantee you people don’t care nearly enough. a little dislike is healthy for the ecosystem. believing otherwise is very sad.

and this is to be optimistic, for clarity. read as much as you can, write as much as you can. research formatting and prose and story structure and be very, very willing.

as for my writing style: i get a lot of comments on it and i really don’t think it’s very special, but im glad others do. it has a lot to do with how i think, which i guess is also good to talk about. im autistic and ive always found myself describing things in odd ways and overall having a very convoluted way of speaking. or sometimes very blunt, where it matters. so, i tend to write in the way i would verbally relay things to others. i have a memory of being very upset in the dark backyard of a party and saying things like “i have never felt more subhuman than i do right now, i feel like a dog, i have never felt more like a dog than i do right now” to try and describe how i was feeling. “sometimes i feel like i’m at the far edge of the world, far away from everybody else.” because of how i feel things, and describe things, people find it very hard to understand me, or it helps them understand very greatly. that’s why i like to balance my bluntness with my more abstract thoughts. i mostly think in abstract similes and metaphors. i don’t think it’s particularly unique but it’s strange enough when you aren’t on the internet, i guess.

prose should come to you. you can study it in others and attempt to replicate the things you like (sometimes it helps you structure your ideas into something legible), but ultimately, you’ll find your voice to get things across.

While like the "light of his life" it feels like Praline is parasitic for him – that is, I'm not dogging on Praline because of the role Sledge plays in her own life. They're like two-way-too-overprotective dogs that won't stop barking and biting at each other and everyone else, yet at the end of the day, they're still in the same "pack". The dynamic that they have, they're leaving it behind, and it just doesn't work as it used to, so do they ever come to a sort of resolution about it? I imagine that codependency is for life but does jr ever change into something else? Does Sledge continue to feel this way the rest of his life–is it a literal "hate" he feels for Praline? Does Praline ever accept that this knight holds resentment for her but develop some opinions on her own situation? Also curious if Stat and Enid are affected by this counterproductive codependency of theirs, or if they notice at all and think, "These two have to chill."

I also want to know if Praline ever gets to have women in her life other than her mother (friends, Partners, Cool people in passing, etc., etc.) 🪐

it’s a very complicated topic ! and you are very right in your observations.

in all honesty, i don’t think sledge would’ve ever liked her if it weren’t for their history together and current situation. praline isn’t a pleasant person to most. he doesn’t like her personality. his affection for her is very rooted in nostalgia, and the emotional attachment brought on by trauma. he has nothing left to live for in his life after the initial incidents with her and enid. he can’t handle being a cop anymore, his parents don’t care to have him home, he has no real goals or aspirations, just a fixation traumatic events.

so yes, the codependency is for life. it changes over the years though, as sledge circles a downward spiral. their relationship becomes a test of “you’ve loved me before, do you love me now?” as things devolve. and the truth is that he does love her anyway. they become closer mainly through sledge’s growing drug addiction and praline’s need to take care of him (which makes him become more lenient to the gory things she does). in turn, he also becomes more angry towards her over menial things, maybe his pent up rage starting to seep through the more she’s around, taking it out on little spats instead of the underlying issues. no matter what, she always waits for him. she’s always there to pick him up. he knows that.

in american tradition, many things revolve around the fact praline is desperately grasping for control in her life. she never has any. she doesn’t even have control over herself. her personal viewpoints are moot. she knows deep down that nobody’s going to save her, not even sledge. that’s alright. she really should’ve died all that time ago, and maybe that’s why things have gone so wrong. it’s really quite a short road to acceptance. there’s a certain point after avoiding death that you know it’s coming back.

we know that praline dies in 2005 and sledge dies years later in 2012. in a way, i feel like her death perfectly preserves her, and perfectly preserves their relationship into a sweet thing to look back on. when somebody dies, a lot of hatred evaporates. it’s just not worth it to ruminate on the hate and disgust anymore. oh yaille, my dear, you have abandoned me, yaille, how do you want me to live ? while i’m not going to disclose how either of them die yet, it’s pretty obvious sledge must’ve taken it extremely hard. his preoccupation with her got much worse after that. very idealized, just like the first time, only he’s a little more clearheaded. this is a picture of a girl i loved once. now she’s dead, and i have to learn how to walk without her help. i must’ve been very very stupid. it was fun. sweet girl.

of course stat and enid know they have their problems, but that history is between them. everybody’s family at the end of the day.

+ women and praline is a very difficult thing. it’s certainly brought up many times but there’s never much of a positive outcome, such is life. her best friend growing up (and first love, though she won’t admit that) was a girl named beatrice pour. their relationship was very tumultuous on both sides. molly is an important side character in long bright dark, and much of their relationship is focused on how far away they are from the other, nothing in common except for them both being women attached to men. still, that fact draws them to each other, even if there’s an impenetrable wall. i could stare at your back all day.

my 9th strangulation this year.

Far Gone and Out—Chapter 5

Sledge must do something on the weekends. He must have b-plots, and c-plots, and d-plots. Anyone with that face has to. I don't picture him as a party type of person, I think he’s a little too old and a little too jaded for that sort of college-aged stuff. He fits much more in bars, I decide. Small ones with football games and veterans cracking wise ones in the corner. His head would probably just skim the light fixtures they put over some of the nicer tables, dark shadows making him look more like a phantom than a man.

Far Gone and Out—Chapter 4

DEFECT, MARINE.

herwìnari “snowblind” te fawtok txanfwerwì’ite, tsakarem of the vawmaw clan.