Resolution in Clockwork

Way too cute to be alive

Probably purrs when you pet him

 “Ahm….mother”

Crying is manly

Snores LOUDLY AS FUCK

Big Thighs™

Looks like a cat and a squid at the same time

Once you romance him there’s no turning back

“Fuck over”

yea sure

1. kill wheelchair-centered angst plots. when you’re mobility impaired, getting a wheelchair is a joyful occasion and something you’re excited for (unless your only option is a big painful hospital chair.) there’s nothing progressive or empowering about associating wheelchair use with dreariness and misery.

2. consider the specific wheelchair user’s abilities and limitations. it’s lazy to just give them legs-don’t-work syndrome, think about why they use their chair. questions to ask yourself can include: have they always used it? do they use it because of injury, illness, or deformity? can they sometimes go without it? are they independent while using it? what are the consequences of trying to get around without it? is their day-to-day life wheelchair accessible, or do they have some challenges with navigation?

3. if you’re not disabled you shouldn’t make the backbone of your story about the disabled experience. if you’re not disabled, you don’t know what it’s like to be disabled, and no amount of imagining is going to create an accurate or meaningful representation. this isn’t to say that you should avoid disabled characters or that you can’t touch on ableism in your stories if you’re abled, but revolving your entire narrative around the disabled experience would be as hollow and meaningless as if i tried to write a story about what it means to be a black man. 

4. search up and find a specific wheelchair model to give your character; the model isn’t something that has to be mentioned in-text but referencing features of a specific chair throughout your story will add dimension and realism.

5. acknowledgement of disability in fiction exists on a spectrum; on one extreme the author makes way too big a deal out of it and reduces the character to only their disability, and on the other extreme it’s entirely ignored. both of these are shitty. find balance in recognizing their condition and not being weirdly obsessed with it.

6. if your character resembles a caricature of a stereotypical wheelchair user, they need to be rewritten. this comes in 2 major flavors: the helpless, naïve, useless wheelchair user, or the entitled, whining, unpleasant wheelchair user. adding to the stereotype glut affects people’s perceptions of disabled people in real life.

and the results were:

it’s all fanfiction

which reminds me that i’ve only ever seen the phrase “carding fingers through his hair” and people describing things like “he’s tall, all lean muscle and long fingers,” like that formula of “they’re ____, all ___ and ____” or whatever in fic

idk i just find it interesting that there are certain phrases that just sort of evolve in fandom and become prevalent in fic bc everyone reads each other’s works and then writes their own and certain phrases stick

One of my fave authors from ages ago used the phrase “a little helplessly” (like “he reached his arms out, a little helplessly”) in EVERY fic she wrote. She never pointed it out—there just came a point where I noticed it like an Easter egg. So I literally *just* wrote it into my in-progress fic this weekend as an homage only I would notice. <3

I think so much of it has to do with how fanfiction is written in a way that feels real. conversations carry in a way that doesn’t feel forced and is like actual interactions. Thoughts stop in the middle of sentences.

and it poses an intellectual question of whether the value we assign to fanfic conversational prose would translate at all to someone who reads predominantly contemporary literature. as writers who grew up on the internet find their way into publishing houses, what does this mean for the future of contemporary literature? how much bleed over will there be?

we’ve already seen this phenomenon begin with hot garbage like 50 shades, and the mainstream public took to its shitty overuse of conversational prose like it was a refreshing drink of water. what will this mean for more wide-reaching fiction?

One thing that we do know is that written English has gotten less formal over the past few centuries, and in particular that the word “the” has gotten much less frequent over time.

In an earlier discussion, Is French fanfic more like written or spoken French?, people mentioned that French fanfic is a bit more literary than one might expect (it generally uses the written-only tense called the passé simple, rather than the spoken-only tense called the passé composé). So it’s not clear to what extent the same would hold for English fic as well – is it just a couple phrases, like “toeing out of his shoes”? Are the google results influenced by the fact that most published books aren’t available in full text online? Or is there broader stuff going on? Sounds like a good thesis project for someone! 

“We are not a matchmaking service,” the woman in the red blouse said firmly, almost as if he wasn’t the first to make that remark. She rather reminded him of one of the managers at work. “We select tenants for very specific homeowners.”

“Okay,” he frowned. “So now you sound like an escort service.”

“No,” she insisted. “No, I told you. You would be renting a room in a house. That’s what this interview is for, nothing more.”

Sure, just like the advertisement had said. And yet— “So why do you need to know about my personality and hobbies?”

The lady was beginning to look rather frazzled. “Because it is very important to my client – the homeowner – that his tenants are a good fit,” she answered. “He lives in the house too after all, and he prefers to keep turnover as low as possible.”

“Turnover?” he baulked.

“Oh you know what I mean,” she said hastily. “People leaving. It upsets him.”

He was trying not to stare, he really was, but he didn’t manage very well. “Right,” he said, as airily as he could. “You’ve moved from escort service to potential serial killer.”

“Really, sir!” she protested, but by now he was honestly ready to laugh.

“I’m sorry, but what else do you call a landlord that has his tenants screened so they will not leave.”

The woman’s shoulders sagged. “That is not at all what I’m doing! And my client is renting out rooms in his own house, he isn’t doing this to make money, just to break even.”

Yeah he had heard that before. But it was a nice house. “So he’s looking for housemates, then, not tenants.”

She brightened up considerably. “Yes!”

He pressed his fingertips together. “And your ‘client’ has a creepy service to find him these roommates that may not leave because…?”

“Oh alright. Fine. Because he’s a dragon.”

Whatever this woman’s problem was she had a weird way of deflecting reasonable questions. “Because he’s a dragon,” he echoed.

“Yes,” she sighed. “I usually don’t lead with that, for obvious reasons, but that is essentially why, yes. It’s all very proper and traditional, of course, speaking from a culturally dragonish point of view. But it makes most humans uncomfortable until they fully understand the situation. I assure you all our clients have excellent character references. And we pledge to find a viable alternative for any tenant who wishes to move out within the six-month trial period if our dragon-human mediation does not work out.”

“Wait, you’re serious?” He was pretty sure his brain stopped working at the words ‘culturally dragonish’ but whatever else she had just rattled off, it was definitely not a joke.

The woman blinked. “Why yes, we take our responsibility as intermediators very seriously.”

“No, no, hold up. You’re actually working for a dragon?” Certain parts of their earlier conversation were slowly starting to slot into place. Stuff about a cosy household, landlord-to-tenant responsibility and a mutually supportive living environment. All very proper and traditional… He met her eyes with his mouth unapologetically agape. “You’re working for a dragon that hoards housemates??”

She cleared her throat uncomfortably. “We prefer not to call it that.”

“But that’s what it is, really.”

The woman’s mouth pulled slightly. “…yes.”

He took a moment to let it sink in. A long, glorious moment. And then he sat back upright in his chair, leaning towards his laptop with entirely renewed interest.

“Alright, so first off, just for the record: you totally are running a matchmaking service. Second—” He added quickly before she could start up another protest. “I will answer whatever questions you need to ask to match me to this dragon household-hoard.”

“Wh- You will?” she said in surprise.

The Chargers have a meeting about how the new “mabari” is growing.

[Dialogue:

tony who babbles, anything and everything, get used to my voice, sweetheart, your mother says i don’t shut up. tony who theorises, bet it’s a girl, pep, my eyes your smile. tony who goes to check-ups, records the heartbeat, plays it back, a reminder—of hope, happiness, something.

tony who spends sleepless nights in the lab, invents bots, cameras, safety protocols; doesn’t admit every invention is born from fear that he won’t be good enough. tony who tells his daughter he loves her long before she’s able to hear it, makes sure she grows up knowing it, howard never told me he loved me, never even told me he liked me. tony who encourages every hobby, interest, you’re doing great, honey, my little genius, my dad never really gave me a lot of support, i’m just trying to break the cycle of shame.

tony who learns every rule to every game, every name for every imaginary friend. tony who plays dress up and sits for tea and buys her tools and teachers her how to use them. tony who reads with her, does puzzles with her, makes her her own baby-proof lab. what do you mean three year olds can’t learn physics? i did!

tony who’s awake for the crying, the late nights. tony who holds her, bounces her, feeds her until she calms down, sits in a rocking chair with his baby girl secure against his chest and breathes, just breathes, just the two of them, voice soft, us against the world, baby. tony who’s selfish, sometimes. who disturbs her just to hold her, keeps her bundled in blankets and listens to her coo. tony who puts his forehead against hers, whispers to her while she sleeps, sweet nothings, promises, i’ll always be here for you, sweetheart.

 Let’s say you’ve got a city where there’s tame white doves everywhere. They’re not pests, they’re regarded as sacred, holy protectors of the city, and the whole city cares for them and feeds them like they’re pets. They’re so tame because it’s a social taboo to hurt or scare one. Nice pretty doves :)

 Then someone points out that even if they’re not seen as pests, doesn’t having a completely unchecked feral pigeon population - that not only isn’t being culled, but actively fed and cared for - mean that there would be bird shit absolutely all over the place?

 A part of you wants to say no, because these are your nice, pretty doves. To explain that there’s a reason why they’re not shitting all over the place, maybe they’re super-intelligent and specifically bred and trained to not shit all over the place. The logistics of how, exactly, could anyone breed and train a flock of feral birds go unaddressed.

 An even worse solution would be to not have those birds, editing them out of the world. No, they spark joy, you can’t just toss them out!

 Now, consider: Yes, yes they would, but the city also has an extensive public sanitation service that’s occupied 90% of the time by cleaning bird shit off of everything. One of the most common last names in the area actually translates to “one who scrapes off dove shit”, and it’s a highly respected occupation. And thanks to the sheer necessity of constantly regularly cleaning everything, the city enjoys a much higher standard of cleanliness, and less public health issues caused by poor public sanitation.

he said, “you have to stop doing that.”

“i know, i know,” because it’s even more embarrassing to be embarrassed about writing fanfic, considering how many posts i’ve reblogged in its defense.

but i misunderstood his original question: “fanfic is just the genre. i asked what you’re writing about.” 

i did the conversational equivalent of a spinning wheel cursor for at least a minute. i started peeling back the setting and the characters, the fic challenge and the specific episode the story jumps off from, and it was one of those slow-dawning light bulb moments. “i’m writing about loneliness, and who we are in the absence of purpose.”

as, i imagine, are a lot of people right now, who probably also don’t realize they’re writing an existential diary in the guise of getting television characters to fuck. 

“that’s what you’re writing. the rest is just how you get there, and how you get it out into the world. was richard iii really about richard the third? would shakespeare have gotten as many people to see it if it wasn’t a story they knew?”

Let’s think about this, shall we? Solas’ views on the dwarves has to do with them being victims (as he saw their downfall in some respects) and being uncreative because they can’t access the Fade. He views their intelligence as lesser than his, and flat out states that dwarves are incapable of imagination and creativity.  

I want to see a dwarf inquisitor take those expectations and use them to get a leg up on Solas.

-sending messages through the Carta, through the merchants guild, because Solas won’t be watching there, he won’t think them capable of it.

-Using Dwarven code within more code to exchange messages that Solas cannot figure out for the life of him.

-Dwarf spies being implemented because they don’t dream and fade walkers can’t get into their heads to spy as a result.

-dwarves using traps to catch dozens on dozens of spies and agents, because no one expects them.

-The Carta fucking with the lyrium trade to cut off enemy mages and reveal their locations. 

one of the most delightful challenges in the world is writing a character who is much, much more intelligent than you. it’s so fun! but also takes effort the same way any other characterization work does, coming up with all the day-to-day consequences of tony being a genius that are so pedestrian to him they don’t even register.

i’m going to take this moment as an excuse to throw out more smart!tony headcanons:

can identify materials by touch; touches everything, actually, tapping and bending them to figure out if it’s ABS or nylon and is there glass fiber in there? will pick up your retro walkman and be like “what is this made of” and if he can’t work it out WILL pull out a multitool, scrape a sliver of plastic off of a nondescript spot, and burn it with a lighter so he can sniff the smoke and figure it out that way. it’s rude, and also a pretty sure-fire way to notice alien tech.

in that vein, a FANTASTIC mold-maker.  he’s constantly prototyping parts and then casting them into exotic alloys, which means he can look at basically any object and split it into smooth planes with no overhangs. 

hand tony stark a chunk of machinery and he’ll be able to tell you how it was manufactured, which bits were done first, and how worn out the bits were when they milled out the middle and if the guy chamfering the edges was lazy or not. again, put a piece of alien tech in tony’s hands and he’s going to notice because he is always, always asking “how did they make that” and if the answer is “not on earth” it’s going to be obvious

eyeballs measurements with creepy accuracy. and not just length: angle, volume, temperature, decibels, area, velocity, duration -- all of it. from very large scale to very small, tony’s “ish” guesstimate is way, way closer than you expect

strikingly adept at order of operations. you know how sometimes you find yourself curled into a pretzel trying to squeeze a paintbrush into some weird corner of the thing you’re making you’re like “i wish i had thought to paint this BEFORE i glued it”? that doesn’t happen to tony.

reads FAST. no, faster than that. can read upside-down or mirrored text just as quickly. can read aloud from things written in relatively simple ciphers as a party trick.

fantastic intuition for which corners can be cut, and what needs extra failsafes. still discharges capacitors by putting his thumb over them though. obviously always errs on the side of cutting corners to make things smaller, faster, better, sleeker. 

i can’t emphasize enough how much tony knows what’s inside every device around him. it’s how he built iron man out of a box of scraps -- encyclopedic knowledge of what he could get by taking apart all those missiles, and what he could turn it into. 

looks at the world in terms of both intended use cases (you are meant to put toast in the toaster) and unintended use cases (if you cut some wires and filled the toaster with water you could probably make an electrolysis chamber to create hydrogen and oxygen). frequently applies unintended use cases to thigs like “your security system” and “household cleaning products”