#craft stuff

AHA I learned how to make home made pins (which are stored on this piece of foam for now until I can get or craft a display to put them on)

I talked a little about a partypooper cosplay i was doing

now uh i failed to take pictures of most of the beginning process but heres how its going so far!

before i finally finished my first original short story in 2021, i had probably between fifteen and twenty attempts under my belt. some of them were only a handful of paragraphs -- strings of dialogue that never quite found the right mouths to go into, descriptions of settings that were beautiful and purposeless. a few more promising ones turned into meandering conversations between characters whose point i hoped to find in the course of writing them. it wasn't easy like writing fanfiction. but that was the point in order fit the contours of what i thought a short story was supposed to be: serious and literary. not something that i had fun writing or at least, not anywhere close to the same fun that i had with fanfiction.

i tried a lot of different tactics to get out of this rut. i could make scenes but there never was much point to them. whatever quality seemed to animate my work when i was writing about characters that did not belong to me was utterly missing from anything that came from my own mind. it's only now that i've finished a couple more stories and finally gotten one published that i have realized that this is, in large part, the point of writing your own characters. when you start, you don't know them, even if you think you do.

there is a difference between compiling a list of traits and general ideas about a character and actually making one, especially if you are used to working with characters that have been developed by someone else. you have an idea of what they sound like when they are talking and how they might look walking around. though this might change depending on the kind of fanfiction you write, you are still working from a base that your readers are familiar.

i've been writing my own version of eren jaeger for almost four years now. there are ways that i have changed him to my own purposes but, ultimately, the way i write him adheres to a general form of a reckless, self-loathing person who is allergic to his own happiness. this is my own interpretation of him, based off of the text, as well as other fics i have read. when i have an idea for a fic that involves him, he is already a known quantity in a lot of ways and all i have to do is figure out how my interpretation of him might move through different scenes. it's still a lot of work (which is why it can be super scary when you're writing in a new fandom for the first time) but there is something i can tack back to if i am lost, especially now that i've written so many versions of him. since i write a lot of aus, usually the characters are the same while the setting varies wildly. but because i have a concrete set point in my characters, it doesn't feel like i'm having to come up with everything from scratch.

when you're working with an already developed character, someone else has already done a lot of trial and error, shaping them into what they are. making decisions about their personality and how that interlocks with the story. creating alternate versions of them that don't end up fitting into the final product but inform it anyway. creating a character who is compelling and believable takes a lot of work and trial and error. while in fic, your character is usually your set point (meaning that they way they act is generally defined in your mind), a character you create on your own, as well as the story that you create around them, can be changed depending on what you find interesting and what best conveys the themes that you are trying to communicate. it is a lot more freedom but with that freedom comes a lot more choices that have to be made. and it is through these choices that you are articulating your creative vision for the story and maybe even your work as a whole. even if freedom is technically a good thing, it can be scary! like fuck, i gotta make all these choices on my own??? in this economy????

i used to think that these choices needed to be made in a different way than i made them in my fic writing. i used to think i had to make the smartest and most intellectually riveting choices that would make my readers think i was smart and well-read and knew what i was doing. but when i did that, i would end up with these meandering, solipsistic 5k behemoths that never went anywhere or reached any higher form of truth.

when i am writing fic, my guiding question is "does this make me horny?" which might sound insane but stay with me for a second. for me, horniness is not just about sexual arousal but a certain feeling i get in my brain that means i am inspired by something. i can't describe it but i know when i feel it. i'm sure you have a feeling like this too when you find a piece of art that you really vibe with or a song that can't get out of your head. it's speaking to something deep inside you that you don't quite understand yet but you know is important.

by ignoring this feeling when i was writing my original work, i was ignoring what i actually wanted to write. even if it wasn't "serious" or adhering to the conventions of contemporary literary fiction. it wasn't until i was so burnt out from writer's bock that i started to let my original characters act in ways that i found interesting, instead of adhering to some amorphous genre conventions i made up in my head. once i figured out this trick, my stories got a lot better. not because i would always get it right the first time but because i would be interested enough in the story to keep working on it. if you don't give a shit about what you're writing, it's unlikely that anyone else will.

anyway i have more thoughts on this and how to actualize it (unfortunately, a lot of revision) but will stop here. :) feel free to send me an ask if you have any questions about this or your own methods for developing original characters.