#hannahcbrown

@hannahcbrown asked: Garrus Darelliun from Oblivion?

Thank you for the tag @hannahcbrown xx

No pressure tags: @lizzie-tempest @sneakyfox55 @beck-a-leck and anyone else who wants to jump in.

OK, this is literally the latest line I've written:

So why had he told you so much?

And no, you don't get context (because I'm evil muhahaha!) OK, maybe not that evil... It's not that deep, really.

Since I also found this tag in my drafts that I'd forgotten about (sorry @hannahcbrown !) have some more:

Heads Up, Seven Up

Rules: Share a recent snippet of 7 lines

He'd told you three a lot. Perhaps more than he'd intended to. Monsters that were already familiar with the Multiverse tended to know him by reputation already, even if they'd never met him personally. But revealing the existence of the Multiverse to those previously unaware of it always felt a little bit like interfering with a developing a civilisation .

Hey Han 🧡️

Terrifying Errand Boy is based on one of the marvelous Nostalgic Breton Girl's headcanons that the Mages guild likes to send dremora as their messengers for every tiny task. It's a very fun piece, I think, and I enjoyed playing on the Oxford idea of townies vs scholars.

I toyed with the idea of Talis knowing what a dremora was, but figured it would be much more fun if he had no clue what he was looking at, which leads to what I feel is a very crisp denouement.

He's a simple, gentle soul, my baker boi, who doesn't like dealing with customers on an average day. I enjoyed the idea that once he figured out that the dremora was there to make a purchase, he'd roll out his 'customer service' façade (and if you've ever worked a customer-facing job, you'll know exactly what I mean 😅️).

Like many others, the dremora's derisive line about "little cakes" is my absolute fave, and I can assure you I was cackling as I wrote it. I'm also quite proud of the description of the jam-filled pastries splattered on the floor.

Bilberries was from a server prompt, and originally I wasn't going to do anything with it, despite the inkling of a story it had already stirred (the usual excuses - too tired, no time). But Moth prodded me with it, and ofc I cannot back down from the mere hint of a challenge.

The end of this story is what gave me the most problem. I powered through the first draft, up to the last paragraph, in one afternoon. Then I hit the last line and there just... was no ending. Gods knows how many time I tried to rewrite it, with no avail. So I went through and cleaned up what I had (falling down a rabbit hole of language on UESP, and figuring out the percentages of race in the Imperial City and a few others for kicks in the process). Still couldn't finish it. It took a full 2 months before the very last line was added and I considered it finished.

I very much enjoyed getting to explore Cygwen's character a bit more. Heathlands are one of my favourite sub-biomes, so to be able to bring them to life in the story was a joy for me.

I'm not sure I can tell you why I wrote what I did for this; sometime it's the nature of the story to write you rather than the other way around. I'm still extremely worried someone will come at me for trying to speak for immigrants when it's not my lived experience. But I do know about accidently dropping traditions and how it sort of leaves an unfinished hole in your life if you skip your tradition or ritual, kind of a 'did I lock the door' feeling. I can only assume that's what I was channeling 😅️

Thank you so much for letting me ramble about my baker boi 🧡️ I hope you enjoyed these insights.

What genre did you write the most this year? Fantasy. Pretty much exclusively.

6. Favorite sentence you wrote this year?

How do I even pick this... I usually prefer paragraphs. uh, Good luck there's no context but it's from my original draft from much earlier this year.

She looked up into the man’s haunted ashen eyes like volcanic dust, heralding the coming explosion, and she pitched backward off the swing seat just as he lunged.

9. Most important writing lesson you learned this year?

This year, I spent a lot of time thinking about writing as a craft, reading books on writing, etc. Some of it conflicted with each other of course, writing is hardly a one-shoe-fits-all. One piece of advice I hear a lot/read frequently is how wanting to be a professional writer, you have to do it every day, even when you don't want, and to "force" the words, write even when it's like pulling teeth and it's terrible advice. I had the worst time. it stopped being fun. I doubted my skills. And in the end, a book a dear friend lent me finally gave advice counter to the usual. Writing should be enjoyable. Finding flow SHOULD be the goal. It's only when I'm in the zone, enjoying myself, that I like what I'm getting onto the page.

Of course!

I think the first thing to keep in mind throughout all of this is that I was referring to the old notion of “Amy is a psycho girl chasing after someone who isn’t remotely interested in her”. This is the big impression Sonic games (and I guess to some extent Archie Sonic, but I don’t want to get in there) left on fans during the 2000′s, and it comes mostly due to two main reasons: 

The differences in western culture versus japanese culture (how we see relationships in general, the actual tropes surrounding Amy, etc.) 

How the actual localization process was handled for each game, like the way Amy acts toward Sonic and other characters, how the games play said acts (cute vs annoying) and the way Sonic reacts to her presence.

It’s no secret that localization works during that era were spotty at best (that’s why you hear Ryan’s Sonic yelling “teriaaaa!” in SA2, or the general weirdness surrounding SA1), and while I personally don’t blame the people that worked on localizing the games (after all, the overall quality of videogame storytelling was pretty shaky back in the early 2000′s), I can’t ignore just how damaging those works ended up being for the canon. For example, cutegirlmayra talked about the differences between japanese and western Sonic for years now, take this quote from her post, a quote that I believe nails this whole thing on the head:

America treats Sonamy much like they do their franchise, a meme or joke to be poked fun of. Whereas, with a much more refined atmosphere, Japan treats Sonamy as an endearing and lovely couple. Though both resign to say they can’t really see Sonic ever ‘settling down’ or really being focused on romance. And,… that makes since to me. Knowing who Sonic is. But even that doesn’t mean he can’t have a crush XD (The heart wants what the heart wants, lol!)

More recently, stuff like “Unfortunately, I’m not inconvenient for my girlfriend” came to light, and that’s one of many examples where japanese Sonic was way ahead of its western self. This particular quote is from Sonic Battle and in the english version you don’t get anything remotely similar to that, instead Amy is left to look like she’s a crazy stalker, or that Sonic doesn’t accept her advances to a degree (that’s one major problem, how western Sonic tends to feel like he’s actually rejecting Amy while she keeps on trying.) It’s not coincidence that Sonic Battle is regarded as one of the worst portrayals of Amy in a Sonic game.

If you start digging on what the creators actually intended for Amy, you'll find lots of good intentions toward her and the framing of her dynamic with Sonic (which isn’t the only aspect of Amy, mind you, but my claims about western localization originally came from a SonAmy post so I naturally focused on that, sorry haha.) 

For example, last year I looked into how Sonic Unleashed handled SonAmy, and while my initial research was pretty sweet (the english version of Unleashed!Amy is really good if you spend time talking to her), the real kicker came as soon as we (me and cutegirlmayra) started looking into interviews with ex-Sonic Team writer Shiro Maekawa and cross-referencing information regarding the actual writers that were involved during that 2000′s era. The result? There was an entire council at SEGA of Japan dedicated to approve the way Sonic characters were presented in all official media, and they approved all of the key SonAmy moments back then, even more that western audiences didn’t get to see (more on that below.) Most if not all the japanese Sonic writers involved in that era (Maekawa was both a writer and part of said council) left around the end of the decade, after Sonic Unleashed (2008) and Sonic and the Black Knight (2009), and ever since that most of the problems shifted from “this is how SEGA of America is localizing Sonic games” to “this is the very poor state of Sonic writing in general”, so, dead end for now.

Then you have situations like with Sonic X, a show handled by Sonic Team and the official Sonic writers of that era working in some of the most iconic episodes... just to see their work censored by 4kids in America and the subsequent dubs that used that version as a basis (from what I’ve heard not all dubs are censored, though.) That’s why you’ll see fans imploring you to watch Sonic X in japanese instead of the english dub, since the series was a lot more involved with the pairing and the general simbolism of some of its touching moments (they used actual love songs for them, for crying out loud), which led to some funny facts, like how the Latin American Spanish and the French dub both ignored the mandate about muting Sonic’s words to Amy in Episode 52, leading to moments like Sonic promising Amy he won’t leave her again (LatAm) or just straight up telling he loves her (the french were on fire with that one.) Sonic X was the one true vision of Sonic Team, and the way it was butchered for western audiences is still baffling to this day.

So, what’s the deal with Amy then? In theory she’s a cheerful, happy-go-lucky girl with a very strong sense of justice, super-determined to help anyone in need (even enemies like Metal Sonic) and, depending on the situation, pretty impulsive. She’s particularly loyal to her friends, and she acts like the emotional support of the group. You’ll see her filling that role regardless of how good or bad the localization is (SA2 Amy helped Shadow realize his true purpose, Heroes Amy is the beating heart of her whole team, Unleashed Amy is the only one who doesn’t lose hope on Sonic when Perfect Dark Gaia rises); yet the ways by which these traits were shown in the games varied a lot, and that’s how we reached a point where a good chunk of the fandom thinks Amy is a stalker. Japan portrayed her acts as cute, as very respectable traits of a great female character; the west portrayed her mostly as a nuisance the gang had to carry around, even to the point of misinterpreting some of her quotes that aren’t actually bad (for example: “If I had to choose between the world and Sonic, I would choose Sonic!“ in Sonic ‘06.) And while this is no longer the case, nowadays there’s a whole different discussion surrounding making Amy better by making her “more mature” (which is also another topic raised here in the west, like, this whole discussion never ends! haha)

Metal Sonic was accurately portrayed in Archie Sonic, when Sonic often used it as his punching bag. No, this opinion will not change.

This is because Metal Sonic’s first appearance... is it running into a wall. It did not show any capabilities that it had combat capabilities.

The OVA made Metal Sonic more popular than it should have been, since it’s canon portrayals... are not that great.

Metal Sonic looked better as a giant metal dragon and his Neo form than he does now, which is just his past self with a few adjustments.

Metal Sonic should have stayed in Sonic CD, as it ran into a wall when it challenged Sonic to a foot race as it’s boss battle.

Mecha Sonic does Metal Sonic’s gimmick much, much better than Metal Sonic ever could.

Eggman should have used the Mecha Sonic Design in Sonic Adventure instead of Metal Sonic.

Eggman prefers to consider E-102 Gamma as more his son, than Metal Sonic ever was. It’s also highly likely that this is the reason as to why Eggman was hidden away in Sonic Heroes.

Storyteller Saturday!

alskjsldkjglsdkjg this ask is brilliant okay

If we’re focusing in on the grocery store list responsibility: Phoenix would be the one who would get exactly what you need and nothing more, and she’d be really good at finding the best deals while still getting higher quality stuff! Celestine would be the worst because she’d shoplift about a dozen more things than what’s on your list.

Who can you trust in general? Phoenix again is probably my most honest character of the cast, she just... doesn’t feel the need to hide anything, really. Rose is the one you shouldn’t trust in any situation ever.