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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/1qxoRwf:boxoftheskyking mentioned you in a post “The thing about trying to damage Poe Dameron in fic (or come…”
…X wing tech. @ bomberqueen17 already got to the…
This is always the problem of trying to write whump or hurt/comfort, because you want the AAAAAGONY and the angst and all of it to be VERY HIGH-STAKES but if you permanently damage your victim, then you’ve just changed the kind of story you’re telling, and that’s okay sure but that’s also not – what you were trying to do, right?
(situational analysis and free plotbunnies below the cut)
(And like. It’s cheating if you have this person miraculously recover. BUT NOT if they’re in a canon in which miracles routinely occur! You still do have to be careful, though, if you’re being Super Realistic and then suddenly are like NEVER MIND. That’s super mean to actual people who have to live with whatever actual debilitating condition you were inspired by. So you gotta strike the right balance between ENOUGH realism, and TOO MUCH.)
In the first draft if you can call it that of this story sort of, which was only in my head, mostly on a long car ride, I had given him some Magic Space version of radiation poisoning, which was going to have the great awesome effect of being really debilitating and super gross and like, it’s got to be an occupational hazard of Space Things, right, so he’d know that like, there’s no cure and it’s a terrible and inexorable and horrifying thing, and yet it’s weird and nebulous enough that if you happen to know a magical person with magical abilities, you could get miracle-cured.
So– I decided against that, but it’s free to a good home. I was quite fond of it. (I made myself blubber all over my car thinking about it! For realsies.)
Something like that, where it’s like– oh nooooo I’m doooomed there is no cure it’s only a matter of hours, days at most, I cannot escape this terrible fate– and as a bonus he was going to pretend everything was fine over the radio, and Nobody Would Know as he completed his Final Mission, and it was going to be very brave. Imagine him like, sounding super peachy-fine on the comms, and they’re like “we detected an anomaly, are you all right” and he’s like “everything is fine i don’t know what ever you could mean” and like, his hair’s falling out and he’s not so slowly going blind or whatever and he’s like, I just have to get there I don’t have to have enough fuel to come back, blah blah, Don’t Let Anyone Know or they’ll Waste Time Trying To Save Me and it’s all just No Good etcetera. UNGHHHH FEEELS. Just– take that finger and just jam it on the self-sacrifice thing and just– crank it up and break off the knob, cool?
But I’m not doing that now, I went a totally different direction, so this is totally not at all spoilery for what I’m doing. So. FREE PLOTBUNNY. Super extra bonus points if BB-8 doesn’t immediately get that what just happened [note that I did not research this like, at all, because I was driving a car at the time, so the mechanics are Very Nebulous] is Inevitably Going To Kill Anything Alive In This Ship because, well, BB-8′s not alive so eir self-preservation protocols didn’t flag it because it wouldn’t harm em at all.
Right? Right? It was so juicy. And then almost at the last minute Something Totally Fucking Magic happens. YESSSSS. (This is why I set shit in Fake Space. So much handwaving potential, saves so much trouble.)
But I went a different way and I already have like, 150k words of this direction, so, I’m pretty committed.
Uh. Huh. Looking up at this post, I’m sort of noticing, like, what it looks like when I plot literally everything I’ve ever written. Jesus fuck I am a one-trick pony.
It’s okay though because PEOPLE LIKE THAT ONE TRICK, okay, they like the FUCK out of it. I mean, anyway, I do, so that’s what counts.
(God it’s every story over like 5k. Christ. Well, I never really deluded myself I was writing Great Literature. Mostly I pick a Pretty Boy and make him grind out his inadequacies through gratuitous self-sacrificing suffering, and boy howdy, does that hit the buttons for a lot of people. Fuck me, it really is every story. Man alive. That is humbling. Not really a surprise though. Shit, Dick Francis used to just write the same book over and over and my mom thought he was a genius and he died richer than Croesus so who’s judging?)
Just remember, kids, as you ceaselessly ratchet the angst up one notch after another, you gotta drop in occasional moments of humor, levity, sarcasm, and even genuine happiness, just to kind of lube the screw as you turn it so you can really jam it in there for maximal damage.
CATHARSIS BABY.
Whew I should give my capslock a break. Anyway. Thanks for letting me get that out of my system.
…X wing tech. @ bomberqueen17 already got to the…
This is always the problem of trying to write whump or hurt/comfort, because you want the AAAAAGONY and the angst and all of it to be VERY HIGH-STAKES but if you permanently damage your victim, then you’ve just changed the kind of story you’re telling, and that’s okay sure but that’s also not – what you were trying to do, right?
(situational analysis and free plotbunnies below the cut)
(And like. It’s cheating if you have this person miraculously recover. BUT NOT if they’re in a canon in which miracles routinely occur! You still do have to be careful, though, if you’re being Super Realistic and then suddenly are like NEVER MIND. That’s super mean to actual people who have to live with whatever actual debilitating condition you were inspired by. So you gotta strike the right balance between ENOUGH realism, and TOO MUCH.)
In the first draft if you can call it that of this story sort of, which was only in my head, mostly on a long car ride, I had given him some Magic Space version of radiation poisoning, which was going to have the great awesome effect of being really debilitating and super gross and like, it’s got to be an occupational hazard of Space Things, right, so he’d know that like, there’s no cure and it’s a terrible and inexorable and horrifying thing, and yet it’s weird and nebulous enough that if you happen to know a magical person with magical abilities, you could get miracle-cured.
So– I decided against that, but it’s free to a good home. I was quite fond of it. (I made myself blubber all over my car thinking about it! For realsies.)
Something like that, where it’s like– oh nooooo I’m doooomed there is no cure it’s only a matter of hours, days at most, I cannot escape this terrible fate– and as a bonus he was going to pretend everything was fine over the radio, and Nobody Would Know as he completed his Final Mission, and it was going to be very brave. Imagine him like, sounding super peachy-fine on the comms, and they’re like “we detected an anomaly, are you all right” and he’s like “everything is fine i don’t know what ever you could mean” and like, his hair’s falling out and he’s not so slowly going blind or whatever and he’s like, I just have to get there I don’t have to have enough fuel to come back, blah blah, Don’t Let Anyone Know or they’ll Waste Time Trying To Save Me and it’s all just No Good etcetera. UNGHHHH FEEELS. Just– take that finger and just jam it on the self-sacrifice thing and just– crank it up and break off the knob, cool?
But I’m not doing that now, I went a totally different direction, so this is totally not at all spoilery for what I’m doing. So. FREE PLOTBUNNY. Super extra bonus points if BB-8 doesn’t immediately get that what just happened [note that I did not research this like, at all, because I was driving a car at the time, so the mechanics are Very Nebulous] is Inevitably Going To Kill Anything Alive In This Ship because, well, BB-8′s not alive so eir self-preservation protocols didn’t flag it because it wouldn’t harm em at all.
Right? Right? It was so juicy. And then almost at the last minute Something Totally Fucking Magic happens. YESSSSS. (This is why I set shit in Fake Space. So much handwaving potential, saves so much trouble.)
But I went a different way and I already have like, 150k words of this direction, so, I’m pretty committed.
Uh. Huh. Looking up at this post, I’m sort of noticing, like, what it looks like when I plot literally everything I’ve ever written. Jesus fuck I am a one-trick pony.
It’s okay though because PEOPLE LIKE THAT ONE TRICK, okay, they like the FUCK out of it. I mean, anyway, I do, so that’s what counts.
(God it’s every story over like 5k. Christ. Well, I never really deluded myself I was writing Great Literature. Mostly I pick a Pretty Boy and make him grind out his inadequacies through gratuitous self-sacrificing suffering, and boy howdy, does that hit the buttons for a lot of people. Fuck me, it really is every story. Man alive. That is humbling. Not really a surprise though. Shit, Dick Francis used to just write the same book over and over and my mom thought he was a genius and he died richer than Croesus so who’s judging?)
Just remember, kids, as you ceaselessly ratchet the angst up one notch after another, you gotta drop in occasional moments of humor, levity, sarcasm, and even genuine happiness, just to kind of lube the screw as you turn it so you can really jam it in there for maximal damage.
CATHARSIS BABY.
Whew I should give my capslock a break. Anyway. Thanks for letting me get that out of my system.
