FeatherWriter

My own, vaguely coherent, mostly shouting liveblog can be found over here. (EDIT: Also heavy apologies to Chaos, who got all of that in his Skype inbox as I was reading. It's his own fault for sending me the link though.)I won't copy paste it since it's kinda long, though I know some other people have. (Y'all are all so composed and using full sentences and I'm just running stream of consciousness as I read.) And now to respond to what other peeps are saying: OH NO THAT'S ADORABLE AND NOW I'M GOING TO HESITANTLY HEADCANON THAT BECAUSE RENARIN WRITING AND HE CAN'T DRAW GLYPHS WELL AND AAAAH It's when Elhokar promotes him to Highprince of Information if I remember correctly. Elhokar is the one who says it. I tend to think that our real-world modesty analogue would be the midriff actually. So, prostitutes and waitresses in sleazy joints go around with it uncovered, but it would be incredibly inappropirate to not have it covered in almost all situations, especially for those of higher birth. Also, there's less of a restriction on men showing midsection skin than women. So it'd be something like Shallan and Jasnah walking around in a cropped top perhaps. Oh I don't think anyone can be as bad as Gawyn. The entire trakand family gets an award for worst fantasy characters ever. Don't know why people hate Adolin so much. He still has some promise. Funny, Adolin's now one of my favorite characters and this chapter has made me like him even more. Though that could just be because I'm a huge fan of his and Kaladin's current dynamic and am currently hoping that it continues to be a thing. It is just so terribly amusing. *hesitantly starts waving Kaladin <3< Adolin flag*

Yep, all four of the girls are supposed to represent sort of differnt kinds of fangirls. Anna's the one that really sees the good in him and wants to stand up for him for his own good. She probably understands his characer best, but even then she's probably overestimating how trustworthy he is. She knows that he's very likely to betray her, but she just can't bring herself not to help. Lynn is a bit more of a casual fan of him, really genuinely enjoying him as a character, but if not for Anna she might not have put forth tons of effort into this. She is up for more of an adventure though, and sees this whole plan as exciting. She's in this for the thrill mostly. Yumi is the far more rational one. She liked Loki only when he was fictional, but is not willing to excuse the things that he's done when she comes face to face with him. She realizes that this is a lot more than just an interesting character now that he's real and knows that there will be major consequences for her actions. Xandra is.... Xandra. Whew. I knew that quite a bit of the audience that this kind of fic would attract was going to be this kind of fangirl, and I wanted to give them some representation. (And a pretty good number of the comments that I got said that Xandra was the character that they identified with the most.) She was fun to write, but I worry that she gets too over the top sometimes, especially for people who don't think like her. I hope I managed to make her humorous, rather than overbearing, but I suspect that it comes down more to personal preference than anything else. Aaaaand, for those who know me a little better, you might be able to find an easter egg in the girls' initials. Specifically the order I used above. *coughs nervously* Yep! That's TFE that Lynn's got there! Gotta promote Cosmere somehow! In keeping with that little thing above, all of the girls have a little bit of me in them. I'd probably react most like Anna in this situation, though my Yumi side would tell me it's a really bad idea (and there would a tiny side of me that might want to just grab him and kiss him. Bad Xandra side, that's a terrible idea!) Lynn's got more of my interests, speaking French, cosmere fan, and she's also got my hair and favorite color. And I'll admit that I put in the French both as a way to amuse me, but also to talk about how the All-Tongue works with other languages. (Because the linguist in me is fascinated by the idea of it.) Yeah, I wrote this fic directly after doing the long-form analysis, Loki's Perspective, so I was very in tune with his character at the time. I'm far more proud of this portrayal than the SS fic one, because I feel like I managed to capture him quite a bit better here. When things work, he's absolutely fun to write, though he tends to throw wrenches in plans, as he is wont to do. I have read comics, but only the more recent ones with Loki, Journey Into Mystery and Young Avengers. I absolutely adore the two runs, JiM in particular, but Kid Loki is a much, much different character than MCU!Loki, of course! And yes, he's being portrayed pretty sympathetically (because I am very sympathetic to him) but hopefully not so much that he's out of character. Occasionally I worry that my Loki is too "nice" but he's still almost exclusively self-motivated, so I figure it's working okay.

*overwhelming sense of shame and embarrassment that the first thing you think of with my novel is that crazy non-canon ship* I will end Fruity for her crazy shipping corrupting the rest of my fandom and making me write the thing. I will end her. Yes, the novel I was talking about is Called Forth, the novel that Vanaline and Len are from. (Shhh, don't apologize. I like talking about stuff!)

Oh wow, I didn't realize this thread was still kinda active! In my absence, I've been somewhat busy with Cosmere songs, to tell the truth. I've actually made three fanmixes over on tumblr now, that can be found here, one for Dalinar, one for Kaladin, and a chronological mix for the Mistborn Trilogy as a whole! Finding songs for cosmere books is just far too much fun.

Is it just me, or does this sound a lot like "I Can Hear Spelling" Skip from Brandon's "I Hate Dragons" story? Seriously, though, how could Shallan know that the name had lots of consonants "squished together" just from what Tozbek said? I would have just heard something like "Amidlatin" (assuming that's how it's pronounced), which doesn't look too consonant-heavy to me. Well, if I had to guess, I'd say that it's probably pronounced a lot like it's spelled: without fake vowel sounds in between. The "tn" cluster at the end and "mydl" in the center are very un-Alethi sound clusters. Alethi and Veden both seem to use almost exclusively c-v-c or v-c-v sound clusters. In fact, Jasnah's name is the only one I can think of that really breaks the pattern with the "sn" in the middle. So I would guess that any kind of consonant clusters are going to sound odd to an Alethi or Vorin speaker. Also, it's worth noting that they're sailing in between Thaylenah and the Frostlands at the time, so Shallan assuming that it's a Thaylen name of a city at which they might be stopping isn't so large of a jump. I am simply a very effective prosthelytizer, it seems. Also, it's worth noting that Shallarin is far from the only active ship in this fandom, it just happens to be the one that gets talked about over here the most because the other ship captains aren't 17th Sharders. Shasnah, Kalarin, and (black or red) Kadolin are all incredibly popular ships, they just happen to be talked about more on tumblr than over here. Fun fact, I found the origins of the Shallarin ship a few days ago and got all nostalgic. I didn't even remember this actually, but it was a friend of mine who pitched the pairing to me, and it took me about a year to get a handle on it. (I wasn't much of a shipper at the time.) Oh, sweet, naive Feather of almost three years ago, if you only knew how far down that little rabbit hole you would fall.

Re: what universe is TF:W in? I'm gonna say... plot point. It will be explained in more detail later. (However, I will mention that Anna thinking that he attacked her world may have been a mistake.) The girls saw our version of the movie, with actors and the whole thing being fictional. The school she attends is not real. Totally fictional. The name, "Culbuter" is the French word for "to tumble" which is a slight nod to tumblr that probably exactly zero people would catch. They'll talk about a courtyard later on though, which I definitely lifted completely from my old high school. I'm trying to find good pictures of it, but I can't. Here's one of the stage at least, so you can picture that when it comes up:

I've said before that my ketek for the Assembly is my favorite ketek I've ever written, right? Of course, I cannot take credit for the awesomeness that is the Assembly, as that is 600% Gavin's fault. Hallowed come the Judges. All hail the Prophets, long may they see our fall. As for requests, I don't usually take them. As you can see from that fic, the ideas that I work best off of are usually my own, not to mention I usually have so many projects of my own in queue (Sydney Scroungers because I am so very far behind right now, getting back to A Strange Mix of Both, oh yeah I have my own novel that I'm supposed to be writing...) that it's just not really feasible to set that aside to write other people's requests. You could always pitch me though, who knows? I might get inspired from your suggestion!

Take your time! I'm glad you're interested though! I don't usually tend to promote that one around here because it's non-cosmere, but like I said, it's one of my faves. And you might be surprised how seriously I can play an army of fangirls. I will warn you, the fic is pretty self-indulgent, and Loki himself is probably a bit more sympathetic than he is in the movies (though you could argue that Anna is an unreliable narrator. She does that.) I have been reading a bit of your story, but I haven't gotten very far! (Sorry! I'm a bad friend!) I'm going to try to read more soon!

What is this? A request for Avengers fanfic from me? Oh, you mean one of my favorite peices of my writing of all time and the longest fic I've written on my own of which I am still intolerably proud? Ask and ye shall receive. (Can also be found on Archive of Our Own, if that more suits your reading style.) The Fangirl: Weaponized is an Avengers fic that I wrote about a year ago, about novella length (30K words) and I still really love it. It's from a year ago, so it's just Post-Avengers, before the events of Iron Man 3 or Thor: The Dark World. It's Loki-centric (and I do a much better job with his character in this one, I think) but all of the Avengers show up eventualy. I'll use that as a transition, because you commented on the fact that the prompt seemed like it could have been taken in a ridiculous way, but I chose to play it straight. The Fangirl: Weaponized is also a concept that could have easily been a "crackfic" but I chose to play seriously as well. Not that there isn't humor in it, but just that the writing and the situation themselves are not portrayed as the source of humor. I'm not good at writing an overtly humourous story like that. I've never tried actually and my instinct is always to play a concept straight and deal with it realistically. Especially when trying to write Loki, who is already such a persnickety character to write, even for someone like me (who has ample characterization research to draw upon) I tend to go for as serious as possible. You mention that this isn't your favorite piece by me, and I concur, it's not my favorite piece that I've written. In a way, I think that's because I didn't come up with the concept, it was handed to me and I had to try to build ideas where I wouldn't have had them originally. In addition to that, this was a concept that I might have liked to play out in longer form, with fewer jump cuts and more development, but the time limit meant I had to make it shorter. I also think I had maybe unrealistically high expectations for this fic, seeing as it was two of my favorite things mixed together, both of which I had experience writing, I figured I should be able to absolutely blow it out of the water and make something fantastic, when in reality, it simply turned out as good. Starting with Loki was not something I originally intended. When I started writing I opened with Vin and Elend with Jastes at the ball, then went back and added the Loki scene in later. For one, I wanted more of him. He's my favorite character and one of the few that I feel strongest writing, and he tends to steal scenes when he shows up if I let him. The fact that so much of what he does has to stay behind the scenes in order for the reveal to work (that he and Kel are working together the whole time as a trick) means that I had to stay away from him for most of the fic. That little intro scene let us see a good glimpse of him, and also felt like a better opener than just jumping right in. Yeah, Hoid was a tough cookie to pull. I could make the argument that the reason he's being so candid here is because he was really not expecting travelers from another universe to show up and was more interested in getting to the bottom of it all than keeping his secrets. I imagine being caught off guard is not something that happens to him very often, and when it does, that kind of takes priority. I could have had just exposition between the groups, but I liked so many of the things that the Hoid scene could bring: an explanation of universe hopping, the Lightweaving comparison, that I decided to go for it. I really considered writing a scene with Kelsier right after he finds Marsh "dead" (when really he's been Inquisitor-ified) and Thor to try to break up jumping straight to that scene, making similarities about losing a brother and such, coupled with parallels of neither of their brothers actually being dead, but time hit me again. I tried my best to make the jump work, but it is rather sudden. Anyway, I liked your feedback and you reiterated a lot of the same thoughts I myself was having. If you end up checking out The Fangirl: Weaponized I would love hearing responses on that if you were up to it, but it's rather long and I wouldn't want to trouble you. That's a much better representation of how I write Avengers fic though, and it was an absolute blast to work on.

First off, since there's some peeps thinking about starting SS, I'll post a helpful link. Just because I've been looking for ways to explain things and I ran across this: There's a really cool featurette about "The Drift" and how drifting works here. It's a good way of showing how that whole system works and you can see how its shown in the movie! It should be noted that Sylvie only uses the full Jaeger drift tech once (thus far) in the prologue. All other drifts she's using a Pons, a three forked helmet-ish thing (here's a picture of Newt and Hermann looking like dorks in a pair) that can be used to initiate drifts outside of a Jaeger. And now on to responding! Sylvie and Seiko are the combat leaders of the team, so if he's rushing off, she's gonna follow. I'm glad you liked the quip about leaving tech! That was in fact a hint back at fiVe! I'm glad the jumping scenes work well, they're the ones I'm most nervous about! Most of the time, all of that stuff is just all happening simultaneously in the same chat, so we'll have all fiive characters and NPCs doing their own thing in each location all together. It can be a bit difficult to sort through and decide what scene goes where. Especially because they often reference what's going on in the others. I can't cut to the Sylvie/Miranda/Leah/Eleanor confrontation for very long, because they're going to overhear Katie's prisoner yell about the Assembly. And then Leah reacts with "Hallowed come the Judges" which sends Katie into deep interrogation mode. Also, something like Katie shouting the warning is always difficult because I have to decide which scene to show first. If I go through Katie's line, we see the warning, but then we jump back in time a bit as we catch up to where Seiko, Miranda, and Eleanor are before they hear her come through. It's a bit disorienting but I try my best to keep things linear. It's better than it all jumbled together, I'm sure! I maintain that Sylvie is rather TERRIBLE with people. Her screaming at the person she's pinning that she's not threatening them is EXACTLY something she would do. Her empathy is still very low and she just really doesn't understand how to communicate effectively. Silly girl. Who hooo, gotta admit I laughed a bit at your thinking that Eleanor might be a cultist. As you quickly figured out, it is her family that got taken in. More specifically, one family member, who then caused problems with the other family members. She'll talk more about that a little bit later. You guessed correctly, those are Kaiju names that Katie lists. (Note: Jaeger names always have two names like "Vulcan Specter" or "Echo Saber" or "Striker Eureka". Kaiju names are always one word, usually English or Japanese, like "Leatherback" or "Otachi" or "Scissure". It should be noted that Scissure was the Kaiju that attacked Sydney in 2014 before the PPDC was established. Miranda's brother Jason was killed in the nuclear blast that took Scissure down. The cult has connections to Scissure as well.) And Katie has nothing but loathing for the cult, especially when they're threatening her crew. She's interested in the Kaiju scientifically only, she has no love for a bunch of terrorist tentacultists who are worshipping these creatures and trying to bring about the end. Sylvie considering going into the cult was not something that I had expected to do, but once it came up, it made a lot of sense. One of her main aspects (her "Trouble" aspect, actually) is "Tempted By Tech." She knows this cult has experimental brainwash tech and she wants to take a peek under the hood. She also thinks its their best shot to get more info. We'll see how well it turns out for her. (And yeah, Gavin knocked it out of the water with the creepy pseudo-religious cult stuff. Just wait until you meet one of the Prophets. Hehehe.) I'll warn you, the next two sessions are shorter, but they're both action sequence sessions. We're technically "in combat" so action is going to happen in turns. So, expect lots of quick scene changes and not quite as much character stuff unfortunately. There's still some, though, which is fun! I'll hopefully get those up soon!

I actually just counted to see how many behind I was and started consolidating them to edit. We as a group have finished Act 2. The main action sequence finishes by Session 20, with a 2-session conclusion on the end. Then we have a more lighthearted intermission that's one session long (it was actually 2, but I'm combining them because they were kinda short.) So, the last finished session is #23. It's worth noting that we've been playing a lot over the holiday break, so I've fallen behind quite a bit, also I've been working on the secret santa fic, so I haven't been transcribing. I should catch back up here pretty soon.

I eagerly await your responses! I'll probably start work on Session 15 tomorrow. Lots of fun things happening!

And here I am, back with two new fics for you all! First up is an actual cosmere fic, my present written for the Shardling Secret Santa! Now that it's been published, I can talk about it and give you guys the link! The prompt I got called for a crossover: Loki and Thor from the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Final Empire Scadrial. It turned out okay, but I was a bit rushed for the deadline. I hope you guys enjoy it! That can be found here. Also, Session 14 of The Sydney Scroungers has just gone live! That can be found over here for those of you who are caught up! (And if you're not caught up, you should get caught up because I will love you forever.)

WHOA HEY. BACK AWAY THERE, SYLVIE MANSEN. THERE WILL BE NO OVERRIDES, UPGRADES, OR REPROGRAMMING WITHOUT MY SAY SO. MARSHAL ZHUUUUU, MY FANBASE IS TRYING TO REPROGRAM ME! HELP! Anyway, Shallarin fanarts are very good resetters. Like this one that dragoninatrenchcoat drew for me last night! BABIES WITH FLOWER CROWNS HOW ADORABLE. (Also, Renarin is smiling! *melts*) Oh, and keep an eye on the Fanfic fanclub thread. I will have an announcement to make in a little bit, hehehe.

Woooooot! PEOPLE READING SYDNEY SCROUNGERS YEEEESSSSSSSS. My favorite thing ever.

Accepted designation for that paring is "Kalarin" (though it's occasionally spelled Kallarin) and it is quite popular, by the way.

@Natans: Yes, yes. I accept full responsibility for the thing which I have unleashed. Oh also, I should maybe post this here instead of just in a back thread where very few people are going to find it. I've been writing a bunch of keteks recently and decided to try writing one for the released chapters. It's kinda loose and not terribly elegant, but I'm sick of messing with it so I'm gonna go ahead and call it done. It's Jasnah themed:

Oh goodness... I can only imagine how that went. I feel... somewhat responsible as the person who kinda ended up bringing "shipping" as an entity over here to 17S. (Sorry, not sorry.) On that topic, I'll go ahead and drop into the thread on behalf of the Shasnah camp, since Shallarin impacts seem pretty well discussed. Also, I've mostly discussed my thoughts on the matter over here. I will say that that camp Shasnah was rather pleased at the rather... extended description Shallan gave Jasnah when she comes on deck. (I don't even ship it and I raised an eyebrow at it.) Not to mention some of the Shasnauts picked up on Jasnah's mention of "particularly a man" to mean that she could be considering Shallan being beholden to someone who isn't a man... So that's out there as well.

Quiver has not watched Pacific Rim, if I remember correctly, so he's probably a better person to ask. However, I tend to say no, you don't need to have seen the movie to enjoy it. I'll quote what I said to him earlier about this:

Idk... "Married to one brother and in love with the other" worked for Navani, didn't it? (Kidding, mostly.) I'm more worried at how my fic has taken a turn for the WHOA NOT CANON AT ALL very quickly. Welp. It was bound to happen. I just didn't think that this was gonna be how it got set up. Honestly, I'm excited to see where this little arranged marriage goes. I'm smelling... drama and interesting twists. What would poor Shallan do if she finds herself falling for her betrothed's younger brother instead? We'll just have to see... On the fanfic front: My secret santa fic is finished, and has been submitted to the shardling-secret-santa blog, however, as of me posting this, it hasn't gone through the queue yet, and until it gets put up, I can't share. I'll link to it as soon as that goes live! For those following Scroungers, (Quiver) I'm working Session 14, and I want to get it done before I head back to school next week so, hopefully that goes live soon too. Aaaaannnd.... I've been writing keteks. Lots of keteks. Stupidly long keteks because apparently I enjoy causing myself pain. I wrote one for today based on Jasnah's newly released prologue today, and while this one isn't my favorite of the ones I've done, it's okay, so I'll go ahead and share it: I've also done a bunch for the Scroungers because reasons.... Eh, I wasn't going to but... yeah I'll go ahead and share them here. WHY NOT. One for Katie Horner, our stalwart captain keeping us together: One for Seiko Watanabe, who has become a criminal to support his little sisters, with a hint of romantic relationship with Miranda, because I ship Advanced Hydrophobia like crazy: One for fiVe, my AI who thought she had been abandoned by her creator until she found a new home with Seiko and Miranda and has now decided she never wants to go back. And finally, my favorite, one written for the two Prophets of The Assembly of True Judgement, the sinister Kaiju cult that we've been squaring off against. This one probably doesn't make sense with what's been posted thus far, so I can explain in spoiler tags.

Hey guys. Hey guys do you remember that part where Shallan offered to marry Renarin? Because I don't know if you maybe didn't catch the part where Shallan OFFERED TO MARRY RENARIN. Wow, yeah remember that time that my ship got mentioned in canon as a marraige proposal? That was a cool thing. I think that part was my favorite part. I have this one favorite part of the reading and it was the part where Shallan offered to marry Renarin. That was a cool part. Wow. So cool. My favorite. Shallan. Renarin proposal. Wow. Okay but more seriously, I'm up for whatever Brandon throws at us, because he hasn't disappointed yet. Really the thing that I was more disappointed at was the fact that apparently Danlan and Adolin didn't work out. (I really like Danlan, and I hope she sticks around.) Betrothed without ever meeting is far from madly in love and gazing starrily into each other's eyes, and if I know anything about Brandon, we've got a long, drama filled road between us and even that distant hypothetical. Now... if I can stop writing keteks for five seconds...

Send me a PM and I can give it a look when I get some time!

Hmm... worldbuilding. I tend to create worlds because I find them interesting, though most of mine are not as well thought out as Jaiset. They got tons for that competition and now all the other worlds are trying to catch up. I just kinda get a basic idea in my head like "sun powered desert people" or "hypnotic voice angels" and then just kinda let it sit in my brain for a while and try different ideas for it. Eventually, ideas start to come together and you can kinda sculpt those into a society. It's worth noting that not all worlds need to be completely brand new and mind-blowingly original. For reference, the world that most of the story of Called Forth takes place on is called Mondial, and reads fairly vanilla-medieval. The other worlds, the ones that we don't see as much of, are the ones where all the tons of worldbuilding takes place on, and that's kind of my way to ease readers in. When people open Called Forth I want the original setting that they're presented with to feel familiar, and then as the story gets deeper and wider, the real worldbuilding shows up.

Hmm, what specifically would you like advice about? I suppose I can start with "Don't be afraid to suck." One of the things that NaNoWriMo taught me was how to just write and don't look back, because if you spend all your time worrying that it's not perfect, you'll never actually get it written. A very wise text post on tumblr once told me that every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist. Write things that you find interesting. I know everyone always says that you should write for yourself, and yet I often find myself writing for other people as well. I write things that I know others will enjoy, sometimes simply because I like making other people happy. I'm lucky that many of my friends like similar things to me, but very few of the things I write are wholly self-indulgent. I love sharing things with others and that's one of my main motivations to write. But make sure you enjoy the things that you're writing too, because when you force yourself though something that you don't enjoy, it's not going to be as good. This might just be me but, the final draft is almost always longer than you expect it's going to be. Perhaps there are writers that are accurate judges of how long their stories are going to be, but I am not one of them. I constantly think of new things that I want to add and my stories could stretch ad infinitum if I'm not careful to rein myself in and actually get to the ending. Not that it's a bad thing. All kinds of fun things crop up while I'm writing like this, and I love it! If you've got questions on anything specific, I can try to help with that. This was kinda broad and wide, but writing's a large topic!

PFFFFFT. You read Sydney Scroungers, Quiver. You're edging for the top spot amongst my favorites at the moment, no where near grounds for being kicked out. Reading Sydney Scroungers is the way to my heart, oh loyal followers, because I am so thoroughly obsessed with this story, it's not even funny.