ARCANUM OF THORNS | Celtic fantasy series by S.K. Lumen

why are cyberpunk tabletop things so obsessed with decency and personhood being tied to how many surgeries you haven’t had

“if you have a prosthetic it takes out a part of your soul” like thanks shadowrun

in early cyberpunk, the point was more along the lines of “if we integrate technology into our bodies we risk becoming dependent upon the people and institutions who control that technology, who would then use that to enrich themselves at our expense”

unfortunately that was too anti-corporate for American mainstream culture so as cyberpunk moved out of its niche it became “uhhh it eats your soul I guess”

tags by @rubyvroom: 

#this is important context #if you weren’t around at the time it is easy to miss but #anti-corporate sentiment was pretty much the lynchpin of cyberpunk until there were movies and games making money off it #it was the 1980s you guys #the entire point was that corporations are evil and technology should be used to circumvent them and escape their control over our lives #and not be used to make ourselves into another product #now that the internet is entirely monetized and corporate it’s harder to remember that originally it was synonymous w freedom & independence

Yes, exactly. Cyberpunk is anti-corporations, not anti-body-modification.

I’m looking for any advice on doing longer fics? I wanna look to doing more and do longer things but I have a lot of difficulty. Outlines aren’t really a thing that work a lot for me and I have this itch to do something longer and was wondering what other people did for longer fics and how they keep themselves motivated to keep it up. Any advice from anyone?

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I can’t plan a fic to save my life, but I do enjoy writing multi-chaptered works. My longest is 75K, but they’re usually in the 20-40K range.

The way I do it is to think of a fairly simple plot (for example, Characters A and B are best friends. They’re in this situation. Events unfold to turn them into lovers.) and keep that throughline in mind. They’re friends and they’re going to end up in love. This is the setting.

The events that transpire to get them there might need some planning, but as long as I keep my end point in mind, the route that I take to get there can be anything at all.

I’m also really bad at taking notes about my fics, so the way I keep it all straight in my head is to just tell myself the story over and over again. I replay the story and the various scenes in my head, often deciding what happens next. Then, since I’ve thought about it so much, I can remember the details I need to reference in later chapters, and all of my daydreaming means that I have a solid idea of what that next scene is going to look like.

This method is almost certainly not for everyone, but it’s what works for me and my brain. Let’s see how other people go about it, shall we?

No joke - this is almost exactly how I write. With maybe a few sparse notes about specific things in the first half of the fic that I’m at least 50% likely to ignore as the pacing changes.

I also want to add that there are a lot of forms of planning that don’t involve outlining at all. I write almost exclusively long things, and I do some kind of planning for almost everything, and I’ve learned the hard way that outlining doesn’t work at all for me–but writing scene ideas on sticky notes and slapping them on the wall? Gold. I also do a lot of jotting notes on pieces of paper and free-associating. For me it’s a balance between having enough of an idea of structure and through-line that I don’t get totally stuck, without planning so much that it sucks the life out of the idea I was excited about. But no two writing processes look the same, and there’s no “right” way to do it!

What I do for AOT is establish the ending, and 2-3 main arcs in the story. From then on I just reverse-engineer the outline by having a clear chapter guide with keywords on each chapter to make sure I'm on track.

Beyond that, I also like to keep a folder of chats, lengthy scenes, and general snippets - so that every idea that pops up is jotted down in the moment and I don't forget about it. When it's time to use those snippets, I weave them into the storyline until all the strings are tightly woven in so to speak.

When there's too much planning and I feel constricted by them, I just brainstorm or challenge myself to try a different approach for the upcoming scenes. Tackle a fresh angle, use another theme, etc. Whatever keeps the creative juices flowing.

And when there's not enough planning, and inspiration and drive is there but I'm concerned about the direction (nothing worse than just writing in vain with no message or direction in mind = irrelevant progress), I sit down and figure out what I actually want for the story. In other words, it's a little balance of everything.

-Lumen

Which OC takes every precaution in order to hide their scars?

When they first meet, Char is fascinated by Kaodhan’s attitude towards his facial scars, the bold fearlessness with which he wears them, the way it hinders nothing in the way he presents himself to the world. On the contrary, it seems to intensify his drive in hiding nothing of his true self.

Char can do nothing but deeply admire his courage, wishing she could be as strong minded in revealing the deformations of her own skin… perhaps one day. But until then, she feels trapped in a vicious cycle of her own making: desiring to show her integral self, like the universe with all its constellations and black holes alike, but feeling paralyzed at the mere thought of being seen as unnatural, alien, horrifying… by the people she cares most.

This in turn causes her to withdraw back into herself, to return to the familiar routine of all the back-straightening devices, bandages and oversized sweaters.