Sorry I'm Just. Reeling. 14 THOUSAND????

SVSSS au except Shen Yuan transmigrated earlier, like say when Shen Jiu was a disciple, and met Shang Qinghua earlier and found out he was a transmigrator earlier and they both pulled their heads out of their asses and realized that they're both their ideal person and fall in love and everyone is both shocked and horrified at this strange power couple

SQQ's ideal man: someone who's caring, protective, a little pathetic, muscular, someone he can relax around, and will do anything for him

SQH's ideal man: cold, not afriad to cut a bitch (physically or verbally), likes be cared for/needs help with paperwork, tall, graceful and regal, someone who will listen to him ramble, who sees him and the stuff he does as someone or something of value

Some idioms and phrases you should know about part II :

Read The Riot Act : to scold, reprimand, or reprove one severely for an error or mistake.

Be Cleaned Out : to be emptied or devoid of money, food, resources, etc.

The Stars Are Aligned : current situation or set of conditions is ideal for the prospects of some activity or endeavor.

Climb The Social Ladder : to improve one's position within the hierarchical structure or makeup of a culture, society, or social environment.

Wash One's Mouth Out With Soap : to punish one for using rude, vulgar, or obscene language by cleaning their mouth with soap, usually used merely as a threat.

Get Down To Work : to begin being serious about something, to begin attending to business or work at hand.

Have Someone Pegged : to distinctly regard one as being a certain type of person.

Breathe A Word : to share information that is supposed to be kept secret, often used in the negative to encourage silence.

Shake Like A Leaf : to tremble violently with fear or nervousness.

Boil The Ocean : to engage in futile tasks.

Feel Blue : to feel sad.

tricky words I always see misspelled in fics: a guide

Viscous/vicious – Viscous is generally used to describe the consistency of blood or other thick liquids. Vicious is used to describe something or someone who is violent. 

Piqued/Peaked/Peeked – To pique someone’s interest is to catch or tease their attention. When something peaks, it reaches its total height or intensity. To peek (at) something is to look briefly, or glance. 

Discrete/Discreet – this is a tough one. Discrete means to be separate, or distinct, i.e., two discrete theories. Conversely, when someone is discreet, they are being secretive or cautious to avoid attention. 

Segue/Segway – one is a transition between things, the other is a thing you can ride at the park and definitely fall off of.

Conscious/Conscience/Conscientious – to be conscious is to be awake, i.e., not unconscious, or to be aware of something. Your conscience is the little voice in your head telling you not to eat the entire pint of ice cream. Finally, to be conscientious is to be good, to do things thoroughly, to be ruled by an inner moral code. 

Hope this helped! Please add more if you think of them!

i see a lot of questions asking about how to write dialogue or plot points or characters, but i personally really struggle with the other parts of writing (trying to describe action, or movement from one place to another, or locations through the eyes of the character.) I've tried searching for help but it seems like it's a very niche struggle. I can do plot outlines, i can do characters, I can do dialogue, but I can't do anything else. any advice/places to look?

Struggling with Description and Action

I wouldn't say those are niche struggles. They're actually pretty common, especially among newer writers. They're just prickly terms to search.

As far as describing movement from one place to another, let me just answer that here because it's a quick one. You don't have to describe every movement your character makes, or every movement from one place to another. For example, if your character is sitting in a chair sipping a mug of tea, you don't have to tell us she picked up the mug, raised it to her lips, put her lips on the mug, tilted her head back, and took a sip. That's all unnecessary detail because everyone knows how to drink a cup of tea. If you have already established that the tea is there, all you have to tell us is, "She took a sip of the tea." If you want to illustrate that the tea is still hot, she could blow on it. If you want to illustrate that she's not a fan of tea, you could have her scrunch her nose after she sips it. Those details are telling the reader something they need to know about the character or situation, so they're okay to add.

Likewise, if the character leaves the chair to look out the window, you don't have to tell us she set down the mug, stood up, walked to the window, opened the curtain, and looked out. We've all gotten up from a chair before, and we've all looked out a window before. We know how it works. You can just say, "Lanie stood and went to the window, annoyed to see that snow had stared to fall." As for locations through the eyes of the character, once again, you don't need to go into a lot of detail when it's not important. Your goal is to give the reader a sense of place without bogging them down with a lot of unnecessary details. It's enough to say that your character stepped into the cold, vast throne room. Any details beyond that should tell us something the reader needs to know. Also, it helps a lot to look for inspiration images when you're trying to describe a place. If you need to describe a cozy den, look up pictures of cozy dens and find some you like. Again, you're not looking to describe every or even many details from the picture. You're looking for a way to boil the picture down to a few important points.

Here are some previous posts that might help, and definitely take a spin through my master list of posts (divided into subcategories like description) to look for additional helpful posts:

Adding Description to Your Writing How to Make Your Description More Vivid The 3 Fundamental Truths of Description (And 5 Tips for Cutting Back) Five Things to Help You Describe Fictional Locations Worried About Cutting Too Much From Story

I hope that helps! ♥

why is baki hyping up cats

How would zyx have handled being born in the canon sects?

my brain is mush, but let’s give this a shot. in no particular order...

Yunmeng Jiang: 

Comes over as part of the Meishan Yu side courtesy of Madame Yu, as Yu Lin 虞琳 (no courtesy name, same lin character as in DBD). 

Freaks out when she Realizes some realizations.

And then it’s down to business because she fucking lives here now, it’s her fucking house and it’s going to fucking catch fire.

Due to precociousness and competence from of being Done since birth, she’s trained as the successor of Jinzhu/Yinzhu for JC. 

Pre-WWX arrival, she sticks to teaching/providing emotional and mental support to the Jiang sibs so they don’t end up so screwed by their parents.

(Secretly works with JYL to help her cultivation bc fuck that noise.)

Once WWX arrives, she ends up tag-teaming with JYL to keep the peace. WWX ends up treating her like Shijie #2 - especially when he starts to cultivate and notices that she knows a lot more than she lets on.

WWX: “Lin-jiejie! Play with Xianxian!” JC: “Wei Wuxian, have you no shame? Even our shimei is more well-behaved than you!” WWX: “Our... what?”

(Still younger than everyone, but she never says anything. Conceal don’t feel.)

Overall: more emotionally stable and patient, Exhausted(TM), and much more reserved. Can’t wait to fuck off somewhere.

If the Golden Core transfer thing is going to happen, it’s not going on her watch - she’d knock WWX out, let JC take her GC instead, and then finds a nice quiet mountain to retire onto. Immortality didn’t mean much to someone that has died before. Also, the math then works out. Everything should be okay. Right?

(Obviously, no. But we’ll leave it at that.)

Lanling Jin:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Lanling Jin is... ugh. Name: Jin Zi’ai/ 金子藹 (zi as the generational character, ai for affable/luxuriant)

IDK if you know those dinner parties with your relatives when you are done with their shit by hour 2... but it’s like that 24/7. She awaits the day she’s powerful and influential enough to go feral.

The resources available to her are awful. She’s a close enough cousin that she has to see JGS’s shit all day. Deal with Jin Zixun all day. But for the sake of survival and agency, she grits her teeth and ingratiates herself with Madame Jin to get close to Jin Zixuan and get access to better cultivation education and resources.

Mme Jin cuts her a deal - if she can be useful to her son and the heir of Lanling Jin, she’ll help out on the side.

At first, JZA (god that’s so weird to see a vowel in an MXTX name abbr) is planning to just use JZX and get the fuck out.

And then his awkwardness makes her care. Damn it.

Plan: Get her uncle pushed down the stairs Actively set up JZX to take over Lanling Jin by Year 5 post-Sunshot Campaign.

Reluctantly ends up taking MY/JGY under her wing once she remembers the Qin Su situation. Ticks another year off of JGS’s life.

Best fucking friends with LQY.

(Plans go to shit once she meets people outside of LLJ. Recalibrating...)

(Due to a bad JZX/JYL encounter, WWX makes an exception and she’s the only girl he hates. “Just as insufferable, if not more, than that Peacock.”)

Qinghe Nie:

It’s fucking cold. She complains about humid heat, but she also bitches about cold and snow. All weather sucks.

QHN is probably the only sect that lets her get away with as much as she does in Shuangfeng. Goes gender-neutral again.

Name: Nie Yunxun. Done.

‘Don’t yell bankai, don’t yell bankai -’ as NYX is training with a humongous sabre. Big sword is encouraged. Give an inch, take a mile.

Da-ge energy pulls them in like a black hole. “Damn it, now I fucking care.” None of this Song of Turmoil Shit on their watch.

(”Da-ge,” because NHS latched onto them and NMJ allowed it, “Not everything is so black and white.” Tries their best to slowly make him chill the fuck out.)

Pretty prim and proper despite a foul mouth - slated to take over for Nie Zonghui when it comes time for the new generation.

Refuses to believe that eating dirt is the only future for sabre-wielders. Convinces NHS to trust and confide in them once he figures out what they’re trying to research and test.

(NHS latching on - 1) he catches NYX punning a subtle insult on LLJ during a discussion conference, 2) while escorting NHS to watch a play, he then catches them making the bitterest commentary on the not-so-great plot, and 3) on the days that he really can’t confront the fact that his Da-ge is going to cultivate to his own death, they will lie to NMJ’s face with no shame and let him hide.)

Uses QHN reputation to their advantage to play stupid and guileless. “A pretty, dumb brute.”

In public, NYX is essentially NHS’s long-suffering henchman.

In private, NYX and NHS are the Shady Duo, scheming tirelessly to... make the Cultivation Realm better, of course :) (better for some, not for others.)

Gusu Lan:

This feels worse than LLJ.

Lan Wenhui 藍文慧, wen for literary, and hui for intelligence.

CR is fine to visit, but awful to grow up in.

Grows up like a grumpy version of Lan Jingyi, because she knows that things aren’t going to be okay and there’s nothing she can do about it from her position.

Acts out a lot (like pre-ZYF death little Lin-lin). Sometimes accidentally, sometime purposefully. Living the CR feels like perpetually having an itch that she’s not allowed to scratch.

In trying to ‘tame the little beast’, LQR discovers two methods: 1) stump her with challenging/stimulating work, or 2) make LWJ ‘babysit’ her.

(Never mind telling an eight-year-old to watch a seven-year-old - but it’s the Chinese way to outsource your older kids to watch younger kids)

LWH can’t bring herself to be mean to LWJ. Thus LWJ gains a reluctant cousin-friend, and a buff to his social interaction skills.

LXC dotes on her so unabashedly that she effectively goes speechless for the whole day out of embarrassment.

Thus LQR discovers method #3 to nerf the Little Devil of the Cloud Recesses, and is so proud of himself and his nephews.

(WWX kicks him off his laurels when he arrives.)

Endgame: post-SSC (since she’s not in a position to change much without being scrutinized), seeing the 3Zun’s essentially make an alliance sans YMJ (+ JYL being betrothed to JZX), JGS basically is the most influential leader of the cultivation world.

Fuck no.

She orchestrates a ruse, if you will. ‘Accidentally’ lets JC pull her ribbon and doesn’t object. When questioned, lies and says that ‘he was her first love since catching a glimpse during the Cloud Recesses.’ (Complete with inflectionless voice)

“well shit, there’s nothing really objectionable about this match... so... congrats on your upcoming nuptials?”

Actually using that time to 1) go back and forth between YMJ with a semi-legit reason to interact and collude with the Yunmeng sibs and warn them of the upcoming BS, 2) delay the JZX/JYL wedding, 3) give LWJ time with WWX and hopefully they both get their heads out of their asses.

Shenanigans, fake dating/betrothal-turned-real? idk.

Qishan Wen:

The worst. Worstest. 

Two options:

Option one, side-side-side branch Wen

She’s fucking off.

Learning some cultivation/stealing some manuals, do a little spying and map-making, and deserting. 

Drops some secret missives for the other main sects, when the information becomes more relevant. 

Due diligence done, fucks off to some coastal town as their standoffish, neighborhood Cultivator. 

Micromanages the town and its well-being with the tenacity of playing a city builder/animal crossing in her previous life. 

Grow old. 

Die.

Option two, Wen Qing/Wen Ning’s family, the middle child. Wen Ling 溫玲, ling for exquisite.

She’s close enough to be in WRH’s purview but not in his main family. Whew.

Tries to convince older sister WQ to turn traitor and dip. 

Almost causes catastrophic end for their family bc of premature planning. 

She can’t play the same espionage game as WQ or MY/JGY does with WRH because she knows there’s no recovering from being publicly seen supporting WRH post-SSC. So she just works as a mainline fighter bc at least she’ll be able to defend herself and feel ‘useful’.

Fakes death and deserts mid-SSC. 

If lucky, lives and reluctantly infiltrates LLJ to be in the position to rescue her family after the war.

If she’s not... WWX kills her while she’s on the battlefield. She sees him and picks that moment to fake her death.

In this case, WWX catches her in the act, kills her but she calls out for WQ.

WQ learns about her death. WN is the one to tell WWX about the relation.

Tries to revive her as ‘owing one’ to the Wen sibs, looks for her corpse, encounters LWJ, gets his help to catch her soul with inquiry.

(Prime LWJ vinegar-drinking as he makes up his own reasons for why Wen Yuan exists and why WWX is taking care of him).

Ends up possessing WN on accident when WangXian returns to the Burial Mounds, able to help avert the Qiongqi Path incident.

Grimy spytime shenanigans to fight back against LLJ and surviving, and ends up passing on once things settle.

I had to draw this text post by @hozukitofu because I absolutely love the idea of the Jin sibs bonding… JZX gets new friends! JGY gets some people who sympathise with his tragic backstory and don’t treat him like shit (hopefully curbing his murdery tendencies)! Qin Su doesn’t get trapped in an accidental incest marriage! and MX gets a new family who treat him better than the horrible Mo clan :.) honestly, it’s what they all deserve. 

Character Development : A Collection of Resources

Patreon || Ko-Fi || Masterlist || Work In Progress

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Resources

Resources For Creating Characters

Resources For Describing Characters

Resources For Writing The Mafia

Resources For Writing Royalty

Commentary on Social Issues In Writing

General Tips

Guide to Character Development

How To Fit Character Development Into Your Story

Tips on Character Consistency

Designing A Character From Scratch

Making characters for your world

Characters First, Story Second Method

Understanding Your Character

Tips on Character Motivations

31 Days of Character Development : May 2018 Writing Challenge

How To Analyze A Character

Alternative Method of Character Creation

Connecting To Your Own Characters

Interview As Your Characters

Flipping Character Traits On Their Head 

Character Driven vs. Plot Driven Stories

Traits

Tips On Writing About Mental Illness

Giving Your Protagonists Negative Traits

Giving Characters Distinct Voices in Dialogue

Giving Characters Flaws

Making Characters More Unique

Keeping Characters Realistic

Archetypes

Writing Good Villains

Creating Villains

Guide to Writing The Hero

Positive Character Development Without Romanticizing Toxic Behavior

Tips on Writing Cold & Distant Characters

Balancing Multiple Main Characters

Creating Diverse Otherworld Characters

Foreshadowing The Villain

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Masterlist | WIP Blog

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looking up an ao3 writer and seeing that both their updates and bookmarks stop at a certain time makes me scared they've crossed the river styx