@friendsfan367: @rednenemon and I stay together for a lot of reasons but I think the biggest one is how messed up our writing can get. Though telling me that I shouldn't do something to Axel just makes it more tempting...
@friendsfan367: @rednenemon and I stay together for a lot of reasons but I think the biggest one is how messed up our writing can get. Though telling me that I shouldn't do something to Axel just makes it more tempting...
@friendsfan367: @rednenemon and I stay together for a lot of reasons but I think the biggest one is how messed up our writing can get. Though telling me that I shouldn't do something to Axel just makes it more tempting...
thats for the axel part not the red part.
thank you for what you said about akira. i think i found the save hes in so i'm going to keep that part i think i just needed to hear i was writing it right from someone whos been through it. especially since its a sensitive topic and a few friends here have.
I come bearing late-night coffee and coffee hour questions! Since our coffee hour is turning into BYOQ (Bring your own questions), please feel free to chime in with your questions for Trip and for the readers!
Question for readers: I always feel like I grow a lot as a writer when I read good fiction. In what ways has reading "No Stars" inspired or expanded your writing?
My answer: I pay more attention to creating a world's various cultures through having read some of this work.
Question for the writer: How has your writing been pushed, challenged, or developed in writing this work? Have you thought about starting any new projects so that you can apply what you've learned in writing this to the new works?
Question for readers: I always feel like I grow a lot as a writer when I read good fiction. In what ways has reading "No Stars" inspired or expanded your writing?
i'm starting to explore things i've been afraid to write.
In what ways has reading "No Stars" inspired or expanded your writing?
Well firstly, No one can deny that each and every dream sequence is very striking, especially visually. On a superficial level, they made me realise that green screens exist. (Or maybe a black screen in this case.) Yup, I didn't know they were a thing ahahaha...
Secondly, I tend to avoid heavy or dark topics when reading, because they make me uncomfortable, I guess. It's interesting- dark things like suicide have featured in my life before, but somehow I feel detached from those experiences, like it was happening to someone that wasn't a younger me. It feels surreal, and I don't like thinking about them. Reading 'No Stars' expanded not only my writing, but my reading as well. It was certainly an experience, seeing the world from the perspective of characters that had vastly different ways of thinking to me. Now I feel inspired to write characters darker than my usual- though I definitely couldn't pull off writing a Thu or an Axel. Small steps xD
Great question, CT. I haven't really been writing much while reading Uptown... I'm late to the party. I would like to maybe add more cultural aspects to my rewrite of Kass' story.
I did have a question for you, @InfraGreen. Was there anything that the readers picked up on or read into that wasn't intentional or something you hadn't thought of?
Question for the writer: How has your writing been pushed, challenged, or developed in writing this work? Have you thought about starting any new projects so that you can apply what you've learned in writing this to the new works?
@CathyTea: good question! I don't really feel like Uptown was much of a departure or challenge beyond the norm. I dunno what else someone would expect if someone said "what if @InfraGreen wrote a grounded drama/romance?" But I think it did push me to develop my writing and improve it. Funny enough, it was in putting limits on myself and learning from past mistakes. I wanted to (read: @CitizenErased14 really really wanted me to ) release chapters on a regular schedule, so there was no overthinking chapters and arcs. I have to get at least two done a week and that is not a lot of time for a chapter. In contrast, Eight Cicadas of course had a focus but it didn't need a tight one, so I let it wander a lot in a very...legacy-esque fashion. And I didn't have a schedule so I'd be stuck overthinking arcs with it eventually leaving me drowning.
Uptown explores a lot but at its core, it's a character study of Axel and Thu and watching these two go towards my mysterious planned end is a simple, attainable goal that gives me a ton of flexibility. I know my necessary limits now.
So I hope that leaves me in a better place for future projects and not feeling overwhelmed by them. And I'm looking ahead at a lot.
Question for the writer: How has your writing been pushed, challenged, or developed in writing this work? Have you thought about starting any new projects so that you can apply what you've learned in writing this to the new works?
@CathyTea: good question! I don't really feel like Uptown was much of a departure or challenge beyond the norm. I dunno what else someone would expect if someone said "what if @InfraGreen wrote a grounded drama/romance?" But I think it did push me to develop my writing and improve it. Funny enough, it was in putting limits on myself and learning from past mistakes. I wanted to (read: @CitizenErased14 really really wanted me to ) release chapters on a regular schedule, so there was no overthinking chapters and arcs. I have to get at least two done a week and that is not a lot of time for a chapter. In contrast, Eight Cicadas of course had a focus but it didn't need a tight one, so I let it wander a lot in a very...legacy-esque fashion. And I didn't have a schedule so I'd be stuck overthinking arcs with it eventually leaving me drowning.
Uptown explores a lot but at its core, it's a character study of Axel and Thu and watching these two go towards my mysterious planned end is a simple, attainable goal that gives me a ton of flexibility. I know my necessary limits now.
So I hope that leaves me in a better place for future projects and not feeling overwhelmed by them. And I'm looking ahead at a lot.
they better stay alive at the end. ilove remus lupin who appeared in book 3 of harry potter but when she killed not only him but his chance to be happy i got upset.
@friendsfan367: nice job. (EDIT: I'm evil and no guarantees on saving anyone )
@chalicen: my "black screen" is simply a floor and wall set that's pitch black. Grab it at MTS if you want. Though it's poor if I actually wanted to, say, completely replace the background behind sims like Axel and Thu. He exclusively wears black and she has a lot of black hair (and wears black too lol).
Hope you follow through with that. I like darker stories and characters a lot. I'm always rooting for criminals (though I draw the line at, well, Andrea).
@AdamsEve1231: maybe we can learn more about Ayesha's roots.
All the time! The biggest was that I was gonna be much softer on Axel's creepiness until readers were catching hints of it really, really early. So I went with what the people (absolutely didn't) want.
@friendsfan367: nice job. (EDIT: I'm evil and no guarantees on saving anyone )
@chalicen: my "black screen" is simply a floor and wall set that's pitch black. Grab it at MTS if you want. Though it's poor if I actually wanted to, say, completely replace the background behind sims like Axel and Thu. He exclusively wears black and she has a lot of black hair (and wears black too lol).
Hope you follow through with that. I like darker stories and characters a lot. I'm always rooting for criminals (though I draw the line at, well, Andrea).
@AdamsEve1231: maybe we can learn more about Ayesha's roots.
All the time! The biggest was that I was gonna be much softer on Axel's creepiness until readers were catching hints of it really, really early. So I went with what the people (absolutely didn't) want.
i just realized something kind of cool. reds story the one i can't read starts with murder. yours has one in the middle. maybe you do influence each other.
@friendsfan367: yeah we'd spend hours chatting and sharing gruesome tips. It's tapered off now that we're both writing dark romances vs. actual horror stories.
@friendsfan367: yeah we'd spend hours chatting and sharing gruesome tips. It's tapered off now that we're both writing dark romances vs. actual horror stories.
she went dark again? cathtea said one story was non violent actually i forget what she said but not scary was implied.
@friendsfan367: yeah we'd spend hours chatting and sharing gruesome tips. It's tapered off now that we're both writing dark romances vs. actual horror stories.
she went dark again? cathtea said one story was non violent actually i forget what she said but not scary was implied.
i ran out of uptown questions for now.
Well @rednenemon still has her moments. It's half cute and half talking about serious problems, with the occasional "oh snap I just discovered my co-worker covered in blood and barely conscious".
@friendsfan367: yeah we'd spend hours chatting and sharing gruesome tips. It's tapered off now that we're both writing dark romances vs. actual horror stories.
she went dark again? cathtea said one story was non violent actually i forget what she said but not scary was implied.
i ran out of uptown questions for now.
Well @rednenemon still has her moments. It's half cute and half talking about serious problems, with the occasional "oh snap I just discovered my co-worker covered in blood and barely conscious".
but for her thats probably normal.
i figured you wouldn't mind if i bought her up you seem to be each others creative force but go abut writing things differntly. i wonder if that makes sense my eyes are open but i'm not awake.
It's our last day of Coffee Hour on "No Stars"! I feel that, even though it's been a "Be-Your-Own-Host" Coffee Hour, it's been really successful and interesting. I've enjoyed reading all of your responses, and I've learned a lot about your approach to writing, Trip, and about readers' insights and experiences.
I've got so much respect for your writing, @InfraGreen ! Really a lot to learn from you. Thank you!
And you're all such insightful readers, I've learned a lot from all of you, too! Thank you!
So, seeing as it's our last day, here's our chance to share our final questions and responses.
What else would you like to ask the writer?
What else would you like to ask the readers?
Thanks so much for your participation, everyone! I've enjoyed this very much!
@everyone At what point in the reading did you feel there was no going back for the characters or for yourself as a reader (Like you were past the point of no return and thoroughly invested in the story)?
@AdamsEve1231: I've seen everything! Responded to it, different story.
Anyways, the character in Thu's place was always meant to be East Asian, though earlier drafts had her be Japanese or Chinese. Half of it was decided on existing familiarity (again, mum had Vietnamese friends, I grew up in an area with a decent number of Vietnamese immigrants and children of them, etc) and half of it was actually for Axel. I had made him prior to this but I had no idea what he was ethnically, other than ambiguously brown with a German name. But I took a closer look at his features, especially his monolid eyes. Monolids/hooded eyes appear in other places beyond East Asia but I thought it would be a nice touch if he could bond with Thu based on ethnicity. Germany also has a pretty large number of Viets living there, around 150,000 and for a variety of reasons (some of them were fleeing the regime, others were part of a program between Vietnam and East Germany to trade workers and they ended up staying...alas I went with the lazier "fleeing because of religion" background for Axel's family instead of working in the unique East German situation with Vietnam).
Axel certainly had parents in CAS, though they were utterly unusable for any serious story. I made Annette and Harwood from Eight Cicadas in TS4 to test Dine Out and the gender/unisex patch. They had a daughter and I did surprisingly little work to make Axel from that. But obviously that wouldn't fly narrative-wise because I'm fiercely protective of the Cicadas canon, whether I'm actively working in that universe or not, and they don't get unjustified spinoffs. So Axel needed real parents. Once I found that I could reverse-engineer a Vietnamese-looking parent for him, his background was set in stone...at least half of it was. It took me 26 chapters to nail down his dad's ethnicity (i.e. he's a very light-skinned man of German and Somali descent)
But most importantly, Vietnamese names are easy to anglicize.
@friendsfan367: a dark romance story is just a romantic story with dark themes. @rednenemon gets a lot of material from her couple's traumatic childhoods and mental health and I do that but more gruesomely. Horror is horror, I guess. But someone out there is gonna combine the two if they haven't already.
@CathyTea: it was an excellent weekend! Hopefully we can clear out of here in time. Thankfully the Uptown thread is always open and all you need is a WordPress account to comment on the blog itself. If we missed something that @chocis had as a question, she's more than welcome to bring it to my thread.
@everyone: if you're caught up, which character do you have the most hope for?
@AdamsEve1231: I've seen everything! Responded to it, different story.
Anyways, the character in Thu's place was always meant to be East Asian, though earlier drafts had her be Japanese or Chinese. Half of it was decided on existing familiarity (again, mum had Vietnamese friends, I grew up in an area with a decent number of Vietnamese immigrants and children of them, etc) and half of it was actually for Axel. I had made him prior to this but I had no idea what he was ethnically, other than ambiguously brown with a German name. But I took a closer look at his features, especially his monolid eyes. Monolids/hooded eyes appear in other places beyond East Asia but I thought it would be a nice touch if he could bond with Thu based on ethnicity. Germany also has a pretty large number of Viets living there, around 150,000 and for a variety of reasons (some of them were fleeing the regime, others were part of a program between Vietnam and East Germany to trade workers and they ended up staying...alas I went with the lazier "fleeing because of religion" background for Axel's family instead of working in the unique East German situation with Vietnam).
Axel certainly had parents in CAS, though they were utterly unusable for any serious story. I made Annette and Harwood from Eight Cicadas in TS4 to test Dine Out and the gender/unisex patch. They had a daughter and I did surprisingly little work to make Axel from that. But obviously that wouldn't fly narrative-wise because I'm fiercely protective of the Cicadas canon, whether I'm actively working in that universe or not, and they don't get unjustified spinoffs. So Axel needed real parents. Once I found that I could reverse-engineer a Vietnamese-looking parent for him, his background was set in stone...at least half of it was. It took me 26 chapters to nail down his dad's ethnicity (i.e. he's a very light-skinned man of German and Somali descent)
But most importantly, Vietnamese names are easy to anglicize.
@friendsfan367: a dark romance story is just a romantic story with dark themes. @rednenemon gets a lot of material from her couple's traumatic childhoods and mental health and I do that but more gruesomely. Horror is horror, I guess. But someone out there is gonna combine the two if they haven't already.
@CathyTea: it was an excellent weekend! Hopefully we can clear out of here in time. Thankfully the Uptown thread is always open and all you need is a WordPress account to comment on the blog itself. If we missed something that @chocis had as a question, she's more than welcome to bring it to my thread.
@everyone: if you're caught up, which character do you have the most hope for?
i have hope for axel anthu. i'll tell you what i tel adam and eve you didn't say pick one character.
I'm not that far into it yet... but I hope the most for Axel. He seems to be "better" now that he's with Thu, though I'm worried he'll slip back if she tells him the truth.
@AdamsEve1231: I've seen everything! Responded to it, different story.
Anyways, the character in Thu's place was always meant to be East Asian, though earlier drafts had her be Japanese or Chinese. Half of it was decided on existing familiarity (again, mum had Vietnamese friends, I grew up in an area with a decent number of Vietnamese immigrants and children of them, etc) and half of it was actually for Axel. I had made him prior to this but I had no idea what he was ethnically, other than ambiguously brown with a German name. But I took a closer look at his features, especially his monolid eyes. Monolids/hooded eyes appear in other places beyond East Asia but I thought it would be a nice touch if he could bond with Thu based on ethnicity. Germany also has a pretty large number of Viets living there, around 150,000 and for a variety of reasons (some of them were fleeing the regime, others were part of a program between Vietnam and East Germany to trade workers and they ended up staying...alas I went with the lazier "fleeing because of religion" background for Axel's family instead of working in the unique East German situation with Vietnam).
Axel certainly had parents in CAS, though they were utterly unusable for any serious story. I made Annette and Harwood from Eight Cicadas in TS4 to test Dine Out and the gender/unisex patch. They had a daughter and I did surprisingly little work to make Axel from that. But obviously that wouldn't fly narrative-wise because I'm fiercely protective of the Cicadas canon, whether I'm actively working in that universe or not, and they don't get unjustified spinoffs. So Axel needed real parents. Once I found that I could reverse-engineer a Vietnamese-looking parent for him, his background was set in stone...at least half of it was. It took me 26 chapters to nail down his dad's ethnicity (i.e. he's a very light-skinned man of German and Somali descent)
But most importantly, Vietnamese names are easy to anglicize.
@friendsfan367: a dark romance story is just a romantic story with dark themes. @rednenemon gets a lot of material from her couple's traumatic childhoods and mental health and I do that but more gruesomely. Horror is horror, I guess. But someone out there is gonna combine the two if they haven't already.
@CathyTea: it was an excellent weekend! Hopefully we can clear out of here in time. Thankfully the Uptown thread is always open and all you need is a WordPress account to comment on the blog itself. If we missed something that @chocis had as a question, she's more than welcome to bring it to my thread.
@everyone: if you're caught up, which character do you have the most hope for?
i have hope for axel anthu. i'll tell you what i tel adam and eve you didn't say pick one character.
I'll have to back you up there @friendsfan367 , although I've still not caught up, I'm kinda routing for those two.
Comments
@friendsfan367: @rednenemon and I stay together for a lot of reasons but I think the biggest one is how messed up our writing can get.
outrun / blog / tunglr
thank you for what you said about akira. i think i found the save hes in so i'm going to keep that part i think i just needed to hear i was writing it right from someone whos been through it. especially since its a sensitive topic and a few friends here have.
I come bearing late-night coffee and coffee hour questions! Since our coffee hour is turning into BYOQ (Bring your own questions), please feel free to chime in with your questions for Trip and for the readers!
Question for readers: I always feel like I grow a lot as a writer when I read good fiction. In what ways has reading "No Stars" inspired or expanded your writing?
My answer: I pay more attention to creating a world's various cultures through having read some of this work.
Question for the writer: How has your writing been pushed, challenged, or developed in writing this work? Have you thought about starting any new projects so that you can apply what you've learned in writing this to the new works?
Do you also play The Elder Scrolls Online? You can find me there as CathyTea, too!
Well firstly, No one can deny that each and every dream sequence is very striking, especially visually. On a superficial level, they made me realise that green screens exist. (Or maybe a black screen in this case.) Yup, I didn't know they were a thing ahahaha...
Secondly, I tend to avoid heavy or dark topics when reading, because they make me uncomfortable, I guess. It's interesting- dark things like suicide have featured in my life before, but somehow I feel detached from those experiences, like it was happening to someone that wasn't a younger me. It feels surreal, and I don't like thinking about them. Reading 'No Stars' expanded not only my writing, but my reading as well. It was certainly an experience, seeing the world from the perspective of characters that had vastly different ways of thinking to me. Now I feel inspired to write characters darker than my usual- though I definitely couldn't pull off writing a Thu or an Axel. Small steps xD
Winter's Alchemy | Britechester After Dark - Forum thread
I did have a question for you, @InfraGreen. Was there anything that the readers picked up on or read into that wasn't intentional or something you hadn't thought of?
Find me elsewhere:
My EA App ID: livinasimminlife
Livin' A Simmin' Life Stories
My Worldbuilding Blog
Simblr
My Sims Pinterest
@CathyTea: good question! I don't really feel like Uptown was much of a departure or challenge beyond the norm. I dunno what else someone would expect if someone said "what if @InfraGreen wrote a grounded drama/romance?" But I think it did push me to develop my writing and improve it. Funny enough, it was in putting limits on myself and learning from past mistakes. I wanted to (read: @CitizenErased14 really really wanted me to
Uptown explores a lot but at its core, it's a character study of Axel and Thu and watching these two go towards my mysterious planned end is a simple, attainable goal that gives me a ton of flexibility. I know my necessary limits now.
So I hope that leaves me in a better place for future projects and not feeling overwhelmed by them. And I'm looking ahead at a lot.
outrun / blog / tunglr
they better stay alive at the end. ilove remus lupin who appeared in book 3 of harry potter but when she killed not only him but his chance to be happy i got upset.
@chalicen: my "black screen" is simply a floor and wall set that's pitch black. Grab it at MTS if you want. Though it's poor if I actually wanted to, say, completely replace the background behind sims like Axel and Thu. He exclusively wears black and she has a lot of black hair (and wears black too lol).
Hope you follow through with that. I like darker stories and characters a lot. I'm always rooting for criminals (though I draw the line at, well, Andrea).
@AdamsEve1231: maybe we can learn more about Ayesha's roots.
All the time! The biggest was that I was gonna be much softer on Axel's creepiness until readers were catching hints of it really, really early. So I went with what the people (absolutely didn't) want.
outrun / blog / tunglr
i just realized something kind of cool. reds story the one i can't read starts with murder. yours has one in the middle. maybe you do influence each other.
outrun / blog / tunglr
she went dark again? cathtea said one story was non violent actually i forget what she said but not scary was implied.
i ran out of uptown questions for now.
Well @rednenemon still has her moments. It's half cute and half talking about serious problems, with the occasional "oh snap I just discovered my co-worker covered in blood and barely conscious".
outrun / blog / tunglr
but for her thats probably normal.
i figured you wouldn't mind if i bought her up you seem to be each others creative force but go abut writing things differntly. i wonder if that makes sense my eyes are open but i'm not awake.
Find me elsewhere:
My EA App ID: livinasimminlife
Livin' A Simmin' Life Stories
My Worldbuilding Blog
Simblr
My Sims Pinterest
Find me elsewhere:
My EA App ID: livinasimminlife
Livin' A Simmin' Life Stories
My Worldbuilding Blog
Simblr
My Sims Pinterest
It's our last day of Coffee Hour on "No Stars"! I feel that, even though it's been a "Be-Your-Own-Host" Coffee Hour, it's been really successful and interesting. I've enjoyed reading all of your responses, and I've learned a lot about your approach to writing, Trip, and about readers' insights and experiences.
I've got so much respect for your writing, @InfraGreen ! Really a lot to learn from you. Thank you!
And you're all such insightful readers, I've learned a lot from all of you, too! Thank you!
So, seeing as it's our last day, here's our chance to share our final questions and responses.
What else would you like to ask the writer?
What else would you like to ask the readers?
Thanks so much for your participation, everyone! I've enjoyed this very much!
Do you also play The Elder Scrolls Online? You can find me there as CathyTea, too!
@InfraGreen Did you see my above question?
@everyone At what point in the reading did you feel there was no going back for the characters or for yourself as a reader (Like you were past the point of no return and thoroughly invested in the story)?
Find me elsewhere:
My EA App ID: livinasimminlife
Livin' A Simmin' Life Stories
My Worldbuilding Blog
Simblr
My Sims Pinterest
Anyways, the character in Thu's place was always meant to be East Asian, though earlier drafts had her be Japanese or Chinese. Half of it was decided on existing familiarity (again, mum had Vietnamese friends, I grew up in an area with a decent number of Vietnamese immigrants and children of them, etc) and half of it was actually for Axel. I had made him prior to this but I had no idea what he was ethnically, other than ambiguously brown with a German name. But I took a closer look at his features, especially his monolid eyes. Monolids/hooded eyes appear in other places beyond East Asia but I thought it would be a nice touch if he could bond with Thu based on ethnicity. Germany also has a pretty large number of Viets living there, around 150,000 and for a variety of reasons (some of them were fleeing the regime, others were part of a program between Vietnam and East Germany to trade workers and they ended up staying...alas I went with the lazier "fleeing because of religion" background for Axel's family instead of working in the unique East German situation with Vietnam).
Axel certainly had parents in CAS, though they were utterly unusable for any serious story. I made Annette and Harwood from Eight Cicadas in TS4 to test Dine Out and the gender/unisex patch. They had a daughter and I did surprisingly little work to make Axel from that. But obviously that wouldn't fly narrative-wise because I'm fiercely protective of the Cicadas canon, whether I'm actively working in that universe or not, and they don't get unjustified spinoffs. So Axel needed real parents. Once I found that I could reverse-engineer a Vietnamese-looking parent for him, his background was set in stone...at least half of it was. It took me 26 chapters to nail down his dad's ethnicity (i.e. he's a very light-skinned man of German and Somali descent)
But most importantly, Vietnamese names are easy to anglicize.
@friendsfan367: a dark romance story is just a romantic story with dark themes. @rednenemon gets a lot of material from her couple's traumatic childhoods and mental health and I do that but more gruesomely.
@CathyTea: it was an excellent weekend! Hopefully we can clear out of here in time.
@everyone: if you're caught up, which character do you have the most hope for?
outrun / blog / tunglr
i have hope for axel anthu. i'll tell you what i tel adam and eve you didn't say pick one character.
Find me elsewhere:
My EA App ID: livinasimminlife
Livin' A Simmin' Life Stories
My Worldbuilding Blog
Simblr
My Sims Pinterest
Find me elsewhere:
My EA App ID: livinasimminlife
Livin' A Simmin' Life Stories
My Worldbuilding Blog
Simblr
My Sims Pinterest
I'll have to back you up there @friendsfan367 , although I've still not caught up, I'm kinda routing for those two.
well she didn't.