I Love It When Characters Are Codependent. I Love It When Losing Someone Feels Like Losing A Limb. I

Satsuten Fanbook Case 1

Case 1

A story of a simple homicidal maniac – the murderer who succumbed to his urges

This is a short story from the Satsuriku no Tenshi Fanbook.

Written by Makoto Sanada, translated by me.

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Long time lurker, first time asker!

How do you keep different voices/characters in your fics so distinct? I'm writing my first longer than 2k word fic and it's... a time.

First, I'm going to link you the best essay I've ever read about How To Write Canon Character Voices—what's too much accent, what's too little, how to pay attention to word choice and the way they phrase things, etc. It's about Transformers but the skills are transferrable to other fandoms (or original writing). The original essay is down so all I can offer is the archive.org version, but it's worth it.

Second, I'm going to link you this post I wrote about how I study character voices. It's about Hazbin but it shows you the kinds of things I pay attention to when I'm learning a character voice.

Third, I'm going to offer you some extra general advice that isn't in the above posts:

Some people try to make characters sound like themselves by basically parroting their catch phrases or most common quotes. Do that and you're just gonna make your version of the character sound like a robot. (Note: if you're writing a character who only knows how to say a few quotes, that's okay lmao.) The readers already know what the characters said in canon, they're reading a fic to hear them say something new. Example: if you have Bill Cipher arrive on the scene and say "Did you miss me? Admit it, you missed me!" word-for-word, you don't sound like you're writing Bill, you sound like you're quoting Bill from That One Scene where He Said That Thing.

But... directly borrowing characters' quotes is kind of a stepping stone on the way toward figuring out how they speak. Think about things they've already said, but use those quotes as a guide for how to write them.

Example: from that quote above, we get that when Bill shows up around people who definitely did NOT miss him, he just... decides that they did and tells them so. This shows you a bit of his sense of humor (he makes jokes to annoy someone who hates him—it's not even a mean joke, just annoying), a bit of his ego (he knows he's clowning around, but even when he's clowning he's going to say something that makes himself sound popular rather than hated), his casual & familiar attitude with someone he barely knows, his tendency to just request people do what he wants (saying "admit it, you missed me" instead of something like "I know you missed me")... etc.

And I kinda already said this in the Hazbin post, but the most important thing you can do when you're struggling with a character voice is just rewatch their episodes and pay close attention to how they speak (or rewatch their movie scenes, or reread their chapters/comic issues—whatever you're writing about). If they're from a visual/audio medium (TV, movie, podcast, etc), then if need be, read transcripts to see how their voices look when written down. Type down the transcripts yourself if there aren't any—and that's also a good physical exercise to make you slow down and pay attention to how they speak. (You notice where they tend to pause in sentences when you're the one who has to decide where to put commas; you notice their accent when you're the one who has to decide whether that word sounds more like walking or walkin'.)

Pay attention to cadence, accent, interjections, sentence length, active voice, passive voice, preferred vocabulary, preferred slang, word choice, sentence length, sentence complexity, any phrases they're fond of (but again—don't overuse a phrase unless they overuse a phrase), how they tend to refer to the people around them (by first name, last name, any titles, any nicknames—and do they change in different contexts?)... Pay attention to anything you can think of. You want to be able to hear the character's voice clearly in your head—read everything you write in their voice, and if it doesn't sound like their voice in your head, change it.

i don't think the theraprism is a good thing, guys

billford animatic i made to the song 'confrontation'! ^^

New Listener's Guide to The Magnus Archives

Or, How To Stop Worrying And Learn To Love The Scares

A lot of people seem to be getting into TMA lately so I thought I’d offer some basic advice for anyone curious about it.

Useful Resources

A full list of transcripts

Content warnings 

Note: The creators have straight up stated that they’re not gonna include sexual violence or explicit pet deaths.

Character guide for keeping track of names

So what exactly is The Magnus Archives?

Fundamentally, it’s a horror anthology podcast. The central conceit is that our protagonist is an archivist and each episode he makes an audio recording of a written statement that someone has made about their encounter with the paranormal. This format means that the particular flavour of horror can vary wildly from episode to episode.

But what about The Plot?

It may not seem like it at first but there’s a lot going on. Don’t worry about it though, you don’t have to keep meticulous notes to understand things. The characters spend plenty of time trying to figure things out and you can just take that journey with them. However, if you’re into cork-boards and red string, then absolutely, this is a great podcast for that. But you’re not gonna have a worse experience if you just want to sit back and get spooked.

And Jonathan Sims?

That would be our protagonist, his voice actor, and the show’s writer. Yes, it gets confusing at times. It’s not set in stone but people often use Jon, John, Jonathan or the archivist to refer to the character while Jonny refers to the real person.

New Episodes?

Nope, it was planned to run for 5 seasons and then it ended. However, there is a prequel/sequel/”sidequel” in the form of The Magnus Protocol.

i don’t want characters with healthy coping mechanisms, actually. i want them to yearn and weep and suffer and have their brutal worldviews informed and/ or altered exclusively by their unyielding love for like. one other person. sorry

Some spamton art and rambling

Spamton is a very interesting character. Anybody who had payed attention to Deltarune after chapter 2 would know this. And his sheer popularity makes sense. His odd way of speaking, the perfect mix of quirkiness and terrifying insanity, the tragic backstory. The elements are all there to make a insanely well written character. But uh- I'm not here to gush about how good of a character Spamton is. (I mean, technically I am) I'm here to look at his character specifically through the lens of him being a spam bot.

Despite what the addisons said about Spamton being "like the rest of us," I think Spamton always was meant to be a little different. The way his appearance is very similar to the addisons but not quite the same - I'm pretty sure his marketing tactics followed the same principle. Whether it was because he was simply a bit more pushy with his advertisements, or that there was something a bit unnerving about his character even before gaster/the mysterious entity came into play, I'm sure there was a reason the customers ignored him. Just like how people ignore real life spam emails. They're annoying, unsafe, weird, stupid. Spamton was always meant to be ignored. To be that one email guy popping up at people with advertisements on the streets. People just DON'T LIKE SPAM.

Then the mysterious entity came into Spamton's life. Somehow, defying all logic, they made spam emails popular. They made Spamton popular. But they also gave him knowledge on the nature of their world. That everything is controlled by the plot and other such unseen forces, and that nobody can truly make their own decisions in this world. With this, Spamton knew his popularity really wasn't supposed to have happened in the first place, but everybody already loved him, (well, the addisons left him- but that was just because they were jealous! He didn't need them!) and he'd ride the wave as high as it'd take him.

But it all came crashing sooner than even Spamton expected. Without the entity's help, the world corrected itself, and everybody went right back to hating spam emails. Spamton would go back to being that forgetful email guy. No, it was even worse now. At least back then he had some people that were friendly to him. Now... he had nobody. He didn't even have a house.

He was always meant to be this way, wasn't he? No matter how hard he tried, the world simply wouldn't let him be a big shot. Spamton absolutely hated that. He wanted to fight back against this cruel world. Now, he didn’t just want his popularity back, he wanted freedom. To escape the confines of this story and his role as a personified spam bot, to become something… more. To truly become a [BIG SHOT]!

But that didn’t change the fact he was still a spam bot. And what do spam bots do? They just keep sending emails to as many people as possible, just in the off chance somebody will click that link. That’s exactly what Spamton does to try to gain his freedom. He latched on to a ray of hope- that robot in the basement- and repeatedly attempted to sneak inside the queens mansion to get to it without regard for exactly how good his plans are, in the vain hope one of those attempts would succeed at one point. He just kept trying. Over and over and over… slowly losing his mind even more in the process. There is evidence that he tries multiple times to get inside the basement, with Sweet Cap’n Cakes mentioning a “funny little man” asking them for help to sneak in the mansion, and Swatch mentioning an impersonator- which is probably Spamton. Which uh… the image of the tiny dude dressing up as this huge bird guy and thinking it’s a clever enough disguise to get past everybody in the mansion in a funny thought- but kinda sad at the same time. Seriously- did Spamton really think there was a chance that’d work??? But I digress.

Even with his repeated unsuccessful attempts to infiltrate the mansion- there was one attempt that worked. When Kris and the player came into the picture. But even with the help of a lighter and a literal god-being on his side helping him with his plan… he still failed. That neo robot didn’t do anything for his situation. He was still trapped. And so he turned against Kris, and by extension the player, in a last ditch attempt to get his freedom. That was what fully solidified his utter failure. He was going against us. But even if he hadn’t attempted to fight the player, he would’ve have failed in any other attempt anyways.

From the very moment Spamton decided to oppose the rules of this video game world, to try to become something more than a spam bot, he was destined to fail. Even if he managed to get Kris’s soul. Even if he somehow became as powerful as Asriel in undertale, he still wouldn’t get the freedom he wants. Because he is a character in a video game, and he will never become anything more than that.

When writing always remember… a character flaw is only a flaw until becomes useful. 

Is your protagonist manipulative? Well that’s awful… until they manipulate the antagonist into making a decision that saves the lives of their friends. 

Is your protagonist a skeptic? Well that’s not good… until someone tries to lie to them. 

Is your protagonist overprotective? That sucks… until someone they love is in danger. 

Is your protagonist remorseless? Well that makes them pretty unlikeable… until a hard decision has to be made. 

Girl stuck in stupidly large basement with a guy with anger management issues

There’s literally a surprising amount to go off of as well! There’s the whole Satsuten cafe, there’s an official (?) school au out there, right? Why isn’t there more content :(

There's a extreme lack of au content and it is bad. I now know why people say this fandom is dead, au content is MANDATORY for fandom nourishment and I haven't seen any new aus for MONTHS.