Your Author Appeal/Creator Thumbprint

• I absolutely love the Took a Level in Badass trope and will nearly always have at least one character who starts out wimpy and ineffectual end ends up kicking ass and taking names, usually the main character, sometimes more than one character.
• ambiguous or bittersweet endings, but on a more idealistic side of the sliding scale — the heroes often don't get exactly what they wanted, but are much happier for it.
• Rage Against the Heavens and Did you just punch out cthulu. What can I say, I'm a sucker for that kind of crap.
• Lost Technology Again, just a total sucker for it.

On the other hand, I seem to like averting or subverting Took a Level in Badass. If you start out a wimp, you often stay a wimp. Whatever aspect of you that is badass has been there from the beginning.

I have a tendency to put on my own spin on familiar plots.

I want to be able to use Mind srew in my works without alienating most people.

I tend to avoid badass if I can I help it.

Whenever I feel cynical, I have a tendency to Yank The Dogs Chain.

I also like create multiple endings that more or less have ntohging to do with the plot.

I could really care less about continuity so I decided to go the Fianl fantasy route and create sequels with new characters. If I ever get a fandom, I expect that there will be some complaints.

I try my best to give my characters different and varying eprosnalities and if I can't, I will try to make similarities minimal.

I like to use Made of Iron in conjunction with You Can Barely Stand.

By this I do not mean my characters shrug off heavy blows at all, just that fatal blows often do not kill them but leave them severely crippled and in no condition to continue fighting... but they struggle to their feet and continue trying to fight anyway.

In short, they're incredibly difficult to finish off.

Something I noticed today: Everybody tends to be a pottymouth. I don't make them that way on purpose, it just kinda happens.

Add Vapor Wear to my list. And... you know what, on second thought, just add the whole fanservice index.

I tend to stay away from bad language, since I don't curse in real life and I don't want to be typing out stuff that I wouldn't want to say at a reading. I think of curse words as pepper. Too much, and it spoils the experience, but only a little bit of seasoning gives it a deeper taste, just for realistic and diction reasons.

Lately, I been using more and more metaphors and similes. Hopefully, I'm not using too much.

^ Yeah, it's kinda narmy if even the little granny swears all the time. But I tend to use settings and characters where it would be more unusual if they didn't swear, I think... A soldier or lower-class frontiersman saying "Darn!" when they're angry, in pants-crapping terror, or in pain is kinda funny.

Now that I do think about it my inner monologue does tend to use a lot of naughty words...

Those metaphors and similes would be useful if you tried writing noir :P

edited 5th Jun '11 9:17:12 PM by melloncollie

• A Byronic Hero or a Vampire or a Vampire by another name.

A ridiculous amount of eating! It is a biological imperative so it shouldn't be too surprising, but I find myself inserting feasts/grazing/social snacking/hunting/cooking/bonding over food a lot, which must be noticeable after some time. I'm also maybe overly concerned with how a character smells, though that does affect our perception of people we meet in real life.

On the subject, I tend to use modern swears in the 6th century.

I have two justifications for that: fuck and shit are very old words that go straight through Old English back to Proto-Germanic, and they spoke a different language. It's impossible to adopt the "local" or even "contemporary" dialect of English when a contemporary dialect of English that we can understand did not exist.

I draw the line at references to Christianity, and tend to lean more towards Old World swears anyway.

edited 6th Jun '11 3:41:32 AM by annebeeche

I'm fond of using:

• Impossibly Cool Clothes
• Action girls as both the main characters and NPC's
• At least one character with a beret
• At least one character with a scarf
• Lots of Les Yay and Ho Yay, but incalculable amounts of Foe Yay
• Nakama
• Meaningful Names
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits

There's quite a lot of other appeals, but these ones are the ones that usually pop in my head the first time around.

edited 6th Jun '11 4:55:07 AM by Nayrani

Mine are:

• Action Girl
• Amazonian Beauty
• Black-and-Grey Morality / Evil Versus Evil
• Black Humor
• most villains and Villain Protagonists being Complete Monsters.
• Crapsack World
• Crazy Awesome
• Deconstruction
• Evil Is Sexy
• Gorn
• Hot Amazon
• Rated M for Manly
• Reality Ensues
• Show Within a Show
• Smoking Is Cool
• Villain Protagonist
• World of Badass
• World of Ham

edited 6th Jun '11 5:55:02 AM by AdeptusAlpharius

Forgot to mention I love Meaningful Names and Code Names. Also if a charecte goes by a code name or nick name they tendto think there original name is lame.

edited 6th Jun '11 9:27:54 AM by HistoryMaker

i tend to avoid using swearwords unless the character is a pottymouth.

in general, im under the impression that swearwords in a story that takes itself seriously, and swearwords in a medieval setting, be it swearwords that would fit at that time period, or modern swearwords, feel silly and drain the atmosphere.

apple red hair and green eyes (virtually any shade) is also a thing i like to put in my stories quite a lot. something about the combination of my 2 favourite colors just works so well

They spoke modern english in the 19th century, so if I were in your position I would actually try to apply the contemporary language.

Old World swears = swears British, Irish, Scottish and other people say.

edited 6th Jun '11 11:49:39 AM by annebeeche

It was modern English, but they didn't have 21st century speaking patterns/colloquialisms. I never seen "fuck" or "shit" in old-timey books either. Or maybe I'm not looking in the right books; A Tale Of Two Cities probably would not have been enhanced by swearing.

Gotcha on the Old World swears.

They spoke Modern English, but not in the same way. The swears themselves were used differently (for example, "bloody" was comparable to "shit" in terms of offence caused, and "fucking" was rarely used as an intensifier back then, IIRC).

I think the lack of profanity in those books is probably more down to sensibilities and censorship laws, though.

edited 6th Jun '11 11:56:51 AM by BobbyG

...it did have swearing in it. Censored. When main dude is put in jail. "He looked like ****"

or possibly s***, can't remember.

:|

edited 6th Jun '11 11:57:00 AM by MrAHR

^ Wait, what. I don't recall that. PAGE NUMBERS BITCH

The main character has been put in jail, same chapter he decides to go the way of Mr. Manette, and make shoes. Right before he does that.

That's from memory, so accuracy varies.

—

When it comes to cursing, this is my excuse:

Any and all slang, puns, and jokes have been translated into the modern English for your convenience.

edited 6th Jun '11 11:59:36 AM by MrAHR

You mean sissy boy Darnay? I don't remember this at all o___O

Well, it's the narrator saying it. About the situation at hand. Think he's talking about a female by the prison.

edited 6th Jun '11 12:00:08 PM by MrAHR

Should I create a thread on cursing? I'll like to discuss this further.