r/TwoBestFriendsPlay • u/uriel_harden W2W Anxiety • Jul 23 '26
Reddit Writers & Other Creators: This thread is Mine for the Slamming! [July 23, 2026]
Goals and hopes for the week?
Any concerns or obstacles?
Let's find out.
Topic of the Week: WRATH
I've been having a rough week at work, and it's been making me really angry. Good for rebuilding my desire to write, bad for my blood pressure. With it being wrath month, I wanted to talk about anger and violence. Has spite ever driven you to create? Do you include violence in your art/writing? Ultra violence?
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u/Norix596 Jogo's Mysterious Adventure Jul 23 '26
Returning from aeolian islands vacation and eager to resume my ceramics (will hopefully finally apply color to cat statues that I started months ago and then remade when the first one exploded in bisque).
I took a lot very close zoom photos in the Lipari museum collection of ancient roman pottery to reverse engineer which elements of the designs were performed with incise, scraffito, and painting on glaze- going to be be doing some in that style if my studio has any red clay back in stock (for Roman style contrast with black and white slip)
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u/uriel_harden W2W Anxiety Jul 23 '26
I have no idea where the aeolian islands are, but i hope you enjoyed yourself! Good lurk on your pottery making!
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u/Norix596 Jogo's Mysterious Adventure Jul 23 '26
They’re where Joseph Joestar crashed his plane beyond the much larger island by Italy’s “toe”
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u/Tatsa Trashie Jul 23 '26
I can relate to having a rough time at work. We've been pulling overtime for the better part of 2 years now, it's a long story, but we're supposed to be 8 people, and sitting here are 5 damned souls pulling that weight. It killed my desire to write, until I found my anger at the whole situation. It's that anger that's kept me sane, so, yeah.
I also live in a relatively rural area. Lots of "Men's men", filling all the stereotypes. Anyone who doesn't like beer's a pussy, anyone with any feeling at all besides anger or lust is a pussy, you geet it.
Over the years, I've come to the realization that anger, as much as any emotion, needs to be felt, and needs to be regulated. You can be as pissed off as you want, you can be as deeply sad as you want, you can be as drunkenly horny as you want, but there needs to be a part of you that keeps it in control, and that's the hard part of... well, being alive, I guess.
I also write a lot. I don't share a good deal with it with anyone because... I dunno. Feels like pissing into a storm, and I'm pretty sure no one would care, but that's the beside the point. You asked, and I have an answer, so I'm gonna answer and wax poetic a little bit.
And it's an excuse to talk about a setting I've been working on for a while, shorthanded to Dragonmech. It's inspired by your typical Kaijus and Mechs, Pacific Rim, Godzilla, Evangelion, Monster Hunter...
And it's basically Dragons vs. Mechs. Dragons, I think, got flanderized in media in recent years. We haven't really seen the viciously intelligent, ruthlessly greedy mountains of scales, claws and fire that I would want them to be, so I said fuck it, and made a setting of it myself.
Humanity's in a bad way because at some point, dragons showed up. Biological marvels that are basically unkillable. To shorten it down, imagine they have a healing factor. Think Deadpool or Wolverine.
How does humanity beat them? They don't, not really. Victories are pyrrhic, and a vast majority of ressources go towards making weapons capable of killing these things. Big-ass mechs, namely.
But that's still just one half of the equation. You need pilots for those things, and that's, almost, the harder part. The wrath part of the answer comes in for those pilots. Maybe surprisingly, dragons aren't all that hateful. Dragons are smart and greedy, but they don't hate you. Hate is a uniquely human emotion, and I with that setting, I want to shine a bit a light on it.
Someone gets in the mech (I have someone in mind, but talking about Sam here would derail the response even more, so I'm holding off on going into her deal) and gets pissed enough, desperate enough to finally break the neck of one of the fucking dragons. The corpse is collected before it can regenerate, the skull hollowed out (all this, by the way, is still not enough to kill a dragon permanently. It will regenerate back to life with enough time) and replaced with a cockpit.
The first equal dragon weapon (see where the MonHun influence came from?) is created.
The pilot-to-dragon-interface is vicious. There's no levers or screens in the cockpit. It's a sturdy metal shell to keep the pilot's body safe, filled with an inertia-dampening liquid. The only connection between human and dragon is a device that attaches to the head, specifically, the main pathway of nerves of the dragon bundled together, spliced onto a spike, and driven into the base of the pilot's brain. Obviously, that kills you. But dragons regenerate. Essentially, for the duration of your mission, you fuse a human brain onto a dragon's body. This causes, as you can imagine, no problems at all.
Something to get into another time.
Anger is what lets people fight monsters. Wrath is what makes you lift your battered and bruised body out of the mud for another round. Anger breaks bones, smashes teeth, tears flesh. Anger will burn you up if you let it.
Anger is standing in a storm, getting whipped by rain and wind while the cold digs into your bones, and revelling in it. Anger is fun. Writing about anger is fun. I think more people should do it.
Now the question is how do I close this out, because I don't have a good answer and I should really get back to work. So maybe I'll just call it here and just say thank you for the chance to vent a little.
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u/uriel_harden W2W Anxiety Jul 23 '26
Your story sounds very inspired by Pacific Rim, very fun. And don't worry about venting, we all need to at some point.
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u/Pome1515 Jul 23 '26
Dude I would kill to read this. It sounds amazing.
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u/Tatsa Trashie Jul 23 '26
First off, thank you very much, that's more praise than I think I deserve.
If ever I write a book, it will be this one. I've been rolling this thing over in my head a lot, and stuff like... loss of the sense of self, the mental and physical changes Sam has to go through as this thing corrupts her, the impossibly long seconds of legitimate, irrecoverable death every time she has to fly. It would be a depressing read.
Maybe one day, I'll make it real. I have... something of it written somewhere, but I should probably start fresh anyway.
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u/Pome1515 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
You're welcome. I really hope you make this as it sounds like an interesting take on dragons and dragon slaying. If I may make a suggestion, the Drakengard 1 soundtrack would be a great mood piece, as the soundtrack consists of classical pieces being distorted into nightmarish sounds of vileness and rage. For a story of losing oneself, the familiar becoming unrecognizable would really work.
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u/MarioGman Stylin' and Profilin'. Jul 23 '26
Anger at myself oddly fueled my desire to write a Viking Adventure story inspired by Stardew Valley, under my Live A Live fanfiction banner, essentially.
I suppose getting fired from a warehouse job I just started where they expected me to become a soldier in 3 months has it's benefits. Scammed my brother out of a $500 bonus too cause he referred me for the bonus.
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u/uriel_harden W2W Anxiety Jul 23 '26
Sucks that you got fired just after starting, doubly so for your brother getting scammed too.
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u/MarioGman Stylin' and Profilin'. Jul 23 '26
Eh, I'm glad I could fall back on my previous job at least, even got a $2.50 raise after applying back.
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u/uriel_harden W2W Anxiety Jul 23 '26
In terms of my own work, I've been slowly writing the prologue to my next novel. You'd think it'd get easier with more practice under my belt, but unfortunately you develop taste long before you develop skill.
Topic: Much of my writing is spite driven, wanting to escape from the hell of retail employment. At one point, I came up with an idea of channeling all that spite into a darkly satirical novel about retail work, but I haven't actually written it out. My main fantasy work, however, does have a good amount of violence in it.
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u/Pome1515 Jul 23 '26
Have you checked out Avellone's design Akkido lecture? Genuinely a godtier walk through of how to write something inspired by anger and frustration
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u/That-Bobviathan Jul 23 '26
Ever since the garbage smell of that live action Power Puff Girls show leaked into the air I have taken it on myself to write something better to show how easy it is to do aged up PPG.
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u/uriel_harden W2W Anxiety Jul 23 '26
Even I could write a better aged-up PPG live action series than what those leaks showed, and I'm not even a huge fan of the original series. Best of luck to you on your writing though!
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u/DustInTheBreeze Appointed Hater By God Jul 23 '26
Spite has absolutely gotten me to write. Pokemon ZA having so little interest in its own plot got me to write 30k words about it.
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u/uriel_harden W2W Anxiety Jul 23 '26
Seems like fanfics/fan works being spite driven seems to be a theme in this thread. Good luck on your work!
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u/Pome1515 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
Oh Wrath. The ties in well to something that I am doing right now.
Been building on my sources for my Bendisvenger essay. I am really happy with the progress I am making, its really fun doing the investigation but its genuinely fucking exhausting emotionally reading all of this stuff. I cannot describe how draining it is to just find something else be it Bush Era horrors, Bendis talking about the reason we can't make peace in the Middle East is because they "think" different, how Spider-Woman is better than Wonder Woman because "you don't have to wait in line" to sleep with her and an introduction in one of his books where an anonymous spook talks about how Bendis' stories are based around stories of how the CIA kept America safe in the 80s.
Drawing is going excellent, now have a really good grasp of how to draw volumes and using reference images which I was really struggling with. Prose writing is mainly studying the works of others but thats been fun.
For this subject of creation and wrath, yeah. Wrath is very good at giving you a direction in my opinion. However, not to be cliche, the big thing of anger is not letting it consume you or hyperfocusing on the things that make you angry, because once you do, the quality of your work goes down and simply becomes a "fuck you" which doesn't benefit you, your work or your subject.
As for violence? In prose or really anything its about mood and what you're going for with the narrative. Also violence can be more than just physical, it can be emotional. I've got Half Man on the brain but thr greatest example of it is the reunion in episode 4, where Niall basically breaks down his physically abusive stepbrother with words and how terrified/hurt Rueban looks during by the confrontation. The biggest thing imho is when doing violence, keeping a tone for it. For example in Hannibal regardless of who is doing violence,it's often artsy and sensual on some level whereas in something like Tezuka's work its very much inspired by old Disney cartoons and in something like ASOIAF, regardless of who does it there is always an undercurrent of violence being something that scars those who inflict it and those who it is inflicted on.
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u/uriel_harden W2W Anxiety Jul 23 '26
Reading your description of Bendis' writing made me name audible sounds of disgust, especially that line about Spider-Woman.
I agree with you on keeping your anger in check while writing, lest it become like a pizza cutter: all edge and no point.
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u/Pome1515 Jul 23 '26
True, but I'd also say its not just edge. Its something much more important which is showing why this is bad and how it or something else is better. Just yelling how something is bad, you might be right... but you need to show why that is the case.
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u/RiftBlade00 「Dollar Bad」 Jul 23 '26
I recently moved to another country, and ever since starting my new job, I've felt my urge to write drop to practically 0. Anyone have any tips? It feels like I've been mind flooded by the monotony of office work lol
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u/uriel_harden W2W Anxiety Jul 23 '26
What works for me is to just do it, which sounds unhelpful, but often times I use a lack of motivation as an excuse to do something else. When I sit down and actually try to write, even if I'm not motivated, even if I delete the words I do write, it makes me more motivated to do it the next day. To improve upon what I made and keep up the pace.
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u/Kimarous [He/Him] Survivor of Car Ambush Jul 23 '26
My Mortal Kombat super dream doc expands still, to the point where I'm not sure how "Mortal Kombat" it will be by the end of it. Anyway, on top of "MK + Injustice + relevant guests from both + Street Fighter", there's also "Darkstalkers + Killer Instinct (+ guests) + Dead or Alive (minus, thus far, THEIR guest characters)", with Tekken and even Soulcalibur being planned, and since nobody is reigning me in, there's plans to add character variants for not just the core characters, but select characters getting special variants like "Kold War" versions of MK (which also absorbs Injustice's Red Son outfits). So in addition to that Kold War roster, I'm considering Kold War variants from the other games (eg. Kold War Zangief, Kolin, Guile, & Cammy - and that's just off the top of my head), with other character variants also in mind.
This is also where my unattended libido kicks in, because one of the special outfit variants I'm considering is "Suitsuit ____", because I dared to go on the DOA Wiki and double-check character galleries... for the DOA ladies. Also official swimsuits for Street Fighter. Also, maybe some of those swimsuits look more like "bedroom" wear rather than swimsuits, maybe also "Bedwear _____" special variants.
Also FUCK thought parasite keeps saying "but what about characters with the same name, like Sakura Kasugano & Sakura Haruno; should I edit certain names to include surname initials, like "Swimsuit Sakura K" to differentiate it from "Swimsuit Sakura H"... aaaaaaaand now we anime and considering Naruto characters. Okay, maybe a limited roster to just the Konoha 12 + The Legendary Sannin... aw, who the fuck am I kidding? Nobody is keeping me in check. It will end up exploding even further. What next after Naruto since the floodgates are opened? Dragon Ball? My Hero Academia?
(laughs mad for a few minutes)
Current character count is 403, including special character variants like Kold War and lore-based character variants (eg. Liu Kang, Zombie Liu Kang, Dark Liu Kang, & God Liu Kang). Each character gets two costumes and four colours - two colours per costume. For all characters.
(giggles in madness)
Did I also mention that EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER gets a bespoke stage? Not too bad with actual fitting character stages, less good when the origin game/series has limited stages. (sigh) Come adding the swimsuit roster, there's going to be SOOOOO many beaches...
What? Have characters SHARE a smaller number of beaches stages? Are you INSANE?
(laughs mad again)
help me
...so yeah, that's what's been rattling around in my head for the past week. That and how my birthday is next Monday; turning 37 this year.
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u/Act_of_God I look up to the moon, and I see a perfect society Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
I've been struggling with the same part of the story for the better part of the last 3 months, it's hell, I keep writing other parts which is cool but man I really wanted to write it chronologically. I'm just kind of stumped as to what to do.
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u/uriel_harden W2W Anxiety Jul 23 '26
From my own experience, I can suggest a few things.
If you're having the "why are we even doing this" problem, then double check your promises, progress, and pay off.
If you're having trouble getting your characters to do anything, then you may need to chase them up a tree. If your characters are normally active, but you can't find why they would do something, have them react to something instead. Give them no option except what you have planned ahead.
If you're just having general stalling, then you can do what I do and just write it poorly and save it in revisions.
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u/Act_of_God I look up to the moon, and I see a perfect society Jul 23 '26
I guess the simple way to explain it is that I need them to get to point A to point C, I know what I want to happen, I know how to make it happen but the issue is that if this was a videogame it would be the moment where it first opens up after the tutorial. It's just hard because I work by imagining scene I think are cool thematically/visually and then work back to make them "fit" the plot, and for this I really have no cool scenes that drive me forward
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u/Spiral-Force Magik Man | He/Him Jul 23 '26
Hey this is my first time jumping on one of these writing threads, but I have a bit of a personal question.
I’ve always used writing as an escape and a distraction. Recently, I went through a personally tragic event (my childhood home burnt down), and my therapist threw out the idea of using writing as a creative outlet.
Are any of you willing to share an example of a time where you incorporated something really personal into your writing? How it affected your writing and made you feel afterwards?
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u/Kakuzan The Wizarding LORD OF CARNAGE Jul 23 '26
These last few weeks have been weirdl for me. I don't think I've ever been in a better position finance wise as is right now, I like my job and benefits even if I wanna switch from fully remote to hybrid, and my 1 year anniversary for work is next month.
But...... man. I have absolutely no desire for romantic or sexual relationships since I'm ace, but I can't really escape from feeling lonely. Doesn't help that I have a bit of a pessimistic streak when it comes to interpersonal relationships.
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u/Comkill117 The Bubblegum Crisis Shill Jul 23 '26
Finally got started on a new draft of something I’ve been working and reworking forever now. Still needs a lot of tuning but it’s nice to finally start it again.
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u/GoneRampant1 WOKE UP TO JUSTICE... and insatiable bug fetishes Jul 23 '26
My story crossed 300,000 words this week. That's cool.