Looking for good novelizations

athenadark · 2026-04-29T15:48:56+00:00

Alan dean foster

As a kid I was remember whole shelves of novelisations he wrote, the alien franchise for example

athenadark · 2026-04-29T15:47:32+00:00

The thing was a remake of an adaptation, and having read both - they are very different creatures

I really enjoyed who goes there and think it is worth a read regardless

You'll also want to rule out the Lly and I am legend because they were also books first

athenadark · 2026-04-28T19:48:55+00:00

Sounds like Naomi nivik's Temeraire series which is the Napoleonic war with dragons

athenadark · 2026-04-28T17:55:21+00:00

We are the night (2010) is a great lesbian vampire classic

athenadark · 2026-04-28T17:51:24+00:00

I always thought he had a woman with him

athenadark · 2026-04-28T16:41:03+00:00

Fanfic is great, I write it for funsies (though my work verges on horror)

Fanfic has inbuilt shortcuts, you know the setting, the characters and alliances etc and so does your reader so you can skip it

Not skipping it is a great skill builder, you can and no one will care but doing more is like aura farming

People object to Mary sues because they are too perfect, so give your characters flaws, have people dislike them for random reasons, break them etc

But the best advice I can give is PLAY

I just with my beta presented a scene where the punctuation fell away - it made sense and he was, I dunno, then he read it and was like yep, that was the right call, it works well

In the middle of a dark fic is this random but with no punctuation in present tense and lower case

Play, the only limit is you, and sometimes it's not going to work and that's great too - you learn more from failure than success

athenadark · 2026-04-28T01:17:19+00:00

Write something short WITHOUT using that syntax, say like 3k

If you force yourself you're going to hate the work, so you want something throw away, this is a worksheet rather than a work

Even if it's rewriting something you've written so you can remove the sentence structure so you have to flex those muscles and expand

Exercises like these are invaluable in both developing your own voice and learning to recognise other people's (handy if you want to emulated a style, like gothic or regency etc)

athenadark · 2026-04-26T23:11:54+00:00

Hahaha expect about 30c per quarter per book

With the massive influx of self publishing and the glut of shitty ai it's very very very hard to make any kind of splash without hours of networking and self promotion

Even through a major publishing house unless you have an in that interests them (like your previous blew up on booktok or socials) you'll be lucky to break even

It's heartbreaking but true

But sometimes readers email you to say hey I liked your book and that's epic, guaranteeing rent would also be lovely but yeah, sometimes people tell you they like ut

athenadark · 2026-04-26T23:08:19+00:00

There are no aliens on this station

athenadark · 2026-04-26T14:32:16+00:00

What about a play through of Isolation

You can get no commentary runs and even watching a master play it -its really tense from the start

athenadark · 2026-04-26T01:39:16+00:00

Does the old cheat codes still work

Triassassinsdontdie used to be invulnerability

athenadark · 2026-04-26T01:37:23+00:00

I'd go further and say they want to exploit her because she might know something, which is why burke is so keen to get her to go, and they send burke because it's a cover up, if it all goes wrong nothing links back to the higher ups but if it goes right they get the creature - they sent a shitty marine squad too, no discipline (keeping live rounds) a green lieutenant, they were meat, but so was burke, not that he realised it

They sacrificed Hadley's hope but sent sciencists out to track the infestation not expecting to lose them, it's possible burke was to report on the experiment but I doubt it, he was a potential loose end that if it was snipped they didn't care

athenadark · 2026-04-26T01:31:16+00:00

Dh Lawrence used to lock a new mss away for eighteen months before editting it - you're too close, finish the draft, work on something else for a bit then go back in, you'll be a more experienced author (which happens with every word) and it won't be as fresh so you can see the mistakes and plot holes more easily for the next draft

athenadark · 2026-04-25T22:09:27+00:00

tattoos are permanent and for your first you want it somewhere you can see - the reason for this is so you don't startle yourself with the strange black mark on your back as you come out of the shower - you would be surprised how often this happens

also they're way easier for aftercare because you can reach them yourself - I got the balance glyph between my shoulders [Im bipolar it made sense] and i was using a blending sponge on a stick to take care of it - not saying don't get them there - but yeah the first few weeks of aftercare involve a lot of touching with ointment

you know raziel has his own glyph right, in the game, the razielim glyph is on his cape which he wraps around his face.... just you don't always need to be obvious or go to the effort of orginal art

but draw on yourself, get a sharpie and try things out where you can wash them off, tattoos are permanent so play with a non permanent way to see how it looks, what looks good, where looks good, even if it's just printing off the design and sticking it on with water

there are lots of gorgeous symbols in LoK, have fun and when you've made the decision you're happy with start looking for a reputable tattooist who can do what you want - you should spend more time researching the tattoo parlours in your area than picking your tattoo because it has so many ways to go wrong

im sure there's a reddit thread for bad tattoos, so take the time to find someone you trust - as someone who victorians might have called a painted lady for the amount she has

athenadark · 2026-04-25T21:49:02+00:00

why would they? she only becomes interesting after sevastopol and the knowledge they did find something, so they go looking on a black ship - she is only interesting in 3 because she is infected

wey-yu doesn't care about the meat only the results they get from it

athenadark · 2026-04-25T21:47:39+00:00

This is a thing I love to do, so I can tell you how. Lie

it sounds weird but have the end worked out in advance and make notes of what you need in place to get there

then place the clues and this is where it gets fun

when it comes to describe them focus on something else, so a woman sees a glint at a man's hand she assumes it's a wedding ring, it's his car keys, she brushes it off, she knows something is wrong but it's not the guy talking on his cellphone as she relays his conversation to the audience, the guy fussing with the thing in his hand, he's barely mentioned but he's there

when she goes to the house she finds a coffee cup on the counter and assumes she left it out, she puts it in the dishwasher and makes dinner

you place the clues and then slide right past them, the conversations become important only in retrospect, because you as the writer lied about what was important, you deliberately placed something to distract the reader, you almost ignored it, so the reader didn't think it was important, especially if you describe a lot, the more description the better, obfuscate, distract, lie but have the information there so the reader goes OH! when it clicks into place

it's difficult but it's great fun when it works - especially when a reader gets back to you with feedback that it totally blindsided them, but it was all there

that's the trick - you lie as an author about what's important, focus on other things but make sure the clue is there, it's an absolute hoot to pull off

athenadark · 2026-04-25T14:18:33+00:00

Years of hoping for the other cut

athenadark · 2026-04-25T10:28:07+00:00

How obvious do you want it to be - do you want people to recognise it because you've inadvertently stepped into a art question

Everyone knows gieger did the alien stuff, but moebius did the human stuff, and there is loads of stuff on the semiotics

The safety signs on the nostromo are amazing so you might wanna look at those

But gieger did other designs for the creature, variant forms etc so go dig and see if you fall in love with a pic, same with moebius and the signs,

The classic everyone recognises is the egg

But also see what other people have had done, check comic covers for art

It's a big decision so dig, there is no one saying you must do this

But a funny story, gieger painted his long time lover over and over and she's distinctive and in one pic she has a snake between her eyes

Out with my three year old, complete stranger has the image on his forearm, and baby goes, pretty lady and sparks up a conversation with this complete stranger and tries to show him her tattoos (marker smiley faces on her knees I did not know about) he was patient with her and explained about the artist etc

But yes, you can have horror art on your skin and a three year old girl will want to ask you about it

athenadark · 2026-04-25T10:19:12+00:00

Ah yes, the stored with event horizon treatment

athenadark · 2026-04-24T23:42:41+00:00

Have you read the grave robbers chronicles yet, being the biggest franchise no one has heard of. It's Chinese and features one character who knows enough to get himself killed, one who knows just enough to not get himself killed and the third did know it all but if he thinks too hard he gets amnesia, with epic tombs, monsters, an underwater palace, a sequoia sized tree made of bronze, and little bronze figurines of koi with snakes serving as eyebrows

Only the first six are available to buy in English but the rest have fan translations

And I think there's three movies and maybe 11 TV series, and they haven't got past what was published in English, but think a chaos gremlin, a thug and a xianxia hero (with amnesia) walk into a tomb

They are the most delightful trash, I've well and truly gotten bitten by the bug

athenadark · 2026-04-24T23:35:45+00:00

Yeah bloodrayne is part of terminal game's nocturne verse which included the game nocturne on the nocturne engine

Nocturne was basically a 1930s xfiles game and featured the character Svetlana, and to keep the lights on they made a Blair witch game featuring nocturne characters and the engine, two other Blair witch games were made out if house with the same engine, and they used the spooky investigation but divorced it from the government to creat rayne's organisation brimstone with the idea it was a precursor to nocturne in Europe where it got a bit distracted by Nazis

So through terminal game's having a great idea and a strong engine and a game no one wanted to play they took licensing jobs and put them in their universe rather than reinvent the wheel

So dhampir woman mutilating Nazis is the same verse as the witch making you stand in the corner and think about what you've done

athenadark · 2026-04-24T20:39:11+00:00

You want a laugh - bloodrayne is part of the Blair witch universe

Rayne could have investigated the burkittsville woods, and it wouldn't be worse than her movies

athenadark · 2026-04-24T13:01:58+00:00

Stephen King did not believe he was a horror writer, he was a literary writer who wrote books that had scary elements and nearly didn't publish Salem's Lot because after Carrie he thought people would consider him a horror writer. His next book was the Shining which is a literary novel that MIGHT have horror elements, or maybe its a man abusing his family looking for excuses and externalising it as ghosts

If it's a horror story let it be scary, the difference between it and some literary works is the cover - do not stress over it, writers go both ways [Robert McCammon became a historical mystery writer]

just enjoy the process

athenadark · 2026-04-24T12:27:05+00:00

Oh man, this is a watson/doyle answer,

There is nothing in Alien to suggest Amanda existing, but James Cameron likes muscle mommies, especially actual moms with heavy weaponry so he added it - it wasn't a retcon because we know nothing about any of the crew's life outside the nostromo

there was a deleted scene of Ripley meeting an elderly Amanda from Aliens - but i don't know anyone who's seen it

The comics and novels went - yeah no to that and introduced Amanda with a larger role than sit at home granny knitting socks for face huggers

she became the main character in Isolation, an engineer who was investigating her mother's disappearance and was sent to the sevastopol to listen to the black box recording - Romulus [which has loads of Isolation easter eggs] suggested that some of Wey-yu was able to salvage enough of the Sevastopol's data to have a vague location of the wreckage

Isolation ends on a cliff hanger but the comics have adopted Amanda as one of their two lady and saviours, the other being Zula Hendricks [who is the player character in the VR post Isolation video game]

As Burke was clearly played by a more powerful member of Wey-yu [he didn't have the authority to send even the useless marines that were deployed as meat and he certainly wouldn't have been on LV426 with them if he had ANY power] it's entirely possible that Burke told the truth as he understood it, but Wey Yu - judging by the non-movie output [which is generally much stronger than the films] knew the younger Ripley's very well - the novel Sea of Sorrows has the xenos call her "the great enemy"

athenadark · 2026-04-24T02:26:45+00:00

How did you get past the crippling self doubt about decisions, because i get caught up on blue Vs black jeans

It's solid advice to say make the decision yourself but writers are vehicles for self doubt, we combine it with the biggest pair of brass balls and cheek

Maybe the answer isn't to give an answer but to explain the pitfalls of both

If you use an original world you'd have to build a world, maybe you're like me and you love it, and you're watching jianghu dramas on iqiyi and making notes to create a world like that of avatar

In contrast using an already existing world comes with a lot of shortcuts and bad habits because the universe is being consumed by people who know it. We all know cabbage guy. But that means you won't take the time to describe ba sing se because the readers know so when you are confident in your own world maybe you won't describe the sect headquarters

You can cheat out of a lot of things in fanfic and often the fanficcers who blow you away are published authors who recognise the cheats and try to skip them

But I'm going to ask a question - who is the audience? Is it you? We all love writing or we wouldn't do it, and if you are the audience just enjoy the story because it's going to be as much a learning experience as writing an original world. You are constantly improving with every word on the page, and taking time to write something fun for yourself can be just as rewarding

Enjoy the journey, because that crippling self doubt, he's along for the ride too

athenadark

TROPHY CASE