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Can we focus on the matter at hand?

@dikanamai

Española. Shameless spanglish speaker. Copy-editor, reviewer and ebook designer in my daily life, and a SFF fangirl to the bones. Yeah, this site is for the fangirl thing. My fanarts, gifsets and fanwork in general, here.

There’s so many stairs in Casa Madrigal

Hello!

Lately, this blog is mainly Encanto related, so if you get here looking for content about this beautiful movie, welcome! (previously, it was a Coco related blog, so I also have a lot of old content about it here)

Since I've been posting here my Encanto fics over these last weeks, and I'm still writing more, I wanted to make a pinned master list to put them all together. If you take a look at them, I hope you enjoy them, and thank you very much in advance for your time and comments and/or reblogs. They're highly appreciated!

So welcome to:

  • Standalones:

It will always be the three of us When Pepa met Félix and she met Agustín, Julieta knew this would happen. They were in that age, after all. Everyone was making big decisions, choosing their paths. Everyone, except Bruno. Because, even if his look was always fixed in the future, he had never been fond of changes.

Sana, sana, colita de rana During those first years setting up the Encanto, it was easier for Alma to keep busy. There were a lot of things to do and no time to think. But as the town grew bigger and the life got steadier, her mind started to waver. Sometimes, she could conceal it. Other times, she couldn't. Especially at night, when she couldn't take refuge in the town's hustle and constant responsibilities, and found herself alone at home, taking care of her children on her own as the widowed mother she was, while seeing the ghost of the love of her life in their little faces.

  • Series:

The life of her dreams Isabela was very different when she was twelve. She was louder, funnier, more energetic, more vocal, more ridiculous, a total jokester. She was braver, too. That's why she didn't hesitate when she asked Bruno for a vision. She really wanted to know if the life of her dreams would be hers someday. But she regretted it later, of course. Because her uncle's vision taught her an important lesson: even good omens could turn into bad news.

And everyone always assumes the worst Three times in a row, Bruno was asked to look into his nieces' future. The first one was Isabela, a perfectly good omen turned into an awful warning under his mother's perfectionist look. The last one, the one that changed everything, was Mirabel, that fateful night full of fear and anxiety about a vanished door. But the one that hurt the most, the one that really made him reach his limit, was the second one. A request in the tiny voice of his dearest niece and a vision that made him wonder what was the point of having a miracle that felt like a curse.

In our darkest moment The triplets knew perfectly the story of the miracle's origin. But even so, Bruno had wondered many times how would it be to live through something so extreme. Losing everything in a blink, turning around and discovering your life had radically changed forever in a matter of seconds. It was something that had given him nightmares when he was younger, and he had concluded he didn't want to fully understand it. It was too much. The night Mirabel didn't get her gift, however, he had no choice but to finally understand.

I’ll do anything for you Dolores was more used to the drawbacks of her gift than to its perks. Since the moment she had turned five, she had been blessed with a significant amount of knowledge, but knowing a lot of things didn't mean she knew what to do with them— or that she could even do something at all. Most of the times, she was compelled to play ignorance, as if she couldn't hear the hard words, scolding, arguments, subtle crying, soft apologies, mumbled prayers, tired sighs or wordless silences. Those were things kids shouldn't know, so she was expected to do nothing about them, just to keep quiet and step aside. The night Mirabel didn't get her gift, however, too many things changed forever. And when she heard tío Bruno crumbling in his room, as much as the very walls of the tower, she decided it was time to step forward.

I'll keep it updated as I post more! :D

I have enough liked posts to fill the queue for a month or more, now I just need enough energy to do it :’)

There are a lot of things I wanna do, but I still feel like if seven trucks have hitten me. And my brief break has ended and now I’m buried on work again, though I only feel like sleeping forever. Recovering sucks, tbh. I wonder when I’ll be able to stop feeling so numb.

New The Heart and the Abyss update 🌊✨⚔️ Running from her problems now looks like a good idea

The Heart and the Abyss is a fantasy/adventure webcomic with pirates, mermaids,sword fights,mysterious magic..and a lot of sapphic and gay yearning. Wlw-slow burn romance with all the main cast Lgbtqia+

Read from the beginning -Tapas- -Webtoon-

Last Update -Tapas- -Webtoon-

THE MISCONCEPTION ABOUT COMMENTING ON FIC

I’ve read all kinds of posts both from writers and readers lamenting about comments on fic. Authors are upset when they don’t get any, readers don’t know what kinds of comments to leave, etc. And it finally clicked in my brain why I think a lot of people don’t bother writing comments. 

And this is what it boils down to:

Writers do not want praise.  We just want to talk about our story. 

I can’t speak for everyone obviously - but I think the majority of writers don’t care so much for the “omg you’re a brilliant writer!!” comments as much as we just want to hear your thoughts on the story. Even if it’s just your thoughts as you’re reading of “oooh x happened! I can’t believe y said this! What’s going to happen now that z has happened?!” We literally just want to talk about what we’ve written like you would with a friend about a tv show. We’re not out here demanding praise like some entitled narcissist. 

While praising our writing skills or writing style is appreciated, it doesn’t need to be said on every fic and every chapter that you read. If you regularly comment on someone’s work that’s telling enough that you like our technique. Readers shouldn’t feel pressured to have to praise a writer’s abilities every time they want to comment. 

In the grand scheme of things, talking about the fic/chapter is actually more helpful to us writers instead of spewing praise. It’s the same with artwork. As nice as it is that people tell me “wow your art is so pretty!” it’s a LOT more useful to me to get comments like “I love their expressions!” or “the lighting on this is gorgeous!” because then I know WHAT people are liking about it. If no one ever comments on my backgrounds, I now know what to improve. If most people comment on liking the expressions, I now know the strong points of my art and can use it to my advantage to make even better art in the future. 

The same goes for fic. If multiple people tell me they liked a certain part of the story I now know that things similar to that are a hit. It’s feedback I can use to improve the story and give my readers more of what they want. Without that I have no idea what they like about the fic.

Talking with a writer about their story also gives them inspiration!! Nothing gets us more in the mood to work on a fic than to have people wanting to talk about it. A lot of times just talking about one of my fics with someone will give me that push to continue working on it. Getting a comment that just says “great chapter” or “you’re a great writer” doesn’t do much to motivate us to continue that particular fic. But if you talk about the story and the characters it gives us motivation to continue working on it, may even give us ideas for future chapters. I would hope that those of you with “comment anxiety” find this approach so much easier than trying to praise the writer every time you read.

So that fic the author hasn’t updated in forever that you’re dying to read? Talk to them about the fic and the elements of the story! It will make the writer want to talk to you about it and will get their mind thinking about it, hopefully inspiring them to continue where they left off. Fics that are left in silence are more likely to be abandoned or even deleted because nothing feels worse than putting your heart into a story to have no one say anything about it. 

TLDR; Writers do not want praise, we just want to talk with our readers about the story itself, and these are the kinds of comments that inspire us to keep writing more. 

I really wish people would understand that there are other forms of queer rep besides two same gendered people kissing.

A queer character is queer rep regardless of their romance or a lack thereof even. Ace and aro people exist. Trans people exist. Bi people exist. Queer characters are rep by existing, not just by who they interact with. If a character is nonbinary, they are queer rep whether they kiss someone or not. A bi character in a relationship with someone a different gender is still queer rep because they are still bi. Queer characters can even just be friends with one another. They can be single! And still be queer because that’s who they are not who they do!

This whole trend of deciding if art is valid representation based on romance and ships is reductive and dismissive of identities existing within individuals. And of the communities that we all need.

Just please, stop reducing entire identities down to relationships. Its all good and fun to enjoy your ships, but you have to remember the community is bigger than just romances.

/gestures wildly at this/

Here is an Encanto colored sketch. The coloring is of my doing, but this amazing sketch is made by one @glitternightingale

While I was coloring, I nearly forgot to add darker colors under Bruno’s eyes for the shadows/bags. They’re not as prominent because I’m taking a guess that he’s at most forty in this. Which is the same reason I didn’t add silver strands.

I believe, hands down, that Bruno adored his oldest nieces for…well, obvious reasons. I still think he has a special bond with Mirabel, but Isabela and Dolores have a special space in his heart.

quick psa for nonblack artists attempting to draw Dolores with her hair down.

Dolores appears to have a mix of type 3C/4A hair

here's some hair charts for reference

her hair is curly not wavy, so if her hair were down it would look something like this.

also if you're attempting to describe her hair in fan fiction, the hairstyle that she has is called an afro puff. It can also be referred to as a 'pineapple'.

I found the "Dolores Listens to Bruno's Rat Telenovelas" tag on A03 and I am obsessed with the idea that Dolores helps him write these stories. The whole Encanto is her telenovela. I'm just imagining her standing on the outside the painting and giving Bruno a rundown on Encanto gossip, like, "You remember Manuela, Julio's wife? Well, she's blaming Julio for their lack of children so she's seduced Julio's best friend Diego in order to conceive a baby but Diego has always been in love with her and thinks she's actually in love with him."

Bruno, on the other side, writing everything down: "That is so fucked up tell me everything."