#AND how important are those pieces??

[kae-karo]

do you ever find that a scene you have to write to get to The Next Bit of the story is hard, or boring, or just for some reason impossible to actually write? if so any tips on getting through it?

oooouu GREAT question honestly !!! i think the reality is i have probably three solid methods depending on the Circumstances lmaooo

method 1: just don't write it. easiest method in the WORLD and i think this works best when the thing you have to work on is boring specifically. it could probably do with a little analysis around "how Actually Important is this scene to the story" before making a decision like that, but if you're having a hard time getting excited about writing it (ESPECIALLY in shorter stories) i find 'don't write it' to be the best method in the book. i'd say it's not ALWAYS the right choice, and it probably helps to have a fair amount of experience under the belt to say when and where this method makes sense

-> a variant of this one is the "it doesn't have to be GOOD it just has to be THERE" which looks like instead of writing a whole scene to get a character from point A to point B, or a whole conversation to get to the point of a character saying they're going somewhere, doing something, etc, just...say it. start the next scene with "after walking from A to B, [blah blah blah]" or "[character] can't believe they agreed to meet up here, but here they are, [etc]". i also sometimes do this with inserted little flashback lines in the context of the scene i actually want to write, which gives the added benefit of picking and choosing when and where things are relevant without adding too much additional exposition

the key benefit of 'just don't write it' as a method is if/when you return for editing, there's always an option to add the scene back in. the way i personally edit involves forgetting about the story for like a week while working on other stuff and then coming back, which usually gives me the exact set of fresh eyes i need to decide whether the scene i decided not to write is actually needed or not. sometimes, it rolls seamlessly without it !!! sometimes i'm like damn i really need something in here to highlight what this character's emotional state is before [next scene], and maybe it's that scene i skipped or maybe it's a different thing altogether. either way, 'just don't write it' lets me get to the bits that i AM excited to write, and usually highlights for me whether the scene i'm avoiding is actually needed or not

method 2: like method 1 but a little more extreme, which i call 'write literally ONLY the parts of the story you're excited about right this second and forget about all the stuff you don't want to write cause it's boring/hard/etc'. which is a very long title, but i think it would do numbers in certain circles. this is basically method 1 on steroids and probably benefits from a longer story with LOTS of parts, especially ones you can skip between non-linearly. for me, this usually works for the hard parts especially, because i can build myself into a corner where, when i return to the hard part, i have a lot of clear detail on what has happened before it and what needs to happen in order to make the next parts make sense - usually this is reserved for the "i KNOW I have to write this or the story won't work, i just don't Wanna" type of scenes

method 3: the 'grin and bear it'. what it says on the tin. sometimes you just gotta buckle down and write the parts that suck, cause there are usually gonna be those parts in some places sometimes. what i WILL caveat here is that when a thing sucks to write, it can be helpful to examine why it sucks - what about it is boring? do you not like writing dialogue, or exposition? is there a way to not do the specific thing you don't like but still get the key elements across? would there be a more fun way for you to convey those elements? maybe a nontraditional format like a text message convo or a flashback? when something is hard to write, what makes it hard? is it conveying a character's emotional state? their physicality in the world? their relationships or thoughts on them? is there something about the character's personality you're struggling with that makes the situation challenging to write because you yourself are confused about the character or what's going on? sometimes i legitimately will step back and just type out something like:

character current motivation: [what they're trying to accomplish, do, say, etc in this exact scene] character actual/overall motivation: [in the realm of the entire story, what is their goal? to overcome loneliness? to find peace with their past? to get together with the other character? to destroy everything the hero holds dear?]

anyway this can sometimes be a super helpful mental reset to make sure i'm keeping on track with both the story as a whole and the character themselves, especially when there are multiple characters cause i'll go through and do this for all of them that are in a scene and that can help identify the tensions, what direction things might need to go, who gets what they want and who maybe doesn't, etc. ultimately just a good way to refresh the brain, and sometimes that leads to making a hard scene feel suddenly a lot easier/feel like you know where you need to go next

secret method 4: arguably the even Worse method, which is 'wait it out'. sometimes there's just no getting around the brick wall right this second, and taking a break to refresh your brain by either working on other projects or like, doing something that isn't Creation is a good idea and can help jog things into place to relieve the boring/hard/etc problem. i say this as someone who does not touch grass nearly enough, but touching grass can also be very helpful lmao. and if literally touching grass isn't feasible, just getting out of your normal habits/routines and doing something different can make a difference too

ANYWAY let me just say: i seriously feel this ALL THE TIME lmao. i'm definitely a serial skipper these days (funny as i used to be a very serious 'i must write everything in order or else i'll DIE' type of writer) but it's ended up being quite good (probably?) for my creativity in that it's allowed me to spend more time excited about what i'm writing and less time stressed or frustrated with getting stuck. your mileage may vary, of course, but hope this is helpful!!

[art-soboro]

wearing thin

[bunubunss]

victor, you'll always be loved ♡

[fluentisonus]

working in a factory has you thinking so much about the insane chain of labor & transport that goes into making literally anything

[blue-mood-blue]

I can pinpoint the moment that destroyed my life today:

It’s been a handful of weeks since Murderbot came within inches of having a new, organic governor module implanted in its head via infection - do you think, maybe, that’s also been hiding behind the redacted? Not the way everything else is, just as a deep-seated reminder of what it can’t afford to lose?

What a way to be told “I love you” - to be told “I will not lose you, I will not let go, I will do the hard part of holding on even if you don’t want me to”

[sysig]

Do you remember? Nope! (Patreon)

[fortes-fortuna-iogurtum]

I've been reading Exodus lately and I've just gotten to the portions where God gives the first commands to the people via Moses (twice), and then goes on to give detailed instructions about the tabernacle and how it should be built, and I'm just... we think art is unimportant?? we think things only mean as much as their functionality?? we so easily fall into the trap of believing that beauty means nothing, that it's cheap and only worth whatever mindless distraction it brings, that it's barely more than a cheap sensual thrill, that buildings should just be practical and plain and cheap, that everything should be functional but ultimately disposable, that paintings and dresses and mugs and curtains and carpets are just pretty but have no real value, that beauty is fleeting and vain and therefore shouldn't be thought about too much, if even looked for at all... we fall into these traps so easily, and we forget that there are chapters upon chapters of painstakingly detailed plans to build one portable worship tent, and those plans have been handed down through thousands of years of human history, because beauty and art and skill in craft is important

[volivolition]

DAY 10: EMPATHY - Lost little pearls of light. Tiny fires in the dark.

YAY YIPPEE a collab piece with @euclydya!! it drew the LOVELY linework and i finished the colors/shading!! wah im incredibly happy i got to do an art collab with y'all, thank you so much my beloveds :D!! <333 <222

without overlay!!

[panncakes]

stuck thinking about when day gets crowded and overwhelmed on his birthday he calls out to gee of all people there to remove him from the situation; and how when day tells her he wants to be alone she makes sure he knows she wants to understand him and he can talk to her (not to help him or to fix things for him; simply to understand him) and when day reaffirms a boundary she accepts this and doesn't press further. he's her friend and she cares for him but he's still an adult and she has no problem treating him as such and i think that at the moment she is the only one from day's past who is actively able to do so

[bacchuschucklefuck]

Can you expand on what you mean by Baron being "too cool" to really fit a horror monster? It's a very interesting concept and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is it that they're too active/involved/tangible and it detracts from their scariness?

I feel like I should preface this with a wall of disclaimers lmao 1/I am a hardcore, down-to-the-marrow, avid, deeply sincere horror enthusiast, esp. horror creatures. this usually means my mileage is vastly different from the average populace's, and my scaredy bone has been disintegrated by longterm exposure. most things in a piece of horror media won't scare me! so I practically never use that on its own as the scale to talk abt horror experiences, but when something does scare me it's always a special occasion to be treasured. 2/canon d20 is never really meant to be horror horror, and for good reasons: it doesn't fit the company's output, it takes a kind of carelessness in production estimation that is always a huge risk, it's often vulnerable in a way that kinda goes against how TTRPGs usually facilitates vulnerability, and for most people it's just! stressful! d20, even with the "horror-themed" seasons, generally just plays with horror tropes and stays focused in its goal of being a comedy improv tabletop theater show. 3/fantasy high's chosen system is DnD, which as I've mentioned before is before all a combat-based game system, which means the magic circle of play is drawn based on stats that facilitate and prioritize combat. want or not this affects every interaction you have in the game, and given fantasy high's concept from the ground up (everyone's going to school of DnD stuff to get better at DnD) it's doubly relevant. 4/This Is Fine I have no quarrel with this. my meters are internal, I do not ask this show to be anything it doesn't advertise itself to be, and what it is is fucking great! I like it! when I expand on this ask's question it will be like a physicist going insane in a lab. that's the mindset we're going in with.

disclaimers done. my stance on horror as a genre is that it's a utility genre rather than a content genre or a demographic genre; it is the discard of narratives. it's the trash pile. horror, above being scary, is about being ugly and messy, it's the cracks on the ground any story inevitably steps over to stay a genre that isn't horror. the genre's been around long enough to develop a codex and a general language that medias and makers and enthusiasts of the genre can use to talk about and build onto, but if you go into individual pieces there's really no unifying Horror Story. one person's beautiful life can be another's horror story, it's just how it is.

this makes The Monster a deeply intriguing piece of the genre. thing is a monster is in a decent percentage of any story - it's just when the antagonist force steps into something past a certain line traced out in the story's world. monstrousness is in pretty much every western fantasy story, it's in any story with a hero and something to vanquish or win; more than anything it's a proxy of that thing up there. the line in a narrative's world. the monster is the guard of the unknown lands, where heroic, civilized people don't tread.

what does this mean in the context of horror? the genre is about that perceived lawlessness, that "unknown land" so to say. we're in the monster's home. that's the literary context that we often walk into a horror piece with; the monster knows more than you about where you are. it may not understand you, but it holds more information than you, and with that it moves swifter than you, has more covered than you, and is more assured in its existence in this context than you. it's a struggle to catch up to it, it's nigh impossible to get one over it, and you're never sure it'll 100% work, because you just don't have the information necessary to.

with that framing you can kinda see where I'm coming from here: horror's often about the breaking of rules. I always think a monster's most effective when it breaks well-established rules of both existence and visual storytelling. think Possum (2018) or Undertale's Omega Flowey or the Xenomorph Queen - unique change in medium, unique change in graphic, unique change in design language, etc. in that sense I actually really like how canon baron plays out: they don't really function like anything else in the fantasy high universe, the bad kids have not managed to kill them when they've felled literal gods, their domain in fhjy literally introduces new mechanics to encompass their existence! from an experience design standpoint they slap mad shit. BUT! I can't help finding their character, like as a character riz (and the other bad kids, eventually) interact with, to be very... coherent? in design. this is kinda hard for me to articulate in words, it's more often a sense you get once you've looked at enough of these scrumptious fuckers, their general design and the way they show up is just kinda too clean, so to say. always kinda newly made? fresh unboxed. it, once again, makes sense for their lore - they are looking for more about themself from riz - and their function - they're an antagonist in a game experience, they're meant to be interacted with in a way that produces results and meshes with the existing magic circle - but that shininess takes away from the implied history they should have dominion over and the person they're haunting doesn't.

from another angle there is kinda something there about how put-together canon baron is as a concept; the domain they call home is riz's deep-seeded fears, extremely vulnerable things he's drawn borders around to quarantine and refused to walk into. things that from his perspective would irreversibly shatter certain pleasant fictions his world is built on top of. canon baron, While Extremely Cool, I feel is kinda too neat to connect with and signify the apocalyticized mess that'd result from this paradigm shift. the part where they're in riz's briefcase and looking through every mirror is Very Cool And Fucked Up! but ultimately the show draws a line around them as well, by making game-physical, tangible spaces they're in (the mirrors and the haunted mordred manor) and put riz and the bad kids there only when they need to confront stuff. riz is meaningfully narratively away from baron's unknown land for most of fantasy high.

with that and all of my disclaimers in mind my conclusion here is if canon baron wants to be a Horror Monster they'd have to cross way more lines. be a Lot more invasive. hence (holds up my class swap baron like a long cat)

[bread-is-my-life]

LITERALLY my only request is engie and pyro being best friends......... you can draw them doing literally anything it just makes me happy to see them getting along

Thanks for sending the request! I wanted to do more than one drawing but school started and I'm too busy atm :') BUT I will make sure to draw more of those two in the future. As for now have my sillies enjoying music :)

Bonus engi sketch :) (first attempt to draw him)

[alumirp]

Model Law x Firefighter Luffy x Police Zoro in an au where one of Luffy's co-workers is seriously injured in a fire that later turns out to be linked to another incident from a few months ago and then another and another. Zoro, Luffy's partner whos a cop, tells him to stay out of this, that everything is much deeper than it seems and that it could end very badly for them, Luffy and those around him. But of course Luffy is NOT about to just let it be.

Serial fires that have so far killed more than thirty people and injured hundreds, mainly because one of these fires happened in a factory that exploded and injured and killed not only the workers, but also many passers-by and neighbors, are not something Luffy can just let be. Zoro has little to do but accept that his boyfriend just won't let this go, so the next thing he knows he's sharing with Luffy all the evidence that has been collected so far that points to the Donquixote Group as the biggest suspect of th incidents of 'industrial sabotage'.

Luffy unfortunately can't keep his mouth shut to save his life, so suddenly the whole 'gang' knows about it and, through Nami, they discover a very good chance to collect evidence. Annually the Donquixote Group hosts a charity ball that invites 'the whole' city and by whole city, she means the entire upper class of the city. Luckily for them, her girlfriend, Vivi, can definitely help them get into the ball without a hitch. Then, all they have to do is go through security and get to the president's office and look for possible evidence. Which, in Zoro's opinion, is a terrible plan, but Luffy's terrible ideas usually work out, so they go with it. And it definitely works. Vivi easily takes them to the ball and, in the confusion of Straw Hats causing chaos among the big shots of GrandLine City

Luffy and Zoro slip through security and find their way to the Donquixote group CEO's office and that's where their luck ends. Or not. Not even five minutes after they begin to search the room, the door is opened and a pair of golden eyes stare unimpressed at them. The door is instantly closed, and before long, they hear voices outside, one of them being undoubtedly those of the owner of the room in question, Donquixote Doflamingo. Luffy and Zoro, practically frozen, simply look at the closed door in anxious anticipation as if at any moment Doflamingo would break down the door and set them on fire. He doesn't and soon the voices drift away. After that Luffy and Zoro are quick to continue the search, despite the scare, and unfortunately, they do not find anything of value to the investigation.

They are quick to leave after that, taking with them the straw hats that served as incredible distractions. Back at square one, they meet again at Luffy's house trying to plan their next step. But their little evil-combating meeeting is interrupted by a surprise visitor. Outside the house, standing at the top of the stairs, dressed in expensive clothes and looking fabulous, Trafalgar Law, the super model who is the face of the Donquixote Group all around the globe, the owner of impassive golden eyes, offers a deal.

[throughpatchesofviolet]

I attended a dress rehearsal for a holiday performance, recently, and it got me thinking ... Radley would attend public school, at least for a short while, which means Heathcliff and Sherry would likely attend a school concert or two--they have to support their son, after all!

Anyway, imagining one of the songs having a dance number, and all the kids being uncoordinated while performing (as kids often are--the important thing is that they're having fun). After it ends, Heathcliff mutters, "That wasn't very coordinated, was it?" and Sherry punches him in the arm before hissing, "You're one to talk about coordination."

[wilsonsmcgillsweatshirt]

It's a crime that more people aren't aware of House's prison bracelet. He wears it basically all of s8, and Hugh Laurie said that House made it in prison as a reminder of the time he served and everything he went through during his incarceration.

[lilacerull0]

i feel like reading/watching mbf immediately means knowing who i am as a person and... i cannot allow this

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...