#and you're still quite likable then too lmao

[xnervouscircus]

that time when laurent got drunk and actually talked to people and the next day was EXTREMELY CONFUSED by how much everyone liked him

🫠

[tizeline]

Now that we're entering into 2024, I'm asking some artists and writers that I follow:

1) What is the one piece you're most proud of from this past year?

2) What are some pieces that you would have liked more people to see? If you can include links, I'd love to go check them out!

3) What were your top three favorite pieces (art, comics, fics, etc) that someone else has made this past year?

(As always, no pressure to respond! Feel free to just ignore, or let me know if you'd rather I not send you these kinds of asks in the future.)

Oh this is fun! :D

1) The drawing I'm the most proud of this year is actually one I never ended up posting lmao, so I suppose this is the perfect reason to actually do that

I always feel a bit self-concious about posting non-fanart drawings cuz they don't tend to gain as much attention. Which, I am fully aware that there are more important things than clout! But I am a simple woman, I crave validation 😔 Anyway, I am still very happy about how this one turned out. I very much prefer drawing characters over enviroments, which led to me being way worse at drawing enviroments than characters, so I've been pushing myself for the last couple of years to get better at drawing backgrounds and surroundings. While I still definetily have a lot of room for improvement, this illustration here is the best I've done in drawing enviroments yet.

2) Again, original stuff don't tend to get as much attention (which I fully understand btw, I don't wanna make it seem like I'm complaining too much, I very much appreciate any and all support I get!!!!) but this post with some doodles of my OCs as well as this random drawing of some forest with a big stone head lying in it are a couple of posts I wouldn't mind if more people saw so..... the links are there if ya wanna have a look 👀

3) Oh man, I've seen so many awesome artpieces this year, i can't guarantee that these are my actual top 3 picks, but here are some that I could remember liking (and that I also managed to find lol) (also these are in no particular order

This GIF was the first piece of RotTMNT fanart I ever reblogged and it's still glued to my mind it's just great honestly.

Man I do not like Timothy in the 2012 TMNT series at all but MAN do I love the way pinetreevillain adapted the character for the Rise universe! He's made quite a few comics of Rise!Timothy and he made the character so extremely likable I just hdsjhgjakfga also Pine's artstyle is delicous yummy yum go check out his art now!

I really like those reanimation projects where a bunch of people collaborate and reanimate induvidual segments in their own style, and there was recently one of those released that was a remake of The Clothes Don't Make The Turtle episode from season two of RotTMNT and it's great! Go and watch it here!

[fluffydice]

I've mentioned it before, but I think I finally want to try and explain how I write the characters in my Saiki K fics. It's mostly for me because I love talking about writing and Saiki K, but maybe some of you will enjoy this, too.

I did Toritsuka because @akechi-gf mentioned wanting tips on writing his dialogue, but 1) I felt bad info-dumping on his post and 2) didn't quite answer the dialogue answer and jumped straight into characterization (Sorry! Hope this still helps you in some convoluted way, if you're willing to read it all LMAO)

Obviously, he's very aggressively horny. He and Aiura are probably one of the firsts to laugh over something that could be taken the wrong way. But I think it's his way of trying to connect with others. He might open a conversation with some odd, vaguely creepy comment on a girl with the intention of moving the subject to something else.

He's vulgar, though I don't consider him much of a swearer. Not when compared to Kuboyasu or maybe even Kaido.

I personally write him as someone who is very opinionated. If he thinks Saiki is being too passive, or in over his head, Toritsuka is going to tell him straight up. Even if he knows the other won't take it well.

That's a big part of their relationship, I feel: even if Toritsuka is the first to cower away from Saiki puffing out his chest, he's also the first to come bounding back. He's not a 'once burned, twice shy' kind of guy. He doesn't really hold grudges, and can't quite go through with threats. I think it's why Saiki puts up with him. Like Nendo, Toritsuka is very devoted.

If you want to portray him differently, that's alright, but I always feel that something people miss with all the Saiki K. characters is that most of them are genuine assholes. They're teenagers, and I feel Toritsuka exemplifies this best. He'll say hurtful things and fucking mean them. It doesn't make him a bad person, but he definitely doesn't have the same emotional regulation as...I was going to give an example but I don't know if any of the kids are good at that. Akechi, maybe.

And speaking of emotions, he's not the best with them. He understands them, sure, but he's not even remotely delicate. That means he'll back off easily when he thinks things are beyond him. If Saiki tells him to leave it alone, that's what he's going to do. He isn't a bad guy. Toritsuka doesn't want to actively make things worse.

And on that note, he's also really fucking whiny. I try really hard not to shy away from making characters unlikable in certain aspects. If they're annoying, make them annoying. If they're a jerk, then so be it. I don't like sacrificing personality for likability. I just make sure its balanced out by other things. Toritsuka, despite his faults, has a lot of things genuinely good about him. He has pure, unadulterated faith in people, a genuine desire to become a better person (after some nudging), has shown care toward his ghosts...there's definitely stuff there.

Toritsuka's world view is fucked up, point blank. The way he talks about women isn't right. If I wrote from his perspective, it'd probably include him objectifying them. But, depending on what period of his development he's in, he might be able to step back and acknowledge that what he's thinking isn't right. He's very capable of growing and changing. Even if he's reluctant with it, he starts being less self-centered and more willing to do things just because it's the right thing to do.

He has mommy and daddy issues up the fucking wall. I think it colors his interactions with the other psychickers (who are willing to keep him in check), especially Saiki (who mother-hens basically anything that moves). He needs guidance, even if it's a bit of bullying.

[adracat]

Ok I am rereading LoC as I am wont to do and I had a thought. Did you watch the Japanese or English version of gwitch? Cause I've seen the sub (multiple times) and just recently started the dub (a friend's preferred way of viewing, and I need them to get the brainrot with me, so). I may only be part way through season 1 of the dub, but so far I'm finding my interpretation of Prospera to be quite different between the two languages. She is far more likable (almost, I still don't like her but I can see how others would here) in English, she comes off as far more conniving, arguably/questionably evil, and not at all someone I am rooting for in Japanese. I'm not sure of that's gonna change as I continue watching the dub, but I'm finding it fascinating. Anyway, as the writer of my favorite Sulemio fics I was curious where you're coming from, especially with the Prospera heavy Chaos and Night.

I watched both as they were airing weekly. Honestly I didn't become brain poisoned with Prospera fixation until well into season two and partway into writing AASB. After doing my character analyses on what imo the show was pulling from, I went 'hey she's got a lot going on 😳' It helped she's too funny for me to dislike lmao. Even when at her vilest with Mio and Suletta, she's fascinating to watch. Both her VAs do a banger job!

[bigskydreaming]

Spoilery thoughts on the Wheel of Time Season 2 premiere:

The casting remains the show's biggest strength. Nynaeve is still pitch perfect and my absolute fave. She is everything Book Nynaeve always had the potential to be if gently (forcibly) removed from Robert Jordan and his complete inability to write female characters. That scene where she drank the water just to get out of that lesson without technically losing ground......lmao this woman absolutely will cut off her nose to spite her face and say you're damn right I meant to do that, who needs a nose anyway?

Ishmael is also perfectly cast....I'm not familiar with his actor but he conveys the character's emblematic charismatic menace PERFECTLY. His scene gave me chills. Rosamund Pike continues to be great as Moiraine, what more is there to say about Lan other than Best Warder Is Best, I would kill people for Perrin as long as they were completely hypothetical people who don't count stop looking at me like that its a figure of speech you KNOW what I MEAN gosh, and Egwene's character isn't even close to getting to the real meat of her character arc but her actress has already displayed more than enough range to convince me she's going to nail it. Liandrin is perfectly awful, A+ depiction, and of the new characters, Verin is everything I hoped that character would be. Too early to say if I'm sold on this Sheriam though. Same with Elyas though he seems promising, and we only got a glimpse of Lanfear in the 'this season on Wheel of Time' preview, but what little we saw has me excited. (Lanfear is my ultimate fave baddy, I have such high hopes for her character though, you don't even know).

In terms of characters who don't have rave reviews from me, its mostly just a lack of content so far, leaving me undecided as of yet. I still don't know why they recast Mat before last season even ended up airing, and I liked the original actor for Mat quite a lot, but I THINK I'll be just as happy with this one. He didn't have much to do this episode so its hard to gauge, but he seems likable enough, and its not like Mat's currently in a position to be his usual devil-may-care self at this point in the story.

Honestly, Rand remains the weakest link in the show so far, to the point where even though he's nominally the most central character, the fact that he was barely in this episode didn't bother me even a little bit. I think it was a good choice, pacing wise - I'm just not sure what it suggests about the production's view of the character/actor that they were confident they could sideline THE 'main' character of the series for almost the entire first episode of a ten episode season and nobody would mind. And the fact that I didn't really miss him this episode has a lot to do with him easily being the least compelling of the cast in the first season.

That said.....over the course of the books, Rand's character undergoes the most dramatic evolution out of all the major characters, and we're still at a very early part of the narrative where he's just....at most mere hints of the character he ultimately becomes. His character hasn't yet been given a ton to do, relatively speaking.....like in terms of screentime, he's certainly been front and center, but as of right now he's SUPPOSED to be hesitant, mild-mannered, unsure of himself and all that....which is exactly what his actor is delivering. Its just.....not as interesting as what other characters are already undergoing, and especially when you have his book character arc to compare it to, knowing what kinds of things are coming for his character makes what we've seen so far feel a bit like treading water.

Which brings me to my next point, which is that I am pretty impressed with the show's pacing so far. In hindsight, the books start out pretty slow compared to how the story flows once it fully gets going, probably around the fifth book or so, IMO.....and those first books were still just as long as the later ones. So I do think the show's done a good job of condensing an enormously long narrative into something that can viably be told in ten seasons or so, & in such a way as to 'get to the good stuff plotwise' without actually cutting out too many of the early events necessary to build a foundation for the more complicated later storylines.

I do not envy the writers trying to figure out what to keep, what to streamline, what to alter and what to cut out entirely, so it is pretty impressive that as of this episode we very much FEEL like we're in familiar territory, like I recognize whereabouts in the narrative we're supposed to be, but most of the storylines' specific events have been so heavily altered as to make it feel unpredictable and I'm not sure what entirely to expect, in terms of how the show will get from where it is to certain major beats that I'm expecting to happen. Rand's storyline in particular has been pretty dramatically deviated from how the events after the Eye of the World stuff played out in the books....but he's still positioned to be right where he needs to be for all the Lanfear stuff. On the flip side of things, Mat's storyline technically doesn't have him too far removed in the show from where he was in the books at this point, but they've changed just enough that it FEELS completely different and has a much more ominous tone to it than the way that part of his storyline in the books felt like just kinda.....him sitting around until the Seanchan were in place and his storyline could really get going.

And speaking of Mat's storyline, ugh Liandrian is just the worst. I mean. She's supposed to be. So....good job, I guess.

Elayne and Aviendha should be showing up soon, and definitely impatient for that. Aviendha's a fave. I don't dislike Elayne by any means, but Elayne showing up soon also means that Elaida, Galad and Gawyn are all about to show up and I literally hate all three of them. Gawyn hasn't even appeared onscreen yet and I'm already ready for him to shut the fuck up. LMAO. He.....irritates me. Like Galad's full of himself and self-righteous as fuck but at least he KNOWS that and is like yeah, I get why other characters don't like me. Book Gawyn spends several volumes absolutely convinced he's in the right about certain key things he absolutely is NOT in the right about, and he never is actually made to own that or face it, once its made undeniably clear the narrative just kinda....moves on from anyone ever being in a position to point out hey dude, you just spent five books being an absolute dick about this thing that never even actually happened, maybe you should reflect on that. And like. Change. As a person.

Book Gawyn: Nah. Even though I wasn't right I didn't KNOW I wasn't right so I was basically right to do all the stuff that I now know was completely wrong.

Me: Ugh, shut the fuck up Gawyn.

Ohhhh just realized, Faile should be showing up soon too. I love Faile, so that is also something to look forward to. I'm STILL pissed about their totally unnecessary decision to introduce a whole extra helping of backstory trauma upon Perrin when like....nobody fucking asked, and Im very curious who's idea that was exactly and what their precise reasoning for it was, like what the fuck did they think it added to Perrin's arc that he needed, how does it benefit his storyline at all, you didn't need to fucking do that lmfaaaaao, but oh well. Course, its inevitable that its going to alter the shape of his storyline with Faile, particularly their earliest interactions, and I guess I'll wait and see if that's for the better or not, I just....don't see the point of those specific changes. Whatever. I'll die mad about it I guess. Its fine.

Other than all of the above, my biggest remaining thoughts are I want them to hurry up and clarify just which of the Forsaken made the cut and will be appearing in the show and which five got left on the editing floor. I hope they don't drag it out, they better at LEAST get named this season so we know who we're working with and don't have to wait a whole additional year to like, find out whether Sammael will be in the show or if he got scrapped for someone like Belial for some random reason.....mostly I just want to know if Demandred the Dull is going to be taking up one of the slots simply because the books like to pretend he's important even though he literally only appeared in one book and a chapter and there's nothing he does that can't be done just as well by far more developed characters like Aginor. Who unfortunately probably WON'T make the cut. Even though he's fantastically terrible. As a person. Not a character. He's the worst. But in that 'I can't wait to see him get murdered' kinda way. You get it.

Also I hope Asmodean's passive aggressive ass is in this season because the only thing better than Lanfear is Lanfear vs Asmodean: The Passive Aggressive Olympics.

[flodaya]

I think I read that you had experience with toxic friendships and I just wanted to ask this, i feel like people are already simplifying the topic a lot? Like it feels like they believe if constantin was kicked out that the instas would immediately be the best friendgroup ever, and idk but there's a reason why all of them became friends in the 1st place aside from constantins alleged problems and that is imo that all of them are/were a bit toxic themselves, I feel like some people think that constantin was forcing them and dragging them to things with him and especially for him from the beginning, and while there's no doubt constantin is the most toxic right now, its just because the others already acknowledged their (past) toxicity, like zoe on NYE, kieu my with the ava bullying, and ismail partly aswell with expressing that constantin is a bad influence, and imo now many took that statement and ran with it, as if the others can't make their own decisions anymore. And also imo if they kick constantin out, their whole dynamic is going to change aswell, because for a quite amount of time it was to appease constantin, but now they have to build up a new one if that makes sense. I have zero experience with toxic friendships so idk if what I'm saying makes sense or is valid so I'd hoped you'd be able to give your own view on it

Also what i forgot to add, fatou really did a great job to make the instas likable, without her I wouldn't want to know anything about them

you're lucky that you have no experience with toxic friendships!! i hope you never will, but yes i do have quite some experience with it, tbh since the moment we've met the instas they reminded me eerily of my own friend group in like 8th through 10th grade, i've had a friend who is a lot like consti and another one who is (and looks!!) a lot like ismail, and then there was me and my bestie and her on and off boyfriend (who was the most unproblematic and most quiet one lmao)

and yeah i definitely think people are oversimplifying the situation but at the same time i don't know if i want them to make it more nuanced? because in reality even the most toxic friends can be the kindest and most caring people towards you. my c-equivalent friend was at times my favourite person to hang out with, he cared for me, he made me feel safe, he was funny; but other times he would become controlling possessive and a literal bully, either towards me and our friends, or a random "victim", yet we never really stopped him, we were more glad he wasn't directing his viciousness towards one of us on that day. tbh we never really tried to cut him out, it didn't really ever cross our minds, we just accepted him as part of our friends - not just accepted we loved him as part of our group because it isn't as simple as to say he was a horrible person all of the time, honestly, most of the time he was awesome, and even 5 years later i still miss him and his friendship while also getting anxious by the mere thought of ever hanging out with him, you just never knew what you were going to get: kind caring friend or bully

in my case we all just drifted apart, after i left the school their friend group kind of crumbled because i was the glue who held him inside our group in a way, i'm glad it happened like that, i think if we had "broken up" in a traditional sense it would have been a lot harder on all of us

so TLDR, this got long and personal lmao, basically toxic friendships are very individual experience, no two will be the same, and while i do think some nuance is needed and contrary to what everyone else seems to want i don't think it would help anyone if they just portray c-man as a pure villain or if he simply vanished by the end of the season, but i also don't think druck should make the situation too complex because the message should still be clear enough for everyone to understand

[hongjooong]

I'm guessing you're watching Chuang 2021 (or Produce Camp). I love this season! The current top trainees are really likable too. My fave is Oscar who is sadly not in the top 10 currently. But I also like most of the top. This show has been one of the most entertaining survival shows ever. (Number 1 is still Idol producer S1) I am also watching Youth With You (Idol Producer 4) but I'd argue it isn't as good. But I am a fan of some of the trainees.

omg there's another survival show 🗿 tbh I only know it cause I think gong jun appears in some of the eps lmaooo but I haven't watched it yet so sadly I do not know this oscar fellow but he looks quite lovely from these pics I just looked up ajdbjakd the one I'm watching currently is youth with you 3! lol should I should I check out chuang 2021 as well? 💃

edit: omg anon wait this oscar guy is like hot hot like what lmao ahaaha.......ok mayhaps I will watch kahdhja

[cookinguptales]

feel free to ignore this question if its annoying or too time consuming or whatever, but I've just started uni and I'm doing a creative writing course but I don't think I'm particularly good. You're my favourite fic writer so I thought maybe you could explain your process? Your stories always have a way of making me connect and feel for the characters, but I don't know how to write like that or make people give a shit about whats happening in a story, or feel whatever emotion is relevant.

It’s not an annoying question, but I’m not sure how well I’ll be able to answer… I’ve never had any formal training or writing classes or anything lmao.

For me, I’ll usually think of an event or a concept that I’d like to have happen to the characters. Like, to make up some quick OCs, uhh… A & B. Let’s call them Adelaide and Bianca. To take an oldie but a goodie, Adelaide has a crush on her friend Bianca, but doesn’t want to tell her for Reasons.

Now, that’s a basic scenario. For me, the important step here is to really think about this character’s emotional core. What has their life been like? How does their personality reflect that? How do they deal with problems? What are Adelaide’s Reasons? Make sure your character’s decisions reflect their emotional core rather than the other way around. If you’re just bending a character’s personality to fit the story you want to tell, it’ll come off as a little false. If there’s a particular plot you want to tell, work backward. If you need a character to make a specific decision, think about what would bring them to that decision, and make sure that groundwork is laid in everything else this character says and does.

So I need Adelaide not to confess, which is a plot point I’m imposing on the character. I need to think about why this is a decision she’d make. Well, Adelaide’s parents can be dismissive of her sometimes, and she’s never really excelled in anything she’s tried before. So she’s scared to keep trying because she’s internalized this concept of her own inadequacy. To keep her likable, let’s say that she’s scared to try, but her own hopeless romanticism won’t let her give up.

So you’ve decided on a backstory and an emotional core. Now you have to apply this to the rest of the story. How has this personality affected her relationship with Bianca? Why are they friends and what is their relationship? How does Bianca change Adelaide’s thought process? What decisions will Adelaide make going forward based not only on her own emotional core, but on how the other characters affect that?

Adelaide, because she is too scared to say anything but has a big enough heart that she needs an emotional outlet, writes love letters in a diary that she assumes Bianca will never read. It is a way to indulge in her feelings without the stress of sharing them.

And what about Bianca? You can’t make the mistake of only thinking about the emotional core of your protagonist. That’ll make for a flat story. Bianca has a thirst for knowledge. She’s bright and intense and wants to know everything. This brightness is what attracts Adelaide, as she keeps her own light buried, but that is precisely what causes friction between the two of them. Think about how these two emotional cores might interact. Adelaide hides things, and Bianca is obsessed with uncovering them. Bianca must hate that her friend is closed off from her.

Clearly, Bianca is going to read Adelaide’s diary.

Now, you can make Adelaide a good writer or a bad writer based on your own conception of the character. I’ll say that she’s not the best writer, but that the genuineness of her feelings come through; after all, she thinks no one will read this, so she is able to let loose in this one portion of her life and nowhere else. It’s easy to become fascinated with genuine words like that, and a curious person like Bianca, who feels everything too strongly to hide any of it, will be a goner.

A writes a diary about her feelings for an unnamed person. B reads it because they’re nosy. This is really a very basic story, but you’ve already personalized it by getting into their heads. You don’t need to say what’s going on in both their heads; make sure you’re careful about point of view. Your POV character cannot know what is going on inside the other character’s head, so your narration can’t lay that out. But you know what’s going on in Bianca’s head, so make sure you write her with that in mind, and do your best to lay those clues for the audience through dialogue or body language. (Or Adelaide, if you go with Bianca as POV character.)

Now is when it will be most important to keep your characters’ emotional core in mind. You will have to think about where this basic story will go. What would your A do in this situation? Your B? Because Bianca is curious and attracted to these things, let’s say that she keeps going back to read Adelaide’s diary. She becomes addicted to her words. But she also feels guilt about snooping – gotta keep her likable. The more she reads, the more she becomes concerned about her friend… and the more jealous she becomes of whoever Adelaide’s interested in.

So now they’re in a bind. Adelaide has unrequited love. Bianca is worried about her friend, but knows she can’t say anything without blowing her cover. You can introduce a plot device here, but frankly, their own emotional cores make this situation untenable for long. They’ll explode eventually. Bianca will accidentally mention something in conversation she shouldn’t have known, or Adelaide will say something cryptic that Bianca won’t be able to let go of. Secrets will come out, as they must in fiction, and they will fight. Think about their emotions and their backgrounds to think about how they’ll fight. Offensively? Defensively? Will they shut down or will they cry or will they say things they don’t mean?

Adelaide has low self-esteem, but she still has the capacity to get angry. However, because she’s often so angry with herself, those angers will probably meld together. She’ll yell about Bianca’s invasiveness but that will eventually devolve into anger at herself – it’s what she’s used to, after all – and she’ll say something bitter about the diary being trash or her love letters pointless. Because she’s trash and she’s pointless and nothing will ever come of them.

We have reached the emotional height of our story! (Make sure you have one!) The decisions your characters make now will be the most important ones of the entire story. Because you have raised the emotional level up so high, anything you write now, your readers will feel twice as hard. So it should be good!

Bianca, as we have seen throughout the story, doesn’t always make good decisions. But she genuinely cares about her friend. That’s part of her emotional core, and an important one. She has concern for her, so all these confessions disturb her. And that curiosity has finally been sated. Is it worth it? Think about how this fight will interact with every part of Bianca’s personality. In the end, it will come down to her love for her friend and the awe she felt while reading those letters. That will override any anger or hurt she feels during the fight.

She’ll say that the letters were beautiful. That anyone who wrote them is beautiful, too. That she hates seeing Adelaide angry with herself when she’s such a good person. And whoever is the recipient of those letters is very lucky.

This is what Adelaide needs to hear, but it’s also what Bianca needs to say. When these needs intersect like this, you’ll have an effective love story. It makes the characters seem like they genuinely fit together. If you’re not writing a love story, of course, they don’t really need to come together well. lmao. But make sure you keep their personalities and aims in mind when you show how they don’t come together. Show why they have friction, and show why they’ll never quite come together. Make sure your readers understand why they have such irreconcilable differences; it will make fights, hatred, and rivalries seem more well-founded and less like your characters are dicks. (I mean, unless you want them to be dicks.)

By this point in your story, your characters should be changing. A story where the emotional core of a character doesn’t see any evolution is a stagnant one, and it can be boring. Bianca has changed; she understands her own selfishness and is filled with concern for her friend. She’s also, coincidentally, in love with her and her words and the emotional core she read in those words. This here, though, is when Adelaide changes. Not all the way; no one changes that much in the course of one conversation. (That’s important.) But it can be enough for her to start questioning her own assumptions and maybe lend her a bit of the bravery she always wishes she’d had.

She tells Bianca who the letters were to, and Bianca is relieved, but also finds that a part of her really always knew. And everything after that is really cake.

What I’m trying to say here with this stupidly long example, is that you need to think about your character’s emotions first. You can’t simply have them react to whatever you throw at them. You need to think about what is driving your character at every single part of the story, and you need to know your character’s emotions intimately. It’s worth it to spend a long time thinking about what makes your characters tick. It’ll make everything after that easier.

When it comes to fanfic as opposed to origific, it’s easier in one way and harder in another. You won’t need to come up with the scenario, characters, setting, so you can zero right on in how the characters are feeling. You can jump right in. However, you’ll also need to spend time thinking about the characters dialogue and actions in canon so you can tease out their emotional core. If you can figure out why they made the decisions they did in canon, you can figure out what they’ll do in new situations. You need to start with that character’s, well, character before you can do anything else.

Finally, it can be hard to write emotions. I find that it’s usually not particularly useful if a story just says that a character’s sad. So think about what sadness is and what it inspires. How do people behave when they’re sad? How does it physically feel inside your body, what sort of things does it make you think, what lies at the heart of that feeling? Try to express that in your work. Talk about the lump in your character’s throat, or the way they feel like they’re buried in something intangible. Talk about the decisions they make because they’re sad. (This is also handy because it’s a good way to show the emotions of a non-POV character.)

Try not to go too over-the-top here or to rely too much on cliches. Think about what sadness means to this character, and how they’ve trained themselves to respond to it, and that will help make things feel more genuine. Adelaide responds to sadness by burying it inside her and only letting it out in her notebook. Bianca responds to sadness by externalizing part of it, but burying the rest of it in action. They’re very different responses to the same emotion, and when you write that, you’re showing your readers characterization and the characters’ mental state. One-two punch.

As for how to make it relatable… Well, like what happened with Bianca, readers respond to genuineness. If it feels like a fully-realized character with real emotions, readers will find those emotions relatable even if they don’t feel them themselves. Readers who understand where a character is coming from will accept their decisions, even if they aren’t the same decisions the reader would make. Try to speak to universal experiences and emotions, though. Fear of rejection. The excitement of a new discovery. The longing for something better paired with the wariness that things might just get worse if they change. People will respond to things they’ve felt before, even if the character isn’t feeling them quite the same way. Just gotta keep it in-character for the character in question. Utilize common emotions to make it relatable, but make those emotions specific to your character to make things feel real. We all feel the same things, but we feel them all differently. That’s what makes the world lovely and frustrating.

Anyway, I guess that was a real long way of saying that, to some degree, your characters’ emotions should drive the story instead of the other way around. It will make any story feel more immediate and more believable, and will make readers feel greater kinship with your characters. Again, I’m no professional. But you asked me how I do it and that’s how I do it. So uh, I hope this was helpful.

[acenancy]

(book anon) Hey! It's been a while I hope you're doing well and reading some great books! I recently read Daughter of Smoke and Bone and wow it was so good and it was one of the most original stories I've ever read! I also read a book called Every Hidden Thing and it's like romeo and juliet meets indiana jones. It had a few odd parts that I definitely would have left out, but as a geology student and book lover, I quite enjoyed the story. I also started Riverdale and really like it so far hbu?

I read Daughter of Smoke and Bone a while ago! It wasn’t my favorite book, I have to say. I just wasn’t a fan of the main character at all. :( Is it the first book of a series? I don’t remember.

I’m reading the description for Every Hidden Thing (by Kenneth Oppel, yes?) right now and it looks really good! I’m always down for a lil adventure romance. This seems super fun.

I’ve flopped a bit with books since your last message actually. I started A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking and stopped less than 1/4 through. I wasn’t learning anything I didn’t already know and flipping through it, it didn’t seem like I was going to. I’m disappointed in myself for not finishing it only because I’ve been telling myself I would read it for a few years now. Oh well.

Right now I’m reading The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and it’s interesting but...I can’t tolerate the main male character. And I’m not a huge fan of the writing style. It’s a rough read for me. But I’m going to try to continue it only because I don’t want to give up on two books in a row and it still has some potential.

Next on my list is Paper Valentine by Brenna Yovanoff which I’m excited to read.

I’m so happy you’re watching Riverdale too! I love it. There are some things that rub me the wrong way, like the statutory rape and what I’m fairly sure is queer baiting Beronica, and the incest vibes I’m getting from Cheryl and Jason, but it’s still great lol. The writing is smart and SO witty which --- be still my heart. The characters are fleshed out and all really likable (except for Archie so far (imo)). The plot seems sort of shallow at the moment but it’s only the second episode so we’ll see. Plus, I’m already in love with the characters so I don’t actually care lmao.