#character corral

[horse-apple-pie]

I made a new fursona!!!!!! His name's Teddy <3

[autistic-spirk]

Idk if this counts as a headcanon BUT I keep thinking about Darry getting burnt out to the point that he's so exhausted that all he can do is lie there and sit with his anxiety spiral. But then his anxiety gets so bad that he starts to shake and it's just this awful cycle that never ends. (I torture him bc I love him, y'know?)

yessss oh my god. he needs to be tortured a little it's like enrichment

[sandersontheside]

the sarcasm, the faux seriousness…Janus energy

[lloydfrontera]

'live up to your name' au where og knight of blood and iron javier gets "killed" in the middle of the plot but instead of dying he's transported to modern south korea, waking up in a random alleyway with no injuries whatsoever. and because he's a protagonist no matter what universe he is in, despite being deeply disoriented and confused when he sees a group of thugs harassing a guy he steps in and chases them off with no problem and barely any mention of cutting off limbs. and then after making sure the guy is okay he very sheepishly asks him if he could please help him because he was lost and had no idea of where he was or how he got there

and kim suho who just saw a gorgeous but obviously foreign stranger in awesome cosplay chase off his would be muggers with what looked like a real ass sword and is currently high and smitten in "oh thank god i didn't get my week's work salary stolen" endorphins and is about to have the weirdest week of his life innocently says "yes of course"

[whump-n-comfort]

when you read a fic that gives you a hyper-specific whump scenario that you know would either A.) take forever to find in another story or B.) hasn't been written at all so the obvious conclusion is that you have to write it yourself

[gutter--trash]

spirit of the dule tree

Dule trees were commonly used as sites of public execution until as late as the mid-18th century — but some believe that there may be an older tradition where originally the trees were a gathering place for people to gather to mourn lost family and friends. (I think that’s probably just the Victorian romanticisation speaking personally but I’m not a historian.)

The name ‘dule’ is taken from the old scots word meaning ‘grief’ or lamentation. One of the most well known trees is a sycamore found on the Aberdeenshire estate of Leith Hall. I read a tiny article about it at work and couldn’t stop thinking about it.

[thelaughingmerman]

This was gaming to me as a kid

Mary Kings Riding Star was my favorite. And to this day when I mess up the voice of the announcer going "overshot the marker there" from when you knock down a jump plays in my head

[overflowing-glass]

Ao3s tagging system has me so spoiled. Whoever thought of combining tags and tag wranglers and meta/sub tags I want to kiss you on the mouth

[tlaquetzqui]

Just so you know, a big cat doesn’t need to get its claws or teeth in you. They hit with more force than a sledgehammer when they’re just batting around a ball. “Every bone in my torso shattered, but it didn’t break the skin.”

[xdarkhowlx]

Hey! That was incredibly unhelpful, actually. :) Could you be more specific? What friend? Can I have their number? What help did you provide them?

This happened to me once! I... am trying to remember how I... remembered it. Hang on. [ user thinks about it for a while. the whole thing was very confusing and muddied ] I made a friend who needed help with something, and when I agreed to help them, they told me my name and I remembered that it was correct. That seems weird, doesn't it? But I swear... I think that is what made it better. Huh.

[horse-apple-pie]

[ID: a page of sketches of two original characters, Dynol and Toby, done on lined paper. Dynol is a robot with meat grinder head, and Toby is a child with extending robotic limbs. End ID]

Dynol my funky dude Dynol

[internationalpioneersagency]

Matt Corral

Mostly known to American B-movie lovers, Matt was Private Rees in "Rees The Hero," Ty in "You Will Pay Dearly" and its sequel, and K.O.B.R.A. in his latest film "Jungle Bungle."

He does not seem to realize it, but he’s not that good of an actor, while he is definitely more capable doing stunts, making him an excellent stuntman. His physical prowess has also led him to perform various bodyguard duties for other actors and directors.

Backpacks? Duffel bags?! None of the above, just the bare minimum! Having crazy deltoids doesn’t mean having to carry heavy loads on your shoulders, on the contrary! One must preserve the physique for the right time.

-A razor-sharp machete, because danger is always lurking.

-Hand training pliers. Yes that's right, muscles are there too!

-Hair gel; a real man's trump card.

-VHS, posters and an autograph pen. A gift for my new friends.

Art: @giorgiaodd

[envy-of-the-apple]

Ik requests are closed but just an idea suggestion 😓 reader whos husband pressured their relationship to turn open, only for him to deeply regret it when reader starts getting laid more than him with a character. idk could do any character but im kinda thinking this is gojo or getos thing. and theyve been WAITING for her so they are NAWT letting her husband close it. shes theirs now

Tik tok has been force feeding me Reddit stories with Minecraft brainrot so this came at the perfect time

you (40f) and your husband (43m) have been going through a rough patch when he demands to open the marriage. Afraid to lose him you agree and have to watch him put in more effort than he ever did for you just to go out and leave you alone at night. After a while you pick yourself up and decide to go out too. Maybe at a bar you meet Gojo (28m) and Geto (27m) who buy you drinks and try to get you to go home with them. You go along with it, trying to get your mind off of your husband and hoping the attention of two younger men will do the trick.

they shower you in adoration. gifting you with jewels, designer clothes, taking you out to expensive restaurants that your husband could never look at. being with them is amazing and fun! theyre young, hot, rich. its nice to finally be coddled over.

eventually, when your asshat of a husband realizes he's not even getting a crumb of pussy, and sees you're getting showered with Birkin bags he instantly demands to close back up the relationship.

you timidly agree because he's your husband, and gojo and geto cant undo the years of low-self esteem being married to this guy's done on you. in your head you knew whatever you have with gojo and geto cant last forever. this has just been fun.

gojo and geto disagree and when they figure out you've cut yourself off because of your shitty husband. they lose their shit.

they've been wanting to get rid of him for a while. Now...they have to expedite the process.

they sit him down, hand him a check with a shit ton of cash. Greedily, your husband agrees to all their demands. Divorce you, take nothing, and leave without a word.

(of course, they wont just let your ex go off scot-free, not after everything he did to you. maybe the check was a fraud. maybe he's arrested without a second glance. maybe gojo claims he doesn't know what he's talking about when your ex claims to know the Gojo heir. i mean who's gonna believe some nobody over Gojo and Geto?)

naturally, you're heartbroken, left with a crumbling self-esteem, it's all too easy for the two to corral you back into their arms again, just like it used to be.

[chaosspear]

after sitting on this game in my steam wishlist for ages, I finally gave it a try when another one of my friends started it, and it ended up becoming one of my favorite rpgs (and games in general) of all time. the emotional rollercoaster this game put me through is unparalleled. so obviously i needed to turn all the main characters into ponies and funny animals.

Notes on my reasoning and thoughts below! (Including major game spoilers!)

As for the sonic character animals the reasons are a lot more simple also i didnt for au lore crazy with them. theyre just furries now: Siffrin- he literally goes nya. he makes cat mouths all the time. they also like silently hanging out with their loved ones, agile and sneaky, etc. Mirabelle- she is so fucking nervous all the time. a little guy seemed fitting. Also, unintentionally, her being a mouse with her rapier makes her look like the tale of despereaux guy Isabeau- a supportive, happy go lucky guy being made a dog seemed pretty obvious, but i wanted to be a little more creative and thoughtful than that, so i specifically went for a smarter dog breed: a collie :] kind of like herding he also brings and corrals the group together Odile- suggestion of a friend, a yellow-throated marten :] just looked really cool and very odile. simple as that Bonnie- wombat-- suggestion from a friend, too :] But in general the idea was a burrowing animal, because they're digging in the ground for tubers to me.

[yumeka-sxf]

I'm finally home from my vacation and able to discuss the latest SxF chapter...all I can say is, I have a lot to say! I'll start with funny stuff first before I move on to analyzing...

Anya was especially hilarious in this chapter - where do I even start with her gremlin-ness? 😂 First off, there's her calling the butlers "henchlings' henchlings" (in the Japanese version, I believe she's using some mispronunciation of 弟子, which means "follower")

Then she calls out Twilight for being, well, Twilight, even giving his behavior its own acronym 🤣

She feels bad for George because his family isn't important enough for Twilight's aforementioned Twilighting 😅

And this doozy of a nickname for Bill!

In the Japanese version, she calls him something like "old man bully who hits people with balls" 😆

But joking aside, we get these profound words from Jeeves that seem to resonate with Twilight.

His words remind Twilight of the hypocrisy of his position: on the one hand, he agrees with Jeeves and wants the children to be able to grow up as they wish, without being burdened by the expectations of their parents. But that's exactly what he's been corralling Anya towards this whole time...doing whatever's best for Operation Strix, regardless of what may be best for her.

This scene reminded me of his musings when they first took Bond to the dog park; another case where he's aware that the morals he believes in are the opposite of his actions and yet...he continues with the mission.

I also think it's great that the other parents thank Anya for her bravery during the bus hijacking. Even if their kids don't act grateful, the parents should be on their behalf. Perhaps seeing this praise for Anya right before his eyes is what made Twilight feel even more guilt upon hearing Jeeves' words - he's seeing more and more what an exceptional girl she is despite not having the perfect traits for his mission, and yet he's still manipulating her (not realizing she's aware of the mission and wants to help).

But on that note, it's nice to see that George's dad and Becky's mom somewhat agree with Jeeves. As of now, I'd say out of all the Eden kids we've gotten to know, George and Becky seem to have the most decent families. I especially like how Becky's dad is adorably doting, to the point where he gets crushed when Becky asks Yor for help instead of him 😅 Also Martha having to reel him in, lol.

But despite being an overbearing dad, at least he isn't quick to jump on Loid supposedly "seducing" Becky 😂 He seems to not take it seriously, which is good since Becky is the one making the moves with her silly little girl crush.

Also Emile thinking Yor is pretty~ I'm surprised he had something nice to say about anyone connected to Anya, lol. I really want a chapter where Yor takes all the Eden kids on a playdate and they start thinking she's awesome like Becky does, even Damian.

Speaking of Yor, just when I thought she would be demoted to "background character" for whatever arc is coming, the last few panels give the impression that she'll have her next moment in the spotlight soon! Is she just destined to always catch Melinda when she falls? 😅

Not only are we getting more Yor/Melinda interactions next time, but also (hopefully) more of Anya reading Melinda's mind. I know there's theories floating around of how Donovan may be able to read minds and is possibly the one behind the experiments done on Anya, and that Melinda may have some psychic abilities too. Also some relation to that Arnold Crowley character introduced several chapters ago. I'm not good at theorizing, so I'll leave it to fans who are better with that kind of stuff 😅 But I think they're all good theories and I'm keeping my fingers crossed we'll get more insight into Desmond secrets very soon!

...but unfortunately the next new chapter won't be until November 25th, so we'll have to be satisfied with theories for now!

[tkingfisher]

So I write all sorts of things (fiction, fanfic, screenplays) and my mind is cluttered garden of flowers and weeds and shiny ideas, and I'm wondering how to form a writing practice to clear it into tidy rows? Is it possible to shepherd untamed ideas into order?

How do you manage all your wonderful worlds, characters and inspiration and not feel haunted by the story bits and pieces in your head? Any practical tips beyond dark magic?

Thank you, you are such a constant inspiration for me, both prose and just your presence. <3

*laugh* Oh god, Nonny, if I ever find out, I’ll tell you! When you read books, you’re getting the Instagram-filtered view of a writer’s brain, all the flowers that grew out of the compost heap, carefully composed and shot in optimal lighting. The real inside of my skull is a magpie nest of Neat Shit I Read/Saw/Thought Up While Lying Awake At 2 AM. There are characters and ideas in there that I’ve been trying to get into a manuscript since I was twelve and typing on an Amiga 500.

But, that said…really, I think it’s okay. Creativity is inherently untidy. The compost heap can be corralled into a very pretty box made of sustainably harvested materials, hand-stained by traditional artisans being paid a living wage by an employee-owned company, but as soon as you lift the lid, it’s all worms and coffee grounds and old potting soil and cow shit and the vegetables you swore you were gonna eat this time before they went bad. That’s what compost is.

Nevertheless, having been in the business for…uh…fifteen years now? (@dduane is snickering at me, I can feel it) and having written nearly forty books, I can offer three bits of something less than advice. It’s what I do. It may not work for anyone else, but it’s what I do.

Un-Advice The First: If you get a shiny idea and you are super excited by it? Go ahead and chase it. Pull up a new page in Word or whatever and slap down a couple thousand words while it’s exciting. I know that this absolutely flies in the face of common wisdom, but quite frankly, my enthusiasm is a much rarer commodity than my time, so if I’m excited about something, I write it down until I’ve taken the edge off.

Then I usually save it into a big folder called “Fragments” and go back to work on whatever I’ve got a deadline on. (Usually. Sometimes the edge doesn’t wear off, and I wind up with another book. Which, y’know, darn.)

There are vast numbers of people who will tell you that a shiny idea is a sign that something is wrong with your current project and the solution is to knuckle down and work! through! it! And those people are probably right for them, and I trust they know how their own brains work. Me, though, I got ADHD like a bat has wings. My hard drive is a vast swamp of story beginnings, neat ideas, random scenes. And that’s okay because I still get books finished.

In fact, it’s better than okay. Not that long ago, my agent sent a novella to a publisher and they said “We’ll take that novella and three more novels. What’ve you got?” And I ended up plundering my hard drive and sending the editor a good dozen random beginnings until we found one that we both liked, and then I wrote the rest of that book. And then another one. If I hadn’t had all those fragments lying around, though, it would have been a miserable experience of writing book pitches and trying to think of stuff I could get excited about. (This may not be how some editors work, but it’s how my editor and I work, anyhow.)

Un-Advice The Second: Trust that everything will find a home eventually.

This one is easy to say and hard to do because sometimes you get that overload that if you’re writing the book about, say, werebear nuns, you aren’t writing the one about the alien crustaceans. Or worse, you feel guilty. If you don’t use that one cool thing, was all that time you spent on it wasted?

Breathe. Be easy. Every single cool thing does not need to go into a single book. There is no sell-by date on the neat character. You will probably write many books in your life and all those random characters will find a home. (Seriously, the werebear nuns were lurking for like a decade.)

For me, at least, when I find the spot where something fits, it often snaps into place like a Lego. Easton’s backstory as a soldier from a society where soldiers were a third sex had been kicking around in my head for a few years, derived from about three different sources, and then I wrote the opening to What Moves The Dead and all of a sudden Easton was there and alive and they had strong opinions about everything and I had ten thousand words practically before I turned around.

You can also stave off guilt by writing some of your ideas in as highly personal Easter Eggs. A couple of my books have references to a white deer woman, a heroic deed done by a saint and the ghost of a bird, and a woman with dozens of hummingbirds on tiny jeweled leashes. Those are all characters and stories I’ve had vague notions about, but haven’t managed to work in anywhere or learn much more about. Still, the passing reference is enough to make me feel like I haven’t abandoned them.

(The advantage to this is that once you DO write those in, the readers are all “oh my god, she foreshadowed this a decade ago, she must have planned this all out in advance!” Then you look really clever and well-organized and no one has to know that you have no idea what you’re doing.)

Un-Advice The Third: Write the kitchen sink book.

At one point, I had so many stray ideas that hadn’t gotten into a book yet—the tree of frogs, the dog-soldiers, the stained glass saint, the albatross and the shadow of the sun, and also I wanted to write something with Baba Yaga—that I hauled off and wrote a book where I just put in everything and the kitchen sink. It’s called Summer in Orcus. There are bits in there that I had been cooking in the mental compost heap for decades, but that weren’t enough on their own to sustain a whole book. The phrase “antelope women are not to be trusted” showed up in my head some time in college. It’s a fun little book and I’m proud of it, but it’s very much a patchwork quilt of weirdness. But it’s also written so that if later on, an antelope woman shows up in another book in another context, that just adds to their mythology, it doesn’t break canon or whatever.

(Pretty sure I’m not the only one who has done this, either. China Mieville has said that he wrote Perdido Street Station because what he really enjoyed was writing all the weird monsters.)

So yeah, that’s my advice, for what it’s worth. Some days I just tell all the fragments and ideas that I promise that I’ll get them a home eventually but I need to write this thing here now. Sometimes I throw down enough words to get the story stabilized and then I’m okay to move on. Sometimes I write multiple books simultaneously.

Any method you use to write the book, so long as it doesn’t hurt you or anyone else, is a perfectly valid method. If anyone tells you different, you send them to me.

(…god, I hope that was the question you were actually asking, Nonny, and that I didn’t go off on a completely different tangent when you just wanted to know how I keep track of a plot or something.)