#could never pull it off but i need it

[sheepthatgobaa]

Tw: a pastel pew pew shooter gun

Can everyone look at my wife

[ckret2]

Writing a character who's a brilliant manipulator is easier than you'd think, even if you yourself aren't a brilliant manipulator.

In order to manipulate somebody IRL you have to know how they think, what motivates them, what sort of things to say to convince them to do what you want them to do, and how to frame it in a way that makes them trust you rather than get suspicious. These are all relatively difficult things to figure out about another person.

However, they're very easy things to know about a character. If you're writing a manipulator's victim, you already know how they think etc etc because you're writing it. You're in control of their backstory and personality. You are god and know exactly what kinds of things would persuade them to take action and what kinds of things would make them distrust somebody.

So all you have to do is go "because the manipulator is so so smart, they've also figured all this out" and feed your own authorial god knowledge into their head. Make it a tiny bit inaccurate & saw off the details so that it doesn't look like the manipulator is psychic. For extra credit, deliberately write in a couple little clues for your manipulator to pick up on that will let the audience go "wow! Look how observant the manipulator must be."

And if you're not showing your characters' thought processes, it's even simpler. You don't have to be able to manipulate a REAL person; you just have to write your character attempting to manipulate somebody, and succeeding at it.

[jilatos]

body thoughts

[iangallagherisadeadman]

post-s11 Tami definitely gets tired of Lip and leaves him.

yes, I do like them as a couple, I think it is an interesting dynamic and that Tami is good for him honestly, even though they lived completely different lives and crash so many times because of it throughout the last seasons.

fact is Lip won't ever change and will keep making the same kind of mistakes and she will get fed up with it eventually. they'll go different ways, maybe keep a somewhat friendly relationship, and she will get a new partner and Lip will have a Sean kind of relationship with Fred: that kid is the most important thing in his whole life and he's constantly hunted by the fear of drinking again and hurting Fred.

[welcometogrouchland]

Since I just got ghosted abt the art job I applied for and I still wanna make some dough this summer

[lacefuneral]

i think stede's adorable little milf glasses

(figure 1. stede's adorable little milf glasses)

are not merely reading glasses, but full-blown prescription-grade lenses that he steadily refuses to wear because he had a hard enough time as a (gay) (autistic) child and didn't need the added mockery of needing a device to see in the 18th century, when glasses were not common devices yet

considering how this man deemed it necessary to have an entire LIBRARY on board, his penchant for escapism, and, again his history of being bullied, i think its reasonable to assume that stede has spent most of his life reading. that a lot of that reading, too, occurred by candlelight, and that this has rapidly deteriorated his vision

rather than wear glasses, though, even as an adult, he simply goes through the world with blurry vision, only bringing out his glasses for rare occasions. he doesn't even READ with them on, even though it would greatly help him. he has a mental block about using them, and they often collect dust in a drawer

[seyaryminamoto]

Fic-to-Art #32: Sokka and Azula's first time

This month's prompt was 'intimacy', and my Patrons picked a pretty important scene for that purpose :') I, of course, went slightly out of control and, uh, well... with a prompt like that, it's hard to hold back a weirdo like me, sorry not sorry x'D

In short: the full version of this month's reward is in fact 8 pieces rather than this one. This is basically the only one I dare use here for obvious reasons :'D Unfortunately, my attempt to post this on a separate Tumblr post, under its "mature" guidelines, resulted in a flagged post regardless. The guidelines of this site about art of this nature are REALLY something else, huh? :')

Honestly... this prompt ended up meaning a lot to me because of how many times I tried and failed to portray this scene properly. Especially the bits I drew for it this time :'D It's no exaggeration to say that this was one of the very first scenes I plotted, and also one of the first I tried to make proper art of. Still, I wasn't good enough to pull it off before... and somehow, I managed to do it this time!

Hope you guys liked it! If you'd like to be part of the creative process behind these pieces, a $1 Patreon pledge is enough to make you eligible for joining the prompt suggestion process, as well as reading Gladiator snippets 6 days before each update!

[yellowocaballero]

DIMILETH! DIMILETH!! DIMILETH!!!!!!! *claps enthusiastically*

YEAH DIMILETH! I'M GONNA RAMBLE ABOUT IT!

There's a serious dearth of good Dimileth content, I think. A pretty high % is E and those kind of feel like dressed up xreader fics in generic aus, tbh. Considering how Byleth's entire character arc is about her growing out of being your self-insert and actualizing as a full person, I can't really get behind them. I think uh there's a truly excessive number of ways to write them badly, out of character, or both.

I've talked SEVERAL times about how I dislike those mommy gf/bf dynamics, especially in H/C. There's always a whumpee to project on, who normally has anxiety or depression and has panic attacks, and a perfect partner who provides therapy and hugs and the comfort. In real life it would be remarkably unhealthy. People are usually better about this in M/F dynamics, but it's unhealthy straight or gay. Where Dimileth comes in is: a) it is extremely easy to fall into this trap, because of how people relate to Dimitri and Byleth and Dimitri's canon relationship, and b) it is uniquely bad, because it is very similar to their teacher/student dynamic. And you want them to grow out of that. You do. For obvious reasons.

What I love about Byleth is that she is kind and nurturing, despite everything. She's so empathic, understanding, supportive, and kind towards Dimitri. I love the story of an emotionless person choosing kindness - somebody who made the conscious decision to turn away from a live of endless violence and death and choose family and love. I don't want to erase that just bc it's surface level mommy gf.

For me, what I decided on is to just flip those tables. You have to completely reconfigure that dynamic into one between two adults and equals. And I think it eventually ended up as - Byleth provided unconditional support, love, and caring to these kids, and now that she's Achieved Sadness it's her turn to receive that. You have to love to have love returned. During their little roleplay scene, Byleth experiences a wonderful feeling of safety and understanding and care. She provided that for Dimitri, and Dimitri provided that for her. She had to be the adult for a long time, on many levels she is still being expected to be the adult, but now that she's speedrunning emotional puberty she has somebody to help her through that (Narratively, it's a good balance for Dimitri himself too - as somebody who received care for a while, I do want to show that he's still an adult who's capable of providing that to others).

Whew. Normally romantic ships are uhhh not the point in anything I write, but in this fic the Dimileth encapsulates the point. Obviously in Phase 1 there was a lot of set-up for it, and equally obviously Byleth did not even passingly think of him romantically or sexually (like would she have even be capable???), but in a story about teenagers becoming adults and a girl finding humanity I think a sweet way to capture that is the insanity of somebody's first teenage love. Thanks for reading!

[reiverreturns]

exceptionally funny that herc invites raleigh to sit with him in the canteen because he wants to reconnect and have a pleasant conversation with a fellow ranger only to sit down and remember his son is a total fuckwad

behold, a man regretting his life choices

[narugen]

growing up in a competitive country/school just means i’m like oh man when i don’t get as much recognition as other people and then i move on bc some ppl are just better and ill just have to create better stuff no biggie

[cold-neon-ocean]

Okay so I've had this WIP laying around for over a year now lol This was my very first attempted at drawing buildings or a cityscape and I definitely got super stuck bc I had no idea what I was doing but I'd like to pick this pack up someday~

[skunkes]

[mossytrashcan]

“Why would LB call her magic system science? Why is she afraid of magic?” She did it for me specifically. The hot stem girly. (READ MY TAGS BOY)

[bunnihearted]

🐁☁️🌫️

[unnonexistence]

trying to coax myself into working on my programming practice stuff by relating it to pacific rim. come onnnn you can graph the kaiju attacks! like hermann!

wait wait shit ok it wasnt working because the wiki is the only place i can pull data from rn & the dates on the wiki suck, but actually. i had a new idea. could put them on there and graph hermann's prediction next to them and from there reverse-engineer the timing of kaiju attacks that aren't specified anywhere. maybe. idk if the math works out. i can at least make cool graphs

[vagabondfromkanto]

//Holy shit I just found my old Junketsu!Ryuko blog which I forgot I even had. MAN I was better at being fucked up than I ever remembered (and than I could play now, honestly).