#i like close third person!

[thegirlwholied]

not to have a grudge against all books written in a certain POV but first-person alternating, we meet again, my beloathed

[jerswayman]

LOVE THY GOALIE. GIVE THY GOOD BOY HEAD PATS.

[blaithnne]

Local big sister experiences emotions, more at 6

Been wanting to do one of these with Lauren for AGES, but I never got round to it. Then I saw the Lydia and Phinium expression sheets on @littledigits’ website and I felt inspiration like never before.

The funniest struggle I have with Lauren’s design right now is that she nose too big for she got damn face. Literally, Hilda characters noses take up a fairly small portion of their faces, and her’s took up WAY too much, leaving little room for her to make facial expressions. But I struggled to find a fix because when I made the nose smaller it just didn’t look like Lauren anymore, so I took this as an opportunity to work on that!

She still has a larger nose than most characters, starting higher up (like her grandad!) and ending lower down (but not quite as low as before). I also made her eyes a little smaller and with a shape similar to Lydia’s (though you can see in some of these I hadn’t quite landed on that yet and her eyes are a bit too big), which works both as a nod to her parentage and because I think it makes the nose look bigger. This still doesn’t leave as much room for the mouth as most other characters, but that’s okay — Lauren is a very private person who keeps her feelings close to her chest, I think it works for her to have subtler expressions, adds to how guarded she is! Oh and I also updated the shape of her hair slightly, just to make it a bit more style accurate.

These changes are pretty small on their own, but I think combined they work well to make Lauren feel a lot more…alive? Far less stiff, anyway. I think she also has a more unique facial structure now, instead of just “what if Johanna was 90% nose”. She’s still got a big old nose and I love it but now she can emote, yay!

This is really all just concept stuff, I’m hoping to get a new fullbody style-ref for Lauren out soon! Now that I’ve improved the main issues I had with her face in the last ref, now it’s onto the silhouette! I want her to read as more of a strong character (though it comes across decently in her current ref, I wanna push it more without being as exaggerated as Ahlberg, which is. A challenge for me lol), streamline her silhouette, and finally make her taller than Johanna like she’s always meant to have been <3 I made her shorter for so long because I thought it would help her read better as her daughter but you know what? That’s dumb actually, she’s tall.

ANYWAYS, thank you for listening in on the annual Lauren redesign, and to the artists behind the show for posting so much amazing inspiring show stopping concept work for free because it makes my autism worse /pos

[daily-grian]

Mod Owl lore: I used to be an artist for an original closed adoptables species called Wuffies on a niche rp forum board and I've been thinking about them again recently, so I thought i'd doodle Grian as a wuffy. Bonus fun fact - wuffies do not usually have wings, but I was the only person to ever get a wuffy with wings cause it was a birthday present from the species owner and I still have it :3 It would feel criminal to not give Grian wings though

[hermitcraftx]

The problem with a lot of traffic life interpretations in my opinion is they don't understand character foils or don't employ them in their writing. Grian-Martyn and Scar-Ren are genuinely pretty good character foils for a series that is not really scripted or planned out like a book is. I could go on and on about how they parallel each other and the similarities between them. Even the smaller details between the four usually match up

leaving the rant in the tags so I don't have a huge block of text again ueueue

[imperatorrrrr]

Harris is losing the popular vote, I repeat, the POPULAR VOTE by over five million voters.

five. million. voters.

[fountainpenguin]

Incredibly funny to me there was literally an explosion behind Anti-Wanda when she was feeding Foop for the first time and neither she nor Anti-Cosmo turned around... Eyes only for BABY!!!

Anti-Wanda listening to Timmy share his plan about making Foop cry on purpose. she and her husband will be cheering for their son's tears in 8 seconds btw.

Moodboard of Anti-Wanda excited for motherhood:

Her son is a smidgen under 7 hours old and she's about to send him to jail <3

Bonus Anti-Cosmo trying to find his baby .2 seconds after Anti-Wanda had him, because it cracks me up every time:

World's dumbest husband <3

[chaos-of-the-abyss]

someone could write pages and pages and pages and pages on elu thingol's life. he could be the protagonist of like five book trilogies each with 600 words per book. he was born in cuivienen where the first non-divine life awakened; he lived through morgoth's earlier attempts to corrupt the elves and very likely lost people he cared about to them; he witnessed the war of the powers; he was among the first of his people to see valinor, having visited it under the invitation of the deities who helped originate the universe; he was the sole flesh-and-blood being in all!! of!!! history!!!! who met, fell in love with, and married a goddess that was there before creation even existed; he and said goddess were the progenitors of a unique bloodline that produced some of the legendarium's most famous figures; he separated from his brother for a very very long time; he was so loved by his people that they refused paradise if he wasn't there with them; he fought battles against morgoth's forces and saw loss as well as triumph during those battles; he was one of the oldest beings and longest-reigning kings in all of beleriand, not to mention he ruled its most ancient and most mystical, otherworldly kingdom; he was the father of two of the most famous heroes in-verse, whose deeds and stories continued to be told millennia after their deaths; he was again the first!! and!!! only!!!! elf-king in all of history to adopt a human as his own son. and throughout it all, he has a cohesive character arc. he grows to respect a people whom he once distrusted and looked down on; he comes to accept the choices of those he cares about even if he doesn't agree with said choices; he has to learn to let go of his loved ones no matter how much it grieves him. if those five trilogies existed i would be reading and rereading every single one obsessively

[plaid-maniac]

Do you ever think about how there totally could have been an old classmate of Phoenix Wright and Miles Edgeworth in the audience during like turnabout sister or turnabout samurai. Do you think they would realize? Like “hey, were those the guys in my class in like fourth grade? I kinda remember them. Wonder if they remember each other. But it was so long ago, I doubt they would even care.” Meanwhile Edgeworth and Phoenix are undergoing the most insane mental battles where both of them are going “I recognize my best friend across the courtroom and I desperately want to be close with them again.” And “god he is so god damn annoying I wish he would die already.”

[reineydraws]

Saw your Mishanks bodyswap art! Very cute and fun! (Mihawk with a genuine smile on his face so so fun)

I imagine Shanks whould have trouble fighting in Mihawk's body at first since it's been years since he's had two arms

yes absolutely, i imagine that too! conversely, i think mihawk would have a little bit of trouble adjusting his balance and reach with a body missing one arm, as well. it's interesting to think about how they both would be forced to change their fighting style, and whether or not they would exchange swords.

mihawk's been seen using yoru with just one hand so he could probably pull it off with shanks's body. also interesting to think about shanks tripping up on having two arms until he naturally slips into his old fighting style again--or would he? because there's also the question of muscle memory, right? would mihawk's body automatically do things that shanks isn't predisposed to doing, and vice versa?

the other thing i find intriguing about body swapping in one piece is the question of whether or not your haki powers would switch as well. they say haki is spiritual presence, so presumably your haki switches if your spirits switch, but if it's the kind of spirit that's tethered to the presence of the body? then consider mihawk having the strongest conqueror's haki out on the blues, or shanks being able to use observation haki at mihawk's level, practically being able to predict the future--or mihawk, able to counter with shanks's haki-kill technique. food for thought!

[welcometogrouchland]

if you're asking for drawing requests, maybe Willow in her timeskip look or Luz with the Collector??

[ID: a digital illustration of Luz (in her titan form from watching and dreaming) and The Collector. Luz stands on a small hill of red grass, waving at The Collector, who's off-screen but depicted to the audience as a closeup inside a star shaped panel. Luz is waving at the off-screen Collector with a smile, while The Collector smiles tearfully at her. Small uncoloured doodles of Eda and King are depicted waving at the collector in the background. End ID]

This was meant to be a doodle anon but unfortunately I went off the shits. Anyway, collector sees Luz post-resurrection and cries big gross happy tears bc he's so happy she's alive

[hanzajesthanza]

the headcanon that regis can hang from the ceiling to sleep or rest like a bat is funny on its own, but when i consider geralt and others in the hanza holding conversations with him like this, it’s made better by my understanding of this as just an advanced “neurodivergent sitting” technique

[radarsteddybear]

Reblog for sample size!

[lucindarobinsonvevo]

[B] How do you feel about public office? [P] Horrible idea. I'm in.

[danielsarmand]

present tense get behind me i will avenge you i will write in present tense in a way that is so scrumptious no one will ever underestimate you again ever

[greenerteacups]

Hi GT, I was reading one of your wonderful responses and you mentioned you don't love what they did to Remus, and I have to say I 100% agree. In my opinion his relationship with tonks is weird (regardless of whether people think he had chemistry with Sirius) like he's at least 10 years older than her and he tries to leave her and it just seems like he goes along with HER infatuation without really caring about her very much. It also puts Tonks back into JKR's frequent dynamic for women, which is "badass who really wants to be with a guy who doesn't seem to appreciate her much" (see Hermione/Ron).

Do you have any further thoughts on that? I always found JKR's writing about women in relationships/who want relationships really weird. You definitely do it better.

JKR has many strengths as a writer, but I don't think anyone would say her romances are one of them. I think a lot of authors either consciously or subconsciously look down on romance as a genre because it's associated with sensuality and frivolousness, but writing and selling the idea that two people should and do want to kiss each other is like, really fucking hard to do, and it requires a certain set of skill checks as an author that not everyone has. Just like writing good horror or good fantasy, good romance has tenets and rules and things you can do to get the audience on board with you, and JKR didn't execute a lot of those things (to my satisfaction, YMMV) in the books. Bad romance is also a high-stakes problem, because it risks flattening out your characters and pitching them into OOC territory if the audience doesn't buy that the dynamic evolution is natural. But again, that's something you don't know if you haven't written romance, or tried to, before.

Mostly, you have to really lean into the vulnerability of the thing. Romance is silly and goofy and embarrassing. It makes you say dumb things and act in dumb ways. It can't be ironic or chilled or demure. At some point, to make a real human connection, someone has to get down, take off their dignity, and bare the rotten core of themselves. When we propose, we kneel on the ground. We get dirty. And all authors have a great terror of embarrassing themselves. They're doing something tremendously vulnerable; of course they want people to think they're cool and intelligent. It's embarrassing to put yourself in the head of a 15-year-old boy with a crush. It's embarrassing to write about a suitor earnestly confessing their love, because — what if this is too much? What if it's corny, what if it breaks the audience's suspension of disbelief? What if my readers are laughing at me? What if I'm the butt of the joke?

Anyway, I think a lot of really great books have terrible romance subplots for that reason. In The Great Gatsby, we never actually see Gatsby and Daisy alone together. We get their story second-hand, from people who can deliver it in a cool, reflective tone of mystery; we don't see them undressed, undone, emptying their hearts to one another. And Nick and Jordan, the romance we actually get to see develop, are easily the weakest plot in the book. Meanwhile, authors like Tolstoy have an incredible gift for writing romance that feels right, and is sensual without verging into purple prose. But Tolstoy is one of the greatest writers of all time. JKR wrote some very good books that a lot of people loved very much, but for her, the romances were accessories to the story. They weren't a focus. I'm certain she cared about Remus and Tonks's relationship, in the same way she cared about Ron and Hermione's relationship. Both take up too much space to explain otherwise.

TLDR: Writing romance is hard because it's really easy to fuck up, even if you care about it. I don't know that JKR put all that much thought into selling us on chemistry and interpersonal dynamics of the couples she threw together; I think she writes for plot, and the couples emerged as a part of that. That means the couples that don't necessarily make sense on paper lose out majorly because the audience doesn't know exactly what they're rooting for, and the couples that do make sense on paper lack a certain... I dunno, va-va-voom.