#it took me way too long to think of an example sentence for “its”

[head-empty-river]

for anyone who doesn't know this grammar rule and is super confused by it, here's a psa i guess?

it's vs its

it's

if it can be broken down into "it is" then use an apostrophe "it's"

ex: "it's okay dude, you'll be fine"

its

if it's possessive, aka something that belongs to or is a descriptor of "it", then don't use an apostrophe

ex: "its grin widened"

my thoughts on the topic:

it's a weird grammar exception that (in my experience) wasn't explained well in school, so (like i used to before learning this) many people would get confused between the two. "it's" is more common, since often the thing being described with "its" tends to make more sense if a specific word is used instead. i think its most common use is in referring to previous statements (like in this sentence), or in describing something unknown/incomprehensible (imo best utilized in eldritch/cosmic horror).

fyi, english teachers often don't want you to use "its" or "it's" in essays when it can be avoided (which is partially why i think this distinction isn't taught. when students don't feel comfortable enough using it, they're more likely to choose other words instead).

[bellarkeselection]

Hello.

Would you write a Story with Jay Halstead x Reader ? ... First Meeting for example... :he cant take his eyes from her after he saw her/ meet her.She is the best Friend of Gabby. For Jay its the First Time that he feel that for a women,what he feels for y/n / reader.

She’s Meant For Me

- Here’s the request you asked for. Sorry it took so long and that it’s not very long. I am getting used to writing for Jay again

Molly’s bar was hopping tonight meaning I got called in to help Gabby work the bar orders tonight. Since I was the only one who had gone to bartender school and knew how to make more drinks then the Firefighters who owned it. Wiping down the bar with a towel I watched someone sit down in front of me. “You’re a new face. Are you gonna be the new bartender from now on?”

“Nah I’m not taking Gabby’s job. She just asked me for help and if I’m being honest they wouldn’t know how to make drinks if it wasn’t for me.” I smiled, bringing a hand to the side of my mouth whispering the last sentence to him.

The stranger had bright blue eyes and dark brown hair wearing a black jacket. “What’s your name?”

“Why do you wanna know? Are you a cop or something trying to spy on me?”

The guy chuckled, extending his hand across the bar counter top. “I am a cop, yeah. My names Jay, Jay Halstead.”

“Y/n, Y/n L/n.” I shake his hand, raising a brow teasingly at him. “You still didn’t answer my question though. Are you here to spy on me or just have me give you a drink?”

Jay takes out some money pushing it towards me. “I’m not spying, I swear. But I’ll do you one better than just making me a drink. You make one for yourself too on me.”

“That’s really nice of you.” I walked away grabbing a bottle of bourbon, pouring us each a drink.

Jay silently watched you walk away to make the drinks. The moment he stepped into the bar he couldn’t focus on anything but you. He hadn’t been in a long term relationship before. He’d been in flings or one night stands more than anything. But there was something about you in the first second he met you that he wanted a real relationship with you and no one else.

Glancing back over at the cop I saw my best friend Gabby walking over to him and I heard some of their conversation. “Hey I felt as her best friend that I should be the one to give you a warning.”

“What kind of warning?” He asked her.

Gabby leaned forward on the bar getting in his face. “The kind that means if you hurt her in any way. I will personally kick your ass to high heaven.”

“Gabby, listen I was afraid of breaking my cover when we met. I should have told I know that but - but I won’t lie to her.” Jay rambled off, raising his hands in the air.

I remembered Gabby talking about this guy that had screwed her over and nearby made the bar get burnt down literally. I’d never seen her so pissed and now it shocked me to think he had come back to the bar after they ended things a few years ago. “Look Jay, I’m just making sure you won’t do the same thing to her that you did to me. She’s my best friend and I don’t want her to have her heartbroken by the same guy who wasn’t honest with me.”

“I’m not that guy anymore. There’s something about her that makes me know I need to put in 100% and not put work first.” Jay ran a hand through his hair hearing me walking back over to them.

Carrying the two glasses over I slid one over to him seconds before Gabby left the two of us alone. “So you’re the guy who nearly set my friend's bar on fire hmm?”

“Y/n, please don’t think that I’d treat you like I did her if I asked you out. I-“

I cut him off. “Dawson, can hold a grudge. You should be lucky that I don’t.”

“So does that mean you’re giving me a chance?”

Nodding my head I raised my glass up. “For now, yes. But if you hurt me I’ll send my best friend after you.”

“I got ya. Here’s to our first meeting.” Jay picked up his glass and we clinked the two together, finishing the whole shot at the same time. I sent him a smile and he flashed his grin in my direction.

Comments really appreciated ❤️

[dnfity]

they were so silly in your fic thank you so much :(( question. how do you write such realistic dialogue? your dialogue is seriously some of the best i've seen in this fandom

sorry it took me so long to get to this i wanted to try and give a good answer. i think the biggest thing that helps me is to just try to imagine them say whatever piece of dialogue i just wrote in my head. if it sounds weird, then i change it and i'll keep changing and changing it until it sounds real.

i wrote some general notes below and its long so dont open unless u want an essay on your dash:

george:

i think i find george's the easiest only bc i watch his videos/streams the most. some notes for him is that he says dreams name when talking to him A LOT. if u notice, he'll usually say it after shorter commanding phrases. for example, "it's fine, dream" or "stop, dream" or "i dont know, dream". he'll also use his name at the beginning of phrases whenever hes about to complain about something lmao. let's say george wants to go out or something. instead of straight up saying he wants to go out, he might say something like "dream, im bored. this vicinity that we're in, it's boring" expecting dream to fix the problem for him.

adding onto that, he loves his little vocab words. words like befuddled seem to be favorites for him. i think he just likes the way certain words feel to say if that makes sense. (dream is one of those words). he also tends to speak in shorter phrases sometimes, especially when hes trying to joke around. his way of speaking in general doesnt typically involve long-winded explanations. in fact, in the past, when dream or sapnap dont understand what hes saying, he usually gets annoyed. "how do you not know what i'm talking about? you're an idiot."

dream:

the thing that stands out the most to me with dreams way of speaking is that hes usually very honest with everything he says. if he suddenly gets this surge of appreciation or gratitude towards someone, he'll most likely vocalize it. he also - contrary to george - tends to draw out his sentences. i think he is definitely a saying before speaking kind of person, and that usually involves him cutting sentences off to start new ones, run on sentences, etc. he has that adhd way of speaking lmao. stuttering, saying "like" a lot, feeling like he cant get the sentence out as fast as his mind is going, switching between topics while telling a story.

dream also sees the world through a technicalities a little lmao. what i mean by that is that he tends to want to be very specific when it comes to his actions / the things he observes. for example, he can't just say, "i slept so much last night." it'll go more like, "i slept so much last night. i slept for like, twenty hours. ok, well, maybe not twenty hours but it was like - okay, it was maybe like, sixteen hours." this i think also manifests into terms he used to use a lot such as recency bias (and george kinda does too, but i think he does it mostly when talking to dream, a way of mirroring him during a conversation).

tldr just really pay attention to the way they speak to each other and spin them around in your head.

im sure there are things im missing but i hope that was at least somewhat helpful. i also didnt read over this after typing it so if there are errors im sorry.

[zuhaism]

⊹ ｡˚ 𓂃 ♡ MMTG ?! ┊ lesserafim ⁺

[ navigation | corso ]

you and the members were in hybe’s lobby. you were sitting between chaewon and jaejae for the interview. many laughs were exchanged here and there as jaejae interviewed each members.

“when do you use it?” asked jae jae when the topic came to slangs. “for example ‘what are we going to eat for dinner?’ IDC. with a shoulder tilt” everyone did it together. then yunjin spoke up. “y/n is the only one who never uses slangs.”

“why why why” jae jae was bewildered. “arent you american too?” she had a shocked look on her face. “what ! no i am!” you paused because you were laughing too hard “it’s just that my mom said i shouldn’t talk like that. she says it sounds rude.” you answered with a sheepish smile.

the members nodded in agreement. “y/n’s actually very polite and has great manners, she just doesn’t talk.“ chaewon intervened and gave a thumbs up to the camera. jaejae continued interviewing yunjin.

“y/n! the other american. an all star basketball player! our nations little math nerd” and it showed a picture of 16 year old you about to do a three pointer and you after winning the mathematical olympiad. the interview finally got to you. you closed your eyes in embarrassment. everyone laughed in unison. “wah our y/n looks so cute.” eunchae spoke up.

“i heard you got recruited when you were playing basketball?” jaejae looked at you for confirmation. you chuckled before answering. “yeah actually i got scouted when i was on a school trip…” everyone was silent expecting you to continue but instead you stopped there. “ah” jaejae spoke amongst the silence “ah i guess thats all okay! its alright if you dont want to continue!” everyone bursts out laughing “no no no i can explain! sorry, sorry i thought you wanted to add something.” you tried explaining yourself. after the laughter died down and them teasing you, you started talking again.

you went all the way back to when you were 17. you and your other matheletes teammates won first place in a competition and got to go to Seoul as the winning prize. one night during the trip u got bored and sneaked out the hotel to a basketball court you saw nearby.

while you were shooting three pointers by yourself you noticed someone from the corner of your eye watching you. you got scared and ignored it hoping it wasn’t an entity from another dimension. the person stayed there for far too long and you started getting creeped out even though you were a whole feet taller than them.

you started packing your things up. putting everything in faster when you heard footsteps close behind. you were ready to book it when someone tapped your shoulder. you turned around and was met with a card in your face. the person said nothing as you took it and walked away.

it was a business card. as you examined it you noticed ‘you’re perfect for us. please come and audition tomorrow’

“and then i had a free day the next day so i went.” you ended your story with a small smile as everyone stared at you in awe. “you rapped to corso by tyler the creator am i right.” jaejae spoke up. you looked at her in shock “how’d you know.” she looked to the camera with a smug face and shrugged.

“y/n ! you once went live and answered all the fans math questions.” jaejae suddenly changed the subject as you sat up straighter. the members burst out laughing while you turned red from embarrassment. “wah y/n you’re really good at math aren’t you!” jaejae praised you.

“what. no no” you declined. “no! you’re really good. you just lack confidence.” jaejae ended her sentence and signalled for you all to look at the screen. it was showing a clip of one of your lives where you answered fearnot’s math questions.

“i think the x is 4 but i dont know” you said with your eyebrows furrowed moving closer to the camera to read the comments. “i dont know guys dont listen to me i might be wrong.” you said looking back at your paper, checking your answer again while scratching your head.

“you’re really cute.” said jaejae.

“stop flattering me”

the topic moved on to you being heartless but caring. you never knew you had this title. you never even knew you were caring you just did what you felt right. now that the topic changed everyone was giving examples on how you speak louder through your actions rather than words.

“one time, after coming home from a schedule. i went to my room and slept in the mess i made in the morning because i was too exhausted. the next morning i woke up to a clean room.” sakura started she said after that, she asked who cleaned her room and y/n only shrugged while zuha confirmed it wasn’t her. “it really warmed my heart because we had the same schedule.” sakura ended.

“no unnie it’s because you’re getting older.” eunchae teased the oldest. sakura gave eunchae the stink eye.

“oh! when we arrived at japan it was pouring and y/n unnie was beside me. she took off her jacket and wrapped me in it, holding an umbrella and then we walked together to the car.” eunchae expressed. “and in the car i noticed her shirt was half wet and i was like ‘so this is love’” eunchae announced softly with a dreamy look on her face as she looked at your red face.

“wow y/n you seem like you’d be a good boyfriend” said jaejae while you protested. “you’re right. you’re right sometimes even i want to date her.” chaewon voiced. chaewon started telling about the time after a schedule, when she got out the car her feet was hurting so bad. she was at the back struggling to walk through the pain. she saw you stopping and waiting for her at the parking lot entrance.

when you noticed she was hurting you immediately crouched infront of her. “what?” chaewon asked. you signalled her to piggyback you. “i am not doing that. we’re wearing the same shoes! you’re going to-“ she got cut off when you moved back and carried her anyways. she held onto you tight when you lifted her and she stayed that way until you guys went up to the dorm.

“wah y/n noticing the small things. we need more people like that.” jaejae added. yunjin and kazuha started talking about their loving experiences with you. yunjin stated that she’d only watch a horror movie only if you’re there. yunjin said when you’re with her, she feels safe. probably because whenever there’s a gory scene you’d mutter ‘that’s so fake’ under your breathe. but that’s besides the point. you’d rub circles on her hand and make her feel reassured.

for kazuha, you’re her debate mate. you talk the most when you’re with her. you don’t know how her mind works but you sure know how to handle it. like the other day, she asked which is the strongest : rock, paper, or scissors. you had to explain to her how its neither and rock, paper scissors is just a game of luck.

she also mentioned how you’re always helping her in korean and you’d go for convenience store runs whenever she gets a question right. you treat her so well.

“in conclusion! y/n is a great person to date.” jaejae ended

“not the dating part” chaewon muttered.

[ziploc849]

My final TMA post of season 2. I think in the future I might try and keep these posts a lot shorter, limit my word count or sentence amount or something like that. But in the meantime, enjoy my thoughts on Episode 79 and 80!! I’ll be making a separate posts about some of my thoughts specifically regarding some shit we learned in episode 80. This is a long one so buckle in yall. I hope my ramblings are at least semi coherent

Ep 79: So many fucking thoughts. Jon doesn’t remember what Sasha looked like. Martin and Tim saw Not-Sasha even if they don’t understand it. Martin and Tim ending up in Michael’s. Domain? That feels like a fitting word at this point, even the way Michael talks, the way he has to remember the word for “sport”, makes me think that he’s not even something that’s good at pretending to be human. Not-Them is so fucking scary, the idea of them “wearing” the people they kill not like wearing their skin, but like wearing their essence, taking their place in the world but not their likeness. Fucking terrifying. Not-Sasha saying the institute “has the biggest eyes you ever did see”. Saying that if they took Jon’s place and became the Archivist he’d “miss the Unknowing” whatever that means. She talks about “robbing the eye of its pupil”. Archivist is capitalized in the transcripts when she says it, like it’s a title or a name. So much weird eye imagery in this fucking show. Strange mystery man appearing from the shadows and. Killing Not-Sasha? I’m not entirely sure what that was. God this episode was a lot from like 20-100 so fast

Ep 80: one of the YouTube comments on this episode is from that one TikTok “day 23 in the chamber, they ain’t found me yet but when they do they gonna be surprised” and that gave me a good laugh after this HELL of a fucking episode. You’re telling me we meet JURGEN LEITNER and then witness his DEATH in the same fucking episode???? What the shit??!?? All of my answers and ideas from the last episode were immediately answered here lmao

The Not-Them is trapped, not dead, likely never able to die according to Leitner. The real Sasha is dead forever, and it’s not surprising but there is a deep injustice in that. She didn’t have an inkling of what was going on.

There’s a book that works on Smirke’s architecture and is related to the phobia of claustrophobia, another hint I think.

The amusement in Jon’s voice with “That’ll be our Gerard” makes me wonder if I’ve missed something about his character related to the others, or if it’s just Jon happy to recognize something familiar in all of this.

The evolution through the episode of “what do you mean you thought they were just books, they are right?” to “oh god. They are so much more than books.” Leitner says some of them must like the flame, that things would take a different form if the book was burned. Is that what some of the creatures are? The ones that aren’t even pretending to be something strange and terrifying? Beings released from books and allowed to be more overtly dangerous? Like unbinding Not-Sasha from the table?

The description of what happened when the house was attacked is chilling and brings back many, many memories. Stabbed through the throat by something with too many teeth and limbs like knives sounds like the bajillions of people-to-the-left we’ve seen. Similar to Not-Them I think? Or maybe there’s a different example I can’t remember. Pulled into a maw that opened up from the floor, which sounds identical to the hole in The Butchers Window. Ran into a door that didn’t exist, Michael obviously. A hand through the roof simply grabbing someone is reminiscent of the way the sky ate, or somehow took the man in Freefall. An assistant whose name isn’t memorable anymore (though all the others’ are) being pulled into a pile of meat, the former sounds similar to what we saw in Lost and Found, but the meat mentioned sounds more reminiscent to things we saw in The Man Upstairs. Rooms taken by darkness or fire, things we have already seen the power of overtly and know very well.

Gertrude had 3 assistants, all 3 “meeting an unpleasant end”. I do not like the foreshadowing that offers for Tim and Martin, with Sasha already gone.

And of course. The entities. The humans to us, the ants. I find the analogy Leitner uses to be particularly interesting, even if I don’t know if he meant it in this way. Fingernails digging, changing the world in a fraction of a second, changing reality in a way ants could never fully understand. Like a creature taking the entire idea of a person and warping it to meet their needs. Changing memories and photographs and nearly everything in its path. The sky moving, in ways it shouldn’t because it just doesn’t, to pluck a man from reality. Eyes watching, knowing and seeing and observing, filing information away in a horrifying and terribly understanding kind of way. Always there, it’s people of interest never far from view even as they’re driven mad. Shadows vast and unfathomable, darkness that seems to spread the way light does. Endless expanses entirely impossible and yet very, very real to the people who see it. Themes we’ve seen before all over this series.

Leitner says Michael is “The Distortion”, “The Spiral”. Illusions and hallucinations and insanity. I think some things are falling into place, and I might have to make a seperate post on it cause this one is already way too long, but I think my phobias theory wasn’t too far off.

Elias killed Gertrude. Gertrude and Leitner were going to destroy the archives. Elias took files, files on “The Stranger”. Another mention of the Unknowing. Another entity? An event to come?

[Brutal Pipe Murder] made me laugh far harder than it should’ve. Sorry Leitner. What is the dripping (I don’t want to know). I don’t know how long Tim and Martin were gone, but gods they came on an awful scene. And they think Jon did it. God season 3 is gonna be Fucked.

[physalian]

“Endings are the hardest!” / “No, beginnings are the worst!”

I’ve never had a problem figuring out the way I want my stories to end but starting them? Yeash, that’s so much pressure. Both carry the same weight for different reasons while you have writers in both camps with legitimate arguments. One may be harder than the other on a writer-by-writer basis, but they are equally daunting.

—

So. Beginnings:

You have sometimes as little as three sentences to hook readers, at most the first chapter. I don’t even give fanfic more than the opening line sometimes (mostly because fanfic takes opening en media res to wild new heights). I’ve been working on a system of “I have one sentence to give you the setting, the protagonist, and the hook that makes this book different, go” and while it might not be perfect, it’s a starting point.

For example! The opening sentence to ENNS is:

Beneath the snowdrift of the longest blizzard Elias has ever endured, the last vampire in the dungeons has finally succeeded in taking their own life.

As someone who struggles with beginnings, I have given you five pieces of information in 25 words:

The setting, that concerns long and repeat blizzards and snow

Protagonist’s name

Establishing the existence of vampires

Establishing that those vampires are kept in dungeons

Establishing that those presumed prisoners are in such bad conditions, that they’re restoring to suicide, something vampires don’t tend to do

I think I did a pretty good job.

So much of the burden of your book is given to so few words. You can’t make it cliché, but try too hard to be unique and you risk looking pretentious. You have to establish the setting, the narrator, the initial setup and inciting incident and convince readers to pick your book out of hundreds of thousands of other options. I hate beginnings.

Best advice among an avalanche of others? Write a placeholder and come back later if it’s too daunting and frustrating because there is no writing advice that is one size fits all.

It’s entirely dependent on your genre, your demographic, the age of your protagonist and how self-aware they are, the tone of your story, your own personal writing style.

“First sentences should include THIS!”

Yeah, okay, but what if I have a better idea? Beyond that your sentence should have a hook that sets your book up as something apart from its genre neighbors, just go look at the most famous opening lines. They’re all different.

There is nothing in common between

Call me Ishmael.

and

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

And that’s the point.

—

Endings though?

Endings bear the burden of providing catharsis, or robbing you of it. Endings have to answer ‘but what does it all mean?’ and stick the landing, or they don’t. Endings can turn a TV show that took the world by storm for four magnificent seasons and drag it limping across the finish line in a finale that sucks the life out of the fandom forever.

Endings either leave you in an existential lurch staring at the ceiling, or in tears of joy or anguish, or frothing at the mouth at yet another cliffhanger. If you can’t answer ‘what does it all mean’ you have bigger problems than just your final lines.

People don’t have fan theories about your first page, they have fan theories about what comes after your last page. There are no rules to writing an ending and sometimes by its nature of being unfulfilling you become infamous.

Example: The ending of Mark of Athena, that prompted this dedication in its sequel House of Hades.

“We’re staying together,” he promised. “You’re not getting away from me. Never again.” Only then did she understand what would happen. A one-way trip. A very hard fall. “As long as we’re together,” she said. She heard Nico and Hazel still screaming for help. She saw the sunlight far, far above—maybe the last sunlight she would ever see. Then Percy let go of his tiny ledge, and together, holding hands, he and Annabeth fell into the endless darkness.

(one short Leo POV later)

Nemesis wanted him to wreak vengeance on Gaea? Leo would be happy to oblige. He was going to make Gaea sorry she had ever messed with Leo Valdez. “Yeah.” He took one last look at the cityscape of Rome, turning bloodred in the sunset. “Festus, raise the sails. We’ve got some friends to save.”

If you weren’t in this fandom when this book came out and ended with the protagonist falling into Greek Super Hell, to wait a whole year to find out what happens next—We lost our collective minds.

And then the next book opened like this:

Gettin’ a bit big for your britches there, ey, Riordan?

How you write your ending should reflect the kind of feeling you want to leave your reader with. In this case, it was anguish and despair and the pinnacle of “always leave them wanting more”. Maybe you’ve written a character who’s suffered constant setbacks to reaching their goal, and the final line is them at peace with, or without achieving it. Or it’s the final plot twist/reveal no one saw coming. Or it’s ambiguous, leaving it up to reader interpretation.

My favorite classical book ending comes from The Great Gatsby and while I had to crack open my copies of the PJO books, I know this line by heart:

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

There’s just something so melancholy and tragic about it, as it should be: Gatsby is not a happy story. That line is the answer to the thesis, that trying to live in the past and not embrace the future, not allowing yourself to move on, can only end in tragedy, and yet, so many of us do exactly that.

The image of a dinky little rowboat is always what I’ve pictured, as opposed to a ship or something more formidable. A rowboat bobbing around the thrashing waves, pitted against a force of nature it can’t ever hope to overcome, yet it endures.

The book opens on an equally melancholy note, “In my younger years…” as the protagonist reflects back on their life gone by. It’s an American classic for a reason.

Even if your final line is unspectacular, the line isn’t as important as how the narrator feels about the book being over. Quotable hashtags are great, but if the ending doesn’t feel like a proper fit, you’re going to leave readers disappointed.

—

Endings are so fricken fun though, no matter what’s at stake. It’s as cathartic for me to finish as I hope it is for the reader to read. There’s plenty of advice out there on the perfect opener or the perfect closer, the endless arguments over which is harder, and it’s all up to you in the end. They just come easy to me, I have no advice. I can picture them well before I get to the final pages and they just click into place. Beginnings, though? Ugh.

—

Thank you for 300 Followers!!!

[blood-teeth]

hi! any tips for turning an idea into a plot / story?

hiiii sorry this took me so long!! tumblr doesn't tell me when i get an ask anymore for some reason???? idk idk but!

✨✨✨morgan's guide to turning ideas into a story✨✨✨

these may not work for you BUT if you're having a hard time piecing together something then i would give these a shot!

the first thing i do when i have an idea i write it down. USUALLY my ideas for me come in a sentence. For Tell Me If There's A Way Home, the sentence was "cowgirl that has to keep burying a body that pops up along her journey"

for This Grave Calls You Home it was "in the light of a dying star, the last astronaut wakes up"

BRAINSTORMING:

so anyway i immediately write this down somewhere, usually the notes app on my phone and i STOP WHAT IM DOING IMMEDIATELY

for me, i have hundreds of these sentences written down somewhere, but the ones that stick with me always stay in the back of my throat.

if its one that gets me really hot and bothered, then the seed is planted and it needs some water babes....

im RUNNING to find media that i feel fits with the idea ... on that netflix or spotify or library app STAT looking for anything that will help that seed grow inside my head. i need the VIBES and the MUSIC and ATMOSPHERE.

once that's on lock...i'm plotting with my little grimy hands rubbing together...

...and i buy...another....notebook... and i KNOW this sounds ridiculous but hear me out...writing in notebook vs on a computer has genuinely saved my life with writer's block so many times. ideas and thoughts and fragments just flow when i allow myself to write in a notebook. idk what it is. but this is just me, if computers or typewriters or what have you works then STICK WITH IT

by the time i'm done scribbling ideas in my notebook and acting unhinged, i have a decent idea about the atmosphere and the themes i'm looking to write about

IF AN IDEA CAME TO YOU, IT MEANS SOMETHING IMPORTANT. DON'T DISREGARD THIS

you need to figure out what it is about the idea that means so much to you - and whatever that reason is, that's gonna be the fundamental core of your story.

PLOTTING:

i have to admit something. i dont plot my stories. i dont know how to plot. i like to discover the story right alongside everyone else. what's gonna happen next? idk babes you and me are gonna find out together.

BUT i do try to have a general idea of where the story STARTS and ENDS. everything else is trial and error. and if u dont have any idea where the story ends, just know it'll come to you eventually. u have thousands and thousands of words to write before the end, so don't sweat this; it'll happen. even if its really simple!

using Tell Me If There's A Way Home as an example:

Start: a woman doesn't know who she is, only knows that she's looking for something

End: She's Found The Thing

think of it like a question and answer. (also! NOT answering the question is totally valid story telling too)

if u are really struggling, the number one thing i suggest is READING. you can glean so much information from reading its actually crazy. study your favorite books or movies or video games. almost always in western media there is the exposition, conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement. (this is super formulaic, so don't feel tied down by this! just a guide line.)

SETTING:

i think everyone gets really tied up in knots about setting. and it shouldn't be like that! this should be YOUR fun!!

setting has very little to do with story/plot itself. it affects the ATMOSPHERE of the story you're telling instead. (except, like, if you're telling an alice in wonderland story or a story about climate change ofc, there's exceptions to everything)

look the locked tomb for example. take out the space aspect, this story at its heart would be the exact same if it were set underwater inside decomissioned underwater research facilities. its just cool as fuck to have a space nun living on pluto.

Take twin peaks and put it in space. the heart of the show works anywhere, but the atmosphere and the mood is enhanced because its in a small, strange town.

you can write a story about generational trauma and put it into the world of jurassic park.

anyway, i hope that you are hearing me say have fun with your setting. it absolutely is a part of the story you're telling, but it is not the heart of it (sometimes)

MISC TIPS:

remember that this is YOUR work. you do whatever you want. it's not up to anyone else.

be obsessed with your own world and your characters!! i literally went to a craft store and made a rosary today for one of my characters and it has actually helped me write a ton today.

you are not stuck in this story. i feel like a pitfall i face often is like "ah man but this writing doesnt make sense in this genre i cant write this" and its like YEAH I CAN. why cANT I . do whatever you want with your story im so serious. you have no idea how many books are releasing now and the common feedback is "man this feels like a book ive read a million times before" and with movies its a remake or based off a book like the entertainment industry DESPERATELY needs new original ideas SO SO BAD. dont be scared to write that book that you're worried is too weird or doesn't make sense trust me.

make playlists! watch movies! play video games! these are all things that count as writing believe it or not.

and remember you are loved !

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

hi! could you possibly share the intercept new report about gay men and their misogyny? i know this isn't really about br politics, and im not even sure if it is in English, but i think it is really important to be shared

I hope it's not too late 😅

-

Gay men and misogyny: no more ignoring this problem

'Don't talk about vaginas around me': for a long time, we ignored the disqualifications of women and the feminine made by gay men. No more.

"If I liked women, I would have become a gynecologist."

"The law of gravity is a crime against women."

“Funny” gay guys, usually white and showing a certain hatred towards females, are a very common social type in contemporary pop culture. The character Felix “Bicha Má” ["Evil Fag"], played by Mateus Solano, from the Brazilian soap opera “Amor à Vida” [Love For Life], is an easy example in Brazilian lands – the sentences that open this text are his. But this sharp-tongued young man who directs much of his bitterness towards women, including friends and relatives, has never only lived on screens: he is a common presence in our daily lives.

"Oh, don't mention a vagina around me, I get all messed up."

"My goodness, this singer was beautiful, but she got old and ugly."

"Get out of here, I don't even like cracks."

I can't say how many times I've heard phrases like that from fellow gay men. For a long time, these ways of disqualifying women – despite the certain discomfort felt by every person who is repeatedly the target of prejudice – were endorsed and reflected by women ourselves. Offenses dressed as “I was just joking” have largely naturalized these forms of disqualification, but the good news is that, in an environment in which feminism has gained ground, what seemed to be just a joke is now named by the right word: misogyny.

This is a delicate subject, since we are talking about people – mostly cisgender gay men – who have been and still are victims of a series of violence, whether at home, at work, on the streets. Perhaps it was precisely this that made us, cisgender or transgender women, leave the discomfort of being made fun of in the background. After all, confronting homophobia in a sexist country like Brazil is no simple task. But if this machismo affects homosexual men, what can we say about its presence in women's daily lives? And what can we also say about the homophobia directed at cis/trans homosexual and bisexual women, especially invisible and also targets of “jokes” by gay men?

“I had a very close gay friend, like a brother. We went out to parties together and often slept in the same bed, at my house or his. Several times, as if he were joking, he said that he was terrified of vaginas, that he was born through a cesarean section so he wouldn't have to go through one. He'd gesture the sign of the Cross and said ‘God forbid’, smiling,” says Adriana Conceição, 47 years old, a telemarketing operator from Recife who, like several other women, took a while to classify the guy's actions with the right word.

Game developer Renata Gomes, also 47 years old, found herself at the center of a virtual outrage after questioning a post by a gay Brazilian film critic living in the United States. In the post, he talked about missing Brazil, since people worked a lot more in the USA. Faced with the possibility of his speech being reductive and stereotypical, he began to treat Renata as “ugly”, “militant”, “frustrated”. Furthermore, several of the critic's friends entered the comments to reiterate the delegitimization of Renata's speech.

Younger people also identify the problem: aware of the issue, Curitiba university student Nicoly Grevetti, aged 24, listened to several people who circulate in LGBTQIA+ spaces about the subject and wrote a text about it. In it, she also identifies how pop and queer cultures, supposedly safer and “modern”, also present misogynistic elements.

One example is the use of the term “fishy”, constantly evoked to define drag queens who closely resemble cisgender women (that is, who have a high degree of “passability”). The expression refers to the smell that these women's vaginas supposedly have. “[Cisgender] women grow up believing that their private parts are disgusting and spend their entire lives using products to reduce their natural odors, which can lead to various diseases. Having female genitalia as something disgusting is so common for this group, that you can find countless reports of women talking about it on the internet,” she wrote. The topic was the subject of discussion in the famous series RuPaul’s Drag Race, generating academic works like this one. Cisgender drag queen Victoria Scone, a former participant in the show, also spoke on the topic.

A few months ago, I experienced a significant episode of this machismo and misogyny that had been attenuated for a long time in relation to gay men. I was in a doctor's office very close to a shopping center in the south of Recife. After the end of the consultation, the dermatologist – homosexual, white, in his late thirties, and anti-Bolsonaro in the last elections – lightly tapped my hand and said: “Okay, now you can go for a walk in the mall.”

Especially on that day, I was rushing to finish presenting a lecture that I would give the following day, online, at the University of Coimbra. Obviously, if I wanted to window shop or spend the afternoon reading celebrity magazines, it wouldn't be a problem (in fact, I love it). The point here was the doctor's obvious intention to fit me into the cliché of the futile and consumerist woman, a sexist and anachronistic way of disqualifying the female gender. Icing on the cake: while I was leaving, the gay boy warned me not to forget to take “the boss” to my next appointment. He was referring to my romantic partner.

If it's feminine, it's smaller

The misogyny present in the practices of part of this population is so evident that it goes beyond the boundaries of gender and occurs between equals: it is common to see it operating even among gay men themselves. Research I carried out in partnership with Professor Ricardo Sabóia, from the Federal University of Pernambuco, analyzed the relationship between body and celebrity on the Grindr app. I was astonished by both the hatred towards what is socially seen as feminine and the extremely high level of normativity, standardization, and even elitism. “'I'm not into effeminate guys” is a constant, as is “I'm not into fat guys”.

In this environment of extremely high value for toned biceps and abs, being masculine – and looking very masculine – is the strongest currency. Thus, men seen as “little women” are disqualified. This is what researcher Carlos Alberto de Carvalho calls “misogynistic heteronormativity”, in which the masculine and masculinities are placed as positive – on the other hand, femininities and the feminine are valued negatively. It is, therefore, an environment of hegemonic masculinity and subaltern masculinities.

The global soap opera “Terra e Paixão” [Land & Passion] currently features an illustration that refers to this scenario, with the character Kelvin (actor Diego Martins), an “effeminate” gay man in love with Ramiro (Amaury Lorenzo), the masculine man, self-declared heterosexual, who desires the other person, but still doesn't know how to deal with the situation. What diminishes the power of the first is precisely its proximity to what is considered “womanly”. But, looking at Grindr, even the desirable “brucutu” [Brazilian slang for a brute and rude man] has his limits: issues such as level of education have weight in the app used mostly by gay and bisexual men, where it is common to read “no illiterates”.

The LGBTQIA+ culture, in which rich and middle-class white homosexual men repeatedly appear to discriminate against other peers from the same community, is a central sociological issue for discussing social inequalities not only in Brazil, but throughout the world. “Queer cultural production has helped to reproduce class distinctions based on the hegemony of representations of middle-class gays”, writes Lisa Henderson in the article “I’m not/I'm not into: circulating meanings in the presentation speeches of the Grindr app”, by Rafael Grohmann. In the same text, Juan Marsiaj summarizes: “Such a strategy can lead to the acceptance of a type of gay (white, middle class), seen as a model of citizen-consumer, and a greater marginalization of all other 'debauches' who do not fit this way. In more Brazilian terms: there is a risk of accepting rich gays and further marginalizing poor queers.”

Discrimination on the part of this part of the queer community was evidenced in a historic episode in the 1970s, in super liberal New York. In June 1973, the Christopher Street Liberation Day Rally took place in the city, a demonstration held in favor of the rights of the queer population – which, at that time, as we will see, in fact was basically limited to white, middle-class gay women and men.

But, among the public, was the activist Sylvia Rivera, a transvestite who in 1971 had created the Revolutionary Action of Street Transvestites, STAR. Rivera had been trying to get on stage for some time, but Jean O’Leary, a lesbian white radical feminist, acted to prevent her from participating. A sample of how, many times, cisgender homosexual/bisexual women also enact the same discrimination as homosexual/bisexual men.

When he finally managed to grab the microphone, Rivera took aim at the hundreds of mostly white gay men and women present. Her speech is a synthesis of the violence experienced by queers who are too effeminate, too poor, too black, or too latine.

“I've tried to speak out here all day for your gay brothers and sisters in jail. They write to me every damn week asking for help – and you don't do a damn thing for them. I lost my job and my apartment for gay liberation… and you guys treat me this way?” she screamed.

The anger had yet another weight and meaning: alongside another important name, the transvestite Marsha P. Johnson, Rivera went down in history as one of the first to face police repression at the New York bar Stonewall Inn, on June 28, 1969. The conflict was the trigger for a fundamental civil movement for human rights – so much so that the date ended up becoming what was then called International LGBT+ Pride Day.

The question remained: how could that engaged audience repudiate the person who, at just 18 years old, spoke out against violence that was not directed just at her? How could they recriminate someone who pulled the trigger that would benefit precisely that white homosexual population?

Rivera and Johnson, who lived in a shelter, were profoundly different from the majority of the public who would return to their comfortable homes after the demonstration. Unlike Rivera, the daughter of a Venezuelan mother and a Puerto Rican father, most had not spent nights in jail or suffered police rape. The activist died homeless, alone, without the care she should have received. Marsha P. Johnson, the decorated, made-up, smiling, super queer transvestite, was murdered and her body thrown into a river.

Thinking historically and humanly about both is a central issue in the debate on hatred of “feminine” and other diverse discriminations present among the LGBTQIA+ population. The right-wing has long opened a war against women, and the rise of red pill assholes is just one of the phenomena of this reality. It still includes names like former federal deputy Daniel Silveira, who broke the plaque with Marielle's name alongside Rodrigo Amorim. [Note from the translator: Marielle Franco was a black bisexual favela-born leftist councilwoman who was assassinated by militias.]

But, as it turns out, misogyny is not exclusive to right-wing radicals and conservatives. And if Sylvia and Marsha were on the front line to guarantee the rights of millions of people, without distinction of creeds, race, genders, and degrees of “femininity”, it is worth asking: when will cisgender gay men, mostly white and middle class, join, with emphasis and strength, debates such as the right to abortion, employment, and wages, issues of life and death for the majority of black Brazilian women? When will the majority of this same group take a stand on the thousands of rapes that mainly victimize girls and teenagers? What collectivities, after all, are we talking about? As Jorge Ben would say in the song Zumbi: I want to see. We're here.

Source, translated by the blogger.

[dinoartistry]

How I got these results on my finals without spending hours stu"dying" at my desk.

Now that finals season is over, we almost all recieved our grades and results.

However, sometimes you don't get the results you wanted despite studying for hours and hours on end. It's frustrating and discouraging, right?

Here are my tips on how to get better grades without having to spend all of your free time at your desk! ↓

NB: That doesn't mean that you should stop studying entirely.

Also this is a really long post but you can of course just read the tips that interest you!

1. Be attentive in class. I know it's tempting to just sit down and chat with your friends or stay on your phone, because class can be really boring. However, paying attention to what your teacher says and taking note of everything that might sound useful is a huge step in getting better grades.

Your note-taking doesn't have to be aesthetic. At the beginning of the year I wasted a lot of time making my notes pretty in class, and that made me lose a lot of precious information. You can always rewrite your notes in an aesthetic way later! Re-writing is a great study method too, so it's a win-win. To give you an example, here are the history and theatre history notes I take in class:

They're ugly. And that's okay! If I could score 35 and 50 respectively with these, so can you.

2. Be active in class. Of course, most of the time just listening isn't enough. You need to participate. Teacher asks a question? Raise your hand!

Now, you might be thinking "but what if I don't have the right answer and say something false? Everyone will make fun of me", and to that I will answer, who cares? They're not trying. You're making efforts to absorb the material, they're just sitting there and laughing because they're insecure about their own answers. I'm not making fun of them by saying this, it's just a fact.

3. Ask questions. Just, a bunch of them. If you don't understand the material, or have doubts, ask your teacher! They're not your enemy, even if they might sound dismissive. This year for example, I had a physics teacher who was a PAIN in class. He talked through the lesson super quickly and never really explained anything to anyone. However, there was one time where I didn't understand the material at all, and I went to talk to him. And he took time (like 20 minutes!) to re-explain to me what I hadn't understood.

Teachers are here to help you. Take advantage of it.

4. Research research research! By that I mean, go further! For example, in French class I had to read a book that talked about the genocide in Rwanda. But it was told through a child's eyes, so didn't really talk about what exactly was going on. So, I took it upon myself to take some time to make my own research about it. And guess what? Talking about it improved my grade on that project. In history, make sure you understand the causes and consequences of the historical events you study in class. "Why did it happen?" and "What was its impact on society?" are two questions you must be able to answer at the end of the day.

5. Understand how. This is maths-specific. Take this simple question about arithmetic sequences:

If the first term of a sequence (a1) is 2 and the common difference (d) is 5, what will be the 7th term (an) of that sequence?

It's not enough to know that the result is 32 because that's the answer you got in class. You need to understand the steps you use to get to the result.

Here for example, the formula is:

an = a1 + (n-1) . d

So, here:

a1 = 2, n = 7, d = 5.

The equation becomes :

an = 2 + (7 - 1) . 5

It's now simply a matter of method! 7-1 comes first, so you're left with:

an = 2 + 6 . 5

Then, the multiplication:

an = 2 + 30

And lastly:

an = 32

It's all a matter of taking the time to do things in the right order, one at a time. Think of it like reading a sentence! You can't just read the words in a random order, right? That wouldn't make sense. Read the words in the right order. Calculate in the right order. It's the same thing, I promise (coming from someone who used to hate maths)!

I really like the exam scene in assassination classroom for that reason. The moment the big monster to slay becomes a simple fish to cut because you know from where to start? That's the goal here.

6. Let go. You don't have to be the best of the best all the time. Putting unnecessary pressure on yourself and beating yourself up for not having full marks is doing the exact opposite of what we want here. You're smart, okay? Stressing yourself out does one thing: it turns your brain to mush, making you incapable of remembering information and will make you lose your means when you're faced with a test or an exam. That's what I did for chemistry this year, because I struggle with it, and would you look at that! I got 28. So let go. It's okay, you got this. ⚝

All in all, you're your own best friend. Take care of yourself. Don't put on yourself a pressure you wouldn't put on others. Being too hard on yourself will only end up hurting you, and we don't want that!

[kurishiri]

Hello! I hope you're doing well. You are truly doing the fandom a service with your translations🙏 As an impatient EN player, they help in so many ways. I also enjoy when you add footnotes that explain some nuances! Would it be okay to ask how you went about learning JP, how long it's been since you started, and if you have any tips for beginners? Reading your and judemoonsbeauty's translations was the final push I needed to start learning the language but aaa~ it's sometimes so overwhelming TT

Oh, and what is it like to play both the JP and EN version? Do you have a slightly more critical way of reading the EN version because you're comparing it to your translations or is that not on your mind?

ANYWAYS this is getting a bit long~ but really, thank a lot for what you're doing for the fandom🫶

helloo anon! wow your words flatter me, this means a lot to me to hear 😳🤍 i will tell ciele too! i’ll put my answers below a cut if its okie — it got pretty long for me too, heh. sorry in advance if anythings worded awkwardly!

how i learned japanese and when i started

its a mix of classroom setting and self teaching for me! jp wasnt offered as a language option at our school before undergrad, so from maybe middle school ish on? i taught myself hiragana and katakana with quizlet, some kanji as well.

i learned very basic grammar and vocabulary while being self-taught, but most of it was gained from the classroom setting during undergrad. i also worked as a japanese tutor. and i took classes solely in jp. everything — and i mean everything — but explanation of important projects and whatnot probably, was done in jp.

my prof from those classes basically trained all of us to read entire texts in jp in a relatively short amount of time and be able to understand what was going on. its the process of learning to not get caught up in every individual word you may not know and using context clues, and this does take time! but it would be no exaggeration to say this has helped me read ikevil jp. atp i think i can read a story in ikevil jp at a similar pace as i do in en (maybe a tad slower) without a translator, and understand what’s going on.

tips for beginners learning japanese

if you ask me, i would not try to read games or stories like ikevil in japanese right off the bat. i can guarantee you doing so is your one way stop to getting overwhelmed and potentially having the opposite effect. ik its tempting, but those are catered to native jp speakers and assume you have cultural knowledge as well, as is evident in some parts of roger, alfons, ellis’ routes. so if you dont at least have a solid foundation in japanese, its probably gonna be a struggle. well, the most obvious example would probably be jude and how he speaks in an entirely different dialect (but one still understandable if you know the tokyo one), known as the kansai dialect.

i would suggest once you at least have hiragana and katakana learned along with some basic sentence grammar (like learning basic functions of particles like は, が, に, で, etc) to use sites that are geared to people learning japanese. the one i recommend personally is nhk. they literally exist as a resource for you to help you learn the language. as you continue, i would use the weekly news in simple japanese feature they have. its a bit of a more boring read than ikevil maybe lmao but what i like abt this is that they have furigana for all the kanji, so they’ll tell you exactly how to read a kanji character, as long as you know the hiragana alphabet. you can also listen to an article be read aloud and also hide the furigana to test how well you can read the kanji.

other resources to learn grammar and whatnot that you may find helpful would be tae kim’s guide, maggie-sensei, and jlpt-sensei. they have these comprehensive guides for grammar structures and whatnot that you may commonly see in japanese. for learning vocabulary or kanji, i would suggest using mnemonics or “image stories” and also investing some time to learn the meanings of radicals, or [部首] (bushu) in japanese.

what its like to play both jp and en

honestly im not too critical of my own work and i dont consider my work worse or better than the official translators. in the end, translating is also an art; the same prompt can yield different results for each person. in the end, the official translations are just another interpretation of the same text, with an added layer of localization to cater to the western audience and perhaps some limitations due to it being a visual novel. so i dont think official tls should be considered more or less valid than any other tl out there. but i believe there are certain advantages to read fan-tls as well. for example, you can read the route in its most authentic form without much changes from the jp version. and fan translators can also use footnotes to explain certain nuances.

there are sometimes i read a story and can notice some things a bit lost in translation. this isnt a bad thing. its quite inevitable, in fact, seeing just how different english and japanese are as languages. but the official game doesnt have the luxury to really explain these. for example, here is one from alfons mad love end in his route.

i guess another thing is that another motivator for me is trying to make in-game feel even a bit more accessible especially content that may be behind a paywall or require grinding. i cant really afford everything and im only one person in the end, but i dont see a reason to not try and share these sorts of things if i can. ig its sorta my way of tryna contribute to the fans.

[urfavdilemma]

Study Date Pt. 3

Sean Diaz x Reader

1 2 3

Warnings: none,, but kissing? so much fluff

Words: 985

*Y/N's POV*

It's 4:45 pm... Sean will be here in 15 minutes. All day time has gone by so slow, I've been waiting impatiently since we hung up. I already got my math stuff out on my desk, and took my time to make myself look presentable, but not too much to where it looks like I'm trying too hard.

I've liked Sean for so long, but I never really got the impression that he felt the same way. Until I gave him my number and he called our study session a date. I immediately ran to my room and jumped up and down when I got home that day. All my friends tell me that I have terrible taste in guys. I don't understand why though. I mean, yeah, I guess hes not everyone's go-to type. But hes so sweet, and hes a dork. My friends say hes too awkward, but aren't we all? We're 16 year-olds, it'd be odd if we weren't. Now, hes coming over. To my house. To do math work. While my parents are at work. What could go wrong?

It's 5:01, he'll be here any minute. Breath, calm down. Ugh I'm so fucking nervous. Y/N focus, he's coming over for you to help him with math, not for you to fuck things up by being all awkward. Besides, I don't even know if he likes me like that, plu-

*DING DONG*

Shit. He's here. Breath and open the damn door.

I walk out of my room and to the front door. I smooth down my hair quickly before I turn the door knob. As the door opens, we make eye contact. Even though it's simple, I can't help but feel my cheeks get warmer as I smile to greet him with his skateboard in his hands.

"Hi Sean! Come in." I say sweetly. "Hey Y/N, mind if I sit my board here?" he asks pointing next to the door. "Not at all. My parents aren't home so we don't have to worry about them. We'll be in my room anyway so." I trail off not wanting to make things awkward. "Okay, cool." he sounded, bored almost? Maybe I'm coming off too excited? I'll try to tone it down and just help him with his math work.

"So, what parts of the math work are you struggling on?" I asked hurriedly as my excitement has basically completely faded. "I don't understand any of this mean, median, mode bullshit. It doesn't make any sense." he says sounding irritated, but not at me, the math stuff. I grab my books, some paper and a pencil. We sit back on my bed and get comfortable enough so we can work properly.

"Okay so, basically when you're given a data set and you're asked to find the mean, median, and mode, you need to do 3 different things. One find the mean, which is another word for average. Lets use the data set 8,3,5,2,6,8,4,7 for example. To find the average by adding up all the numbers and then dividing by how many number you have in the data set. So for this set we'll get the sum of 43 and then we divide that by 8 and we'll get 5.3, that's our mean. Now we find the median, first we need to put them in order from least to greatest, so 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,8 and we find the number in the middle and in this case we have two numbers in the middle, so all we do is add them together and divide by 2. 11 divided by 2 is 5.5, and there's our median. Lastly we need our mode. This one is the easiest, we just need to see which number reoccurs the most. For this set its 8, because while all the other numbers appear once, 8 appears twice."

(sorry for the rambling lmao I didnt intend that to go on so long)

I pause to look up at Sean, only to be met by his gentle stare. I hesitate for a moment. "Does that make any sense?" It comes out like a whisper. "Yeah, I think I get it now." he doesn't take his eyes off me even for a moment. And it's just now that I realized how close our faces are, as I can lightly feel his breath on my face.

"Good, good. Um so" I fail to form a complete sentence as my heart rate continuously climbs. Sean's eyes flicker down to my lips for just a millisecond, I would've missed it if I had blinked in that moment. And in this moment I feel like we're finally telling each other everything we've needed to say, without a word actually being said.

Sean finally breaks eye contact, mumbling a "Fuck it" and takes the books, paper, and pencils and tosses them to the side. He takes my face in his hands and places his lips on mine. I sit frozen for a second before I start to kiss him back. I relax a bit with my hand placed on his chest as he grabs my waist for a moment to pull me onto his lap. My arms wrap around his neck to deepen the kiss, as his wrap around my waist.

The kiss only lasts a few moments but at the time it felt like a lifetime. For once I feel like were finally on the same page. I pull away from the kiss and we lock eyes. His stare is a bit hazy almost like hes in a state of complete serenity. I place my hands on his cheeks and pepper small kisses all around his face.

"You missed a spot." he says puckering his lips. I chuckle at this mumbling a quick "You're such a dork." before leaning in again to kiss him on his lips. He pulls away with a lopsided grin and he says "I may be a dork, but at least I'm your dork."

[gg-selvish]

please share your analysis

i talked about this on twitter so forgive me those who are gonna see me repeating myself but that clip is just so fascinating if u take a step back and compare it to the way dnn interact with each other because theyre all friends and theyre all in love or whatever but their duo dynamics are so drastically different from each other and the way they balance out as a trio is like the whole reason i ship them. every duo works despite how the tropes/dynamics/dare i say behaviours are unique yet the trio is like perfect balance

anyway. let's talk about george saying 'wait'

george has self-imposed rules of how he interacts with people and how others interact with him. we learned this from everyone in the uk and customer service workers who have talked about him where he can be a sweet people pleaser while still being a little spicy but he does know how to be normal. then he gets to florida with people he's incredibly close to and comfortable with and all we hear is 'george sucks' 'george is a menace' 'george is crazy' so as we all know people are multi-facetted, but i think george is especially multi-facetted and even multi-faced at times. there's like a different george for streaming, videos, in call, uk irl, florida/la irl, and then everything we don't see is a whole other george i can't even begin to think about

but im getting distracted. the wait. the dnn.

when george is talking to people he's close to, especially dream, sapnap, and now karl as they've gotten closer, he has more rules. like karl and sapnap pointed out in banter he has long pauses in between sentences and gets frustrated when he's interrupted when people don't know they're interrupting him so he just gets louder and more persistent and it drives sapnap especially crazy. it's so fascinating to me how things that dream is comfortable with an appreciates about george drives sapnap right up the wall. because he still loves george so much, you can tell it from the way theyre glued to each other and talk about each other constantly even if its negative. if he didnt like him he wouldnt be sharing stories about him constantly, yknow? he's mad and ranting but theres this lingering fondness under the frustration that brings me back to 'we wouldnt be friends if we werent already friends' and a lot of people took that as 'i dont want to be friends with you' but i read it as 'we're such a good friends you can do anything to me and no matter how pissed i get we're still gonna be friends because i decided 7 years ago that we're stuck together'

sorry sorry. the wait. the wait.

george does this all the time in calls. we see him do it with solo streams too. he reeeeeeeeeeeeally draws out goodbyes because i think he hates them. he says hes leaving and gonna end then reads pieces of chat or shares another anecdote then says hes gonna end again and doesnt again.

for dream this is amazing. he loves listening to george no matter what and entertains all of his weird mannerisms easy as breathing because he's a simp for him and infatuated and we all know this. a telling example of this is when theyre streaming and george does this exact thing

g: im leaving

d: ok bye

g: wait *says something else*

d: *waits and listens*

and then they get sucked into another conversation and go on or they move to an offstream call to continue what they were talking about because dream would listen to george read the newspaper and be enthralled. we know this. dnf is real. but sapnap is different

sapnap is george's favourite thing to needle. he pokes and prods at him until he's riled up and frustrated which is puts george on the moon with amusement because it makes him laugh and it means sapnap cares about him. their bickering back and forth is pure quality time, and when george gets quiet and starts to get soft it's sapnap's turn to make him uncomfortable. this is what they do... they find each other's tender underbelly and wait for the right moment to deliver a blow. it's a love language and a reminder of their dynamic which is fighty and spicy and always on their toes. they have their soft and sweet moments but their preferred way of interacting is lightning speed fighting back and forth to feel alive

but the wait.

george did exactly what he does with dream in that clip. says he wants to leave and is told not to leave and says hes gonna leave anyway so sapnap, who isnt dream, goes 'ok dude bye' and then HE WAITS. HE WAITS FOR GEORGE TO SAY WAIT BECAUSE HE KNOWS HE DOESNT WANT HIM TO HANG UP YET HE WANTS HIM TO WAIT. HE KNOWS THE RULES. george says wait and sapnap hangs up.

sapnap is satisfied with himself for putting george in his place and george doesnt get that from a lot of people 'has anyone ever said no to you?' sapnap has. sapnap does it all the time. sapnap is a firm hand on george's scruff and keeps him from playing mind games like an expert zookeeper and it's absolutely fascinating to watch.

i would love to see a moment like this in a threeway call and see how it balances out. it's literally like a lab experiment to me

[goodluckclove]

I'm writing a new thing!! I don't really need advice I'm just excited about starting it. They're gay and one of them's a shapeshifter the other has a culturally engrained fear of shapeshifters given that as defenders of the wilderness/ basically very local gods they tend to fuck up anyone who's in their space. I also dong know how to start books which is an issue my beginnings are always weak. How do I start a book. Do I describe the sheep? He's a shepherd btw which I think is fun because the shapeshifter often takes the form of a wolf or coyote. It's also set in a relatively high fantasy setting (no elves and shit just weird magic and a different landscape) that vaguely corresponds to the late 17 or 1800s (they've got some guns i think, they ride horses and trains might exist). How do I start a book. What do I start with. Where do I start. There's no real solid beginning I've got in mind, just a dude trying to take his sheep over a large area on his own. Help please I do actually need advice

Well you see, Ghostie, everyone knows that the first sentence of a novel is the most important part of the entire story. It has to contain the main character's name - in fact, it has to contain the names of every character in your cast - and it has to provoke intrigue and resolve it in a satisfying way without being a too long and jesus christ i can no longer keep up this bit.

I'm annoyed by people who say you need to have a super profound first line. I mean, they're good when they happen. If you can think of one that's great. But if you can't you aren't fucked right off the gate. If your first line isn't something people will get calligraphed onto canvases to hang on the walls of their boring houses (Is this a thing? Did I just make up a type of person to hate?), it doesn't mean your beginning won't be good.

You want to hook the reader. That's what all the guides say, right? They describe a person picking your book off the proverbial shelf and leafing through the first page to see if it's something they'd be interested in. That's solid, but then some go on to make it seem like you have maybe ten words before they either buy the book or toss it across the room in disgust. I'm not saying this is never true. I'm just saying that, personally, that type of person is probably not someone who'd be interested in me or my stories to begin with.

Usually when I'm considering a new book I'll skim the first few pages and then a bit throughout the middle, just to see if I like the prose. I do not put that much weight in the beginning, but it's always a good sign when the general scene feels purposeful. It doesn't have to be a car chase/diamond heist/sex scene/murder. I read someone somewhere saying that you have to start with something exciting and it took like an hour off my life I was so angry.

Here's one out of a billion angles to tackle this puzzle from - where does the story start for you? What is the inciting incident to the inciting incident? This feels like something easy to answer, but oftentimes what you come up with might feel a little inconsequential.

A beginning scene - like, for instance, a prologue centered around only sheep and coyotes - does not necessarily sound interesting on its own. But in a world where shapeshifters usually take on those forms it both sets up the world and establishes a mood. You can play with how much information you give people in the world.

Using my book as an example because I've been watching my editor @hoard-sweet-hoard react to it in real time, at one point he commented that he didn't know if the Eddie in my initial prologue is the same guy as the Edgar in Chapter One. And I was like yeah man that's the whole goddamned point of the book you tiny little king of fools. I wasn't at all that mean. I made a really good sandwich for dinner so I'm feeling extra rowdy. But the point is that I focused less on the action and more on the feeling it would create in the reader.

With that mindset the action doesn't really matter. If it's mundane it can be comforting, or tiring, or numbing, or eerie, or unnerving. If it's far removed from the world we know it can be fantastical and whimsical and sexy, maybe? I don't know. God that sandwich was good. I'm getting really into bagels lately.

Also, from purely the perspective of a writer, you might think of a better beginning midway into the draft. So you can also go back and make a weak start much stronger. You can skip the beginning entirely if it's really fucking with your life. Come back to it later. Who will stop you? Me? I don't even know how to find you. And if I did, you could easily kill me. You have that vibe and I am very clumsy.

Also also start posting excerpts when you get going because that shit sounds rad as fuck.

My bagel had egg and bacon and a hash brown patty and caramelized onion. Man has done a lot of sin, but it is almost neutralized by the insight we once had to caramelize onions. They have a unique flavor that I can only describe as eating the house of a beloved grandmother? Or maybe just the way that house makes you feel?

Yum.

[femmchantress]

So I really enjoyed Terrifier 3 and in terms of overall quality I think it's just shy of Terrifier 2. It's ideas were bigger and I don't think it fell short of the mark on any of them, but I do think that there were a few areas where it erred.

Victoria's dialogue really needed revising imho. A lot of her lines felt like she was trying too hard to channel Regan from The Exorcist (that idea of using excess vulgarity or explicit language for shock value), which often fell flat because both she and I are adults and neither of us are particularly unsettled by words like 'fuck' or 'bitch.' If they'd either committed to even more explicit language (For example if she'd said, "Nobody's gonna eat your pussy now" or something instead of that "Now nobody's gonna want to fuck you" line) or if she spoke just a little less (a lot of her dialogue felt like it went on just a sentence or two too long) it would've been more impactful. I wanted to like her character a lot, like this sort of reverse Claudia of a child-like demon possessing an adult woman's body - making both her explicitly adult and childlike actions feel unsettling in a way - but she always just barely missed it for me. I didn't particularly care for her involvement with story exposition either. Her character worked best when she was silent alongside Art and when she was channeling her previous incarnation, the Little Pale Girl from Terrifier 2. I do give her kudos for the masturbating with broken glass scene, that was fantastic. I did also especially enjoy when she was playing the role of the silent accomplice to Art, she really worked best when filling this hybrid daughter and companion role. Oh! And the gleeful way she played with and coddled the rats, that was really unique and enjoyable to see.

I do think the scene where Art tests the liquid nitrogen cannon on one of Vicky's rats was a missed opportunity for another "the mass murdering demon clown does observe some of the most minute and specific social norms" moment, akin to him washing his hands after taking a piss or washing the dishes after eating the milk and cookies left by the family he home invasion'd in the opening. These moments are, in my opinion, one of the things that make the Terrifier franchise so unique and special. And if he'd gone to test his contraption on the rat, only to pick it up, change his mind, and like... idk give it a pet and piece of cheese and letting it run back to Vicky to be cuddled, before revealing one of the demolition men was still alive and test it on him instead, it would've worked wonders for me and been a really great instance of the "obeying specific social norms" motif that makes the series so great. But again, this didn't ruin the film for me, it just felt like a missed opportunity to demonstrate what makes the series special.

I also think the film went a little too far in terms of creating an installment that had some level of exposition with regards to the nature of the world and the conflict at hand. Mind you, I understand that doing something like that is a natural conclusion to reach when you're working on an anthology series like this and you wanted to make an installment that both felt different from its predecessors while also establishing stakes clear enough to give your franchise the structure needed to eventually end and not drag on for fifteen or twenty installments. But I think they could've leaned on it less - the previous film had the ratio right in my opinion, but again it doesn't ruin anything (and I understand entirely why they chose to do it). For me, it just took the tiniest bit away from my enjoyment of the film.

But those are just my nitpicks! None of this took away from my overall enjoyment of the film and I do think it's an absolutely incredible next installment in the series and it does marvels to show that independent filmmakers who are used to milking their (comparatively) small budgets for all its worth are some of the most talented creatives out there. I genuinely look forward to where this series goes next and I can't wait to see what its commitment to dark comedy, practical effects, and the art of superfluous gore has for us in future installments.

[kyoshalearns]

Some quick thoughts on Kanji mnemonics

This is just an opinion.

When your native language is English and you are learning Japanese, there are some conceptual hurdles to overcome. One big one is Kanji, how to approach it, when the right time is, the best review methods etc etc. For this reason it took me some time to figure out how to process Kanji from learning a new character to effectively reviewing it.

RTK or "Remembering The Kanji" is an influential work that has clearly affected the kanji learning praxis in large parts of the Japanese language learning community. I have not read this book but I know that it ask the reader to come up with long mnemonics to help remember kanji.

Firstly, I agree that mnemonics are probably the best way to remember all the details you need to know. What I don't agree with however is having really long mnemonics, because the longer the mnemonics the harder it is to remember. I have seen people suggest writing paragraphs for one kanji.

Personally I think a mnemonic should be as short as possible and include the 3 main pillars of a kanji character

The meaning in English

Kunyomi pronunciation/s

Onyomi pronunciation/s

Stroke order is a whole other beast but at its core these are the aspects of a kanji character that you need to know before you can say you "know it".

So to me the ideal mnemonic is taking these 3 aspects and fitting them into one short sentence if possible. Lets take the kanji for 1, "一"

The meaning in English: One

Kunyomi pronunciation/s: ひと (hi to)

Onyomi pronunciation/s: : イチ( i chi)

So for this example the mnemonic I use is :

"One day HE TOld me to EAt CHEEse"

It takes some creativity sometimes to fit it into something coherent but the effort is worth it because this one mnemonic builds on your understanding of multiple aspects and is easy to remember/access in your mind.

The mnemonic allows me to reason through the kanji so I make those repetitive associations that eventually make the mnemonic unnecessary.

My whole point is just that I think mnemonics should be short sweet and to the point, highlighting the 3 main pillars of a kanji character, and not a multi-sentence story paragraph that takes too long to write or remember.

[too-many-rooks]

Writing procrastination game!

Thanks @lastlymatt for tagging me, I got rambly so I’ll put this under a ‘read more’

Tagging @pigandpepper @known-concepts @countessrivers

1.) what’s the name of one of your wips?

My doc names are usually very boring 95% of the time I finish a fic and think it’s ready to post and realise I need a title. How about ‘Yassen Bedroom Visit’?

2.) Describe a Wip in the format of __+__=__

SCORPIA heir Alex + totally normal kidnapping and drugging in the middle of the night get to safety orienteering exercises = childhood trauma

3.) What tags/warnings will one of your Wips need if you share it?

Forced child seperation?

4.) alternative title to a wip?

I don’t really have alternate titles! Titles tend to come pretty late in the process!

5.) which wip are you most likely to update/finish next?

Probably one of my s3 aus I’ve got brewing, there’s a longer thing I posted the first chapter of today but I also have some one shots, one where Yassen gets wounded fighting off Alex’s enemies and Alex basically has to hold him down to say he cares about him, and another where Yassen comes to chat to him in the middle of the night (while Alex is sleeping) and they catch up.

6.) what is one of your wip’s document title, not what it’s name is but what you have it saved as?

Again, extremely boring. Some examples - ‘Tom/House introduction’, ‘stables’, ‘the ball’, ‘heir apparent 1-9’, ‘hunting’ ‘hostage’ ‘orienteering.’

On reflection, these are very badly organised. But, hey Ho.

7.) post any sentence from your WIP?

Okay this took me forever to decide bc I want to share like, all of my sentences, but here’s a sentence from my SCORPIA heir Alex thing where Yassen just tries to take a day off, but is interrupted by Alex sneaking out of school/the country and mountain his school is on

‘Rubbing his eyes with his forefinger and thumb, he blocked out the little blonde headache sat before him, and sighed, already imagining the state of his email inbox when he got back to his laptop, which he’d sworn would stay folded in its case for the rest of the day.

“And how long ago was this? When should I start expecting panicked calls from your father?”‘

8.) a scrapped idea from your WIP?

Not necessarily a scrapped idea but evidently one I forgot about and rediscovered as I was flicking through google docs - originally a pre-season 3 idea (but could work post s3) where Yassen retires, and decides it’s time for Alex to retire too, even if he doesn’t want to. Very “congratulations you are being adopted! Do not resist.” Meme with Yassen that I’ve seen on here, the bit I’d written was him contemplating the least traumatising way to kidnap him, to make sure they’re a happy family unit post-kidnapping

9.) what’s a story you would love to write but have yet to start?

Alex sees dead people AU - Ian knows, when he dies his ghost becomes bound to Alex, and helps take care of him/watch over him in the field, Alex bumps into Yassen at Point Blanc and immediately recognises the ghost bound to him as his father, especially as he begs the assassin to stop pretending like he can’t hear him for once and let him see his son, to protect him.

10.) how many WIPs are you actively working on?

Four - regency fic, darker Alex s3 au, two other s3 aus I mentioned earlier. Suprised myself by how much of this longer ‘SCORPIA heir’ Alex thing that I’d put off for a while I’ve actually written. That’s one that I really want to finish before I start posting bc I’m bad at doing work without an immediate emotional reward/it’s a longer than anything I’ve written before and I don’t want to give up on it when it’s half published. I had been delaying it till after s3 but maybe time to get to work (will try and finish regency fic first)

11.) is there a scene your struggling to write now?

Oh I mean so many but the most immediate stumbling block is with the regency fic, chapter after this one they go to a ball and that’s almost basically written and so is a lot of the next two chapters but there’s things I need to thread into this chapter that just don’t want to be threaded - I need Alex to start being a bit more suspicious of Yassen, and remember that whole thing about his uncle being murdered now he’s a bit passed the initial princess diaries revelation moment.

I was thinking like Alex waiting up for him on Christmas Eve or something and falls asleep then is woken by Yassen sneaking back in and Alex noticed he’s got blood on his clothes or something and Yassen just shrugs him off and reacts more strictly/authoritatively than he has before. But the scene is a bit sludgy I my mind atm.

12.) Not a question but a second kudos!