#word choice matters

[underthetree845]

Amazing :))

Showing but not telling is very important in writing. E.g.

“He looked down, ashamed.” (This is good).

“He averted his eyes to the floor, avoiding her gaze and shuffling nervously in place with guilt swimming in his eyes.” (This is showing that he is feeling ashamed, but not telling).

How to show emotions

Part III

How to show disappointment

swallowing hard

low, monotone voice

clucking their tongue

rubbing their face

shaking head

clenching hands

sighing

frowning

pursing of the lips

slumped shoulders

looking away

scowling

How to show relief

exhaling deeply

tension in their face going away

closing eyes for a moment

tentative smile

eyes brightening up

small giddy laughter

putting hand on their breast

joyfully tearing up

looking up

How to show desire

gaze dropping down to the other's lips

opening mouth slightly

small smile around the eyes

eyes widening

pupils dilating

biting lips

following them with their eyes

inhaling deeply

licking lips

How to show tiredness

closing eyes

slowly opening them again

long sighs

yawning

no eye contact

head lolling to the side

closed mouth, neither smile nor scowl

not moving a lot

doing everything slower

staring off into the near distance

How to show confidence

prolonged eye contact

nodding to show they are listening

putting their shoulders back

holding head high

leaning forward

standing tall

smiling openly

Part I | Part II

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[asteracaea]

"There were also reports that Taylor was upset that Karlie had leaked personal information to Scooter, 42."

they could have chosen the word rumors instead of reports

also that sentence implies that the reports were about taylor being upset about something karlie actually did

"...upset that karlie had leaked personal information to scooter"

[canisalbus]

this is oddly specific but i absolutely adore the way you draw fur.... it looks like if you were to pet it down it would just fwip back up its wonderful and i love it

I think I know what you mean! That's so nice to hear, it's precisely the look I often aim for!

This is maybe a little off topic but there's this one particular coat type I try so hard to capture believably. I always think of it as "borzoi back fur" because a friend of mine had a borzoi with this sort of fur on her neck and back and they were just the softest, bounciest, most gravity defying curls ever.

I do my best but the results vary.

[favvn]

The Conscience of the King + Mirror, Mirror

It's interesting to note that Bones is the link between these two scenes. Spock gives him the information about Tarsus IV since Jim refuses to speak of his past. In the Mirror Universe, Bones is with Jim when they learn that Mirror Kirk is responsible not only for killing his captain and destroying a whole planet but that this Kirk has killed 5,000 colonists on a planet named Vega IX. And to have the camera show Bones' reaction to Vega IX instead of Jim's response? What a way to recall The Conscience of the King and place the audience with Bones as they hear news of a massacre that chillingly parallels Tarsus IV.

Also, I used these scenes not just for the exposition but also because there's a delightful swapping of both the placement of Kirk's name in the scenes alongside the role reversal. In other words, in The Conscience of the King, the scene reveals that Jim Kirk is the survivor of a massacre, and it ends with the use of his name, albeit in its diminutive, nickname form (Jim rather than James). Whereas in Mirror, Mirror, the scene begins with Jim's full name and rank title, and it reveals that he is the one committing the massacre. The two scenes not only recall each other, but they show the other's reverse as if looking through a mirror.

[former-leftist-jew]

a) I can't remember if it was Athiest Republic or Apostate Prophet (ex-Muslim men from Iran and Turkey, respectively) who said,

"You put words in Israel's mouth and then call them liars for saying something they never said." "Israel never says, 'Go to this area and you will be safe." THE IDF WARNS, "We will target this area around this and this time, so please evacuate the area while you can."

There is a BIG DIFFERENCE between promising safety and warning of danger.

Don't believe me? Here's a literal audio recording of an IDF officer warning a family to evacuate in Arabic, and note Abu Younes' response. (Don't worry, , commented on by independent Britsh-Iranian journalist (don't worry, he's brown) Mahyar Tousi:

b)

And that's before getting into this:

Even with Hamas' trumped up numbers, the estimated Gaza civilian-to-combatant death ratio is about 2:1, the lowest casualty figures ever recorded in the history of urban warfare--if ever.

Even US and UK military airstrikes of terrorists hiding among civilians had a civilian-to-combat ratio was, at best, closer to 8:1 or 6:1. But Israel gets no fucking credit for it.

Not to mention this:

We have all known this has been a genocide for a while but Israel is literally gathering as many Palestinians as they can so they can bom them that is what is happening and has been happening for a long time Rafah was the last safe place they had, the only safe place for them to go is Egypt which has either closed its border by now or is close to. We learned about the holocaust in school, we were horrified of what the nazis did, this is history repeating itself, this is not war this is genocide

[goldkirk]

I don’t know how to explain any more clearly that it doesn’t MATTER if it seems legitimate to you. You have got to fact check every single headline and post and claim on the left just like you need to do on the right.

The left is NOT immune to misinformation and rushed reporting. And the more emotionally polarizing or shocking the talking points, sound bytes, and headlines are, the worse it is and more frequently it happens.

Learn to verify through multiple independent sources. If you can’t do that, you can’t trust it.

If you have to wait extra hours for the real information to come through vetted channels—NOT just one individual somewhere everyone links to, and not just one single media source either, EVEN if it’s a major news network—thats just how it has to be. What news outside of genuine local disasters near you TRULY needs your outrage and post-sharing in the next hour specifically?

Misinformation works best by not seeming like misinformation and by fitting in with the rest of what you already expect to see. It doesn’t help anyone to not be able to recognize and avoid the stuff.

[razberrypuck]

anyway Dr. WD Gaster being a soft and kind soul makes his character infinitely more interesting to me than him being evil or even just kinda mean. like his passion for his craft lies not in fucked up experiments, but in a genuine love for learning and the opportunity to teach others and do good by his people. he's definitely strange (all scientists are) and kinda intimidating but he's literally the most thoughtful and considerate person ever it's just a little bit hard to tell because of the way he speaks does anyone HEAR me. he's one of the few characters that WOULDN'T benefit from the mad scientist trope.

[itissadbutitsmy-artblog]

i think i found a solution. you just introduced us to 800 wizard children. get going.

fionna: couldnt you just reupload our world to someone elses head

prismo: prismo: maybe. if i could get it out of simons head and find a willing wizard

simon: well theres no shortage of wizards in ooo

prismo i guess: hey. pep. mind if we store an illegal fanfic universe that mirrors your own in your head. do you want that.

pep: boy do i!

[quickreaver]

Word choice absolutely matters, and words have meanings and implications, and maybe we're in a little bit of conflict over the chosen words used to describe Sam: spoiled, self-centered, sheltered, babied. If we step back and actually look at the facts of Sam Winchester's life, these are not words I'd have chosen to describe him or his situation. But the fact that others do says something about the way they view the situation, yeah? Negative words have negative connotations. Sam, not wanting to be homeless and desiring an education and to not die young doesn't actually make him spoiled. These are reasonable, normal, good responses to poverty and in this case also to abuse and neglect. But it does make him a bit of a class traitor to his family, which isn't necessarily untrue! Yet I still can't blame Sam for wanting to get outta this class and make change.

Here are a few things I'm mulling over:

The show adopts Dean's POV early and a lot (for smart, storytelling reasons), however Dean isn't exactly a consistently reliable, nuanced narrator. Dean was shocked as heck that Sam confessed to being a lonely kid. "Hey, you had ME, wtf??" But …

If you're left by yourself much of the time, and you hop from school to school and have no friends for more than a few months at a chunk (then you're ripped away from those scant friends repeatedly, no forwarding addresses, no phone numbers allowed), and you develop into a self-reliant kid, navigating an adult world largely alone because your dad and brother are either off working together or it's expected of you to know how to wield a gun at nine, stay off the cops' radar, etc, you think nothing of doing that at, say, 15. It's not like Sam was sheltered or coddled; he was uninformed and felt unheard, and there's a big semantical difference, to me. Like you touched on, fandom-hoarder, if anything, he was left out of the loop and had to come up with his own assessments and solutions, regardless of Dean's best intentions. If Sam’d had all the facts (that Dean had, at any rate), if Dean would've told Sam how John treated Dean, or what John expected of them and why, instead of just demanding compliance without explanation, Sam would almost certainly have made different choices.

And also, here's a thought: John might've had a vested interest in putting distance between the boys. It served his purposes. Keeping Sam out of the supernatural fray—because John knew Sam had a direct tie to it—and using Dean as his support and instrument of control, was the tactic John took but it was incredibly alienating for Sam, as a smart, independent personality who knew full well he wasn't being told the whole story. He felt discounted, not protected. If Sam hadn't been innately inclined to these traits, John's protocol might've worked brilliantly. But alas!

Instead, it got Sam's roommate possessed by a demon, and his girlfriend fried on the ceiling of their shared apartment, kicking off the adventures (and misadventures) of the family Winchester and hit show “Supernatural”. ;) Sam somehow managed to preserve his sense of self, and the feeling that he deserved to wrench himself from a dangerous life (even though cosmic destiny had other plans, regardless). This is just a different flavor of “selfishness”, to John's (and sometimes Dean's) “My way or the highway” demands. Sam took the highway, and John told him to never come back. Dean felt abandoned by Sam, but he stuck with John. Sam was literally abandoned by both, but to him, the risk was worth it. (This reply is a conglomeration of thoughts from not just me, but a gaggle of my fandom buds who have many good thoughts and POVs, and are as weary of exaggerated sacrificial parent!Dean and spoiled brat!Sam as I am. It's a trope that often gets a lot of traction in fandom due to delicious iddiness and less-delicious projection, so I do get where it comes from! But I disagree with how often it's asserted as unquestioned canon, and the empathy and pathos fandom feels towards Dean’s position in the narrative, but relatively little reciprocal sympathy for Sam’s.)  

A lot of people seem to be taking that "s1 sam is kinda spoiled" post as wank and sam negative/dean glorifying and... idk if I'm just reading it wrong, but I didn't take it that way AT ALL, and seeing people pop off upset over it is weird rn. I'm kinda reeling. It's just...commentary on s1 dynamic? Yeah 'spoiled' is not exactly the term I would've used, but I didn't take it as a negative like others apparently have??

Bratty, somewhat self centered S1-Sam is my beloved. Because he has to be that way. Because he doesn't have all the info --and that's not his fault, and it was self preservation to want out of that life, but the fact remains that some of the things Sam doesn't KNOW he doesnt know gives him space to BE self centered. Most young people are self centered in some way -- this is not a moral judgement; it's how brains work. And Sam HAD to be self centered, because he was so often responsible for himself.

Sam being alone a lot does not negate the ways his family sheltered and babied him, though. Some people also seem upset about this word choice, as if it means Sam had it easy and didn't have to deal with the trauma of hunting life -- um, NO, that is not what I mean. When people shelter and baby someone, it hampers their agency. Life is multifaceted that way. The reasons for doing it may come out of deep love -- in spn it's a combination of misguided love AND emotional self protection that lead both John and Dean to not tell Sam key things about their life. Even so, Sam not having all the information DOES affect his behavior -- even his snark -- but because of the baby of the family effect, s1 Sam isn't even aware of some of the ways Dean tried to protect him by omission; has seemingly never considered there's things about Dean he doesn't know, or aspects to situations he wasn't aware of at the time -- things that may have, in his own opinion, changed how he reacted to Dean about it.

Maybe it's the part about Dean sheltering Sam from truths 'the way a mother would' that has everyone really upset. I think the post took liberties with their read of parentified Dean there, but I still enjoy the idea that some things Dean never told Sam was him trying to preserve some vestiges of Sam's innocence. Liking/exploring that idea doesn't have to mean thinking Dean was a selfless paragon of motherly virtues or whatever. C'mon, y'all -- nuance.

[incesthemes]

"their relationship is romantic" "their relationship is familial" "their relationship is platonic" you're thinking too narrow. their relationship goes beyond labels. the family is inherently queer. their platonic love is romantic. the erotic is familial. each one is the other and the other is them

[boydyke]

"you can play harry dubois as a communist or fascist or boring neoliberal centrist" Wrong. you can follow along harry as he pretends to hold political convictions but he is forever harry dubois and you cannot change that about him. he has never been a communist in his life & you'll never make him one. he is a cop.

[quietwingsinthesky]

how much of your writing is ai generated

ngl anon kind of fucking rude to come here and accuse me of that. i don’t make fic just to rack up some arbitrary numbers, be that wordcount or idk, kudos. i make fic because i fucking care about what i’m writing about. if i didn’t, i wouldn’t write it, i certainly wouldn’t post it. AI fic is a plague on fandom for plagiarism reasons, obviously, but also because why should anyone give a shit about your writing if you didn’t? I don’t care if one day we have AI that makes stuff identical in quality to what people can, or better, even, because the words on the page aren’t the point, it’s always about the reason behind putting them down.

So, to answer your question, none of it. And it never will be. I’d rather never write again than stoop to that. And I certainly think less of anyone who does it themselves.

[mzannthropy]

You know what would be cool, if Sam Claflin and Pierre Niney, the two latest actors to play the Count of Monte Cristo, did a photoshoot together.

[jasontoddenthusiastt]

Imo Jason is “irredeemable” by default because I don’t see what he needs redemption from.

[morallyunhelpful]

it kind of baffles me how little sympathy eurylochus gets :( everyone is so mean to him…

[tetrakarn]

okay now that i'm safely at home i can go feral over the confession images

as devastating on every possible level the "shallow emotions" part is i'm a little obsessed with the fact that ivan specifically thanks till for being the "victim" of his emotions

ivan doesn't apologize for subjecting till to the ways he tried to express his affection in their youth that irritated till and potentially pushed him away

he isn't sorry about harboring this love for him that went unnoticed and unreciprocated and ultimately wound up becoming a source of trauma and hurt for the both of them

he says thank you for being the person those feelings ended up focusing on. thanking him for being the person he fell in love with in a horrible world that wouldn't teach them what love is or show it to either of them, the only taste of it ivan would ever experience

it was messy and imperfect; it left him with regrets. he should have been kinder. should have shown his love in gentler ways. a lifetime of things he could have done differently, but it's too late. he doesn't believe till will think twice about him once he's gone, that his death won't leave a mark on him, but just in case he does. on the off chance till thinks of him again someday. he's grateful that, out of everyone in the universe, everything aligned perfectly to make till the person he loved until the very end