crimsolyn:

I think the purest form of love is just wanting someone to notice life with you. “taste this. look at that. hear this song.” again and again. until you can’t imagine noticing life without them.

dduane:

mckitterick:

ALT

V.E. Schwab’s advice for creating memorable characters - works for both protagonists and villains

source post: X

This is really good advice.

It also ties neatly into the simplest version of the formula for getting people emotionally engaged with your characters: or how to build the moment in which your character starts moving from their initial state to the state in which they’ll start changing their own lives.

First, you figure out the one important thing the character believes that they’re wrong about. There’s usually a core misperception that they haven’t examined. Once they’re forced to engage with it, it’ll start to change everything about their perception of the world they’re inhabiting and/or the people in it.

Then, as V.E. says, you identify the character’s great desire and their great fear: the thing that character wants more than anything, and the thing or situation that terrifies them, and that they’ll go to any lengths to avoid.

And having identified these two objects or situations, you build a situation in which the two forces will be in close, direct opposition to one another… then drop the character down in between them, and squeeze. Those two opposing forces become the jaws of a vise… and you crank the vise more and more tightly closed until the character has no choice but to acknowledge those opposing forces, and start (even in a small way) to deal with the pressure being exerted and push their way through.

This does not have to be, initially, a great climactic moment. In fact, it works better if it’s not. It’s more effective if your character has a brief low-intensity brush with these conditions-in-conflict early on. That way, when your big resolution scene comes along about two-thirds or three-quarters of the way along through the story arc, you’ll have set up a resonance between that earlier hint or intimation of what’s to come, and the really big blowoff. Your readers will recognize the resonance—the throb of tension between the two occurrences, like the vibration of a plucked string—and will find satisfaction both in the true resolution having been partially telegraphed earlier, and in how it’s now being experienced and resolved in full.

This approach also allows you to set up more minor resonances between the realization of the conflict and its final resolution. These can serve to bind the structure of the work more closely together: to make it look (and be) less like a series of loosely strung-together plot events, and more like a unified whole, in which ripples of story business flow backwards and forwards, interpenetrating and influencing one another, and hinting at the big one to come.

But none of this can happen until the paired and opposing what-do-they-most-desire, what-do-they-most-fear axes have been defined. So that’s a subject it’s smart to spend some while thinking about (and for all your characters, not just the major ones), to be sure you’re getting it right.

It’s not unusual to get the wrong answers, or merely superficial ones, while you’re still working out what’s actually going on with the characters. So take your time. Eventually you’ll find a set of answers that feel unquestionably right… and you can then nail those down in your notes and get on with making the kind of “good trouble” for your characters that will see them made complete.

camgoloud:

have the last five years been just a complete blur for anybody else

marlynnofmany:

*giant wind gust outside*

Me: “Don’t say it.”

My Brain:

retquits:

ALT

holiday arven 🎄❄🍓

leonleonhart:

[grabbing your shoulders] listen. the next time you make a character in ff14 i need you to make a max height femroe. it doesnt matter how big her tits are or how muscular she is you just need to make her max height. it is the ultimate way to experience the game where you are taller than basically everyone in the msq other than varis and zenos

you are a head taller than emet-selch

even max height male au'ra pcs can’t fucking measure up to your esitmated 7'3" ~ 7'4". the only people that can be taller are max height maleroe and so few people do max height

join the honorable cause of Tall Women

cutecipher:

cutecipher:

cutecipher:

Ricky’s pouch/funny report: hehe its still sofd

the beast

quote from man pet: yay yipee!

allthingswhumpyandangsty:

ao3 turns 16 today.

reblog if you’re older than archive of our own

sapphic-and-stupid:

naamahdarling:

That has to be the most humiliating way to describe one of Earth’s most terrifyingly effective predators.

Picture of her from the USA Today

bunnyangelart:

[oc] Lilli Banner