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𝔩𝔦𝔳𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔪𝔬𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰

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The anti-social media of a century past. LIFE, December 23, 1926

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Lots of nice first editions in the windows on Charing X Road yesterday

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𝔱𝔢𝔫𝔡𝔢𝔯 𝔥𝔢𝔞𝔯𝔱𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔰

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𝔠𝔬𝔷𝔶 𝔞𝔣𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔫𝔬𝔬𝔫

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Missing home

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With you I am home 🩷

You can support the art here on Instagram

@amandapearls , @lulufoxlainfawn , and I have been holding onto this commission for so long we’ve been dying to share it. We’re so excited to share this GORGEOUS artwork of Elain and Lucien. We wanted to show Elain and Lucien happily mated and just having a nice peace day together. Plus sometimes a girl just wants to be carried by her mate 🥹🥹

Paola Pieretti.art blew us away with this beautiful art! Seriously we screeched with happiness when we saw this art. Thank you so much Paola Pieretti.art for creating this amazing artwork. It’s always a pleasure to work with you! The way you portray emotion so well in your artwork is exceptional!

All characters belong to Sarah J Maas and Bloomsbury Publishing

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American Girls! ★

I drew 10 of the original historical American Girls in my style! This was a fun little fan art series in between my other illustrations 🤭

In order: Felicity and Josefina, Kirsten and Kaya, Molly and Kit, Addy and Samantha, Julie and Rebecca.

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did you know public libraries are free and beautiful

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there is not a single day i don't think about this quote in relation to tragedies

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how to keep people in character: a guide

I have gotten some requests for advice on how to write specific characters, but the underlying principles to keeping characterizations canon-compliant can apply to writing anyone in any series. Better yet, this advice may help you come up with character interpretations that feel both canonical yet original (and distinct from mine!).

You can reduce characterization to three basic principles:

1) Habits and speech patterns

Habits and speech patterns serve as “shortcuts” that immediately connect the character to the canon. The audience recognizes these cues and will associate them to the actual character.

Speech patterns are particularly important to keeping a character recognizable. As soon as the speech pattern of a person deviates from canon with no explanation, the suspension of disbelief will break for an audience. A common issue I see in shipping fics is that people will make a character give the love interest a pet name that just would never leave their mouth in canon-compliant situations.

Habits can be verbal tics (e.g. they say “babe” a lot), bodily motions (e.g. touching their hair or pushing up their glasses), behavioural trends (e.g. eating a lot), or even phrases that come up often. The latter I find is underused but very effective. Here’s the thing about people in real life: they will repeat phrases and stories, sometimes even verbatim, to different people! If you lift a line out of the show or book and re-contextualize it, it’ll immediately feel like the canon.

Habits come with two caveats:

Do not overuse the tics. It can be annoying and intrusive, especially when used more frequently than in canon! 

Do not rely too much on these habits for characterization. Your character may come off as a shallow imitation of canon without “substance” if so. 

The next two tips will help give your characterization substance and originality.

2) Drivers in decision-making and thought patterns

People in real life often have patterns in the decisions they make or the thoughts they have because of some kind of underlying motivation, whether or not they are cognizant of it. The same will apply to well-written characters in fiction. Try to think about any significant decisions the character makes in canon and why they might exist. (Hot tip: If these motivations are not explicitly stated in the canon material, this is where you can come up with some extremely juicy headcanons!)

Understanding the fundamental drivers behind the character’s actions will allow you to extrapolate and write what they’d do in the situations in your fanfic. These non-canon situations can include relationships! It’s a common issue for romantic relationships in fanfic to feel OOC because the characters act inconsistently with their canon decision-making and thought patterns solely for their love interest.

Examples of common drivers in fiction:

Abstract values such as freedom, revenge, survival, self-preservation. (If you’re writing anything political, try to figure out how they value conservatism vs liberalism, anarchy vs authoritarianism, etc).

Baggage and trauma relating to familial issues or past relationships, which can often result in maladaptive trends in behaviour or hard-lined moral codes and ideals.

Significant relationships that affect their needs, goals, etc. Pay attention to platonic, familial, or romantic bonds that are strongly featured in the canon.

All these examples are interrelated. Often our abstract values will arise from baggage, which then influence relationships, which in turn influence our values. Try to think about how each of these types of drivers may relate to one another for your characters.

Stories tend to have the most layered characterizations when the author has identified two drivers that are in conflict with one another, or one that leads to opposing behaviours. This can also be the starting point for character growth, whether it’s a hero’s journey or descent into a villain role.

3) Cultural context

Cultural context is a subcategory of drivers that I often find is overlooked. 

The culture in which someone was raised will often influence their decision-making habits, whether they conform to it or outright reject it. Recognizing the cultural context for a character can be very useful for figuring out cool little headcanons or extrapolating behaviour/opinions in the absence of canon material.

Some examples of how culture contributes to behaviour:

The kind of art and hobbies they enjoy, or at least are on their radar. 

Knowledge they would have about certain topics—even mundane things like musical instruments, certain skill sets, etc.

Their judgments on themselves and other characters, as well as the values they’d project onto their relationships.

The actions they would take when trying to conform to social norms of the time period—or even the set of actions that might occur to them!

It’s a pet peeve of mine when characters behave in a way that ignores their cultural context, simply because it won’t feel realistic! Since I’ve been relating this to shipping, I will make this point: what time period and country (or coded culture) is this character in? What are courtship norms like? And, if we’re going to go the nsfw route, what “interests” (haha) would exist?

Here are some quick examples of this analysis applied to two different characters: Hakuryuu Ren (Magi), Daryl Dixon (TWD). These are characters I’ve gotten requests for—let me know if anyone is interested in others!

Keep reading

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literary kinsey scale time

i’m just curious what mix of fiction and nonfiction the average tumblrina is consuming

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I've started doing some minor book repair at work, which means I now have:

1. A marginally better practical understanding of how books function mechanically, and

2. A bunch of tiny book cloth scraps

So I decided to make a tiny version of one of my favorite books!

The text is pulled from an e-book copy that allowed a 50 page download. I figured many more pages might make the tiny book unwieldy at normal paper thickness, and also that 50 pages of a 500+ page book made tiny for ART falls pretty squarely under fair use.

Print formatting was done using the"tiny" option at https://momijizukamori.github.io/bookbinder-js. It worked well and the instructions were super clear and helpful.

The title is as small as I could manage with the writing implements I had; it would be interesting to try some alternatives with printing or stencils.

I may experiment with public domain works in the future, especially if I can figure out making the tiniest text print more clearly -- but all on all I'm pretty happy for this as a first try!

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lizzie 🪶

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"If my book is not perfect then-"

Then what? People will actually discuss it? fill your plotholes with fanfiction and headcanons?

People dont care about perfection. perfection is boring. if your story is perfect people will forget about it. its how we are wired. we remember the strange, the weird and all things left open.

Perfection isnt the goal, interesting is

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kings and queens of narnia

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Wood Engraving Wednesday

Here are a few delightful wood engravings from a recent gift showing the various processes that go into binding a book. This little pamphlet is entitled A Short History of Bookbinding and a Glossary of Styles and Terms Used in Binding … .printed in London at the Chiswick Press for the bookbinder Joseph William Zaehnsdorf in 1895.These images were probably printed from metal plates that were made from the original wood engravings. The engravings are not attributed, as was the case for most commercial engravings.

Click or tap on the images to see the definitions for these activities as provided in the booklet’s glossary. 

View more posts with wood engravings!