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immortality as theft (you have to steal life from something else) immortality as parasitism (there is something else inside You that is keeping you alive and you become less of yourself more and more the longer it stays in you) immortality as violence (everything is trying to kill you because everything is supposed to die and the universe will always try to find a way to right the wrong that is You) you understand

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if anyone asks me about writing Ouran High School Host Club in the year of 2025, just know. I’m only slightly less confused than you are (characters spark joy)

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reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

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last rb lots of people seem to view inspirations as a template your copying rather than a ingredient in your new evil stew. if you tell me your new shonen manga is inspired by dragon ball i’ll think youre a dipshit but if you tell me your cartoon network lesbians are inspired by dbz i’ll be neurotic about them within the first season

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Okay, another little lesson for fic writers since I see it come up sometimes in fics: wine in restaurants.

When you buy a bottle of wine in a (nicer) restaurant, generally (please note my emphasis there, this is a generalization for most restaurants, but not all restaurants, especially non-US ones) you may see a waiter do a few things when they bring you the bottle.

The waiter presents the bottle to the person who ordered it

The waiter uncorks the bottle in order to serve it

The waiter hands the cork to the person who ordered the bottle

The waiter pours a small portion of the wine (barely a splash) and waits for the person who ordered it to taste it

The waiter then pours glasses for everyone else at the table, and then returns to fill up the initial taster's glass

Now, you might be thinking -- that's all pretty obvious, right? They're bringing you what you ordered, making sure you liked it, and then pouring it for the group. Wrong. It's actually a little bit more complicated than that.

The waiter presents the bottle to the person who ordered it so that they can inspect the label and vintage and make sure it's the bottle they actually ordered off the menu

The waiter uncorks the bottle so that the table can see it was unopened before this moment (i.e., not another wine they poured into an empty bottle) and well-sealed

The waiter hands the cork to the person who ordered the bottle so that they can inspect the label on the cork and determine if it matches up; they can also smell/feel the cork to see if there is any dergradation or mold that might impact the wine itself

The waiter pours a small portion for the person who ordered to taste NOT to see if they liked it -- that's a common misconception. Yes, sometimes when house wine is served by the glass, waiters will pour a portion for people to taste and agree to. But when you order a bottle, the taste isn't for approval -- you've already bought the bottle at this point! You don't get to refuse it if you don't like it. Rather, the tasting is to determine if the wine is "corked", a term that refers to when a wine is contaminated by TCA, a chemical compound that causes a specific taste/flavor. TCA can be caused by mold in corks, and is one of the only reasons you can (generally) refuse a bottle of wine you have already purchased. Most people can taste or smell TCA if they are trained for it; other people might drink the wine for a few minutes before noticing a damp, basement-like smell on the aftertaste. Once you've tasted it, you'll remember it. That first sip is your opportunity to take one for the table and save them from a possibly corked bottle of wine, which is absolutely no fun.

If you've sipped the wine (I generally smell it, I've found it's easier to smell than taste) and determined that it is safe, you then nod to your waiter. The waiter will then pour glasses for everyone else at the table. If the wine is corked, you would refuse the bottle and ask the waiter for a new bottle. If there is no new bottle, you'll either get a refund or they'll ask you to choose another option on their wine list. A good restaurant will understand that corked bottles happen randomly, and will leap at the opportunity to replace it; a bad restaurant or a restaurant with poor training will sometimes try to argue with you about whether or not it's corked. Again, it can be a subtle, subjective taste, so proceed carefully.

In restaurants, this process can happen very quickly! It's elegant and practiced. The waiter will generally uncork the bottle without setting the bottle down or bracing it against themselves. They will remove the cork without breaking it, and they will pour the wine without dripping it down the label or on the table.

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Writing question - how do you feel about scene jumping? What I mean is, skipping time with ***, instead of writing the whole thing out. I find that I tend to do that a lot, in my writing and I don't know what to do about it exactly, if it's just the lack of practice or just my style... Any thoughts or advice?

Okay so first of all it is essential that I tell you that this little guy > *** < is called a dinkus. I'm not making that up.

I think the existence of a standard typographical mark to indicate a scene break is maybe a clue that this is fine and normal practice. Scenes have to end somewhere.

Most people overwrite their fiction. They start scenes too early, and they end them too late.

Do you want to know the single biggest and most powerful secret to writing fiction that people will devour in one sitting & then leave a comment like "I stayed up until 5am reading this despite having a 7am meeting tomorrow"?

✨ Hooks and cliffies ✨

The beginning of every single scene should be a hook. The end of every single scene should be a cliffhanger.

This ask is not about hooks so I will spare you.

This ask is, really, about cliffhangers, because it's about where to end a scene. And the answer is you should be ending a scene, ideally, most of the time, at the moment when the reader would be most likely to ask AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED??

Because that's what makes the reader keep reading. They have to know what happens next.

(Sidenote: the cliffie need not be "and then the TARDIS exploded". Sometimes it's "and then the door opened", sometimes it's even subtler than that—the important thing is that it makes the reader wonder and then what? This takes practice. A good way to practice is to really look at the way scenes and chapters end in books.)

Presumably you're stopping at a particular point in a scene because you're bored with it. If you're bored with it, a reader will be, too. This makes it an excellent place to stop and move on. Many writers will never get the hang of this.

But also, bottom line, end of the day: do whatever the fuck you want and don't let anyone else tell you otherwise. You are the only person obliged to interact with your work so you should enjoy it. I'm always happy to give advice on Writing Better FictionTM in principle because that is my number one favourite subject of all time but I do not think art is obliged to measure up to any external standard of quality.

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do you have any tips on improving your writing? have a good week

READ as much as you can. copy the writers you admire (style, rhythm, diction, not actual plagiarism), until your voice evolves and your writing sounds more like the things you like to read. feel on the first draft and think on the second. sorry this is all very general

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the big thing about worldbuilding is that it’s ALL about tone. The other thing about worldbuilding is that it’s about repeated tropes that keep showing up in aggregate. You can control your story’s tone but unfortunately your story exists in conversation with all the other stories in its genre and you can’t control those, only how your story engages or doesn’t engage with the trends those other stories set.

“why are there potatoes in this Generically Vaguely Medieval European Fantasy World?” gets mocked a lot but it’s a question worth asking. If your world has Wizard McDonald’s with a McDragon (dragon hamburger) and Magic Fries no one is gonna be asking where the potatoes come from because you have set the tone of the world: it’s silly and satirical and those aren’t the relevant questions to be asking.

There’s also something very fair to be said for the Vaguely Medieval England Fantasy World, like the Vaguely Star Trek Sci-Fi World, as a known setting: we all know it, we all know its tropes, we all basically know How It Works, so authors don’t HAVE to do any meaningful worldbuilding any more than they’d have to if they set their story in, like, London, or New York City. Anyone in the English speaking world is at least vaguely familiar with how London or NYC work; similarly, the Generic Medieval Setting and the Generic Space Setting are places English language genre readers Basically Know. It’s a pre-made world full of inbuilt connotations to drop your characters/plot/concept into. There’s value in that, imo particularly for short-form works.

But if you take your secondary fantasy world to stand seriously on its own, to support a fantasy epic of your own, it can fall apart at the seams under the conflicting weight of own casual assumptions, and that’s what the “where do the potatoes come from?” question is all about. It’s about assumptions. The potatoes question is basically a synecdoche for, “if your world has the (literal) fruits of nonwhite people’s labor and cultures in it, does it have any nonwhite people?” The Shire has potatoes, tobacco, and iirc sunflowers and strawberries: all plants native to and domesticated in the Americas by Indigenous American people. The question is for you to ask yourself, why are potatoes a quaintly charming English thing for hobbits to eat, while, say, a hobbit eating quinoa or avocado toast would be jarring? Why do the royalty of Westeros eat lemon tarts but not curry? Why is coffee normal in this temperate-climate setting, but papayas and bananas would break immersion? Why are some foods “normal” and others “foreign”? What does this indicate about the assumptions baked into your story-world about what is Normal and what is Foreign? And why are potatoes, in particular, so common in fantasy worlds that are Vaguely European? Why is this a Normal Part Of The World but quinoa or maize corn (other South American Andean staple crops) aren’t? Why don’t we think of potatoes as a South American food?

It’s not about the potatoes, not really. It’s about whether you’ve thought about how Your World works, whether you’re being deliberate with the tone and the type of expectations you set, or if you’re just repeating what Feels Normal without digging into what’s Normal and what’s Foreign and why.

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Writing tool for your fight scenes.

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It's kind of incredible just how much the Country House Murder Mystery genre is, at its roots, a reaction to WWI and the social change that sprang from it.

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The Minimalist Character Sheet

So I am not the biggest fan of those ten page character sheets that include 100 questions like “What’s their favourite ice cream?”. Don’t get me wrong: If those help you with your writing, more power to you! Do what works for you. But I tend to discover all the little details of a character while writing. I only need the fundamental things. Maybe this works for you too!

The Basics

Name: including all nicknames, titles, etc.

Gender

Age

Role in the Narrative

Physical Description: focus on defining features

GMC (If you want to learn more about the concept, check out this post.)

Internal Goal

Internal Motivation

Internal Conflict

External Goal

External Motivation

External Conflict

Personality

Short characterization: internal personality and external behavior

Their biggest failure/issue/flaw: and how it impacts their life/personality/behavior

Backstory: and its consequences, such as triggers

Speech pattern: at least three speech marks that emphasize their personality (if you want to learn more about speech patterns, check out this post)

Behaviour pattern: at least three habits that emphasize their personality

Character Arc: where do they start, how do they change, where do they end?

That’s it! Hope this gave you some pointers on how to start out with character creation.

Have fun writing!

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ok so i think that my favourite fantasy subgenre is The Inherent Tragedy Of Being Born Into Royalty. which mostly means that i like to read about gay princes but with some nuance

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Any conspiracy theory about people going missing in National Parks is automatically silly to me. Like "Why are National Parks such a hotbed of disappearances???" because they're full of idiots. You've got thousands of people who've never pissed outdoors in their life wandering around the woods/desert/mountain with zero experience and zero gear and zero understanding that this place can kill them. You don't see as many disappearances in wild areas because people don't go to them unless they have some background knowledge. Whereas you get tour buses full of old folks and suburban families shuttling people into National Parks 365 days a year. If you took the same amount of buffoons and dropped them in the actual wilderness the disappearances would be significantly higher than at the parks. Use your brain.

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We don’t talk enough about how fanfiction writers love to give character large amounts of non-specific paperwork they hate doing

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okay I did the math so we call get to bask in the math:

between 2020 and end of 2024, I started writing 383 fics that I either really liked, or made significant progress on (some of them are really short but are chef-kiss perfect)

of those 383, 47 are ones that I am intentionally coming back to because I want to finish them

and of those 383, there are currently 174 posted. which is roughly 47% of the total, when rounded

i didn't really have a goal or a guess for what those numbers would look like, and the reason i have them at all is i wanted an easier way to look back at the stuff i wrote to see what i left behind that i might want to bring back. but like. wow. that's so much started, and so much finished. and just looking at how the ratio works out as the years go on, i think i've been making progress with finishing what i started

idk. it's late and i'm just looking at how far i've come 🤷‍♀️

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The trope where people don't recognize each other because it's been so long since they last interacted and they've both changed so much that they're basically strangers UNTIL one of them does their Signature Thing™ and the other just stops dead because oh. It's YOU. All at once it's so clearly you