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something fun about all those "could granny weatherwax defeat kira" "could the infinity train fix izzy hands" sort of tumblr polls is like. there's a smug answer that's just "it depends whose story they're in," like, bugs bunny always wins if the genre is a looney tunes short but if he's in some sort of grimdark action drama then he's just a rabbit and gets shot by a hunter. but the other way to look at those polls is that's the whole question: whose genre rules have priority? there are some characters whose genre rules take priority over whatever story they're in.

here's what i say, granny weatherwax would always defeat kira precisely because granny can't exist in the death note universe without her own genre rules taking over; there's no "if it's a light yagami story then light wins" here because if granny's there it isn't a light yagami story. bugs bunny always wins because whatever story he enters becomes a looney tunes short, he cannot by his nature exist in any other context. the answer to "which our flag means death character could survive black sails?" is stede bonnet and only stede bonnet, because if any other ofmd character enters black sails they become a black sails character and most black sails characters die. but stede is the one who carries the romcom aura and that's part of who he is, if stede enters the world of black sails then black sails is now a romcom, and he's absolutely fine

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Tips for writing and drawing amputees

Amputees don't constantly wear bandages over their stumps after their initial recovery.

just for clarity, eda falls into an exception in the show, her amputation is new, but I've noticed a lot of the fandom doesn't seem to know this and draw her wearing the bandages continuously since the show didn't have time to make it clear, so that's why I'm picking on her as my picture example lol

I think this trope started from one of a few places:

1. People saw amputees wearing bandages/compression garments during the recovery from an amputation and just assumed they wear them all the time.

2. They think the stump is just a perpetual open wound that never heals, and so they think it has to be covered so as not to be "gory" (I've met fully grown adults who believed this until i showed them that wasn't the case)

3. People are just uncomfortable with stumps for some reason and want it covered on their characters.

4. People mistook the silicone or cotton liners amputees wear under their prosthetics as padding as a bandage and just assumed it was a bandage we have to wear all the time

5. Some combination of these points.

But if you're amputee has been an amputee for more than 6-12 weeks (maybe a little longer if the amputation was the result of a burn), the stump will be fully healed, no need to cover it.

And please, if you're working on something aimed at kids, or something that kids are likely to see, please show your character's stump at least once. I know this sounds like a weird thing to say out of context lol, but I used to work with kids, and I lost count of the number of kids who were actually scared me and my stumps because they were expecting them to be all bloody and scary looking. They calmed down when the realise they aren't but I was the first exposure a lot of these kids had. The problem is, kids can't always articulate that, especially if they're already scared, so often times they will say really horrible things, and for new amputees, or amputees who just aren't used to being around kids, this can be a devastating blow to their confidence. It's not the kid's fault, but that's why exposure to people like us young, before they have a chance to hear the wrong info that might make them afraid of us can go a long way.

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By Ed Himelblau

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Hardest part of writing is accepting that some people will not fucking get it & you just have to like cope with that because over-explaining it just makes it worse

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The Terrible Tower of Terror crumbled.

"Thus ends an Era," the Elf said.

"Aye," the Dwarf nodded. "I reckon the Age of Man begins now."

"And our kin, old friend, and all magic, will fade."

"Wait, what?" said the Human.

"It is Fated."

"Then I'll fight Fate."

"You have my axe!"

"And my bow!"

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The 3 important B’s

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Years and years ago, I read a book on cryptography that I picked up because it looked interesting--and it was!

But there was a side anecdote in there that stayed with me for more general purposes.

The author was describing a cryptography class that they had taken back in college where the professor was demonstrating the process of "reversibility", which is a principle that most codes depend on. Specifically, it should be easy to encode, and very hard to decode without the key--it is hard to reverse the process.

So he had an example code that he used for his class to demonstrate this, a variation on the Book Code, where the encoded text would be a series of phone numbers.

The key to the code was that phone books are sorted alphabetically, so you could encode the text easily--picking phone numbers from the appropriate alphabetical sections to use ahead of time would be easy. But since phone books were sorted alphabetically, not numerically, it would be nearly impossible to reverse the code without exhaustively searching the phone book for each string of numbers and seeing what name it was tied to.

Nowadays, defeating this would be child's play, given computerized databases, but back in the 80s and 90s, this would have been a good code... at least, until one of the students raised their hand and asked, "Why not just call the phone numbers and ask who lives there?"

The professor apparently was dumbfounded.

He had never considered that question. As a result, his cipher, which seemed to be nearly unbreakable to him, had such an obvious flaw, because he was the sort of person who could never coldcall someone to ask that sort of thing!

In the crypto book, the author went on to use this story as an example of why security systems should not be tested by the designer (because of course the security system is ready for everything they thought of, by definition), but for me, as a writer, it stuck with me for a different reason.

It's worth talking out your story plot with other people just to see if there's a "Why not just call the phone numbers?" obvious plot hole that you've missed, because of your singular perspective as a person. Especially if you're writing the sort of plot where you have people trying to outsmart each other.

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The scene is...

...an archetypal one. I walk out onto the streets of Upper Noir City, inner monologue on the facts of the whodunit at hand blending with the pouring rain. The shot shows me leaning against an alley wall, cupping a hand to my cheek as I try to get a lighter to spark up.

The audience should realize after a few seconds that I have just been keeping the lighter on, far longer than any cigarette, cigar or stogie would need, and the shot then switches to the profile on the other side, revealing that I am toasting a marshmallow over the flame.

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if the vibes are off, close your document. stare at the wall. think about your protagonist’s childhood trauma. return stronger.

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hate what people did to the dead dove tag

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Fandom Problem #8886:

I think that a lot of discourse in fandom, especially when it comes to fan content, would be solved if people just accepted that authors have free will and add stuff to their story just because they want to and not everything needs a deep reasoning

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Fandom Problem #8879:

Sometimes I think that some people take that "why does the author think he knows so much" meme a little too seriously, to the point where you wonder what's the point of getting into a story if you're gonna ignore 99% of what it entails and its message

Bonus if they start yelling at people and getting mad over interpretations they made up in their own head

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You know what I've never really seen realistically depicted in fiction? The way that people in places that get a huge amount of snow deal with said snow. Specifically in the cities. I get that it's probably not exactly an intuitive thing to think about if you've never lived in a place that gets a lot of snow, and even if you do, you probably figure that they must have some really sophisticated infrastructure systems specifically for this purpose. It's not like they'll just scoop the snow off the streets and gather it into huge piles, and then just climb over the progressively larger and larger snow piles every single year for months while waiting for the piles to melt in the spring.

We do. There's no point in planning more sophisticated systems to get rid of something that'll eventually just go away on its own. So they just pile the snow into randomly designated spaces that cars or people aren't supposed to go through, and let it pile up. There's significantly less street parking available in the winter because some spots where you could otherwise park a car are currently the parking spot of a snow pile three times taller than a car.

You get used to it. And if you grow up around here, it never even occurs to you to think of it as something strange in the first place.

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<div style="white-space:pre-wrap">

🧠 THE MANNEQUIN WITH POWERS — Why Character Comes Before Plot or Die in the Void A Blacksite Literature™ Transmission (If your protagonist couldn’t grip a reader’s soul in a blank room, you already failed.)

I. THE VOID YOU'RE WRITING INTO

Let’s get this out of the way first:

If your character can’t speak — not literally, but viscerally — to the reader’s insides without the crutch of explosions, lore dumps, or a “cool” outfit…

You are not writing a character. You’re dressing a mannequin. And no one gives a fuck what a mannequin does.

II. IF THEY FEEL NOTHING, YOU BUILT NOTHING

Who cares what city’s under attack? Who cares if they’re the Chosen One? Who cares about your twist, your map, your seven-act structure?

If the protagonist you’ve built:

Has no secret

Carries no weight

Evokes no response from a quiet, tired reader on a Tuesday night—

Then you wrote into the void.

Your reader wasn’t “dumb” or “impatient.” They felt nothing. And they left.

III. THE LIE OF “PLOT FIRST”

You’ve been sold a lie:

“Just make the story exciting and the characters will follow.”

No. Never. Backwards.

Character always precedes plot. Character is the plot.

Because if I don’t care who it’s happening to — Then nothing happening will ever matter.

A reader can forgive:

A slow start

A clunky scene

A cliché trope

But they will never forgive the crime of hollow company.

You gave them someone to follow —

And that someone had no soul.

IV. THE MANNEQUIN WITH POWERS

Let’s define the threat.

The Mannequin:

Has abilities

Has trauma

Has a goal

Has quips

Has a backstory

But no voice.

No contradiction. No shame. No private thing they would die to protect, not because it’s powerful — but because it’s theirs.

This mannequin does things. Big things. High stakes.

And no one cares. Because nothing human is bleeding through the plastic.

V. ESCAPISM ISN’T A LICENSE TO LIE

Yes, readers want to escape. But not from humanity.

They want to escape into:

A place where flawed people matter.

A place where pain has context, not just screen time.

A place where characters don’t just “get better” — they get known.

Escape into fantasy all you want. But if you’re escaping the imperfections of the human condition, then you’re not writing fantasy. You’re writing propaganda for emotional disconnection.

And your reader knows it. Even if they don’t say it. Even if they reblog it. Even if they finish it.

They know.

VI. THE SECRET THEY DON’T BRAG ABOUT

Let me give you the fix.

Give your character one thing:

A secret they don’t brag about.

Something they hide not because it’s cool — but because it’s raw, vulnerable, humiliating, or sacred.

Examples:

She used to believe in God, and now she can’t even say “grace” over her food.

He kept a voicemail from his brother the day before he overdosed.

She has two daughters, and hasn’t seen them since the custody ruling.

He talks shit to villains but goes home and reads old love letters he never responded to.

Do not announce it. Do not reward it. Do not let them monologue it.

Let it live. Quietly. And watch your readers form emotional attachments like animals recognizing kin.

VII. PLOT WILL NEVER SAVE YOU

You can worldbuild forever. You can twist the timelines, deepen the lore, expand the pantheon.

But if your central figure could be replaced by anyone and the story still works?

You didn’t build a character. You built scenery in a cape.

Plot is what happens.

Character is who we blame, who we mourn, who we root for in spite of ourselves.

And if you skip that? You skip the anchor. You leave your reader floating — no matter how pretty the setting is.

VIII. THE READER DOESN’T OWE YOU A DAMN THING

Let’s be brutally honest:

Your reader doesn’t care how much time you spent.

They don’t care how much of your soul you “poured in.” They don’t care how important your themes are.

If they can’t connect to a being — not a puppet — then they leave.

Because they’re not in your head. They’re alone. Reading. Tired. Wanting to feel something.

And if your protagonist doesn’t show up with emotional currency in hand?

They’re gone.

IX. THE ONLY TEST THAT MATTERS

Write this down:

If your main character was in a blank white room for five pages — with no plot, no action, no powers — would I want to hear what they think?

If the answer is no?

Start over.

Not from page one. From soul one. You didn’t give them a person. You gave them a vessel to carry your story — and no one wants to be ferried by a stranger.

X. THE REALITY YOU’RE TOO SCARED TO ADMIT

You’re not scared of writing bad plots.

You’re scared of putting real, flawed, mirrored, shameful, holy you into your character — because if it fails, it’ll feel like you failed.

So you keep them clean. You keep them plastic. You keep them “relatable” in all the ways that mean nothing.

But the only thing that ever makes a reader stay?

Is the feeling that this character was carved from a place they weren’t supposed to see.

That’s what creates emotional loyalty. That’s what earns tears. That’s what builds cult followings, not just fandoms.

XI. SO FIX IT.

Kill the mannequin.

Bury the empty badass. Silence the sarcastic automaton. Throw the trauma plot in the fire.

Build a person. A person with shame. A person with weight. A person who reminds the reader of a truth they’ve never told anyone.

Then throw that person into your plot.

And watch the story ignite.

XII. CONCLUSION: YOU'RE NOT WRITING STORIES. YOU'RE WRITING PEOPLE.

You think you’re writing entertainment. You think you’re building scenes. You think you’re plotting arcs.

But you’re not.

You’re introducing human souls to strangers. And the ones who do it well? They become immortal.

Every good story is just a person you didn’t want to say goodbye to.

If you don’t have that?

Then what the fuck are we doing here. </div>

📌 If this made your spine straighten mid-sentence — reblog it. 🧠 If it exposed a hollow character you once thought was “done” — save it. ✍️ If it reminded you why we write at all — read it again.

And if it hurt? That means it’s time to start over.

Bonus:

🧠 FREE WRITING LESSON — THE MOST POWERFUL CHARACTER DEPTH TRICK YOU’LL EVER READ.

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no writing workshop can help you improve your writing as much as this screenshot can

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no writing workshop can help you improve your writing as much as this screenshot can