#Decadent introspection

[boomerangguy]

Forgotten Firelord

As much as I want to see a well-executed Azula redemption, I also need Ozai to get some attention.

Not asking for a long dramatic arc where he “unlearns imperialism” because that’s never going to happen and trying to moralize through education (especially to a deposed monarch) doesn’t work. Personal values need to change.

So his ‘redemption,’ if we can call it that, is all very subtle and delicate, completely confined to his own thoughts and spanning several decades. The regret has to gnaw at him. He has to spend those years imagining what would have happened if he’d defeated Aang, reliving the day of Sozin’s Comet over and over and over until all his bitterness runs dry and his ‘what ifs’ grow stale.

Reluctantly, he finally admits — maybe just subconsciously — that world conquest would not have satisfied him. That sort of thing cannot offer the deep fulfillment he yearns for, so he starts wondering what would.

Participating in a loving, fruitful marriage. Companionship with his brother. Watching his children grow and flourish. Protecting his own people’s way of life instead of using them as fodder to conquer other nations. Ozai spends years dwelling on what he might have missed, gradually delving deeper and deeper.

He eventually faces regrets that he doesn’t know how to process. Missing his chance to kill Aang becomes the furthest thing from his mind — instead, it’s blindly following his ambition, mutilating his son, exiling his wife, mistreating his daughter, failing as Firelord.

But it’s too late to fix any of that now. All he can do is whisper in the darkness of his cell, late at night when no one else will hear:

“I’m sorry.”

When he finally dies forty years after Sozin’s Comet, no one knows that he had a change of heart — and no one particularly cares that he’s gone, either. The Fire Nation has moved on. Most people had forgotten about him or assumed he was already dead. Just one person bothers to visit the lonely cell where Ozai spent nearly half his life.

Decades before, Aang sent a small gift — something of a gag, but not intended to mock — to the prison for Ozai. To his surprise, the Firelord noodle art he’d made in Fire Nation school is still hanging on the cell wall. Only a few moldy old noodles are left, but there’s no mistaking what it means: The noodle art is how innocent children would have seen their Firelord — the man and ruler he should have been.

He buries the art with Ozai and resolves to find him in the Spirit World.

[sbd-laytall]

Hi, I would just like to talk to the writers of Batman (1940) #496 and ask why they would hurt me by having Bruce get sprayed with fear gas, have a vision of Jason's death, and then beat up The Joker while screaming nothing but "Jason Todd" at him over and over.

[titanrkive]

autistic aro/ace people of tumblr....... please please please share your wisdom with me. how did you realize and/or accept that you were also on the aro/ace spectrum???? i've been thinking about this for literal years but i just can't wrap my head around my own feelings and what they mean

(to clarify: i am questioning if i am aro and/or ace, but i just. don't know?????)

[cozza-frenzy]

I swear to fucking god. Whoever told autistic people that social interactions are a game you're supposed to win every time by doing the correct inputs? And it's entirely your sole responsibility forever and ever if the other person gets the wrong idea? Even if the way they're playing this game-in-your-head is equivalent to spinning around and firing a shotgun at the ceiling at random? And they get mad at you because they lost count of how many bullet holes? Even though there's no possible way you'd know that's the kind of game they think you're both playing? They should be sent to a prison colony on the fucking moon. - Terry

[juliareed]

Fandom: Alias Relationships: Sark/Sydney Song: Spiracle by Flower Face Content warnings: Blood, death, violence, spiders, insects, flashing lights

[frogaroundandfindout]

“None of this has worked out the way we thought it would, Kory. I’m sorry for what I put you through.”

“Your eyes drank in everything with equal interest and love. You cherished every moment you lived while I eyed everything with suspicion. I tried to make you more like me rather than embrace your openness. And when the changes came, when ravens body died and was replaced by her dark soul self, when she attacked you and tried to implant her demon seed…I didn’t understand. I didn’t try to help. I just held your hand wondering when you would be able to help me. I loved you but I was more consumed with my own problems than yours. You always thought of me first. You were willing to try to change when I should have never dreamt of asking. You were willing to marry me, but I didn’t ask you out of love…I asked because I thought it would help me grow up.”

New titans #113

[gh-verse]

I know I say a lot Anna and Maddie have astronomical levels of miscommunication but the majority of them stem from Maddie being avoidant of negative emotions and Anna’s tendency to express her feeling things in ways that are often unconventional/misinterpreted.

[cl0wnapologist]

its crazy i have mutuals on here. i feel like i never use my tags or say shit that has a recognizable voice. or post anything of my own LOL. and yet most of my engagement is from mutuals.... maybe ill say more stuff so u have a canon idea of me. i want to make more art. and write more. andhave 10million dollars. love you!

[nazorneku]

verse: ash echoes

original character profile

Name: 祸烨莲 Huo Ye Lian English: Luminotus Previous Name: Lotus Chinese VA: Wu Lei Prototype Source: Gu Jian Qi Tan online version First Introduction on CN: Chapter S0-5

Race: Human Gender: Male Affiliated Force: R.E.D. Native world: Levare World Number: UPD-0001007XXL36H-Ⅴ Current Residence: Sen Lo, Hai Lin, Celestia District, 52 Ilex Road, Dorms, room 2006

Resonator: Yes Seed: Seed Ability: Mutation Affinity: S - 88.497% Cellular Synchronization: A - 75.163% Potential Risk Level: Medium

Hospital Opinion: The Mutation Affinity Index is showing unpredictable swings, with too many unusual readings. This poses a certain risk to society, so we suggest a period of close monitoring. R.E.D. Opinion: Acknowledged. R.E.D. will undertake the duties of a temporary guardian. Responsible Person: Hong Yu (Scarlet)

One of the High Priests of the Court of the Dawn. When the Skyrift Passage appeared, he accidentally went to other unknown world, and it was not until recently that he came to Sen Luo. He is the only resonator from the world of Levare in the past two years.

[velvetporcelain]

what shall i call you? —- you need a nickname—- hmmmmmm

i like all my play things to have a nickname and you most certainly were my favorite one —- so you have to be named without actually BEING named and he/him— too — unappealing.

ahh ha. ——— i shall call you scapegoat— because you represent an evil that is only to be hidden amongst the woods. and and well —- no — nah this isn’t it —-

it has to be cheesy yet unique, romantic yet deadly, lurking yet obsessed ——

think mon coeur—- ah that’s it—-

i shall name you mon coeur.

—— i have not thought of you until i realized that i hadn’t. i want to see you. i want to lasso you and torture you, tease you, tempt you—- make you moan, make you cry, make you fucking beg me to let you go.

“i will do anything” repeating out of your broken bitch fucking mouth.

be quiet mon coeur, let mommy think.

-x

[seekingxanadu]

Clark, disappointingly, continuing the canon pattern of allies and friends punching on Dick without an iota of consideration for Dick's own grief and loneliness. To think poor Dick, who just lost his father figure -the one who gave him a roof and purpose after his beloved parents were murdered in front of him and after he was wrenched away from his own community and thrown into juvenile detention/orphanage, is being berated by Superman who SHOULD for all his nearness to Bruce and Dick's crusade for justice for nearly two decades have seen the grief of a son wearing his father's cloak as a last ditch effort to save Bruce's city, Bruce's family, Bruce's business. But no. It was too much to ask of Clark apparently.

That post where Clark loses it on seeing Dick as Batman...

Thinking of it as Clark and Bruce being on the same page about Dick - he should never be Batman.

Clark has seen what the years of wearing the cowl did to Bruce. He remembers the early days, when Bruce was still idealistic, still able to trust.

And now, seeing Dick - his Robin, their boy - in that cowl, all he can think of is what it is going to turn him into.

It's not just the wrongness of seeing someone else in the batsuit - it is the horror of a future where Dick becomes another Bruce because he believes Batman is needed.

Especially since they both know, it’s not what Bruce wanted for him, and they both knew him as Nightwing and could see how much lighter he was in that role. Batman is curse, and here Dick is accepting it willingly because he thinks he has to. 

[seldnei]

Look, I’m just saying that not being a genre snob is helpful because reading these 4,000 KJ Charles and Jordan L Hawk novels helped me figure out why this book felt off.

Like, within any genre, find an author you dig and read that shizz. You never know what will spark an epiphany.

[everythingunderthestarsthings]

End of a Decade

The end of 2023, for me, marks the end of a significant decade and chapter of my life. I had a fallout with my best friend. Someone I’d known for ten years. It’s not a pleasant thing to go through. No one teaches you what to do when a good person hurt you, but you know you’ve hurt them too. No one teaches you how to bid farewell to people you thought you never would say goodbye to. No one…

[physalian]

How to make your writing sound less stiff

Just a few suggestions. You shouldn’t have to compromise your writing style and voice with any of these, and some situations and scenes might demand some stiff or jerky writing to better convey emotion and immersion. I am not the first to come up with these, just circulating them again.

1. Vary sentence structure.

This is an example paragraph. You might see this generated from AI. I can’t help but read this in a robotic voice. It’s very flat and undynamic. No matter what the words are, it will be boring. It’s boring because you don’t think in stiff sentences. Comedians don’t tell jokes in stiff sentences. We don’t tell campfire stories in stiff sentences. These often lack flow between points, too.

So funnily enough, I had to sit through 87k words of a “romance” written just like this. It was stiff, janky, and very unpoetic. Which is fine, the author didn’t tell me it was erotica. It just felt like an old lady narrator, like Old Rose from Titanic telling the audience decades after the fact instead of living it right in the moment. It was in first person pov, too, which just made it worse. To be able to write something so explicit and yet so un-titillating was a talent. Like, beginner fanfic smut writers at least do it with enthusiasm.

2. Vary dialogue tag placement

You got three options, pre-, mid-, and post-tags.

Leader said, “this is a pre-dialogue tag.”

“This,” Lancer said, “is a mid-dialogue tag.”

“This is a post-dialogue tag,” Heart said.

Pre and Post have about the same effect but mid-tags do a lot of heavy lifting.

They help break up long paragraphs of dialogue that are jank to look at

They give you pauses for ~dramatic effect~

They prompt you to provide some other action, introspection, or scene descriptor with the tag. *don't forget that if you're continuing the sentence as if the tag wasn't there, not to capitalize the first word after the tag. Capitalize if the tag breaks up two complete sentences, not if it interrupts a single sentence.

It also looks better along the lefthand margin when you don’t start every paragraph with either the same character name, the same pronouns, or the same “ as it reads more natural and organic.

3. When the scene demands, get dynamic

General rule of thumb is that action scenes demand quick exchanges, short paragraphs, and very lean descriptors. Action scenes are where you put your juicy verbs to use and cut as many adverbs as you can. But regardless of if you’re in first person, second person, or third person limited, you can let the mood of the narrator bleed out into their narration.

Like, in horror, you can use a lot of onomatopoeia.

Drip Drip Drip

Or let the narration become jerky and unfocused and less strict in punctuation and maybe even a couple run-on sentences as your character struggles to think or catch their breath and is getting very overwhelmed.

You can toss out some grammar rules, too and get more poetic.

Warm breath tickles the back of her neck. It rattles, a quiet, soggy, rasp. She shivers. If she doesn’t look, it’s not there. If she doesn’t look, it’s not there. Sweat beads at her temple. Her heart thunders in her chest. Ba-bump-ba-bump-ba-bump-ba- It moves on, leaving a void of cold behind. She uncurls her fists, fingers achy and palms stinging from her nails. It’s gone.

4. Remember to balance dialogue, monologue, introspection, action, and descriptors.

The amount of times I have been faced with giant blocks of dialogue with zero tags, zero emotions, just speech on a page like they’re notecards to be read on a stage is higher than I expected. Don’t forget that though you may know exactly how your dialogue sounds in your head, your readers don’t. They need dialogue tags to pick up on things like tone, specifically for sarcasm and sincerity, whether a character is joking or hurt or happy.

If you’ve written a block of text (usually exposition or backstory stuff) that’s longer than 50 words, figure out a way to trim it. No matter what, break it up into multiple sections and fill in those breaks with important narrative that reflects the narrator’s feelings on what they’re saying and whoever they’re speaking to’s reaction to the words being said. Otherwise it’s meaningless.

—

Hope this helps anyone struggling! Now get writing.

[coureirsix]

feeling tension and anxiety from things that come from within you vs the sugary sickly sweet anxiety and tension that come from feelings, whatever they may be, for another person really are the difference between depression and a mental breakdown huh