#I monologue in there like a bad villain

[strawberry-jackalope]

navy lilac lemon

[thelesbianthespianposts]

book finding the bolt:

Percy: give us the bolt!

hades: what??? I don’t have the bolt, you have the bolt. Give me my hat back!

Percy *finds bolt in bag*: oh shit did I take the bolt??

show finding the bolt:

Percy: whoa the master bolt is in my bag

Grover: Ares must have put it there

Percy: I concur, we should see if hades is working together with him

[demonboyhalo]

Velvet literally did such a good job as a villain tho his EMOTION when he rants as the Egg - *chefs kiss*

Puffy: For eons I have Waited. Watched. [Voice becomes deeper and echoey] Grown.

Egg: THOUSANDS of years trapped deep below. As the hour glass spun again and again, you were my prey. I needed you, and yet...I did not understand you.

[shibaraki]

dabi does this fight or flight thing where he tries to convince me he’s a big bad monster that I shouldn’t love and I’m like. is the monster in the room with us right now

[mummer]

i hate that the big bad in stranger things is just some fucking guy who was the real mind flayer all this time or whatever. like how was the evil all along just some random sociopathic child doing it for shits and giggles. like Who cares. #bring back the eldritch unspeakable horror!!!! LOSERS!!!!

[dallasstarsdyke]

lucahjin is on dio end vlr rn and its killing me what is wrong w this man 😭

[hippo-pot]

wait i wanna be a hater for a sec. Y'all remember when that book The Sixth Extinction came out and ppl were acting like it was a pretty big deal? That book SUCKED. I couldn't get through it. Despite the subject matter being inherently tragic, the author deliberately crafted the chapters to stretch out the tragedy and make it hit 'harder' (put that in quotes because guess what? most of the book didn't hit at all because I didn't feel respected as a reader and didn't finish it)

I'm not talking about presenting the facts. The facts I can handle. I'm talking like. Telling part of a story - dang, this story is a bummer. Okay, now we're talking about something else. Phew, glad that story was over - oh wait, we're getting back to it. Aaaaaaaand it's so much worse now because you didn't mention the human greed element before. Saved the best for last. WE COULD HAVE BEEN THROUGH THIS STORY IN LIKE 2 PAGES. Could have acquired the knowledge and MOVED ON. WHY DID YOU PUT BREAKS IN IT AND STRETCH IT OUT INTO A WHOLE CHAPTER

[icedteaandoldlace]

Personally, I envisioned The Flash's series finale involving a scene with Barry, Caitlin, and Cisco all teaming up in the field again, with Iris on comms in the Cortex, Kamilla and Joe helping somehow from the S.T.A.R. Labs van, close to where the O.G.s are doing their thing, the JV Squad being Somewhere Else, idc where, just not in this scene, Mark being long gone past the point of anyone mentioning or thinking about him, and Starlight by Muse playing in the background.

[marklikely]

infinitely more respect for the people who just come out and say they think corey cunningham is hot over the people who try to convince me halloween ends was actually good

[originalcontent]

It’s Nona (she/her)!! She’s a bug! Level 3 fighter! Very lawful good, like the most! Has no friends! Bug! She’s deaf and uses sign language, which only one party member knows! She has a secret passion for sculpture but has negative talent in it! She makes her own dresses! Bug! Like a mantis with hook arms and spider powers! Music themed! Dnd character!

[comradeboyhalo]

there’s honestly so many ways to analyze bad’s character that even when i see a take i disagree with i cant really argue with it. like some people make him out to be a complete dick which i dont agree with but then sometimes i step back and look at the source material and im like “yeah, i can see why youd think that”

[zoebelladona]

scrolling through the stranger things tag... genuinely think i didn't watch the same show as everyone else

[firesnap]

I'm sorry I saw this tweet and didn't have enough room to scream on my priv.

Dream literally did nothing other than suggest blowing up L'Manberg during the Revolution until Tommy's exile. And look at how that went. After Tommy's disc finale he sat and rotted in a prison, not answering people, and existed ENTIRELY as a plot device people had to drag him to do every few months.

LITERALLY THAT'S ONE OF THE WORST PARTS OF THE SERVER. He took up being the big bad, then didn't answer people and locked himself in a prison and stalled lore and delayed things and just fucking sucked. And his important role in most people's lore could have easily been replaced by a cardboard cutout after exile ended.

BBH paid for the server. People were already getting bored as fuck when Wilbur joined. Do people seriously forget how quickly vanilla Minecraft servers died back then? Literally the introduction of L'Manberg gave people something to do other than walking up the same wooden path over and over.

Bait used to be believable. I'm sorry if you think that guy was a good actor you literally never watched Wilbur or Charlie or Quackity. I never cared for Techno's 4th wall breaks, but you can't compare a single monologue Drm made to ANY of Techno's. The amount of crazy good and memorable lines everyone else had in comparison is hilarious. He wasn't even the best actor on the Dteam and one of those dude's slept through the whole story.

THE PRISON WAS THE WORST ARC THE SERVER HAD AND WAS AN EYESORE TO LOOK UPON

Fuck that guy. He wanted to be the villain and then would fucking retcon and change shit to make sure his guy never lost. Even when the story would try to frame something as a loss for him his ass would come back months later and go UM ACTUALLY like he's the fucking JK Rowling of Minecraft Roleplay.

[physalian]

Pacing your Story (Or, How to Avoid the "Suddenly...!")

Arguably *the* most important lesson all writers need to learn, even for those who don’t give a damn about themes and motifs and a moral soap box: How your story is paced, whether it’s a comic book, a children’s chapter book, a doorstopper, a mini series, a movie, or a full-length season of TV (old school style), pacing is everything.

Pacing determines how long the story *feels* regardless of how long it actually is. It can make a 2 hour movie feel like 90 mins or double the time you’re trapped in your seat.

There’s very little I can say about pacing that hasn’t been said before, but I’m here to condense all that’s out there into a less intimidating mouthful to chew.

So: What is pacing?

Pacing is how a story flows, how quickly or slowly the creator moves through and between scenes, how long they spend on setting, narration, conversation, arguments, internal monologues, fight scenes, journey scenes. It’s also how smoothly tone transitions throughout the story. A fantasy adventure jumping around sporadically between meandering boredom, high-octane combat, humor, grief, and romance is exhausting to read, no matter how much effort you put into your characters.

Anyone who says the following is wrong:

Good pacing is always fast/bad pacing is always slow

Pacing means you are 100% consistent throughout the entire story

It doesn’t matter as much so long as you have a compelling story/characters/lore/etc

Now let me explain why in conveniently numbered points:

1. Pacing is not about consistency, it’s about giving the right amount of time to the right pieces of your story

This is not intuitive and it takes a long time to learn. So let’s look at some examples:

Lord of the Rings: The movies trimmed a *lot* from the books that just weren’t adaptable to screen, namely all the tedious details and quite a bit of the worldbuilding that wasn’t critical to the journey of the Fellowship. That said, with some exceptions, the battles are as long as they need to be, along with every monologue, every battle speech. When Helm’s Deep is raging on, we cut away to Merry and Pippin with the Ents to let ourselves breathe, then dive right back in just before it gets boring.

The Hobbit Trilogy: The exact opposite from LotR, stretching one kids book into 3 massive films, stuffing it full of filler, meandering side quests, pointless exposition, drawing out battles and conflicts to silly extremes, then rushing through the actual desolation of Smaug for… some reason.

Die Hard (cause it’s the Holidays y’all!): The actiony-est of action movies with lots of fisticuffs and guns and explosions still leaves time for our hero to breathe, lick his wounds, and build a relationship with the cop on the ground. We constantly cut between the hero and the villains, all sharing the same radio frequency, constantly antsy about what they know and when they’ll find out the rest, and when they’ll discover the hero’s kryptonite.

2. Make every scene you write do at least two things at once

This is also tricky. Making every scene pull double duty should be left to after you’ve written the first draft, otherwise you’ll never write that first draft. Pulling double duty means that if you’re giving exposition, the scene should also reveal something about the character saying it. If you absolutely must write the boring trip from A to B, give some foreshadowing, some thoughtful insight from one of your characters, a little anecdote along the way.

Develop at least two of the following:

The plot

The backstory

The romance/friendships

The lore

The exposition

The setting

The goals of the cast

Doing this extremely well means your readers won’t have any idea you’re doing it until they go back and read it again. If you have two characters sitting and talking exposition at a table, and then those same two characters doing some important task with filler dialogue to break up the narrative… try combining those two scenes and see what happens.

**This is going to be incredibly difficult if you struggle with making your stories longer. I do not. I constantly need to compress my stories. **

3. Not every scene needs to be crucial to the plot, but every scene must say something

I distinguish plot from story like a square vs a rectangle. Plot is just a piece of the tale you want to tell, and some scenes exist just to be funny, or romantic, or mysterious, plot be damned.

What if you’re writing a character study with very little plot? How do you make sure your story isn’t too slow if 60% of the narrative is introspection?

Avoid repeating information the audience already has, unless a reminder is crucial to understanding the scene

This isn’t 1860 anymore. Every detail must serve a purpose. Keep character and setting descriptions down to absolute need-to-know and spread it out like icing on a cake – enough to coat, but not give you a mouthful of whipped sugar and zero cake.

Avoid describing generic daily routines, unless the existence of said routine is out of ordinary for the character, or will be rudely interrupted by chaos. No one cares about them brushing their teeth and doing their hair.

Make sure your characters move, but not too much. E.g. two characters sitting and talking – do humans just stare at each other with their arms lifeless and bodies utterly motionless during conversation? No? Then neither should your characters. Make them gesture, wave, frown, laugh, cross their legs, their arms, shift around to get comfortable, pound the table, roll their eyes, point, shrug, touch their face, their hair, wring their hands, pick at their nails, yawn, stretch, pout, sneer, smirk, click their tongue, clear their throat, sniff/sniffle, tap their fingers/drum, bounce their feet, doodle, fiddle with buttons or jewelry, scratch an itch, touch their weapons/gadgets/phones, check the time, get up and sit back down, move from chair to table top – the list goes on. Bonus points if these are tics that serve to develop your character, like a nervous fiddler, or if one moves a lot and the other doesn’t – what does that say about the both of them? This is where “show don’t tell” really comes into play.

4. Your entire work should not be paced exactly the same

Just like a paragraph should not be filled with sentences of all the same length and syntax. Some beats deserve more or less time than others. Unfortunately, this is unique to every single story and there is no one size fits all.

General guidelines are as follows:

Action scenes should have short paragraphs and lots of movement. Cut all setting details and descriptors, internal monologues, and the like, unless they service the scene.

Journey/travel scenes must pull double or even triple duty. There’s a reason very few movies are marketed as “single take” and those that are don’t waste time on stuff that doesn’t matter. See 1917.

Romantic scenes are entirely up to you. Make it a thousand words, make it ten thousand, but you must advance either the romantic tension, actual movement of the characters, conversation, or intimacy of the relationship.

Don’t let your conversations run wild. If they start to veer off course, stop, boil it down to its essentials, and cut the rest.

When transitioning between slow to faster pacing and back again, it’s also not one size fits all. Maybe it being jarring is the point – it’s as sudden for the characters as it is for the reader. With that said, try to keep the “suddenly”s to a minimum.

5. Pacing and tone go hand in hand

This means that, generally speaking, the tone of your scene changes with the speed of the narrative. As stated above, a jarring tonal shift usually brings with it a jarring pacing shift.

A character might get in a car crash while speeding away from an abusive relationship. A character who thinks they’re safe from a pursuer might be rudely and terrifyingly proven wrong. An exhausting chase might finally relent when sanctuary is found. A quiet dinner might quickly turn romantic with a look, or confession. Someone casually cleaning up might discover evidence of a lie, a theft, an intruder and begin to panic.

--

Whatever the case may be, a narrative that is all action all the time suffers from lack of meaningful character moments. A narrative that meanders through the character drama often forgets there is a plot they’re supposed to be following.

[beybuniki]

Shounen has a bad habit of making teens indistinguishable from adults— like teen is a place in a power hierarchy instead of a state of development.

Like idk they’re 15 some of them will not know how taxes work. Maybe someone needs braces and the dentist hasn’t given them a referral yet. None of them can drive.

Like idk can you imagine a villain in their monologue quoting a bit of famous literature and the kids are like “what the fuck are you talking about.” And it’s like. The book is famous because it’s required reading in 2nd year and they don’t know it because they haven’t hit their second year yet.

I need more of the kids to be Genuinely Stupid in the way freshmen are.

true but also I think horikoshi is pretty good at writing teenagers but yeah some fans ignore that

[bigification]

Jealousy Jealousy

Strong, loyal, dedicated. All words used by the boss to describe me, and every word seemed like a knife in the back of my roommate. I can hear it in the way he talks to me, ever since I joined the military all he ever seems to be is jealous. I've always been stronger and more dedicated than him, he's smarter but that doesn't even matter that much.

The walk back to our room is awkward. It is completely silent and I can almost see the steam coming out of his ears. I wanted so badly to be friends with him, but he makes it impossible. I've always worked out and kept my body in good shape, and apparently that's unforgivable to him.

We get back to our room and he immediately goes rummaging through his stuff. I pace back and forth, debating whether I should talk to him. It's hard living with him and I just want things to be civil between us.

"Hey man, I wanted to ta-" I'm interrupted when he quickly swings around and jabs something into my stomach. I look down and see a needle sticking into the side of my stomach. I feel frozen with fear, I can't talk, almost as if there is something stuck in my throat. I let out a groan as he pushes the end of the needle, injecting a green liquid into my body.

"I'm tired of being in your shadow, let's see how long you'll last after this." He monologues like some cartoon villain. What does he even mean by that, was that some kind of poison? Is he killing me just because the boss likes me more.

I stumble back against the wall, I feel weak but it hurts less than I thought it would. Although my stomach feels like it's boiling.

Am I dreaming... It feels more like a nightmare. But it must be a nightmare. I see a lump form under my shirt, and it seems to grow every time I blink. It can't be real, but it feels so real. The lump grows until it looks like I have a little belly. Do I have a belly? It's growing faster and faster until my shirt becomes untucked. It finally stops after growing into a sizable beer belly, making it impossible for me to see my feet. Maybe he gave me drugs, maybe this is just a bad trip. But it feels so real.

It doesn't end with the beer belly. Next my pecs start to swell. Something I worked so hard on is gone in seconds. I see them soften into a pair of man tits, growing until they press against my shirt. I always swore I would never let myself go like my father did, but I guess that's a lie. At least it took him until his thirties to get fat, I can't even make it to my late twenties without pigging out.

I still have no idea what's happening to me. It's getting harder and harder to think. I was thinking about... Something about pigging out. It must be because I love pigging out, that's how I got this belly.

As I'm trying to think, my body continues to grow. I hear the button on my pants pop off and feel the pressure release. I think my ass is growing, not that I mind. I feel my body being pushed further and further away from the wall as fat spilled into my ass.

Why does my crotch feel so tight? I could have sworn it didn't feel this tight a moment ago. I don't really care anyway, I can't even remember why I should care.

My pants strain against the fat filling my legs, I think I can even hear some rips tearing through them. My arms follow suit, softening up my defined muscles and fattening up my hands. Better off that way if you ask me, fatter hands means better belly rubs, and I like belly rubs.

I feel an itchiness engulf my body as a thick pelt of hair covers my skin. My arms, my legs, my chest, and most importantly my belly become a forest of sweaty hair.

My body finally relaxed and I let out a loud burp. Oh... I'm so hungry. I rub my belly trying to get any relief. It's all I can think of. Wasn't I stressed about something? What would I have been stressed about, maybe I was just hungry.

"How ya feeling big guy?" My roommate asks me.

"I'm so hungry." I cry out.

"Aren't you supposed to be on a diet?" He teases me.

"Why the fuck would I be on a diet. This is the mark of a true man!" I say as I slap my gut.

"Well I'm sure this box of donuts won't hurt your fitness assessment next week, and they won't eat themselves." He pulls out a dozen donuts. It feels like I lose control of my body as I instinctively ravage the donuts.

I lean back after finishing off the last donut and let out a loud burp. God I'm stuffed, but I want so much more. I rub my belly, trying to process the snack I just had, so I can make room for more.

"There's plenty more where that came from, big guy."

Credits to bulkgainer92 for the video and for inspiring this story.