#appreciation exercises

[wise-life]

Top 10 Ways to Improve Communication in Your Marriage From Scripture

Effective communication is the cornerstone of a strong, healthy marriage. As a marriage coach, I often turn to biblical principles to guide couples in improving their communication. Here are the top 10 ways to enhance communication in your marriage, inspired by Scripture, along with practical tips and expanded story examples for implementation. Improving communication in marriage is essential…

[mannequinswithkillappeal]

assad zaman • prem

[recurring-polynya]

Sorry to be insane about Soul Society once again, but does anyone actually know anything about those boards they are always banging on whenever there's an emergency or a wartime exemption or whatnot?

This thing:

Does it have a name? A historical precedent?

I wasted a portion of my morning trying to figure this out, and the closest thing I could find was the hanshō (半鐘), which is a bell that was struck with a hammer and were used for fire alarms. (You can read more at this interesting article about fires and firefighting in Edo-era Tokyo; there's a section about halfway down specifically about the bells).

That's a bell though. The thing above is definitely wood; I left it as a video so you can listen to the banging. If you want to listen to what an actual hanshō sounds like, here's a news piece about the one at the U.S. National Arboretum. There is a lot of bell ringing in that video but they ring the actual hanshō about about 1:25, and it's got kind of a muted reverberation, but it definitely goes "bong", rather than the distinctly wooden "clack clack clack" from the video above.

At some point while I was down deep in this rabbit hole, I learned that most hanshō were melted down for their metal during WWII. Does the Seireitei have a metal shortage? I feel like there is not a lot of metal/mining in Soul Society generally and while this might be fun enrichment for my terrible brain, someone chose to draw these bang-y boards all the time and I am absolutely sure it was not for the purposes of alluding to Soul Society's otherwise-uncommented upon metal shortage.

There was also the weird slide-y board, cursive alert tiles that B3 posted about once. We saw it exactly once during that early period where Kubo was absolutely wilding on Soul Society worldbuilding. Weirdly enough, if you look up that part in the anime (the opening moments of episode 21), you can hear a bell being struck in the background. Maybe they just liked the wooden sound better??

In fact, the sound effects they used in the manga were "BONG BONG BONG" and "KLANG KLANG KLANG."

I don't even know anymore.

[astral-herald]

it should not be so fun and easy to rewrite season 2...not even just at the fanfic level, but an entire script restructuring. and it benefits every character imo.

[wisteriagoesvroom]

sorry you guys are all talking about his posture and all i'm literally able to think about is the sleeper build. 'cus HELLO????

and bonus: lil guy deer prancing footage

[x]

[feloire]

[art-appreciation-dog]

Neck muscles from different angles by Shape Foundations

[keferon]

Bro, momu just updated

WAIT WHAT I DIDNT GET ANY NOTIFICATIONS WAIT WAI

[katapotato55]

how to make your writing be remembered forever and possibly be well loved.

(incredibly stupid and silly fanfiction line at the end of this post) I know that title is incredibly daunting but listen, its very simple. you ready?

MAKE STRONG CHARACTERS

"but kat! surely its not that simple! " nononono listen. bear with me. I want you to think of your favorite thing. Now ask: what do you remember the most about the thing you love? I will go first:

I love team fortress 2. and guess what: this game has been around since 2007, and was in development hell since before I was even born. The game has been around for 16 fucking years. And guess what? in the strong year of 2023 team fortress 2 Is STILL getting memed about. and do you want to know the crazy part? the character designs to the naked eye are not special at all. ok sure from a designer standpoint, these are very well designed characters made so that you can easily tell who they are based on their silhouette. but from the average joe.... tf2 is iconic but overall it looks ok. it doesn't seem special to a stranger to tf2. look at this completely random and arbitrary example of a game in the same genre:

I don't know shit about the characters in overwatch. Yeah i have a BASIC idea on what their personality is like based on voice lines and some videos i guess... but in-game they just exist. these characters are brightly colored, they have beautiful unique designs, hell they have even more diversity such as robots and people from other cultures! but i don't remember shit about these characters. Maybe I remember the ice lady and tracer, but nothing else. and yeah part of overwatch struggling right now is incompetant development, BUT: The characters in team fortress 2 are SO remember-able because the characters have such a vibrant personality. I am an orange box owner, its been a decade and a half and I am still remembering this game and enjoying art about it.

"but kat! that is a comedy game! Overwatch is a very serious game! are you saying comedy is needed to make a character more noticeable?" no. though I think allowing your characters to lighten up every now and then would humanize them. Not full on goofy, just give them something that makes them likeable. and if you cant do that, you can STILL make a compelling character even though they are mostly seriousness. I have an even more awfully thought out example:

kung fu panda is a masterclass in making a serious comedic movie somehow work. Master Oogway.... he isn't a comedic character at all. Yeah we made memes about him, but ignoring that, he is a wise and resourceful person. He is at calm and has faith in this intuition. there are a lot of characters like this. What makes Oogway stand out is that he is also a little bit kooky and sassy.

this youtube clip sums up what I mean. It is a funny line, it fits the character, and It doesn't ruin the seriousness of the moment. Some of the most successful series in history have something about them that has appealed to people. In my opinion: characters with strong personality and interesting traits is always a good way to ensure your writing is successful. The second most important is the characters bouncing off of each other in terms of their chemistry with each other. There is a reason why I spent years playing the first Destiny game and all of the DLC, but I remember fuck all about the characters. I think I maybe remember the bootleg star lord robot guy.

A writing exercise

here is an exercise to get you in the spirit of character making. step 1- get a random character from a random bit of media. In this case let me bring you master Oogway. Step 2- Get a completely different character from a completely unrelated series. I am going to give you Scout from team fortress 2. step 3- write a random ass thing about them interacting. Think about how the characters would react to each other and why. Think about each characters values in life and think about how they would bond and conflict with each other. Think about characters similar to the character they met in the past and how they reacted then, and if they have never interacted, make something interesting with it. Step 4- keep experimenting. Once you get into the spirit you can apply this to any new character you could want to make anyways thats it byeee- "arent you going to do that ?" do what? "make a writing thing about oogway and scout. " ........

Scout: let's go turtle you got nothing on my speed- Oogway: The one who first resorts to violence shows that he has no more arguments. Scout: that sounds like chicken talk! come on tough guy let me have it- Oogway then proceeds to make scout eat shit before vanishing in a cloud of cherry blossoms and dust from the desert. If this post isn't popular I want you to know my dignity was lost for nothing.

[benevolenterrancy]

Leong Lili, a Huan Hua disciple OC by @fixation-central

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

in general i’ve really really started to hate the ’omg siblings 💞’ thing in response to ships because you can just say you don’t ship them . i feel like 9 times out of 10 people just want to turn the ship ’taboo’ in their minds so they can sort of sneer at the people who do ship them or even just feel comfortable Not shipping them and it’s like YOU DON’T HAVE TO SHIP ANYTHING . YOU CAN JUST SAY YOU THINK THEY HAVE ZERO ROMANTIC CHEMISTRY

[rueclfer]

Erm hai rue… I need ur advice !

I’m an aspiring writer and I loooove writing so much. It brings me so much joy knowing that people like what I write, however my writers block has been super bad lately. To combat this, I’ve been using chatgpt for ideas. I’m not making it write a whole fanfic, but I ask it for prompts and stuff. Is that okay?? I import my fics into the bot and ask how to finish it, or like I said, ask it for prompts. I just feel bad because writing is a creative outlet for a lot of people and I feel like I’m a complete poser.

You don’t have to answer, but I’d really appreciate if you did!

generative ai in any capacity is not okay and a fanfic is never worth the damage that it causes to the environment and to your integrity as a writer

aside from the poserness, it's important to realize that writing is a skill that has to be built and in order to build it you have to take the time and dedication to practice, study, and struggle. (the struggle is the most important!!!! you can't get better if you don't work around roadblocks!!! that is law!!!!!!) (you also need to take an extra step to reevaluate your relationship with writing if you find yourself doing it for the validation of the people more than for your own enjoyment)

i am a firm believer that in order to combat writer's block, you need to do anything and everything BUT write. -> read. watch a movie/show. listen to music. play a video game. go for a walk. journal. day dream. get out of your head and draw inspiration from other forms of media/art !!

there are also many resources and blogs dedicated to writing prompts so i encourage you research a bit

@creativepromptsforwriting -> this one i scroll through whenever i feel a bit at a wall but there's fr so many!!

[ozcarma]

In light of the TGWDLM remount I’m tempted to make a compilation of my favorite parts of various student and community theater productions that have been uploaded onto YouTube…

[affixjoy]

[binart]

*positive vibes intentions and wishes from the other side of earth being sent to you*

Hope you're doing well and if you dont right now i hope you will tomorrow!!! :)))

<33 THANK U FRIEND! i am getting better every day i think 💪

[rustingcat]

Have you ever wondered if the life you lead right now was altered by a wish you never knew you made? Like to have your closest friend be your actual sibling, only to never grow as close as you once were. Or maybe you wished to fix a disability or some part of your appearance that bothered you all of your life, only to never even acknowledge the change. Maybe you wished for a normal life and now burdened with mundane problems of your new existence, or purhaps you wished for some interest in your life only to lead a life wondering what normalcy is like.

Maybe it is far better than the life you led previously, maybe it's worse, and purhaps in just simply different. But as the wish was made and your life had changed, you would never know.