#event engineering

[gehetzterfuchs]

[fantastic-nonsense]

however bad of a day you're having, know that it's not nearly as bad as whatever the Crowdstrike security team is going through since waking up this morning

[germesthegenie]

Was looking into Breaker triggers (to try and get a better understanding of Wanton and Annex) and came across this comment from Wildbow with perhaps the funniest possible trigger I’ve seen for a cape

Game so spectacularly bad that you trigger from somehow actually managing to pull the person you like 😭. How do you even manage that, how do you even explain that??

[nebulousmedic]

WHY ARE THE PONIES GAY?!?!??!?

[the-most-humble-blog]

<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.

[jaratedeguadalupe]

i love the trope in tf2 fanfics where the mercs get banned for life in every single establishment they enter

[prokopetz]

The funniest possible outcome of all these Google antitrust disclosures re: deceptively re-writing people's search queries in order to maximise Google's ad revenue would be if the corporations that paid for those ads decide that Google has been defrauding them the whole time. The ultimate "bite each other's dicks off" scenario.

[orangesand-lemons-234]

I'm not sure if trains have to eat, but if they do, I know right well that dinnertime at the Freight shed takes at least an hour every night.

First off, there's an argument every time over who has to set the table, which usually ends with Porter passive-aggressively slamming the cutlery against the table to let everybody in the shed know that he's the one who stepped up and did it.

Then dinner actually begins.

Rusty's always about fifteen minutes late to the meal cause he's out practising, and by the time he gets back, the others have eaten about half his food.

Slick uses like- half a bottle of ketchup and gets in trouble for using that much off Momma. Hydra starts gagging cause he can't stand the smell, and she jokingly shoves a piece of food covered in ketchup in his face and he almost gets sick.

Lumber and Porter start having a petty argument that ends in food being thrown, and Lumber spilling his drink everywhere.

Hydra starts yapping about hydrogen, and Lumber threatens to find a way to shove potatoes in his tank. That shuts him up for a while.

Slick starts at least one major argument a dinner by bringing up a topic none of them agree on that ends in everyone getting in a food fight, including Rusty and Momma. The reason for the argument is forgotten after about ten minutes.

Momma does make them all help clean up afterwards, or else they won't get any ice cream.

[cracklewink]

I know its not canon but I always liked the idea that Flurry Heart grew up to be a normal pony. Never went on any princess-title-earning quest, no grand magical destiny, no real royal responsibilities. Just a normal pony (who happens to be an alicorn) free to enjoy life with her friends and hobbies

[sainz100]

Carlos Sainz | F1 London Live in 2017 | x x x x x

[bsptourist]

gm_tornadoalley

created by Eltra, mil, Commander Dixie original map by RhapidFyre

[fortress-substitution-team]

merry smissmas!! y'all like them bananas?

the team is too busy with their celebration to look at the TV

[feydpauls]

@asiandramanet event 04 ㅡ love is in the air: top 5 side couples. @asiandramanet jan/feb creator bingo — lgbtq+ rep

[gophergal]

TFTober 8 - Defense

[daisywithnomakeup]

Tis my birthday!! 👀

Yo the clock struck 12am, so it's officially ma birthday!!

For this, I'm hoping to draw some peoples' ocs!

Reblog with a clear ref, basis (if they have one) and your oc's personality ^.^

I've also made a new oc which I've put under the cut :3

Her name's Event Horizon and she's a VR S Class.

The lamp resembles a Stargate and its...uh...event horizon lol. The blue, orange & white taken from the chevrons around the different generations of the Stargate portal.