#your characters are good enough

[crymeariveronceagain]

hey i don't know what writer needs to hear this today but you can have characters in your work who exist only to move the plot forward. you can create an oc for a fanfic who exists to ask a question at the right time and is never seen again. you can create a novel and have random characters that exist to move the story. characters are elements of narrative. not every single one has to have a whole backstory and a life fleshed out. sometimes they can just be there for a scene and then never be involved again. isn't that how life works? don't we meet people and then they vanish? aren't our lives simply moments spent to drive forward the plots of others? your character can be pointless. you character can exist in a moment. your character can take up space. your character can exist, even if you don't know their birthday and their mother's favorite song.

characters are not people. you do not have to make them into people unless you want to. you owe them nothing. use characters however you want in your story. develop them as is relevant. otherwise, it literally does not matter.

[formosusiniquis]

When Mike Wheeler, red faced and still faintly tear stained, asks him how he knew he liked both Steve doesn’t know how to tell him it was his sister.

Before Nancy Wheeler it had only been boys. Before Nancy Wheeler Steve had been sure he was gay and knew well enough to keep it to himself; dating around enough to earn himself a protective reputation. Before Nancy Wheeler there’d been Marcus Summers, from the baseball team, during freshman year. Steve had gone to every game, and had been forced to make up excuses about schoolwork and his other commitments when asked why he hadn’t tried out for himself. Before Nancy Wheeler there’d been Tommy Hagan. The summer between seventh and eighth grade had been very kind to Tommy, he was sunkissed and boy next door sweet, Steve had wanted to hold his hand and count the freckles across the bridge of his nose. 

Before Nancy Wheeler there’d been his first love, a boy who only visited one summer, the year Steve turned ten. His name had changed every time they hung out but he’d favored E’s. Eli, Emmett, Elliott, Eric, Excalibur, Excelsior, and once for about an hour Wayne. His hair brushed his chin in pretty brown curls and his big brown eyes were always bright with excitement. He always got storm off mad when any of the other boys they’d played with that summer said he was acting like a girl, E would run off to the woods and Steve would always follow. E always came up with the best games anyway, he didn’t like playing soccer or HORSE or anything else with rules that couldn’t be bent; he preferred imagination games where they were knights or wizards. He didn’t laugh when Steve said he always liked playing house, but never wanted to be the dad because why would he want to be someone who never wanted to spend any time with his kids. E who, while insisting on being called Samwise all day, was his first kiss.

Cause he knows what Mike wants to hear. He’s seen the way Mike and Will have danced around each other since the last portal closed. He’s heard the things Mike has said to and about Will. He’s heard all about the week that Will was in the Upside Down. He’s heard all about the summer of ‘85. He’s heard all about the final off again that seems to officially mark the end of Mike and El romantically. He knows that Mike wants him to say that he’d never even thought about boys before he met Eddie. That there’s just something special about Eddie that makes him want to give up his lady killing ways. That Eddie was different. That it was okay that he was having these scary new thoughts, maybe Will was just an exception.

And Steve doesn’t know how to have that conversation. When he realized he liked both it was a relief, that maybe he could have something normal and wouldn't have to spend his life lying or hiding. 

But Eddie was different. Eddie was special. Eddie was probably it for Steve which is scary in a different way that he’s not ready to touch yet -- not when it’s only been three months.

There’s never been another girl since Nancy Wheeler, not really

There will never be another boy after Eddie Munson.

So he tries to help, as best he can. It’s easier with Eddie there, not quite dozing against his shoulder -- the kid’s emergencies always seem to come so late at night these days. “When I was ten, there was a boy whose name kept changing who decided prince charming should get to kiss his faithful knight. And when I was sixteen, your sister-”

Mike’s goodwill diminishes quickly as his sister gets introduced to the conversation.

“Stevie,” Eddie says. It’s not an admonishment for bringing up Nancy. It’s awestruck and watery. “You remember that?”

“Of course I remember the first boy I ever loved," that word catches up with him a second later. Remember. 

Cause there's Eddie with his riot of brown curls and his Bambi eyes. Eddie, who has explained why soft feminine words chafe against his skin leaving him itchy and anxious. Eddie, who has an Uncle in Hawkins. Eddie who moved to town the summer before he entered high school with a buzzed head and his mother's last name. Eddie who finally settled into an E he liked best.

"Wheeler, here's a tip from me to you," Eddie says, his advice is always better received than Steve's anyway, "if you have to ask you probably already know."

"Straight people don't really spend much time wondering if they aren't really straight," Steve agrees.

They don't rush Mike out the door, a crisis is a crisis and even in the wake of new discoveries Mike deserves to be heard out. Deserves a chance to cry and rage and feel those emotions someplace safe from his Reaganite father -- just as much as Will deserves to have someone who knows what they want come to him, deserves better than experimentation.

They cross the bridge from late into early by the time Mike sets off. The sun is creeping up over the horizon and Mike looks solid, certain; the dawn hints at the man he is growing up to be. Though every instinct of Steve's begs him to drive the kid home, Eddie's soft hand lingering at his hip holds him fast. They wave instead, encouraging Mike to go home and to bed before he does anything; knowing his front bike tire is already pointed toward the Byers-Hopper place.

"The first boy you ever loved, huh, Stevie?" Eddie teases before the door has even managed to click shut.

"And the last, I'm hoping, if I play my cards right."

"You were always pretty good at that. You were the only person that summer who called me by my name, except Wayne."

"It was your name." He knows that's too simple. Knows how hard Eddie has had it, continues to have it. But that summer it had been that simple, Eddie trying on names like shirts each one fitting until they didn't. "For what it's worth, I like Eddie a lot more than Excalibur."

"Oh fuck off, I was going through a fantasy knight phase. Which I know you remember."

"Right a phase, and how much longer is this fantasy 'phase' going to last?"

They're the kind of tired that makes you feel drunk, when Eddie tackles Steve and sends them both to the floor and to giggles. Eddie might not have been his bi awakening, but Steve is pretty fine with him being his everything else.

[fellthemarvelous]

Holy forking shirtballs

I'm choosing violence today. I started this on Twitter, but I'm going to finish my thoughts here like I always do.

But what really blows my mind the most is the way that people look at Aziraphale's "choice" at the end, as if he had one to fucking begin with.

I'm sorry, but Aziraphale knows how messed up Heaven is. He told The Metatron, more than once, that he did not want to go back to Heaven! We can debate what each of us means by "choice" all night because my "choice" and your "choice" might be two different concepts. He could have been strong armed by The Metatron or he could have looked at where things were headed and realized he had no choice but to intervene himself.

You need to ask yourself what Aziraphale has a moral imperative to do.

What do we owe to each other?

Seriously, if you have not watched The Good Place, I recommend you go and watch it, because it absolutely shaped how I've viewed Good Omens 2 since its release.

My levels of frustration with the bad faith mischaracterizations of Aziraphale are off the charts. If you are blaming him for everything, implying that he should have to grovel and that Crowley has a right to hurt him back, you have missed the point of Good Omens entirely.

I defend Aziraphale, but I don't think one of them is more right or wrong than the other. They're equals. They're a group of the two of them, acting and reacting to each other throughout history. They're Alpha Centauri.

I cannot even begin to explain how fucking devastated I felt when Crowley said these words, knowing he was fighting a losing battle. What he said took a lot of courage because he's finally admitting something they've both been too scared to publicly define for 6,000 years. Crowley has had to spend so long with a rough outer shell because he fell and had to hide all of his softness.

The look on his face was one of pure joy when he created that nebula, but I think the fact that he got to share that moment with Aziraphale is what has always stuck with him.

So yeah, seeing Crowley with a broken heart at the end of "Every Day" was sad for me as well.

My brain still lives here!!

But Neil has said that Good Omens 3 is not quiet, gentle, or romantic. I imagine it's going to be more like the the first season in which they are not central to the plot. GO2 will help us make sense of how they ended up where they are when we see the bigger picture with all the other major players involved with GO3.

Aziraphale was still a soldier and accidentally got himself discorporated in his own magic circle in season one. He had a platoon waiting on him to start Armageddon, and he deserted them to go save the world with Crowley instead. Aziraphale is a deserter. I need everyone to remember that. He yeeted himself out of Heaven and sought out Crowley before even locating a body just to warn him about what was happening so they could try to save the world together.

I can't help but think of 1941 and that magician who had been arrested for being a deserter.

Aziraphale disobeyed orders. That took courage but it branded him as a traitor against Heaven. They tried to destroy him for it the same way Hell tried to destroy Crowley for his part in stopping the war.

Aziraphale and Job are the only characters we have seen interacting with God directly. Aziraphale has spoken to God before and he is determined to do so again.

Aziraphale knows Heaven is flawed, but he also knows it's supposed to be good. He wants it to be good. He does not like the way the system works and he wants to make a difference. (And I'm pretty sure he's also determined to talk to God without being intercepted by The Metatron.)

Since when is that a bad thing? I don't get it. And I've had this discussion before.

If you need to change the system by burning the old one to the ground, it's still change, and we don't know what Aziraphale has planned.

It seems to me that people just want to see Aziraphale fail because it would punish him for returning to Heaven instead of running off with Crowley.

Some of y'all take everything Aziraphale says or does and twist those things into malicious anti-Crowley actions because you think the only reason Aziraphale exists is to make Crowley happy, and if he isn't thinking only about Crowley then he's doing something wrong.

Aziraphale does not exist as a plot device to further Crowley's character. They come as a pair. They've been learning from each other for 6,000 years. Crowley challenges Aziraphale just as much as Aziraphale challenges him.

You can be mad at Aziraphale all you want, but villainizing him is gross. Defending Crowley does not mean you have to tear down and mischaracterize Aziraphale anymore than defending Aziraphale means you have to tear down Crowley (but I don't see that happen on nearly the same level it happens to Aziraphale). Stop painting Aziraphale as an abusive partner, for fuck sake.

Aziraphale knows there are flaws in the system. He wants to make a difference, and since he has seen that Gabriel can change, then maybe the whole system can. He has to at least try, and if he can succeed then maybe he and Crowley can stop hiding and finally be together without having to look over their shoulders all the time.

Why is that a bad thing? He's just as protective of Crowley as Crowley is of him!

But don't forget that Aziraphale's wing was covering Adam and Eve too. As much as a wants to protect Crowley, he has a moral imperative to keep humanity safe as well.

He sent Adam and Eve into the unknown with a flaming sword so they could protect themselves.

As much as he wants to be with Crowley, there are 8 billion people on Earth heading toward the Second Coming and Judgment Day. They'll work together to fight alongside humanity in the end. Aziraphale should not have to humiliate himself just to earn Crowley's forgiveness. That's a rancid notion.

The Resurrectionist was a whole ass moral dilemma for Aziraphale, which is why I brought up The Good Place earlier, but that's a post for a different time.

Aziraphale has his own motivations and they're just as important as Crowley's, and they don't have to be chalked up to Aziraphale being the bad guy. Weird, I know, but shades of grey.

"To the world."

[how-are-you-so-perfect-dear]

"where are your friends at?"

"my friends?"

"yeah. kipperlilly copperkettle--"

"oh, my adventuring party."

thats the difference between the rat grinders and the bad kids. the bad kids love each other and are genuinely best friends.

the rat grinders are just in an adventuring party together.

[dreamwinged]

sometimes honestly if you're feeling invalid/anxious/any sort of negative feeling about your selfship , you just have to go back to canon. and i know it seems like such an easy answer but you really do have to. it is always SO comforting to me when i'm feeling bad about things to just see my f/os normally, without any fan interpretation or characterization or opportunities for jealousy involved; to remember why i fell in love with them and that no one can take that specific experience away from me. that other people's thoughts on the character don't matter because at the end of the day, none of it has any bearing on canon and no one can "know" a character any better than anyone else. it really really does work and i wish id realized it sooner

[significant-ace-nnoyance]

2024 in: annabeth chase stan era

2024 out: OVERLOOKING AND ERASING ANNABETH'S CHILDISHNESS, POOR SELF-ESTEEM ISSUES, LACK OF SELF WORTH, MASK OVER HER EMOTIONS, ETC.

SHE IS NOT AN ADULT SHE IS NOT A COLD ROBOT SHE DOES NOT HAVE FULL CONFIDENCE IN HERSELF ALL THE TIME THAT IS LITERALLY JUST WHAT SHES PROJECTING TO EVERYONE AS A DEFENSE MECHANISM IN REALITY IF YOU READ MARK OF ATHENA IF YOU READ BETWEEN THE LINES IF YOU WATCH LEAHS ACTING SHES JUST A TINY SCARED CHILD THAT DOESNT KNOW IF SHES DOING HER BEST AND IS TERRIFIED OF FAILURE OR LETTING PEOPLE IN AND IT ONLY GETS WORSE AS SHE AGES AND LOSES MORE PEOPLE SHE TRUSTED AND LOVED

[oldkamelle]

Still accepting Ideas? If so, Spy asking advice on Sniper on how to tell Scout that he is his dad.

[doodleodds]

Happy Valentines, Akira. Happy Valentines, Asshole.

If you can’t read what Akechi’s secondary inner-dialogue says cause I obscured it too much behind his regular dialogue, here’s a transcription in panel order: Hello, you fucking- Ah- Hello, Akira! Fuck off, why should I tell you- Just a soda- there’s a new flavor.

I don’t want your shitty gift. Oh- haha! You’re so sweet.

I hope I choke. They’re lovely, thank you.

Like hell. Likewise. There’s no way it’s just a coincidence. Still though, it’s a funny coincidence.

[lesbian-sunshim]

support me on patreon or leave a tip

rare pairs for your consideration - starlight x discord

[gofancyninjaworld]

OPM Volume 29 Covers and Illustrations

Outer covers

Inner covers

Inner material

All translations in this section courtesy of u/Diego-Aguilar35

Translations:

Author page: "I'm currently undergoing special training to get used to working on several works in parallel."

Disclaimer page

Volume title: Rejuvenated Offence

Synopsis: The leader of the Monster Association, Gyoro Gyoro, is revealed to be a female psychic named Psykos. Psykos fuses with Monster King Orochi and gains even more power, gaining the upper hand on Tatsumaki... At that time, Drive Knight and Genos join the battle and support Tatsumaki. Seeing this, the other S-class heroes became inspired and began to fight in a coordinated manner for the first time to make up for their inferiority. Meanwhile, Saitama and Flash discover a huge dark space in the underground labyrinth...

Index: Ch. 144: Abyss Ch. 145: Stones and Diamonds Ch. 146: Rejuvenated Offence Ch. 147: How to Behave. Ch. 148: Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity. Ch. 149: Silver Fang. Ch. 150: The Black Shine

Bonus images

[jessepinwheel]

my very serious writing advice for people who are trying to write more morally complex characters is to stop caring about their morality and focus instead on their individual motivations

it’s hard to articulate exactly what I mean, but the essence of it is basically: when a character does a murder, not only do I not care about whether they’re justified in doing so, it’s straight-up irrelevant. a character’s moral standing from some nebulous universal standard has no bearing on the plot or their interactions with other characters and has no use in the story for me as a writer. what does matter is why the character thought they were justified and then if it comes up to other characters, what they think about it.

you can obviously think about your characters’ morality but it’s not your job as a writer to interpret your stories for your readers and tell them how to judge your characters. your readers can see the evidence for themselves and draw their own conclusions. your job is just to understand why a character is motivated to act in a certain way and have it make sense

focusing on character motivations is a much more versatile framework than trying to give them specific personality traits or moral alignments, and frankly more useful to understand why a character would do a certain thing instead of just what they do. that way when something fucked up happens and your character starts acting differently, there’s an actual logical reason for it that isn’t you forcing characters to do things because it’s what’s required to make the plot go

when you write your characters with the understanding that people are not static and they act differently under different circumstances, complexity in character and morality follows naturally.

[kenmaiii]

after two years i finally draw the favorite

[wild-flowerhoney]

sirius and regulus run away AU but make it moonwater/moonseeker

they do go to the potters and sirius immediately fits in, they're a family of eccentric extroverts and that's exactly the kind of people sirius adores - regulus doesn't, though. he still has hang ups about james, euphemia is Amazing but he's truly not comfortable with her expansive nature and fleamont is just barely better.

anyway remus stays for a bit during summer and the plan is to bring him home (the lupins dont have a floo connection) and stay for dinner there. except. hope is immediately enamoured with the tiny, sarcastic teenager standing moodily behind his older brother - reg is quiet and looking at the bookcases more than at them but still managing to snark and jokingly insult the others in a way that makes her genuinely laugh. and remus is so clearly fond of him, the two of them going back and forth easily.

and regulus likes her too - hope is warm but quiet, motherly but in a subtle way. and lyall is gruff and clearly doesn't know what to do with all these teenagers but he still looks at his family with love even if he doesn't know how to show it. they're a little broken, a little less clean and polished than the potters are. and regulus likes it that way, prefers their quaint little home (with the yellow paint peeling off of the old wooden front door) to the splendour of potter manor.

he visits often, during that summer. until he's pretty much only going back for sirius (living without his brother, even after everything, would be too unnatural) because he's got his own bed at the lupins', his own bookcase and space in remus' closet.

(sirius knows his younger brother. he pushes reg to accept the offer of staying over more often, even if it feels weird to have breakfast without him outside of hogwarts. he stays at the lupins' himself, as much as he can, just to give reg more opportunities. sirius has a mother in euphemia, regulus wont let himself admit the same about hope.

sirius has only ever wanted happiness, for his little brother. he wont let regulus give up on it for his sake. )

this is all to say: reg at home with the lupins, building a close friendship with remus and falling in love with him through late night talks and mornings spent together and long nights crying softly under the light of the full moon - hope has two sons now, both happier than they've ever been. lyall watching his wife and son welcome another boy into the family is exactly the kind of shock he needs to start proving that he can be part of it too. remus and regulus being loved and loving in return. life has never been so good.

[jasontoddenthusiastt]

The recent influx of “Jason is obviously a bad person. Look at how many people he’s killed” posts is 2x more idiotic because it runs on the same premise as “Jason is a cop symbol”. There’s an infinitely more famous example right next to him that people ignore entirely.

In the real world killing people is a felony, just as vigilantism as a whole is too. The same way Batman is a fictional character in a fake world, Jason is not part of the real world either. I think if you’re above age 10 you should’ve moved past the stage of trying to point fingers to try to determine a right vs wrong way to do illegal vigilantism in a world like the dcu while pretending it’s a perfect model of a real society lol.

Batman enjoys maiming and crippling people (bad things). Why is he working with cops and throwing drug addicts into prison after beating the tar out of them (bad things). It’s proven in the real world that that does not do anything to rehabilitate them and in fact costs the government billions of dollars and actually worsens the war on drugs (higher mortality & crime rates, and increased spread of infectious diseases). Yet since the authors constantly spoon feed you lines about how heroic he is people just eat that shit up, disregarding the fact that it might be utter horseshit irl and his morals wouldn’t make much sense either.

If ‘character doing bad thing’ is synonymous with ‘character can’t possibly be a good person’, then that should negate the idea that Batman’s biggest trait is compassion (although I think it already does for other in-story reasons lol, re: he tends to be classist and discriminatory towards people who commit petty crimes, calling them degrading names like “trash” and “bottom-feeders”. No amount of donating to charity makes you a good person if at your core you see poor/homeless people as lesser and you get a kick out of mocking them).

There’s far more evidence of Jason possessing all the good traits the authors keep begging you to believe Batman has. He patiently fed and cared for his dying mother all alone as a small baby/child. He literally fed groups of homeless people like a mother hen everyday while he himself was homeless, brain dead, and running on basic survival instincts. After finally regaining higher functioning in his brain and discovering the joker was still alive, one of the first things he cried about was the countless number of other innocent people dead at the hands of his own killer. If the only justification you have for why Jason’s a bad person is that he kills, that’s a weak and baseless argument for obvious reasons.

[achingly-shy]

THE QUARTER QUELL ALLIANCE (insp.) — requested by @panemgif

[magnetic-rose]

i think some people reaction's towards gale also like... has a lot to do with how fandom perceives redemption, which has increasingly become in a more negative light in recent years. there's so much talk about "x character doesn't deserve redemption because they did the bad thing" but it's like... at what point does that become too extreme?

because what gale did was shitty, yes. but his punishment was to isolate himself from society while slowly dying with a bomb in his chest. and when he's told that he needs to die to redeem himself, he readily accepts it. at no point does he blame anyone but himself for his mistake, and he accepts his impending doom pretty gracefully.

and i've been in fandom for a long time. i've seen how fans treat morally flawed characters, characters who make huge mistakes, villainous characters who try to turn their ways around. there's a very weird push back against it from a certain crowd. and what's interesting about gale is he's one of those characters who we meet AFTER he committed his big sin. he's been living in penance for it. he's accepted the punishment, he's willing to die, he even says that mystra is in the right. he makes no excuses for himself.

and yet that's still not redemptive enough for some people. he's still an asshole who deserves death. idk, i feel like sometimes i'm playing a different game lmao.