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no animal was harmed during the making of this video. not one. for the few minutes that we were shooting film, the guns of each hunter fell silent. the industrial bolt throwers observed a moment's peace and the jaws of every predator hung softly open. no fish bit any hook and the bait worms held off on drowning only until the cameras stopped. the tails of ruminants ceased to flick just as their attendant flies, in unison, landed on their flanks to catch their tiny breaths. a spider instantly stopped winding silk around a wasp, patiently waiting for the caesura to end. a young veterinarian paused with the syringe in their hand. somewhere, a colicky baby stopped biting its mother's nipple and nursed happily for the very first time. we're sorry. we're sorry it couldn't have been longer. we didn't know this would happen.

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— Traci Brimhall, Dear Eros

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frozen in time

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im in the middle of your picture, lying in the reeds

prints available on inprnt

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one sonnet of summer by W.S. Merwin

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Zoom In, Don’t Glaze Over: How to Describe Appearance Without Losing the Plot

You’ve met her before. The girl with “flowing ebony hair,” “emerald eyes,” and “lips like rose petals.” Or him, with “chiseled jawlines,” “stormy gray eyes,” and “shoulders like a Greek statue.”

We don’t know them.

We’ve just met their tropes.

Describing physical appearance is one of the trickiest — and most overdone — parts of character writing. It’s tempting to reach for shorthand: hair color, eye color, maybe a quick body scan. But if we want a reader to see someone — to feel the charge in the air when they enter a room — we need to stop writing mannequins and start writing people.

So let’s get granular. Here’s how to write physical appearance in a way that’s textured, meaningful, and deeply character-driven.

1. Hair: It’s About Story, Texture, and Care

Hair says a lot — not just about genetics, but about choices. Does your character tame it? Let it run wild? Is it dyed, greying, braided, buzzed, or piled on top of her head in a hurry?

Good hair description considers:

Texture (fine, coiled, wiry, limp, soft)

Context (windblown, sweat-damp, scorched by bleach)

Emotion (does she twist it when nervous? Is he ashamed of losing it?)

Flat: “Her long brown hair framed her face.”

Better: “Her ponytail was too tight, the kind that whispered of control issues and caffeine-fueled 4 a.m. library shifts.”

You don’t need to romanticise it. You need to make it feel real.

2. Eyes: Less Color, More Connection

We get it: her eyes are violet. Cool. But that doesn’t tell us much.

Instead of focusing solely on eye color, think about:

What the eyes do (do they dart, linger, harden?)

What others feel under them (seen, judged, safe?)

The surrounding features (dark circles, crow’s feet, smudged mascara)

Flat: “His piercing blue eyes locked on hers.”

Better: “His gaze was the kind that looked through you — like it had already weighed your worth and moved on.”

You’re not describing a passport photo. You’re describing what it feels like to be seen by them.

3. Facial Features: Use Contrast and Texture

Faces are not symmetrical ovals with random features. They’re full of tension, softness, age, emotion, and life.

Things to look for:

Asymmetry and character (a crooked nose, a scar)

Expression patterns (smiling without the eyes, habitual frowns)

Evidence of lifestyle (laugh lines, sun spots, stress acne)

Flat: “She had a delicate face.”

Better: “There was something unfinished about her face — as if her cheekbones hadn’t quite agreed on where to settle, and her mouth always seemed on the verge of disagreement.”

Let the face be a map of experience.

4. Bodies: Movement > Measurement

Forget dress sizes and six packs. Think about how bodies occupy space. How do they move? What are they hiding or showing? How do they wear their clothes — or how do the clothes wear them?

Ask:

What do others notice first? (a presence, a posture, a sound?)

How does their body express emotion? (do they go rigid, fold inwards, puff up?)

Flat: “He was tall and muscular.”

Better: “He had the kind of height that made ceilings nervous — but he moved like he was trying not to take up too much space.”

Describing someone’s body isn’t about cataloguing. It’s about showing how they exist in the world.

5. Let Emotion Tint the Lens

Who’s doing the describing? A lover? An enemy? A tired narrator? The emotional lens will shape what’s noticed and how it’s described.

In love: The chipped tooth becomes charming.

In rivalry: The smirk becomes smug.

In mourning: The face becomes blurred with memory.

Same person. Different lens. Different description.

6. Specificity is Your Superpower

Generic description = generic character. One well-chosen detail creates intimacy. Let us feel the scratch of their scarf, the clink of her earrings, the smudge of ink on their fingertips.

Examples:

“He had a habit of adjusting his collar when he lied — always clockwise, always twice.”

“Her nail polish was always chipped, but never accidentally.”

Make the reader feel like they’re the only one close enough to notice.

Describing appearance isn’t just about what your character looks like. It’s about what their appearance says — about how they move through the world, how others see them, and how they see themselves.

Zoom in on the details that matter. Skip the clichés. Let each description carry weight, story, and emotion. Because you’re not building paper dolls. You’re building people.

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salvage by Hedgie Choi

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hi it’s lottielee hours again 💔

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“i feel it so deeply in my bones” except it’s taissa’s determination, shauna’s rage, lottie’s unwellness, van’s loyalty, travis’s grief, jackie’s insecurity, laura lee’s dedication, mari’s sarcasm, misty’s loneliness, akilah’s kindness, and natalie’s tragedy

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laura lee / ethel cain, "sun bleached flies"

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day 28 - pick an actor and draw them

i owe my life to @yellowjacketsfashion for this one their work is insane

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TARAMIA !?!? HELLO?!?! HOW HAVE I NEVER THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE YOU ARE A FUCKING GENIUS. I need to sit down

Oh thank god I can finally talk about these two. It’s the imperfect victim vs. imperfect victim duos that always get to me.

So Tara and Mia manage to be very similar and different at the same time. The main place they intersect is in the people writing them. Mia’s arc is flawed but she’s still consistently treated like a kid and they make a point to say that everything that happened to Mia is not her fault. Tara never gets the same kindness.

(Green Arrow 2001 #2 / Teen Titans: Judas Contract)

Unlike Mia, Tara gets the full villain treatment. Reading the interviews about her, it’s so fascinating to me how Wolfman and Perez really did not care about her! At all!! Intentionally making Tara smoke to imply that she’s “an irredeemable bad girl!” And instead just creating a clearly troubled girl? Check. Tara’s unhinged levels of loyalty towards Slade being used in order to prove that she’s impossible to save? Just giving off the impression of a grooming victim? Yeah.

Interview found here.

Where Mia was able to become a hero, Tara was cast aside as a villain. I think that ideally Mia would hear about Tara from stories by the Titans and the alarm bells would go off. When you are being groomed the person grooming you often makes themselves appear more formidable than they really are either as a manipulation tactic (I can make you feel safe. Let your guard down around me and I will become the true monster) or as a threat. I think that Mia would see this and understand what it felt like to be young and scared.

I wish I could say that the titans would be empathetic towards Tara after defeating her, but that’d be a lie. In their defense: Donna was dating a 29 year old when she was 18-19, she had her own issues going on. While Dick is sympathetic towards characters like Donna (though he has so many problems with his own love life anything he says is lovingly hypocritical) that sympathy clearly does not extend towards Tara. Kory is far from naive regarding relationships but NTT #16 shows that she is also a victim of horrible taste - and an alien. Raven sensed Bad Vibes from Tara and Bad Vibes from Slade but she was also raised by monks. In my heart I know that Vic was fine with none of this. Gar shows the most compassion for Tara - one of his few redeeming traits - but everyone else hates him for that for no fucking reason.

I know almost nothing about Joey.

(New Teen Titans: Games)

Of course there’s more titans by the time Mia joins (Cassie, Kon, Bart, and Tim, sort of Rose) but the narrative hates teenage girls so the narrative of Tara Markov is, how Wolfman and Perez put it:

“Anyone who thought after seeing how truly bad she was that we would find a way of redeeming her was being a little naïve. We wanted her to be as much a viper in the garden as we could.”

How fucked up would this be for Mia and Rose. You see a girl that reminds you of yourself, but unlike you, everyone hates her. She’s a story for new members to gossip at and croon about how stupid the originals must have been to let a freak like her on the team. It was inevitable, really. 

Two things to know about Mia Dearden:

She has come so far in her journey as a survivor. And her openness as sexual assault survivor and as someone with HIV is one of the best parts of her character.

(Green Arrow 2001 #45)

2. The perfect victim does not exist.

(Green Arrow 2001 #11) 

Mia gives speeches to educate people on HIV. She’s too scared to tell the Titans she has it because she doesn’t want them to judge her. Mia’s a rape survivor, and she’s hypersexual as a result - something that is rarely ever talked about despite being extremely common.

Mia’s journey is good because it isn’t linear. Contrast this with Tara;

(Deathstroke 2016 #27) 

Tara’s journey has also never been linear. She was groomed (like Mia) and never truly recovered in the way Mia could. She will always be a warning to do proper background checks, she will always be the villain because she’s “impossible” to redeem. Personally I don’t even think she needs to be redeemed, I just think she needs to kiss a girl and murder Slade. 

This is a long way of saying that I want them to meet. Maybe if Mia got to stay with the Titans for longer she could run into Tara, they learn about each other and it fixes absolutely nothing because Tara is bitter as fuck about why a girl so similar to her was given a chance but she got none of them.

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intifada incantation: poem #8 for b.b.L. by june jordan

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acceptance speech after setting the world record in goosebumps by Andrea Gibson

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freedom or freedom?

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queen of hearts