What if he only managed to get Greg home.
a fools guide to not wanting to die anymore
by me, a fool who doesnt wanna die anymore
- never make a suicide joke again. yes this includes “i wanna die” as a figure of speech. swear off of it. actually make an effort to change how you think about things.
- find something to compliment someone for at least 4 times a day. notice the little things about the world that make you happy, and use that to make other people happy.
- talk to people. initiate conversation as often as you possibly can. keep your mind busy and you wont have to worry anymore
- picture the bad intrusive thoughts in youe head as an edgy 13 year old and tell them to go be emo somewhere else
- if someone makes you feel bad most of the time, stop talking to them. making yourself hang out with people who drain you is self harm. stop it.
… 8|
That’s some pretty good advice. I don’t know what’s left of my humor after ‘guess I’ll just die’ jokes but it’s worth a shot.
Personally i went from “guess I’ll die” jokes to “IF I HAVE TO BE HERE FOR 5 MORE MINUTES I PROMISE YOU I WILL BUY JUST, AN ARRAY OF CLOTHES.” and other wild hyperbolic stuff. Just replace the death part with something ridiculous and off topic. Its very entertaining
This also works with calling myself things like stupid, worthless, trash, etc. Even if you do this jokingly to yourself, your brain still believes it, and keeps up the cycle. Seriously, I found that when I stopped saying these things about myself, even jokingly, it made a massive difference.
Here’s a tip I picked up from a friend that’s helped me a lot — replace self deprecating jokes with ironically self aggrandizing jokes
Like every time I trip and fall, instead of saying “l’m just a disaster human” I say “I’m the epitome of grace and beauty”
Or like, when I draw a picture I’m not 100% happy with, instead of saying “my art is trash” I say something like “you know I think it’s time we replaced the Mona Lisa”
When you do that you get to make a joke, but you’re ALSO getting practice building yourself up, y’know?
And eventually it becomes a reflex and you get so used to it that you can say nice stuff about yourself even when you AREN’T joking
This is so important
Older forms of English kept Latin’s gender-specific suffixes -tor and -trix; tor is for men and trix is for women. So a male pilot is an aviator, a female pilot is an aviatrix. A male fighter is a gladiator, a female fighter is a gladiatrix.
This contrasts with the modern system, where tor is for both men and women, and trix are for kids.
YOU COME INTO MY HOUSE
I have made a mistake
I refuse to believe this exists
I am OFFENDED
THIS IS ABSOLUTELY BANGIN!!!!! @purple-haze-feedback
Harry disappears from the wizarding world for a little while after the fall of Voldemort and only like Ron Hermione and Ginny know where he’s gone
but he’s traveling. he considered backpacking Europe, but then he realized he’d had enough of camping for at least twenty years, so he teaches himself to drive and pulls enough strings to get himself an American drivers’ license and and then he’s off on a roadtrip in a beat-up car that’s still fast as anything. he doesn’t use magic if he can help it because it feels tainted, feels like it belongs to the war, feels like it marks him out again as someone with power and responsibility and the weight of a world on his shoulders. and for now he wants to find out what it is not to be a world-saving wizard, but just to be Harry.
and he meets a lot of strangers (he figures it’s safe enough picking up hitchhikers when they’re more than likely muggles and he’s got his wand if anything bad happens) and he learns what it’s like to be just another face, another car on the road and he learns all sorts of stuff on the radio, tries every genre out there. and it’s nice to listen to stuff that isn’t specifically designed to remind him of the wizarding world, but he finds so much of it surprisingly relatable and sometimes he just breaks down sobbing at the wheel and has to pull over.
and one of the hitchhikers he picks up is a veteran, and Harry doesn’t tell him much but he does say that he’s been a soldier, too, and it’s hard adjusting to a life that you never thought would exist because things were so hard that you could not imagine yourself after. hard to think about settling down and marrying the girl you thought you’d die loving. hard to think that not everyone around you is an enemy. were you a prisoner of war? the veteran asks. or undercover? both, says Harry. and lost, not knowing whether I was on the run or on a mission that was taking a year. I got back alive in the end but something—something’s definitely dead, you know?
how old are you, says the veteran. I’m eighteen, says Harry. the veteran raises his eyebrows. but they both know that some armies, some wars, don’t care about your age.
I think the dead thing is me, Harry says one day, when he’s going seventy in a fifty-five mile zone and the sun is setting in their eyes. when I killed the enemy, I killed myself.
and the veteran looks at him for a very long moment and Harry slows down and looks back at him and at last the man says, no. no, you lived. and you’re going to keep living, son, and one day you’ll be ready to marry that girl, if you love her, and now that you’ve got out of the war, it’s time to get the war out of you.
(they almost have a wreck when Harry pulls over to the side of the road, gets out, sits in the grass and laughs through his tears. flowers start to spring up around him and he feels the magic in his core, but this time it’s peaceful and pure and fun. unspoiled. and he knows it won’t always feel this way but for now things are leaking out of him, joyful things, because he is the boy who lived again, the boy who lived after the war.)
Webcomics w/ Black Leads
I was wondering how many webcomics there were out there with black protagonists (for my own reference). Then I figured plenty of other folks would love to see a list. So heeeeere we go! (Please reblog and add more!)
AGENTS OF THE REALM by Mildred Louis
NIBI by Gyimah Gariba
DEMON STREET by Aliza Layne
VIBE by Dan Ciurczak
BALDERDASH by Victoria Goog
STAR TRIP by Gisele Jobateh
SCHOOL SPIRIT (FRESH ROMANCE) by Kate Leth & Arielle Jovellanos
ALL OUR CUTS AND BRUISES by My Sjögren Blücher
STEVE’S STORY (KHAOS KOMICS) by Tab Kimpton
DEMON HUNTER KAIN by Burrell Gill Jr.
SAFE HAVENS by Bill Holbrook
THE SUBSTITUTES by Myisha Haynes
VALOROUS TALES by Dashawn Mahone
M.F.K. by Nilah Magruder
THE IMMORTAL NADIA GREENE by Jamal Campbell
PRINCESS LOVE PON by Shauna J. Grant
AS THE CROW FLIES by Melanie Gillman
SHADOWEYES by Sophie Campbell
CAN’T LOOK BACK by Sophie Campbell
STREETCROWS by Dieselhands
ORDER OF THE STICK by Rich Burlew
DOLLHOUSE by Ray Nadine
BASEMENT DWELLERS by Leland Goodman
SNAKES AND LADDERS by BriAnna Haley
ARCHIVAL QUALITY by Ivy and Steenz
NAMESAKE by Isabelle Melançon and Megan Lavey-Heaton
MAHOU JOSEI CHIMAKA by KaiJu
MISSING MONDAY by Elle Skinner
CRASH AND BURN by Finnaeus
OLYMPUS OVERDRIVE by Milky and JoJo
TODD ALLISON & THE PETUNIA VIOLET by Nozmo
GLOOMVERSE by L.O.P.
PRETTY HEART BOUQUET by E Hetrick Jackson
RANDOM BATTLES by J.D. Benefield
BAJO-MANO by Talula Bertram
FASCIST FRIENDS by Erin Lux
Mosscreek Divide by Jake Myler
GALAXYS FOR HIRE by Shawn DePasquale, Sherard Jackson, Whitney Cook
OUTGROUP by Maddie Chaffer
MONSTER LANDS by James Nelson
BOUNCE by Chuck Collins
SEVEN by Davis Ketterer
RUTH & ANNABEL RUIN EVERYTHING by Chelsea McAlarney
Deak Sledge by Mike Williams
DICEBOX by Jenn Manley Lee
ENDLING by Jonathan Larsen and Cecilia Latella
LOVE! LOVE! FIGHTING! by Sharean Morishita
RESCUE ME by Sharean Morishita
THE WYVERNS by Dragon Bros Media
GODSLAVE by Meaghan Carter
ERSTWHILE by Various Creators
ROCK AND RIOT by Chelsey Furedi
SCARFS by Mike Kirby
ANIMOSITY SONATA by Olivia Smith
KAMIKAZE by Alan Tupper, Carrie Tupper, Havana Nguyen
Reblogging again for the extended list!
My interwebz is down so I figured I’d go ahead and post this up. I’m really proud of this. For my Screen Design class, we had to take a fairytale and retell it in however we wanted in storyboard form. I chose the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Just as a heads-up, I’ve replaced the bears with Ursa Major/Ursa Minor, the constellation based on a bear.
I could always tell the story myself, but I figured I should let the art do the talking and only answer questions if you’re curious about it. The only hint I’ll give is to pay attention to the faces of the characters. ;D
This sucker took me 3 days to work on. I’m dead, man. ;_;
I read a lot of writing in my line of work and while that’s amazing, I see the same flaws again and again. Below is a list of 7 common writing mistakes in fiction and how you can fix them. This list is by no means complete. In fact there’s a great list over at The Editor’s Blog that covers even more mistakes.
1. Bad dialogue
Sometimes writers can forget that they’re writing a conversation and thus not write a conversation. The dialogue can be boring, stilted and unnatural, and I’d rather listen to the territorial call of an Australian Raven than read one more word of it.
There are many things that contribute to bad dialogue, but here are the three that really get on my nerves:
- Not using contractions–I’ve seen work that is modern and still doesn’t use contractions. Consider this:
“You are going to be late.” Unless the speaker is trying to sound like an irritated mother and is leaving an emphatic silence between each word to sound threatening, use contractions. It sounds really drawn out and like the speaker is pointing their nose in the air. We generally don’t speak like this in real life, so neither should your characters. - Using complete sentences–Not only is it natural for your characters to chop their sentences, this can also contribute to their voice. Does your character say “I don’t know.” or “Dunno.” Would he/she say “I missed the train and had to find a lift home.” or “Missed the train. Had to find a ride.” In casual speech, we often only use the words necessary to convey our message, even if it doesn’t form a complete sentence. You shouldn’t apply this to every line of dialogue, but consider it if your dialogue sounds stale.
- Using characters as a conduit for research and plot information–Sometimes writers like to show off their research (looking at you Jurassic Park), backstory, world building and plot by having their characters talk way too much. If your character says “Once this valley was home to an ancient race of elves, who looked after the land and treated it with respect. One day, the secret magic spring dried up and then the goblins came. Without their magic spring, the elves couldn’t fight back, and they were killed by the goblins. The goblins didn’t respect the land and now it’s uninhabitable.” he should probably shut up. It sounds less like a person talking than it does an audio tour. The information he’s shared could be given in a much more interesting way.
How you can fix it:
- Listen to and watch the way real people talk to each other. Do they speak in full sentences with full words? Do they speak with grammatical correctness? Do they speak differently in different situations? How do hand gestures, body language and facial expressions help them communicate?
- Read your dialogue out loud as if you’re practising lines for a movie. Does it sound natural? Does it flow?
- Test every piece of information your characters give out. Does it all need to be said? Would your character say all of it at once? Do they need to say it all in so many words?
2. Passages of uninterrupted speech or thought
Sometimes you might want to avoid telling the reader about something and have a character tell another character instead. Sometimes you might want to avoid telling the reader how a character feels about something by having them think about it excessively instead. If this goes on for longer than a couple of paragraphs (or less), you risk allowing your reader to drift out of the scene.
The only thing anchoring your reader in the scene is your characters and what they’re doing. If the characters are talking or thinking for a long time without interacting with anyone or anything else, they might as well be floating in space, which can make the reader feel like they’re floating in space. That’s not to say that they’ve forgotten where the scene is taking place or who else is involved, just that it can feel that way if this is how the character acts.
How you can fix it:
- If your characters have a lot to say, try to include the other characters as well. Have them ask questions or make comments so it feels like a scene and not a soliloquy.
- If your character is around others when he/she is deep in thought, try to include the other characters in some way. If the POV character is thinking about something that the other characters can see, why not give voice to one of the other characters in between thought paragraphs?
- If the character is alone when he/she is deep in thought, is there a way they can interact with their environment? Unless they’re standing in front of a wall, they should be able to see, smell, feel or hear something.
- If your character is absolutely, completely lost in thought, is there a way you can bring some sort of image into it? For example, on page 216 of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Katniss is thinking about how to treat a burn she receives. Almost the entire page is a paragraph describing a memory; however, there is still action in this memory and, therefore, there is something for the reader to imagine.
3. Not knowing when to/not to use said
Some people will tell you to use descriptive speech tags and others will tell you there’s nothing wrong with said. Both are true, but when do you follow the former and when do you follow the latter? And when do you use no speech tags at all?
Using anything but said and using nothing but said both get exhausting and boring very fast.
How you can fix it:
Below is a rough guide to what kind of speech tag to use. Please bear in mind that it is only a guide and will not and should not apply to every situation.
Said is unobtrusive–a way of letting the reader know who’s talking without making a song and dance about it.
Specific verbs (e.g. whispered, shouted, mumbled) give the reader information about how the words are being said.
Adverbial tags can also give extra information about how something is being said, but more often than not they can be replaced with a stronger verb (e.g. she said loudly can be replaced with she shouted). Writers can also fall into the trap of telling where it’s better to show when using adverbial tags, which can make the writing bland. Sometimes telling is better, but with speech tags, it’s usually better to absorb the reader in the conversation. If you’ve used an adverbial tag, go back and have a look at it. Is there a better way you could get the message across?
What you need to pay attention to when determining what speech tags to use is the context of the speech. If the reader is already aware of the manner in which a character is talking, it won’t be necessary to remind them every time the character speaks. If there are only two characters in the conversation, it won’t be necessary to finish each quote with he said/she said. Going back to #2, you can also do away with speech tags entirely and use action to demonstrate how a character is feeling, while also grounding the reader in the scene.
The key to avoiding repetition and blandness is to find a balance between using the unobtrusive said, using something more specific, and mixing it up with a bit of action, which means you might not even need a tag at all.
4. Too much description/overwriting
Sometimes it’s better to tell and not show. Some details just aren’t important enough to warrant a lengthy description. If you want your reader to know that it’s raining, you can write something better than “It was raining”, but there’s no need to go overboard and write a poem about how the puddles on the asphalt looked like a great abyss.
Think of description like camera focus. The more you describe something, the more focus you put on it. If you put enough focus on something, you eliminate everything else. What’s this? A close-up. What does a close-up in a movie tell you? That object of the close-up is significant.
Be wary: when you write thirty words describing the way the moonlight is reflecting off the inky black lake, you might not be just setting the scene. You might also be giving the lake undue emphasis, and it’s probably going to irritate your reader when they realise there’s nothing significant about the lake at all, you were just showing off your imagery skills.
How you can fix it:
Keep it real. What would the character notice, what would they think about it and is it worth the attention? And try not to focus on sight. Your characters have more than one way to perceive their environment, and incorporating their other senses can help build a 3D setting for your reader rather than just painting them a picture. Give the reader enough to imagine the scene, and no more.
5. Not knowing when to/not to use adverbs
There’s a lot of writing advice out there that will tell you to cut all adverbs. The result is that many writers now think adverbs exist only to eat their children and wouldn’t dare to ever use one.
There is truth to the advice, but to say “The road to hell is paved with adverbs”? Really, Stephen King? And his dandelion analogy assumes there’s no editing process.
Adverbs aren’t evil, but there is such a thing as using them ineffectively. Which of the below are more descriptive?
She ran quickly or She sprinted
“It’s a long way down,” he said nervously or “It’s a long way down,” he said
He was shamefully prone to anxiety or He was prone to anxiety
She sprinted not only gets to the point faster, it also creates a more powerful image for the reader.
“It’s a long way down,” he said gives no indication of how the speaker is speaking or feeling; however, “It’s a long way down,” he said nervously is telling, not showing. Rather than using an adverb here, the writer could describe the speaker’s body language.
He was shamefully prone to anxiety tells you how the character feels about being prone to anxiety and there is no stronger word to replace “shamefully prone”.
How you can fix it:
Ask yourself:
- How would the meaning of the sentence change if the adverb was removed?
- Can the adverb and verb be replaced by a single verb?
- Does the action really need clarification?
- Does the adverb add something to the sentence that can’t be described in another way?
6. No conflict in the beginning
The first few chapters of a lot of stories I’ve read involve the main character plodding along in their daily life. This is a good thing as the reader needs to get a feel for your character before the big plot things happen, but that doesn’t mean the first few chapters should be without conflict. I don’t want to read about a character waking up, looking at themselves in the mirror, getting dressed, getting coffee, going to work, getting home, going on a date etc. for three chapters. It’s boring and I don’t care about any of it.
The confusion might be caused by common story structure theories that say the main conflict enters the story at the first plot point, or 25% into the story. But this doesn’t mean there should be zero conflict at the beginning! At the beginning of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone Harry was told ‘no funny business’ or he’d be grounded. Not long after that, there was some vanishing glass and an escaped boa constrictor. After this happened there was a mysterious letter addressed to Harry, and he spent an entire chapter trying to get hold of it as the weirdness escalated. There’s conflict and a goal right off the bat, and the story hasn’t even really started yet. In The Hunger Games Katniss faces the Reaping. In The Hobbit Bilbo finds himself hosting a dinner party for dwarfs and being asked to go and fight a dragon.
How you can fix it:
- Take a look at all the books you’ve read. Most of them (if not all) start with some sort of problem or goal. Study up on this to help you realise what makes a good beginning.
- Don’t fill your first few chapters with characterisation and nothing else. Build your character in the context of a problem or goal.
- Keep in mind that you find your characters more interesting than your reader does. What you like about your character might not be enough to keep the reader’s interest.
- What’s going on in your character’s life? How is this going to influence what happens when the conflict or story goal takes the stage?
- What would happen if you cut your beginning out of the story? Would the plot still make sense? Maybe it’s better to start the story at a later point.
7. Lack of story structure
When you write a first draft, whether you’ve planned it or not, there are going to be structural flaws. Maybe halfway through you thought of a way to solidify a character’s motivation. Maybe at the climax you thought of a way to strengthen your conflict. Maybe somewhere in the middle you had no idea where you were going with this and slugged your way through some boring scenes. It’s all good; this is how stories come together.
What should happen next is that you revise your draft with story structure in mind. There’ll be a lot of “I should add a scene here about this” and “what was I thinking when I wrote that?” and after a few goes, you’ll have a story.
Writers don’t always do this though (which, by the way, makes my job take longer and cost more). They’ll go through and fix all of the obvious problems, but what remains is a manuscript that still lacks a solid structure. It’s messy to read, it’s confusing, it’s clearly not thought out, and it feels like the writer is giving me the finger. I’ll regret paying for the book, stop reading it and leave a negative review on Goodreads. Is that worth not giving your book a good edit?
How you can fix it:
- Read a lot. Make sure you have a decent grasp on different story structures. Make sure you understand the way stories progress, the way they’re paced and what keeps the reader engaged.
- Re-outline. Or if you pantsed your way through the first draft, make an outline. Write a checklist for what each scene should accomplish and what each chapter should accomplish. Make a timeline of how the events progress and how the tension increases. Don’t base this on what you’ve written, base it on what you’ve figured out about your plot.
- Edit ruthlessly. If a scene doesn’t measure up to your new plan, cut it. If it’s in the wrong place, move it.
For Science [Voltron fic, Shidge, Part ½]
It didn’t take five years of hurtling through space with a ragtag group of galactic defenders for Shiro to figure out which fires to put out, and which fires to ignore.
But when Pidge and Hunk’s zany experiments - “for science” - start hitting close to home, Shiro starts to wonder if maybe there are some fires that are better left to burn.
Fandom: Voltron: Legendary defender
Pairing: Pidge|Katie Holt x Shiro, Lance x Keith
Rating: T, for swearing and implied sexual content
Words: 13,179
Tags: Shidge, swearing, #letallurasayfuck2k16, background Klance, sideline Shallura, sideline Punk, gymnastics, antics, FOR SCIENCE duh, cuddling, oblivious Shiro is oblivious, AGED UP, FIVE YEARS LATER.
@battleshidge @heretherebefandom @moriartystayingalive
It didn’t take five years of hurtling through space with a ragtag group of galactic defenders for Shiro to figure out which fires to put out, and which fires to ignore.
Hunk and Coran’s seemingly endless, heated debate over whether the green goo, when frozen, should be considered a dessert, or a side dish? Ignore.
Lance challenging the other paladins to a Lion dance-off in space? Put out.
Pidge slyly teaching Allura Earth profanities and daring her to use them? Ignore, unless within a 10m radius of Coran.
Keith’s tendency, when bored, to insinuate that Lance and Blue would never be able to beat him and Red in a slingshot race around the orbit of whatever planet they were passing closest to? Sound the alarm, ready the extinguisher, and hide the matches.
He’s escaped Galran prisons, piloted one of the most technologically advanced machines known to humankind, and survived Keith’s cooking. After five years of navigating the eccentricities of daily life in the Castle of Lions, there’s not much that fazes Shiro anymore.
Which is why it takes him a full day and a half of castle regulated time to notice that Hunk and Pidge are up to something.
It starts with breakfast.
“This isn’t green.”
Morning reblobs to keep my soul strong
Final evening reblogs are gentle ways of saying “…notice me”
diosaurs
