multi-colored full moon dividers:
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Stranger Things

JVL

祝日 / Permanent Vacation

Love Begins
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
i don't do bad sauce passes

@theartofmadeline
h
ojovivo
No title available
YOU ARE THE REASON

Origami Around
Claire Keane

ellievsbear

roma★
sheepfilms
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
Peter Solarz

blake kathryn
trying on a metaphor
seen from Brazil
seen from United States

seen from Germany
seen from Hong Kong SAR China
seen from United States

seen from Malaysia

seen from Italy
seen from United States
seen from France
seen from Portugal
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from Ecuador
seen from Pakistan

seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from United States
@apple-writes
multi-colored full moon dividers:
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Compiled some basic information I know about drawing fat characters for beginners since I've been seeing more talk about absence of really basic traits in a lot of art lately.
Morpho Fat and Skin Folds on Archive.org (for free!)
I made dithering brushes & patterns pack!
Ok, so I now want to read fics in all the fandoms based on this.
(Found on twitter https://twitter.com/WholesomeMeme/status/1632788134856474624?s=19)
omg, yes please. this would translate so well into so many fandoms :D
What impresses me most is the attention to design. There's formatting and layout involved.
Did this bouncer like, bring this person home, put them to bed, start the laundry, and then sit down to make a little Drunk Guest zine? Does he do this regularly so he had a template ready? Is that cool or a little weird? Was he attracted to his guest and hoping to make a great first impression? Was he just super anxious that they weren't waking up before he'd have to leave for presumably his day job, so he poured it all into this little gem the following morning? Is his day job in typesetting?
It manages to inspire even more questions than it answers, which is quite the feat.
Oh this is going to feed SO MANY fic ideas
Things to say to your rival while sparring or fucking
“Cute that you think you could keep up with me.”
“You're getting sloppy.”
“Think you can handle another round?”
“Too slow.”
“Don't be so hard on me, I'm still sore from last time.”
“I need five.”
“Perhaps you should've stretched first.”
“Slow down!”
“I'm not done with you yet.”
“Nice grip.”
“Get used to being below me.”
“Teach me that move.”
“Show me what you've got.”
“Must you always slam me down so hard?”
“Let's go again.”
“You can do better than that.”
“Tired already?”
“Someone has a bit of pent up aggression, huh?”
“Watch me.”
“We're done for today.”
“Steady your breathing before you pass out.”
“Is that the best you can do?”
“Quit going easy on me.”
“Want me to show you?”
Silly drunk dialogue
Can also be under the influence of other stuff.
"Oh, look at the stars! Ursa Major… so beautiful!" "We're inside. Those are just ceiling lights."
"Please don't leave me!" "I'm just going to the toilette." "Can I come with you?"
"My arm is floppy. I'm like a puppet."
"Can you be my girlfriend?" "I already am." "Oh, lucky me!"
"Let’s go play baseball!" "Your shoulder is dislocated, maybe not right now."
"You look almost as pretty as this moon." "That's a street lamp." "And you're almost as pretty."
"Have you ever thought about penguins? I think we should think more about penguins."
"You have a stupid face and it's my favourite one to stare at."
"I will definitely remember this tomorrow! How could I ever forget?" *doesn't remember anything in the morning*
"Oh, I think we haven't met before." "We have been in a relationship for five years now."
"You should go, otherwise I'm doing something stupid. Like kissing you or falling asleep on the bathroom floor."
"Let's get you home." "Oh, mine or yours?" "Ours." "Oh, wow!"
"I'm totally, absolutely, not at all drunk at all. Like... at all."
"Why are you all laughing? That is not very nice. I haven't even told my joke yet."
"How many drinks did you have?" "Yes, yes I am."
"You are too beautiful for me." *starts crying*
"Why are you undressing?" "Because it's hot! And I'm hot!"
*starts singing a remix of all their favourite songs*
*then starts crying, because their own voice is too beautiful*
FACIAL MICRO EXPRESSIONS FOR WRITERS <3
sometimes you need dialogue tags and don't want to use the same four
when i was in high school and had a roget's expanded collegiate thesaurus the "said" entry was the most marked up one
i loved that fucking thesaurus. it had quotes in it and the origin of words. it was so fucking cool. i read that thesaurus like a book
I know I say that I'm kinda nuts for doing the amount of visual research I do, but at the same time: Specificity is SO much more compelling and real feeling, and imo not getting references often makes things look more amateur.
Eg. drawing a sofa- my mental image of a sofa is something like this:
Like. Its a sofa. It works. But it's not very convincing, the pillows are kinda wrong at the back, and it's not really giving any information about the owner. Even if you want a basic sofa... What kind of basic.
comfy and cheap?
kinda rigid?
inherited? ------
who does this comfy cheap ikea sofa belong to anyway?
guy living alone?
teenage girl?
Grandma?
Anyway I'll get off my soapbox but specificity is sexy and fun and it can do your storytelling for you!
How to Fix Underwriting
1. Slow down at emotionally important moments.
Big emotions need space to land. If a scene feels rushed, pause the plot briefly to show how the moment affects the character.
2. Add reactions, not explanations.
Instead of explaining what a character feels, show it through physical responses, hesitation, or small actions that reveal emotion naturally.
3. Ground every scene in the senses.
If a scene feels thin, add one or two sensory details—sound, texture, smell, or temperature—to make the moment feel lived-in.
4. Let thoughts interrupt action.
A line of internal thought can deepen a scene without slowing it too much. Thoughts show stakes, fear, longing, or conflict beneath the action.
5. Expand consequences, not events.
You don’t need more things to happen—you need to show what matters. Focus on how events change relationships, decisions, or self-perception.
6. Strengthen setting where emotion peaks.
The environment should echo or contrast the emotion of the scene. Setting is not decoration—it’s emotional reinforcement.
7. Add specific details instead of general ones.
Underwriting often relies on vague language. Swap “they argued” for one sharp line of dialogue or a specific breaking point.
8. Let dialogue breathe.
Short dialogue exchanges without pauses can feel flat. Add beats—silence, gestures, interruptions—to give the conversation weight.
9. Show transitions between scenes.
If scenes jump too quickly, readers feel disoriented. A brief transition helps establish time, mood, and emotional continuity.
10. Clarify stakes early in the scene.
If readers don’t know what can be lost, scenes feel empty. Make sure the character wants something specific and fears losing it.
11. Use the “what are they feeling right now?” check.
After each major beat, ask what emotion is dominant in that moment. If it’s missing on the page, the scene is likely underwritten.
12. Expand scenes that feel “too clean.”
If a scene resolves too neatly or quickly, it probably needs more tension. Messy emotions and unresolved feelings add depth.
calling all authors!!
i have just stumbled upon the most beautiful public document i have ever laid eyes on. this also goes for anyone whose pastimes include any sort of character creation. may i present, the HOLY GRAIL:
https://www.fbiic.gov/public/2008/nov/Naming_practice_guide_UK_2006.pdf
this wonderful 88-page piece has step by step breakdowns of how names work in different cultures! i needed to know how to name a Muslim character it has already helped me SO MUCH and i’ve known about it for all of 15 minutes!! i am thoroughly amazed and i just needed to share with you guys
Cultures include Yoruba, Sikh, Vietnamese, Polish, and dozens more!
This could also be a good staring point for conlangers looking for inspiration for personal name conventions.
Québec names are largely catholic-church-inspired and not on the list, so in case anyone wants to write a french canadian character:
A generally older or more traditional french canadian name will be formatted as “Marie/Joseph” “Middle Name(s)” “Given Name” “Family Name”, though I’ve seen less of that from my generation’s kids. Unsure if being anglicized or just because most of my sample is from french-speaking families in Ontario. (Even as a completely atheist french canadian, it didn’t occur to me not to use this format for tradition’s sake)
So you might be “Marie Thérèse Louise Tremblay”
and your actual, useable name will be “Louise Tremblay”
Anglophones do not get this. I’ve had to get into arguments with the federal government because they “fixed” my legal name on my passport, and I demanded a reprint.
No, “Louise Marie Thérèse Tremblay” isn’t the same. No, I do not want to legally change my name so it’s formatted in a way that makes the federal government happy. Yes I will keep complaining that it doesn’t match. No, I don’t care that you personally think it’s the same and makes no sense.
See also: I did not take a spouse’s name. Neither did my mother, or my grandmothers, or my great-grandmothers. We don’t do that, except for some anglicized bitches, I guess. Their loss.
But if I look up my grandparents on a geneology site, my grandmother is listed as Béatrice Tremblay “Née Larose”, and that was never her name. Her name was Béatrice Larose. But the english geneology sites literally can’t recognize a wife with a different name, so they “correct” it.
I did find one french-language geneology site where all women in my family were properly listed by their actual motherfucking names.
And when we moved to NWT and lived in a largely English town- with some Inuktitut but it wasn’t the majority- other women would shame my mom for not “loving her husband enough to take his name”, or my dad would be shamed for having a “mistress” instead of a “wife”.
I would bet that Jean-Jacques Leroy from Yuri On Ice is probably legally called “Joseph Gilbert Jean-Jacques Leroy” and his mother is probably named Louise Dufour, because Louise is THE MOST COMMON BOOMER WOMAN’S NAME.
this is so mean but sometimes i see published writing and suddenly no longer feel insecure about my own writing ability. like well okay that got published so im guessing i dont have much to worry about
I have a friend who is an editor, and gets submissions of mostly poetry and short stories.
I have had a glimpse into her slush pile, and let me tell you, the contents were unbelievable and immediately disabused me of the notion that reading through submissions is in any way glamorous. People have the nerve to submit unhinged paranoid ramblings, fetish porn, and a seemingly endless supply of poems about masturbation.
I no longer feel like my fiction is somehow an imposition on the people who read it. It may be forgettable, but at least it isn't typeset to look like sperm.
Do not be afraid to submit your work. Your competition is not only worse than you think, it's worse than you ever imagined.
Do these three things to get to the top of the slush pile:
The place has a style sheet. Use it. They say they want your MS in 16.5 point Papyrus italic with 0.8 inch margins all around, guess what you're doing before you send it off? Save As, reformat, send it. In the absence of a specific guide: Courier 12 pt (Times New Roman if you must), double spaced, align left, tab 0.5 at each new paragraph.
Check the word count. Don't submit novellas to 2500 word short story venues. BTW, you format the MS in that old style above because the question isn't literal words. Courier 12pt double spaced gives you 250 words per page for typesetting purposes. 2500 words is 10 ms pages, 5000 is 20 pages, etc.
Don't send your romance to Analog or your war story to Harlequin. If it's a cross-genre story, be sure there's enough of what the publication is focused on to interest them, but breaking through is hard if that's not something they usually do.
That's basically what every single editors' panel at every con I've ever been to has boiled down to. And invariably, someone tries to get up and argue with them, not realizing it's not a discussion.
Bonus tip: Don't be in any way cute in your cover letter. Just the facts/Luke Skywalker's message to Jabba the Hut in ROTJ.
Enclosed/attached is my story <Title> for your publication <Magazine>. It is x (rounded to the nearest 500) words. I can be reached at <email> (that you check regularly and isn't likely to dump things into spam) and <phone>.
(If submitting a hard copy: The manuscript is disposable. A SASE is enclosed for your response./A SASE is included for return of the manuscript and your response.)
Thank you for your consideration.
If submitting a novella length piece or greater, a brief and complete summary is appropriate.
In the midst of an interstellar revolt against an evil galactic Empire, vital weapon plans fall into the hands of a farm boy on the edges of the galaxy. With the help of an aging warrior from the Old Republic, and a smuggler with a dark past and his imposing alien copilot, the four set out to deliver them to the rebel forces but are instead flung into a rescue mission to save the beautiful princess who stole the plans as worlds are destroyed by the might of the Empire's weapon, the Death Star.
Captured by the Death Star on route to deliver the plans, they manage to escape the base with the princess, the old warrior sacrificing himself to make this possible. As the Death Star approaches the rebel base, they use the captured plans to stage a desperate final stand. In a fierce space battle of single-pilot ships over the surface of the moon-sized weapon, the farm boy manages to make the critical shot with an unexpected assist from the smuggler, destroying it.
Never under any circumstance put a cliffhanger into a query letter summary. There is no faster way to get the entire MS binned than doing that.
Happy writing.
PS "Top of the slush pile" means into the top 25% of manuscripts received. Three quarters of the submissions don't take the trouble to do even those three basic steps.
Now, that still means 25/100 submissions or 250/1000 submissions, but it still improves your odds and forms the basis for starting a relationship with the publisher for the next piece you send them.
PPS This is obviously about prose. Poetry certainly has its own submission rules, and I know none of them. If you're writing poetry, find out what they are.
This goes for query letters to agents as well.
Also, that emphasis on the submission guidelines (or style sheet) and formatting things EXACTLY the way they requested it? Yeah, that's so that they know at a glance whether you have a brain in your head and can fucking read. Didn't follow the guidelines? They can discard your submission in an instant rather than wasting the two minutes it takes to read your cover letter.
FOLLOW THE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES!!!!! THIS IS STEP ONE OF "PROVING YOU'RE A PROFESSIONAL AKA SOMEONE WHO SHOULD BE PAID MONEY FOR THEIR WORK". FOLLOW! THE! SUBMISSION! GUIDELINES!
Wait hang on there's still a couple of you who are not internalizing Follow The Submission Guidelines. I will tell you a story.
Couple years ago, I taught a college course on Writing & Publishing Scifi/Fantasy. Towards the end of the 8-week workshop, I told the class that they were going to learn what it is like to be a literary agent. I asked them to tell me a few things about what their dream novel would be if they were an agent (genre, themes, etc) and then I went and wrote fake a fake query letter for each of them. Then I scraped together a bunch of other query letters from Queryshark, and then I wrote some unhinged ones. Printed them all out, put them in a box, walked into class on the day, said "The first person to find their Dream Client in the slush pile wins Twenty Real Human Dollars." The air in the room suddenly became *FERAL*. RABID. College students will literally kill a man for $20. I dumped the box on the floor, screamed "GO!" and watched them throw themselves into it.
You know what happened? Almost instantaneously they developed a sense of "UGH FOLLOW THE GUIDELINES." They were ruthlessly throwing things aside simply because it did not include a "Dear [your name]," salutation. They were crying, "NO!" when they got a query letter for a short story instead of a novel. When confronted with a pile of garbage with a couple gems in it, they figured out in nanoseconds that the #1 red flag for garbage is "did not follow the submission guidelines."
FOLLOW THE GUIDELINES!!!!!!
Back in the days when it was all done by snail mail, I had a gift subscription to the magazine Writer's Digest, and there's one thing that has stuck in my memory from an article (which was published probably 35 years ago) about sending unsolicited manuscripts for novels to a publisher: make your envelope or box distinctive anything other than plain, stark, unadorned white. Every publisher, according to the article, had stacks and stacks of manuscripts in undifferentiated white packages and they just sort of all blurred together when you looked at the physical slush pile, so if one was in a colorful box or they'd drawn or written something on the side it'd immediately jump out and get their attention.
Bear in mind that they were also very, very clear to always follow the submission guidelines.
I don't work in publishing and you could not pay me enough to work a slush pile, but I know I'd quickly start looking for the manuscripts that stand out like a hot pink giant document mailer, but that still followed the submission guidelines, because that's the sign that you're someone the venue can work with. When I was doing research for publication in refereed journals, I worked for an organization that had an entire editing and proofreading department dedicated to ensuring that all the researchers' journal submissions would follow the submission guidelines, because otherwise it wouldn't even make it past the first step of submission.
Again, I'm not an editor and you couldn't pay me enough to be one — I'm extremely happy to torture data until the numbers come out for a living — but I do understand how this part works, and I hope that you understand the subtle FOLLOW message THE I'm SUBMISSION sending GUIDELINES here.
FOLLOW THE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
on “the blond,” “the older man,” and other crimes against third-person limited
You know that thing where a story is written in tight third person limited — we’re meant to be inside someone’s head, seeing the world through their thoughts — and then suddenly the narration says “the blond frowned” or “the shorter woman sighed” about a person the POV character knows really well?
That’s called antonomasia — using a descriptive label instead of a name. And it’s fine when we’re talking about strangers: “the cashier handed her the receipt,” “the tall guy blocked the door.” The POV character doesn’t know their names, and we just need a quick way to tell people apart.
But the moment it’s used for someone the POV character already knows, it breaks immersion. Because that’s not how our minds work. We don’t think “the older man smiled at me.” We think “Mark smiled.” Or maybe “my boss” if that relationship matters in the moment.
Third person limited means the narration sits inside someone’s perception. Their inner monologue is the story’s voice. So when you switch from “Mark smiled” to “the blond smiled,” you’ve pulled the camera away from their mind and turned it into an outside shot.
If you want to create distance or irritation, you can do it on purpose —
“The idiot from accounting emailed again.”
That’s character voice. That’s judgment. That works.
But otherwise?
As soon as your POV character knows someone’s name, use it. While we do tend to worry about repetitions, names rarely register as such to the readers.
If you need variety for rhythm, use relational or emotional identifiers that make sense in their head: her friend, his partner, their teacher, the person they loved.
Because inside someone’s thoughts, there are no “blonds” or “brunettes.”
There are only people they know.
Are people on Tumblr aware that you can customize your kudo message??
got it from this twt post (has more stuff in the thread)
og reddit post here
More than "here in the Southern Hemisphere we have inverted seasons :)" thing, which is TECHNICALLY true, I would go a step further and encourage to think about that "much of the world does not exactly has a spring-summer-fall-winter season sequence as they show in cartoons"
so i live in boorloo (perth) which is on noongar country and 1. i fucking love the noongar seasons it’s so much more accurate to here 2. should be noted that other season stereotypes are completely different! there’s ONE native deciduous tree here (common coral tree) and it blooms in the middle of july, which to a greater point! different native plants are always blooming all year round! the traditional “spring” period doesn’t really that many more (native) flowers than any other time of the year!
anyways i fucking hate how northern hemisphere coded the western holidays are girl why are you putting up snowflakes and reindeer it’s 40°c outside i am going to melt into a puddle
While colonial genocide means that the weather calendar for my region is no longer known for south-east Queensland (if I am wrong and there's one out there please tell me!), I have found the Banbai calendar pretty accurate for Brisbane (less the snow. We don't snow).
It has 6 "seasons", mostly determined by wildfire risk. One of those seasons: Wildfire Time is 5 months, from November to March.
The 4 seasons model really really doesn't work here.
GUYS. DID YOU KNOW YOU CAN WRITE CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE FICS ON AO3
Other things you can do:
Linked footnotes
Customized page dividers
Sticky notes
Lined paper
Paper that looks stacked on top of each other
Old looking paper
Newspaper articles
Tumblr posts
iOS text messages
Emails
Fake ao3 authors notes and kudos button
Freaking discord chats
Its fucking amazing. Ao3 is fucking amazing. Can I legally marry a website?
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Birthday AUs
My friends booked a nice restaurant for my birthday party, but you booked it for your party as well. I guess we have to celebrate our birthdays together now.
It’s my birthday and I want to spend a quiet day at home, I just hope no one’s planning a surprise party.
There is a pony in my front yard with a pink bow around its head and no, this is NOT the best birthday present ever!
We both meet at the bar at a birthday party but we don’t even know who’s birthday it is. I think it’s yours, you think it’s mine.
We were supposed to bring the cake for our mutual friend’s birthday party but we got in a fight over who should carry it to the car and now the cake is on the floor and HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM!
You want me to guess the present you got me and give me ridiculous little clues that make me kinda afraid to even open it,
My birthday party is in full swing but it’s too much for me right now, so I grab a bottle of wine and go up to the rooftop. That’s where you find me eventually.
After we spent some time at a club to celebrate my birthday my friends are pretty drunk and ask random people on the street to sing for me. You really can’t sing, but maybe I’m drunk too because it sounds perfect to me.
Today’s my birthday, so I decided to post some birthday prompts. Hope you like them. 🎇
You can find more prompts at my sideblog: creativepromptsforwriting