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DEAR READER

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祝日 / Permanent Vacation

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Keni

oozey mess

pixel skylines
trying on a metaphor
Jules of Nature
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KIROKAZE

Kaledo Art
Sweet Seals For You, Always
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@brundlewrites
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THE TRUTH: art is inherently manipulative and artists are wicked evildoers who like to power trip off of controlling other people's emotions
Alva Claire for Burberry High Summer 2026
Luca Marinelli in Martin Eden (2019) dir. Pietro Marcello
listen to me. this is my final message to you. when you are at your lowest a fictional guy will come to you and when that happens you must start putting them in situations. this is the meaning of life.
The kind of sex I want requires like 3 layers of psychological manipulation
[Closing my eyes] [smiling peacefully] I like to make bad things happen because I'm a bad person and my blood is not unlike a corrosive poison.
Writing Resources to use instead of AI
For coming up with character names:
Behind the name (my absolute fav)
Allows you to choose the origin of where you want the name to be from, whether you want a more feminine vs masculine vs androgenous name (as voted by users), random surname generator, and clicking on the name gives you important info like if there are any famous people with the same name, where it’s from, how common it is, and how people tend to see it, etc.
You can also search their name database by letter or meaning or origin, so if you know you want a character who has a name/surname that starts with an A from Ireland, there’s a whole list for you to choose from.
Census sites
Especially useful if you’re looking for a name from a specific place and/or time period. Just search “(country) census (year)” and you’ll find a database of real people who lived in that place at that time. No one can ever call your names unrealistic again.
For coming up with place names:
Fantasy name generator
This site can basically come up with any name for any person, place, or thing you might ever need. There are also specific generators for different fandoms if you’re looking to make an OC in an established world.
For finding that one word on the tip of your tongue:
One Look Thesaurus
This is my go-to. Not only can you find synonyms like a regular thesaurus, but you can also describe words like “unhappy smile” or “quiet laugh” to find the more specific word you’re looking for.
For coming up with ideas:
Word cloud
When I need to inspire a new idea, I write down all the things I’m interested in (hauntings, academia, lesbians, etc.) and put them into a word cloud to shuffle them next to each other. Sometimes seeing a concept in a new context can spark new ideas!
WWF Discord
This is my discord channel (shameless plug) for when you need to brainstorm off other people but don’t have anyone irl to talk to. We’re also happy to read and give feedback on writing, answer writing questions, or just chat!
For visualizing places and characters:
Pinterest can at times be a bit too sterile for my tastes, but if you use the right words, you can find more realistic photos of places. For example, adding “aesthetic” after basically any word will bring up a more broad collection of photos to help you flesh out places.
This is also a great way to find photos of people and fashion to help visualize characters. I’m bad at describing clothes, so I usually collect photos of outfits to help me know what my characters are wearing. Searching up “character inspiration” will collect more interesting photos and drawings of people who might not exactly be of our world.
(However, to make Pinterest not show you AI results, you have to go into your settings and check the “reduce AI” box. Luckily, it does mostly work.)
Death to Stock
Like pinterest but completely AI free (hooray!) Only drawback is that you have to pay a monthly subscription (about $20 CAD).
Cosmos
Very similar to pinterest but slightly more "artsy". I'm not super familiar with this one but I believe all the photos are human and you can save them and create collections with a free account.
Dupe Photos
Royalty-free stock image site with very Pinterest-core photos!
Minecraft
If you haven’t built your entire fictional city in Minecraft instead of writing, why not? It’s fun.
The Sims
This one is dual purpose because you can not only create your characters in Create a Sim, but you can design their houses. If you really want to go for it, you can bulldoze all the lots in your town and build your world from scratch.
For checking grammar:
Grammar Girl
Easy to follow definitions and examples, and if you learn better by listening, every article comes with a podcast to follow along with instead.
Grammar Monster
This one is my favourite for checking grammar rules because there’s tons of examples in graphics that helps for any situation.
Reedsy
Among other things, reedsy can connect you to professional editors within your budget.
For writing advice:
One Stop for Writers
This one was recommended from my discord channel and has all sorts of tutorials and resources for the writing craft.
My Blog Directory
Another shameless plug, but if you need writing advice on something specific, you can search through my directory to see if it’s there. If it isn’t, you can always send me an ask about it!
For an alternative to Google Docs:
Ellipsus
Think google docs but without AI. Yay!
(will update this list with any more suggestions or resources I discover 😊)
A great resource
Unsaid Things writing ideas
⭒ Two characters sit in the same room, both fully aware that if either of them speaks honestly, the relationship will never be the same again.
⭒ One character practices a confession over and over in their head, then says something completely meaningless out loud instead.
⭒ A character overhears a conversation that confirms their worst fear, and chooses to pretend they never heard it.
⭒ Someone writes a letter they never intend to send, then hides it somewhere the other character almost finds.
⭒ A character asks a harmless question, already knowing the answer, just to see if the other person will lie.
⭒ One character is desperately waiting for an apology that will never come, while the other assumes enough time has passed to forget it.
⭒ A character realizes the other one has been protecting them from the truth, and can’t decide whether to feel grateful or betrayed.
⭒ Two characters share a private joke in public, using humor to avoid acknowledging the fracture underneath.
⭒ Someone almost says “I need you,” but replaces it with something safer, smaller, and far more dishonest.
⭒ A character chooses to leave the room instead of finishing the sentence they started.
⭒ One character knows exactly when things started going wrong, but refuses to admit it because that would mean admitting they stayed too long.
“she should be at the club” well i should be in the green house party paintings by salman toor
louis garrel via instagram
luca marinelli gif pack !
click HERE to find #131 gifs of luca marinelli in trust ( season 1, episode 3-4 ). all gifs were made by me from scratch. if you want to make them into gif icons, you can as long as you credit me by @’ing me and don’t make them smaller than 100px. don’t claim as your own. don’t use these in smut threads or for taboo plots. feel free to give this a like or reblog if you found this useful, and enjoy! content warning: violence, guns, smoking.
V.E. Schwab's advice for creating memorable characters - works for both protagonists and villains
source post: X
This is really good advice.
It also ties neatly into the simplest version of the formula for getting people emotionally engaged with your characters: or how to build the moment in which your character starts moving from their initial state to the state in which they'll start changing their own lives.
First, you figure out the one important thing the character believes that they're wrong about. There's usually a core misperception that they haven't examined. Once they're forced to engage with it, it'll start to change everything about their perception of the world they're inhabiting and/or the people in it.
Then, as V.E. says, you identify the character's great desire and their great fear: the thing that character wants more than anything, and the thing or situation that terrifies them, and that they'll go to any lengths to avoid.
And having identified these two objects or situations, you build a situation in which the two forces will be in close, direct opposition to one another... then drop the character down in between them, and squeeze. Those two opposing forces become the jaws of a vise... and you crank the vise more and more tightly closed until the character has no choice but to acknowledge those opposing forces, and start (even in a small way) to deal with the pressure being exerted and push their way through.
This does not have to be, initially, a great climactic moment. In fact, it works better if it's not. It's more effective if your character has a brief low-intensity brush with these conditions-in-conflict early on. That way, when your big resolution scene comes along about two-thirds or three-quarters of the way along through the story arc, you'll have set up a resonance between that earlier hint or intimation of what's to come, and the really big blowoff. Your readers will recognize the resonance—the throb of tension between the two occurrences, like the vibration of a plucked string—and will find satisfaction both in the true resolution having been partially telegraphed earlier, and in how it's now being experienced and resolved in full.
This approach also allows you to set up more minor resonances between the realization of the conflict and its final resolution. These can serve to bind the structure of the work more closely together: to make it look (and be) less like a series of loosely strung-together plot events, and more like a unified whole, in which ripples of story business flow backwards and forwards, interpenetrating and influencing one another, and hinting at the big one to come.
But none of this can happen until the paired and opposing what-do-they-most-desire, what-do-they-most-fear axes have been defined. So that's a subject it's smart to spend some while thinking about (and for all your characters, not just the major ones), to be sure you're getting it right.
It's not unusual to get the wrong answers, or merely superficial ones, while you're still working out what's actually going on with the characters. So take your time. Eventually you'll find a set of answers that feel unquestionably right... and you can then nail those down in your notes and get on with making the kind of "good trouble" for your characters that will see them made complete.
Natalie Diaz
Paloma Elsesser by Julia Noni for Vogue Germany September 2025