You absolutely got it right and you are a life saver!
Thank you lots 💓 💗 💖
Glad I could help out :3

roma★
Misplaced Lens Cap
Show & Tell

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Cosmic Funnies

Love Begins
hello vonnie
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
styofa doing anything
Peter Solarz

tannertan36
Jules of Nature
Keni

Discoholic 🪩

Kiana Khansmith
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$LAYYYTER
Game of Thrones Daily
NASA
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
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@dark-heika
You absolutely got it right and you are a life saver!
Thank you lots 💓 💗 💖
Glad I could help out :3
Hello! How are you?
I'm hoping you can help...
See, I cannot for the life of me, find this fic anymore and I've hit a wall searching for it.
Basically from what I remember it's a rujinu fic on Ao3, it introduces three new demons (though they aren't regular demons one of the girls can shapeshipt - a plot of the fic is her framing Rumi for a crime, buying drugs i think), Gwima has a semi-physical presence and become the Saja Boys' manager to keep a better eye on them and the new group (i thinks they're called Lillix I'm not sure). Rumi and Jinu are in a complicated relationship. Oh and it has one of the best written version of Rumi revealing her patterns to Mira and Zoey.
Thanks a lot in advance, I'm really hoping you might have read it and remember it.
Lucky you, I actually know this one! Pretty sure you're looking for "best of me," by konohafics. Here's a link for you: https://archiveofourown.org/works/67657761/chapters/174891156
Let me know if I've got it right. Happy reading!
If you ever feel bad about polytrix folks constantly putting stuff in the rujinu tag, just remember: they have to work out how to write our ship out of their stuff. We don't.
Okay but consider: service top Jinu
Hot take: Actual literary analysis requires at least as much skill as writing itself, with less obvious measures of whether or not you’re shit at it, and nobody is allowed to do any more god damn litcrit until they learn what the terms “show, don’t tell” and “pacing” mean.
Pacing
The “pacing” of a piece of media comes down to one thing, and one thing only, and it has nothing to do with your personal level of interest. It comes down to this question alone: Is the piece of media making effective use of the time it has?
That’s it.
So, for example, things which are NOT a example of bad pacing include a piece of media that is:
A slow burn
Episodic
Fast-paced
Prioritizing character interaction over intricate plot
Opening in medias res without immediate context
Incorporating a large number of subplots
Incorporating very few subplots
Bad pacing IS when a piece of media has
“Wasted” time, ie, screentime or page space dedicated to plotlines or characters that are ultimately irrelevant to the plot or thematic resolution at the cost of properly developing that resolution. Pour one out for the SW:TCW fans.
The presence of a sidestory or giving secondary characters a separate resolution of their personal arc is not “bad writing,” and only becomes a pacing issue if it falls into one of the other two categories.
Not enough time, ie, a story attempts to involve more plotlines than it has time or space to give satisfying resolutions to, resulting in all of them being “rushed” even though the writer(s) made scrupulous use of every second of page/screentime and made sure every single section advanced those storylines.
Padding for time, ie, Open-World Game Syndrome. Essentially, you have ten hours of genuinely satisfying story….but “short games don’t sell,” so you insert vast swathes of empty landscape to traverse, a bunch of nonsense fetch quests to complete, or take one really satisfying questline and repeat it ten times with different names/macguffins, to create 40 hours of “gameplay” that have stopped being fun because the same thing happens over and over. If you think this doesn’t happen in novels, you have never read Oliver Twist.
Another note on pacing: There are, except arguably in standalone movies, at least two levels of pacing going on at any given time. There’s the pacing within the installment, and the pacing within the series. Generally, there’s three levels of pacing–within the installment (a chapter, an episode, a level), within the volume (a season, a novel, a game), and within the series as a whole. Sometimes, in fact FREQUENTLY, a piece of media will work on one of these levels but not on all of them. (Usually the ideal is that it works on all three, but that’s not always important! Not every individual chapter of a novel needs to be actively relevant to the entire overarching series.)
Honestly, the best possible masterclass in how to recognize good, bad, and “they tried their best but needed more space” pacing? If you want to learn this skill, and get better at recognizing it?
Doctor Who.
ESPECIALLY Classic Who, which has clearly-delineated “serials” within their seasons. You can pretty much pick any serial at random, and once you’ve seen a few of them, you get a REALLY good feel for things like, for example…
Wow, that serial did not need to be twelve episodes long; they got captured and escaped at least three different times and made like four different plans that they ended up not being able to execute, and maybe once or twice they would have ramped up the tension, but it really didn’t contribute anything–this could have been a normal four-episode serial and been much stronger.
Holy shit there were WAY too many balls being juggled in this, this would have been better with the concepts split into two separate serials, as it stands they only had four episodes and they just couldn’t develop anything fully
Oh my god that was AMAZING I want to watch it again and take notes on how they divided up the individual episodes and what plot beats they chose to break on each week
Eh, structurally that was good, but even as a 90-minute special that nuwho episode feels like it would have worked a lot better as a Classic serial with a little more room to breathe.
How in the actual name of god did they stretch like twenty minutes of actual story into a four-episode serial (derogatory)
How in the actual name of god did they stretch like twenty minutes of actual story into a four-episode serial (awestruck)
If you’re not actively trying to learn pacing, either for literary analysis or your own writing…honestly? Just learn to differentiate between whether the pacing is bad or if it just doesn’t appeal to you. There’s a WORLD of difference between “The pacing is too slow” and “the pacing is too slow for me.”
“I really prefer a slower build into a universe; the fact that it opens in medias res and you piece together where you are and how the magic system works over the next several chapters from context is way too fast-paced for me and makes me feel lost, so I bounced off it” is, usually, a much more constructive commentary than “the pacing is bad”.
And when the pacing really is bad, you’ll be doing everyone a favor by being able to actually articulate why.
Show, Don’t Tell
This is a very specific rule that has been taken dramatically out of context and is almost always used incorrectly.
“Show, don’t tell” applies to character traits and worldbuilding, not information in the plot.
It may be easier to “get” this rule if you forget the specific phrasing for a minute. This is a mnemonic device to avoid Informed Attributes, nothing more and nothing less.
Character traits like a character being funny, smart, kind, annoying, badass, etc, should be established by their behavior in-universe and the reactions of others to them–if you just SAY they’re X thing but never show it, then you’re just telling the audience these things. Similarly you can’t just tell the audience that a setting has brutal winters and expect to be believed, when the clothing, architecture, preparations, etc shown as common in that setting do not match those that brutal winters would necessitate.
To recap:
Violations of Show Don’t Tell:
A viewpoint character describing themselves as having a trait (being a loner, easily distractable, clumsy, etc) but not actually shown to possess it (lacking friends, getting distracted from anything important, or dropping/tripping over things at inopportune moments.)
The narration declaring an emotional state (”Character A was furious”) rather than demonstrating the emotion through dialogue or depicting it onscreen.
A fourth-wall-breaking narrator; ie, Kuzco in The Emperor’s New Groove directly addressing the audience to explain that he’s a llama and also the protagonist, is NOT the same! This actually serves as a flawless example of showing rather than telling–we are SHOWN that Kuzco is immature and egotistical, even though that’s not what he’s saying.
A fictional society or setting being declared by the narrative to be free of a negative trait–bigotry, for example–but that negative trait being clearly present, where this discrepancy is not narratively engaged with.
(For example: There is officially no sexism in Thedas and yet female characters are subject to gendered slurs and expectations; the world of Honor Harrington is supposedly societally opposed to eugenics, yet “cures” for disability and constant mentions of a nebulous genetic “advantage” from certain characters’ ancestry are regular plot points that are viewed positively by the characters and are not narratively questioned.)
A character declaring that their society has no bigotry, when that character is clearly wrong, is not the same thing.
The narrative voice declaring objective correctness; everyone who agrees with the protagonist is portrayed as correct and anyone who questions them is portrayed as evil, or else there is no questioning whatsoever. For example: in Star Trek: Enterprise, Jonathan Archer tortures an unarmed prisoner. What follows is a multi-episode arc in which every person he respects along with Starfleet Command goes out of their way to dismiss the idea that he should bear any guilt, or that his actions were anything but completely necessary and objectively morally correct. No narrative space is allowed for disagreement, or for the audience to come to its own conclusion.
NOT Violations of Show Don’t Tell:
A character explaining a concept to another character who would logically, within that universe/situation, be the recipient of such an explanation.
An in-universe explanation BECOMES a SdT violation if the explanation fails to play out in reality, such as a spaceship being described as slow or flawed in some way but never actually having those weaknesses. Imagine if the Millennium Falcon was constantly described as a broken-down piece of junk…and never had any mechanical failures, AND Han and Chewie weren’t constantly shown repairing it!
Information being revealed through dialogue, period. Having your hacker in a heist movie describe the enemy security system isn’t “telling” and thus bad writing. Having information revealed organically through dialogue is what “show” means.
The “as you know” trope is technically a Show Don’t Tell violation, despite being dialogue, because it’s unnatural within the universe and serves solely to let the writer deliver information directly, ie, telling.
Characters discussing their own actions and expressing their motivations and/or decision-making process at the time.
The existence of an omnipotent narrator, or the narration itself confirming something. Narration saying “there was no way anyone could make it in time” is delivering contextual information, not breaking Show Don’t Tell.
Keep in mind that “Show, don’t tell” is meant to be advice for beginning authors. Because “telling” is easier and requires less skill than “showing,” inexperienced authors need to focus on getting as much “show” in as possible.
However, “telling” is also extremely important. Sometimes, especially in written formats, the most appropriate way to deliver information to the audience is to just say it and move on.
Keep in mind that a viewpoint character in anything but…a portal fantasy, essentially…is going to be familiar with the world they’re in. Not every protagonist needs to be a raw newcomer with zero knowledge of their new world! In most cases, a viewpoint character is going to know things that the audience doesn’t. Generally, the ONLY natural way to introduce worldbuilding in this situation is to just have the narration point them out. (It makes sense for Obi-Wan to have to explain the Force; it would make no sense for Han to explain the concept of space travel to Luke, who grew up in this universe and knows what the hell a starship is. So, if you’re writing the novelization of A New Hope, you need to just say “and so they jumped into hyperspace, the strange blue-white plane that allowed faster-than-light travel” and move the hell on.)
For that matter, in some media (ie, children’s cartoons) where teaching a moral lesson is the clear intent, a certain level of “telling” is not only appropriate but necessary!
The actual goal of “showing” and “telling” is to maintain a balance, and make sure everything feels natural. Show things that need to be shown, and…don’t waste everyone’s time showing things that would feel much more natural if they were just told.
But that’s not nearly as pithy a slogan.
(Reblog this version y’all I fixed some really serious typos)
idk how to articulate this exactly and this is gonna get slightly ranty but there is actually a difference between an english major and a writer, and they often overlap but they dont always and sometimes it is FRIGHTFULLY obvious to me when someone is an english major who is not a writer
i feel like most english teachers fall into this category, and it really shows in the way they give really confining and honestly super unhelpful writing advice to young writers.
like... the most common and egregious example i can thinking of is telling them not to use "said" because its overused.
you can overuse any word. and "said" is a VERY useful dialogue tag, it's neutral, it doesnt continuously interrupt the flow of the scene and dialogue with increasingly new and more obscure dialogue tags that leave you desperately flipping through the thesaurus.
can you overuse said? yes, obviously, like i said you can overuse any word - but in my experience the overuse of said is usually an overuse of dialogue tags in general and the "solution" of using a thousand different dialogue tags instead actually makes this problem worse, not better.
which is advice from a writer, which i am, and not an english major which i am not (though linguistics i suppose is close)
i dont really have much of a point to this other than like... when someone gives you writing advice, you dont actually have to take it, and sometimes you honestly shouldnt. the best way to get better at writing is to just... write, a lot, and figure out what works for you rather than internalizing a bunch of pithy soundbite "rules" from people who you have no guarantee even know what theyre talking about
Pretty sure I recently mentioned this? But. Fairly important advice, so I’ll share it again.
Oh my gosh. I just found this website that walks you though creating a believable society. It breaks each facet down into individual questions and makes it so simple! It seems really helpful for worldbuilding!
So, India is dying.
Look, I know a good number of you are from the US and things aren't amazing there either, but my country is literally on the brink of collapse. So I'd love it if we could talk about that for a minute.
If you can't do anything else, please just read and reblog.
I always see the dog choking info on here, so here’s what to do if a kitty is choking
Save your kitties, we all know they eat everything anyway.
http://www.wikihow.com/Save-a-Choking-Cat
http://www.wikihow.com/Perform-CPR-on-a-Cat
important
REBLOG TO SAVE THE KITTIES!
IMPORTANT FOR KITTY OWNERS
THIS IS SO IMPORTANT!!! MY CAR WAS CHOKING ON SOME RIBBON THAT GOT LEFT ON THE GROUND AND THESE TIPS SAVED ONE OF MY PRECIOUS FUR BABIES’ LIVES.
It can be difficult to understand just how routine-oriented cats can be if you’ve never owned one. If my oven timer goes off and I’m slow responding to it, my cats will run and fetch me and lead me right to it, because the beepy thing means the human is supposed to go into the kitchen, and are they the only ones around here who give a damn about the Rules?
One night my partner decided to stay up and play video games whilst I got an early night, and the cat responded to this by running from the bedroom to the living room yelling, because only ONE human had gone to bed and so IS IT BEDTIME OR NOT HUMANS, MAKE UP YOUR MINDS, THIS IS NO WAY TO RUN A HOUSEHOLD.
Can confirm. My cats not only know exactly when I’m supposed to get up for work in the morning, but they also know when I’m supposed to STOP working. The fact that these times correlate to snackies and supper is not a coincidence.
And one of them is Quite Proficient at people-herding. After a certain time of day, all the humans must be in the sleeping chamber and if one of us is not, he becomes Perturbed.
Alright.
Instead of whispered, consider:
murmured
mumbled
muttered
breathed
sighed
hissed
mouthed
uttered
intoned
susurrated
purred
said in an undertone
gasped
hinted
said low
said into someone’s ear
said softly
said under one’s breath
said in hushed tones
insinuated
These posts make me unreasonably cranky. So cranky, in fact, that every time a new one of these goddamn things crosses my dash, I’m just going to dissect them. Both for the edification of newer writers and because fuck these lists.
As mentioned in previous posts: These are not synonyms for whispered. You can’t use them interchangeably. Let’s go through them.
“Well,” she whispered, “I suppose I haven’t got a choice.”
The character is speaking in a voice so low it’s become words made of breath, probably because she doesn’t want to be heard.
“Well,” she murmured, “I suppose I haven’t got a choice.”
The character is saying this very quietly, but above a whisper. She may be talking to herself.
“Well,” she mumbled, “I suppose I haven’t got a choice.”
The character is speaking under her breath in low enough tones that her words may sound unclear or slurred. Also very possibly talking to herself.
“Well,” she muttered, “I suppose I haven’t got a choice.”
The character is speaking lowly, but more clearly than a mumble. She sounds angry, irritated, or dully frustrated.
“Well,” she breathed, “I suppose I haven’t got a choice.”
Breathing words may mean relief, exasperation, or exhaustion, and sound half like a sigh. Oh, look—
“Well,” she sighed, “I suppose I haven’t got a choice.”
The character is almost certainly not happy. She’s speaking in a tired, heavy breath.
“Well,” she hissed, “I suppose I haven’t got a choice.”
The character’s words are coming out in low, very sharp breaths. She sounds angry, irritated, or maybe just in an intense moment.
“Well,” she mouthed, “I suppose I haven’t got a choice.”
The character is using the barest hint of her voice, if any at all. Her lips are silently forming the syllables.
“Well,” she uttered, “I suppose I haven’t got a choice.”
Using uttered in this particular type of descriptive sense actually just sounds awkward. That said, ‘utter’ sounds like a word that implies speech in low yet strong and loud tones, well-enunciated, like someone preaching.
“Well,” she intoned, “I suppose I haven’t got a choice.”
The tone of her voice is dull and flat, with little variance in pitch. She is saying this without much emotion (intentionally or not).
Fuck “susurrated”.
“Well,” she purred, “I suppose I haven’t got a choice.”
The manner she’s speaking in is silky, smooth, and particularly pleased; quite possibly smug. In this particular example, this implies she probably does have a choice about [whatever it is] and is being facetious.
“Well,” she said in an undertone, “I suppose I haven’t got a choice.”
This is bad, because an undertone is something that needs describing. That’s like saying “her dress was a color”.
“Well,” she gasped, “I suppose I haven’t got a choice.”
The character is speaking in a sharp intake of breath, probably brought on by surprise or shock. She could also be short of breath, being strangled or something.
“Well,” she hinted, “I suppose I haven’t got a choice.”
The character has particular (duh) hint-hint tones in her voice as she speaks to someone. One can just imagine her leaning over closer to their ear.
“Well,” she said low, “I suppose I haven’t got a choice.”
Her voice has dropped below normal pitch, but is above a whisper. There’s a certain amount of dullness in the tone, probably.
“Well,” she said, into his ear, “I suppose I haven’t got a choice.”
This implies nothing about the actual voice, just that she’s literally speaking right into his ear (perhaps at normal volume, which would be painful). It doesn’t, on its own, carry any connotations of tone or emotion.
“Well,” she said softly, “I suppose I haven’t got a choice.”
I have a personal beef with the word “softly” on account of writers in a certain area of a certain MMO that use that word for fucking everything; speech, movement, touch, footsteps, because it helps to passively describe their character as delicate and pretty or something.
It’s a personal beef. There’s nothing really wrong with the word. Moving on.
Saying something softly implies not only a lowered pitch but a certain gentleness (or at least lack of weight) in tone.
“Well,” she said under her breath, “I suppose I haven’t got a choice.”
This is very like muttered, murmured, etc — it sounds (dur) breathier, and is more likely to imply a person talking to themselves.
“Well,” she said in hushed tones, “I suppose I haven’t got a choice.”
Now you’re getting closer to an equal term for “whispered”; hushed tones could mean that, or half-whispered. It does imply a certain amount of whisperiness or breathiness. It also implies a deliberate attempt to be quiet.
“Well,” she insinuated, “I suppose I haven’t got a choice.”
Like with ‘uttered’, this feels grammatically weird in that it’s usually a thing a person describes another person as doing (“Greg didn’t say it, but he insinuated it!”), but whatever. It’s similar to hinting; it means you’re trying to imply or subtly convey something, but has nothing to do with actual whispers.
tl;dr Those words are all different, these lists are terrible writing advice and people need to stop pulling tangentially-related words from the thesaurus and saying they all mean the same thing.
as i tell my students:
“use the precise word, not the word that kinda sorta fits or ‘sounds more impressive’ ”
use exactly the word you MEAN
THIS THIS THIS OH MY GOD THIS.
I fucking hate those lists, they drive me batshit. Put down the thesaurus and back away slowly.
fuck “sussurated”
“Sussuration” is the continuous, ambient, non-verbal sound that comes from wind or water interacting with solid matter. A person can’t have an intelligible conversation that answers to that description. Precision is important.
I got to “ sussurated” and started angry scrolling getting ready to make this exact point.
I genuinely love lists of words but for the love of me, stop telling people to nonsensically throw words around just because you’re afraid to repeat “said” or “whispered”.
Heck, don’t even be afraid to repeat ‘said’ for every single dialogue tag. Some of the writing advice that’s actually been stuck for me is to avoid dialogue tags like the plague, and when you can’t? Just use ‘said’. It’s more of a really big punctuation mark than it is an actual word. The reader will just gloss right over it. Much better than breaking their immersion by spamming every dialogue tag under the sun. And it makes the fancy tags that you do use that much more... pointed.
star wars is so fucking stupid, I love it
Prime example of why being a fanfic writer is painful
star wars fuckery to english glossary: the reader’s digest version
the star wars universe has no official name but in fandom you’ll see it shortened to GFFA for “galaxy far, far away”
glass - transparisteel
metal used in construction - durasteel
very strong space-plastic (used in stormtrooper armor) - duraplast
tablet computer (analogous to a PADD in trek) - datapad
rather than paper, handwriting is usually done with a stylus on flimsiplast (flimsi/flimsy for short)
holos are 3-d videos or videomessages, recorded and played on a holoprojector (these are often seen in small formats, palm-sized - analogous to like. a GoPro.)
we don’t drive cars, we drive landspeeders or speeder bikes
we don’t shoot guns, we shoot blasters
if you didn’t bring a knife to a gun fight, you perhaps brought a vibroblade instead - an edged weapon that, you guessed it, vibrates. little ones could be called vibroshivs or vibroknives. we actually got to see polearm versions of these in The Mandalorian! it was very exciting.
robots in GFFA are, of course, droids. astromech droids (astromechs) are the like. iphones of the droid world - ubiquitous, multipurpose, most with a similar aesthetic. R2-D2 and BB-8 are both astromech droids. human-shaped droids like C-3P0 are protocol droids.
got a papercut? a nasty flesh wound? a missing chunk of your torso, perhaps? slap a bacta-patch on it or take a dip in a bacta tank for a soothing treatment with this all-purpose miracle healing goo. this is what diapered Luke is bobbing around in during the early part of Empire Strikes Back.
you’re supposed to say kriff/kriffing instead of “damn,” “shit,” or “fuck/fucking,” but this is for cowards. let Obi-Wan cuss.
midichlorians - ignore them.
before the Empire comes to power, baby jedi who can’t hack it as knights or are never chosen to be Padawan apprentices become members of the Service Corps, the branches of which are the Agricultural Corps (AgriCorps), Medical Corps (MedCorps), Educational Corps (EduCorps), Exploration Corps (ExplorCorps)
dates are expressed (typically) as [date] Before the Battle of Yavin (BBY) or [date] After the Battle of Yavin (ABY). for instance, the sequel trilogy begins in 34 ABY.
and, yes: that famous cantina tune from Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes is in a musical style called jizz. because star wars is incredibly stupid.
popcorn is called bang-corn, because obviously the earth-centric aspect of popcorn is the popping, not the corn.
- Just found out the bathroom is sometimes the refresher. Filing that away…
i think the most likely explanation is that immediately after the party on endor obiwan hauled anakin as far away as possible from all mortal drama and anything that could take him away from obiwan again. anakin’s been blissfully unaware of anything in the galaxy except his soaps, his softie blanket, and obiwan holding plate after plate of pancakes for 30 (slutty, slutty) years.
Honestly, this is the only explanation I will accept and Star Wars better be ready to give me a canon comic series detailing out their 3 decades of hedonistic indulgence if they expect me to deal with never seeing them in the saga again.
(I would totally buy Obi-Wan having some idea of what’s going on in the outside world, but damn it, he lost Anakin once and he’s not going to risk it happening again by letting Anakin anywhere NEAR a darksider, so NO ANAKIN, nothing is going on out there, that’s not the Force going out of balance again, you just sit there and look pretty and oh look my shirt fell off and I’ve pinned you down guess we’ll have to stay right here OH WELL.)
it just occurred to me that darth vader, master engineer, probably looked at the death star plans at some point and noticed the flaw, but didn’t bother to tell anyone about it because he despised everyone who was involved in the project
#krennic and tarkin: [die as a (indirect and direct, respectively) result of the death star’s flaw] #vader, who knew about that flaw and did nothing: unfortunate
Obi-Wan & Anakin by Minss00