[haloassists]

I’ve seen a lot of fc directories dedicated to specific groups but I’ve yet to see one specifically for black face claims (if there are, PLEASE send me a link!). So please allow me to introduce my BLACK FC DIRECTORY!

You can filter by age, gender, and ethnicity. This page will be updated regularly. Please feel free to message me with any fcs you’d like to see added or any suggestions you may have.

Click on the source link to be directed to the page!

[blackcharacterpolls]

Masterlist Of Black Focused Resources: Art And Writing Addition (1)

Good Skintone Coloring Tip More Skintone Tips Skintones And What To Do For Black Characters Coloring Scars On Dark Skin Skintone Sheets How To Draw More Accurate Blush On Dark Skin Coloring Tips On Palms Skintone Tutorial Lighting Dark Skin, Part One: Color and Identity Lighting Dark Skin, Part Two: Lighting a Flat World Skintone Coloring Tips Coloring Skintone Skintone And Black Features Humanae How To Paint Dark Skin Naylissah The Mightyz0 Tip For Picking Darker Skintones How To Draw Dark Skin Tip For Drawing Vitiligo On Dark Skin Tips To Get Facial Features To Pop On Darker Skin Kupa's Guide To Skintone When Using a 3D reference How To Avoid Whitewashing Undead Characters Of Color Lips Tutorial Guide On Drawing Biracial Characters Creating Black Characters Tips On Drawing Black Lips How I Draw Lips Drawing Black People 101 How To Draw Black People Important ideas to consider when creating characters who are Black and Indigenous people of color Rendering Dark Skin Anti-Whitewashing Tutorial For Pale & Pastel GIFs How Not To Whitewash Screencaps A Guide On Coloring Poc In Edits How I draw Black Hairstyles! Five tips On Drawing Black People’s Noses How to Draw Black People Part 1 (Intro) | All of the Basics Tips For Coloring Black People | How to Draw Black People How to Draw Curly Hair | How to Draw Black People Why Black Artists and Creators are Important How to Draw Black People with Copics/Alcohol Based Markers How to Draw Black People Part 5 | Nose and Lips How to Draw Headwraps | How to Draw Black People Part 6 Whitewashing In Art And How Colors Work Quick guide on coloring deeper skin tones Coloring palms Let's not have history repeat itself | Skin Tutorial 2025 [Tutorial] How to Draw Black Anime People - Part 1 What is Racial Caricature? How To Design Black Hair How To Critize A Black Character While Avoiding Racism\Bias Why The Disposable Black Girlfriend Is A Problem How the “Angry Minority” Trope Gaslights People of Color The "Undateable" BIPOC Co-Star Black Hair Pack! | Black Hair! 2 | Black Hair! 3 - CLIP STUDIO ASSETS How to Render Dark Skin Oil painting process Dont be afraid of Dark Skin Painting Dark Skin Tones Anatomy: Skin Skintones for POC companions in Dragon Age How to draw lips for Black/Dark Skinned people This is what colorism in media looks like white authors….can we stop the bad POC rep in fiction Why Black Villains Matter The Sassy Black Woman Trope

[which-ocs]

Which OC really likes pink and violence?

[livelaughwriteit]

Writing Sexual Tension

Some tips and tricks I’ve seen on Tumblr, on Pinterest or have learned the hard way while writing. These are pretty basic but sometimes basic is good!

Realizing they can feel the person touching them. Maybe they’re not touching but they can feel the warmth.

Accidentally saying something flirty and both of you freeze. Or saying something flirty and the other person panicking and running away

Eyes dropping to lips. Eyes looking them up and down. Eyes unable to look away. Eyes unable to make contact without blushing. Eyes are you best friend.

Mirroring. When people have crushes or like someone (or want someone to like them) they do what is called mirroring. If character 1 crosses their arms and character 2 has a crush on them, have character 2 cross their arms too.

New Girl taught me about toes. If their feet are facing you, they want to stay. If their feet are pointed away, they want to leave. I’ve found its not always true but its something you can mention or use.

Unable to stop smiling. Unable to stop laughing.

Touching the other one when you laugh. Touching them to move them out of the way. Touching them and not moving your hand away

Hugging them when you see them. Sharing a bed. Trying to be near them at all moments.

Looking at their lips and fantasizing about kissing them.

Watching others interact in some way with them or how they act around them and being super jealous, wondering why they don’t act that way with you.

[luna-azzurra]

Urban fantasy & hidden world ideas...!!

⊹ ࣪ ˖ The city has a second map. You can only read it after midnight. You've been living on the wrong one.

⊹ ࣪ ˖ "Every taxi driver in this city is the same person. No one has ever noticed."

⊹ ࣪ ˖ The graffiti changes overnight. Warnings. If you know how to read them.

⊹ ࣪ ˖ She's been the city's anonymous street artist for decades. The paintings move when no one is watching. She doesn't know why either.

⊹ ࣪ ˖ "There's a door in the subway system that isn't on any blueprint. The drivers slow down when they pass it. They never stop."

⊹ ࣪ ˖ The pawnshop on 5th street takes things that can't be held in your hands. Business is booming.

⊹ ࣪ ˖ Every city has a keeper. Someone who holds it together without knowing they're doing it. Yours just quit.

⊹ ࣪ ˖ "The pigeons aren't pigeons. They haven't been for a very long time. We're not sure what they are now."

⊹ ࣪ ˖ The bar at the end of the alley serves drinks that taste like your best memory. No one goes there twice. Everyone wants to.

⊹ ࣪ ˖ Something lives in the space between floors 13 and 14 of the hotel. The elevator always slows down there.

⊹ ࣪ ˖ "She collects lost things. Not objects. The actual feeling of loss. Her apartment is getting very full."

⊹ ࣪ ˖ The city votes for a new mayor every four years. The city itself has been choosing the winner since 1923.

⊹ ࣪ ˖ Magic didn't disappear from the world. It just learned to look like coincidence.

[livelaughwriteit]

Character Generator

Here is a fun way to set up the characters for you stories. I usually use this for my secondary characters as I generally already know what my main characters will look like. Let me know if you like it!

For Gender: 1, 2 or 3. Female 4, 5 or 6. Male

Age: 1. Child 2. Teenager 3 or 4. YA 5. Adult 6. Elderly

Species: 1 or 2. Human 3. Vampire 4. Shifter 5. Fairy/Fae 6. Ghost/Ghoul

Body: 1 or 2. Skinny 3. Average 4. Muscular 5. Dad/Mom Bod 6. Chubby

Hair Type: 1. Straight 2. Wavy 3. Curly 4. Ringlets 5. Fizzy/disheveled 6. Bald

Hair Length: 1 or 2. Short 3 or 4. Medium 5 or 6. Long

Hair Color: 1. Blonde 2. Brown 3. Red 4. Black 5. white/gray 6. Colored

Normal Hair Style: 1. Pony tail 2. Braids 3. Bun 4. Half up/Half down 5. Down/no style 6. You pick

Eye Color: 1. Blue 2. Green 3. Brown 4. Hazel 5. Mismatched 6. black/gray

Skin color: 1 or 2. Pale 3 or 4. Tan 5 or 6. Dark

Accessories: 1. Hat/cap/beanie 2. Scarf 3. Glasses 4. Necklace 5. Freckles/moles 6. Scars

Style: 1. Grunge 2. Casual 3. Dark Clothing 4. Street Wear 5. Preppy 6. Western

[livelaughwriteit]

Examples of Growth in Characters

One thing I didn't consider when I first started writing was that your character needs to show some sort of growth or change. It's like proof that your story meant something and your character actually went through something. Here are a few examples of different growths that can occur.

Cowardly -> brave

Arrogant -> humble

Spiteful -> understanding

Self centered -> thoughtful

Prejudiced -> informed

Reckless -> disciplined

Focused -> curious

Cautious -> curious

Rude -> merciful

People-pleasing -> placing boundaries

Doormat -> selfish

Don't forget, growth doesn't always have to be good either. It can be reverting to a more cinical normal than what they started at. What matters is that they change as a whole!

[luna-azzurra]

Tips for writing Hospital/medical scenes!!

Spent way too long researching this before posting lol. but please, if something's wrong, tell me. i'd rather be corrected than spread misinformation.

⋆˙⟡ Doctors don't run. Almost ever. Running in a hospital is a safety hazard, knocks into patients and equipment, and signals panic to everyone who sees it, which is the opposite of what hospital staff want to project. In a true code blue situation, there is urgency, but it looks more like extremely fast, purposeful walking and a kind of controlled chaos where everyone knows their role. The sprinting attending dramatically sliding to a bedside is a TV invention.

⋆˙⟡ "She flatlined" does not mean what you think it means. A flatline (a straight line on a heart monitor) means asystole: the heart has stopped producing electrical activity. You don't shock a flatline. CPR, yes. Epinephrine, yes. But the dramatic defibrillator moment everyone loves? That's for ventricular fibrillation, which looks like chaotic scribble on the monitor, not a flat line. Shocking a flatline in real life does nothing. Your doctor character would know this. Your nurse would know this. Your paramedic absolutely knows this.

⋆˙⟡ Medical professionals have a dark, dry humor and it's a coping mechanism, not a character flaw. People who work in high-stress, high-death environments often develop humor that sounds brutal to outsiders. BUT It's not callousness, it's a pressure valve.

⋆˙⟡ Hospitals are obscenely loud and smell very specific. Writers default to clinical silence and "the sharp smell of antiseptic." Real hospitals smell like a combination of cleaning fluid, stale air, cafeteria food leaking through vents, and occasionally something you don't want to identify. They're also constantly noisy. Intercoms, rolling carts, the beep of a dozen different monitors all slightly out of sync with each other, people talking too loudly, visitors crying in hallways. The silence only comes in very specific moments, and it's jarring precisely because it's unusual.

⋆˙⟡ Waking up from a coma is not waking up from a nap. Someone who has been unconscious for more than a day or two will have profound muscle weakness, and they often can't hold their own head up. They'll be confused, possibly for days. They won't be able to speak normally if they had a breathing tube, because their throat will be raw and damaged. They won't recognize people immediately and then have a tearful reunion five minutes later. The brain coming back online is slow, strange, and disorienting in ways that aren't photogenic. Patients frequently don't remember the first several days of recovery at all.

⋆˙⟡ There's a specific hierarchy and it matters to the people inside it. Attending physician, fellow, resident, intern, these are not interchangeable words for "doctor." An intern on their third week is legally a doctor and can barely order a sandwich without second-guessing themselves. An attending has full clinical responsibility and has seen everything. A fellow is post-residency, specializing, somewhere in between. Nurses operate in their own parallel hierarchy that intersects with but is absolutely not subordinate to doctors in the way TV suggests. Experienced nurses regularly catch errors that residents make, and both parties know it.

⋆˙⟡ Patients are almost never alone in their room doing emotional things. Nurses check vitals. Phlebotomists come for blood draws at ungodly hours. Housekeeping rolls in. A different doctor than the one managing the case comes to consult. Meals appear. An orderly needs to take them to imaging. The room itself is rarely private for long. The idea of a character lying in a hospital bed having a long, uninterrupted emotional conversation is something that mostly happens in fiction. In reality, someone knocks and enters approximately every 40 minutes, sometimes more.

⋆˙⟡ Paperwork and insurance are a constant, grinding presence. Discharge doesn't happen because the patient is better. It happens when it's approved, when a bed is needed, when insurance says so. Patients are sometimes sent home earlier than feels safe because the system demands it. Doctors spend an enormous, demoralizing amount of time on documentation, estimates suggest 2 hours of paperwork for every hour of patient care. The administrative weight of hospital medicine is a slow-burn horror that almost no fiction touches, which means the moment you do, it feels startlingly real.

⋆˙⟡ Prognosis conversations are never one clean scene. When a doctor tells a family that someone is dying, there isn't a single moment of devastation and then forward motion. People mishear. They ask the same question rephrased five different ways hoping for a different answer. They argue with the information. Someone pulls out their phone to Google the diagnosis. Someone else goes completely silent and leaves the room. A week later, one family member still believes recovery is possible and another has accepted the death entirely, and they haven't been able to talk about it. Information lands at different speeds for different people and the gap between them is its own source of suffering.

[livelaughwriteit]

What does your fictional world need?

I never make a very convincing world unless I consider these steps. I found a diagram on Pinterest early on in my writing career and have since been using variations of that! Here is essentially what they tell you is needed for a successful world. Let me know if there's anything else that you use or think about!

A functional society – determine what kind of society it is and how many people are in the population. Determine how crime is dealt with and how often it occurs. Determine who matters and how doesn’t, and how they clash.

An understandable economy – determine what is used as currency and how it is achieved. Determine what wealth looks like and how it compares to those that don’t have it. Determine what they import versus what they export.

Religion – determine what they believe in (gods/goddesses vs one god; myths and stories) and how they worship. Determine any rites of passage they must go through to be accepted. Determine the role religion plays in society and how it clashes between beliefs.

A complex government – determine how your world will be run. Determine how many people are in charge of decisions, what happens when they clash, and who is in charge of who. Determine the feelings subjects have about the government, what caused these feelings, and how they are dealt with.

Thoughtout Physical geography – determine features of the world. Determinate what the climate is, what natural physical features are present (mountains, caves, islands, volcanos, etc.) and how they impact the world. Determine natural resources and terrain. Determine how people live in the world (towns/cities, nomads, villages, etc.).

Reasonable transportation – determine how the society gets around. Determine if they travel via cars, trains, boats, planes, creatures, ferries, teleportation, by foot, etc. and determine how this impacts their daily life. Determine if all modes of transportation are available for everyone or only certain subjects. Determine which of these options is reasonable with the land features you created (probably need a boat/ferry/submarine if your world is mostly water). Determine how they relocate to other areas (by boat, bus, ferry, etc.) and any regulations with that.

If you don't already use it, Pinterest is a great resource for getting free writing tips!

[livelaughwriteit]

Features of your characters skin!

I never see very many descriptions for how characters look beyond having tattoes or some scar that means something. Here are a few others that I would like to see more of!

Scarred with no hidden or important meaning

Burned (cigarette, lighter, touched an outlet, touched a light bulb, etc.)

Birthmarks

Oily

Pale

Pierced

Reeking

Tattooed (hidden that no one knows about that don’t make an appearance only to further the plot)

Rosy

Rough

Smooth

Sunburnt

Tanned

Painted

Weathered

Moles / skin tags

Imperfect

In my opinion, only introducing tattoos/scars/burns/etc. that only add something to the plot or are a secret meaning for the plot make things feel a bit superficial. Adding little scars or tattoos that don't mean anything but still hold meaning give the characters more dimension and make them more relatable.

[luna-azzurra]

Character Quirks & Habits List!! 

𐙚⋆.˚ Always sitting with their back to the wall 

𐙚⋆.˚ Checking the lock twice. Then once more. 

𐙚⋆.˚ The comfort food that only comes out during specific moods 

𐙚⋆.˚ Knowing exactly how many steps it takes to get somewhere 

𐙚⋆.˚ Keeping one thing from every place they've ever lived 

𐙚⋆.˚ Never throwing away cards or letters but never rereading them either 

𐙚⋆.˚ The specific way they make coffee/tea that will tolerate no variation 

𐙚⋆.˚ Humming without realizing it when they're focused 

𐙚⋆.˚ Sleeping on one side of the bed even when alone 

𐙚⋆.˚ Holding their breath in elevators 

𐙚⋆.˚ The book they've never finished but also never gotten rid of 

𐙚⋆.˚ Keeping their phone face-down in certain company 

𐙚⋆.˚ The route they take when they want to think vs. when they don't 

𐙚⋆.˚ Apologizing to inanimate objects when they bump into them 

𐙚⋆.˚ The word they can't spell no matter how many times they look it up 

𐙚⋆.˚ Always being five minutes early or perpetually, chaotically late. No in between. 

𐙚⋆.˚ The thing they do with their hands when they're listening 

𐙚⋆.˚ Laughing at their own jokes before finishing them 

[luna-azzurra]

Moments that reveal your Character's Loneliness!!

✧ Keeping a running list in their head of things to tell someone, even though there's no one to tell.

✧ Talking to the cat. Not in a playful way. In a confessional way.

✧ Lingering at the checkout counter a beat too long because the cashier made eye contact.

✧ Watching the clock on Friday evenings and feeling something they can't quite name drop in their chest.

✧ Answering "what did you do this weekend?" with something tidied up and social-sounding, leaving out the two days they saw no one.

✧ Muting their TV just to hear how loud the silence actually is.

✧ Ordering too much food and eating alone with the plates set out, taking up the whole table.

✧ Spending longer than necessary in public places (bookshops, grocery stores) because being around strangers is close enough.

✧ Re-reading old messages from people who don't talk to them anymore, not out of longing but out of proof they existed to someone.

✧ Getting very invested in strangers' lives online: their updates, their kids, their ordinary days.

✧ Starting conversations with service workers and then feeling ashamed of how much they wanted it to continue.

✧ Making plans they know won't happen just for the brief warmth of having something to look forward to.

✧ Dreaming about people they barely know.

✧ Waking grateful, then embarrassed.

✧ Keeping their coat on too long at parties, as though they're still deciding whether to stay.

[luna-azzurra]

Things to consider when Writing about Schools/Academies!!

⊹ What is this school actually for. training mages? knights? spies? just normal education? because "prestigious academy" means nothing if you don't know what they're prestigious at

⊹ Who gets in and how. is it merit based, do you have to be rich, legacy admissions, secret tests, random selection, born with the right abilities. what happens to kids who don't make the cut

⊹ What's the age range. are these literal children or young adults or mixed ages. because a school with 11 year olds has very different problems than one with 18 year olds

⊹ How strict is it. prison vibes with tons of rules? pretty chill? different rules for different student groups (which is unfair and causes drama)?

⊹ What are the social hierarchies. obviously there are cliques but what are they based on. wealth? power level? what year you're in? family name? talent?

⊹ What happens if you fail or get expelled. are you just sent home in shame or is it worse. do people sometimes not survive the training. how often do students drop out or disappear

⊹ Who are the teachers and why are they teaching. washed up former heroes? people who never left? actually passionate educators? suspicious people using it as a cover? mix of all of them probably

⊹ What's forbidden. certain magic, certain areas of campus, relationships between students, leaving grounds, specific books/knowledge. and obviously your protagonist will break these rules

⊹ How do students get sorted/grouped. houses? teams? specializations? randomly? and do these groups have rivalries because they should

⊹ What's the curriculum actually like. is it actually useful or are they learning weird outdated stuff. are there classes that are just covers for something else. what are the hardest classes

⊹ Where is this school located. isolated castle? middle of a city? pocket dimension? floating island? does it move? can students leave or are they stuck there

⊹ What traditions does the school have. tournaments, festivals, hazing rituals (the dark kind), graduation ceremonies, weird old customs nobody questions

⊹ Is there corruption in the faculty/administration. favoritism, taking bribes, secret agendas, covering up student deaths, embezzling, working for the villain

⊹ What's the diversity situation. is it segregated somehow (by class, species, magic type)? integrated but with tension? do some groups face discrimination from staff or other students?

⊹ What happens outside of classes. clubs? underground fight rings? secret societies? banned parties? students sneaking out? romantic drama?

⊹ Why is your protagonist specifically there. chosen one nonsense? hiding from something? forced to attend? actually wants to learn? found out they have powers and got dragged there confused?

[luna-azzurra]

Internal Monologue & POV Thoughts List!! 

𐙚⋆.˚ Noticing weird details when in shock (the color of someone's shoes, a crack in the ceiling) 

𐙚⋆.˚ The thought they immediately try to un-think 

𐙚⋆.˚ Mentally rehearsing a conversation seventeen times before having it 

𐙚⋆.˚ Hyper-awareness of their own breathing in tense moments 

𐙚⋆.˚ Latching onto something small and fixable when everything big is broken 

𐙚⋆.˚ The moment they realize they've been holding their breath 

𐙚⋆.˚ Second-guessing a read on someone, then being right anyway 

𐙚⋆.˚ Remembering something at the worst possible time 

𐙚⋆.˚ That specific mental static that isn't quite thinking 

𐙚⋆.˚ Bargaining with themselves ("just get through the next five minutes") 

𐙚⋆.˚ Noticing they're hungry/cold/tired only once the crisis is over 

𐙚⋆.˚ Replaying something someone said with a new, terrible meaning 

𐙚⋆.˚ The thought that arrives fully formed and changes everything 

𐙚⋆.˚ Knowing the right thing to do. Doing the other thing. 

𐙚⋆.˚ Arguing both sides of something until they're exhausted 

𐙚⋆.˚ The way grief or love hijacks every unrelated thought 

𐙚⋆.˚ That moment of calm before a decision that will cost them something 

𐙚⋆.˚ Intrusive memories at inconvenient times 

𐙚⋆.˚ Talking to themselves in second person when being hard on themselves 

𐙚⋆.˚ The thought they won't let themselves finish

[luna-azzurra]

How to write Apologies!!

✮ Bad apologies are worse than no apology. Your character says "I'm sorry you feel that way" or "I'm sorry but..." and wonders why the other person is still mad. They're not actually taking responsibility, they're deflecting. Or they apologize way too much for little things, making it about them and their guilt instead of the person they hurt. Show the difference between PERFORMING remorse and actually FEELING it. Real apologies are specific. They name the harm and they don't make excuses.

✮ Sometimes your character doesn't know how to apologize. They were never taught. They get defensive instead. "Well you did X" or "I wouldn't have done it if you hadn't..." They're so afraid of being the bad guy that they can't admit they messed up. Show that resistance. The pride and fear mixing together. The way they're digging themselves deeper while trying to save face. They know they're wrong but they can't make their mouth say the words.

✮ A good apology is vulnerable as hell. Your character has to sit with the discomfort of hurting someone. Look them in the eye. Say "I fucked up. I'm sorry. You deserved better." No buts. Just acknowledgment. And then they have to wait for the other person's response. They don't get to demand forgiveness. They don't get to move on until the other person is ready. Show that powerlessness (Please.)

✮ Actions matter more than words. Your character can say sorry all they want but if the behavior doesn't change, the apology is worthless. Show them following through. Doing the work. Proving they meant it. Or show them failing, apologizing over and over for the same thing until the words become meaningless. Sometimes people don't get second chances. Sometimes the damage is done. Show the consequences of waiting too long or not trying hard enough.

[luna-azzurra]

Tips for Writing Small Towns!!

⋆˙⟡ Everyone knows everyone and they have for forty years. The history is load-bearing. In a small town, the guy who runs the hardware store and the woman who teaches third grade went to prom together in 1987 and had a falling out over something no one talks about directly. The person behind the diner counter is the cousin of the person who sold you your house. Nothing is without CONTEXT. Every interaction carries a decade of subtext. Writers often write small-town characters like they just met each other. BUT Real small-town social life happens almost entirely in implication, in what you don't say, in who you happen to be standing next to when you say it.

⋆˙⟡ The gossip network is fast, imprecise, and almost impossible to correct. Information in small communities travels faster than in cities because the network is dense, EVERYONE has direct ties to almost everyone else. But it also distorts rapidly. By the time something gets around, it may be only vaguely related to what actually happened. And correcting a rumor is exponentially harder than spreading one, because corrections aren't interesting. If your character does something embarrassing on a Monday, by Thursday half the town has a version of it, and no version is quite right. The original fact may be less damaging than what it became. This is just how information behaves in a closed system.

⋆˙⟡ People who grew up there and people who moved there live in parallel versions of the same town. Longtime residents navigate the town through memory, that means every building has a history and every corner has a former version. The old pharmacy that's now a coffee shop is still "the old pharmacy" to someone who grew up there. New arrivals navigate the town as it exists now, without the palimpsest. These two groups see each other and don't quite connect, and there's a specific low-grade tension in it that isn't unfriendliness exactly, it's more like speaking slightly different dialects. The newcomer who thinks they've been accepted into the community is usually still a newcomer in the eyes of people who've been there for three generations.

⋆˙⟡ There is no anonymity, and some people are destroyed by that. Others thrive. Being known everywhere you go is experienced radically differently depending on who you are and what your history is. For someone who is liked, trusted, in good social standing, it's warm and a safety net. For someone who made a mistake, has a stigmatized identity, or just doesn't fit, it's a trap you cannot escape without physically leaving. The family with the father who was arrested. The person who had a public breakdown. They are permanently known as that thing. The smallness is indifferent to whether it's kind or cruel to you specifically.

⋆˙⟡ People who live rurally organize their lives around weather, seasons, and land in ways that urban writers often don't account for. A bad winter IS A FINANCIAL THREAT. The soil condition matters. What the river is doing matters. Whether the deer are bad this year matters. There's a literacy to the natural environment that rural people have and that outsiders don't (reading the sky, reading the fields, knowing what certain sounds mean, knowing when something is wrong with the land before you can articulate why.) Writing a rural character who doesn't have this relationship to their physical environment makes them feel like a city person who happened to move somewhere with a longer driveway.

⋆˙⟡ There are almost no strangers, which means crime and conflict work differently. When something bad happens in a small town (theft, assault, betrayal etc.) the suspect pool is tiny and largely known. Everyone is someone's cousin or former coworker or neighbor. The person who did the thing is someone whose name you know, whose mother you know, who you've been at the same table with. This is much more psychologically complicated than anonymous crime. It's not just WHO did it, it's the rearrangement of every relationship once you know. And there's immense social pressure to not pursue it, to not break the fabric, to let it go for the sake of everyone having to continue living next to each other.

[luna-azzurra]

Dialogue Beats & How People Actually Talk List!! 

𐙚⋆.˚ Trailing off mid-sentence and not finishing the thought 

𐙚⋆.˚ Answering a question with a question to buy time 

𐙚⋆.˚ Laughing before saying something painful 

𐙚⋆.˚ "I'm fine" said in twelve completely different ways 

𐙚⋆.˚ The pause before a name that carries a whole conversation in it 

𐙚⋆.˚ Repeating the last word someone said while processing 

𐙚⋆.˚ Starting a sentence three times before finishing it 

𐙚⋆.˚ Saying "no, yeah" vs. "yeah, no" (opposite meanings) 

𐙚⋆.˚ The overly casual voice when asking something they desperately care about 

𐙚⋆.˚ Talking faster when nervous, slower when trying to control the room 

𐙚⋆.˚ The subject change that's so obvious it becomes its own confession 

𐙚⋆.˚ "It's fine" vs. "It's fine" vs. "...it's fine" 

𐙚⋆.˚ Going very quiet and polite when actually at their most dangerous 

𐙚⋆.˚ Agreeing just to end the conversation 

𐙚⋆.˚ Using someone's full name vs. nickname as a power shift 

𐙚⋆.˚ Apologizing for things that aren't their fault out of habit 

𐙚⋆.˚ The "anyway—" that means I'm done being vulnerable now 

𐙚⋆.˚ Jokes as deflection (always) 

𐙚⋆.˚ Saying the brave thing, then immediately walking it back 

𐙚⋆.˚ The sentence that stops just before the word that would mean too much