the shards of many @fragmenthearted - Tumblr Blog

spiteful / ruinous / I'm all things you feared I was / another villain in your story

cold rage / hides the shame / of images I can't escape / scars that live under the surface

it's strange / what I became / when part of me was ripped away / and replaced with something worthless

afraid you're on my bad side? / that's good / if I wanted to end you / I could, I could

I'm sinking down / if you only knew how hard it is for me to climb out / I'm kicking and screaming, but no one can hear me, so what happens now? / the shadows are creeping in

I didn't ask for this

Take what's left of my fractured heart / Bloodstained 'cause the pieces are so sharp

#(music)#an ardent anathema : musings #//oh god were those my tags #//I think so #(mobile)

ironinkpen

When writing couples, I like to use the Kiss Rule:

If they have to kiss for you to know they’re in love, you’re not writing a romance right.

demytasse

I couldn’t agree more with this. As someone who has been married for 7 years (together for 9), kissing hardly proves anything of love, at least on its own. The starry-eyed lover type of intimacy is cute, but using it exclusively is like eating fondant off a cake. It’s sweet, looks polished and pretty, but lacks robust the flavour of combined elements — fillings, frosting, toppings, and the cake itself.

It’s gestures often overlooked, silent acts of respect without calling attention to them. Subtleties mixed with the obvious.

The good, bad, and the ugly.

playful banter, ribbing, insults/backhanded compliments

recognising ticks/tells and how to respond (e.g. specific throat clear before they speak)

tolerating inconsequential bad habits (e.g. puts dishes beside dishwasher, not in it)

listening to the same stories multiple times as if they were new

developing similar quirks (e.g. particular laugh)

inside jokes

mock fighting, mini competitions

blatant honesty, humble apologies, knowing when to drop an argument

saying nothing/talking for hours

tending to illness or injuries

pokes, pet/pats, head/shoulder bumps, bites, tickles, cuddling, long gazes, stroking hair

grooming, restraighten clothing, touch up hair, brush off crumbs

singing and dancing together

understanding your partner’s hurt rather than just apologising

trust and respect

knowing how to cheer the other up, how to piss them off, humour them

reassurance (e.g. I’m here to talk, you’re doing a great job, your insecurities don’t define you)

associating sights, smells, touches, songs, phrasing, etc with them (e.g. “I saw a pigeon today and thought ‘is this my partner?’”

hating dumb things they do, but finding them hard to live without and secretly loving them

compromising, sacrificing, reciprocation

Love is unspoken, tolerant, and a spectrum of emotions.

It’s accepting that you’ll fuckin’ hate their entire being at times, exclaim with vitriol, “god, you’re so fucking annoying” while you smile and know that it’s trivial in the grand scheme.

It’s real. It’s healthy. It’s fun. That’s what I try to encapsulate in my sappy romantic fiction because realistic fluff is so much more gratifying.

I hope this helps.

#//i like this #(reference)

lythane

Au where instead of being rejected by the crystal, Ardyn absorbs its power and becomes the crystal himself, like a funky little human battery. Still infected by the scourge and spreading it, he is both a necessity and a danger and is kept locked away in the Citadel instead of Angelgard so the Lucis Caelum line don’t lose their connection to the Gods and their magic.

egelskop

‘blood honey’

skribblegurl

some people think writers are so eloquent and good with words, but the reality is that we can sit there with our fingers on the keyboard going, “what’s the word for non-sunlight lighting? Like, fake lighting?” and for ten minutes, all our brain will supply is “unofficial”, and we know that’s not the right word, but it’s the only word we can come up with…until finally it’s like our face got smashed into a brick wall and we remember the word we want is “artificial”.

#//oh mood #(mun things)

the-writers-bookshelf

Try to recognize patterns in your writing and brace yourself for the lowest points.

You can’t be “on” and inspired all the time so there will be points in your WIP that are less-than-exciting to write. You won’t want to do it. You’ll feel depressed and gloomy and doubt yourself.

It’s okay to feel that way. It doesn’t mean you’re a sham. It doesn’t mean the story has lost its edge and you need to trash it (*slaps your hand away from the delete key*)

Chances are, this is a normal pattern for you. Eventually, there will come a segment in your WIP that makes you dread working on it. Happens in practically every story, right?

For me, I hit the doldrums at 30k like clockwork. Every time. It becomes slow, laborious, and awful.

But don’t let it stop you. Keep trucking through it and reassess when you can be a bit more objective later on after you’ve had a break.

By bracing yourself for the lowest points, it takes the emotional component down a notch and you can ground yourself in the realization that this is normal and it will pass.

kavtari

Reblog if you RP using Discord

drunkfinalfantasy

Your Regis&Clarus post reminded me of all the Obama&Biden memes from a while back and now that won't leave my head. So thanks for that. Seriously though, I love this blog! Keep up the great work! :)

It’s really a shame there isn’t more of these two in the games or movie.

#//still good

magicalinspo

“How cruel fate is to remind us that we will bend to it even whilst demanding we shape our own.”

— Excerpt from a Book I’ll Never Write // v.r.

#an ardent anathema : musings

magicalinspo

look at this mess that i made it’s written on my g r a v e

“ HERE LIES THE MAN WHO CAN’T BE SAVED. ”

#an ardent anathema : musings

magicalinspo

I’m out for blood to claim what is MINE.

#an ardent anathema : musings

aylo-anzu

❀💙❀

#;;somnial progenitor

elfsroot

Lee Pace as Brother Day in F O U N D A T I O N

#//i have been gone but also watching foundation #//can we talk about how much he reminds me of somnus #(inspirations)#;;somnial progenitor #(gifs)

rpmusings-galore

I beg my sins be forgiven.

I beg my soul be made whole.

I plead what was taken be returned, for scars to fade with nightmarish memory.

I cry out in vain.

#an ardent anathema : musings

egelskop

#;;ardent anathema #//ooooo

succubusboyfriend

being a self-taught artist with no formal training is having done art seriously since you were a young teenager and only finding out that you’re supposed to do warm up sketches every time you’re about to work on serious art when you’re fuckin twenty-five

succubusboyfriend

someone: oh yeah, do this exercise during your warm ups! it’ll help

me: my what

suave-eddboy

thepioden

What’s up I have an actual college degree in art and I was never ONCE taught to do warm ups.

sparksel

when i was in undergrad, it was kind of mentioned in and offhand way that we should do warmups, but we were never shown what that meant. And, y’know, we were young so it didn’t matter so much.

Being older now and having an art job it’s…kind of essential.

So: a quick primer for those of you who are like ‘ok but how do i actually go about doing this warmup thing.’

1) you may be tempted to do ‘a warmup drawing’ which is just a drawing that will take longer than it needed to and probably be frustrating and kind of bad because you didn’t warm up first. It’s tempting but always a trick your brain is playing on you! Do not trust!

2) warmups will vary based on what feels good to you/what task you’re about to do/what motor skills you want to practice. That being said, some good standbys:

a) circles. Just a whole page of circles on whatever drawing surface you’re going to be using, whether that’s your tablet or your sketchbook or a drawing pad on an easel. For these circles you should make sure that you’re drawing from your shoulder and not your wrist. In fact, you want to be drawing from your shoulder rather than your wrist most of the time! forever! your wrist is delicate please preserve it!

In order to ensure that you’re drawing from your shoulder, when you’re holding your pencil or whatever drawing tool you’re using, the only part of your hand that should be touching the drawing surface is part of the last two fingers–some people prefer the finger tips, but I tend to favor the first knuckles. Either way, the fingers should really be ghosting over the surface, providing guidance rather than support.

I usually start with big circles and then go to smaller circles and lines of ellipses, and then try to fit circles and ellipses inside other shapes i’ve already drawn as a precision exercise, but i don’t do that unless i’m feeling loose

b) spirals! i don’t always do spirals, but if i’m stiff and the circles just aren’t cutting it, spirals are a good fall back. I start from the center and work outward, going both clockwise and counterclockwise until i feel comfortable with the whole range of motion. Some people really care about getting perfect spirals but for me it’s all about making sure i’m comfortable with how i’m moving so who really even cares about how the spirals look. Not me!

c) lines! straight lines! in parallel! i do a mix of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. These are often more from the elbow than the shoulder, especially if I’m working on a smaller surface. For this exercise, I recommend holding the drawing tool perpendicular with the surface

d) connect the dots. This is a precision and accuracy exercise and takes two forms. The first is to draw two dots and then draw a straight line between them. The second is to draw three dots and draw the curve that connects them. This sounds a lot simpler than it is in practice. Take time to ghost over the line you plan to draw before actually committing to your line. (I don’t always remember where I picked up my warm up exercises, but I’m pretty sure I got this one from Scott Robertson. His how to draw and how to render books are very technical but also accessible and worth checking out)

e) cubes, spheres, cones, and cylinders. These help get your brain into a more volumetric space. I draw multiples of each, rotating the forms around, and I’ll often take the time to do some rough shading on at least a few of them

f) spidermans! This one is really good if you’re going to be storyboarding or working on dynamic poses. Just fill a page full of spidermans doing all sorts of acrobatics.

g) beans. I don’t do beans too much anymore, but I know a lot of people like it so I’m mentioning it here. Fill an area with different size bean shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper.

h) short medium and long line repetition. draw a short, medium, and long line on your page, and then draw directly on top of them 8 to 12 times, doing your best to exactly trace what you’ve already drawing. Repeat with a wavy line. I’m bad at this one, which means I probably need to do it more.

And there are lots more options too! Hit up youtube to see what other people recommend, put together your own go-to list, mix it up when you’re getting bored, etc.

This is a long list, I know, but I usually don’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes to warm up, and I can warm up one handed while I’m drinking coffee, so, multitasking hurrah.

Sometimes I’ll advance to a precision warmup and find that I haven’t loosened up enough yet; it’s totally ok to go back to an earlier exercise! Also, all of this has the added benefit of kind of ritualistically getting you into the drawing mode so even if I’m not feeling it before I start, by the time I’ve gotten to the end I’m usually Ready For Drawin’. Brain hacks.

so, yeah! that’s a lot of words, but! Warmups are important! Save your joints, take less advil, do better drawings!