How Very Silly

[luna-azzurra]

Caretaker Lines!!

✮ "Stop trying to act tough. You're shaking."

✮ "When did this happen? Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

✮ "Hold still--I know it stings, but I have to do this."

✮ "You scared me half to death, you know that?"

✮ "I've got you. You don't have to hold yourself up anymore."

✮ "Just breathe. In and out. I'm right here."

✮ "You're going to need stitches and I swear, if you say you're fine one more time--"

✮ "Don't argue with me right now. Just let me help you."

✮ "I'm not going anywhere, so stop telling me to leave."

✮ "Can you squeeze my hand? I need to know you can hear me."

✮ "You're running a fever on top of everything else. Of course you are."

✮ "I found you on the floor. Do you understand how terrifying that was?"

[luna-azzurra]

Writers have two modes and they are "i haven't written in three weeks and i am rotting from the inside and everything feels wrong and i don't know who i am anymore" and "i wrote for four hours straight and forgot to eat and it's dark outside and when did that happen and i feel like a god" and there is nothing in between. no chill. no medium setting. just famine or feast and a very confused nervous system.

[alittlelevity]

my dream for tumblr is that we all relearn the phrase "it's not for me" and we remember that this is different from "it should not exist."

something something likes charge reblogs cast

[luna-azzurra]

Amnesia Prompts!!

☆ "You keep looking at me like I should remember you. I'm sorry. I'm trying."

☆ "They told me who I was. I don't recognize that person at all."

☆ "You loved someone who wore my face. I don't know if I can be them again."

☆ "Don't tell me everything at once. Let me find some of it myself."

☆ "I know I'm supposed to feel something when I look at you. I'm waiting for it."

☆ "You're a stranger to me. The saddest part is I can tell I wasn't to you."

☆ "My hands remember things my mind doesn't. That terrifies me."

☆ "Everyone keeps telling me who I was. Nobody is asking who I want to be."

☆ "I fell in love with you twice. Once before and once just now."

☆ "You kept everything. Every photo every letter. What do I do with that kind of love?"

☆ "I don't remember our history but I remember how you make me feel. Is that enough?"

☆ "Don't grieve me while I'm still standing here. I can't bear that."

☆ "I lost my past but I still have a future. I'm trying to focus on that."

☆ "You're the only thing that feels familiar and I can't explain why."

☆ "I know I loved you. I can feel the shape of it even if I've lost the details."

[luna-azzurra]

Thriller Dialogue Prompts!!

✮⋆˙ "I don't make threats. I make schedules."

✮⋆˙ "You should've stayed out of it. Now it's too late for that."

✮⋆˙ "The thing about secrets is they always find a way out. Always."

✮⋆˙ "I've been in this room before. The last person who sat in that chair didn't leave."

✮⋆˙ "You're looking for a monster. Stop looking so far away."

✮⋆˙ "I didn't plan for you to find out. But now that you have, we have a problem."

✮⋆˙ "Trust no one in this building. Including me. Especially me."

✮⋆˙ "Something is wrong. Everything looks normal and that's exactly why something is wrong."

✮⋆˙ "I've kept this secret for fifteen years. One more day won't kill me. Probably."

✮⋆˙ "You're not afraid of me yet. Give it a minute."

✮⋆˙ "I counted the exits before I sat down. Old habit."

✮⋆˙ "They found the letter. Everything we planned is falling apart."

✮⋆˙ "I'm not the villain here. I'm just the one willing to do what nobody else will."

✮⋆˙ "You should've run when you had the chance. Now we're past that."

✮⋆˙ "The last person who betrayed me is still missing. Think carefully."

[luna-azzurra]

Dialogue Prompts!! #3

☆ "I'm not the same person you left. You should probably remember that."

☆ "You don't get to miss me. You had me and you wasted it."

☆ "I've been keeping secrets for you since we were seventeen. I'm tired."

☆ "Don't call it love if you only show up when it's convenient."

☆ "I'm the most dangerous person in this room and nobody knows it yet."

☆ "You broke something in me that I'm still trying to name."

☆ "I'm not asking for much. Just stop lying to my face."

☆ "We could've been something incredible. You chose ordinary instead."

☆ "I saw the way you looked at her. Don't insult me by denying it."

☆ "Some people leave marks. You left scars. There's a difference."

☆ "I forgave you three times before I realized you were counting on it."

"☆ You're the only person I'd start a war for. That terrifies me."

☆ "I don't do second chances. You already know this."

☆ "They asked me if I loved you. I said something worse--I needed you."

☆ "Walk away if you want. But you'll think about this conversation for years."

☆ "I built walls and somehow you still ended up inside them."

☆ "You have a talent for making people feel invisible. Truly a gift."

☆ "I'm not broken. I'm just not what you expected."

☆ "It wasn't hate at first sight. It took at least a week."

☆ "Don't make promises in the dark that you can't keep in the daylight."

[luna-azzurra]

Dialogue Prompts!! #2

☆ "I'm not angry. I'm just done explaining myself to people who already decided."

☆ "You don't scare me. You used to, but not anymore."

☆ "I kept every promise I made to you. You kept none of mine."

☆ "Don't touch me like you still have the right to."

☆ "I watched you choose everyone else and called it love. Never again."

☆ "You're the reason I check my exits before I walk into a room."

☆ "I'm not hard to love. You were just too lazy to try."

☆ "Say that again. Slower this time, so we both understand what you mean."

☆ "I didn't come this far to be treated like a backup plan."

☆ "You look at them like they hung the moon. It's disgusting. I'm obsessed with it."

☆ "We were fine until we weren't. That's the part no one warns you about."

☆ "I don't miss you. I miss who I thought you were."

☆ "The audacity is truly breathtaking. I almost respect it."

☆ "I'm bleeding out and you're asking me if I'm okay. Do I look okay?"

☆ "You taught me that love isn't always enough. That was an expensive lesson."

☆ "Don't come to my funeral if you couldn't check on me while I was alive."

☆ "I was rooting for you. That's the part that hurts most."

☆ "You're not leaving. Not until you finish what you started."

[azzurina]

Villain Dialogue Prompts #2

♱ "You call that a plan? I've seen better improvisation from amateurs."

♱ "I didn't climb this far to be stopped by you."

♱ "You're not brave. You're just too naive to know fear."

♱ "Every hero I've faced said the same things. None of them are here anymore."

♱ "I don't break people. I simply reveal what was already broken."

♱ "You think righteousness is armor. It's a blindfold."

♱ "I gave you a chance to walk away. That was my one act of mercy."

♱ "You're fighting for people who would turn on you in a heartbeat."

♱ "Hope is just disappointment that hasn't arrived yet."

♱ "I didn't become a monster. I became honest."

♱ "You remind me of who I used to be. That's not a compliment."

♱ "The world doesn't want saving. It wants someone strong enough to rule it."

♱ "You're a candle calling itself a wildfire."

♱ "I've already taken everything from you. You just don't know it yet."

♱ "Loyalty is a leash. I cut mine the moment I saw clearly."

♱ "You bleed for people who sleep soundly while you suffer."

♱ "I don't need followers. I need the world on its knees."

♱ "Your courage is wasted on a losing side."

♱ "I was like you once... full of fire and empty of wisdom."

♱ "You want to save everyone? You can't even save yourself."

♱ "The difference between a villain and a visionary is who writes the history."

♱ "I don't destroy for pleasure. I destroy for purpose."

♱ "You're the last echo of a dying ideal."

♱ "When I'm done, they'll build statues of me and forget you ever existed."

♱ "I don't fear death. I've already killed everything inside me worth mourning."

[actual-changeling]

In the spirit of encouraging people to comment on fanfics while also making it easier to do so, I feel obliged to share a browser extension for ao3 that has quite literally revolutionized the comment game for me.

I present to you: the floating ao3 comment box!

From what I've seen, a big problem for many people is that once you reach the comments at the bottom of a fic, your memory of it miraculously disappears. Anything you wanted to say is stuck ten paragraphs ago, and you barely remember what you thought while reading. This fixes that!

I'll give a little explanation on the features and how it works, but if you want to skip all that, here's the link.

Edit: Yes, this also works on mobile!

The extension is visible as a small blue box in the upper left corner.

(Side note: The green colouring is not from the extension, that's me.)

If you click on it, you open a comment box window at the bottom of your screen but not at the bottom of the fic. I opened my own fic for demonstrative purposes.

The website also gives explanations on how exactly it functions, but I'll summarize regardless.

insert selection -> if you highlight a sentence in the fic it will be added in italics to the comment box

add to comment box -> once you're done writing your comment, you click this button and the entire thing will automatically copied to the ao3 comment box

delete -> self explanatory

on mulitchapter fics, you will be given the option to either add the comment to just the current chapter or the entire fic

The best part? You can simply close the window the same way you opened it and your progress will automatically be saved. So you can open it, comment on a paragraph, and then close it and keep reading without having the box in your face.

Comments are what keep writers going, and as both a writer and a reader, I think it's such an easy way of showing support and enthusiasm.

[luna-azzurra]

Writers cannot watch a movie normally. we are sitting there going "oh that's the inciting incident" and "they introduced that object too early it's obviously coming back" and "this dialogue is doing three things at once good for them" while everyone else is just. watching the movie. having a normal experience. feeling feelings without labelling them. i envy that so much and i would never give it up.

[luna-azzurra]

Things to consider when writing a character!! --1

⊹ What do they want vs what do they need. these should not be the same thing. what they want is the surface goal ( the job, the person, the revenge, the answer.) What they need is the thing underneath that they can't name yet. The story is what happens in the gap between those two things. if they're identical your character has nowhere to go.

⊹ What are they wrong about. Not morally wrong necessarily. just. what belief do they hold that the story is going to test. What assumption do they make about themselves or the world that turns out to be incomplete? A character without a wrong belief is already finished. They have no arc, give them something to learn even if learning it hurts them.

⊹ How do they talk when they're nervous. Do they go quiet or do they talk too much? do they deflect with jokes? do they get weirdly formal? do they ask questions instead of answering them? the way a person behaves under pressure is who they actually are. And it should be different from how they behave when they're comfortable.

⊹ What do they find funny. this one sounds small and it is not small at all. Humour is worldview. What makes someone laugh tells you what they value, what they're afraid of, how they handle pain. A character with no sense of humour is just flat. even the gravest person finds something absurd. find the thing.

⊹ What are they ashamed of? not their tragic backstory. their actual shame. The small ugly thing they would never say out loud. The time they were a coward. The feeling they pretend not to have. The desire they think disqualifies them from being a good person. Shame is where the most interesting character work lives and most writers skip straight over it :(

⊹ What do they do when no one is watching? how do they move through a space alone. What do they reach for when they're sad. What do they do with their hands??? Public behaviour IS performance. Private behaviour is truth. you don't have to show all of it but you have to know it or the character will feel hollow in a way the reader notices without being able to name.

[disabledfurry]

what if we stopped giving characters strabismus as a funny joke. what if we stopped? what if we stopped. what if we stopped

why the fuck do i even need to say this. "it's googly eyes" no, real people look like that. and you know they do. i know you know they do

ID: a graphic titled "strabismus (misaligned eyes) by Cleveland Clinic. there are 4 types of strabismus, each represented by a drawing of a person with it.

Hypotropia: eye points downward.

Exotropia: eye points outward.

Hypertropia: eye points upward.

Esotropia: eye points inward.

end ID

[disabledfurry]

i've only seen it in the tags just once, but because it happens every time i mention strabismus jokes, i want to preemptively say:

this joke when it appears in media is not usually just "hey this person has a weird eye" it's "hey this person is disabled", specifically, 99% of the time, "this person is intellectually disabled and either has or potentially has brain damage". (alternatively, rarely, "this person is mentally ill", such as fiddleford mcgucket and his glass eye, and a handful of cartoon villains i saw growing up for some reason)

strabismus jokes are not harmful because they "wrongly associate strabismus with stupidity", they are harmful because they are making fun of disabled people, especially intellectually disabled people and people with brain damage, who often do have strabismus, because many congenital and neurological conditions cause strabismus, intellectual disability, developmental disability, and cognitive disability. so while they think our eyes "look funny", that is only part of it

the strabismus jokes i see are generally about exotropia or esotropia. i see them on tv in comedy skits, i see them in cartoons both new and old, i see them in just random peoples's fucking art, i see them in reaction images often, i see them in memes often, i see them in emojis in discord servers, i see them in new media like fionna and cake (candy queen) and dungeon meshi (most notably marcille's "if i'm not useful to anyone" scene, laios, and an orc are all portrayed with exotropia as a joke at least once.)

there is a tv tropes term for this: fish eyes. and another! comically cross-eyed. the second even mentions this:

"In Real Life strabismus is a serious condition and poking fun of it is likely to offend some people, as it's a relatively common disorder. Despite this it's still an Acceptable Target in most circles, and mockery of strabismus is surprisingly common even in modern media."

but why are we considered an acceptable target? is it so normalized to make fun of people with visible differences, especially facial differences, that you need someone on a condemned social media platform to tell you it's not ok?

how do you "not know" that people with strabismus exist? stop putting that on my post. how could you not read between the lines when you see characters take a blow to the head and suddenly become cross eyed, speaking and walking like they're drunk? when things fall out of their hands and they drool? i always remember patrick going "wall eyed" and drooling and spongebob snapping his fingers. how could you not see what was being made fun of? did you not have disabled kids in your schools? have you never seen people with strabismus outside, even though there's at least 13 million of us? i just can't wrap my head around it- how could you "not know"?

someone i know recently said that people with visible disabilities are so hyper-visible that we've become "invisibilized". inconsequential. i'm hidden in my house and a shadow at my mother's heels, a flea bitten bad dog who does not speak unless i'm spoken to, does not try to take or want more than i have been graciously offered, and does not challenge the way things are

i refer back to the ugly laws- that unless we were there for the purpose of entertainment (jokes, inspiration porn, "feel good" stories that dehumanize us and shower praise upon able bodied people for being so kind as to take care of us or to take us to prom or to dance with us or to fucking... take us to a strip club, because we are also desexualized, and degendered, rendered entirely fucking inhuman and only existing for able bodied consumption, even in our day to day irl interactions) or reminding people to be repulsed by us (horror, villains, "undesirable" characters like loser nerds or stalkers), we were not to be seen in public.

this is also a call to like, think about what you're seeing and what's being depicted and what's being implied by what you're seeing depicted. think about what's being implied by marcille with her wide apart eyes and her childish voice and limited vocabulary. who might sound like that? who might look like that?

[luna-azzurra]

Tips for Writing Injuries! (AGAIN)

Your action hero just got shot in the shoulder, stitched it up in a motel bathroom, and is now running through a forest. I need you to know that a shoulder wound severs muscle, nerves, and sometimes bone, and the human body's response to that is not "mild wincing followed by full range of motion." here is what injuries actually do to peoplee...

⊹ Adrenaline is REAL and it does allow people to do extraordinary things immediately after injury, BUT it is a loan, not a gift. you borrow the function and you pay it back later with interest. Your character might genuinely be able to run for twenty minutes after being stabbed. and then the adrenaline drops and everything the body was delaying arrives all at once. the collapse is NOT weakness. it's biology collecting its debt. write the debt collection. it's more interesting than the heroic sprint anyway.

⊹ Blood loss changes cognition before it drops you. you don't go from "fine" to "unconscious." you go through a whole middle stage of confusion, poor decision-making, emotional dysregulation, a strange calm, tunnel vision, difficulty forming sentences. Your injured character making a bad call, saying something they normally wouldn't, becoming suddenly and inexplicably gentle--that's blood loss. use the middle stage. it's dramatically rich and almost nobody writes it.

⊹ Recovery has a timeline and the timeline is long and boring and inconvenient to plot. a broken rib takes six weeks and during those six weeks sneezing is a genuine emergency. a concussion means no screens, no reading, no bright lights, and symptoms can persist for months. a stab wound to the abdomen means weeks of infection risk, limited mobility, and a specific kind of exhaustion that has nothing to do with sleep. Your character being sidelined and frustrated and useless for a long time is not a narrative problem. it's the story.

⊹ Pain also affects personality in ways writers skip. chronic pain makes people short-tempered and then guilty about being short-tempered. it makes concentration difficult. it makes intimacy complicated, both emotional and physical. a character who was patient and warm before their injury and is now snappy and withdrawn is not a character regression. they're in pain. pain is exhausting in ways that don't show on the outside. the people around them noticing and not knowing how to help is a whole story in itself.

[sashayed]

has anyone figured out how to turn off the thing where you love your pet so much it slides inexorably into grief-borrowing

[boomstab-papa]

[your-cosmic-creature]

“For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”

[luna-azzurra]

Tips for Writing Grief! (AGAIN)

the five stages of grief were never meant to be a checklist your character moves through in chronological order across three chapters. Let me save you from writing a grieving character who is simply having scheduled emotions:

⊹ Grief is not primarily crying. i know that sounds wrong but hear me out. a lot of grief looks like doing laundry. cooking something the person liked and then not being able to eat it. watching a show they recommended and never told anyone you finished it. grief goes very quiet and very domestic for long stretches and then ambushes you at completely unreasonable moments like a petrol station or a Friday at 4pm for no reason at all.

⊹ people who are grieving often seem fine. not because they're suppressing or being brave or in denial, but because humans are genuinely capable of functioning and being devastated at the same time. your grieving character can make jokes. can go to work. can have a good day. can feel guilty about the good day. can feel guilty about not feeling guilty. grief has a very active internal bureaucracy that has nothing to do with what's visible on the outside.

⊹ Grief also changes shape over time in ways that aren't necessarily about getting better. the first year is often adrenaline, there are things to do, people around, ritual and structure. year two is frequently harder because the adrenaline is gone and the world has moved on and expects you to have moved on with it. your character being more visibly undone eighteen months later than at the funeral is not a pacing problem. it's accurate.

⊹ The relationship with the dead person doesn't stop. this is the one writers get most wrong. your grieving character is still in a relationship , still arguing with the person in their head, still updating them on things, still furious about something left unsaid, still finding out new things about them from other people and having to integrate a version of them they didn't fully know. grief is not the end of the relationship. it's the relationship continuing without any new information coming in.

[luna-azzurra]

Tips for Writing Trauma!

i love you all and i need you to stop writing trauma as a single breakdown scene in the rain after which the character is Healed and Ready to Love Again. that is NOT trauma :(

⊹ Trauma doesn't announce itself. it shows up as your character suddenly not being able to eat a specific food, or going very quiet in a loud room, or laughing at the wrong moment because their nervous system decided that was the appropriate response. it's mundane and weird and it makes no sense from the outside. the dramatic flashback sequence is the least realistic part. the most realistic part is your character suddenly needing to leave a grocery store for a reason they can't articulate.

⊹ The body keeps score and it keeps it in the strangest places. a particular smell. the quality of light at a certain time of day. a tone of voice that sounds like someone who hurt them. your traumatised character doesn't think "this reminds me of the bad thing." their heart rate spikes and they don't know why. they feel wrong and they can't locate the feeling. they're irritable for three days and only later, if ever, do they make the connection. write the disconnection. it's more honest.

⊹ trauma also does not make people universally sympathetic and wise. it makes some people controlling. some people funny at inappropriate times. some people very good in a crisis and completely unable to handle a normal day. some people are generously kind to strangers and absolutely terrible to people they love. trauma shapes behaviour in contradictory, inconvenient ways that don't resolve into a lesson. your traumatised character can be difficult to like. that's not a flaw in the writing. that's the WRITING.

⊹ Healing is not linear and it is not a destination. your character does not get better and stay better. they have a good month and then something small undoes two years of progress and they have to start again with slightly more tools than before. that's the actual shape of it. the spiral, not the arc. the scene where they finally open up and cry is not the end. it might not even be progress. sometimes it just means they were tired that night.

[luna-azzurra]

People always ask what a story is "about" like there's one answer. but a story is about whatever the reader needed it to be about the day they read it. you write a story about a woman leaving a house and one person reads it as a story about freedom and another reads it as a story about loss and another reads it as a story about their mother and none of them are wrong and you didn't write any of those stories on purpose. the story knows things the writer doesn't. that's not mystical. that's just how meaning works.