we are merely dust and shadows @peoniesandpomegranates - Tumblr Blog

If you adamantly refuse to even hear an opinion or point of view that differs from the one you've been taught to believe, you don't actually believe the one you've been taught. A genuine conviction doesn't waver from something as flimsy as mere exposure to disagreeing ideas. If you fear that hearing an idea that deviates from the "right" ones might make you accidentally adapt it, get the two confused and forget which one was the "right" and which one was the "wrong" idea, and get rejected by your peers by accidentally echoing the wrong kind of thoughts, you don't actually truly think that the things you've been taught as right are right.

Not because you would somehow deep down secretly think that the "wrong" ideas are "right" and the "right" ideas are "wrong", but because you simply do not actually think at all.

tarydarrington

"Fuck, it's all wrong. And it explodes in paper."

theconcealedweapon

blair-kamo

that-gay-jedi

Cleared of all charges on account of smol

great-tweets

We just knew.

awed-frog

As a reminder, this is what she looks like:

yougetsomekisses

larkiethings

Also I hope everyone knows that Miette was fostered before she was adopted, and her foster mom loved that little kitten so much and always hoped she’d gone to a good home. this tweet got so popular that she recognized Miette and reached out to her current mom, and was able to share previously unseen baby pictures

darthmelyanna

You mean, she saw Miette was kicked like the football and did nothing to help put Mother in jail for a thousand years? I am appalled.

tigerses

her!!!

madeofstarsandfairylights

Baby Miette!!!

ottermatopoeia

Babe wake up new Miette lore just dropped

devil-with-three-heads

IT’S MIETTE!!!!

paper-wounds

not-a-smartass-just-a-nerd

I wonder if all the "dead poets society" "sad poetry" ppl reblogging this know it's from a d20 campaign.

do they know about ylfa? do they know what she became? do they know that the wolf did not eat her, but that she ate the wolf? do they know that she walked her grandmother's past to a wooden door? do they know she gave up her name so that people might someday be able to write their own stories?

earhartsease

starofhisheart

Happy pride to those 5 seconds where Charlie Swan thought Jacob was coming out to him in the most insane way possible

lake-yearner-unlimited

HJ Wingstreet they could never make me hate you.

parttimesarah

papertrailprints-blog

Carrie Lingscheit, “Falling Cat”, Monoprint, 15" x 5.5", Available here.

pantserspen

How to Fix Underwriting

1. Slow down at emotionally important moments.

Big emotions need space to land. If a scene feels rushed, pause the plot briefly to show how the moment affects the character.

2. Add reactions, not explanations.

Instead of explaining what a character feels, show it through physical responses, hesitation, or small actions that reveal emotion naturally.

3. Ground every scene in the senses.

If a scene feels thin, add one or two sensory details—sound, texture, smell, or temperature—to make the moment feel lived-in.

4. Let thoughts interrupt action.

A line of internal thought can deepen a scene without slowing it too much. Thoughts show stakes, fear, longing, or conflict beneath the action.

5. Expand consequences, not events.

You don’t need more things to happen—you need to show what matters. Focus on how events change relationships, decisions, or self-perception.

6. Strengthen setting where emotion peaks.

The environment should echo or contrast the emotion of the scene. Setting is not decoration—it’s emotional reinforcement.

7. Add specific details instead of general ones.

Underwriting often relies on vague language. Swap “they argued” for one sharp line of dialogue or a specific breaking point.

8. Let dialogue breathe.

Short dialogue exchanges without pauses can feel flat. Add beats—silence, gestures, interruptions—to give the conversation weight.

9. Show transitions between scenes.

If scenes jump too quickly, readers feel disoriented. A brief transition helps establish time, mood, and emotional continuity.

10. Clarify stakes early in the scene.

If readers don’t know what can be lost, scenes feel empty. Make sure the character wants something specific and fears losing it.

11. Use the “what are they feeling right now?” check.

After each major beat, ask what emotion is dominant in that moment. If it’s missing on the page, the scene is likely underwritten.

12. Expand scenes that feel “too clean.”

If a scene resolves too neatly or quickly, it probably needs more tension. Messy emotions and unresolved feelings add depth.

nondelphic

editing is just you vs. past-you in a duel of questionable comma placement and emotional instability

twiststreet

She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.

She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.

81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves. On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.

The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.

Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision. She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.

Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.

The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.

She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it. Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.

Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.

When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.

The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.

When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.

The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes. The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.

You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.

Edited down a long tweet. (x)