Life's Contradictions

Welcome to the eclectic mess - I hope you enjoy your stay! Even if you don't, I hope you have a good day. 😊

[sugar-petals]

modern media in a nutshell

[vergak]

Zillow house listings

[aaays-and-bees]

>go right

[vergak]

[giugirl743]

>go left instead (looks nice and fun!)

[vergak]

[bunjywunjy]

>...go back to the right

[vergak]

[muhlisss]

Go left

[vergak]

[muhlisss]

Go forward

[vergak]

[squirrledworld]

> Ascend

[vergak]

[jpuff9]

Go right ->

[vergak]

[athena-viviana]

Open the door! :3c

I wanna see what’s inside!

[vergak]

Congratulations! You Have Made It To The Ping Pong Chamber!

[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.

[pwlanier]

Hedgehog-shaped jar, Neolithic period (3500-3000 BCE)

Courtesy Alain Truong

[redscharlach]

I feel you, Neolithic hedgehog. I feel you.

[221btimelordette]

I was initially planning on being a casual fan, but then I thought, why not just let it consume my soul instead? 

[meganwhalenturner]

Went to a 2000 year old Roman temple in Nimes. I thought it had been reconstructed, but no, it’s been standing, pretty much unchanged since 5 ad.

I went to buy my 6€ ticket to go inside and read all their informational material and admire their scale model and the guy in the ticket book was like “you know it’s just this one room, right?”

Trust me when I say it would be cheap at twice the price.

[awesomebutunpractical]

The first draft philosophy that has finally gotten me writing for fun isn't "worst version of story" type framing, it's "tell the story to yourself."

Your story isn't ready for polished prose, you don't know what happens yet. This doesn't make it Bad Writing, it's a different type of writing. And this ties into why I think the plotter vs pantser debate misses the mark - both detailed outlines AND make-it-up-as-you-go first drafts are ways to make up the story. This part is for you, so how you do it should be whatever is the most fun or satisfying way to tell yourself the story.

[waitingforthesunrise]

Just realized that the reason I love making friends on tumblr is because it’s exactly how you make friends on the playground as a six year old. No, I don’t know their name but they love mermaids too and built this awesome sand castle. No, I don’t know their age but their imaginary cheetah is friends with mine. You like this show? You like this character?? You can sing the theme song really loud??? Here is a flower crown. Here is a juice box. You can share my time and I might never see you again but part of you stays in my soul forever. In my mind we’re still on the swing set and the sky is blue and nothing will ever be wrong again.

[creative-anchorage]

[sycamorality]

would anyone's imaginary cheetah be friends with mine...

[arsonstick]

my imaginary cheetah would be friends with yours

[sycamorality]

okay!

[julesofnature]

Gleninchaquin/Kenmare-County Kerry

“May you always have walls for the winds, a roof for the rain, tea beside the fire, laughter to cheer you, those you love near you and all your heart might desire.”   - Irish Blessing

[apatheticfluorescence]

some hyper famous artists like Van Gogh transcend overratedness and become underrated because they're so normalized. Like I'll look at a van Gogh and I'm like wait this really is amazing you guys don't get it

[headspace-hotel]

Shakespeare is like this

[insufferablepirate]

Every time I see a Van Gogh that’s not one of his better known pieces it absolutely blows me away

Have you seen this shit my liege? smh unreal

[alanaisalive]

The other night husband and I were watching a documentary about the yeti where they were doing DNA analysis of samples of supposed yeti fur, and every one of them came back as bears.

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

Bears. They’re everywhere. Be wary. Anyone or anything could be a bear.

[iguanamouth]

oh shit

[throughshadow-to-the-edgeofnight]

[alanaisalive]

As the OP of this post, I’m going to threaten that if this gets to one million notes by the 10 year anniversary on 1 June 2026, one year from today, I will get a lower back tattoo of the loch ness bear monster.

[sugaldean]

I know it feels like a lot but I really believe we can do it 20k notes per day isn’t that hard to do?

[scorchroots]

I've never loved anyone as much as I love Ursula Le Guin

[wrigglewormz]

I'm perfectly fine with people criticizing my favorite stories and frequently do it myself but can you stop being so boring about it

[wrigglewormz]

"This scene made me so uncomfortable" given the subject matter, it would be really, really badly written if it wasn't.

[antlered-vixen]

I am so tired of short-attention-span, trim-the-fat culture. All writing advice these days is for how to write like Chuck Palahniuk. "Cut 'think', cut 'feel', cut 'wonder' - only action, only pushing forward, show and move and move and move." What if I could emulate this style, and still don't want to? What if I want to write like Henry James, with three paragraphs of introspective musings between each dialogue line? The music advice is, "make it shortform, make it Tik-Tok compatible, make it punchy, hit the refrain as soon as possible." What if I want that 10-minute prog rock piece? What if I want that symphony? What if I want it slow and luxurious and lazy? Movies. Series. Poetry. Bodies. Everything is "trimmed trimmed trimmed trimmed, stripped bare, you have three seconds to win me over, make it airport chic." I don't want to win you over, then, I guess. I want the fat left it. I want the pleasure and the indolence and the indulgence. Fuck this art-advice that's always "your art needs Ozempic."

[peterparkersleftwebshooter]

so very normal about it!

[ashenberry]

reblog game put in the tags how you found prev

[batrachised]

i love Bill Watterson's quotes on the artistic process, especially as he puts it, in a world where kids' lives are organized to the minute.