Screaming into the void so you don't have to

Eret | aro/ace | nonbinary | 22 | This is my writing blog, I drop in from time to time

[poketcg-art]

Ancient Mew -- Artist Unknown

[bogleech]

Dragons by tony diterlizzi looked a million times better than the standardized glitzy dragons they have now

[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.

[suddenlyshouting]

A Kikimora and Domovoi: two little Slavic deities of the hearth. The Kikimora is often troublesome (especially if the house is not kept in order). The Domovoi is protective of the family and household, especially the children and animals, unless angered or insulted. They are often said to be married to one another.

[slavic-folklore]

🇺🇦 Ukrainian folk costumes by Ariadna Efimovna Perepelitsa

[vesnaaa]

🇨🇿 Další příručka, tentokráte ke kroji novohrozenskému aneb orszáckému:

(🇬🇧 A simple guide on the traditional dress that women wore in Nový Hrozenkov, Moravia):

🇨🇿 Asi není tak podrobná, takže pokud něco není jasné, můžete se podívat i na předchozí příručku jihokyjovskou, případně na tento příspěvek o rukávcích. Pokrývku hlavy jsem tu neřešila.

(🇬🇧 It's similar to a guide I made on the traditional clothing from around Kyjov, which is translated into English)

[dailyunsolvedmysteries]

Beast of Gevaudan

Between 1764 and 1767 a mysterious creature called the Beast ravaged the rural region of Gévaudan, France. About 100 men, women and children reportedly fell victim to La Bête du Gévaudan. While many French at the time presumed the Beast to be a wolf and many modern scholars agree, some have suggested that the Beast may not have been a wolf at all. The first recorded fatal attack of the Beast occurred on June 30, 1764 when a 14-year-old shepherdess, Jeanne Boulet, tended a flock of sheep. Boulet was not the creature’s first victim. As historian Jay M. Smith writes in Monsters of the Gévaudan, about two months prior, a young woman tending cattle was attacked by a creature “like a wolf, yet not a wolf” but escaped because the herd defended her. The attacks continued through the summer and into autumn. On January 12, 1765, the Beast attacked 10-year-old Jacques Portefaix and a group of seven friends ranging from ages eight to 12. However, Portefaix led a counterattack with sticks driving off the creature. The children were rewarded by Louis XV, and Portefaix was given an education paid by the crown. The children’s heroics prompted the court of King Louis XV to send royal hunters to destroy the Beast. There was now a 6,000-livre bounty on the creature’s head. The story of the Beast, meanwhile, was spreading and covered in newspapers from Boston to Brussels, becoming one of history’s first media sensations. The Beast was consistently described by eyewitnesses as something other than a typical wolf. It was as large as a calf or sometimes a horse. Its coat was reddish gray with a long, strong panther-like tail. The head and legs were short-haired and the color of a deer. It had a black stripe on its back and “talons” on its feet. Many drawings of the Beast at the time endow it with lupine characteristics. Witnesses described the Beast as an ambush hunter which stalked its prey and seized it by the throat. The wounds found on the bodies were typically to the head and limbs with the remains of 16 victims reportedly decapitated. The creature prowled in the evenings and in the mornings.

[archivist-crow]

Beast of Gevaudan (1764-1767)

Werewolf terror in the Gevaudan region of south-central France.

From July 1764 to June 1767, a pair of large and unusually colored man-eating wolves attacked and killed 60 to 100 people or more in Gevaudan, causing a wide-scale panic. Many feared the killings to be the work of a single wolf; others believed the creature to be a tiger or hyena, or the offspring of a tiger and lioness. Still others believed the Beast (La Bête) to be a werewolf.

A poster printed in 1764 described the unusual Beast:

Reddish brown with dark ridged stripe down the back. Resembles wolf/hyena but big as a donkey. Long gaping jaw, six claws, pointy upright ears and supple furry tail—mobile like a cat's and can knock you over. Cry: more like horse neighing than wolf howling.

Montague Summers gave this description based on an article in London Magazine in 1765:

For months this animal panic-struck the whole region of Languedoc, and is said to have devoured more than one hundred persons. Not merely solitary wayfarers were attacked by it, but even larger companies traveling in coaches and armed. Its teeth were most formidable. With its immense tail it could deal swinging blows. It vaulted to tremendous heights, and ran with supernatural speed. The stench of the brute was beyond description.

King Louis XV took a personal interest in the situation, for the panic could have political ramifications. The Gevaudan area was actually an independent state (it was not annexed to France until 1791) and was rife with tensions between the Huguenots and Jesuits. Huge bounties were posted for the killing of the Beast. Teams of professional wolf-hunters and dogs fanned into the forests. Several detachments of dragoons joined the hunt as well. At the height of the panic, more than 20,000 men joined the hunt in several parishes. More than 1,000 wolves reportedly were killed.

One of the more appalling means of trying to kill the Beast was an extensive use of poison, advocated by the king's chief wolf-catcher, M. Denneval. Dogs were fed high doses of poison, and their tainted carcasses were left out as bait for the Beast. Instead, the carcasses attracted and killed domestic dogs, farm animals, and other animals. The poisonings were finally ended when too many working dogs were lost among the peasants.

The Beast eluded all efforts. In one week in June 1765 alone, four people were killed and eaten: a woman, an eight-year-old child, a 15-year-old girl, and another person. Most victims were mutilated and torn to pieces; some remains were too small for burial. One girl was recognized only by her eyes.

The peasants became convinced that the Beast was a werewolf sorcerer, and would never be caught. One farmer claimed that he had seen it and had heard it speak. The terror finally came to an end when the male wolf was killed on September 21, 1766, and the female of the pair was killed in June 1767.

The wolves may have been dog-wolf crosses. They were exceptionally large for wolves, and they had unusual colorations and markings.

Abridged text from The Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monsters (Checkmark Books, 2005) by Rosemary Guiley

[victusinveritas]

This statue was created by French sculptor Philippe Kaeppelin (1918 - 2011) and stands in Auvers, Haute-Loire, in France. The statue is made of bronze and was erected in 1995.

It depicts the battle between the Beast of Gevaudan and Marie-Jeanne Valet that took place on August 11th 1765. During the fight, Valet defended herself and her sister by stabbing the beast in the chest with a spear. While the strike did not kill the creature, the two girls escaped alive. Legend has it that La Bête stood on her hind legs, placing a paw over the wound and rolled into the river nearby - vanishing until her next kill. As you do.

A court was able to examine the spear that had been used. It had reportedly pierced at least three inches into the Beast's chest, as that was the amount of blood on the weapon. Valet's sister told the court that the monster was "the same size as a big farm dog, having a big flat head, black jaws with big teeth, throat white and grey neck. She was much bigger at the front than at the rear and had a black back."

(18th-century engraving of la Bête du Gévaudan, The London Magazine, vol. xxxiv, May 1765 (reprinted in Montague Summers, Werewolf, 1933).)

[varwlf]

To Cure Lycanthropy

There are several methods with which to cure the werewolf:

* If the lycanthropy is caused as a punishment from God, typically the werewolf must endure seven to nine years as a beast, after which they will return. However if they taste human blood, they will remain cursed forever.

* If the lycanthropy is caused by a magical object such as a ring, sapling, or belt, touching the werewolf with the object and reversing the incantation will cure them.

* Other methods include finding the werewolf's clothes, finding out and declaring that they are a werewolf, drawing blood from them, and giving them cooked food.

* The werewolf's pelt may also be found and burned while they are in human form, however this will most assuredly kill them.

[ellensferatu]

In early Serbian folklore, neither holy water, nor the cross, nor silver had any effect against vampires. The only way to deal with them was to exhume the corpse, dismember it, and then either drown it or burn it. This indirectly suggests that the belief in vampires predates Christianity. Indeed, even in ancient Greek mythology there are numerous blood-sucking entities associated with Nyx, the goddess of the night. Curiously, the Romans initially seem to have had nothing quite comparable.

There is a theory that the Slavs who arrived in the Balkans already possessed their own pantheon of dark creatures, centered around werewolves. As for vampire beliefs, they likely absorbed them from the region’s indigenous populations—the Illyrians and the Thracians. Philology even lends support to this: the Serbian word vurdalak, now often used to mean “vampire,” literally translates as “a person covered in hair.” In Greek, there is a related term, vrykolakas.

[headspace-hotel]

I’ve been reading about werewolves on Wikipedia and I just have to say. “Werewolves are warriors that descend into hell to fight demons” kicks unbelievable amounts of ass as a concept

[digitalkiddo]

If you're writing anything involving cons, scams, heists, or morally questionable characters who are very good at lying, here are some free resources I've been using for research. Saving you the "why is this in my search history" anxiety.

1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.

2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.

3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.

4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.

5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.

Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.

Reblog to save for later. Your WIP will thank you.

[courtesycalling]

Happy mušḫuššu monday everybody

(Photo credit: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

[teathattast]

[tunashei]

I love desire paths. There's something so wonderous about seeing an echo of humanity. Depending on it's location, a desire path can mean so many different things.

In a city, like the pic above, they represent rebellion, and efficiency. The messiness of humanity. We like to imagine we're oh so logical and neat so we design our cities to be logical and neat an then real humans literally trample on that idea. The ego required to think you can design something perfect that checks every box. Life is all about compromise and patching stuff when some new problem arises. Though people have certainly tried! Ohio state univeristy let students carve their desire paths, and then paved them over. It looks pretty artsy.

Some people will try to discourage desire paths, but this is almost always going to fail.

Eventually, people just have to accept them. Humans are too dang stubborn.

Certain desire paths are just adorable. A 0.5 second time saver. You just can't design for maximum efficiency, humans will always find shortcuts!

Though on occasion a desire path can actually be the least efficient way...especially if you're superstitious.

In a wilder area, such as below, they show us the curiosity of humans. A desire path somewhere natural often tells you there's something interesting just ahead. (Though remember some ecosystems are fragile and will suffer if trampled! Stick to paths in these sorts of areas)

And how about desire stairs? I always think these look so cool. We get see humans determination to climb, to traverse every kind of terrain.

And for something really crazy...a desire path used for centuries will create a 'holloway'

All of these pics are off the Desirepath subreddit, check them out for more examples! And many thanks to the users who submitted these photos.

[dduane]

I always wondered if these had a name. Now I know. :)

[o3ak]

This made my day

[tinyyellowflowers-blog]

Fieldwork tip: sometimes in the Forest you will find deer desire paths. “Oh!” says your brain, “this will lead me to somewhere cool!”

It will not. The deer wants to go to heavy brush and surge up a steep hill with its powerful hindquarters and presumably collect all the deer ticks living along the deer desire path. Waiting. You are a human, you want to meander along the side of the hill in absolutely no brush at all, thank you. Your desires are not compatible. You must abandon the deer path.

Cow desire paths though: flat as pancakes, always lead you to water or meadows. Useful things.

[traegorn]

Thank god someone else said it. When I saw that path in the woods and it was talking about human curiosity I was like... no. Other animals besides humans make paths.

Sometimes it's a really bad idea to follow them.

Especially if you don't want to get covered in deer ticks.

[thehmn]

Foxes disguised as monks. On the left from Japan and on the right from Denmark.

[crabs-and-bedbugs]

It was a global problem

[kyleblackpaw]

Humans are one of the longer lived animals on this planet, outlived by only a handful of things. So instead of humans as space orks, rapidly and aggressively spreading, please consider the following:

Humans as space elves. Ridiculously long lived, even compared to the Redronia who were previously envied for their long lives of 7.5 large galactic time units (approx 37.5 terran years). They are often willing to wait years, MULTIPLE YEARS! for projects to complete or plans to play out. Each one is possessed of more life experience and the accompanying wisdom than a Quixlan could attain in 3 lifetimes by the time they reach their age of maturity. Never let them borrow something however, as it may be half a lifetime before you see it again.