here be dragons

23 | oleander | they/them | aro ace | writer

[hinoneko]

*sigh* fine, fine, i'll be the new doctor who showrunner. bring me two twinks, britain's tallest woman, and 1000 pounds worth of alumininamian foil

[vividciggy]

Mm worms in my brain

[gatheringbones]

that whole "make your characters want things" does so much work for you in a story, even if what your characters want is stupid and irrelevant, because how people go about pursuing their desires tells you about them as a person.

do they actually move toward what they desire? how far are they willing to go for it? do they pursue their desires directly or indirectly? do they acquire what they desire through force, trickery, or negotiation? do they tell themselves they aren't supposed to feel desire and suppress it? does the suppressed desire wither away and die, or does it mutate and grow even stronger? is the initially expressed desire actually an inadequate and poorly translated different desire that they lack language for? does the desire change once the language has been updated, or when new experiences outline the desire more clearly? do they want something else once they have better words for it, or once they know that they definitely don't want something they thought they wanted before?

how does the world accommodate those desires? what does the world present to your character and in what order to update and clarify their desires? how does your magic system or sci-fi device correspond to those desires and the pursuit of them?

there's so much good story meat on those bones; you just have to be brave and decisive enough to let characters want specific things instead of letting them float in the current of the plot.

[gatheringbones]

and I loved the responses of “Well, my character is very passive and doesn’t know how to want things, the story is about their process of learning to do that exactly”, because that’s fine, that’s all well and good, but passive people still want things. passive human beings who have been so thoroughly neglected that the articulation of a single desire is beyond them want what their internal sphere of control tells them they are allowed to want. they desire constancy and a lack of conflict. they desire nostalgic artifacts that remind them of prior constancy and lack of conflict. the desire to float is an engineered desire that runs in conflict with the development of a happy healthy human being. Who engineered it? How do you begin to chip away at something like that? How do small, passive desires lead up to that?

[toddsolondz]

destroying and betraying yourself for nothing all by yourself, handsome?

[jadenvargen]

PARASITE LOVE

[pixeldinostorytelling]

Everyone make a doctor who oc and play extra hard with it right now.

[nonlynear]

the losing dogs and i are engaging in insider trading

[greyhoundone]

[carefulzombie]

it would be so funny if/when dw comes back they simply never address the billie piper cliffhanger

[lestatthevamp]

I can't believe there are people watching the Vampire Chronicles shows and going, "Louis is the sane one."

My brother in Christ, Louis is not the normal one. Lestat isn't normal. Armand isn't normal. Everyone in this series is absolutely out of their minds.

[pixxyofice]

make that trio polyamorous

[callizinc]

When the story has a sequence where the characters each get personally tortured with their exact personalized greatest fears and traumas

[thefaultinourchickennuggets]

the bad thing about having unhealthy habits due to mental illness, is when you DO do something healthy style you can't brag about about it because then people will then know you've been doing it yucky style all along. Like you can't brag you changed your sheets or brushed your teeth because then ppl will be like oh did you not brush your teeth regularly before? Thats yucky disgusting! So you just gotta keep it to yourself. And be proud alone, I suppose.

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

[isuggestrespecttranspeople]

This is a good idea!

[dunkthebiscuit]

"Have your employers told you to ask me about my genitals? Because that's a terrible thing to do to you. But I'm not going to tell you about my private parts. Because they're private. I'm sure you understand."

[butchniqabi]

see the thing about iwtv is that i will always believe louis no matter what unless claudia says something different. then i believe claudia. lestat could tell me that it's raining during a thunderstorm and id need a peer review.

[di--es---can-ic-ul-ar--es]

ME AND WHO

[shieldfoss]

#why do they call it the little death if not to remind you to do a post mortem.

lmao

[closertotheheartofthesunrise]

no no @nogoodhorsethief, you have something here

[smoqueen-deactivated20251108]

sorry for the nervous breakdown everyone im actuallt fine because i have to be