Little written things

A writeblr.

[writtelings]

black, black is love’s potion

(take heed, take heed of the thorns) 

“Daddy made a deal with the devil. Archie was the price.”

Or: Hiram gains magic powers and the gang goes to hell to save their boy. A usual week in Riverdale.

Fandom: Riverdale (TV)

Pairings: Archie Andrews/Jughead Jones, Betty Cooper/Veronica Lodge, Archie Andrews/Hiram Lodge (Implied), Alice Cooper/FP Jones (Mentioned)

Rating: Explicit (Graphic Depictions of Violence)

Words: 36,949

Chapters: 11/?

Updated weekly.

[2022dirt]

Outlines of two alligators that slept through the rain.

[honeyscomet]

"theyll hate you for this" "but theyll be alive" is THE juiciest thing to me

[honeyscomet]

i will ensure you stay alive above all else. even if what i do to make it happen is horrendous. even if it violates all your wishes or moral principles. even if you can never look at me the same way again, even if you hate me for it. because at least if you hate me it means youre alive

[hiveswap]

big fan of when you peel back all layers of a character and at the bottom of it there's love

[hiveswap]

why are they doing this? because they loved someone so much it caused the plot to happen. Grief counts btw

[hiveswap]

ESPECIALLY a big fan of when this isn't enough to make them a good person

[homunculus-argument]

The stereotype of the nerd girl taking her glasses off and suddenly she's beautiful, but in reverse. A cold tough mean office lady who glares at everyone until she gets glasses and suddenly becomes sweet, approachable and friendly since she no longer has a constant headache over not being able to fucking see, doesn't need to squint at everything, and actually remembers individual people by name now that she can tell them apart at all.

[langernameohnebedeutung]

"I hate you, but at least you never lied to me" is a character dynamic i enjoy so much, it must be said

[pocket-deer-belly]

fat character who becomes a vampire and loses a ton of weight and blood can not sate their hunger but they can't eat anything they used to like anymore. everyone views it as a positive healthy positive development but they're starving and dying slowly but never truly dying, a living corpse. this is a metaphor for something

[pocket-deer-belly]

People finally think they’re attractive and cool and funny but they’re dead. People finally treat them well but they’re dead. Do you see the vision

[pocket-deer-belly]

Transforms into a shell of my former self and finally gains the respectability society never bestowed upon me before

[prokopetz]

The whole "the Old Magic actually sucks because material conditions have advanced" thing, but applied to cinematic martial arts. No, yeah, the legends are true, that move used to explode a man's entire skeleton, but you need to understand that people had more fragile bones back then. Poor nutrition, you see.

[prokopetz]

This five-point meridian strike is meant to make your head burst like an overripe melon, but it turns out it only works on people who have peripheral nerve damage from chronic vitamin B12 deficiency, which everyone did at the time it was developed. If you take your multivitamins it just makes your ears ring.

[starcut-sand]

When I was in college, my Creative Nonfiction professor would regularly have us do something she called "hotspotting" (she didn't know that this was already a term tbc) with our rough drafts. Basically, hotspotting is when you look at your draft and pick out your favorite sentence, or one of your favorite sentences--one that you're really proud of--and write it down in a blank sheet in a notebook. Not a new document, a physical notebook. (You are not allowed to use technology for hotspotting.) And then you set a timer for however long--like maybe ten to twenty minutes--and you elaborate. You treat that one sentence as if it's the opening sentence to a new draft, and you write from there, until the timer is up.

It sounds like a gimmick, but honestly, some of my best writing in that class came from hotspotting. Usually, the sentence you consider the "best" is the one that really gets to the heart of something you're trying to convey. In a rough draft, it tends to be that you're fumbling around a bit before you really hit on the heart of things. So with hotspotting, you're starting from a less fumbly place, which means you're able to dig into your subject in a much deeper and more precise way. It makes you feel like a surgeon, a little bit.

So I do recommend trying it, even just for fun, even if you think the rough draft you have is already good. You might surprise yourself with what you come up with! :)

[anistarrose]

immortality is a disability. to me

[anistarrose]

the nature of your body has changed in a way you don't understand. there will always be a "before" and an "after." why did this happen? and why did this happen to you? you're searching for a reason. you're searching for a meaning. is this a punishment? is it a divine gift in disguise? is there a cure? do you want a cure? all your friendships seem to drift inevitably away from you. will people ever see you again as the age you actually are? will you ever be able to interact with the world again like how you used to?

[anistarrose]

but. and this is crucial. you should hit your immortal characters with normal disabilities too

[dateamonster]

tbh im not entirely immune to a villain with a tragic backstory but i do think villain origins are a lot more interesting when the focus is less "here is the original sin, the first big bad thing that happened to them that made them who they are" and more "here is the first time a person who maybe otherwise felt powerless in their life realized that they could hurt someone and get away with it"

[dateamonster]

you can get a lot more mileage out of analyzing a truly abhorrent character through the lens of like. what sort of conditions would allow or even incentivize this kind of cruelty? what kind of person benefits from those conditions and how? over the more typical who hurt them type analysis. imo.

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

Scars? Not body horror. Limb differences? Not body horror. Facial differences? Not body horror. Feeding tubes, colostomy bags, etc? Not body horror. Movement disorders? Not body horror. Visibly disabled people just existing is not horror.

[birdplushie]

i love stories where a character entering a romantic relationship is a sign that they've been broken and defeated and subdued and are being reduced to something lesser than they were and are losing who they're supposed to be. i love when love is suffocating and terrible and makes you beg in horror for someone not to give into it <3

[valtsv]

when the story got a weapon that requires self harm to wield

[valtsv]

>it's self harm because all acts of violence are a form of self harm: 🙄🥱

>it's self harm because the weapon is an extension of you and the reckless way you use it reflects your self hatred: ☝️‼️

>it's self harm because the weapon doesn't want to be used for that purpose and forcing it to do so means fighting to subjugate its will to your own every step of the way:

[timeskip]

When the character makes selfish decisions fully knowing it's the wrong choice. and then it causes them and everyone else pain and disaster and ruins everything 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

[thatsbelievable]

TRUTH. What you need is imagination, and you don’t need to go anywhere to use it.

[caitymschmidt]

Yeah, sure, seeing new things is helpful as a fantasy writer. But. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that exposure to new things is the same as traveling. You know what else exposes you to new things?  The internet. Documentaries. Books. Freaking Youtube. So when you’re bored of cats and cooking tutorials, go on an adventure!

You wanna write create some fantasy creatures but don’t know where to start? Go check out some videos The Weird Creatures Earth has Had.

Want some inspiration for your Super Evil Villain’s Villanous Deeds?

Or maybe you want some weird locations to kick start your Fantasy World Terraforming?

Or maybe you need knowledge of bunches of historical places and cities and cultures?

But maybe you’re basing fantasy on the modern world?

Okay but lets say you want to start from the same inspiration as GRRM? (and part two!)

That’s just the stuff I could quickly grab. Things I’m subscribed to, that I know offhand. There is So. Much. Stuff. Online.

The best thing about the internet is that it means its not just the fortunate sons that get to learn, and explore and imagine and write. We get to see stories from all over the place, from all sorts of people, who bring All Kinds of New Ideas.

[ultimatebottom69]

I like you.

[sevdahalma]

most fantasy books or fics i’ve read that contained a desert biome fell back on real world prejudice and misconceptions in place of authentic worldbuilding for a place and people, and it is so telling that the trope seems to repeat itself

things like

the desert as a lifeless wasteland where ‘life is crushed underneath the shifting sands and blazing sun’ blah blah blah. deserts are full of life and they are beautiful and people have lived and prospered in them for eons. please read a book

the desert as an ugly or barren terrain where everything is harsh and threatening

the desert as something scary

the inhabitants as backwards religious zealots

the men as overly violent and oppressive

the inhabitants in need of outside instruction/intervention, i.e. “civilizing the savage”

the “harem” and women as exotic, sensual, mysterious

writing tribalism with no knowledge of how tribes actually function

djinn (or for the westerners, genies)

Islam Lite (the aesthetics or spiritual practices appropriated and stripped of meaning)

sprinkling random arabic words for ✨flavor✨instead of expanding your worldbuilding to include language as well

clothing as oppressive or mysterious, instead of serving its actual purpose (protecting you from the elements, which should be obvious but i guess it isn’t. covering your skin keeps you cooler and safer in most deserts)

people who live in deserts as ignorant, superstitious, uneducated

this isn’t worldbuilding, it’s just ignorance and bigotry

[sourb0i]

So true!

To anyone writing stuff set in the Mojave/Sonoran Deserts (and maybe the Colorado?) Please please please look up Palo Verde forests!! The trees are green but completely bare of leaves- they photosynthesize directly through their bark. And instead of leaves they have spikes! It's so trippy and cool to be walking through a lush green forest knowing that the nearest water is 50+ miles away.

Other Mojave/Sonoran specific things:

There's tortoises! They're pretty rare to see but you can often find their burrows, or sometimes skeletons

Nightjars will wait till you get super close and then fly up, scaring the crap out of you

There are areas called 'desert asphalt', which are large expanses of black volcanic rock. Looks totally different from any other part of the desert

There are jackrabbits everywhere

Everywhere there aren't jackrabbits there's lizards

It's actually pretty loud; there's loads of insects- mainly crickets and the like- but also lots of birds! You won't see them but by God you will hear them

Wildflower blooms in the rainy season are the most beautiful thing you'll ever see in your life. There will be so many flowers that you never even knew existed

If you live near any mountain range, you'll actually see thunderstorms fairly often. You'll never actually get rained on, but there's almost always thunder on the mountains, especially in the evening. Idk maybe that's a metaphor or something

Source: I lived on the edge of the Mojave and Sonoran for a bit, and most of my job involved wandering around the desert for 8 hours a day