HAPPY HALLOWEEN :) WEBTOON - INSTAGRAM

Y'know if you told me that Scooby-Doo Vs Courage the Cowardly Dog would involve them referencing Asura's Wrath of all things mid-fight, I wouldn't have believed you.

Seeing today's Death Battle has really made me dislike the Bayformers movies a lot more.

You're telling me comic Megatron had a whole ass corruption and redemption arc where he forgot the ideals he once fought for and then realized the side he fought against had come to embody those ideas and changed sides and became a hero and saved the universe alongside his longtime nemesis?!

And Bayformers was what we got?! With all that to work with?!

I think Megatron just retroactively became my favorite Transformers character.

Welcome to IDW Transformers fandom, where we feel heartbroken about giant robots.

The League of evil exes gets a lot of flack for being "unhealthy" or "super toxic and not cool" but if YOU were told a woman you really care about was dating someone who was literally cheating on her with a HIGH SCHOOLER and this guy was jobless and homeless and staying in her house after one date and you were offered the chance to make 6 new friends who were all on the same wavelength as you and had a plan to curb stomp that guy, you would take it!

Even emailed him first to inform him of why you wanna kick his ass and schedule a convenient time for it to happen! Absolutely reasonable.

Have Antagonists and World, Need Protagonist

[Ask edited for length]

You're actually off to a great start by having the world and antagonists fleshed out. Here are some questions to ask yourself that might help you come up with protagonist ideas:

1 - What kinds of people live in the world of your story? Who are they? What are their lives like? What is important to them?

2 - Thinking about these people, where might you find a young person who is willing and able to fight for the greater good? What's at stake for this young person that makes them want to fight for the greater good, or that pushes them into this fight?

3 - What is this young person's life like? Where do they live? Who do they live with? What is their daily life like? Who are the important people in their lives? What are their hopes, dreams, and personal goals? What's their personality like? What do they look like? What is their backstory?

4 - Thinking about this character's backstory, what's an event or situation they experienced back then that played a major role in who they are at the start of the story? What was this situation/event and how did it shape them? What internal conflict (problem in their heart and mind) resulted from this experience? How does this internal conflict play into their willingness (or unwillingness) to join the fight for the greater good? How does it influence their decisions and actions throughout the course of the story? How can the events of the story help them resolve that internal conflict so they can heal and grow?

5 - What is your character's relationship with the antagonist trio like? How does that relationship change over the course of the story?

My post 5 Tips for Getting Attached to Your Characters has some additional tips. Happy writing!

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I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

Some Dreamworks & Disney characters fan art I drew in the past couple of years. The most recent one is the Dr. Facilier art >:)

Who do you like the most? I have more Hades & Eris arts UPD - added Puss in Boots art. Actual Puss can be found here :) UPD - added new Moses and Tzipporah art!

New Prince of Egypt art!

Oh they mean a service desk! I thought they meant like, a tally. Like you get off the plane and go ask for help because you're in the wrong country and a big publically displayed counter labelled PASSENGERS WHO CAN'T FIND THE KANGAROOS ticks up one more number.

Fun fact! Standing under this tree during rain or burning it is also not advised! The leaves cause the rain falling off the give burns and the smoke from the trees is also poisonous! Isn't nature amazing!

Reminds me of this post. Don't be this guy.

I'm fascinated that this person not only knows what Nintendo cartridges taste like (answer: bad, because they don't want you to eat them) and uses it as a reference point.

See if we’re talking forbidden fruit, “it will give you knowledge of good and evil” is a much less effective deterrent than “it will make you shit and die”

KUNG POW PENIS

294. Linda Lowery - HeartQuest #5: Moon Dragon Summer (1984)

The first of only two HeartQuest books that were published in 1984, and the penultimate in the series that will soon be dropped, it's a fun little gamebook mixing fantasy adventure and romance in a D&D context.

Most of the novelties come with the new illustrators, Larry Day for the cover and Valerie Valusek for the interior art, both of which are pretty excellent, and add real value to a book that is pretty hard to find these days.

The main story tells of a warrior princess, Summer, who is a real badass with a sword who wants to take on a Moon Dragon who kidnapped her grandmother. She has been promised in marriage to a local merchant, but on the way to defeat the dragon finds a sexy wizard with whom romance might flourish. Another fun addition to the series.

preperations for the long journey ahead, friend

I've worked in both libraries and bookstores and this is more nightmare than dream with all the stairs. That's way too much work.

hello!

everyone go follow and support her!! she’s an amazing pixel artist n is new to tumblr 💙

HOLY CROW

ITS FUCKING PIXEL ART

horse people are weird

what does this mean

horses can see demons

@betterbemeta are you able to translate this? Is it true horses can see netherbeings?? Will we ever know the extent of their powers???

I think I have reblogged this before but I’ll answer it again bc its a fascinating answer I feel and i was more funny than informational last time.

The truth is that horses see what they think are nether beings, I guess. They have a perfect storm of sensory perception that, useful for prey beings, marks false positives on mortal danger all the time. Which is advantageous to a flight-based prey species: running from danger when you’re super fast is much ‘cheaper’ than fighting, so you waste almost nothing from running from a threat that’s not there. Versus, you blow everything if you don’t see a threat that is there.

Horses also have their eyes positioned on the sides of their heads, which gives them an incredible range of peripheral vision almost around their entire body with only a few blind spots you can sneak up on them in. But this comes at the cost of binocular vision; they can only judge distance for things straight ahead of them. Super useful for preventing predators sneaking up from the sides or behind, but useless for recognizing familiar shapes with the precision we can.

Basically we now have a walking couch with anxiety its going to get attacked at any second, that can see almost everything, but mostly only out of the corner of its eye. It has a few blind spots and anything that suddenly appears out of them is terrifying to it. Combine that with that it actually has far superior low-light vision than us, and that its ears can swivel in any directions like radar dishes, and you’ve basically given a nervous wreck a highly accurate but imprecise danger-dar.

To be concise: all horses, even the most chill horses, on some level believe they are living in a survival horror.

This means that you could approach it in a flapping poncho and if it can’t recognize your shape as human, they mistake you for SATAN… or you could pass this one broken down tractor you’ve passed 100 times on a trail ride, but today is the day it will ATTACK… or your horse could feel a horsefly bite from its blind spot and MAMA, I’VE BEEN HIT!!!… or you could both approach a fallen log in the woods but in the low light your horse is going to see the tree rings as THE EYE OF MORDOR.

However, they actually have kind of a cool compensation for this– they are social animals, and instinctively look towards leadership. In the wild or out at pasture, this is their most willful, pushy, decisive leader horse who decides where to go and where it’s safe. But humans often take this role both as riders and on the ground. They are always watching and feeling for human reactions to things. This is why moving in a calm, decisive way and always giving clear commands is key to working with this kind of animal. Confusing commands, screaming, panic, visible distress, and chaos will signal to a horse that you, brave leader are freaked out… so it should freak out too!

On one hand, you’ll get horses that will decide that they are the leader and you are not, so getting them to listen to you can be tough– requiring patience and skill more than force. On the other hand, a good enough rider and a well-trained horse (or a horse with specialized training) can venture into dangerous situations, loud and scary environments, etc. calmly and confidently.

The joke in OP though is that many horses that are bred to be very fast, like thoroughbreds, are also bred and encouraged to be high-energy and highstrung. Making them more anxious and prone to seeing those ‘demons.’ All horses in a sense are going to be your anxious friend, but racehorses and polo ponies and other sport horses can sometimes be your anxious friend that thinks they live in Silent Hill.

Reblogging some horse knowledge for certain people who write fantasy books but know nothing about horses *cough cough*

reblogging for the line “Basically we now have a walking couch with anxiety”.

Also: horses have very limited depth perception. You know that thing where you out your finger on the bridge of your nose and it disappears because it’s behind your field of vision? Now imagine your nose is as long as a horse’s. The blind spot in front of a horse’s nose is huge, four to six feet or so. When a horse jumps, it can’t see the fence, it has to be trained / remember to look for it and remember where it is and how high. They cannot tell if that is a spot of oil or a black hole in the road. It’s probably a black hole. Better avoid it.

Horses can’t see your hand, they smell the treat (and use very sensitive skin/whiskers to feel.) Some horses are garbage at doing this gently, just absolutely awful, but remember - they can’t see what they’re doing.

Horses also have partial color vision - they see horse relevant colors. Blue, yellow and therefore green. No red derived colors. If you want to see an anxious couch have a bad trip, ride it in an arena with alternating sections of purple and yellow seating. Grey grey YELLOW YELLOW HOLY SHIIIIIIIT. Every single horse would walk past the purple seats and go OH MY FUCK at the yellow ones. This is why the bright red (grey) bucket isn’t a problem, but oH my FfffffffffSHIttTTTT do they notice a stray yellow plastic grocery bag.

Last statement here is, instinct tells a horse that anything clinging to your back is going to eat you. That we spend so much effort convincing them otherwise is amazing and in general a testament to the human race’s commitment to Bad Ideas.

Thank u horse science side of tumblr

@trashcan-full-of-life

So the banner ad didn’t scale down for the mobile browser and it took me multiple minutes to realize that this stock photo of people in business suits was not, in fact, an illustration of what oathbreaker paladins in service to an evil power are supposed to look like

Megoosa.

Gonna go out on a limb and assume @elodieunderglass has been tagged here a billion times but tag them anyway just in case

I think you’re the first. She’s amazing! I feel strongly that her gaze shouldn’t turn you to stone. (That property is usually strongly associated with mythical serpents, and is probably genetic.) I think that her gaze should do something different to you; perhaps you freeze in place, sweating slightly, until she looks away from you, and you’re released. And then one individual goose suddenly whips around and stares at you, and you are frozen again!

Careful not to take a …gander. 👀

!!!

guys. obviously it should make you DUCK

I GOT A FUCKING RAISE THE POTATO WORKED WTF

This potato works. Every. Fucking. Time.

Then bring me luck

the day after I posted this last time I was notified that I was selected for a really cool mentorship gig and got an unrelated glowing review at work

Weird Brain Hacks That Help Me Write

I'm a consistently inconsistent writer/aspiring novelist, member of the burnt-out-gifted-kid-to-adult-ADHD-diagnosis-pipeline, recently unemployed overachiever, and person who's sick of hearing the conventional neurotypical advice to dealing with writer's block (i.e. "write every single day," or "there's no such thing as writer's block- if you're struggling to write, just write" Like F*CK THAT. Thank you, Brenda, why don't you go and tell someone with diabetes to just start producing more insulin?)

I've yet to get to a point in my life where I'm able to consistently write at the pace I want to, but I've come a long way from where I was a few years ago. In the past five years I've written two drafts of a 130,000 word fantasy novel (currently working on the third) and I'm about 50,000 words in on the sequel. I've hit a bit of a snag recently, but now that I've suddenly got a lot of time on my hands, I'm hoping to revamp things and return to the basics that have gotten me to this point and I thought I might share.

1) My first draft stays between me and God

I find that I and a lot of other writers unfortunately have gotten it into our heads that first drafts are supposed to resemble the finished product and that revisions are only for fixing minor mistakes. Therefore, if our first draft sucks that must mean we suck as writers and having to rewrite things from scratch means that means our first draft is a failure.

I'm here to say that is one of the most detrimental mentalities you can have as a writer.

Ever try drawing a circle? You know how when you try to free-hand draw a perfect circle in one go, it never turns out right? Whereas if you scribble, say, ten circles on top of one another really quickly and then erase the messy lines until it looks like you drew a circle with a singular line, it ends up looking pretty decent?

Yeah. That's what the drafting process is.

Your first draft is supposed to suck. I don't care who you are, but you're never going to write a perfect first draft, especially if you're inexperienced. The purpose of the first draft is to lay down a semi-workable foundation. A really loose, messy sketch if you will. Get it all down on paper, even if it turns out to be the most cliche, cringe-inducing writing you've ever done. You can work out those kinks in the later drafts. The hardest part of the first draft is the most crucial part: getting started. Don't stress yourself out and make it even harder than it already is.

If that means making a promise to yourself that no one other than you will ever read your first draft unless it's over your cold, dead body, so be it.

2) Tell perfectionism to screw off by writing with a pen

I used to exclusively write with pencil until I realized I was spending more time erasing instead of writing.

Writing with a pen keeps me from editing while I right. Like, sometimes I'll have to cross something out or make notes in the margins, but unlike erasing and rewriting, this leaves the page looking like a disaster zone and that's a good thing.

If my writing looks like a complete mess on paper, that helps me move past the perfectionist paralysis and just focus on getting words down on the page. Somehow seeing a page full of chicken scratch makes me less worried about making my writing all perfect and pretty- and that helps me get on with my main goal of fleshing out ideas and getting words on a page.

3) It's okay to leave things blank when you can't think of the right word

My writing, especially my first draft, is often filled with ___ and .... and (insert name here) and red text that reads like stage directions because I can't think of what is supposed to go there or the correct way to write it.

I found it helps to treat my writing like I do multiple choice tests. Can't think of the right answer? Just skip it. Circle it, come back to it later, but don't let one tricky question stall you to the point where you run out of brain power or run out of time to answer the other questions.

If I'm on a role, I'm not gonna waste it by trying to remember that exact word that I need or figure out the right transition into the next scene or paragraph. I'm just going to leave it blank, mark to myself that I'll need to fix the problem later, and move on.

Trust me. This helps me sooooo much with staying on a roll.

4) Write Out of Order

This may not be for everyone, but it works wonders for me.

Sure, the story your writing may need to progress chronologically, but does that mean you need to write it chronologically? No. It just needs to be written.

I generally don't do this as much for editing, but for writing, so long as you're making progress, it doesn't matter if it's in the right order. Can't think of how to structure Chapter 2, but you have a pretty good idea of how your story's going to end? Write the ending then. You'll have to go back and write Chapter 2 eventually, but if you're feeling more motivated to write a completely different part of the book, who's to say you can't do that?

When I'm working on a project, I start off with a single document that I title "Scrap for (Project Title)" and then just write whatever comes to mind, in whatever order. Once I've gotten enough to work with, then I start outlining my plot and predicting how many chapters I'm going to need. Then, I create separate google docs for each individual chapter and work on them in whatever order I feel like, often leaving several partially complete as I jump from one to the other. Then, as each one gets finished, I copy and paste the chapter into the full manuscript document. This means that the official "draft" could have Chapters 1 and 9, but completely be missing Chapters 2-8, and that's fine. It's not like anyone will ever know once I finish it.

Sorry for the absurdly long post. Hopes this helps someone. Maybe I'll share more tricks in the future.