humans: awwww the kitty loves the tree look the magic of xmas touches everyone

cat: im gonna eat it

hey. hey. I have a confession

I fuckin LOVE dialogue as a first line. I adore it. whenever I flip open a book and the first line is dialogue I’m like hell YES this is my SHIT

there’s lists of, uh, TOP TEN WAYS YOU SHOULD NEVER START YOUR NOVEL EVER and “opening with dialogue” is always on them

the gist being that it’s bad bc the reader doesn’t care about this character yet so why are they gonna care about this dialogue, right, they don’t have any context for it, you should start with something that gets the reader invested and emotionally pulled in, so on, so forth

(and I’m not here to argue or call bullshit on these lists or anything…… 99% of the time, the reasons listed of why you should Maybe Not Do The Thing are perfectly valid concerns and dangers that should be taken into consideration)

(this post is more a ramble about personal preference with a nice moral at the end)

(and definitely not a TOP TEN REASONS “TOP TEN WAYS YOU SHOULD NEVER START YOUR NOVEL EVER” LISTS ARE LIES AND SLANDER post god could you imagine)

but yeah, for me, dialogue opening lines pull me right the fuck in emotionally. for real. nine times out of ten they’ll yank me in and have me engaged instantaneously. always have, probably always will

(like come on. have y’all never just started eavesdropping right in the middle of some total strangers’ conversation on the bus. especially if it’s somethin weird. it’s so good)

but ANYWAY, the moral is uhhhh

whatever Mortal Writing Sin you wanna commit, there’s probably at least one weirdo out there possibly named logan who digs it

do whatever the fuck you want, honestly

you can write an opening scene that does everything every advice page tells you to do with an opening scene and it can still be shit

you can write an opening scene doing everything every advice page tells you NEVER to do with your opening scene and it can still be fabulous and engaging

if you can pull it off, literally who cares

“if you can pull it off, literally who cares“ is the only real writing rule

Those “rules” are made up 

and if you read a few things, you’ll notice that all successful authors break at least some of them. It’s that exact thing that makes them memorable.

Pratchett never kills characters he doesn’t need any more, as a lot of writing advice I’ve found tells you to. He doesn’t kill characters for drama or shock value at all. He doesn’t ever fridge a character for the development of another.

Tolkien added conflict after climax, which is a big structural no-no, and also why the liberation of the Shire was cut from the movies. And he doesn’t flesh out his characters much. The Lord of the Rings is still in the top ten of most read books on the planet.

J. K. Rowling doesn’t write very deep characters. Most of them are pretty one-dimensional, they have one hat and that’s p much it. With very few exceptions.

Sir Walter Scot of Ivanhoe fame inserts treatises about history and culture into his books that only tangentially have to do with the plot. They are cut in a lot of publications, but I think to give the reader this kind of context adds to their understanding of the characters and the settings.

I could go on.

But…these are some of the most influential writers in the English-speaking world - and all of them commit cardinal sins of writing. You know who doesn’t? Those writers wrangled into absolute conformity by their editors and publishers. They are told to never break these rules, to never deviate from the formula. And they don’t.

That’s why you immediately forget them. They are bland, and everything that made their writing unique in form or structure is gone because it’s too much of a risk and might not sell. Because books aren’t considered art by those who run publishing businesses, they’re marketable products. They are designed to be disposable, they are designed to only be read once and never again - because if you re-read an old book, you don’t buy a new one.

And that’s the main reason why I stopped reading books when I discovered fanfic. Fanfic writers don’t care about certain writing conventions. They experiment, they keep things fresh, they let their stories be the exact length they need to be, be that 100 words or 100k. They experiment. They write in present tense (keeping the past tense for flashbacks makes so much sense!), they write in first or second person. And I’m telling you: what makes you go “ewww” at the mere idea of a reader insert is only what you’ve been trained to think since you started to read. It’s just a habit to not do that. Habits and thought patterns can be broken. You don’t need to abide by made up rules put in place by people who just want to sell you something.

TLDR: Capitalism kills art, and fanfic is anarchy in the best sense of the word.

people really came for hozier for his four year hiatus as if they have clocks in the woods

me, rattling spoons in the wilderness: hozier come on it’s been four years

hozier, materializing from a tree: it what

Wrong Number Gone Right

that was wild since the very beginning

Maybe I’m an old man but goddamn, these vampires with blood dripping down their chins–that’s your food!! THAT’S YOUR FOOD!! Close!! Your!! Mouth!! You think some asshole slobbering chicken noodle soup or yogurt or clam chowder all down themselves would be sexy??? What makes you any different, you sticky-stained slackjawed screwball??? Close your mouth!! Use a napkin!! And for godssakes stop looking so smug, like, “Oooo, I’m a creature of the night look at what sustains me” yeah uh huh a fucking lack of basic hygiene is what I’m seeing and it is not impressive!! At all!! My nephews are three years old and they drool less than you do!! You’re how many centuries old?!?! ACT LIKE IT

everyone in harry potter treated luna like she was crazy for believing in weird shit like they didn’t go to wizard high school

fucking 5 hit combo this one 

What Your Mass Effect: Andromeda Romance Says About You

Cora: You’re a lesbian who always gets crushes on straight girls. Liam: You’re an idealist and a huge fuckin’ nerd. Jaal: You’re a cat person and you probably have a dysfunctional family. Vetra: The whole time you were playing the original trilogy, you just wanted to romance a lady Turian. This is your moment, stud. Go for it. Peebee: You are fiercely protective of characters who get undue hate and you will go to any lengths to impress a hot girl. Gil: You’re gay and you hate Bioware. Suvi: You probably preferred Traynor’s romance in the original trilogy, but dammit you came here to smooch a cute, soft lady and that’s what you’re going to do. Reyes: You probably romanced Zevran in Dragon Age: Origins, but you badly misunderstood his character.

wish customer service jobs operated w video game standards, so a customer would come up to me and i’d say “greetings traveler! looking to trade?” and they’d only had 4 options for their response 

i’d just stand there wiping down the same part of the counter for 8 hours until my shift ended and then id drop everything and walk away and if you tried to interact with me i’d just keep running into you silently until you moved 

Kitty isn’t allow outside and she gets mad at us so she sits in the potted tree and pretends she is outside

SHE LOOKS SO SAD

A tradition

In peacetime, the ruler grows their hair long. In war, they cut it short. A ruler with long hair is held in great esteem, for defending the peace. The traditional declaration of war is for the ruler to send their cut-off hair to the enemy ruler. The statement carries greater weight the longer the hair: to receive long hair says that you have angered one who is slow to anger, that you have incurred a wrath not easily woken.

Violent war-mongering leader frantically and aggressively tries to shave just a LITTLE hair off the top of their head into an envelope.

A faraway king receives a heavy wooden crate filled with a coil of the longest hair he has ever seen.

A despised ruler finds hundreds of pounds of cut-off ponytails at her castle entrance, each one belonging to her own people. 

A young emperor refuses to cut their hair and insists on trying to make peace with invaders. The enemy leader steps forward, draws their blade, and cuts the emperor’s hair themselves.

Hellen cuts her hair off and throws it in Cathy’s face at her son’s soccer scrimmage. 

Today I visited my absolutely favorite place in this city.

absolute unit

ROUND!!!!!!!!!!

R O T U N D

B O D E

fat