If your plot feels flat, STUDY it! Your story might be lacking...

Stakes - What would happen if the protagonist failed? Would it really be such a bad thing if it happened?

Thematic relevance - Do the events of the story speak to a greater emotional or moral message? Is the conflict resolved in a way that befits the theme?

Urgency - How much time does the protagonist have to complete their goal? Are there multiple factors complicating the situation?

Drive - What motivates the protagonist? Are they an active player in the story, or are they repeatedly getting pushed around by external forces? Could you swap them out for a different character with no impact on the plot? On the flip side, do the other characters have sensible motivations of their own?

Yield - Is there foreshadowing? Do the protagonist's choices have unforeseen consequences down the road? Do they use knowledge or clues from the beginning, to help them in the end? Do they learn things about the other characters that weren't immediately obvious?

Thank you so much for this!

Future Grandkid: Grandpa, what was it like when Obama was president?

Me: Aah, yes… the Homestuck President.

what the shit does that mean

I see all of you people who had this post queue’d for 4/13. Good job.

homestuck, for all its insanity, still has the best quotes, my favorite being “the circle of stupidity is complete”

mine might be that one karkat rant like ‘your vehicle is parked squarely in the ‘nobody gives a fuck’ zone’

“Yes sir we are literally under siege by planet fucking Jupiter.”

“shit. let’s be santa”

“i’m 13 u egg”

That might be the saddest thing I’ve ever heard get said.

Well you see, the explanation is perfectly simple and scientific.  It was because shut up.  Shut up is why.

I’d throw it in the lava but that would be a waste of melting

“How old are you?” “6” “Goddamn”

Kick it barak

TIME TO RENDEZVOUS WITH MY HOMIE KILLA AND DROP THE SPECIAL SCIENCE ON HIM

My personal favorite:

time to fly up away into the sun you fucknig piece of gargbage

KARKAT: THAT SOUNDS SUPER! DOESN’T THAT SOUND SUPER KANAYA? KANAYA: No KARKAT: I THINK I SPEAK FOR KANAYA WHEN I SAY IT SOUNDS Really Fucking Super.

“You have a hat full of bomb, a fist full of penis, and a head full of empty” is my favorite tbh

@pacifriske

“This is exactly why babies shouldn’t be allowed to dual wield flintlock pistols”

God launders in mysterious ways.

today is the only day i regard this post fondly. and i love that just around this time it explodes with notes and my activity is clogged with everyones additions of quotes.

DAVE: well shit

DAVE: thats a hell of a mystery no one thought was a mystery and didnt even really need solving

DAVE: but damn if it didnt just get solved so nice work

Ok but like. What the fuck is there to do on the internet anymore?

Idk when I was younger, you could just go and go and find exciting new websites full of whatever cool things you wanted to explore. An overabundance of ways to occupy your time online.

Now, it’s just… Social media. That’s it. Social media and news sites. And I’m tired of social media and I’m tired of the news.

Am I just like completely inept at finding new things or has the internet just fallen apart that much with the problems of SEO and web 3.0 turning everything into a same-site prison?

Long collection of resources under the cut.

Keep reading

ALSO you should consider browsing Virtual Pet List and seeing if there are any pet sites you might be interested in playing. There is a whole genre of browser games right under your nose

Another one that I just found recently is this, which is a whole collection of blogs, organized by topic!

Look guys the real internet IS STILL THERE I’m going to cry

Getting off of twitter and onto neocities has really healed me and I am so glad to see it is healing other people too ;u; let’s retreat into the self-made digital woods and away from corporate bs pls, I am so tired

I am a(n):

⚪ Male

⚪ Female

🔘 Writer

Looking for

⚪ Boyfriend

⚪ Girlfriend

🔘 An incredibly specific word that I can't remember

*wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat*

WAIT IT’S CALLED A THROW PILLOW

here is a super helpful website for this kinda thing!

the first result isn’t always the one you’re looking for but when you press enter it’ll give you a ton of words related to your query that’ll probably have what you’re wanting, or something better

here’s some examples:

Reblog to save a writer's sanity.

T h a n k y o u k i n d s i r .

THANK YOU REBLOG TO SAVE A LIFE

vulpetrope | konbini snacks and drinks based on pokemon

what do you mean fi1nn5ter got banned from twitch for “female presenting” tit streaming how does that even happen 😭

talk about setting records

i’m obsessed with twitch apparently hopping on the tumblr train of “female presenting tits/nipples” especially in this context. finn identifies as male but his tits don’t. apparently

i was joking

I feel its also important to know that Finns boobs are not real. He has one of those rubber breast attachments. He got banned for fake rubber boobs.

1. This is genuinely awful

2. This is also darkly funny

3. several gender studies students just picked a paper topic

i feel like counter-trolling is an essential skill that kids online aren’t learning and it’s kinda worrying

like back in my day, the day of online forums, learning how to trick someone in to getting themselves banned was an essential skill. if you could tell someone was a chud, you would ask them short, leading questions and watch them get frustrated and post longer and longer rants until they said something that would catch a mod’s attention and get them banned and/or at least publicly humiliated. 

and guess what? that’s the exact same tactics the alt-right use now. these people are exclusively acting in bad faith. every interaction these people post online is done with the intention of getting someone to respond to them so they can screenshot the massive paragraphs of text and laugh

so, what’s the solution?

dare ‘em to post dick pics.

don’t acknowledge the content of the stuff they post. if you see someone trying to engage you in bad faith just dare them to post pictures of their penis until they either get frustrated and leave or get frustrated and do it. either way they lose. 

this is the tactic used by the fans of a podcast (that i haven’t listened to) called the Chapo Trap House, and 4chan’s /pol/ users fucking HATE them. they hate Chapo Trap House and think they’re crazy because Chapo Trap House fans refuse to engage in meaningful debate and repeatedly demand dick pics. they get frustrated and leave. it works. 

Some of you never used your position as a mod on an a series of unfortunate events forum to get a racist troll to post evidence of their tax fraud and it shows

…that second comment is oddly specific and I’m a little scared

Are you constantly wanting to do A Thing but never know how to do The Thing?

Does figuring out where to start a task and knowing what steps need to be taken to complete the task stress you out?

Lemme introduce you to...

goblin.tools

For example, you want to clean your oven.

You simply go to the website and in the "Add new item" box, you type "clean the oven". You can then also use the lil chillies next to the plus to change the level of breaking-down you'd like. Next, hit the magic wand-looking button to break it down!

You can check off items as you go, and further break things down if desired!

It works on large tasks such as planning a cross-country trip, writing a book or going on vacation and smaller tasks such as cleaning an oven.

There's also tools for task time estimation, meal-prep that takes into account dietary constraints, equipment and such, and a braindump compiler.

It's available as an IOS/Android app for less than a dollar, or a free web app. I can't hype this up enough, the developers deserve so much love for this.

by far the worst thing about reading homestuck for the first time now is how with every page that I get deeper into troll lore, I can see more and more clearly how my 14 year old self would have completely lost their mind and become totally insufferable if they read homestuck when it came out.

however, by far the best thing is that I have now unlocked the power y’all have been taunting me with the whole time - I can now just say whatever I want about homestuck and everyone who hasn’t read it will probably just believe it’s canon somehow…on an unrelated note, vriska falling in love with nicholas cage has to be the funniest plot twist in the history of ever.

seeing my non-homestuck mutuals liking this while they have no idea if vriska actually has a secret shrine dedicated to her love interest nicholas cage or not is a great feeling, so this is why y’all homestuck fans have been doing this the whole time 

I could assure everybody that this absolutely is canon, and there are multiple official musical animations on the subject, but to be perfectly honest I would have said that even if you were lying.

Saw this Trucks Discourse on facebook and I'm not part of that world but yeah that one on the left is delightful and I really had no idea just how wasteful and pointless the other kind is until this comparison

it’s so sad that they’ve been selectively bred for size and aesthetics over their health. look at that pushed-in muzzle—there’s no way the one on the right can breathe properly

MY GOD WHAT HAVE I FOUND XD

I'm not sorry for having you know this exists XD

“French is such a beautiful, romantic language.”

“Cat, I farted.”

i watch baseball for the side quests (ps: this baseball player also makes fruit cocktails midgame)

Art by u/reachling

These wonderful people have a single braincell to share but unfortunately none of them are using it

Saw this tweet and had to collect Ryan Gosling’s best PR quotes for Barbie

Hey uh brand new addition

If those trees were pollarded annually, the cut areas would NOT look like that. There would be big knobs of old growth at the trimming sites. Not seeing any of that here. The way those trees were topped (not pollarded, which is a very careful process that has to begin when the tree is immature) is excellent way to kill them due to loss of hydration, open sites to infection and parasitism during the best time of year for both, lack of nutrition due to so little greenery and new budding growth being left, sunburn and other exposure damage, and a myriad of other possibilities. Plus, if they were topped annually, they would not have the lovely drooping branches seen in the other picture but would have tons of vertical suckers instead.

This is what an annually pollarded mature tree should look like:

If this was done by the city, the public works arborists should be protesting in front of city hall and screaming their heads off right now. I'm not hearing about that, so... Tree law!

The Studios: *speak*

Botanists and other Tree Experts:

Update and confirmation of Imminent Tree Law:

He mentions later in the thread that not only do they not trim the trees annually, they’re trimmed at best once every 18 years. Supposed to be every five, and only in dormancy, which even my layman’s ass knows about tree trimming.

And yes, Universal can probably eat the fine. But it’s gonna be a whopper even if the trees survive (which is as mentioned kinda unlikely), California is a triple damage state for tree law, and it may increase dramatically if there were nesting birds in the trees.

All this to be a Captain Planet filler villain to some writers. And yes, it’s currently just the writers officially picketing there; SAG-AFTRA recommended against it for petty bullshit like this and the suddenly necessary sidewalk construction.

I asked my dad— a retired arborist—about TREE LAW and he just kinda blinked and said (i paraphrase because Dad Tangents, amirite?):

"Worst and best case I ever saw was a guy who was caught in the act of cutting down a C&C tree by two Department of Urban Forestry supervisors while they were randomly driving around on a Saturday. Not only did he have to deal with the cops showing up and months of paperwork and bureaucracy, but he also had to pay the fines AND cover the cost of the tree removal + stumping + buying a new tree + planting the new tree + wages for the regular crew plus the extra workers they needed to get the jobs done. That tree ended up costing him upwards of $35K, and that was over 20 years ago."

So yeah, respect Tree Law or pay out the bootyhole.

I don't get why this is horrifying other than it being a mass shooting?

Is it that they used up so much ink to make a point?

Read closer, each of those lines is a different incident

#‘el pastel promedio tiene tres leches’ es en realidad un error estadístico. El pastel promedio tiene 0 leches. Leches Georg#quien vive en una cueva y absorbe 10.000 leches al día#es un valor atípico qeu no debería haberse contado (via @deathbycoldopen)