Well. That was smart.

#bobbi's being weird again #Lee G. Simmons Wildlife Safari Park #wildlife safari #Ashland Nebraska #dinosaurs

Surprise visit to the Wildlife Safari in Ashland, NE with the fambly today :D

There were dinosaurs :D

lesbxdyke

catsbeaversandducks

Happy first day of summer! Welcome to #bellyseason! The pouch is definitely out!

Via Joint Animal Services

walking-in-lucis

mildlycuriousdragon

My piece for @ember-lace from the @promptisgiftexchange this year!

missregality

☁ Gloomy day ☁

projectdestati

moonstoneraven

they are friends now :)

prokopetz

It's kind of striking how the whole "renegade robot cop" trope has evolved post-RoboCop, particularly with respect the tendency to discard the bit where the robot cop was ever human.

Like, sure, you want to write a story about a loyal cop discovering how corrupt the system really is and how little it values its pawns and rebelling against it, but how do you make that arc credible in today's political climate? How to you preserve the audience's sympathy for the hero in light of the fact that they chose to be a cop in the first place?

The answer: they didn't choose. They were made that way – quite literally Assigned Cop At Birth. Their value system exists ex nihilo, so they can engage in introspection without needing to confront the guilt of complicity; after all, it's not their fault they were born a cop, is it?

What you end up with is a character who has the aesthetic of a reformed villain without the need to reckon with their past misdeeds because they simply don't have a past, having sprung into being as a fully formed bastard.

fixyourwritinghabits

writingquestionsanswered

Scene Lists

I mention working from scene lists a lot, so I wanted to do a quick post about those…

What is a Scene List? In its simplest form, it’s exactly what it sounds like: a chronological list of your story’s scenes from beginning to end. However, the exact format of that list is up to you and your needs as a writer.

What Does it Include? At the very least, each scene needs to be identified by a keyword, phrase, or title that tells you what needs to happen in that scene. For example, the first scene of The Hunger Games could be “getting ready to hunt with Gale.” Or just “hunting with Gale.” At its most complex, a scene list can contain the date of the scene, chapter and scene number, beat, and a summary of the scene. Ultimately, it can include whatever works for you. This is what I include in my own scene lists:

*** not a real story, btw. ;)

What is the Purpose? Scene lists not only help you flesh out each individual scene, but they give you a “big picture” overview of your story, and they function as a handy road map while you’re writing. There’s never a point where you don’t know what you’re supposed to be writing or what you should be writing next.

Pro Tip: When I start writing, I always have a printed out copy of my completed scene list, plus a printed out blank copy of my scene list. This allows me to make changes (on the blank copy) if I need to shuffle things around along the way. It’s a manual way to keep track of the changes you make rather than crossing things out on the other version (which can get messy.)

How Do You Make One? You can do a scene list in a notebook, a scrap of paper, or you can create one in your favorite Word Program. If you use a writing app or program like Scrivener, you can create one in there. I use Word for mine.

————————————————————————————————-

Have a question? My inbox is always open, but make sure to check my FAQ and post master lists first to see if I’ve already answered a similar question. :)

hi hello i have been drinking and i love all of you and this fic so much

“Fuck me,” Frey muttered, facing down yet mass of what had once been crows. She carelessly brushed back the hair stuck to her temple with sweat. Fuck but she hated Avoalet. “Can’t you just, I don’t know,” she began, summoning a hail of stones to strike down the first, “call them off?”

“‘Call them off?’” Cuff repeated, derision dripping from every syllable. “And how do you imagine I do that?”

She dived out of the path of a swooping bird and brought another down in a shower of rotted feathers. “How the fuck should I know? Just do the opposite of what you did in Cipal when I kicked your ass.”

“I tugged at the magic, my magic, at the center of their being to summon them. How exactly do you suggest I untug it?” The disdain in his words didn’t stop him from pulsing out to take a blow meant for her, razor-sharp talons raking across glittering gold rather than her skull.

“So you can summon these fuckers but can’t send them away? Great. So useful.”

Y'all know what else I love about this?

It gives the odd sense that Cuff has a sort of incomplete, slap-dash understanding of his own magic.

Like... he uses it intuitively but doesn't truly know how it works, or what he can do with it. There's little to no comprehension of the underlying mechanics or whatever.

Here, for instance, it would be logical to think "well, if I pull, they come; let me try to push, and perhaps they'll leave." Like, I feel that that's a fairly reasonable approximation of how things might work. And yet Cuff just kind of throws his hands up all "I don't know, why are you asking me?"

And it's funny because Frey's magic is an innate part of her, too, and she certainly starts using it intuitively, through instinct. But at the same time, as she grows and upgrades her spells, she does so through intellectual study and practice. She doesn't just do whatever; we know that she specifically reads books on magic and uses them to improve.

It's just funny to consider that Frey, a self-taught vagabond who has been practicing magic all of six months, seems more adept at logicking it out than an ancient demon who had immense magical power usable from birth.

He has technically had immense power from birth but it has been unusable for a whole lot more of his life than it’s been useable. A lot of it is about opportunity: Frey has had a lot more time to just… fuck around with her magic and figure out what’s what. Especially now, she can just sort of meander through her magical education. She can dive into Olas’s library, she can ask questions of her bitchy mentor or the remaining Cognoscents, she can just do her own testing. He’s always been on a deadline with a goal. And when he hasn’t been, when he’s been bored, he’s been cut off from his magic.

What he’s not going to tell her is that he tried. He’s tried to push them away from her and he thinks maybe it’s been helpful in keeping them from being spotted but that may be wishful thinking. He’s not going to tell her that when he snarled, “Get away from her,” he tried to turn them back and it didn’t work. Maybe it would have once. It doesn’t now. It’s easier for him to accept that that’s just not how it works than to really square with how powerless she’s kept him.

So no eduction + no access for long periods + no time in which to figure things out himself = “Fuck if I know”

You made it sad :c

There's something very... I dunno... demoralizing? About him truly just not knowing, or trying and failing and not quite understanding if it's because he truly can't do it, or because he's been bound.

It makes me wonder about how much he actually know about himself. His own abilities, the idiosyncrasies surrounding his nature. I'm guessing it's "not much." Only enough to be a successful weapon.

It makes me think of other humorous bits of dialogue, like Frey asking him if he needs to eat, and him acting as if it's blistering obvious that he doesn't, but of course he can still talk because that's totally normal. He behaves as if these things are clear, but it wouldn't surprise me if he had no real clue and was just putting forth some firm bravado.

Hm. It would be cute if, eventually, he and Frey could figure things out together. Mutual magical learning. Though knowing them, something would explode c:

He gives off such middle-aged man vibes that it’s really easy to fall for his con that he has it all together, that he knows himself so well, but actually, he doesn’t know shit. He didn’t know how he was reborn, he doesn’t know the full extent of his power, I doubt he knows what actually made him. A lot of what he does know was discovered through deprivation. Does he need to eat or sleep or breath? No because he’d be dead if he did. Can he? Fuck if he knows.

I feel like Frey will one day realize this and truly have a field day with the revelation.

Literally in my fic: “You know, you give off such middle-aged man vibes but you actually have the taste of a small child.”

And yes, that’s received as well as you’d imagine.

#lys writes fic #forspoken spoilers #HA! yes we did rather bring that one ~down to earth~ :>

I mean, has he heard himself?

"Our magic's better than your magic!"

Can you really blame her?

thatrandombystander

ublock-origin

purrfectleoboy

ao3commentoftheday

50 tips for (fanfic) writing

have fun
write whatever is interesting to you, even if it won’t be interesting to anyone else
appreciate kudos when they come, but don’t expect them
appreciate comments when they come, but don’t expect them
if you wish you could just write that one scene you have in your head, do that. you don’t need to create a 30K backstory for it first.
embrace one shots
embrace drabbles
embrace writing your story out of order
rough drafts are meant to be rough. if you can’t think of a word, put in a placeholder for it and keep going.
try not to get stuck on the little things
it’s okay if your readers can’t see the picture inside of your head
some people work well when they have a posting schedule. some people work well when they don’t. it’s okay if you don’t know which kind of person you are, and it’s okay if the type of person you are changes over time.
if a rule you created for yourself isn’t working for you, get rid of that rule.
make fandom friends. even if they don’t read your fic, they’ll cheer you on while you write it.
cheer on other writers you know. you’ll be cheering yourself at the same time.
no trope or genre is better or worse than another one. they all just appeal to different audiences.
quality and popularity are not the same thing, although they do sometimes overlap
numbers and statistics will never tell you whether or not you’re a good writer. they will never tell you how valuable you are as a person.
you belong in fandom if you want to be there
you’re a writer as soon as you start writing things
writing and posting are two different things. your story is still worth writing, even if you never plan to share it
you don’t need to apologize for what you write or what you post.
don’t worry about taking up too much space. the internet doesn’t have a maximum size.
keep your readers in mind when you’re tagging your content. how could they search for your fic? if you use a tag, will be a reader who loves that tag be satisfied with how much it appears in your story?
if you have a relationship in your fic that plays a minor role, tag it in the Additional Tags section instead of the Relationship section so that people who love that ship don’t get their hopes up
be cautious when looking at bookmarks on your fic. they aren’t “extra comments.” that’s a space where readers make notes for themselves and each other, not for authors.
you don’t need to know everything about canon before you start writing fic
you don’t need to read fic in the same fandoms you write for
you don’t need to read fic at all in order to write it
love your work because sometimes you’re the only one who will - and that’s okay
if your hobby starts feeling like a job, you might need to take a break before you get burnt out
if you get stuck on a story, you can always start a new one
if you fall out of love with a story, you can always stop writing it. if you’re worried about your readers, you can always give them a bullet point summary of where you were planning to go with thing. for a lot of people, that’s satisfying and provides closure
if you get hate, report it
use the tools at your disposal to block hate before it can come in (limiting or turning off comments, limiting or turning off asks, blocking users, etc)
try replying to comments sometimes. it can be a lovely way to make fandom friends
don’t be afraid to reblog your own writing posts.
if you get stuck on your summary, just write 1) who the story is about 2) what they are doing and 3) what problem gets in their way
notice when your writing makes you smile. that moment is a gift. enjoy it.
notice when your writing makes you cry. that moment is a gift, too.
even if you’re disappointed in how your story turned out, there’s something in there that’s fantastic. find that thing and focus on it and feel proud.
some ideas are ones you want to write. some are ones you want to read. if you ever have too many ideas to deal with at once, give some of the latter ones away to someone else.
sometimes the things you write will be really personal. be careful about putting them where other people can comment. they won’t know how personal it is for you, and you need to remember that comments aren’t about you, they’re about the story.
remember that you can write series as well as stories. if the story is done but you still have passion or ideas, start a new one in the same universe.
enjoy the satisfaction of finishing a story. savour it. bask in it a little while.
don’t feel guilty about abandoning a story. not every story gets finished, and that’s okay
you can have separate accounts for different fandoms. you can have one account with a million fandoms in it. do whatever works for you.
sometimes writing is more important than sleep - but only sometimes
it doesn’t matter if that story has been written before by someone else. it doesn’t matter if it was written by you. write it again.
only follow the advice that makes sense to you. the rest isn’t important.

civ5crab

neato-burrito-scream-dorito

sophbun

how to care for your low poly

llsnart

✨COMMISSIONS OPEN✨

The prices are references, they can change depending on the request and their complexity.

Hey! If you want something but you don’t have enough money we can negotiate.

Prices are referential, if you want something different, less or more complex we just can talk.

DM if you have any doubts ❤️

Payments methods depends on the country

You can help me sharing this ✨

angelselene

writing-prompt-s

While having humans on initial survey teams to determine if a planet is hospitable enough to support a colony, it’s important to remember that a humans definition of ‘hospitable’ is vastly different from the rest of the galaxy.

theleastprofessionalchef

Daryl and Marlin, our ship cats! It's Marlin's second season sailing (though he's been with us three years- got locked at the seaport last season for crimes) and Daryl's first! What sweet babies 💖

theleastprofessionalchef

The people have spoken: What Crimes Has Locked This Poor Soul Away

You are Marlin, ship's cat and mascot of the tallship Lady Washington. It is the summer of 2021, you are about a year old, and full of Mischief.

Lady is docked in the Port of Everett, and no one is paying attention to you- never mind the fact that they're doing their jobs and getting money so they can keep pampering you. No, they're not paying attention to you Right This Instant, so you decide you want to take a little jaunt off the ship and explore on your own.

In addition to the marina, the waterfront, and all manner of other delights, the Port of Everett also has a Naval base, so you decide to check it out! See what all the fuss is about.

Of course, wandering kitties without the proper credentials aren't allowed on high security Naval bases, so when the Marines inevitably capture you and ask you where your people are and what you're doing here and how you got here, you just curl up cutely and bat your eyes and meow the most pitiful meow because these new people are paying attention to you but not the Right attention, no one's even petting you!

They call the number on your collar, which goes to the captain of Lady at the time, who... is on leave. In Florida.

"Ma'am? Is this your cat?"

"Oh god yeah where was he?"

"A high security government facility. Can you come pick him up?"

"Considering I'm on the other side of the country, no. Let me get in contact with the crew to send someone."

"Thank you. Also he's very cute."

"I know."

So the captain does just that, playing telephone while trying to find someone to go pick you up. Except by the time a viable crewmember is chosen and calls back to confirm, you've gotten bored and decided you want to leave.

So you clawed the Marine holding you and escaped.

You get a smidgen more exploring time before you're captured again and taken to your crew and back to the boat, but at this point no one is happy including you, because no one pet you the Whole Time you were off adventuring and that's a damn travesty.

And not only that, when you get back to the ship, you're locked up tight in the aft cabin because no one trusts you anymore not to wander off and break into government facilities when they're not looking, and then when the boat gets back to her homeport in Aberdeen, they do you just the WORST injustice and lock you inside there! For the whole winter! And then the following summer, because you are now a Criminal and Criminals don't sail.

Except this season, you made Big Pouty Eyes at everyone, and they caved and let you back on, so you are a very happy kitty now.

With a tracker in your collar so this doesn't happen again.

hi hello i have been drinking and i love all of you and this fic so much

“Fuck me,” Frey muttered, facing down yet mass of what had once been crows. She carelessly brushed back the hair stuck to her temple with sweat. Fuck but she hated Avoalet. “Can’t you just, I don’t know,” she began, summoning a hail of stones to strike down the first, “call them off?”

“‘Call them off?’” Cuff repeated, derision dripping from every syllable. “And how do you imagine I do that?”

She dived out of the path of a swooping bird and brought another down in a shower of rotted feathers. “How the fuck should I know? Just do the opposite of what you did in Cipal when I kicked your ass.”

“I tugged at the magic, my magic, at the center of their being to summon them. How exactly do you suggest I untug it?” The disdain in his words didn’t stop him from pulsing out to take a blow meant for her, razor-sharp talons raking across glittering gold rather than her skull.

“So you can summon these fuckers but can’t send them away? Great. So useful.”

Y'all know what else I love about this?

It gives the odd sense that Cuff has a sort of incomplete, slap-dash understanding of his own magic.

Like... he uses it intuitively but doesn't truly know how it works, or what he can do with it. There's little to no comprehension of the underlying mechanics or whatever.

Here, for instance, it would be logical to think "well, if I pull, they come; let me try to push, and perhaps they'll leave." Like, I feel that that's a fairly reasonable approximation of how things might work. And yet Cuff just kind of throws his hands up all "I don't know, why are you asking me?"

And it's funny because Frey's magic is an innate part of her, too, and she certainly starts using it intuitively, through instinct. But at the same time, as she grows and upgrades her spells, she does so through intellectual study and practice. She doesn't just do whatever; we know that she specifically reads books on magic and uses them to improve.

It's just funny to consider that Frey, a self-taught vagabond who has been practicing magic all of six months, seems more adept at logicking it out than an ancient demon who had immense magical power usable from birth.

He has technically had immense power from birth but it has been unusable for a whole lot more of his life than it’s been useable. A lot of it is about opportunity: Frey has had a lot more time to just… fuck around with her magic and figure out what’s what. Especially now, she can just sort of meander through her magical education. She can dive into Olas’s library, she can ask questions of her bitchy mentor or the remaining Cognoscents, she can just do her own testing. He’s always been on a deadline with a goal. And when he hasn’t been, when he’s been bored, he’s been cut off from his magic.

What he’s not going to tell her is that he tried. He’s tried to push them away from her and he thinks maybe it’s been helpful in keeping them from being spotted but that may be wishful thinking. He’s not going to tell her that when he snarled, “Get away from her,” he tried to turn them back and it didn’t work. Maybe it would have once. It doesn’t now. It’s easier for him to accept that that’s just not how it works than to really square with how powerless she’s kept him.

So no eduction + no access for long periods + no time in which to figure things out himself = “Fuck if I know”

You made it sad :c

There's something very... I dunno... demoralizing? About him truly just not knowing, or trying and failing and not quite understanding if it's because he truly can't do it, or because he's been bound.

It makes me wonder about how much he actually know about himself. His own abilities, the idiosyncrasies surrounding his nature. I'm guessing it's "not much." Only enough to be a successful weapon.

It makes me think of other humorous bits of dialogue, like Frey asking him if he needs to eat, and him acting as if it's blistering obvious that he doesn't, but of course he can still talk because that's totally normal. He behaves as if these things are clear, but it wouldn't surprise me if he had no real clue and was just putting forth some firm bravado.

Hm. It would be cute if, eventually, he and Frey could figure things out together. Mutual magical learning. Though knowing them, something would explode c:

#forspoken spoilers #itwt spoilers

He gives off such middle-aged man vibes that it’s really easy to fall for his con that he has it all together, that he knows himself so well, but actually, he doesn’t know shit. He didn’t know how he was reborn, he doesn’t know the full extent of his power, I doubt he knows what actually made him. A lot of what he does know was discovered through deprivation. Does he need to eat or sleep or breath? No because he’d be dead if he did. Can he? Fuck if he knows.

marinella-ela

lesbxdyke

homunculus-argument

Imagine an alien sharing a cool human fact they just learned like ”hey guys did you know that the silvery markings on humans actually aren’t true stripes? They’re called stretch marks, they happen when the human is growing fast enough to actually outgrow their skin, which is apparently something that just fucking happens to almost all of them at some point of their life.”

and another one is like ”wait so you’re saying humans don’t have stripes.”

”actually they do, but the stripes are invisible. There’s genetic code that’d give them stripes but they’re just the same colour as the rest of the skin. So the visible stripes are not real stripes and the real stripes are invisible.”

”I swear if you tell me one more weird human thing today I’m beating your ass.”

thantos1991

The human in the room looks up and goes "Wait I have stripes?"

cosmicbumfights

"what do you mean cats can see them, but I can't?"

what do you fucking mean cats can see them

I WENT THROUGH THE SAME THOUGHT PROCESS

MY CAT THINKS I HAVE STRIPES?!?!?!?

NO NO ITS NOT "IT THINKS I HAVE THEM"

BECAUSE WE DO ~~APPARENTLY~~

SO ITS ACTUALLY A VERY DISTRESSED "MY CAT THINKS I KNOW I HAVE STRIPES?!?!?!"

AND I THINK THATS A BIT WORSE TO BE COMPLETELY HONEST

MY CAT KNEW I HAD STRIPES BEFORE I DID?!?!?!?!?!?

I DIDNT THINK OF THAT

WELL I DID AND NOW I CANT UNTHINK IT

blueberryrock

@beenovel @messiambrandybuck these are the variants

WHAT

apparently there's a disease where they become visable, and these are the most common kind??

Ngl it looks cool but???? I'm still in shock tbh

hachama

I NEED TO KNOW WHAT PATTERN OF STRIPES I HAVE AND THE CATS WON'T TELL ME

yupokaysuremhm

I COULD HAVE A CHECKERBOARD ON MY BACK AND NO ONE WOULD KNOW???

sinestrocas

demonoflight

They’re called Blaschko's lines!!!

injuries-in-dust

The reverse can also be true ... kinda.

I remember reading somehwre the human eye can see more shades of green than any other colour. I just googled it and the human eye can see 10 Million different shades of green.

So human could see stripes and patterns on, say, a reptillian race who maybe can’t see as many colours as we do, and think they’re just one boring shade of green.

Human: We have stripes?! I wish I could see them. I hope they look like yours.

Reptile Alien: Wait, I HAVE STRIPES!

*mutual excitement all around*

writing-prompt-s

Your spouse is leading a secret double life as an assassin, trying their best to keep it secret from you. This has never really worked, because, unbeknownst to them, you are actually their handler.