no one wants to hear it but love is earned after the initial infatuation. commitment is something u both mutually agree to and then from there it’s work. it’s not work like it’s a chore it’s jus work like it takes effort. to get good at these things takes practice. it takes practice to learn to communicate better and it takes practice to learn to love each other in the ways u need to be loved.

And it’s also terrifying! Like it’s the kind of vulnerability you can’t do while being all cool and in control of things, you have to like open up the really awkward, ugly inner part of yourself and hope that the other person is still into you. 

Like you have to actually say - with words coming out of your mouth or hands or whatever way you use to directly communicate in person - what you would like from the other person! You have to say stuff like “hey the thing you did made me feel some ways and we have to address this like adults” and hope that the other person says “I see, yes I also think we should address this like adults” (instead of “no I didn’t” or “you’re overreacting” or other shut-down-ing shit that ruins lives). 

Worth the read my oh my

Is it impostor syndrome?

This is funniest joke I have ever made in my life and I feel like you guys don’t appreciate that enough

Me af 😂

OK to make a font out of your own writing

go here

http://www.myscriptfont.com/

instead of printing it off just use this blank thing that way you dont have to scan it or anything

so fill that out by pasting it in any art program and whatnot

then save it and upload it to that site

and itll give you an option to download it

so do that and then install it BAM

I JUST GOT THIS ON MY TABLET IT’S SO COOL OH MY GOD

for some reason it refused to recognize the third page of my letters but they were all pretty unnecessary mathematic things anyway so I’m not too worried. still something to keep in mind though, I hope it doesn’t happen for you!

paintfont.com would be a good place to go to quickly make a custom font for your comic!

ehh

It looks just as horrible in real life..even worse with the letter attached…

I’ll try this later.

you can also use alternative alphabets

Welp. Guess I know what font I’m gonna be using for comics from now on. B)

Welp. Looks like I have to do this now. So I can use this for Tengri’s asks.

For some reason there is no apostrophe in my set, but it still looks cool.

NEAT THING ALERT

The site is now called https://www.calligraphr.com/en/ but it’s basically the same!

I’ve been wanting to make one of these out of my dad’s handwriting, he does last year and he used to write everything down about his life

calligraphr is a godsend for webcomic artists

A dating service where matching is based on people’s search history exists. You’re a serial killer. You go on a date with a writer.

Serial Killer: metaphorically, if you were to kill someone, how would you do it?

Writer: Air shot between the toes, it’ll look like a heart attack.

Serial Killer who is obviously in love already: *sucks in a breath* ok

Writer: how long would it take to die if you were to potentially stab someone in the guts

Serial killer: anywhere from 2 to 30 minutes

Writer, already bringing a ring out: *shaking* thanks

A++ addition

Writer: *shows the serial killer the murder scene they’re writing* babe, i’m not sure if this would actually work?

Serial killer: *kisses writer on the forehead and leaves, comes back later, a suspicious scent of blood coming off them* it works baby, you’re doing great

I LOVE THIS

Oh no, murder comedy is my jam

I love this, I love all of this, but quick question, does the author know? Like are they aware that their significant other is a serial killer or do they just think that they have a morbid sense of humor? It’d be even funnier if the author had no fucking clue, like how Aurthur Conan Doyle was apparently stupidly gullible, and on top of it they’re a horror or crime novelist. Like the serial killer works at a butcher shop or something so it’s completely normal for them to come home smelling like blood, no murders going on here, no sirey. Just my darling coming back home from a long day at work.

Now fast forward a bit and the author has managed to get their first book published, with loving support from the serial killer who helped them fine tune all the murder scenes, and it’s a big hit. Enough so that a detective with the local police department has noticed some disturbing similarities to several active cases, including details that were never released to the press. Obviously he brings this up to his superior and convinces him that there’s something to the theory, but it’s all circumstantial right now. He stakes out the author’s home and is super convinced that the author is the murderer, but they don’t seem to do anything??? Like they literally are at the house all day, that’s it. Most they do is leave for groceries.

So you get this dynamic of the serial killer mining the author for creative murder schemes, the author being lovingly encouraged by the serial killer, and finally the detective who is just so sure that the author is the killer and that if he sticks it out long enough he’ll FINALLY have proof.

Plot twist, The serial killer and detective use to go out so it gets sub what personal. 

“You need to stop seeing them. I think they are a serial killer.”

Serial killer breaths in. “Look-”

…perfect

I don’t like actual murder mysteries, but this is perfect

THE ORIGINAL POST HOW DID I GET SO LUCKY

Haikyuu!! We love you, dad! 2018.03

forever removing “agree to disagree” from my vocabulary now i end all my arguments with “live with what makes you comfortable but know that ultimately you’re not telling yourself the truth” and that’s on me being sick and tired <3 we’re burning bridges today

STRONG RELATE

friendly reminder that moments like sitting in the sun, waking up well-rested, discovering a song that makes you feel your heart and laughing with someone will find you again. clouds will dissipate and the sun will sink and rise and the moon will be full and bright outside of your window, and life will stop feeling this heavy. in the meantime, we’ll try. sometimes that’ll feel like enough and sometimes it won’t, but that’s okay. you’re here and that’s an achievement and that’s good and it matters.

tonight’s twitter discourse:

this thread (all their takes after the initial tweet are bad too)

https://twitter.com/benedict_rs/status/1349954211358924800

i don’t know if they wanted to become a more popular writer or podcaster but they’re getting ratioed by the minute. 

i’ve been finding new authors to follow by digging in the quote-retweets

The best part of this this thread is watching the OP desperately trying to ignore all the award-winning authors showing up to patiently explain why she’s wrong.

The best part after that is knowing that she runs a podcast telling people how to be better writers and has just alienated at least half her potential listeners and guests.

The part that hurts my head most is someone with a (small) handful of short-story (and one novella?) writing credits to her name claiming the right to run a podcast telling other people how to write. 

I did not have time to wade into this fight again, at least in part because anyone coming to Twitter with this “hot take” in 2021 has already decided not to read or pay attention to any of the people who have already said very smart things on the topic.

In case anyone isn’t completely convinced: This is not how learning works, and definitely not how learning to write works holy shit.

There are a number of specific skills that fanfiction cannot teach you. Introducing and establishing character tends to be one of those; with fanfiction you’re typically working with already established characters with established characterization, whereas in original fiction you have to do the establishing yourself.

There’s also worldbuilding, and if you want to write fantasy, worldbuilding is important.

And so on and so on.

But.

You do not become a worse writer by writing imperfect stories. Any variation on “writing can make you a worse writer” is, without exaggeration, the worst possible writing advice, because 90% of getting better at writing is literally the exact opposite, which is writing insane amounts of whatever shit you can scoop out of your brain until you’re getting carpal tunnel in your dreams.

Of course, this is not even getting into the things that fanfiction does a better job at teaching you than whatever is considered to be Real Writing:

also, this reminded me of this xkcd:

…which in turn reminded me of James Joyce’s love letters (repressed memory), which itself became a reminder of something I think is a very good final point: There are outliers, but most fanfiction authors can write a far better sex scene than almost any old straight white guy writing Literary fiction. Literally just clearing the bar of having both characters appear to be actually enjoying it and calling a dick a dick instead of a “bulbous salutation” is acceptable. I know the horribleness of fanfic sex scenes is renowned but. Y’all. Have you EVER read any “literary” adult novel I swear to god I have read so many sex scenes that are just the WORST they’re so uncomfortable

…anyway.

Also, while fanfiction won’t teach you everything you need to know to write original fiction, that's… not actually a flaw in the form?

I mean, by that logic, poets should be shit writers. Because what the fuck are they learning? Weird structures, often way too much description, not enough plot, sometimes no characters at all— not to mention the fact that most of it is just too damn short to ever be a novel.

Or screenwriters! This time not enough description, and they’re definitely not learning how to frame dialogue properly, or communicate where the characters are without literally printing it in capital letters at the top of the page.

Short story writers don’t learn how to manage a longer narrative spanning multiple chapters; novelists may never figure out how to cram a satisfying story into just a few hundred words— it’s almost as if these are all completely different forms with completely different purposes.

Fanfiction is fanfiction, it’s not Baby’s First Practice Writing For Before You Write Your Real Novel.

The only reason it sometimes comes across as more amateurish than ‘proper writing’ is because it’s one of the only forms where the average reader is regularly exposed to work from new writers. Very few people will sit down to write their first story ever and immediately churn out something that ends up getting traditionally published, while most people will happily post their first fanfic online.

(It’s also a form of writing that is exclusively done For Fun— when fanfic is legally done for money it morphs into ‘adaptation’ or ‘tribute’ and tends to traitorously ally itself with the likes of Proper Fiction— which in some cases probably does lead to lower standards. Personally, I don’t edit my fics nearly as much as I edit my original stuff. They would almost certainly be better if they did, but this is For Fun, and editing is Not Fun for me.)

This doesn’t mean that those first time writers (or longtime slackers, like me) will become worse writers because of it. Not only will a lot of the skills they learn from fanfic transfer over to original but, whatever happens, writing a lot of fanfiction will definitely make you better at fanfiction. And that’s not an unworthy goal.

Also, fanfiction CAN teach you worldbuilding and character building, depending on what kind of fanfiction you write.

If you write extensive AUs, you’re probably learning how to worldbuild, because you absolutely have to. You’re creating a new universe for the characters to play in, and you’re often altering the characters somewhat so they fit this new world you’ve made. If you write a lot of OC fic, you have to learn how to introduce characters and integrate them into the world. So saying fanfiction can’t teach you these things is disingenuous and ignores a whole lot of the fanfic that’s out there doing…..exactly that.

Which, again, doesn’t mean that fanfiction needs to be doing any of these things to be valid, but it can and does, because not all fic is canon compliant relationship studies focused only on canon characters!

This ^^^^

Also you probably don’t have to wonder completely into another universe to need to do or practice worldbuilding. Sometimes you may want to take a route that is different from canon and the information you need just isn’t there or you have trouble finding it. Eg. If canon took a primarily action packed route but you want to try talking and politics. You may have very little, if any, information to start building on or maybe the knowledge gets you part way but you have to figure it out yourself past a certain point.

Part of worldbuilding could also be deciding what to include or not include, getting inspiration from all over the place, and figuring out how all of these things work together and impact each other. Which is something fan creators do all the time. Sometimes because they go ‘I don’t like these bits but I like those bits of canon’ or ‘What happens if I just give things a little twist here, what ripple effects does that have?’ or ‘Ooh that looks cool I’m incorporating that!’ or ‘canon is doing my head in with all these contradictions, I need to pick one or create some sort of mix mash or something and then stick with it’

So in a way even if you aren’t building an entire world, you are still playing around with world building skills.

yes yes yes, all of this too!! fic that focuses on underexplored parts of canon or that incorporates bits and pieces from different parts of a canon or what have you is also worldbuilding!!! you’re creating something new, and even if there’s a skeleton there you’re still doing a LOT of work adding to it!! thank you @moon6shadow-bookmark-writing!!

You know what’s really quite funny about this? People pulled the receipts and turns out that said twitter person’s ‘original’ writing includes a Modern Retelling of a historic event with Urban Legendish/Fae aspects. Which, correct me if I’m wrong, technically makes it fanfiction of a specific story.

coming out to my brother was one of the nicest moments in my life

I will reblog this all the time because this is the greatest validation comic I’ve seen

🥺 this is soo cute!

Me reading this:

[ID for first post:

A multi-panel comic, with a pink monochrome coloration and a sketch-y style. The main characters are a young woman and man. The woman has long medium-tone straight hair, while the man has darker hair in a semi-short rounded style. The woman is on the left, the man is on the right.

Image one:

The woman is side-eyeing the man while he plays on a Nintendo DS.

Woman: “Bro.”

Man: “Hm?”

The woman now looks nervous, with visible sweat on her face.

Woman: “Um. What are your thoughts on.. gay people?”

The man has a question mark over his head and is still looking at his DS.

Man: “…. No opinion.”

Image two:

The woman is looking over at the man, surprised and a bit confused.

Woman: “No opinion? At all????”

Man: “Well I’ve never met anyone gay in real life… so. I don’t know.

A side view of the woman, with black scribbles encroaching on the sides of the panels. A dark speech bubble says “just say it”.

Woman: “…I”

Front view of her, looking off to the side and frowning while in internal struggle. Another black speech bubble says “SAY IT”.

Woman: “..I”

Her lap is shown. Her fists are clenched very tightly.

Woman: “I like girls”

Image three:

The man is shown again, with his lips pursed contemplatively. There is a speech bubble pointing off-page with sweat drops in it.

Man: “… Hm”

He closes his DS and looks over at the woman.

Man: “I change my mind then”

Image 4:

Both are shown again, looking at each other.

Man: “Gay people are the coolest.”

The woman tears up, with several blue tears running down her face. Three speech bubbles are around her, containing “AAAA”, “..!..”, and a circular scribble indicating inability to form words and being flustered.

The man is now drawn in a much less detailed style, and looks panicked. His mouth is open wide and there is a zigzag symbol by his head to indicate shock.

Man: “Why are you crying?!?”

/End ID]

[ID accompanying caption “me reading this:”:

A drawing of a very simplistic, rounded person. The person is kneeling on the ground, clutching a blank rectangular sheet. They have tears on their face and are looking at the sheet.

The person then has even bigger tears on their face and is looking up towards the sky. They look overcome with emotion, with creases between downturned eyebrows and a very wobbly open mouth. They are now holding the sheet against their chest with both arms.

/End ID]

What an adorable start to a murder

reading letters from 1818 is wild

“it’s that time of the year when I get colds for no apparent reason again” have some Clairitin hon

But also we’re not becoming allergic to everything nowadays like certain white moms fear. Allergies have always existed. They were just talked about differently

Like “oh clams always ~turn my stomach~”. Or “what a pity he was taken from us at age 5”

“Well we didn’t have all this fancy chronic illness stuff in the Olden Days, what did people do then??”

They died, Ashleigh. 

This is a picture tracking bullet holes on Allied planes that encountered Nazi anti-aircraft fire in WW2.

At first, the military wanted to reinforce those areas, because obviously that’s where the ground crews observed the most damage on returning planes. Until Hungarian-born Jewish mathematician Abraham Wald pointed out that this was the damage on the planes that made it home, and the Allies should armor the areas where there are no dots at all, because those are the places where the planes won’t survive when hit. This phenomenon is called survivorship bias, a logic error where you focus on things that survived when you should really be looking at things that didn’t.

We have higher rates of mental illness now? Maybe that’s because we’ve stopped killing people for being “possessed” or “witches.” Higher rate of allergies? Anaphylaxis kills, and does so really fast if you don’t know what’s happening. Higher claims of rape? Maybe victims are less afraid of coming forward. These problems were all happening before, but now we’ve reinforced the medical and social structures needed to help these people survive. And we still have a long way to go.

This is one of my favorite anecdotes to show how clever rewording of statistics can make them say the opposite of what they mean:

Every time a state makes riding a motorcycle without a helmet illegal, the number of ER patients seriously injured in motorcycle accidents skyrockets. Every single time.

When you phrase it just right, it makes it sound like it’s more dangerous to ride a motorcycle with a helmet than without one. Of course, the reality is that before those laws, those patients were going to the morgue, not the ER.

a concept: i’m in a warm bed with lots of blankets and i have no obligations to be anywhere. i’m calm and safe and happy and you are here with me