Todays doodles are Myras personal Horse Acting Guide! 🐴

DISCLAIMER: im not a horse expert, but i’ve been hobby riding for 13 years and read some books through the years, so it’s just my personal experience. I dont know everything and people have different ways!

how to draw arms ? ? 

holy fuck

holy fuck is right… but… does it work with legs???

yes !!

but how much extend

^^^^^^^^^^

I NEARLY CHOKED

ENJFDFNFATFVFDF

finally. i can be accurate

This is too fucking great to not reblog

I give it MASCLES

BIG MACHO

LMAOOOOOO

Okay but for anyone who legit wants to know how to calculate it correctly:

The elbow joint on average rests a couple inches higher than the navel, so if you measure how long the distance is from the middle of the shoulder to that point then you have the length of the upper and fore arms!

So if anyone’s wondering about legs too, the simplest rule of thumb is that the length from the top of the leg to the knee is equal to the distance between the top of the leg and the bottom of the pectorals:

And I wanna stress that when i say “top of the leg” i’m not talking about the crotch (please don’t flag me tumblr it’s an anatomical term) i’m talking about the point where the femur connects to the pelvis, which is higher up on the hips:

It’s easier to see what I’m talking about in this photo of a man squatting: 

So yeah if you use that measurement when using this technique you should get fairly realistically proportioned legs:

But remember! messing with proportions is an important and fun part of character design! Know the rules first so you can then break them however you please!

HOW THE HELL DID I FIND THIS POST OMG

Gay culture is wishing you could go all the way back and be yourself from the beginning

Yo, I really dont think straight people understand that a lot of us were robbed 15-20 years of our lives if you’re lucky and didn’t commit suicide or stay in the closet untik you were in your 30’s, 40’s or later.

Trans culture too. I mean what do you do when a quarter of a century has been stolen from you.

hot new tumblr discourse

put in the tags your opinions on wearing shoes in the house and why

You’re writing PTSD dreams wrong

But don’t worry, most writers are and I’m here to help because reading them is making me cRAzY.

I’m writing this because I’ve read three otherwise great romance novels back to back featuring characters dealing with PTSD (or PTSD symptoms) and each one of them made the same dream mistakes. I honestly can’t think of a fiction book I’ve read that didn’t make these mistakes, so I thought I’d compile a handy dandy list of mistakes and how to fix them. 

Lucky for you, I have PTSD and a ton of fellow veteran friends who deal with these symptoms. 

*This is based on my experience and things told to me by friends. This is not to say that the below doesn’t happen in real life, only that it’s not as common as you might think.

The issue with these dreams is twofold: on one side is the psychological accuracy of the dream and on the other side is how you’re using the dream within the narrative.

Oh an Black Sails spoilers-ish ahead. 

1) Stop writing the dream as a shot-by-shot accurate retelling of Traumatic Event.

Listen, not only do dreams seldom follow reality, but our own memories are tricky at best. I don’t remember getting beaten up because a) it was horrifying and we block stuff like that out and b) I was going in and out of consciousness. It would be pretty strange for me to dream something I don’t even fully remember. Our brains are simply not wired to do these vivid factually-accurate cinematic retellings.

My friend dreams things that did happen, but in his own words those dreams are always wrong in some noticeable or bizarre way. For instance, he’s getting chased through the streets of Iraq by a werewolf. 

2) Dreams are informed by reality, not direct reflections of it. 

It’s entirely likely my friend dreamt of a werewolf in Iraq because I got him binge watching Supernatural and the two ideas merged in his dreamstate. But see, that’s how dreams work. 

The trauma event exists as a constant in his subconscious, but he has all this other information right there in his conscious mind all day, every day. In dreams, there isn’t a clear delineation between that information.

My dreams are often dependent on whatever I’ve fallen asleep watching on television. The themes are consistent, but not the content.

In Black Sails, Captain Flint’s trauma dreams feature his dead partner and friend following him around his empty ship. You have an element of the trauma (the animated corpse of his friend) + his daily existence (his ship). The two things intersect to form these unsettling nightmares as expressions of his fears and grief. He never once relives the event itself in his dreams as shown on screen.

Speaking of…

3) Trauma dreams often revolve around feelings, not necessarily the events themselves.

The PTSD package generally includes heaps of shame, guilt, anger and fear. As someone who survived a beating when I should have had control of the situation, my dreams tend to revolve around fear that people will know I’m a fraud or being unable to act in a dangerous situation. 

Again, it’s entirely common for trauma victims to not remember large chunks (or the whole thing) of the trauma event. So why should their dreams be stunningly accurate? What we remember are feelings. Real strong feelings.

You cannot go wrong if you write your trauma dream around feelings, not a specific event.

4) If you present trauma dreams as expressions of themes, you can let go of the trauma dream as an exposition dump/way overused suspense trope.

You know you’ve read this: MC has dreams that are a shot-by-shot retelling of Traumatic Event that always cut off right before Traumatic Event, so that the Big Reveal must happen by a discovery later in the novel. 

If I were the MC in a book, the easy and common thing would be to use the “dream sequence” as an expository retelling of Traumatic Event as a way to give some backstory to why I might be surly, mistrustful, afraid to try something new, whatever, and to clumsily shoehorn in suspense where there doesn’t need to be.

The much more interesting thing might be if my dreams were inconsistent in content but consistent in theme. In one I’m on an alien planet (because I fell asleep watching the Science Channel again) and the ground opens up and I fall into a pit from which I can’t escape because I am helpless. In another a man is watching me while I sleep where I am again frozen and helpless. This would force the reader to think: what is the recurring issue in these dreams? Why is it important? What is this telling me about this character and what happened to her? 

It could be a personal preference, but I’d rather see the Traumatic Event either told in narrative flashbacks (not dreams) or verbally retold by the character in question. Let the dreams tell me something deeper about the character. It’s not that I was beat up, it’s that I feel like a failure because of it. One of these things is a shallow factual detail, the other tells you something about me as a person that I’m sharing with you, gentle reader, because talking about this stuff is healthy.

5) The Traumatic Event doesn’t have to be a big secret. 

In Black Sails, we know what happened to Captain Flint’s partner. It happened in real time in the show. That didn’t make his uber disturbing dreams less disturbing or mysterious. Fans still debate exactly what the symbolism was and what they were telling us about James Flint in those moments. We do know from the dreams that he was disturbed, obsessed, and also monumentally guilty and blaming himself for what happened. 

The mystery was perhaps more heightened by the fact that the dreams weren’t direct reflections of reality. We know who this person was, what she believed, and why she died. That Flint is imagining her screaming silently in his ear is horrifying and discordant with what we know to be factual. This adds emotional complexity to his character and the decisions he’s making while suffering these dreams. 

^^^this didn’t happen. It was a dream. A real unsettling dream.

Once you let go of the concept of the trauma dream as a literal retelling and exposition dump, you have the entire dreamscape to work in other narrative elements, like symbolism, metaphor, foreshadowing, etc. 

*1st gif source: @idontwikeit

Just a reminder that I am not going to be offended by you writing a character that has flaws, negative personality traits, prejudices and or general pitfalls in personality or mentality.

     This culture of politically correct / glossing over the bad parts of characters out of fear of offending someone is honestly so frustrating as a writer and a role player and a general lover of media and fiction and drama and tension and angst and all of those things that create ebb and flow and character / plot dynamics in writing and media as a whole. People are allowed to be flawed. Real people are flawed and no one is perfect and if you take away all the negative traits there’s nothing left for conflict or development for that character or the people that interact with them. 

     You are going to find characters that are prejudiced against religious groups or skin color or sexual orientation. You are going to find characters that commit robberies and murders and violent crimes - for any and all sorts of reasons including just because they want to. You are going to have characters that commit mass murder or that incite wars just for profit. You are going to have characters that use slurs and insults that are offensive. It’s gotten to the point where people are being attacked for their characters doing something that is offensive or rude or evil when ? What exactly is the point of writing or role playing if there isn’t some conflict interpersonal or external? 

     It’s getting to the point where tumblr gets offended by a bad guy being a bad guy or a character being innately flawed because hey guess what - we all are - and it’s just to the point of ridiculous. Every story in the history of fiction has a problem, has a source of conflict, had an adversary, a bad guy, a bad group of guys, an empire of bad guys doing bad things and making bad choices. And no they aren’t always going to be redeemed. And no they aren’t always going to be stopped or defeated. There would be no story arcs, no plot lines and no true development without someone to be the bad guy in your story. Remember that.

Don’t talk shit about people’s teeth. Seriously.

Speaking as a major dental hygiene enthusiast…

Great-looking teeth come from two things: luck and money (which is also a function of luck).

Regardless, don’t be an asshole. Not even very attractive teeth look good on those.

I’ve NEVER seen a post like this and I’m thrilled TBH because I’m very insecure about my teeth and there is literally one reason they are not nice and that is money so I’m literally down for teeth positivity

also: sometimes people have shit teeth because they were physically or mentally ill for an extended period of time, and brushing their teeth wasn’t high on the priority list of “shit i should take care of”.

Just, y'know. don’t be a dick.

Moved out of my previous living situation. Still not the best (I got AC now but back to being deadnamed and with my ableist dad pushing me about my foot and phobia of driving) I’d like to try and get out of here as soon as I can. Every little bit helps! So if you want to help me out by commissioning or reblogging this, it’d be amazing and I super appreciate it!

Moved out of my previous living situation. Still not the best (I got AC now but back to being deadnamed and with my ableist dad pushing me about my foot and phobia of driving) I’d like to try and get out of here as soon as I can. Every little bit helps! So if you want to help me out by commissioning or reblogging this, it’d be amazing and I super appreciate it!

Moved out of my previous living situation. Still not the best (I got AC now but back to being deadnamed and with my ableist dad pushing me about my foot and phobia of driving) I’d like to try and get out of here as soon as I can. Every little bit helps! So if you want to help me out by commissioning or reblogging this, it’d be amazing and I super appreciate it!

Moved out of my previous living situation. Still not the best (I got AC now but back to being deadnamed and with my ableist dad pushing me about my foot and phobia of driving) I’d like to try and get out of here as soon as I can. Every little bit helps! So if you want to help me out by commissioning or reblogging this, it’d be amazing and I super appreciate it!

Moved out of my previous living situation. Still not the best (I got AC now but back to being deadnamed and with my ableist dad pushing me about my foot and phobia of driving) I’d like to try and get out of here as soon as I can. Every little bit helps! So if you want to help me out by commissioning or reblogging this, it’d be amazing and I super appreciate it!

finding out people dont usually add numbers by first adding something to make a ten (for example 7+6= 7 plus 3 is 10 plus another 3 is 13) & that its actually an adhd thing is the WILDEST shit literally ive lived like 10 years (or however old i was when i learned to add and stuff) thinking thats how everyone does it. what the fuck

WHAT

What? How the fuck do other people count? 

*does the ADHD dance of weird counting*

I….Ive always done it this way