aw, coffee, no

Creative Writing Tarot Spread

Writers block bogging you down? Use this 7-card spread to help jumpstart your creativity! This prompt can help you generate a very basic storyline.

First, pull a character card! Decide for yourself what this means: will your character carry the traits of the positive meanings of this card? Will your character’s conflicts be brought about by the card’s negative meanings? Will your character look like the figure depicted on the card? Will they wield the item depicted on the card? (Note: if your story has multiple main characters, you may wish to pull a card for each)

Next, pull the plot cards! Pull a card for the beginning of your story, a card for the middle, and a card for the end. Again, let yourself decide what this means. Do these cards describe your character’s emotional state(s) as the story progresses? Do these cards describe internal or external conflicts? Do these cards represent other characters your MC will meet along the way?

Finally, pull your meat cards! These cards are the “meat” of your story. Pull one card for the main or most important setting of your story, one card for the main conflict, and one card for the resolution of that conflict.

Have fun with it! Remember that these cards are just tools, and this spread is simply to kickstart your brain. If you get halfway through the spread and come up with something on your own, or if you start writing and realize your plot is deviating from what the cards gave you, don’t stress about it! You write for yourself, not for the cards. Thank them for their help and continue on with your own imagination.

I think for me this spread might work better as a way of reframing an existing narrative -- it feels like it's most useful when you've already got a story and are trying to get a new view of it, or you have part of a story but need help fleshing it out. When I was using it to lay out completely new stories, I found I usually needed slightly more detail about the setting, or about the conflict, so I designed an auxiliary reading that springboards off this one.

So I did a reading titled The Detective's Novice, with my Found Fortune deck.

It begins with the character, which was The Judge (justice, examination). The plot was The Student (academia, a novice), The Book (study, esoterica, autodidacts), and The Spy (surveillance, codes, subterfuge). Setting was Honor (oathkeeping, an older man), Conflict was Fate (predestination, an ill-omened plan), and Resolution was The Elder (a mentor, formal education).

Most of that was pretty straightforward; the plot summary I wrote was "A detective is murdered and his apprentice (novice) must solve the crime, which he thinks was engineered by a secret society. He eventually solves the crime and it turns out that improbably, the secret society does exist, but didn't engineer the murder; he uncovers the secret society and is inducted into it specifically so that he can root out the corruption that it turns out the murdered detective was a part of."

That's fun, but didn't tell me much about the setting, and I didn't feel like I had any very imaginative ideas for that. So I took the Honor card from the Setting position, moved it to the center, and laid out four more cards.

For anyone who hasn't seen them before, Hidden Search Operators are handy tricks you can use when you're either searching or filtering AO3.

summary: string is a generic way of explaining that you can search AO3 for a specific word that appears in a summary. You can do this from the search bar in the header, from the Any Field box at the top of the Advanced Search form, or from the Search Within Results box at the bottom of the filter menu.

Examples:

summary: Bruce

summary: "Bruce Banner"

summary: Bruce OR summary: Banner OR summary: Hulk

You need to put quotation marks around your search term if it is more than one word. The quotes make sure that the site searches for those two words together.

The other two operators listed work best in the Search Within Results box.

expected_number_of_chapters: 1 will return results where every fic has only 1 chapter currently posted.

You can use -expected_number_of_chapters: 1 if you want results where every fic has more than 1 chapter currently posted.

Any time you want help with how to use AO3, look for the question mark bubbles. Clicking or tapping on those bubbles will open up a pop up window with information on that specific part of AO3. For example, here's the information for Include filters.

2. When you log into AO3 for the first time, you'll have a banner on your dashboard that gives you a ton of links and information that's useful for new users. A lot of people will dismiss this banner without ever reading it, but you can get it back at any time.

Go to your Preferences, scroll down to Misc. and check the box next to Turn the new user help banner back on. Update your preferences, and the banner will return.

3. When you first tap or click into the search in the header bar, a little popup tip appears below the text box. This is showing you an example of a search that you can do.

4. If you've never seen the filters before, click or tap on any tag that you're interested in. On a wide screen like a laptop, the filters will appear on the right hand side of the screen. On a narrow screen like a phone, you can tap on the Filters button for the menu to appear.

5. The FAQ has a series of questions related to Searching and Browsing on the Archive. You can find the FAQ in the dropdown under the word About in the header.

6. You can also just click on stuff and see what happens. For example, if you're wondering what the four icons at the top corner of each fic blurb mean, you can just click on them and get a popup with the key. Same thing if you're wondering about the icons at the top right of a bookmark.

7. I almost forgot ☝️If you want to see fics based on the primary pairing but you're okay with additional ships being in the fic (so otp:true won't work for you) - there a script for that! AO3 Only Show Primary Pairing.

More Dispatch anti-ICE art!!!

I recieved a lot of love on the last one, thank you guys so much!! These are really fun to make, I entered a flow state making this one while listening to Primer 55.

Here's a sketch based on a suggestion by videogamesarecool! I might actually finish it cause it turned out really good. :)

Looping character not flinching at danger anymore because they’ve come to expect it.

Similarly: flinching at EVERYTHING or completely random triggers once they’re out of a loop, because a certain innocuous thing always meant disaster.

“You said that last time.”

“You… did not say that last time.”

Forgetting what day it’s supposed to be

Openly breaking down in front of people because it’s not like they’ll remember it tomorrow (bonus points if this is the day the loop breaks and they do, in fact, remember it tomorrow)

Having a cold or migraine on the day they wake up into the timeloop and just being stuck with it indefinitely

Letting themself get hurt because no permanent consequences or scarring, developing a freakish pain tolerance as a result

Chasing dangerous or harmful behaviours just for the thrill of something new

Going to bed with bruises or broken bones, knowing tomorrow there’ll be no evidence of what they’ve endured

Over time, their loved ones becoming scripted characters whom they feel like they’ll never really see again

Loops where they spend the entire duration in bed without tangible consequence

Post-loop they go days without sleeping or eating because they’ve forgotten they need to do things to stay alive

Never telling anyone about the loops after they’re over because who would believe them?

They let it slip one day and maybe somebody doesn’t believe them.