be the happiness you so desperately need

⊹ What do they want vs what do they need. these should not be the same thing. what they want is the surface goal ( the job, the person, the revenge, the answer.) What they need is the thing underneath that they can't name yet. The story is what happens in the gap between those two things. if they're identical your character has nowhere to go.

⊹ What are they wrong about. Not morally wrong necessarily. just. what belief do they hold that the story is going to test. What assumption do they make about themselves or the world that turns out to be incomplete? A character without a wrong belief is already finished. They have no arc, give them something to learn even if learning it hurts them.

⊹ How do they talk when they're nervous. Do they go quiet or do they talk too much? do they deflect with jokes? do they get weirdly formal? do they ask questions instead of answering them? the way a person behaves under pressure is who they actually are. And it should be different from how they behave when they're comfortable.

⊹ What do they find funny. this one sounds small and it is not small at all. Humour is worldview. What makes someone laugh tells you what they value, what they're afraid of, how they handle pain. A character with no sense of humour is just flat. even the gravest person finds something absurd. find the thing.

⊹ What are they ashamed of? not their tragic backstory. their actual shame. The small ugly thing they would never say out loud. The time they were a coward. The feeling they pretend not to have. The desire they think disqualifies them from being a good person. Shame is where the most interesting character work lives and most writers skip straight over it :(

image in savvysergeant’s reblog: screencap of tags from two people. Feeblekazoo’s tags read: the degree to which the Acropolis museum is designed to shame the British Museum is spectactular. butherlipsarenotmoving’s tags read: the acropolis museum is the most passive aggressive museum i’ve ever been to and i love it

/end id]

For those of you who don’t know museum drama, one of the largest and most famous parts of the British Museum’s collection is the so-called Elgin Marbles, which were looted from the Acropolis by Lord Elgin in the 18th Century. (The Acropolis is the hill in Athens, Greece which has some of the most amazing Greek ruins anywhere, the most famous of which is the Parthenon.) Elgin had (or at least claims to have had) permission from the Ottoman Empire to take stuff home with him, but a) this is one empire asking another empire if they can loot stuff from the other empire’s subjugated people, so, not exactly any moral high ground there Elgin, and b) he took a lot more stuff than the Ottomans said he could have.

Greece has been asking for those statues and sculptures to be returned since they won independence in 1832. That’s right, 1832, 190 years ago. The British Museum has had a number of excuses over the years, one of the biggies of the late 20th Century being “we couldn’t possibly give them back because Athens doesn’t have a nice enough museum to display them” and ignoring Greece’s response of “we will BUILD a museum just for them if you will just give us our damn stuff back!“

Finally, Greece said “fuck you” and built a museum at the bottom of the Acropolis called the Acropolis museum. It is huge, it is gorgeous, the collection of objects is amazing and the educational bits (“this is what it is and why it matters”) are really well done. It’s probably one of the best archaeological museums in the world; it definitely is the best collection of ancient Greek artifacts in the world, both for the size of the collection and the way it’s displayed.

Oh. And it is amazingly passive-aggressive. Every single piece of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum has an empty spot on display waiting for the piece to be returned to Greece. For example, there are a lot of pieces where Elgin took, say, the nicest (or easiest to remove) one of a set. The column/statue in the OP’s image is one of these. Friezes from the roof of the Parthenon are another example. The Acropolis Museum displays each one of these sets with space for the stolen pieces, along with a picture of what the stolen piece looks like and where it is. It is a giant middle finger at the British Museum, disguised as helpful information.

I surrender.

percy: it feels like all i managed to do is… not die

“Your son.” “Your dad.”

This boy knows love. Knows the warmth of his mother’s gaze. Knows how to wrap his arms around friends, tells them they matter, they’re important, they’ll be okay. Knows how to see the best in people, see the good. He’ll hold fast and brave the storm.

He knows how messed up all the games are. All of the god’s stupid rules, and squabbles, and schemes, and pride. That none of it matters

A cold wind was blowing. ... Mal tried to rub some warmth into my arms.

Siege and Storm- Chapter 7

He was all nice and attentive throughout the trilogy. He's not simply horrible all the time. There are moments even I'd call sweet and thoughtful.

... but it never stoped him from shaming Alina as soon as she wants more, it didn't really make him stop her from taking on the blame for his actions, her health is far from his priorities, I doubt his anger disappeared with Alina's powers- there will be things in ordinary life to get pissed off about-, his trust in her's not the strongest- especially with other men present... all those nasty traits already co-exist with the nice moments ON THE PAGE.

That is the real horror of the relationship. That is why I can see him even hitting her one day, when he grows tired of the mousy puppet she became for him. He'll surely apologize later, because he wouldn't really want to do it, would he?!

So, I’ve received more than one ask about giving some Jily fic recommendations… but tumblr is determined to drive me mad and if it didn’t crush after I’d spent hours compiling a list, making me lose everything, it refused to process my post as an answer to an inbox message *sigh*. But I’ve been meaning to make a list of my recommendations for a while so I’m posting it separately here! 

Buckle up cause this is going to be a LONG post.

The first half consists of sort of canonverse stories (in that they take place in the magical world of the hp books) but not necessarily canon compliant. The second half consists of varying non magical AUs.

There are some stories that I’ve revisited time and time again over the years as well as others that I haven’t read since I was a teenager but remember liking at the time. 

At the end of the post I’ve also included some fics and new authors that are on my TBR- I’ve hit a big slump over the pandemic, but I’m still keeping an eye out and there are some new jily writers that have began writing over the past 2-3 years whose work looks amazing and I can’t wait to check out!

Enjoy!