Being Frank

Kinder Than Man Althea Davis

And God please let the deer on the highway get some kind of heaven. Something with tall soft grass and sweet reunion. Let the moths in porch lights go someplace with a thousand suns, that taste like sugar and get swallowed whole. May the mice in oil and glue have forever dry, warm fur and full bellies. If I am killed for simply living, let death be kinder than man.

--

Also: + The Mower, Philip Larkin + Good People, W.S. Merwin + A Blessing, James Wright + In the Nursing Home, Jane Kenyon

Today in:

i wonder how close we all are to burning down Airline CEO houses. I already know how we're feeling about Health Insurance CEOs. Grocery corporations like General Mills? (they own like 30% of all the brands in your local grocery store) Bet they're going to be in our sights soon too.

A young woman is imprisoned in a castle by a monstrously formed prince. The servants of the castle hope for them to fall in love, and when the spell is broken they assume their prayers have been answered. They are all surprised, but nonetheless pleased, when it is revealed to them that the young woman and prince are the truest of friends, and nothing more.

They say the kingdom is ruled by an evil queen, a woman who is incapable of loving. She is unmarried, she has no consorts, and she wishes for no partner. She is the wretched queen, the heartless queen. She must hate her daughter, for her daughter is beautiful, and women are incapable of liking another woman who’s prettier than themselves. It must be for this reason that the princess was sent away, not for how she was attacked by a man in the woods. They say the kingdom is ruled by an evil queen because she cannot love. The queen loves her daughter, and that is enough for them both.

There lives a prince who is forced to choose a bride at the ball. He meets many beautiful women, but find none which he loves. He spies one in a gorgeous gown and wonder in her eyes, and he dances with her all night long. The kingdom is sure he has found his bride. When the clock strikes midnight he tells her how he will never love a woman, or a man, in the way he is expected to. The beautiful woman smiles and tells him she expects nothing from him. The next morning the prince and the beautiful woman are missing, having run off together to see the world. They leave their shoes behind in their haste.

exist. It doesn’t all have

to be romantic.

contradicting details especially work really well in writing if you put them far enough apart on insignificant enough details that you can make the reader genuinely question what they know. if you start a chapter with “the girl in the red coat” and end it six pages later with “the water ran off her emerald coat”, you can get the reader to have a “wait a second thats not right” moment that sets them up for an eldritch reveal later. eldritch creatures shouldn’t make sense to the characters perceiving them and one way to convey that is for them to not make sense to the reader either

there’s also a really good tumblr post about this sort of thing with not-a-deer monsters that i tried to find to link in and couldn’t, but it’s basically:

something that was a deer and now is not a deer anymore is very different than something that looks like a deer but definitely isn’t one and never has been. context will inform things about your creature. was-a-deer type abominations might longingly stare at raw fish swimming in a river and salivate because their body used to be able to eat those, isn’t-a-deer ones might look perfectly human before they unhinge their jaw and gulp down a raw fish whole

Character Ideas:

Character creation masterpost

Character Alignment Chart

More character alignment descriptions

Muslim Character questions

Characters with magical powers

Building a new character advice

How to create a character for an online or tabletop RPG (also a good guide on creating characters in general)

Royalty/nobility TV Tropes page

Basic character profile

OC masterpost

Random character generators - (1), (2), (3), (4)

D&D Character Building Tool

Character Design Ideas:

How clothing affects a character’s personality

Character Design Inspiration blog

Concept art, fan art, cool art to be inspired by

Character design references and inspiration

Sources for POC character design ideas and models

Create your own character model using HeroForge

For horned characters

Body and hair types guide

Random outfit generator

Naming Help:

Amazing site with an endless amount of naming resources

General advice on avoiding naming appropriation

Hispanic Surnames

Gothic Victorian names

Huge master list for character things in general

Masterlist of names of all types - including but not limited to ancient/old world names, Celtic, African, Northern European, Southern and Central American Native names, Japanese, Chinese, Mongolian, Polynesian, and more

Another name masterlist

How to pick a character name guide

Yet another names masterlist

Creating Background/backstory:

Character Sheet/Development Sheet

Another character development list

In-depth character personality, motivations and traits sheet

320 talents and passions for characters

On writing likes and dislikes that aren’t frivolous

Why you should write non-human characters non-conforming to the gender binary

Stereotypes, tropes, and archetypes

Random backstory generator

Assassin and thief character tropes to avoid

Character Interactions and putting your character into your world/story:

Comparing character height/height references

Characters who are scientists and writing about them doing science

Describing what different voices sound like

Describing skin tones

Writing friendship interactions that are platonic

Why having one character knock their friend unconscious to prevent them from doing something is a bad idea

Advice on shipping OCs with canon characters and what to avoid doing

Sweet Polly Oliver and Sweet on Polly Oliver situations (think of Disney’s Mulan for an example)

How to write multiple viewpoints/juggling a main cast of more than 4 to 6 characters

How to make readers care about your morally gray hero/anti-hero

On platonic OC and canon character relationships

How to avoid Godmodding in RPs

When it’s cheap to kill off a character

Writing dialogue

Things you shouldn’t do to canon characters

Avoiding purple prose in writing and RPs

Slang resources

Dialogue tips

Websites to chart your story/plot/character relationships

Pirates use this innate fear to their advantage to protect themselves from mermaids, hence the iconic beards and hat: