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So... I found this and now it keeps coming to mind. You hear about "life-changing writing advice" all the time and usually its really not—but honestly this is it man.
I love the lawyer metaphor, because whenever I see “John knew that...” in prose writing I immediately think “how? How does he know it?” Interrogate your witnesses. Cross-examine them. Make them explain their reasoning. It pays dividends.
First, let me preface this with something very important: you can treat all of this advice as SECOND-DRAFT ADVICE. It is so much easier to rewrite this kind of stuff once you have words on the page. Telling yourself the first draft is totally appropriate and acceptable.
What we’re talking about here are FILTER WORDS (and to some degree verbs of being). Yes, “thought” words are included. But so are “heard, saw, looked, tasted, smelled” etc.—most words having to do with the senses.
This isn’t black and white advice; sometimes you’ll use these words and that’s okay. They’re not WRONG. They’re just weaker. And they’re weaker because they create distance between the reader and the experience of the character.*
If you want your reader to feel like they’re experiencing the story right alongside the character, you want to cut down on filter words.
*This is particularly important with first person and close third POVs. The reader always knows whose eyes they’re seeing through and thoughts they’re privy to. So you don’t need to tell them “I saw X.” Or “I heard X.” Or “I thought Y.” You can just jump into the action/observation as it’s happening.
This is also where you want to pay attention to verbs of being.
“It was rainy.” Versus: “The rain pounded against the roof.” Or “The rain howled like an injured animal.” Or “The rain tapped against the window like an anxious lover.” All of these are inviting the reader deeper into the experience of the story by using stronger verbs and similes. And, at the same time, they stir feelings (instead of TELLING feelings). And feelings keep your reader engaged. Engaged readers keep turning pages; engaged readers become FANS.
The most valuable advice that Author Ex gave me through the years that we wrote together was this: the problem with all these filter words is that they create distance in the POV.
That means that when you read a line like
John saw that the curtains were open.
It immediately takes you OUT of the character's perspective and instead tells you what they experience as a secondhand observation.
You don't have to get fancy or purple with how you rephrase things like this. Not everything needs a ton of breathing room.
You wanna know what's perfectly impactful while keeping a tight POV?
This was one of my all time most powerful writing lessons! This mindset shift makes you a stronger writer immediately in a way that just keeps getting easier and better for you.
The take I always have on advice like this is that "John saw that the curtains were open." and "The curtains were open." are sentences that are telling you two different pieces of information.
Some of this, yes, is about POV distance--but some of it is also about the information being conveyed by the sentence. If you are using a sentence like "John saw that the windows were open" it should be because the information you are seeking to convey is that John saw it.
Maybe this matters because the next time John looks back they are closed, and so he's doubting what he saw. Maybe it matters because he later has to recount information about the room he was in, and it's notable that he specifically saw that the windows were open. The fact and method of his observation is part of the point of the sentence, rather than simply the observation itself.
When we are using sense verbs, it should be because part of the point is the sense. Same with "thought", "felt", etc.: "Mary thought that Susan looked a little thin" is telling us a different piece of information than "Susan looked a little thin."
Contrarily, at least in my opinion, simple telling phrasing like "It was rainy" can sometimes bring us more into a character's head than something showing like "The rain howled like an injured animal." I have read books when a relatively plain-spoken/plain-thinking character suddenly starts having elaborate descriptions of things like scenery or weather, and it is abundantly clear that the author wanted to spruce up their writing and avoid "telling." The problem is that it drags me as the reader out of the character's head and shows me where all of the strings are. I'm suddenly thinking about how the author is worried about being yelled at for "telling" instead of just reading the story.
Your writing, down to the sentence structure and word choice level, should be about what you are trying to accomplish. Is the point to tell us that the window was open, or is it to tell us that John saw that the window was open?
Yeah I said something similar yesterday but we can NOT let what happened to Renee Good cloud what happened to everyone else at the hands of these SS Demons!!!
Because we can’t disregard one person if we’re for human rights!
My 43-year-old son, Keith, was tragically killed on New Year's Eve in Northri… Keith Porter needs your support for Support for Keith’s Daugh
The above screenshot reads:
A Black man was killed by ICE (off duty) in Los Angeles on New Year's Eve. And like Renee Good, he was an American citizen. But most people have not heard about Keith Porter.
I need y'all to realize this. Black people experience this lack of visibility all the time when it comes to being victims.
(Christopher Webb @cwebbonline.com)
The second screenshot above reads:
Renee Nicole Good wasn't the first killed by ICE...
In 2025, ICE murdered:
Silverio Villegas Gonzalez
Carlos Roberto Montoya Valdez
Genry Ruiz Guillén
Serawit Gezahagn Dejane
Maksym Chernyak
Juan Alexis Tineo-Martinez
Brayan Garzón-Rayo
Nhon Ngoc Nguyen
Marie Ange Blaise
Abelardo Avellaneda Delgado
Jesus Molina-Veya
Johnny Noviello
Isidro Pérez
Tien Xuan Phan
Chaofeng Ge
Lorenzo Antonio Batrez Vargas
Oscar Rascon Duarte
Norlan Guzman-Fuentes
Miguel Ángel García Medina
Johnny Noviello
Santos Banegas Reyes
Ismael Ayala-Uribe
Norlan Guzman-Fuentes
Miguel Ángel García Medina
Huabing Xie
Leo Cruz-Silva
Hasan Ali Moh’D Saleh
Josué Castro Rivera
Gabriel Garcia Aviles
Kai Yin Wong
Francisco Gaspar-Andrés
Pete Sumalo Montejo
Shiraz Fatehali Sachwani
Jean Wilson Brutus
Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir
Delvin Francisco Rodriguez
Nenko Stanev Gantchev
In 2026, ICE has murdered 2 people:
Keith Porter [New years eve 2025]
Renee Nicole Good
-From the ICE_Raids Community on Reddit
And to all of our lovely WWC Followers, particularly those in the United States:
Take care. Take care of each other, your community, yourselves.
Travel in groups and make sure your loved ones know where you are. And absolutely know your rights.
And even in troubled times, try to find a spark of hope, creativity and comfort and hold onto it. For even joy is resistance.
Resources
Immigrant Defense Project
City of Mpls website: Know Your Rights (Minnesota)
For those who can support:
I've included the verified GoFundMe for Keith Porter's daughters.
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I’ve seen some discussion about how Shelby, and other “good” vampires who the town eventually rallies against is proof that the town wouldn’t accept any of the vampires. And while their are individuals who I could see never really accepting it the town eventually becoming hostile towards Shelby is not because she’s a vampire, it’s because she continues to stay friends with people who are enacting violence on the townsfolk, even then they still want her to come back to the town they keep their hand outstretched for episodes but ultimately Shelby throws her lot in with the castle vampires.
Shelby isn’t a bad/evil character for this, she like all the characters in the vsmp is flawed and through a combination of manipulation and delusion decides that the vampires are her family, and that the towns anger towards vampires like Owen, and pyro (sometimes Scott he’s charmed even townsfolk though) is wrong, that the vampires didn’t do anything. But she knows they did, knows they chased her and pyro down and forcefully turned them, knows that Cleo and Drift also didn’t want to be turned. But it’s okay, being a vampire is fun, the others will learn to forgive those who attacked them, that’s what she did after all.
The town and specifically legs is open to helping the vampires he just wants everyone to be honest so he can actually help. Cleo is readily accepted by the townsfolk even if some still get scared from time to time.
Now with all of this said the town is still very flawed, the way they treat Apo, Avid, and Pyro is wrong. Apo is outed and victim blamed for her turning, Avid is treated as a burden, and insane despite his greatest crime being his fear induced by his trauma and townsfolk just finding him annoying. Yes he accuses Scott he didn’t commit but he fully believed his friend was missing, and does apologize if a bit reluctantly. Pyro is initially ignored, everyone talks about saving Shelby and how she’s good but forgets about Pyro in a way I imagine made them feel isolated.
The town missteps frequently but each of the townsfolk/town aligned charcters, are far more justified to me.
Pearl is a monster hunter who only kills those who hurt others, she wants to protect her friends and tells the vampires that she believes that their actions define them.
Doc is a war veteran trying to atone for his past, he knows what he did was horrific and wants to dedicate the rest of his life to atonement. He wants to cure the vampires who want it but makes it clear with Owen he will not force onto anyone.
Abolish is a competent vampire hunter working to maintain balance and get as many people out alive as he can. He doesn’t hate vampires and is more than willing to work with them because he knows no matter what you are you’re defined by your actions.
Martyn pretends to be an arrogant rich kid, who makes frequent missteps but who is ultimately scared, he works to fix his relationship with Apo and his
Ren is a stubborn man who is afraid and disgusted by the vampires, but who still works alongside Apo, and Cleo. And in the end is willing to compromise so that as many people as possible can leave, unfortunately all does not go as planned and he lashes out.
Cleo who I would regard more with the town because of her attachment to Pearl, believes in a code and though I think it’s wrong that she pushes that code on others and justifies horrific actions in the name of it she ultimately works to get as many people out as possible, and learns to grow past the traumatic life she was forced into.
All this to say I was team townsfolk from beginning to end though some of my favorite characters (Drift, and Avid) did end up in the castle alliance, and I find Pyro and Owen to be deeply interesting characters, but my enjoyment of their characters was never enough for me to agree with the idea of killing the townsfolk. More relevant Apo was aligned with the two predominantly and she is my favorite of the Vsmp cast.
V!Apokuna is one of the characters who plays most directly into the idea of vampirism as assault and whose narrative post turning focuses heavily on the trauma that assault causes and the difficulties it causes in her life.
Apo for the first few days is left to wander unsure of how to handle this sudden hunger, trying to figure out exactly what she is in the aftermath of it all, pretending that she’s still the same. She deals with feelings of isolation, feelings amplified by the fact she doesn’t know if there’s anyway to tell her friends what happened without being outcast.
Eventually though she does tell someone but due to a combination of social stigma, and poor wording she’s left trapped in a room till Martyn returns with more people. This failed confession strains her relationship with the others, but she still wants to help them and so she proposes that she plays as a double agent to get the town more information.
And so she goes to the vampires, and tries to work on gathering information, unfortunately Apo’s charisma is low and she cannot hide her disdain for Scott, or the fact that above all she wants to return to Cherri. This motivation leads her to learning from Owen that she cannot return to Cherri while the humans are alive. At this point the cure is theoretical and while she prefers the townsfolk more than anything she needs to get back to Cherri, she doesn’t know if she can still be accepted as she is but it doesn’t matter as long as she can return to the person who matters to her more than anything.
And so she decided to bring a peace offering to Pyro, she does what vampires are supposed to do, what was done to her. She leads truffle to the castle and offers her as food, and Pyro is horrified. Truffle is kind and innocent, what purpose would killing them serve.
“Truffle wants this, truffle wants to die”
Over and over throughout the series Apo has been told that she asked to be turned, that she deserved it, that it was her fault. Her killing truffle is a renenactment of her turning, and Pyro the other person involved with truffle doesn’t get it. They don’t make the connection and instead view it as an act of cruelty and so he begins plotting with Owen to kill her.
Ultimately Apo is not killed and makes it to the final episode, aligning her self firmly (though temporarily) with the humans, she is interested in a cure but ultimately her first priority is escaping.
Throughout the final episode she tries to tell people about her turning but is repeatedly misunderstood or undermined. Cleo was one of my favorite characters in V!smp up till the later half when she began behaving in a way that was cruel. I still enjoy her and thinks they played a wonderfully complex character, but their treatment of specifically Apo made me a bit less fond overall mostly because their words led them to feel further isolated. M/Sausage though is a much larger perpetrator of this issue , after begging to be turned he is (granted by accident) and then turns on Apo putting her into danger. M then lives out the fantasy of being a powerful vampire before deciding to flip flop on both sides while pushing the idea that Apo will need to die.
Fortunately in this instance Pearl, Ren, and Martyn have her back pointing out the ludicrousness of trying for days to get turned and then expecting the person who turned him to sacrifice their life because he was all done living out his vampire fantasies.
Apo fights tooth and nail throughout the final episode and survives to the final meeting where Scott and Legs propose the plan.
It’s good, sure she’ll have to keep living with this trauma for the rest of her life, but most the townsfolk will survive, the people she just managed to rekindle a relationship with will make it out and she’ll go home to Cherri.
And then Martyn dies, because of her blood. Because she saved him, and then Ren is cut down. Sausage blames her for both of their deaths. He doesn’t blame the vampires who threw Martyn from the bridge in the first place, he blames Apo.
But it’s over and she gets to go home. She gets to see Cherri again even if it’s as a vampire, even though she’ll have to live with this for the rest of her life, she’ll have the one she loves most beside her.
She has to live remembering everyone she lost, either to death or deception. She’ll live knowing that Scott the person who turned her and turned people against her is out there, and she has to hope he was being honest about changing, or that Abolish will cut him down if he doesn’t.
Don’t know how to conclude this, I’m a big fan of V!Apo’s charcter.
VSMP, thoughts and analysis, big head up here I am talking about the characters and I think all the CCs are awesome and managed to portray wonderfully complex characters!
Overall I think the ending was pretty good with their being only one thing that sours it for me.
Scott Goldsmith
Scott was the main POV I started with and I watched all his episodes, I think his character learning to care and feel was good but he didn’t get a redemption, which makes his, Drift, and Shelby’s ending feel uneasy. The reason for this being that V!Scott is an abusive Charcter who did not apologize or make reparations to many of his victims.
Apo, Pyro, Shelby, Cleo, and Drift were all violently attacked and he then proceeded to gaslight them and those around them to sell the idea that it was good that they were turned, or that they asked for it. Throughout the series he undermined Apo, and Pyro’s support network pushing Pyro into violence and Apo into isolation. The way he speaks about Apos turning shows a lack of remorse and every time she expresses anger about what he did he claims she made a deal, or that she attacked him as if he didn’t coerce her by threatening her life as well as the townsfolk’s.
All of the charcters in VSMP are flawed and most are morally grey but Scott is hardly morally grey, he’s starts out as an aristocrat who was sealed away for enslaving a town to serve him, and when he wakes up he decides that instead of trying to sustain himself in animal blood to start seeking out victims, his co-vampire Owen is also guilty of this but at least seems to act with the idea that vampirism is a good thing, a gift, though that doesn’t absolve him of cruelty but I’ll discuss Owen later.
V!Scott believes he is entitled to other people and their bodies.
And at the end of the story he maintains a relationship with two of his victims while getting leave behind the others who will have to live (in pyros case die) with the trauma he caused.
I’ve seen people interpret vampirism as queerness and I think that’s a cool lense, it’s not a direct analogy and reading it as such hurts certain aspects of the story. vampirism is analogous to different things in different POV’s. That said no matter how it’s ultimately viewed by the charcters as a gift or a curse it’s undeniable that the charcters feel that forcefully turning people is wrong.
“You know what you don’t get? You got to choose being changed. We have to just accept it.”-Shelby ep 5
Shelby ultimately enjoys being a vampire but she’s still able to understand that what happened to her and others is wrong.
So in summary for Scott, I don’t think he redeemed himself and the fact he’s entrenched himself in the lives of two of his victims feels icky to me. Though I am happy to see he isn’t just free to fuck around and is being observed by Abolish.
I’m going to make another post for Apo because she was my favorite character by far. I’ll also prolly talk about Owen and Avid. If yall want my thoughts on any other characters or would like me to elaborate on anything lemme know.
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As a queer religous kid I enjoyed writing fantasy because it let me create a world where gods weren’t against my existence.
Before realizing I was gay there were numerous instances of me writing queer characters in fantasy, additionally I wrote a lot of characters who are in retrospect autistic, because they were a reflection of my experiences.
I think being able to create worlds that were much kinder is one of the reasons I found writing comforting, even with my darker stories I give them somewhat happy endings because I personally find comfort in writing characters who heal and move forward because that’s something I wish for myself and others to be able to do.
This is the Charcter who I’ve gotten the most attacks for throughout Artfight, which makes sense since I find them fun to draw so I imagine others do too!
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From left to right we’ve got Cass my Charcter, Miu Yanagi created by Akaneaoixme who u can find on Instagram at akaneowie, and then finnaly Fei by LewdTea who is on DeviantART and Instagram as LewdTea.
snowghoul
ellievsbear
pixelskylines
jacobvanloon
izzy806
origamiaround
annaxmalina
dededos
baratheonpilled
