Eleanor Ashes

love characters who are like "this is how the world works. this is how it has to be (because if i'm wrong i have to face what i've done // if i'm wrong i have to face whats been done to me) "

This trait is much more endearing in fiction than in my mother.

every time i write i think about that maya angelou quote where she talks about her editor asking her why she uses semicolons instead of colons and says she has often responded by threatening to never speak to him again

This is legit good writing advice, especially the first bullet point! In playwriting class we did a bit where every bit of dialogue had to be an accusatory question and it was glorious.

sad reality of the fanfic-to-published work economy is that the weirdest people are willing to do it. that's why there's now hundreds of shitty no plot cishet hate-to-love enemies-to-lovers books that are ex reylo fanfic. and it's not even good. that's because the people who wrote book-quality steve/bucky and kirk/spock fic are too normal to think to themselves "i should get this porn published". they're too busy working in local government offices

fairytales which tell you to be both kind and clever fairytales that say to be kind is to be clever and to be clever is to be kind fairytales that say the cleverest thing you can ever do is choose kindness and that cruelty or thoughtlessness are always foolish but not kindness never kindness

you bring oil for the gate and food for the dog and clean out the oven and bake bread in it and the oven will hide you and the dog will not betray you and the gate will stay open for you and close on your pursuers, to be clever is just to know that if you are good in a world made of rules, goodness will be returned to you.

on the one hand it's pretty cool when athena disguises odysseus as an old man, but what if that was a lie to spare him from the pain of knowing for certain that no one could recognize him anyway?

#yeah. yeah#the very first time that my professor mentioned that like#not only was odysseus gone from ithaca for 20 years#but also by the time he gets back EVERYONE he took with him. EVERYONE who made the journey with him. is dead#and given the fact that they dont have PAPERS or ID or anything back then this means that in a very very very real way he has#no way of confirming his identity. meaning:#/without the community of other people. people who have known you. How Could You Possibly Say Who You Are/#anyway she said that back then and it fucking rattled my brain right outside of my fucking skull dudes via @faunina

A trope that gets to me: 'guard dog' character and their partner who are both fully aware of it and honestly don't care/kind of like it. Someone says "call your guard dog off" and their partner does call them off. That person, their 'guard dog', is someone who is unreservedly, irrefutably loyal to them. Someone undoubtedly dangerous who is willing to kill, to maim, to obey, simply because of their love for one another. There's no manipulation involved— it is loyalty, brutal, dogged loyalty. And it goes both ways.

actually the best ship dynamic is i would kill for you. i would kill anyone who layed a hand on you. please let me kill for you. please let me show my devotion by dirtying my hands, it's the only way i know how. let me destroy anything that hurts you. i've hurt you too. i'm destroying myself.

i know we've all been warned that art is the biggest snitch but no one tells you that reading your own writing will make you realize things about yourself that you wouldn't confess to while being waterboarded

i know we've all been warned that art is the biggest snitch but no one tells you that reading your own writing will make you realize things about yourself that you wouldn't confess to while being waterboarded

you can literally never go wrong with having diners in your story regardless of its genre. like they're false beacons of hope, they're safe havens for the lost and unwanted, they exist as a bridge between worlds, they're haunted by the memories of all the people who have been there before, they're both cozy and eerie, and they're literally always there. every town has a diner. every town knows what those flickering red lights mean. and stories about diners never fail to fuck severely.

comedies that turn into tragedies when the fucked up stuff played for jokes suddenly gets treated with the severity and realness that it would get in real life are genuinely my weakness and hit so much harder than tragedies that start off with the sad stuff.