Droid, please!

continuing--

⊹ How do they treat people who can't do anything for them? Waitstaff? strangers? people they'll never see again? this is the oldest trick in the book for a reason. It works. How someone behaves toward people with no social utility tells you everything about their actual values versus the values they perform for an audience.

⊹ What's their relationship with their own body? Are they comfortable in it or is it something they carry around like a problem? do they take up space or make themselves small? are they aware of how they look or completely indifferent? Physicality is psychology and most writers forget the body entirely until someone needs to throw a punch.

⊹ What do they lie about and why. Not dramatic plot lies necessarily. the small everyday ones. the things they exaggerate or omit or reframe. Because people don't lie randomly, they lie to protect something. Find what your character is protecting and you'll find what they're afraid of. That fear is the ENGINE!!

⊹ Who did they used to be? not their whole backstory. just: who were they before the thing that changed them. because that person is still in there somewhere, showing up in small ways, wanting things the current version of them would never admit to. The ghost of a former self is one of the most interesting things you can write into a character without ever stating it directly.

⊹ What would make them walk away?? from the goal. from the relationship. from the person they're trying to be. everyone has a breaking point and it should be specific to them, and please not a generic "too much" but the exact thing, the particular betrayal or loss or realisation that would finally be enough. know this even if the story never reaches it.

Just canceled my account (not that I used it that much). But I won’t permit this. Via @unaminh.bsky.social:

IMPORTANT: For any artists/writers/etc etc, using Linktree to point people to their work, from 5 July, they'll be feeding all imagery you use on your landing page into DALL-E by OpenAI.

this is NOT because of blocking screenshots, it's because of HOW streaming sites use your computer's hardware to optimise performance, which means the thing rendering the video and the thing capturing your screen aren't the SAME thing. so they can't talk together.

How to Start by rthwrms

for the times when you really truly want to do something, but find resistance or that starting feels impossible

most helpful action to get into a task is: look at it options include: review what you've already done open the tab on screen blur your eyes at first if that helps fullscreen the image browse or skim relevant texts let your gaze move around how it will JUST...LOOK!!!

Your brain has resistance towards starting the particular project in the way that you've previously conceived of it. Instead of fighting that resistance, try to change your approach to starting your work. Ie, start with colored pencils on a piece you were doing in gouache, include a new stitch in a crochet piece, Step one: identify the process Step two: identify places where something new can be included Step three: brainstorm new options to fill these spots Step four: select one or more options and try your piece from this new angle

encourage yourself by asking questions start with: "What am I actually trying to do right now?" then try: "What would this look like if it were more fun?" "How would I do it if anything was possible?"

divide into discrete tasks make the closest or shiniest one literally as small & specific as freaking possible

image text: I BELIEVE IN YOU screenshot text: The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper. W.B. Yeats (via billowy)

there is a window now there is a door

I present to you: the floating ao3 comment box!

From what I've seen, a big problem for many people is that once you reach the comments at the bottom of a fic, your memory of it miraculously disappears. Anything you wanted to say is stuck ten paragraphs ago, and you barely remember what you thought while reading. This fixes that!

I'll give a little explanation on the features and how it works, but if you want to skip all that, here's the link.

Edit: Yes, this also works on mobile!

The extension is visible as a small blue box in the upper left corner.

(Side note: The green colouring is not from the extension, that's me.)

If you click on it, you open a comment box window at the bottom of your screen but not at the bottom of the fic. I opened my own fic for demonstrative purposes.

The website also gives explanations on how exactly it functions, but I'll summarize regardless.

insert selection -> if you highlight a sentence in the fic it will be added in italics to the comment box

add to comment box -> once you're done writing your comment, you click this button and the entire thing will automatically copied to the ao3 comment box

delete -> self explanatory

on mulitchapter fics, you will be given the option to either add the comment to just the current chapter or the entire fic

The best part? You can simply close the window the same way you opened it and your progress will automatically be saved. So you can open it, comment on a paragraph, and then close it and keep reading without having the box in your face.

Like yes, Ilya logically knows that it’s not about him personally, not really. It’s about hockey. It’s about The Rivalry™️. It’s about the public persona of douchebaggery that he has specifically played up for years at this point to get under people’s skin and keep them at arm’s length. It’s the contrast between the golden boy of Canada and the big bad Russian. Like, duh, of course everyone thinks Rozanov isn’t worthy of Shane, but that’s not real.

But also, does he know that? Does he know that down to his bones, deep in the heart of himself? Does he know that when he’s on his own, without Shane by his side, when it’s late and he’s tired and he’s in bed in the dark on his own with just his own thoughts for company?

Or does he think of his father, and how he never missed an opportunity to remind him of his value or lack there of? How he constantly degraded and abused and mocked him for every failure until Ilya had internalised the truth of his own worthlessness, until winning was unremarkable and losing unthinkable? Does he think of his brother? Of how the only worthwhile thing about Ilya was his bank account ? How the closest to affection he could get from his own kin was always that he sent money and Alexei sent back insults, and he should be thankful because if he didn’t pay it would be even worse? Does he think of his mother? Who loved him, yes, of course she did, but still couldn’t stay for him? Who instead abandoned him to his fate at the hands of his father and brother even though she knew how bad things could get. Does he think it’s because she could see even then, even at twelve years old, that fundamentally Ilya wasn’t worth sticking around for?

Does he think about how even the people who brought him into this world couldn’t love him right, and so where does he get off thinking that someone like him would deserve to love and be loved by someone as good, as pure, as kind as Shane Hollander? Of course everyone else can see that, to the point that it’s the first thing they say. Of course it’s just a matter of time until Shane sees it too.

Do you think it’s death by a thousand cuts? That every shitty comment from Shane’s loved ones - Hayden and Yuna and J.J. and whoever else finds out about them - that whittles down to variations on the theme of “I can support being gay, but I draw the line at loving Ilya Rozanov?” in that same disbelieving tone cuts through to that miserable hidden core of himself he tries so hard to make up for and reminds him that other people see how worthless he is too?