Library of Helpfulness

i think we need more toxic friendships in media. I've had enough of your romance. make them worse. make them best friends. make their friendships' quality inscrutable.

freak4freak is always so awesome but another character dynamic that i think is really great is freak vs freak. you're the only person who understands me and i'm the only person who understands you. unfortunately this also does not stop either of us from hating each other and in fact it might even make everything significantly worse for everyone involved

big fan of when you peel back all layers of a character and at the bottom of it there's love

why are they doing this? because they loved someone so much it caused the plot to happen. Grief counts btw

ESPECIALLY a big fan of when this isn't enough to make them a good person

when it comes down to it everything is about ghosts except ghosts, which are about love

a hometown is a type of dead wife

one of my least favorite tropes is when a character has a crush that is explicitely unrequited and hopeless, yet in the timeskip epilogue they inexplicably get married. like bro if you fruitlessly pine after someone and they show no interest for the whole 3 year run of the story and then suddenly change their mind. i think theyre settling for you. quite frankly both of you need to learn some self respect. get divorced immediately.

basically the best thing any character can do is decide they don't want to be afraid anymore - in fact they never want to be afraid of anything ever again - and take action so drastic they fail to realise that this too is a decision motivated by fear. or to account for the Consequences of that.

it is always narratively correct to make your characters sleep together before they sort through the hundreds of lies and misdirections between them. make things worse make things worse make things worse #i love betrayal #i love lying #i love people feeling bad about themselves

If a fantasy world has an ancient tree of wisdom, that means it must also have young trees that are dumb as shit. Just giving terrible advice like, "the evil wizard is kinda hot"'

You are an unreliable narrator because your coping mechanisms for your deep-seated trauma forbid you from acknowledging the reality of the situation. I am an unreliable narrator because I sincerely have no idea what the fuck is going on.

love it when characters do a sacrifice play ostensibly to save others but mostly so they don't have to face themselves

i Really love when two characters are really quite similar but in such a way that they just hate eachother onsight.. dog barking at a mirror type beef

big fan of when a character metaphorically sweeps something under the rug, but you can feel them flinch every time they walk over it and feel the crumbs beneath their feet

blorbo sickfic that turns into a possession fic halfway through

what does this meannnn

big fan of when a character is dead and the narrative frames them in a very angelic, soft, gentle manner but then it turns out not only are they still alive (plot twist) but theyre alive in the most gruesome and horrific way. your loving kind mentor who motivates you to fight in their memory came back wrong and theres blood and dirt under their fingernails from clawing they way out of the grave.

ok so its a pretty good story but you know what would make it better? a liar. a character who lies. maybe two.

I really love it when a character's past self and their present self are considered entirely different characters