[ not such x clever boy ]

Andorian - always winds up in a fight, but will claim the other person started it

Bajoran - Spiritual but fiesty

Betazoid - can tell you what’s bothering you even if you don’t know

Cardassian - will shit talk you behind your back, and will not deny it

Changeling - god complex

Denobulan - a space Hufflepuff

Ferengi - will do you a favor… if there’s something in it for them

Human - just wants to make friends

Kazon - douchebag who always took gym class too seriously

Klingon - will definitely fight you and will call it honorable (even if it’s not)

Q - knows everything, claims to be better than you, and is extremely annoying about it

Romulans - knows all the gossip, but never is directly involved in any drama (though they are def pulling strings from the sidelines)

Tellarite - brutally honest to the point of being an asshole

Vorta - the fake smile of a seasoned retail worker

so as the conclusion of the school year looms, i find myself fuCKING SWAMPED with shit i need to do. and also no motivation to write publicly bc i’m awful.

 Don’t have them die of old age after a long, fulfilling life. Many people don’t even think of this as sad (note that this can still work if you have enough of the other factors).

 Leave one of their major goals unfinished. The more enthusiastic they are about completing the goal, the sadder.

 Give them strong relationships with other characters.

 Make them fight against whatever is causing their death. Their ultimate loss is sadder if they struggle.

 Kill them in the middle of their character arc.

10. have their loved one, broken hearted, tell the team to stop fighting because “its over.” 

11. have their pet come looking for them. 

12. have their loved one perform a popular song at their funeral so it makes the fans cry whenever it’s played.

13. family witnessing the death and/or blaming themselves.

14. kill the character in the middle of making a joke, smiling, or expressing/experiencing joy/happiness.

15. make the character’s death slow and painful, but make them unable to call out for help even though they can literally see the other characters nearby.

16. after killing the character, have others think the character had betrayed them so they’d always hate them and remember them as traitors and never say nice things about them… Give your readers no chance to have group-therapy with other characters by making them the only ones who know the truth.

17. right before their death, show a side of them nobody has seen. (someone who is always tough and brave being genuinely scared of dying alone; someone who is always laughing being in tears before dying, etc.)

18. make them the only person who knows a big important secret that would help other characters in the story.

19. have them being lied to before dying. (thinking they’ve been betrayed; thinking they weren’t loved; thinking they’ve lost their loved ones, etc)

20. make the character very enthusiastic/passionate about a certain goal, constantly put stress on their goal, have them die unexpectedly before they can reach their goal. 

and the best one…

21. have another beloved character kill them–better be a close friend to your character, one that absolutely nobody suspects, one that everyone can’t help but love, one who is always enthusiastic about things and encourages your character. THEN

reveal the truth only later when it’s too late and the a-hole character has already escaped.

have a cowardly character know the truth and never tell anyone else

have another character find out the truth and have them die before revealing it to others. 

have the said character ^ not actually die, but go through something so they’d forget the friend of the deceased character is actually an asshole. 

This way only your readers will know the truth, thus the frustration would be… most enjoyable for you.

Reveal later on there was a way to save them without killing them through some rare method that no one knows about that you discover mid or late story.

Have the character who killed off their friend/lover/family member put int he same position where they have to be killed.

Have the rest of the characters cure them because they now know the cure even if the cure is some horrible ritual.

Have the character not wanting to be cured because of the trauma they have over killing their friend/lover/family member, but no one listened and cures them anyway.

Have them be horrified over killing other character and yet they got to be cured and lived. 

23. Make one of the characters have something that will slowly kill them over time such as month and years. And

Make sure to have some fluffy moments between the angst. This is to make those angstier sad moments even sadder. Make sure other characters who love the character have to be there as the person’s healthy slowly worsens day by day or month by month. Eventually kill them off.

24. Have them never find the character because they think they went home or that they left for some happy reason, but they die on the way home and no one ever finds out they died except the reader.

what this adds to my fic-writing arsenal?

“I was his destruction;