Tafkar

If you haven’t been around Dreamwidth recently, you may have missed a great post at GYWO!  All links are member-locked, so if you’re not signed up for the challenge, you won’t be able to access them.

Challenges

STOP: Stop, write, continue on

What's in a Name? Challenge: Request a real world or fantasy name and let it inspire your next character

Time Management Challenge: You have 72 hours (three days) from reading this challenge to find a total of 60 minutes to write

Discussions

Integrating Worldbuilding Into Your Prose: Here's a breakdown of a few methods to incorporate worldbuilding into your prose and how those methods function

Choose What Book I Should Read Next: Having trouble deciding what to read? Let the community choose for you!

Giving Useful Critique for Fanfiction: Tips for keeping critiques constructive when fanfiction authors write for free

Writing a Scene With 6+ Characters: How to handle a lot of characters in a scene

Celebrating Queer Authors: Join us in reading stories by queer authors! Check out the recommendations already left or leave your own in the comments

Where Does the Writing Process Start?: How do we start the thing we want to write? Let’s discuss some techniques to get your story out of your head and onto the page

Expressing a Character's Emotional Thought Process (Interiority): How do you express interiority without just telling everyone everything that’s going on in the character’s head?

Worldbuilding for Pantsers: Tips for approaching worldbuilding as a pantser

Why We Do This To Ourselves....: Why do you write?

Why Tentacles? Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And LOVE Eldritch Horrors!: Tentacles! We know what they are, but what are they good for?

Support

Chronic Illness Support Post: Another round of gratitude

Pep Talk: Should I quit?

Writing Round-Up: Post links to & descriptions of your finished work

Events & Announcements

Mid-Year Marathon – July: Complete your minimum monthly pledge for July 

GYWO Yahtzee

Yahtzee Leaderboard & Digest: Fills June 2–June 8

Yahtzee Leaderboard & Digest: Fills June 9–June 15

Yahtzee Leaderboard & Digest: Fills June 9–June 22

Yahtzee Final Results: On to our final results for 2026!

GYWO Build-A-Bingo

GYWO Build-a-Bingo 2026: GYWO’s choose-your-prompts game; ends Dec 8 

Build-a-Bingo July Prompts: Check out this month’s prompts and start thinking about what you’ll write in your next fill

Monthly Check-In

The heat’s been brutal this summer but we still gotta eat! If you’re like me, heat might suppress your appetite, and the last thing any of us want is to sweat over a hot stove and oven when it’s already boiling outside. Here are some of my favorite hot-weather recipes to keep hydrated and fed with when the weather is unbearable! (All recipes should be un-paywalled).

NYT’s best gazpacho (lives up to its name!!)

Persian cold cucumber soup (if you like tzatziki you will like this!)

Eric Kim’s cold noodles with tomato (infinitely riffable Korean flavor profile — for a creamier and less brothy take, try these cold sesame noodles too)

Vietnamese chicken and herb salad (this is an excellent time to get a rotisserie chicken so you don’t have to turn the oven on)

Radish sandwiches with butter and salt (and in a similar vein, if you dig this flavor combo you should try this Polish cottage cheese dip on some good rye bread or even crackers)

It’s still a little early in the season, but you can never go wrong with a BLT (or, if you don’t eat bacon, try this tomato furikake sandwich in its place)

Infinite iterations of pasta salad! You can use anything you got but here is a template I like.

Assorted dense bean salads. This back pocket canned salad is a weird combo of jarred ingredients but it slaps, this hoagie-inspired one is super satisfying, and cowboy caviar is a classic for a reason.

Poke bowls! Canned tuna mixed with some kewpie mayo and sriracha is a budget-friendly riff on the usual ahi and makes everything taste like a spicy tuna roll, but use whatever proteins you like, this is more of a loose template.

Murderbot chronically finding new scientists/travellers to claim as “clients” (whether paid or not) like one of those sheepless herding dogs that goes around finding sheep (or anything else they can herd like a flock of sheep). Like it clearly has a protect humans instinct and a desperate need for enrichment.

— then it's art nouveau

and if the sexy lady has a bob cut or a hair cap and is wearing a column or flapper dress; there's a lot of geometry like rectangles, arches, rays, and diamonds; angels have super sharp wings and a lot of muscles; everything is steel, concrete, marble, gold, and red velvet seats; everything is VERY angular; and all the foliage is basically papyrus fronds; things feel vaguely Egyptian or Turkish or Mesopotamian; the fonts play with being very skinny or very thick and are sans serif with extra lines; or Gatsby would be found floating dead in that pool

— with lots of lush flora, tiny insects (like dragonflies) or graceful birds, stained glass, iron, warm golden lighting, lots of wood and wood carving (but now it's more wood paneling), a stylistic fondness for Japan, line weight variation in the font, and tile (but this time it's carved or sculpted on, not tiny mosaic)

but you're worried it's art deco

— because the forms (especially foliage) are very symmetrical and slightly more angular or blocky and graphic looking, things are more rectangular than circular or curvy in architecture, the patterns repeat more often, and more of the lamps are pyramids or rectangular, and there are nods to Egyptian or Ottoman style, and they used the color red (probably in an accent chair or carpet rug)

BUT there's no steel, concrete, gold plating or gilding, marble, big muscles, spiky or radiating diamond shapes, angular people, or flappers,

AND the vibes are jacobean, gothic, or spanish mission revival; they love some brick and stone; the wallpaper is an explosion of colorful pattern that could give you arsenic poisoning or help depict a descent into postpartum psychosis in a famous short story; but there are NO people to be seen, not even sexy ladies,

„You are more than welcome to come see the place with us.“

Seems like there are different opinions on that matter.