jackie writes things

I’ve been getting questions about endings, and how to write them, forever. This seems like as good a place as any to begin sharing my thoughts, though I also have plans for a post on “the dos and don’t of writing endings.”

For further reading on the matter, check out these articles, here, here, and here – they were most helpful in compiling this post. As a disclaimer, some of these categories will overlap.

Happy writing, everybody!

1. The Resolved Ending

In a Resolved Ending, loose ends are tied. Protagonists and major characters are assigned to their fates. 

You know this ending from Austen novels, from Jane Eyre (hence the title), from most fairy tales and Shakespearian plays, from Legally Blonde. These endings don’t leave you to speculate on what the characters do next – they spell it out for you. Lizzie marries Darcy, Jane marries Mr. Rochester, Cinderella and her prince live happily ever after, the Little Mermaid (in the original version of the tale) does not. Elle Wood becomes best friends with Vivian, leaving Warner with no job prospects and no girlfriend. Either way, we know. 

Subsequent authors can speculate on alternatives – “What if Beauty preferred the Prince as a Beast? What if Emma and Mr. Knightly went to marriage counseling?” – but there is a canon, which we can choose to accept and/or diverge.

The Resolved Ending can be incredibly satisfying. The conclusion to Pride and Prejudice? One of the most satisfying, and comforting, of all time. The conclusion of Legally Blonde is without a doubt the best ending in cinematic history.

Contrariwise, some readers can find it frustrating when things are too neatly tied up. Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the mostly teen and young adult readers of Harry Potter rebelled at the prospect of the protagonists having babies ever after and becoming just like their parents (I personally didn’t mind and found it satisfying enough, but Harry Potter was never a huge source of fixation for me.) 

Like any ending, there are risks that accompany a Resolved Ending. If you are going to give your story a Resolved Ending, it’s best to either go in with a clear vision of what your ending will be, or decide on one that makes sense for your characters and tone of the story.

Regardless of how you choose to end your story, there will likely be readers who are displeased with the ending – people almost always have strong and very specific opinions about how their favorite stories should end – so it’s best to focus on the quality and integrity of the ending. 

2. The Unresolved Ending

I’m lumping two types of ending together for this one, since they can overlap: the cliffhanger, and the ambiguous ending. Possibly three, if you consider the open-ended ending its own category. 

This class of ending embraces ambiguity, and the fact that life itself can be more of a continuous streamline than episodes with definitive conclusions. This doesn’t mean that the Unresolved Ending is worse than the Resolved Ending – as I said, many of my favorite stories conclude with Resolved Endings. But it’s a distinction that often goes a long way in determining how your story is remembered, and should fit the tone of the story.

Unresolved Endings aren’t inherently less happy or satisfying than Resolved Endings. Unresolved Endings are oftentimes incredibly hopeful and optimistic. For example, the conclusion to Neil Gaiman’s Graveyard Book ends with Nobody leaving the graveyard in which he grew up. We don’t know what the rest of his life will be like, what he’ll do or who he’ll become, but we know that he goes into life “with his heart and eyes open.” The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, one of my favorite spiritual successors to Pride and Prejudice, has a much more ambiguous but still optimistic ending – it doesn’t say when and how its main characters get together, but it implies that they will. 

More bittersweet – or less definitively happy – ambiguous endings include I Capture the Castle, which doesn’t confirm whether the protagonist’s puppy love will blossom into anything more, but nevertheless leaves most of its main characters on optimistic notes. A Tree Grows In Brooklyn sends its characters off into a brighter future, without diminishing the trauma of their impoverished upbringing. 

For non-literary examples, people are still steaming about The Sopranos’ refusal to give its viewers the resolution they craved – and I, personally, am fine with that. I would argue that BoJack Horseman’s ambiguous ending also fits perfectly with the tone of the show, which, despite its sitcom-esque formatting, firmly refutes the notion that life has any definitive conclusions. Planet of the Apes answers the question the audience hadn’t realized they’d been asking – where and when are we – but doesn’t say what happens to its characters. 

There’s a trend I’ve noticed in well-regarded short stories: most seem to have Unresolved Endings. I recently finished the Best American Short Fiction of 2020, and I noted that almost every story had an ambiguous ending. Some of these were frustrating for me – I wanted to know more, damn it! – but they left me contemplating the stories for days afterwards, and the authors were predictably masterful at knowing the most powerful place for the conclusion.

Of course, proper cliffhangers are a little different than any of these endings – unless you consider The Sopranos’ conclusion to be a cliffhanger, which I think is arguable. Cliffhangers most frequently appear in episodic or serial stories, to get you hyped up to read/watch/listen to the next one, but cliffhangers can also serve as a conclusion in and of themselves. Inception, anyone?

Pros of the ambiguous ending: they allow the reader to use their imagination about what happens next. Cons: you really have to think about how much information you want to reveal, and where the most powerful cut-off point will be. They can also be quite frustrating, but this can be a good thing! It all depends on the quality. 

3. The Tragic Ending

A tragedy, in its original sense, is a sudden reversal fortunes, usually leading to the moral or literal demise of a protagonist. Sometimes, they can just mean that the protagonist doesn’t achieve their objective, which is often representative of a larger trauma or form of grief.

The Greeks had a huge fetish for tragedy, to the point where Perseus is the only human Greek hero who didn’t meet some kind of tragic demise (thank you, Percy Jackson series, for bringing that to my attention at age fourteen.) 

For the record, I’m a big happy endings kind of gal. My favorite characters – both my own, and those I’ve adopted from other authors – deserve happy epilogues, preferably after a lot of tribulation and a conflict. Hopeful endings are a second favorite, followed by bittersweet, as long as they leave room for hope and better days ahead. I’ve been known to avoid stories if they’re too tragic, hence why I could never bring myself to read Cujo or watch The Mist. 

But culturally, I can acknowledge the importance of tragedies. Take Oedipus, for example – an admirable man, who remains oblivious to his misfortune until it’s already too late. In the words of Disney’s much-sanitized Hercules, “And I thought I had problems.”

And, on the subject of Hercules (or Heracles, the Greek version of the name), his status as the most quintessential Greek hero did not save him from a whopping portion of tragedy: among other things, he was driven mad and killed his family, for which he had to perform his famous twelve labors as penance. His mortal life concluded with being burned alive, though once his mortal parts had been obliterated, he was rewarded with becoming a full-fledged immortal. So, whether or not Hercules’s story actually is tragic remains up for interpretation, but the point still stands.

Tragedy reminds us of fallibility, and the fact that the seeds of our downfall can arise in unexpected places. Tragedy endows us with compassion. 

Oftentimes, tragedy is the result of the incompatibility of individual and circumstance: others have pointed out that Hamlet’s scheming nature would have suited him perfectly for Othello’s situation, but Othello’s action-oriented personality would have immediately solved Hamlet’s problems. 

Interestingly, the only tragedies that don’t fill me with total despair are Shakespearian tragedies – specifically, Macbeth and Hamlet. Probably because their aesthetic absolutely slaps.

4. The Happy Ending

I am an absolute sucker for a good happy ending, particularly if the characters have been through the ringer to get there. 

To be absolutely clear, there is nothing childish about happy endings. Even if they were unrealistic – and I insist that they’re not – stark realism can compromise the strength of a story. Not that sad endings are inherently bad, but you shouldn’t be dissuaded from writing happy endings out of a commitment to realism.

Instead, think about which kind of ending would best convey the message of your story. 

Would Shawshank Redemption, for example, be rendered more powerful if its protagonists had died a miserable death in prison? No, because that would have undermined the message of hope and perseverance. To use an even more iconic example, would The Lord of The Rings have been more iconic if the dark forces had overtaken Middle Earth? I think the answer to that is somewhat obvious. 

Just as we need tragedies, we need happy endings to demonstrate that love and goodness are worthwhile, that hope and effort and faith aren’t a waste of time. That good can prevail.

Now, getting off my happy endings soapbox: different kinds of happy endings.

I’ve seen happy endings defined as “the protagonist achieving their goal,” but I think the truth is a bit more complicated than that. After all, what we think we want often differs wildly from what we actually want. 

For example, in Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, the protagonist spends the entire story pursuing the hand of the girl he thinks he wants, hoping to present her with the titular, anthropomorphic star. Along the way, he realizes that love should be unconditional, and falls in love with the star instead. He doesn’t get what he wants, but he gets what he needs, and is significantly happier for it. 

It can be similarly satisfying if a character achieves their goal, however, particularly if it’s well-earned, and has character-driven significance behind it. The original Rocky remains the most iconic of the series because Rocky achieved his goal – to remain standing for the entirety of the fight. Not to win, mind you – just to remain standing, and to prove to the world that he has integrity. 

To me, happy endings are the most significant if the character had make sacrifices to achieve their goals and learn unexpected things about themselves in order to do so. Oftentimes, even when the character achieves their goal, it’s not the goal itself that gives them the most satisfaction, but the relationship and character development they achieved along the way. In Mad Men, Don coming up with the iconic coca cola jingle is a byproduct of him finally finding piece after a lifetime of disconnect.

There are interesting ways to subvert happy endings. Sometimes this means making them “less happy,” and other times this means demonstrating that happiness takes unconventional forms. The book version of A Princess Bride subverts the happy ending, where the protagonist re-reads the book as an adult and realizes that the happy ending is more ambiguous than his father lead him to believe. The movie, on the other hand, plays the trope straight. Shrek – and yes, I’m unironically referencing Shrek in this Serious Post About Literature – completely subverts the traditional fairytale ending while still making it, unequivocally, an extremely happy ending. The Last Unicorn rejects happy endings, not out of pessimism, but because “nothing ever ends.”

But of course, few things in life are clear cut, and the same is true for endings. So let’s talk a bit about endings that are neither 100% happy, nor terribly sad…

5. The Bittersweet Ending

The Bittersweet Ending is a spectrum, and can skew more towards happy OR sad. 

A lot of the aforementioned endings could be argued to fall on the spectrum of bittersweetness. In Lord of the Rings, the characters achieve their goal, but Frodo is left mentally and physically scarred by his trauma with the Ring. The ambiguous nature of the book version of Princess Bride could also be argued to be bittersweet.

Other prominent Bittersweet Endings include Gaiman’s – and jeez, I’m referencing him a lot today – Ocean at the End of the Lane, which concludes on a purposefully ambiguous note about the grief of childhood trauma and the ambiguous nature of what constitutes a worthwhile life. In Mathis’s Twelve Tribes of Hattie, the eponymous Hattie devotes herself to nurturing her granddaughter, after becoming alienated from many of her children. In Ng’s Everything I Never Told You, the surviving characters repair their relationships and move towards a brighter future, but continue to grieve Lydia. Her absence will be felt at every milestone. 

BoJack Horseman is one of the most famous examples of a recent Bittersweet Ending, in which the titular horse seems to have faced a reckoning with his past and is moving towards something better, but many of his closest friends have outgrown him or opted to put some distance between them – including Diane, who has been his greatest confidante over the course of the series. 

A Bittersweet Ending can be a beautifully emotional conclusion to any story, and sits in the reader’s mouth like dark chocolate: not too bitter, not too sweet, but the taste of which can linger long after the story concludes.

6. The Twist Ending

The most famous twists don’t merit a spoiler warning, because everyone and their mother knows about them. In the Sixth Sense, Bruce Willis’s character was a ghost the whole time (I was able to predict that twist as a child, which I’m quite proud of.) The Planet of the Apes was actually Earth in the distant future. Tyler Durden and the Narrator are actually the same person. Pretty much every episode of The Twilight Zone. M. Night Shyamalan wants what The Twilight Zone had.

There are components to a good twist ending. It has to answer a question, which the viewer may or may not have known they had. How did Willis’s character survive the attack on his life at the beginning of the film? Where, and when, is the Planet of the Apes? Who is this mysterious, charismatic man who represents everything the Narrator thought his life was lacking? 

One cannot simply baselessly retcon the entire plot and call that a twist, as I’ve seen a lot of narratives do. The story must be a question mark, and the twist must be an answer.

7. The Tied Ending

Also known as the Full Circle Ending, this is the conclusion to the Hero’s Journey in which the narrative comes full circle. This can be represented by the hero literally returning home, or with a narrative that metaphorically returns to the place where it begins. 

Think of Dorothy returning to Kansas, or Frodo and Sam returning to the Shire. The characters return to their lives, but they’ve been changed by their experience. They’ve learned and developed and grown, and/or suffered trauma which they’ll have to reconcile.

Similarly, the story can be “bookended” by similar events. In Bad Monkey, (SPOILERS AHEAD) the book begins with a supposed murder-victim losing his right arm. He actually chopped it off purposefully to achieve his own goals, but the book ends with him getting devoured by sharks. After which, all that’s left of him is his LEFT arm. 

The Big Lebowski offers up a comical version of the Hero’s Journey, and has an appropriately Tied Ending, in which Lebowski goes back to living exactly as he lived before. Also appropriate for a Static Character, who remains set in his ways as the world changes around him.

My favorite example of a Tied Ending in recent history is probably Jojo Rabbit, in which it begins with a caption reading that Jojo is eleven years old, and ends with a caption reading that he is eleven-and-a-half years old. This hammers home how much Jojo, and the world, has changed and developed in just half a year.

Another iconic example? Futurama. Anyone who’s seen it knows exactly what I mean.

A tied ending is an excellent way to bring your reader back to where it all began, and remind them of what they’ve all been through together.

yea sure

1. kill wheelchair-centered angst plots. when you’re mobility impaired, getting a wheelchair is a joyful occasion and something you’re excited for (unless your only option is a big painful hospital chair.) there’s nothing progressive or empowering about associating wheelchair use with dreariness and misery.

2. consider the specific wheelchair user’s abilities and limitations. it’s lazy to just give them legs-don’t-work syndrome, think about why they use their chair. questions to ask yourself can include: have they always used it? do they use it because of injury, illness, or deformity? can they sometimes go without it? are they independent while using it? what are the consequences of trying to get around without it? is their day-to-day life wheelchair accessible, or do they have some challenges with navigation?

3. if you’re not disabled you shouldn’t make the backbone of your story about the disabled experience. if you’re not disabled, you don’t know what it’s like to be disabled, and no amount of imagining is going to create an accurate or meaningful representation. this isn’t to say that you should avoid disabled characters or that you can’t touch on ableism in your stories if you’re abled, but revolving your entire narrative around the disabled experience would be as hollow and meaningless as if i tried to write a story about what it means to be a black man. 

4. search up and find a specific wheelchair model to give your character; the model isn’t something that has to be mentioned in-text but referencing features of a specific chair throughout your story will add dimension and realism.

5. acknowledgement of disability in fiction exists on a spectrum; on one extreme the author makes way too big a deal out of it and reduces the character to only their disability, and on the other extreme it’s entirely ignored. both of these are shitty. find balance in recognizing their condition and not being weirdly obsessed with it.

6. if your character resembles a caricature of a stereotypical wheelchair user, they need to be rewritten. this comes in 2 major flavors: the helpless, naïve, useless wheelchair user, or the entitled, whining, unpleasant wheelchair user. adding to the stereotype glut affects people’s perceptions of disabled people in real life.

Thank You anon for requesting this list I had fun listing them and I’m glad you asked for it and I am glad I can help you. This list is in no particular order just the ones that came to my head as I went and the ones I had in my gif hunt tag, some of these may be the rpc definition of dark skin which is anyone darker than Michael B. Jordan but I had to put them on this list because the rpc really need to know people darker than Michael B. Jordan exist, cause with the way y’all covet light skin fcs, y'all act like they don’t. I will not put this under a read more. the rpc will look at it and acknowledge that people with darker skin exist and since I got a lot of this list from my gif hunt tag, best believe a majority of them have resources and the rest need resources to be made so you have no excuse not to use this list to your advantage and utilize it. If you’re like Andrew, don’t read the rpc while you’re helping them, that’s rude. I’m telling you, ignoring people with darker skin tones is also rude, so get over it. Y’all can do better. So do better.

 Anyway, yeah, the list:

Nicole Byer  ·  30+  ·  body diverse  ·  does not identify as straight

Sasheer Zamata  ·  30+

Kirby Howell-Baptiste  ·  30+ 

Anna Diop  ·  30+

Samantha Marie Ware

Aja Naomi King  ·  30+

Amber Riley  ·  30+  ·  body diverse

Bre-Z  ·  30+

Bernard David Jones ·  30+   ·  does not identify as straight

Sterling K. Brown  ·  40+

Aldis Hodge  ·  30+

Daniel Ezra

Brian Michael Smith  ·  30+  ·  body diverse  ·  trans male

Dominique Jackson  ·  40+ ·  trans female

Angelica Ross ·  30+ ·  trans female

Billy Porter  ·  40+

Lamorne Morris  ·  30+

Dule Hill  ·  30+

D.B. Woodside ·  50+

Angela Bassett   ·  60+

Viola Davis  ·  50+

Idris Elba  ·  40+

Lovie Simone

Ryan Destiny

Nomani 

Lakeith Stanfield

Brandon Michael Hall

Brandon Michael Smith

RJ Cyler

Tyler James Williams

Issa Rae  ·  30+

Jermaine Fowler  ·  30+ ( please gif him. also if you want to cry please, please, please watch the episode of celebrity drag race he was on with Nico Tortorella) 

Jonathan Daviss

Ashley Blaine Featherson ·  30+

Joko Sims  ·  30+

Paul James  ·  30+ ( he has a whole ass show on netflix called soundtrack someone make him gifs so I can use him )

Thabang Molaba

Chinenye Ezeudu  ·  body diverse

Ncuti Gatwa

Kedar Williams-Stirling

John Boyega

Jade Payton

Ama Qamata

Michaela Coel ·  30+

Nafessa Williams  ·  30+

Sonequa Martin-Green  ·  30+

Jeremy Pope

Isaiah Mustafa  ·  40+

DeWanda Wise ·  30+

Ester Deen  ·  30+

Yandeh Sallah

Léo Daudin

Luke James  ·  30+

Alex Newell  ·  body diverse  ·  genderfluid

Kimberley Drummond

Assa Sylla

Ashleigh Murray

Rutina Wesley  ·  40+

Shameik Moore

Algee Smith

Tsion Habte

Sinqua Walls  ·  30+

Siddiq Saunderson

DeRon Horton

China Anne McClain

Gabrielle Union  ·  40+ 

Zuri Adele ·  30+

Kofi Siriboe

Brandon P. Bell ·  30+

Shannon Thornton ·  30+

Javicia Leslie ·  30+

Malcolm-Jamal Warner ·  40+

Yvette Nicole Brown  ·  40+  ( THIS WOMAN HAS BEEN IN SO MANY SHOWS. SHE COULD HAVE SO MANY POTENTIAL RESOURCES WHY ARE Y’ALL NOT GIFFING HER???? )

Danai Gurira ·  40+

Lupita Nyong'o  ·  30+

Danielle Brooks  ·  30+  ·  body diverse

Mehcad Brooks  ·  30+

Gabourey Sidibe  ·  30+

William Jackson Harper  ·  40+

Cress Williams  ·  40+

Jesse L. Martin  ·  50+

Mike Colter  ·  40+

Shamier Anderson

Amiyah Scott ·  30+  · trans female  

Chris De'Sean Lee

Eddie Leavy  ·  body diverse

Spence Moore 

Marcel Spears  ·  body diverse

Nonso Anozie ·  40+   ·  body diverse

Okieriete Onaodowan  ·  30+   ·  body diverse

Jason Winston George  ·  40+

Chandra Wilson  ·  50+

Jessie Usher

Lena Waithe  ·  30+

Jovan Adepo  ·  30+

Trezzo Mahoro

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II  ·  30+

underused faceclaims of color ; they have tons of resources edition !                 * what faceclaims of color need to be used more in the rpc ?

adria arjona.

aimee carrero.

alia bhatt.

amandla stenberg.

ariela barer.

arjun gupta.

ashleigh murray.

aubrey joseph.

belissa.

blair redford.

brenda song.

charles michael davis.

chella man.

christian navarro.

conrad ricamora.

constance wu.

dascha polanco.

dev patel.

devery jacobs.

dichen lachman.

ellen wong.

fola evans-akingbola.

gemma chan.

hannah john kamen.

indya moore.

issa rae.

jade willoughby.

jamie chung.

jessica parker kennedy.

jessica sula.

john boyega.

jordan rodrigues.

karrueche tran.

keith powers.

kiana madeira.

lakeith stanfield.

lucy liu.

luka sabbat.

malese jow.

manish dayal.

meaghan rath.

michael ealy.

mj rodriguez.

nathalie emmanuel.

odiseas georgiadis.

omar ayuso.

paulina singer.

q’orianka kilcher.

rahul kohli.

riz ahmed.

rome flynn.

ross butler.

ryan destiny.

sandra oh.

sasha lane.

shemar moore.

sonoya mizuno.

steven yeun.

summer bishil.

sydney park.

tanaya beatty.

wakeema hollis.

zazie beetz.

Ask them?

Also be patient because they are a group of volunteers who ask for no money. Tumblr at least gave them the courtesy to let them know an update was going to happen so they could be prepared.

Welcome back to Edgewood. Welcome home.

 At a glance, Edgewood is an ordinary midwestern town nestled among the dense forests and towering bluffs of western Wisconsin. Century-old buildings house the downtown businesses, aging retirees fuel the local gossip mill like there’s no tomorrow, and everyone seems to know everyone. But beneath the rustic charm, Edgewood’s greatest secret runs far deeper than any torrid love affair…

                                  Open for over one year!

Edgewood is a supernatural roleplay inspired by Charmed, Maggie Stiefvater’s ‘The Raven Cycle’, Kelley Armstrong’s ‘Women of the Other World’ series, D&D, and so much more. Come join our chaotic little family!

So listen up y’all, nothing drives me crazier as both a writer and a scientist than seeing alien diseases that make no fuckin’ sense in a human body. 

If you’re talking about alien diseases in a non-human character, you can ignore all this.

But as far as alien diseases in humans go, please remember:

DISEASE SYMPTOMS ARE AN IMMUNE RESPONSE.

Fever? A response to help your immune cells function faster and more efficiently to destroy invaders.

Sore/scratchy throat? An immune response. Diseases that latch onto the epithelium of the throat (the common cold, the flu) replicate there, and your body is like “uh no fuckin’ thanks” and starts to slough off those cells in order to stop the replication of new virus in its tracks. So when it feels like your throat is dying? guess what it literally is. And the white spots you see with more severe bacterial infections are pus accumulation, which is basically dead white blood cells, and the pus is a nice and disgusting way of getting that shit outta here.

(No one really knows why soreness and malaise happens, but some scientists guess that it’s a byproduct of immune response, and others suspect that it’s your body’s way of telling you to take it easy)

headache? usually sinus pressure (or dehydration, which isn’t an immune response but causes headaches by reducing blood volume and causing a general ruckus in your body, can be an unfortunate side effect of a fever) caused by mucous which is an immune response to flush that nasty viral shit outta your face.

Rashes? an inflammatory response. Your lymphocytes see a thing they don’t like and they’re like “hEY NOW” and release a bunch of chemicals that tell the cells that are supposed to kill it to come do that. Those chemicals cause inflammation, which causes redness, heat, and swelling. They itch because histamine is a bitch.

fatigue? your body is doing a lot–give it a break!

here is a fact:

during the Spanish 1918 Plague, a very strange age group succumbed to the illness. The very young and very old were fine, but people who were seemingly healthy and in the prime of life (young adults) did not survive. This is because that virus triggered an immune response called a cytokine storm, which basically killed everything in sight and caused horrific symptoms like tissue death, vasodilation and bleeding–basically a MASSIVE inflammatory response that lead to organ damage and death. Those with the strongest immune systems took the worst beating by their own immune responses, while those with weaker immune systems were fine.

So when you’re thinking of an alien disease, think through the immune response.

Where does this virus attack? Look up viruses that also attack there and understand what the immune system would do about it. 

Understand symptoms that usually travel together–joint pain and fever, for example.

So please, please: no purple and green spotted diseases. No diseases that cause glamorous fainting spells and nothing else. No mystical eye-color/hair-color changing diseases. If you want these things to happen, use magic or some shit or alien physiology, but when it’s humans, it doesn’t make any fuckin’ sense. 

Some bacteria have physical effects on the body that cause symptoms (EHEC varitype of E. coli ruptures cells at the site of infection, which is usually the large intestine, hence, you have bloody stools from it). If your alien or “made-up” bacteria or virus causes a certain symptom, find a real bacteria or virus that causes the same symptom. They need to behave in a similar fashion and have similar physical traits. Bacteria and viruses do not evolve functions because they’re cool. They evolve them because they’re useful.

There are also dietary issues, medications and chronic diseases that cause physical changes–copper toxicity can cause an orange ring around the iris, an eyelash lengthening “medicine” causes darkening and/or color change of the iris, hemochromatosis (sometimes known as “Bronze Diabetes”) causes darkening of the skin etc. If you want to use this sort of thing, again, find something real that causes it and work through things logically. 

I’d like to add that the same goes for parasitic infections, more or less. If you want a certain trait for a diseases, cross reference with existing parasites to see what’s happening, and also make sure you check what happens if you put a parasite in a host it’s not meant for. We can sensibly assume that alien parasites that encounter a human would be ‘wtf’ and potentially cause complications that would never happen in the native species. Maybe in the native species it causes a cold like reaction at worst, but in a human the parasites may attempt to nest in a totally different tissue. Maybe that causes widespread tissue damage by the parasite itself as it tries to borrow in? Again, check existing cases to see what horrific things could happen.

While we’re on it, also check how your disease is communicated. One of the things that annoy me so much with zombie movies is that ‘biting’ is supposed to be a very effective way to spread it. It’s not. Anything that requires such intimate contact is actually kind of hard to communicate. Airborne things? Now there we are at potential ‘oh shit’ territory. So if you want your disease to sweep the country/planet/ship, pick something that’s easily communicable. 

Also consider the incubation period. How long until someone shows symptoms? Are they already infectious to other people before showing symptoms or still after they stopped? As mentioned above, illness symptoms are in most part immune responses and the immune system needs time to get up and run. Give it that time.

Nothing makes me groan harder than a made-up plague which gives anyone X diseases within seconds to MINUTES. I’m looking at you, most zombie movies. And if your alien/synthetic/sci-fi pathogen is at all like a virus (read: no metabolism of its own, just genetic material of some kind which it uses to reprogram host cells), then the rate at which it mupltiplies is limited to what normal human cells can do. Now, viruses can multiply pretty damn fast. But give you symptoms within MINUTES? Nope.

So long as we’re on the subject of epidemiology, and speed:

 "Oh no, patient died less than a day after being infected! We’re all doomed!“ Wrong. While that SOUNDS scary, a plague that kills that quickly would not actually be that dangerous, and would be unlikely to have evolved to begin with. A disease needs to pass itself on to at least one other person, on average, before it kills its host, or it’s doomed to extinction. Any virus that kills its host before it has a decent chance of being passed on will basically quarantine itself. (Of course, you CAN do this if you handwave its origins as being made in a lab or whatever, just know it won’t realistically pose a truly terrifying threat on a population level.)

Mmore ideas for a realistically scary made-up plague:

- Long incubation period (say, a couple of weeks), making quarantine much more difficult, disruptive to everyday life, and unlikely to succeed. - Infectious period != symptomatic period, i.e. someone can spread the disease before they appear sick. (Note: if this condition is met, then dying very rapidly after *manifesting symptoms* becomes plausible again, more plausible than dying quickly after being infected.)

- The possibility or relative prevalence of healthy carriers - think Typhoid Mary. I.e. rare people who skip the symptoms part entirely but are still infectious.

- The disease is transmitted through an animal that is hard to keep out, the definition of “hard to keep out” would depend on the setting here. Poor water sanitation means waterborne bacteria and microscopic parasites would be a huge danger. Insect or arachnid (e.g. tick) bites could be a danger in almost any setting..

- As an alternative to above point: the bacterial/viral/parasite/whatever can form spores that are fucking EVERYWHERE. (Read: the reason for both tetanus and botulinum poisoning.)

- The pathogen is both dangerous and impossible to fully exterminate through vaccination because it has a huge population of reservoir hosts. (Reservoir hosts are entire SPECIES that can carry and propagate the disease without being affected much by it.) Same way the Black Plague is still out there because a shitton of rodent species passively carry it.

doesn’t like to wear shoes

always has a piece of sugarfree gum in their mouth

has a collection of cartoon dvds

walks everywhere they go

only wears pastel colors

won’t go anywhere without three hairbands on their wrist

refuses to wear any shoes except red converse

has a crippling fear of something mundane like mushrooms

has a dream notebook filled with every dream they can remember

has a really loud sneeze and goes into sneeze fits

only wears vintage clothing

has damaged hair from messing with it too much

super good at advanced math but can’t do addition for shit

believes in the supernatural, like ghosts

likes to go on midnight shopping trips and run through stores

gets too emotionally attached

loves dogs and has three of them

has hallucinations, but not scary ones

works at a fast food establishment in their free time

always carries a musical instrument with them

always carries a sketchbook with them

likes to name inanimate objects

strictly against drug use

excessively polite

excessively indecisive

can recite the first 200 digits of pi

can only play clocks by coldplay on the piano and plays it 24/7

gets itchy skin when anxious

has to move things around in a certain pattern before going to sleep

worries that if they do one thing wrong they’ll die

obsessed with puzzles

obsessed with rpg videogames

texts with one thumb

always has red painted nails

an amazing runner with super toned legs

has a beautiful voice

has restless legs, especially at night

has terrible performance anxiety

doesn’t like to turn assignments in because they’re afraid they’ll fail

loves science but is really bad at it

can/can’t make friends easily

likes to lie in fields and stare at the stars

believes that wishes can come true

falls deeply in love

bruises super easily

beautiful/horrible handwriting

ambidextrous

only likes nintendo games

only drinks sparkling water

doesn’t watch tv/listen to music

goes to concerts every week

likes slam poetry

likes to study in coffee shops/libraries

doesn’t understand politics but tries nonetheless

wears the same sweatshirt every day

collects sweatshirts

works three part time jobs

crazy intelligent but super shy

likes to memorize phone numbers instead of writing them down

loves to calculate probability

gets homesick very easily

wants to leave home very badly

trips a lot

can’t dance but tries anyway

brushes their teeth seven times a day

incredibly honest to a sometimes brash extent

only draws with mechanical pencils

only writes with pens

collects pens from hotels

wants to believe in heaven but can’t

watches a ton of anime

makes people cute nicknames

makes people origami

uses origami as a coping mechanism

owns a ton of t-shirts from hot topic, but has never been inside

makes all their own food

vegetarian/vegan/pescatarian

eats rice krispies every morning

does everything “for the aesthetic”

watches kids shows

goes to a private school

short term memory loss

loves disney movies

makes lists of random things in their free time

only eats foods with a spoon

only likes to wear skirts

never has their hair down

dyes their hair every two weeks

likes to collect pokemon cards

gets obsessed with games really easily

gives up too easily

gets their heart broken too often

has a mysterious disease

has a big social media following

tries too hard to be popular

likes to draw everything and everyone

can eat a whole lemon

one of the most important things i do when creating a character, be it for a roleplay or a story, is figure out their arc. to learn exactly how to do this i bought several books on writing and i thought i’d share what i learned from them. all of the information below is taken from the book creating character arcs by k.m weiland.

though weiland writes for authors and screenplay writers, i think character arcs are something that we can use in roleplaying as well. creating an arc for your character will give you a sense of what they want and where they’ll go, thereby making thinking of connections/plots and interacting with other characters that much easier.

it’s helped me a lot, i hope it helps you guys, too!

me: don’t say it

me: don’t say it

me: don’t say it

me: don’t say it

me: don’t say it

me: don’t say it

me: don’t say it

me: don’t say it

but before [Character] could [verb], ACTION!

[Character] was about to [verb] when ACTION!

but no sooner had [something] than ACTION!

but just as [something boring], ACTION!

BANG!/CRASH!/BOOM! ACTION!

“Character dialogue starting some sentence about–” ACTION!

Character’s internal monologue starting some sent– ACTION!

Narrator starting some– ACTION!

… ACTION!