TMW writing

its good to acknoweldge the hollowness of revenge but sometimes you really do just need a story about someone who gets hurt and then kills and kills and kills and kills their enemies. its cathartic, babey.

holding you by the hands: you know that the "you" in a 2nd person pov isn't literally you right? you know that even in a "reader insert" story it is still a character, right? you recognize that because they are not actually you they may make choices different from the one that you would make for the sake fo the story, right? you know that? you know that the only "you" that exists in the context of the story is the you that is reading it? right?

they're saying spending 2 hours in the word doc changing words slightly to be more specific and evocative and moving endless commas around is one of the most noble and respected things that you can do

tbh im not entirely immune to a villain with a tragic backstory but i do think villain origins are a lot more interesting when the focus is less "here is the original sin, the first big bad thing that happened to them that made them who they are" and more "here is the first time a person who maybe otherwise felt powerless in their life realized that they could hurt someone and get away with it"

you can get a lot more mileage out of analyzing a truly abhorrent character through the lens of like. what sort of conditions would allow or even incentivize this kind of cruelty? what kind of person benefits from those conditions and how? over the more typical who hurt them type analysis. imo.

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

“not unkindly” has to be one of the ultimate adverbs ever. Implies so much

Not to sound mushy, but stories about two lonely characters from vastly different worlds finding solace with each other always appeal to me

you ever accidentally create a recurring theme in your writing. you start putting together an outline for something you’ve never written before and get partway through planning, rearrange the pieces, and go “GODDAMMIT THIS IS ABOUT GRIEF AGAIN”? because let me tell you,

your freak-of-nature boyfriend that we locked up in a high security lab is loose in the fucking facility send help before he kills us all

Harrowing: someone in your Fandom just made an innocuous and harmless post that nonetheless betrays a deep misunderstanding of the character and the character's narrative purpose and you just have to sit there and let them be wrong lest you be an asshole

revising your writing is just like "is this weird. is this a weird sentence. is this the weirdest most poorly-worded sentence ever written by anyone" and the sentence in question is "he walked across the room"