Good Omens + Text Posts

how to ask the demon you've been smitten over for 6000 years to dance: an angel's guide

bonus:

Do you have any tips on how to write a character who’s being manipulated?

Your blog has been very helpful to me! :) thanks a lot

Quick Tips for Writing Manipulative Characters

To convincingly write a character who is being manipulated, you must first understand how to write a believable manipulator. Often hidden in plain sight, manipulators pull the strings, guiding the actions of those who are often unaware that they're dancing to someone else's tune.

Let’s look at manipulators as puppet masters, exploring how they function and how their actions echo throughout your story. By understanding the manipulator, you'll better equip yourself to create realistic characters who are unwittingly under their sway.

How do they behave?

Play the victim to garner sympathy

Charming and persuasive

Twist and distort the truth to suit their agenda

Play mind games

Are silver-tongued

Passive-aggressive when confronted

Use guilt to control others

Don’t hesitate to lie or deceive

Demonstrate a sense of entitlement.

Project their feelings onto others

How do they interact?

Play different roles with different people

Prefer indirect communication to direct confrontation

Gaslight others, making them doubt their own perceptions

Shift the blame onto others

Exploit others' vulnerabilities

Use people’s secrets against them

Make others feel obligated or in debt to them

Use flattery to get their way

Create conflict between other characters

Deliberately create confusion and chaos

Describe their body language

Maintain intense eye contact

Use touch to seem friendly and intimate

Facial expressions often don't match their words

Use large, expressive gestures to dramatise

Have a confident and exaggerated posture

Soften expression to look more trustworthy

Smile artificially or excessively

Lean in close, invading personal space

Mirror others’ behaviours to seem more likeable

Mimic emotions they may not feel

Describe their attitudes

Believe they are always right

Feel entitled and superior

Lack empathy

Highly competitive

Often impatient and intolerant

Controlling and like to be in charge

Rarely apologize sincerely

Often play the martyr, acting self-sacrificing

Can be sceptical of others’ intentions

Kindness is often an act

Positive narrative effects

Paradoxically, manipulative characters can have a positive narrative effect on those they manipulate. These characters can act as a catalyst for change, pushing others to unlock hidden potential and indirectly teaching them to be more cautious. In the face of manipulation, characters can mature and grow resilience.

Manipulative characters can also reveal people’s true natures by tricking them into revelations or by fostering unity as others band together against them. Furthermore, their actions can create dramatic plot twists, make people question their own perceptions and realities, and add intrigue.

Negative narrative effects

Manipulators can cause emotional and psychological distress, breed distrust and insecurity, and disrupt relationships and friendships. These characters often lead others to make damaging decisions, creating a toxic environment.

By exploiting and exposing others' vulnerabilities, manipulators make individuals question their self-worth. The extent of their manipulation can even cause physical harm and lead to the downfall of other characters. Their lasting legacy? Emotional scars that define their victims long after the manipulator has exited the narrative.

This scene pulls at my heart. Below, Smaug just told Bilbo that Thorin Oakenshield weighed the value of his life and found it worth nothing. His response to that? Laughing with a huge grin on his face and eyes turned down, almost like he's remembering all the times' Thorin proved that statement false.

Smaug is a VERY intelagent dragon. He immediately picked up on that sure little laugh, which brings me to the below. Smaug doesn't say corrupt his mind. No, he says, corrupt his heart and drive him mad. He knows that is what will shake him. Look at Bilbo's face in the first gif. His look is defiant and unbelieving, but in the second gif, he starts rapidly blinking and losing his composure. That is terror, worry, and fear. Not for himself but because he doesn't want to lose the dwarf he loves.

Moments in time, preserved through sentiments Twitter | Ko-Fi | Patreon

Bearded Irises

Favourate fanfic series of all time. I’ve reread it so many times, it’s so good

Emily said once that being nervous was his full time job. Even now, Adam doesn't know if he considers that to be very fair. At the time he’d laughed. It’s more of a hobby, he’d said. For it to be a job I'd have to get paid. At the current moment, face flushed by drink and blasted by a late night breeze that’s a mixture of boiled fetid garbage and car exhaust, five stories away from the crippling ground, those nerves are all he can focus on. His nerves, and not developing a case of vertigo. He’s always been a bit nervous, a bit shy. Highschool had been rough, honestly. He’d been quiet, contemplative and, above all, nervous, and that was back in the days when bullies had eaten his discomfort with glee. Is high school is still like that? For Lydia's sake, he hopes not. Maybe girls are kinder now than they were then. Maybe kids who are different or strange don’t get the short end of the stick. Maybe he’ll be a millionaire by next week.

Heard Something… by Ben J on ArtStation

This artist on Instagram

I’ve heard many songs. So many. But this lyrics verse is by far one of the deepest ones I’ve ever heard.

“Gone now are the old times

Forgotten, time to hold on the railing

The Rubix cube isn't solving for us

Old friends, long forgotten

The old ways at the bottom

Of the ocean now has swallowed

The only thing that's left

Is us, so pardon the silence

That you're hearing is turning

Into a deafening, painful, shameful roar”

-Ode To The Mets by The Strokes

Ha they can try

Y’ALL STFU AND LOOK AT THIS SHIT I DESIGNED IN 3 DAYS IN A FUGUE STATE