To Write Better Antagonists, Have Them Embody The Protagonist's Struggles

HELL YES A POST ABOUT CROCS! Utan is a sweetheart, and they're all machines of PURE POWER and DEATH. One of these hardcore sonofabitches hunts *hippos*, those territorial murder tanks that anyone with the slightest bit of knowledge about gives a wide berth (they are fast enough to catch up to you and they give zero fucks about your well being). AND wonderful physics on these good crocs as they get bigger in size! What's not to love?

I can’t stop thinking about crocodiles for some reason so here’s some cool pictures I found of probably the second largest one in captivity, his name is Utan:

isn’t he beautiful

listen to the SOUND when he bites

and that’s not even a real power bite, that’s mostly just heavy bone falling on heavy bone from his jaws and the air rushing out from between them

“Politicisation of science was enthusiastically deployed by some of history’s worst autocrats and dictators, and it is now regrettably commonplace in democracies. The medical-political complex tends towards suppression of science to aggrandise and enrich those in power. And, as the powerful become more successful, richer, and further intoxicated with power, the inconvenient truths of science are suppressed. When good science is suppressed, people die.”

— Kamran Abbasi, Covid-19: politicisation, “corruption,” and suppression of science

so uh this is an interesting one. i don't normally do these but this would technically mean that this:

would be in Monster Hunter Rise. either that or Deep Rock galactic, i'd need to check Steam to see which one of those i technically played last.

Thinking of this little puffball decked out in Monster Hunting gear ready to capture a monster like Mitsusune or the whirlwind monkey guy (etc.) or carrying a big ol' Gold Chunk/the big green ore stuff/ the big purple ore stuff/ glitchy cube is insanely fun to think about. i don't know if i could ever draw that at the skill level i'm at right now, but it is now taking up space in my head.

The last character you drew/wrote about is now stuck in the last game you played. How screwed are they?

10 Ways to Avoid Writing Insecurity

by Sean Platt

Face it. There are few things as intimidating as the blinding white of a blank page.

It makes no difference if it’s an empty sheet lying on our desk, or a blank screen, aiming between our eyes. Defeating “nothing” by subjecting it to “something” with our words is what gives a writer breath.

Whether to pay our bills or please our muse, eventually words must spill. Here are ten tips to help plow past writing insecurity.

1. Appreciate your unique perspective.

No one sees the world exactly like you, and no one can articulate it in quite the same way. The oldest stories are told and then retold, not because they invent new things to say, but because inside a timeless message, each storyteller may weave a million individual moments.

2. Writing is conversation.

The more we speak, the more we understand the fundamentals. Writing is no different. Most of the time, our brains operate on the surface, doing only what must be done. We may adopt the push and pull of conversation to push our voice further. Writing, much like a good discussion, can help us dig a little deeper.

3. Allow your influences to shape your voice, not drown it.

Creativity is borrowed. None of us formed our thoughts in a vacuum, and all of us were subject to a myriad of different models. Inspiration lives inside us, and our subconscious never forgets. We need not copy our heroes, their hand is always there to guide us.

4. Believe.

You can do it! Fear is a set of handcuffs, keeping our fingers from flight. If you don’t believe in yourself, then no one else will either.

5. Ignore the rules.

Rules can be intimidating; intimidation a shortcut to insecurity. You may not know precisely when to use a comma and when to use parentheses, but that decision will never equal the importance of a good idea. We first need broad strokes to lend foundation. We wash our world in red, blue, yellow, and green. Chartreuse and vermillion come later.

6. Write for someone specific.

Nothing will crystallize your voice, like scribbling for a single set of eyes. It doesn’t matter who it is, and it doesn’t have to be the same person twice. Write as though you are speaking to them. Design your jokes to make them smile, your words to feel them near.

7. Write without pause, return later.

Alone with our thoughts, it is easy to think the worst, but we should never allow them to slow us down. When our inner whisper begins to shout, we must lower our nose and keep on going. Once drained, leave. Return later, and you’ll likely be surprised at what you’ve written.

8. Take pride.

Our words are simply a more permanent version of our thought. Be proud of who you are, and know that what you write is a reflection of you.

9. Even Stephen King writes with his door closed.

No one gets it right the first time through. Just start. Even if the world will be watching once you are finished, no one is watching you now. Close the door, breathe the silence, and let what’s inside you come out to play.

10. Dip your toe, then jump… the water’s fine.

The first keystroke is always the hardest, but begetting something from nothing is what separates us from the lower species (well, that and opposable thumbs). Pushing past our fear and into uncertainty, is when we’re most likely to find ourselves.

How to write dynamic scenes

Here’s how you can inject some dynamics into your scenes where characters may be idling during their conversations! This is my favourite trick to use when I want to round out a scene.

Sometimes you may have a static scene in your book with characters simply sitting and chatting. So how do you make this more interesting?

The answer is to add in some dynamics!

🤔 What does that mean?

Creating dynamics in a scene means that you add some form of repetitive or changing background element throughout the scene to keep it moving, despite it being in the same spot.

For example, if you have a scene set in a restaurant with two characters having dinner, pick out an element from the setting that could create some kind of dynamic, pressure or conflict to your scene.

✍️ In a restaurant this may be:

An annoying cast of waiters circling around and offering refills

A scorching radiator by the side of the table raising temperature and shortening patience levels

A loud party of people in the background who make it difficult for your characters to understand each other

A partner’s phone buzzing on the table every other minute

A character’s personal tendencies - like fidgeting with the table cloth and eventually unthreading it, or coming close to dropping things until they shatter a glass at a high point of the scene

Think of background elements, or ways to externalise the way your characters are feeling in a particular scene can add so much life to a scene!

It also makes it feel more interesting, dynamic, and immersive, even a scene you’re writing is a simple conversation.

Whenever you find your characters having a conversation while they’re simply walking or sitting, think of whether you can externalise any of their emotions or inject some background element to make the scene more interesting!

Did you hear my first book is coming out August 15th? Pre-order it now through the [link here] or below!

The (neuro)science of getting and staying motivated

There is no question that motivation is one of the hardest and yet important factors in life. It’s the difference between success and failure, goal-setting and aimlessness, well-being and unhappiness. And yet, why is it so hard to get motivated – or even if we do, to keep it up?

That is the question that scientists led by Professor Carmen Sandi at EPFL and Dr Gedi Luksys at the University of Edinburgh have sought to answer. The researchers worked off previous knowledge that told them two things: First, that people differ a lot in their capacity to engage in motivated behavior and that motivational problems like apathy are common in neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders. Second, to target an area of the brain called the “nucleus accumbens”.

Sitting close to the bottom of brain, the nucleus accumbens has been the subject of a lot of research. The reason is that it was quickly found to be a major player in functions like aversion, reward, reinforcement, and motivation.

To test and quantify motivation, the EPFL team designed what is known as a “monetary incentive force task”. The idea is that participants perform a task with increasing – and measurable – effort and get paid sums of money that correspond to their effort. Basically, do more and get paid more.

In this study, 43 men were scanned to measure–metabolites in the nucleus accumbens in their brains with a sophisticated brain-imaging technique called “proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy”, or 1H-MRS. This can specifically measure the abundance of neurochemicals in the brain, such as neurotransmitters and metabolites. Because of this 1H-MRS is used even in clinical settings to determine neurological disorders.

Subsequently, each participant was asked to squeeze a device that measures force – a dynamometer – to a given level of contraction in order to earn either 0.2, 0.5, or 1 Swiss franc. This procedure was repeated for a number of 120 consecutive trials, which made performance in the task quite demanding.

The idea of the experiment was that the different sums would push participants to decide if they were going to invest energy and perform the task accordingly at each trial. The scientists also ran the experiment under isolation and group conditions to investigate the influence of competition on performance.

Once they had gathered the behavioral data, the researchers processed it through a computational model that estimated the most appropriate parameters that should be measured with regard to utility, effort, and performance functions. This allowed them to interrogate whether particular neurotransmitter levels predicted specific motivational functions.

The analysis revealed that the key to performance – and, by extension, motivation – lies within the ratio of two neurotransmitters in the nucleus accumbens: glutamine and glutamate. Specifically, the ratio of glutamine to glutamate relates to our capacity for maintaining performance over a long period of time – what the researchers term “stamina”.

Another discovery was that competition seems to boost performance even from the beginning of the task. This was especially the case for individuals with low glutamine-to-glutamate ratios in the nucleus accumbens.

“The findings provide novel insights in the field of motivation neuroscience,” says Carmen Sandi. “They show that the balance between glutamine and glutamate can help predict specific, computational components of motivated performance. Our approach and data can also help us develop therapeutic strategies, including nutritional interventions, that address deficits in effort engagement by targeting metabolism.”

I mean sure, I’m really terrible at actually getting stuff out but questions/ critique are always welcome!

Reblog if you write fanfic and would be totally down with your followers coming into you askbox and talking to you about your fic

soft scaly water child

huggable boy!..

one of my favorite stupid things to do in fanfic is to throw two characters together who literally never interact. and then give them an entire, fleshed-out relationship dynamic that exists nowhere but my own head. yes they’ve literally never spoken. yes their relationship is important to me. hope this helps.

Reblog if you write fanfic and would be totally down with your followers coming into you askbox and talking to you about your fic