Art Help

Expanding a thought from a conversation this morning:

In general, I think "Is X out-of-character?" is not a terribly useful question for a writer. It shuts down possibility, and interesting directions you could take a character.

A better question, I believe, is "What would it take for Character to do X?" What extremity would she find herself in, where X starts to look like a good idea? What loyalties or fears leave him with X as his only option? THAT'S where a potentially interesting story lies.

In practice, I find that you can often justify much more from a character than you initially dreamed you could: some of my best stories come from "What might drive Character to do [thing he would never do]?" As long as you make it clear to the reader what the hell pushed your character to this point, you've got the seed of a compelling story on your hands.

some fucking resources for all ur writing fuckin needs

* body language masterlist

* a translator that doesn’t eat ass like google translate does

* a reverse dictionary for when ur brain freezes

* 550 words to say instead of fuckin said

* 638 character traits for when ur brain freezes again

* some more body language help

(hope this helps some ppl)

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

⁂

Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

did I respond to this right 

I spent last night looking at Neocities sites and here are my takeaways:

There's a real push to keeping the internet weird, open and less corporate-driven -- info on bypassing paywalls, protecting your data, archiving web media and basic coding/tech literacy.

(I found one tutorial on how to make a pop up that detects whether someone has an ad blocker and suggests they install one if they don't! Love that.)

There's also resources on finding the kind of internet that isn't the default experience anymore - alternate search engines I hadn't even heard of, human-made link lists and webrings. (Webrings! Turns out they never went away!)

If any of that sounds interesting to you, by the way - sadgrl.online has a lot of it and is possibly the best thing on the internet????

The "90's web" aesthetic is really fun and nostalgic, but I particularly loved seeing some people bring the better parts of the "modern internet" into it. What if we had weird, eye-searing personal sites BUT with plaintext alternatives for accessibility purposes? CW for flashing lights and unreality triggers?

(Again sadgrl comes in with a lot of resources for making your website accessible.)

Most of all, I'm honestly emotional about all the sites I found that were like, "hi! I'm 14 and this is my website where I talk about stuff I like haha."

It's so good that so many kids and teens who never experienced the "old internet" are still finding stuff like this and making their own weird stuff! Not just because weird websites are more fun, but because these skills are being passed down.

Anyway it's great and who knows maybe I'll make my own site sometime to keep horror media recommendations or something.

WHY IS DRAWING HANDS SO FUCKING HARD

DEAR ARTISTS, PLEASE READ THIS POST I STUMBLED ACROSS

IF YOU ARE NOT DOING THIS ALREADY, YOU SHOULD TRY IT

I even tested it out myself, it works great

I don't think a single person on planet earth cares abt this (except me) but I've seen some minos prime enjoyers using thou/thee incorrectly. so if you have mental problems like me and you DO care here's a small guide

Thou is a subject and Thee is an object (like he vs him)

Thy and Thine are both possessives, the usage depends on whether or not the following word starts with a vowel (like a vs an); you'd say "thy hand" and "thine arm"

feel free to ignore this post

How to make characters that start a story off dead feel real.

Name them- this is the bare minimum

Happy memories- what did this person mean to those they had relationships with? These little details contextualize your living characters and who they are as people.

Identity- who was this person outside of these relationships?

Agency- give them a last action related, but more personal simply dying. For example, taking a bullet, giving one last piece of advise, leaving a scar on their killer's face, telling a joke, or even just figuring out a plot to kill them and doing something about.

In conclusion, characters who start a story off dead should mean something besides making a reader's feel sympathy for another character. Death is a big deal, and neglecting this reality can mess with a reader's suspension of disbelief, even for characters the reader will never truly meet. Having bits and pieces of a dead character feels more real because it mimics that experience of getting to know a person through their family and friends or reading a diary of a person long dead.

worst news ever