Girls are amazing. Being friends with girls is equally amazing.
The Tatler, England, April 22, 1903
I really like the fact that Hordak’s and Entrapta’s friendship can be read as invisible disability and visible disability solidarity.
Entrapta and Hordak, She-Ra 3x02
Hi, are there any transcripts or play through videoes for lovestruckvoltage games? The hearts are bleeding me absolutely dry.
So today I thought I’d help out myself and anyone else who’s writing something where family plays a central role, seeing as a lot of people write about families but I barely see any posts about it!
Families are really fun to read about (imo), but often hard to write, as each family has a different dynamic that you really need to get a hold of. It’s easy to get discouraged because sometimes your fictional family might feel like strangers when they interact with each other. So without further ado, here are some questions and prompts to help you get to know your characters’ families.
Questions
Who is in this family? Are they all important characters?
How big of a role does this family play in the story? The theme of family in general?
Who looks the most like who? What general physical features do they all share?
Who is closest with each other? Who feels more distant?
What is a tradition this family has?
What holidays does this family celebrate? What religion do they practice?
What does this family always fight about?
Are all the relationships in this family healthy? If not, what makes them toxic?
Who is in charge or seems to have the most authority?
Is there a social hierarchy within the family? Who generally seems the coolest to the others?
Does this family travel a lot together? Where do they go?
What was/were the older generation(s) like before the younger generation(s) were born?
Has anyone in this family died? How did this impact the others?
Do members of the family have different politics? How does this affect the family’s relationship?
How much do your characters value their family?
What movies does this family watch on movie nights? What movies do they refuse to watch together?
What role does extended family play in this family’s life? (Ignore if the family you’re writing about is an extended family.)
Who argues the most?
What personality traits does the family share?
What makes this family unique?
What did/does the younger generation do for fun as little kids?
If this family had a vacation home, where would it be?
Who looks up to who?
Prompts
Write a conversation at the family’s dinner table.
What was the most disastrous family reunion/outing? Write it.
Try making a character web (shown in this post) for the family.
How does the rest of the family behave when one member graduates?
Write the script for everyone’s favorite old home video.
Draw a family tree. See how many generations you can go back.
Write each family member’s favorite family memory.
Describe how a family road would trip play out.
This family becomes the family fighting in Walmart. Describe how this happened.
The family is known for their top-notch annual ________ party. Write one such party.
Have a character from the family give your reader a “tour” of the family home.
Who got drunk at the last reunion? What ensued?
A character from the family is going through their favorite family photos. What are they? Why do they like them? What is the story behind them?
Imagine that this family has one huge family scandal in its history. What was it? How did people react when they found out?
A character has been hiding a secret for years, and their family finds out.
Listen to me. Listen very carefully:
They are trying to wear you out, and they own most major social media now, along with many major media outlets. The disinformation machine is cranking along. You are going to have to slow the fuck down and read things before you help them wear out other people, too.
So you just saw a post about a real scary bill, hunh? Republicans want to make it a capital offense to pet dogs and repeal The Sky Is Blue Act of 1793, declaring the new official color of the sky to be squant? Damn, that sounds scary.
Let's go look up this fictitious "Make The Sky Squant Again Act" on GovTracker* & on the official legislative tracker on congress.gov!
Well, let's see... GovTracker estimates it has a 1% chance of even getting out of committee and a 0% chance of being enacted, while congress.gov says this bill has 2 cosponsors who have been in the House and combined total of less than a month. The bill doesn't have any actual text, and it was referred to 5 different committees.
That fictitious bill and a hundred others like it are quite literally not worth your time, and more than that, continuing to wring your hands about it and tell other people about the scary scary squant sky bill only does their work for them. It scares people, it makes them spend time and energy on it, and it wears them out. It is a legislative Gish Gallop, meant to throw so many things at people that we can't keep up.
Even calling or messaging your Rep in this case means their staffer has to waste time responding to you and letting you know that Representative Buttzonheads definitely won't support making petting dogs a capital offense, a thing that will never, ever happen regardless.
Staying engaged in this environment is going to require protecting your heart and protecting your energy, yes, but also protecting the energy of others. This is why WWII propaganda posters also included ones taking people to task for spreading panicky rumors and undermining morale.
Do you know why most observant Jews don't eat chicken and dairy together, even though the ban is on red meat and dairy together bc you're not supposed to cook the calf in the milk of its mother?** It's not because we think that chicken might secretly lactate or Just Because. It's because the rabbis decided that if I'm sitting out in public and eating turkey and cheese together, someone might glance at the turkey and mistake it for red meat and think, "oh, well, I know that Spider is a good Jew, there must have been a change, or maybe I can just justify it to myself that if Spider does it, it must be permissible to bend the rules just that much." And I would then be accidentally leading my fellow Jew astray. We are responsible for being even more careful for the sake of others than we are for ourselves.
It's the same principle here. We need to really be careful about the information we are spreading and check things past reading a news site. Is it true? Is it relevant? Is it meaningful? Is the news site one I recognize? Can I find meaningful independent corroboration on another site, which is to say, if I find an article about it on a second site, is it just quoting or rephrasing this site?
Yeah, that is a lot. But that's how we keep them from using us to lead our fellows astray.
*GovTracker is an independent site. They explain their methodology in their About section.
**I cannot say enough how I am not at this time interested in going on a Jewish Side Quest About Dietary Laws on this post. Usually, I love it, but hold off this time, please, y'all. Let's stay on target this once.
I love the lettering on this. I love the flow and placement. The use of color. The character illustrations. It’s amazing how we tell something can affect a story. I also want to add it’s thanks to online interactions that a lot of web comics are going with a scrolling vertical kind of layout in mind. I wonder how someone would try to adapt this ina more traditional horizontal graphic novel sort of way.
“Tell me about the Spear of Selene.”
(via rfrostine)
this is the money dog, repost in the next 24 hours and money will come your way!!
22/Bisexual/ Autistic/ ADD/ Dyspraxia/Dysgraphic/ She and her pronouns/ Pagan/intersectional feminist
223 posts