The You That Was And The You That Is Walk Into A Bar

i’m such a “i want your attention” but “won’t bother you” kinda person

happy “the great gatsby is now in the public domain” day to all who celebrate

- Stella and Riven are kidnaped by some dumb ass-

Musa yelling: Are you the one who have them?

Dumbass: I have them. Try anything and they get it!

Brandon: Please Don’t kill! I beg of you!

Dumbass: I wont do anything as long as I get what I want!

Musa:We aren’t talking to you! Guys Don’t kill him!

Brandon: Yeah he seems nice!

Dumbass*confused as fuck*:W-what?

In the town where I grew up, there was a large statue in one of the parks, of a famous historical white colonizer. I'm not going to say who specifically, suffice it to say that it was someone who wasn't worth memorializing for their deeds. And as you can imagine, this statue was a frequent target of vandalism, with paint or toilet paper or eggs on multiple occasions. Now, the local council was generally pretty lax when it came to repairing potholes or other public damage in the town, but every time, 24 hours after this particular statue was hit, the same person would always appear in a Hi-Vis vest, hat, mask and sunglasses, carrying a bucket of water, and wash it clean. They would do it as quickly as possible, but always made sure the face and the name carved at the bottom were generously scrubbed. This only encouraged people to do it again, and so it became a vicious cycle.

Within a year, the statue had sustained so much damage that it was unrecognizable and the lettering unreadable, so eventually the council came and took it down. Also apparently, the person in the Hi-Vis vest didn't even work for the council. They were supposedly just some 'good samaritan' who cleaned it, often before the council even discovered it needed cleaning, so they just let them do it and ignored the problem. They didn't bother putting the statue up again.

Much later, we found out that the anonymous 'samaritan' had been deliberately washing the statue with a bucket of saltwater, which had dramatically corroded it, causing irreversible accumulative damage far worse than spray paint ever would have done. It's even theorized that they were also often the one spray-painting it, just so that they had an excuse to come back after a day to wash it.

describe nyc in 3 words

new york city

!!! WARNING, EVERYONE !!!

IF YOU SEE THIS IN A YOUTUBE AD MUTE YOUR DEVICE AND SCROLL UNTIL YOU CAN’T SEE THE VIDEO SCREEN ANYMORE.

This is an ad about animal cruelty that has very loud screaming of dying animals. Also flashing, graphic pictures of said animals, like a dead chicken or a pig biting a wired fence.

It’s about thirty seconds, the screaming starts 10 seconds in and the ad isn’t skippable.

It can trigger panic attacks and cause your anxiety to skyrocket, and it’s just generally a very disturbing thing no one should see.

I’ve only seen a warning yet, haven’t stumbled across this before despite using YT a lot but for the love of God please be careful. Here is a link to that video but ONLY WATCH IT IF YOU KNOW YOU’RE NOT SENSITIVE TO THIS TYPE OF CONTENT. I’m merely giving out the link so you can report it and I wouldn’t advise any of you actually watch it.

Hello I love your writing I was wondering if you can do a piece on villain motivations and how to recognizeyour villains motives. Also what are some examples of bad motivations.

I was about to write 1) You create the villains, so it’s not so much ‘recognising’ as ‘you can create whatever you want it to be’. Then I remembered fanfiction, in which case recognising would apply - but recognising in that can vary so much depending on the text, as it will always depend on how you choose to interpret the source materials. 

So let’s just go onto villainous motivations. Note, I am using and understood ‘villain’ and ‘villainous’ to mean the antagonist of the story, rather than a superhero definition of the word.

A list of potential motivations, which can be mixed up, but I split them into different umbrellas:

To gain power or control (for whatever reason)

because they don’t want to feel powerless again

because they have strong opinions about what should happen to the world and need sufficient power to implement any change

 because contemporary career trajectories in western society feed us the idea that we always need more money and power so they think they’re just succeeding/doing what’s natural/normal

better to be the one in control than under someone else’s

being in control/powerful has perks

because they want sufficient power to protect themselves or others etc...

Revenge

What it says on the tin, but look deeper at the undercurrent emotions, desires and values beneath the surface...

Revenge because something unfair happened and it hurts

Revenge because they have a sense of entitlement

Revenge to gain back a sense of power/agency

Revenge as a means of justice

Revenge because they tried nice, and lost everything etc. etc....

Love

Can be combined with power or revenge, because they either want to protect, avenge, or get their own back on someone they love (villain because they go way over the line of what’s acceptable, as opposed to if say a protagonist had a heartbreak, and we would judge them if they started chopping limbs)

X thing that the hero needs means someone the villain cares about dies, or is wounded in some way, or has to sacrifice themselves

Not quite love, but tangentially lust - they want the protagonist/love interest and are willing to do whatever to get them

They want to impress someone and think this is the way to do it

They are working as an antagonist for a larger antagonist in order to protect someone or something.

Fear/Desperation

Again, this works as a driving undercurrent for a lot of the above but worth noting, but...

Fear that the protagonist is dangerous and the only way to prevent something terrible from happening is to kill or otherwise control them

Fear that something bad will happen if extreme action is not taken

Fear of being perceived as weak, because they know what happens to the weak/have been taught they’re never allowed to be weak.

Desire to be free/survival instinct

See, I have been told all my life that I have to do this and I won’t, I refuse, even if that means being a bad person. E.g, why be the chosen one just to die? That’s not fair. 

See, why someone might want to accumulate power. 

I just want to be free and people keep trying to lock me up. Leave me alone or die. 

You programmed me and I will destroy you for what you made me, how dare you.

Miscellaneous

This is just my job: I’m following orders

This is what my culture/species does and my morality is simply different to the protagonist’s, so for the purposes of the story I am the villain because it’s blue and orange morality to anything human’s consider acceptable

Ignorance

Bad motivations...

To me, the only ‘bad’ motivation is ‘just because’ or ‘because they’re evil’, but that’s a personal opinion because I think that’s a boring reduction of human behaviour. People don’t do stuff ‘because they’re evil’, there’s something else going on. Sadism is a form of control, if doing something makes you happy (even if not’s socially acceptable) then you’re more likely to do it.  Depending on your story, you are not necessarily go in depth into your villain’s backstory or motivations, in which case ‘just because’ can apply simply due to lack of story space. On a similar vein - ‘because they’re mentally ill’. 

The thing about motivations is that they’re often not good or bad. Your villain’s values may not be that different to your hero’s, but they present differently in a way that we know is not acceptable or healthy behaviour. It’s something twisted toxic, or too extreme. 

The more important question is ‘does this motivation match the character?’ Do they behave in a way that logically follows on from the motivation chosen? Is it logical for them to feel that way within the universe? 

Also, is it a sexist/racist/anything phobic depiction? That is not to say people within a minority cannot be the villain, but a) they shouldn’t be the only character of that minority in your text if they are at least at our current level of cultural representation and b) the minority character should probably not be doing the bad stuff just because they’re a minority. Which leads back to X character is inherently evil, inherently worse than anyone else! X minority types are just like that!

It’s character creation in the same way you would do for your hero or your protagonist. If you know what you need them to do, but not why, try asking yourself ‘okay, well, why would someone do XYZ?’

you know when you're drawing and you're like "oh yes this is good" but then you add colour and it's the worst thing you've ever seen

Joining a small fandom for the first time is like getting hit with a brick. How do people do it 😭😭