reblog if you’re okay with people writing fanfics of your fanfics and/or fanfics inspired by your fanfics
HEY!!!!! HEY!!! HEY!!! HEY!!! YEAH, YOU!!!!
DO YOU STILL REMEMBER WHY YOU STARTED??? DO YOU STILL REMEMBER THAT DAY WHEN YOU GOT A LITTLE CLOSER TO YOUR DREAM??? TO YOUR GOALS??? DO YOU???
WELL, LET ME REMIND YOU, GET BACK TO YOUR WORK AND START PURSUING YOUR GOALS!!! 🚀🔥
YOU ARE ACHIEVING ALL YOUR GOALS FOR SURE! WINNING IS IN YOUR FATE, REMEMBER THAT!!! 🏆✨
GOD BLESS!!!!! 🙏
(We get lost sometimes, but keep walking the path that will lead you to a better place. Resting is fine, but keep moving!)
-Y.N. / Dark Asher
Writing Prompt #8
“What is your problem?!”
“You! You’re my problem! Why can’t you understand that?”
hello! i'm trying to write a manipulative/cunning character that uses his charm to get what he wants, but i'm unsure how to go about it without being too overt. he basically acts all polite and uses peoples' inherent biases (like how they are more likely to listen to or trust someone who's conventionally attractive)
i'm also struggling to come up with instances where he'd use those skills. surely he can't just walk up to somebody and say something out of nowhere haha
thank you for your time!
That’s such a fun character to write! For subtle manipulation, focus on how he frames things—he never demands, just suggests. He compliments before slipping in a request, or pretends to confide in someone to earn their trust.
Manipulation has three core tactics:
Mirroring – He subtly copies people's tone, body language, or opinions to build fast rapport. People feel more at ease when they see themselves in someone else.
Framing choices – He never gives direct orders. Instead, he offers two options—both benefiting him—but makes one seem like the “better” or more moral choice.
Playing the victim or the hero – Depending on what the situation calls for, he knows when to act vulnerable to gain sympathy, or when to seem competent and generous to earn loyalty.
As for scenes: think small but calculated moments—like offering help so he can later call in a favor, or using flattery to get into private conversations. His charm should feel effortless, like everything he does just naturally benefits him. Let people want to say yes to him, because why wouldn't they? He'd never do anything wrong!
Use foreshadowing and drop hints through your scenes too, like:
He helps a powerful person in public (small act, big praise), later using that goodwill to get access somewhere.
He praises someone’s intelligence just before suggesting a risky plan—making them feel clever for agreeing.
He eavesdrops, then later "guesses" something personal about someone to seem insightful and trustworthy.
Basically, his charm is a tool, not a mask—it’s always used with purpose.
One character that comes to mind for inspo is Tom Riddle. I wrote a Tom Riddle fanfic series for like 2 years and crafting scenes where everyone thinks he's perfect while internally he's looking down on all of them was so so fun! Some personal tips from that experience:
Have someone who knows the truth! The one person who doesn't fall for his charm no matter what he tries, make his eye twitch and smile strain as he tries to maintain the farce of perfection whenever this person calls him out in public.
Internal monologue. It's important to make sure your readers get that this guy doesn't actually like the random girl he flirted with to get access to the professor's records. Or that the group of friends that constantly swarm him are really just nuisances in his eyes.
Make things easy, but not too easy. Have people who easily fall for the physical charm, and others whose trust he gains by making them let their guard down. The sceptic trusts him because he's apparently part of the same tiny dog club as them, the girl who falls for no one feels her heart flutter by how 'real and kind' he was during the moment they 'accidentally' met outside school.
I hope this helps!
characters going “we were lovers once”: eh, it’s okay i guess. it’s nice enough
characters going “we were friends once”: absolutely devastating. one hit knockout i’m gone
"it's all in your head" correct! unfortunately I am also in there
Hey OP, by any chance can you give us some sources to look at?
a quick psa to anyone recently getting into greek mythology and is a victim of tumblr and/or tiktok misconceptions:
-there is no shame in being introduced to mytholgy from something like percy jackson, epic the musical or anything like that, but keep in mind that actual myths are going to be VERY different from modern retellings
-the myth of medusa you probably know (her being a victim of poseidon and being cursed by athena) isn't 100% accurate to GREEK mythology (look up ovid)
-there is no version of persephone's abduction in which persephone willingly stays with hades, that's a tumblr invention (look up homeric hymn to demeter)
-as much as i would like it, no, cerberus' name does not mean "spot" (probably a misunderstanding from this wikipedia article)
-zeus isn't the only god who does terrible things to women, your fav male god probably has done the same
-on that note, your fav greek hero has probably done some heinous shit as well
-gods are more complicated than simply being "god of [insert thing]", many titles overlap between gods and some may even change depending on where they were worshipped
-also, apollo and artemis being the gods of the sun and the moon isn't 100% accurate, their main aspects as deities originally were music and the hunt
-titans and gods aren't two wholly different concepts, titan is just the word used to decribe the generation of gods before the olympians
-hector isn't the villain some people make him out to be
-hephaestus WAS married to aphrodite. they divorced. yes, divorce was a thing in ancient greece. hephaestus' wife is aglaia
-ancient greek society didn't have the same concepts of sexuality that we have now, it's incorrect to describe virgin goddesses like artemis and athena as lesbians, BUT it's also not wholly accurate to describe them as aromantic/asexual, it's more complex than that
-you can never fully understand certain myths if you don't understand the societal context in which they were told
-myths have lots and lots of retellings, there isn't one singular "canon", but we can try to distinguish between older and newer versions and bewteen greek and roman versions
-most of what you know about sparta is probably incorrect
-reading/waching retellings is not a substitute to reading the original myths, read the iliad! read the odyssey! i know they may seem intimidating, but they're much more entertaining than you may think
greek mythology is so complex and interesting, don't go into it with preconcieved notions! try to be open to learn!
I have two, but my retellings are like hadestown in which they use Greek mythology as a mode of storytelling to explore themes of ptsd and trauma and how that affects individuals (and those they love) and for the other themes of identity and love and trying to figure out who you are in a world that tries to tell you who you are.
I’m very excited to finish them :>
in my opinion, many modern greek retellings/stories inspired by greek mythology don't fail because they're inaccurate. they fail because they have nothing new to say.
i don't mind changes to the original myths, as long as they make sense and they have a narrative purpose! i understand that making changes is sometimes necessary to convey a certain narrative, especially to modern audiences.
is epic the musical mythologically accurate? hell no! but the changes serve to tell a specific story and to convey a certain message. also, epic the musical is self aware about its "inaccuracies". and the music just bangs.
is hadestown accurate? no! does it make the change that I always dread, removing the kidnapping from the hades/persephone myth? yeah. but hadestown is barely about them, and it uses greek mythology as a "narrative frame" to tell a certain story. it has a point. it has a message.
what are stories like lore olympus trying to say? what is the messagge of the hundredth persephone/hades retelling? what are we supposed to take from them? "don't listen to your mother she's a bitch"? "mothers are irrational and you should forsake her for a man"? very feminist.
why are we still doing the medusa "feminist" retellings? it's BEEN done. too many times. and they're ALL the same. it's a worse crime than being bad: they are boring.
i'm tired of retellings that are just "what if this very famous story was THE OPPOSITE and the protagonist was an ASSHOLE the whole time and the villain was MISUNDERSTOOD and the real VICTIM" okay but why. why would that be the case. what's the point of the story you want to tell. or do you just want to use shock value.
of course, i dislike retellings that are so different from the myth that they go AGAINST the spirit/message of the original, because in that case what's even the point of retelling the myth? just tell an original story. but i would take stabbed poseidon and capitalist hades any day over the same basic story of medusa being a girlboss or demeter being bad because of... reasons?
tl;dr: stop being unoriginal and tell a good story. or at least an entertaining one. i beg you
Writing Tips
Punctuating Dialogue
✧
➸ “This is a sentence.”
➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.
➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”
➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”
➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”
➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”
➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.
“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.
“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”
➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”
➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”
However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can also be “outside”!
➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.
If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)
➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations dashes typically express—“
“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.
➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.
➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”
➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.
“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”
➸ “If it’s the same speaker but different paragraph, keep the closing quotation off.
“This shows it’s the same character continuing to speak.”
Writing Prompt #5
A screams, clutching the chair.
“Why are you screaming?!” B shouts as they run into the room.
A stares at the floor with a horrified expression.
“I dropped it.”
fanfic writers are so fucking awesome man. they write novel length fics that are sometimes even better than some published bestselling books written by professional writers. like fanfic writers are professional writers to me and they gift us their masterpieces for free. they give us something we can look forward to after a long day. something from which we can seek comfort when life is hard. something that can be our own little getaway. in a world of capitalism, despite everything, they give us all of these for free. like holy fuck. shout out to every fanfic writer. I wish all fanfic writers a very ‘I love you with all my heart and soul. I thank you from the bottom of my heart’
Hello! Welcome to my silly little corner of the internet.
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