Every 21st century piece of writing advice: Make us CARE about the character from page 1! Make us empathize with them! Make them interesting and different but still relatable and likable!
Every piece of classic literature: Hi. It’s me. The bland everyman whose only purpose is to tell you this story. I have no actual personality. Here’s the story of the time I encountered the worst people I ever met in my life. But first, ten pages of description about the place in which I met them.
Modern writing advice: Yes your protagonist should have flaws but ultimately we should root for them and like them from the beginning :)
Charles Dickens: Here is the worst ugliest rudest meanest nastiest bitch you’ve ever met in your life.
Modern writing advice: Make sure your POV character goes through a significant arc! Make sure they are changed by the narrative! Make sure they learn a lesson!
Narrators of every book of the 19th century: the lesson I learned is these people fucking suck, sayonara you freaks
Modern writing advice: It’s all about the character overcoming obstacles and learning! They learn their lesson so they can fix their mistakes and make good choices in the future! It’s a character arc! It’s called growth! Readers love it!
Everyone from ancient times through the 19th century: would you like to watch a Guy fuck up twenty times in a row
why aren’t there more mysteries that take place in nursing homes & retirement communities. i want to watch a group of deranged retirees-cum-amateur-detectives combine their powers of:
decades of life experience
boredom-fueled busybody shamelessness
access to the most gossipy next-door-neighbors in existence
“I am too old to be arrested and/or give a shit” attitude
and solve crimes. this should be an enormous subgenre.
flattered that my tags passed peer review:
#their sidekick/Watson/pet hacker is a 15 year old grandkid who hangs out with gram gram on the weekends. her only power is that she has above average search engine skills and flexible knees–which is completely sufficient to round out the group’s skill set.
#they involve her in heist style operations. on the rare occasion she gets caught housebreaking she explains her grandma locked herself out of the condo and asked for help getting in. then this sweet slightly addled old lady shows up and explains she got the address mixed up, it’s so confusing when you’re old & all the houses look alike and oh she’s so sorry to have caused so much trouble!……and meanwhile the teenager is rolling her eyes bc she’s aware gram gram was a highly successful career criminal & con artist for 50 years.
ANYway gimme a 80+-year-old con-artist-turned-amateur-sleuth who loves getting older because people are less suspicious of little old ladies (#this all takes place in florida naturally)
because of the many, many comments, i have now read all of the Thursday Murder Club books. I am pleased to report they are DELIGHTFUL.
if you like charming/stubborn old ladies and grumpy/shy old men who solve (and commit) crimes for fun–here you go!
(this series is also fun and poignant and contains senior citizens embracing modern values & the changing world & and basically living their best lives at 70/80+. and it’s great.)
Doggo Majima and Kazuma Kiryu plushies are coming!
If you want to be notified once they’re available, please give me your email HERE
I’m planning to launch some plushies very soon and this is the second sample I got from my supplier! I still need to fix some details but they are almost done ❤
·Size is 25 cm so they are BIG and huggable!
·Magnet on their hands to hold Majima’s knife, Nugget and a micro
·Yakuza plushies will be available as a crowdfunding on a later date!
I’m loving this new trend of people going to zoos and participating in animal enrichment. We use to observe large exotic animals for our entertainment, but the fact is that we are now trying to make ourselves equally as entertaining for them. It’s interactive, completely parpicipatory and I would argue that eventually someone’s gonna come up with something new enough that it expland ethologists understanding about how some animals think, problem solve, communicate and feel and I think its fantastic.
Human: play?
Aquatic creature from an entirely different branch of the animal tree: play!
My dad regularly sings to my mom about how much he loves her while standing exactly in the way of whatever she’s trying to do
My parents didn’t marry until I was 4 and they regularly forget that they’re spouses. They generally refer to themselves as partners
My mom proposed to my dad by yelling at him from a room away that her taxes were fucked and they had to get married to which my father replied “this is how I always dreamed you’d ask me!” and pretending to swoon
My dad appears as an actor in the movie Swoon, supposedly an important piece of queer cinema
My parents were both punks in their youth
When I came home for thanksgiving with a mohawk, unannounced, my mom started crying because I looked “so handsome” and “just like your dad” and kept petting my head
My dad only says “that’s my boy” to me when I say something gay about men
My mom and dad have the same taste in women but opposite taste in men
One time we were watching a movie set in Chicago and my mom turned to my dad, and in the most sentimental mom voice, said “Chicago honey! We haven’t been there since the anarchist convention!”
My dad worked on California’s weed legalization bill
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