Bonus:

By: 水梨★学トラ3/エ31

“If you get bored, come out to the hallway and wave to the camera for me. You won’t see me, but I’ll wave to you too. Remember that you’re never alone.”

The less you say, the more your words will matter.

Rae Carson, The King’s Guard

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(via books-n-quotes)

good artist tips

there’s always gonna be someone better than you. try to work less on comparing yourself to their work and instead learning from them and turning envy into a personal challenge for your own stuff. i know its hard, trust me.

the best way to get better at art is to practice. there is no special trick to improving, no secret method. practice makes perfect is a tired old saying that im sure you dont want to hear but unfortunately, its true.

draw as much as you are able to. i wont say draw every day!!! because i know that there are folks that dont have this sort of luxury, whether it be because of physical or mental restrictions, or simply because they dont have time. draw whenever you can and have the strength to. try not to be too upset if you miss a day or a week or even months. shit happens, do the best you are able to.

if you get bored or stuck, try another way. change mediums if you can, flip the canvas, do something weird that you wouldnt normally do. sometimes this is the best way to un-stick yourself from art block.

dont be afraid to ask for help. this is so important! its ok to ask for assistance from other artists you admire (given that they have time to give pointers.) even if asking for help is straight up asking for a redline of your work, its ok to ask for it. improvement doesnt come without outside assistance, more often than not.

references are 100% a legitimate resource. i’m not really sure where the idea came from that real artists dont use references, but its not true. every renaissance painter used references in the form of in-house models. disney artists use references of animals and people to correctly model and then correctly exaggerate their designs. you cant learn to draw the world around you without actually studying it. use references, even if its just google searching.

your art is not an island. you will pick up styles from other people like tape picks up pet hair. its inevitable, and its not something that should be seen as a negative. artists inspire other artists. use your discretion, and study what you like about another artist’s work. every artist’s style is a mashup of a hundred other artists. its ok, experiment.

youre not going to make masterpieces all the time. youre gonna suck more often than not. but youre putting effort into something you enjoy and in the process you are getting better, slowly but surely. you arent going to see your stuff improve overnight, be patient.

please be kind to yourself. you are making a unique form of artistic expression, regardless whether you see it that way or not. youre doing fine, please keep going and pat yourself on the back for getting this far.

🐈 💛💚 🐈

Fake happiness is the worst kind of sadness.

words by dominic riccitello (via wordsbydominic)

Do you have any tips on writing really great mutual pining? It's a pretty big part of my next fic but I can't seem to get the emotions across in my writing ;-;

Plotting Great Romance

While “pining” implies an almost lack of romance, I still think the same goals of writing a great romance apply. You develop each of the two characters separately, and you develop a basic story for each of them separately, and then you see what happens when you bring them together. Think of it like clapping - each hand is capable of accomplishing a lot on its own, but when you slap your hands together, it creates a unique sound that one hand cannot produce on its own.

You could plot out the scenes/tension/suspense between them before developing each individual character, but I think it can be more challenging that way. So I would try to imagine the backstory, the characteristics, the wants, the needs, the goals, the motivations, the quirks, the interests…figure out who each of these characters is first.

Once you have that, you can start to think about how each character affects the other. What new characteristics do each bring out in the other? Are they good or bad? What ways do they challenge each other? What impact does each one have in the other’s life? Don’t think in terms of romance at this point. Just imagine your characters together, and imagine them separately. What’s the difference? What aspects of their personality do they suppress around the other and which ones do they set free?

Then, consider what qualities they each admire in the other. Why does each of them like being around the other? And counterpoint - what things frustrate them about the other?

When it comes to pining…

…make the reasons behind their unrequited romance good. A reader can quickly get frustrated by two characters who are simply too shy to admit their true feelings, or too naive to recognize chemistry and affection that is obviously mutual.  This is easier than you think. Imagine what obstacles a relationship between them might have, and then have your character foresee this obstacle as too troublesome to deal with.

For example, in a Romeo/Juliet type storyline, two characters might pine for the other but fail to act on their feelings due to family expectations. An artist might never pursue art because their parents expect them to be a doctor, just like a person may not pursue another romantically because their parents wouldn’t approve. 

Geography might be another potential obstacle. Two characters that meet unexpectedly while on vacation may hit it off, but knowing they each live on separate coastlines, they anticipate a stressful long-distance relationship and hold back on confessing feelings. 

An existing relationship is a big one - a character might not feel fully committed to their current partner, but their partner has never treated them poorly and for all intents and purpose, they seem perfect for each other. So they hold back feelings for another person because they don’t want to hurt the person they’re currently with, who they do still care about deeply. Their life might also be comfortable with this person, or even well established, with a nice home and kids, and not wanting to hurt your children with a divorce is a big reason someone might hold back on feelings for someone else. 

Basically, you need to consider what is stopping each character from confessing their feelings. Fear of rejection is implied - there needs to be more than that in order to carry mutual pining for an entire novel. There need to be other obstacles, and they need to be ones that your characters can predict, and ones they care about. 

Let me put it much more simply. Instead of each character asking, “What if they don’t love me back?” have them ask, “What if they do love me back?” And consider what the answer to that question is. Once these feelings are requited, what are the consequences?  What is each character afraid of? 

So I think that would be my biggest suggestion - make their hesitations be about more than rejection. And when it comes to describing their emotions, don’t try too hard. Tell your story, and see what emotions naturally unfold. We convey emotion by putting ourselves into the shoes of our characters and imagining how it might make us feel. I think once you have the story well plotted and the characters well developed, it’ll become easier to describe what each of them is feeling. 

Good luck!

-Rebekah

My personal prerelease predictions are as follows:

Saihara Shuuichi is evil and the first chapter’s killer. Kaede is going to lie for him and defend him and she nearly fucks everyone over because of it. His victim is Amami Rantarou because he learned too much about him and realized his true intentions. If he isn’t the first chapter’s killer, he’s the traitor/mastermind and he shouldn’t be trusted. Something is totally up with this guy, and not in a good way. To further elaborate on this, look at Amami and Shuuichi’s designs alone. By themselves, Shuuichi appears to be the “evil” one, and it is only because of Amami’s resemblance to Komaeda that people think Amami will be crazy. The game won’t go in the same direction again with a crazed hope fanatic and a detective as our faithful partner. The ship is being set up to be broken.

Everyone is blackened and had their memories erased. They were gathered from all over the country by the government because they escaped their own killing games by being the culprits. They killed someone, got away with the murder, and everyone else in their games was executed for their escape. The government has locked them up together but Monokuma fucks things up and takes over. 

Nobody but Amami has a talent and everyone was given artificial memories to believe they had a talent. These talents are their past childhood dreams that were somehow broken, either with Iruma being unable to invent enough to be the SHSL Inventor, Kaito never becoming a real astronaut, Ryoma having his tennis career broken because of his crimes, etc. It isn’t that they have no talent at all, but that they never became the best at what they did. 

The vine/spiderweb execution is Korekiyo Shinguuji’s execution. The flamethrower bit is not part of it. It will be in a setting representing hell and his crime will have something to do with selfishness and seeing “beauty in hell”. His crime will have something to do with Gonta or Kirumi (but I sway towards Gonta). 

The boo'ing execution is Kokichi Ouma’s execution. The people are a crowd overthrowing their dictator. (Could also be Himiko’s, but I think she’ll be a survivor.) 

Angie Yonaga will kill Tsumugi and use her artistic talents to “fake” a cosplay on her corpse. Most people will assume that Tsumugi put on the cosplay herself, but Angie painted it onto her to confuse everyone.

Amami Rantarou is the first victim. As much as I hate to say this since I love Amami, it seems fairly likely. He’s the SHSL Analyst.

Ryoma Hoshi is a victim. I suppose he’ll have a tragic backstory as to why he had to kill those mafia members, and then he’ll show up dead. 

Survivor Predictions: Kaede, Gonta, Kaito, Iruma, Himiko

oh Sor, looks like it’ll be a tough road ahead ❤️

Chibi bidders are so cute 😍