I literally only have one rule in my writing and it is this:
No matter what I put my characters through, they make it. They get to make it to the end of the story and have everything work out and be ok.
Because that’s the story I need. So it’s the kind I write.
If you want a piece of writing advice: write a story that is what you needed to hear at whatever age your target demographic is. I can guarantee you there’ll be someone out there who needs to hear it as much as you did. And maybe you’ll help them the same way someone else’s story did for you.
For some reason, this hit home and I never realized it that I did this for my stories too
It’s so significant too that this narrative was collected by Zora Neale Hurston, one of the greatest authors and anthropologists of her time. She was shunned by the “gatekeepers” of both of these professions, largely because of her Blackness, her womanhood, and her uncompromising commitment to honoring and showcasing both in her works. She died penniless and alone in a state-run institution in 1960. All of her works had gone out of publication by then. It took more than a decade before she was rediscovered. A young author by the name of Alice Walker had come across her work and was deeply inspired by it. “In 1973, after an exhaustive search, Walker came across Hurston’s unmarked grave in Ft. Pierce, Fla. She purchased a headstone for Hurston’s tomb and had it inscribed “A Genius of the South.“”
It is through Zora Neale Hurston’s pioneering sacrifice, and the acceptance of that inheritance by Alice Walker that we have found this missing piece of our history. Without the courageous and unfailing work of Black women, we wouldn’t have Cudjo Lewis’s story. We are slowly regaining a narrative that’s been hidden from us, one that continues to be lied about. Trust Black women to lead the way.
I’ve just seen the most incredibly wrong thing about Zevran on my dash and I need to say something.
Zevran was groomed from childhood to be a killer. He had no choice in the matter. Kill or be killed, that was his life.
Now I see where people would be coming from, saying he’s done so without remorse if they never bothered to get to know him, but here’s the thing. He takes an impossible mission to kill two Grey Wardens, who are famed warriors of great skill and are not to be trifled with. I say impossible because that’s what he wanted. He didn’t want to succeed. He wanted to die. Your character sparing him is a mercy he neither expected nor wanted when it was given.
If you go down his romance path, or even just get to know him well enough to get him to stay after Taliesen confronts you, you would know this. You would know he does this because he’s filled with a profound guilt after he allowed Taliesen to murder the woman he loved because he trusted the wrong man. He laughed and spit on her corpse and when he found out he was wrong, he became suicidal. That is not the reaction of a person who lacks remorse.
And frankly, with this in mind, his humor is no longer the trait of a callous person. It’s the defense mechanism of a person so broken by what his past made him that he has literally zero faith in himself as a person. He can’t see himself as a good person, he hates himself for what he did. He’s aloof in his interactions with the Warden because he doesn’t think they would believe him.
LIke at the end of the day, Zevran did shitty things, but those things tore him apart. He’s not happy with himself and it takes the literal entire game, which spans the course of a year, to believe himself worthy of love or respect.
And that’s it, really.
Zevran was as much a slave as Fenris ever was.
He was literally bought. For coin. He tells you how much. Then he was tortured, broken, and trained to be what the Crows wanted him to be. There were eighteen recruits bought by the Crows the same year as Zevran. Two survived. Two. One of those other survivors is Taliesin, aka the closest thing Zev has to a friend if the warden doesn’t befriend him, aka the guy he has to decide to kill if he wants to stay with you.
When Zevran wanted to leave the Crows, they tried to kill him.
And it makes me so mad because the ONLY reason people don’t realize this is because Zevran downplays this and always insists that his situation could have been worse. He was one of two kids who survived horrific torture and he thinks that makes him lucky, because he survived. He got bought for three sovereigns by a criminal organization and he thinks that makes him lucky, because other kids who were in a similar position ended up suffering even worse fates.
What doubly pisses me off about it, though, is that Zevran’s natural personality – the one that starts to sneak through when he’s not around the Crows any more – is fantastic.
Like, okay. This is Zevran. Talking to the Dog:
Zevran: I noticed some dog drool in my pack this morning.
Dog: (Happy bark!)
Zevran: Not that I like to make accusations. And I even appreciate the artistry behind a good burgle when I see it, to tell the truth. But leaving all that drool as evidence? Sloppy.
Dog: (Happy bark!)
Zevran: I’ll take that as an apology.
Dog: (Happy bark!)
Zevran: I’m so glad you’re pleased. It really is quite something to find such enthusiasm in one’s companions.
Dog: (Ecstatic bark!)
Zevran: I agree. Go, team. Hurrah.
I just… he is like that. He makes jokes and pleasant conversation and waggles his eyebrows and if left to his own devices and not asked to kill people, he is ridiculously sweet.
Wynne tries on numerous occasions to get him to talk about feeling guilty over his past, and he rebuffs her by commenting on her bosom… but to the Warden, he actually will open up, and admit that he feels so guilty he tried to commit suicide.
The truth is, Zev wants very desperately to get away from the Crows. He just doesn’t know what he’ll do with himself when that happens, necessarily, whether or not he can do something other than what he’s been trained for, and if he can actually process his guilt over his past without wanting to die. Like a lot of people stuck between becoming a total monster to survive or being killed over matters of conscience, he’s taken a third option: lying.
It’s probably worth noting that Zevran is one of the few characters whose dialogue can completely fail to reflect his approval losses. He can cheerfully converse with the warden while you ding yourself down and down and you’d never know if you didn’t have the counter telling you so. Because he is wary of you.
You literally have his life in your hands. He’s an escaped slave who’s been taught his only value is as a killing tool, and his life literally rides on how useful you find him.
So then if, on paper, his primary use to you is as a Person Who Kills Stuff, why would he ever confess to having reservations about killing within earshot of a warden he doesn’t completely trust?
concept: instead of hedwig, Harry goes into the pet store and this little snake in the back of the store talks to him, obviously gets his attention more than the other animals, and harry feels sorry for it so he takes it home. Then the snake helps Harry throughout his years at hogwarts as harry carries it wrapped around his hand all like “pssssst, haaarryyy, the dark lord isss coming sss” or just petty shit like “haaaarrryy, now is the time, assskkk out cho chaaannngg”
The snake getting really agitated in second year and Harry like ‘Aw, what’s wrong little friend?’
And snake’s like ‘Nah don’t worry it’s cool, it’s just that big fuck-off snake in the pipes that keeps making you think you’re hearing things—it’s like, ten thousand foot long, and I’m a corn snake, so you know. Bit intimidating.’
Third year he eats Scabbers and saves them all a lot of time
What’s your most unpopular video game opinion? Go!
Videogame fanatics want videogames to be considered art but don’t want their precious medium to go through many scopes of social criticism like most forms of art.
No, seriously, look around you next time you’re in a building and count the number of things that are shiny even thiugh they do not need to be shiny.
Humans are naturally attracted to any thing that shines, shimmers or glitters— I mean for fucks sake, we invented glitter. There are people right now who work in glitter factories and so whose sole job is to make shiny things for people to put nonshiny things so as to make them shiny.
We paint our nails and faces with glittery varnishes and shimmery powders. We use gloss on our lips to make them shinier. We shine our shoes to make ourselves look smart. We have been known to start fucking wars over who owns the bits of land with the shiny rocks in. Genocides have been commited and kingdoms toppled because one group had a lot of shiny metals and the other group wanted those shiny metals.
Why, then, do we all like shiny things so much?
Well, scientists now think that it’s probably because we evolved in a desert. If you’re living in a desert, then you’re going to need to be constantly be on the lookout for water, and water shines in the sun. So the best way to survive in a desert environment is to just chase after everything that shines because it might be water.
So now imagine how weird this would all be to a species who didn’t evolve in a desert.
Imagine aliens just being baffled by the human habit of wearing certain rocks— or even just pieces of glass or plastic cut to look like those rocks— just because we like the way they catch the light. Imagine aliens who come from worlds where there are a lot of shiny rocks bringing them back for their human friends to see and watching, puzzled, as said human friends start wearing the rocks around their necks, wrists, fingers or even (weirdly) stuck through special holes they make in their ears.
“Thank you so much! These are beautiful!”
“I literally just scooped up some of the gravel from the spaceport— how are you so amazed?”
Imagine caves on alien planets full of crystals and gems becoming huge tourist attractions for humans, and the aliens not understanding why because, on their planet, pretty much the only people who go to the caves are school groups and geologists. The caves are boring— why do the humans keep taking photos of a load of old rocks?
We complain that Magpies are obsessed with shiny things and keep stealing our shiny things but that just shows how crazy we are about protecting our shiny things
Also imagine that some alien species that really likes, I dunno, textures or really subtle striations or something, going apeshit over our gravel and shit
i’m pretty sure “cats and humans can never have a bond as strong as a dog and a human” is just code for “i’ve never even tried to treat a cat correctly in my life”
Also dogs are man-made to be loving towards us. We didn’t selectively breed cats the same as we did dogs. I’m 100% a dog person but with them it’s more of, “this tool that I use is also very cute and I’ve removed 96% of its ability to not love me” whereas with cats it’s more, “Ah yes, this is my roommate Craig. He’s very nice to me unless I ignore his wants and treat him like an asshole.”
Cats are the only animal that domesticated itself. The bond between cats and humans are on the cats’ terms, not ours.
BLESS THIS POST
Cats also domesticated themselves multiple times, both in Egypt and in China. They legit want to be friends.
Captain-Radioactive-Mentality 