@disneynetwork public event: live action remakes
→ cinderella (2015)
Rainbow + Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Merlin Reincarnation AU
In which Arthur is contacted by an annoyingly good-looking loony called Merlin who keeps trying to convince him that he is the legendary King Arthur. Arthur would tell the idiot to leave him alone but he really is easy on the eyes…
cat: hey you gonna eat that?
human: uh, that’s a rat. They’ve been showing up ever since we started harvesting grain. We don’t eat them, they eat our food.
cat: free game then. Cool.
human: be my guest.
cat: hey is this spot free? It looks warm and I need a place to have my litter.
humans: this is my house. Feel free, I guess, just don’t get stepped on.
cat: hey can you watch my kittens for me? I need to hunt and I don’t want predators finding them.
human: holy shit these buggers are cute. Nothing will happen to them.
cat: I am going to climb on your lap now and you are going to love me.
human: I’m ok with this.
The Domestication of Humans
consider this:
maybe your hands don’t have to destroy everything they touch.
you are not your father,
even though his shame sits heavy within your rib cage,
even though his name is a shadow you can never
quite crawl out from under.
maybe,
(surely)
there are other ways to quell the storm beneath your fingertips.
(a cowboy with lightning in his lungs, a chop shop girl with thunder in her eyes.)
consider:
there are other colors besides red.
maybe you just never knew you could see them
until now.
white noise, red peril | h.m.
(via carry-the-sky)
(via carry-the-sky)
I'm writing in first person pov, When two characters have a conversation, it doesn't feel real to include lot of internal thoughts or explaining what's going on outside of the dialogue flow. When I talk to someone, I don't notice much of anything except the conversation. Is it just me? When I don't add extra details wrapping the dialogues, it looks like one big interview. I'm confused. How to balance this? Thanks!
The Stuff In Between The Dialogue.
You don’t usually need a lot going on outside the dialogue itself, but you’re right — dialogue often feels static or otherwise unnatural if you have a entire conversation with dialogue, a few tags, and nothing else.
But we never want to add extra words for the sake of just having words. Everything we write should contribute to the story in some form or another.
So how do we make dialogue feel more natural by adding useful words outside the dialogue?
First off, we have to remember a key point about dialogue: Dialogue needs to have emotion and intention. There should be something the characters want to get out of the conversation, whether that’s an external plot objective like ‘learn why the birds are dying’ or ‘get Liz to ask me to the dance’ or an internal, even subconscious, desire like ‘feel better after an argument’ or ‘convince myself I have friends.’ The more personal the goal and the more emotionally invested in it the character is, the more impact the dialogue will have when you include these concepts:
1. Setting and activity.
Giving your characters something to do or interact with while they talk is a fantastic way to both flesh out the scene in the reader’s mind and emphasize the character’s emotions.
An angry character might wash the dishes so hard they chip the side as they set a plate down. A frustrated character might pick apart a leaf as they walk through the woods. A nervous character might refold the same clothing over and over again. A happy character might balance along the length of a small wall (and then fall when their companion says something alarming.)
Keep in mind that it’s the portrayal of the emotions through the characters interaction with the setting that makes these non-dialogue segments feel like a natural part of the scene. What you’re essentially doing is binding the setting to the dialogue through emotion.
2. Internal monologue.
When we have everyday conversations, we tend to one of two things: focus on the person talking or think about when we’re going to say next. Characters in stories should not be doing these things very often because they should not be having everyday conversations very often. Characters should spend the majority of their dialogue time pursuing difficult to achieve external or internal goals.
They should be having the sort of conversations that force them to:
- Shift the way they’re talking.
- Re-evaluate what they want.
- Experience heavy emotions.
- Learn overwhelming information.
- Dive out of their comfort zone.
- Hide their own thoughts and emotions.
- (And an array of other challenging things.)
These kind of conversations force people to start thinking as they talk, either rationally to work through problems or through the sort of intense emotion that bubbles out or shuts the speaker down.
The end result of internal monologue should not be to recap anything being said, but to show a fuller picture of it — a fuller picture from our pov character’s perspective, anyway.
3. Expression and body language.
Not only should your point of view character experience emotion, so should the other characters present in the conversation. Unless these characters are skilled at hiding their feelings — which is worth describing all on its own — that emotion filters into their expression and body language.
Many writers tend to overdo the same few expressions and body movements in the rough draft stages (if I don’t watch it, my characters will nod their heads clean off), but it’s much better to pick and chose these strategically, to determine which expressions and body language contribute to the reader’s understand of the conversation and the characters involved, and leave the others out.
4. Physical emotional sensations.
Whenever you have high emotions within a scene, your characters will feel the physical manifestations of these emotions. These are not your bread and butter of anything though. They should be nicely spaced out and not too repetitive — if your pov character alternates between a feeling something in their stomach and their heart every other page of the story then they don’t have emotions, they just have indigestion and heart palpitations.
But physical sensations brought on by emotions should still exist, even in dialogue segments, so don’t forget about them entirely!
5. Exposition… or should we say, expositionot. (That’s not even a real pun, I’m sorry.)
What we don’t want to be doing is halting the progression of the dialogue to suddenly explain something that was mentioned within the dialogue itself.
Instead of Mai telling Joon that the Council of Eves is meeting tonight and the scene pausing to explain what the Council of Eves is, we want to imply the information through the dialogue and show Mai and Joon’s personal frustration with the council.
You can learn more about conveying world building without relaying on exposition here.
There is also an art to writing the kind of dialogue where the dialogue speaks for itself. Some masterfully done books thrive off this kind of tag-less back and forth dialogue.
The reason they work is often that the writer takes all the emotion and action that would naturally happen along with the dialogue and builds it like layers into the words themselves. In order to become truly good at that kind of dialogue, most writers have to master the inclusion of other variables first.
For more writing tips from Bryn, view the archive catalog or the complete tag.
Want to read about a bloodthirsty siren fighting to return home while avoiding the lure of a suspiciously friendly and eccentric pirate captain? You can purchase Bryn’s debut novel, Our Bloody Pearl, today!
gay dads
Do you ever think about how when Ron’s wand broke 2nd year, just using spell-o-tape wasn’t enough to fix it. It kept backfiring in ways that were really bad, like making himself eat slugs, or kinda just. being defective in general.
Hagrid’s wand was snapped his 3rd year. But he still uses it, disguised as an umbrella. And it works.
Like we know Ollivander didn’t fix it, since he was surprised to hear Hagrid had the pieces. Not to mention since Hagrid was expelled, it would be extremely illegal to fix it. Hogwarts works as a groundskeeper, and lives in a one room wooden hut that he made himself. He’s not going to have the money to ribe someone to fix it, and then there’s also the fact that because of his heritage, even if he could bribe someone to fix it, they probably wouldn’t. And sure, Dumbledore probably knows that Hagrid fixed his wand, there’s a certain level of deniability there. He wouldn’t have actually gotten involved with the wand mending process. Especially when Hagrid was just accused of killing a student.
So that means Hagrid would have put his wand back together himself.
The 3rd year transfiguration examination was to turn a teapot into a tortoise. Only inanimate objects into animals. Part of the reason animagi are so rare is because they’re human to animal transformations. The first time we meet Hagrid, he gives Dudley a tail, and correctly animates the boat he and Harry are on. Silently.
Harry and co. didn’t even attempt to learn silent casting until 6th year. Anything Hagrid learned after 3rd year would have been self taught.
Hagrid is one powerful wizard and holy shit combined with his resistance to magic with his giant heritage forget McGonagall holy shit Hagrid is terrifying
No wonder sixteen-year-old Voldemort was intimidated enough by thirteen-year-old Hagrid to pick him as the one to frame for murder.
Woulda been nice if the media had explored wordless magic more deeply, since the first spells we ever see use it.
Hagrid defeating Voldemort would have been one hell of a plot twist.
So, AU in which Hagrid didn’t get framed for murder and expelled. We’ll say Aragog never happened and Tom settled on a different fall guy. Myrtle dies and Riddle gets away with it, but Rubeus is not a casualty of the plot.
His written coursework was never going to be great, even if he hadn’t been orphaned at age twelve, but his practical casting gets more noticeably excellent, the more the spells they’re learning benefit from having more power behind them.
Dumbledore made a teacher’s pet of him from the beginning, because he wants to see the half-giant kid Dippet almost didn’t let in succeed, so he’s always worked hardest in Transfiguration. Once Albus notices there’s actual potential here, he keeps assigning him different tutors trying to find someone who can get transfiguration theory into his head because once this kid figures out what the hell he’s doing he’s really good. He starts taking all the kid’s detentions and assigning them as tutoring sessions.
Toward the end of fourth year he tries Minnie McGonagall, a prefect who is ironically in detention for cursing a Slytherin prefect during an argument about politics.
Rubeus gets five OWLs and the Transfiguration score is actually pretty high. The next year, he turns out to be a natural at nonverbal casting. His DADA scores climb steadily.
The summer before Rubeus’ seventh year, his Transfiguration Professor goes to Europe and defeats a Dark Lord. When he comes back, everyone is incredibly excited to have the Conqueror of Grindelwald among them and keeps praising him and thanking him and telling him how proud they are and how proud he must be to be such a hero.
Rubeus is the only one who seems to notice that his favorite teacher seems really, really sad. He bakes him an inedible cake. Albus finds himself smiling and meaning it for the first time in at least three months after he nearly breaks a tooth on it.
Where has one of his favorite students been spending the summers since second year, anyway? Do wizards have their own orphanages? Did Hagrid’s father have relatives that put him up?
(It’s 1946, there aren’t a lot of government regulations covering this kind of thing even for Muggles yet, and the situation of ‘homeless orphan who spends nine months a year at boarding school’ is unprecedented in my experience because those usually cost money.)
Rubeus gets three NEWTs: Transfiguration, DADA, and (with flying colors) Care of Magical Creatures. He gets a job with the winged-horse breeders. Offends the young Abraxas Malfoy by being Entirely Too Large and Not Human and In his Stables. Gets fired. He gets a job at the Welsh Green reserve out west. Gets attached to a particular elderly dragon scheduled for slaughter. Gets fired.
Manages a position at the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures–a real grunt position, not at all what you’d expect for someone with such high NEWTs and glowing letters of recommendation from his teachers, even if he has been fired twice, but that’s institutional prejudice for you. Mostly they have him deal with dangerous animals, which is just how he likes it.
Manages to go several years without being fired, mostly because he’s managed to keep his head down and avoid anybody noticing how many animals he was supposed to kill he actually smuggled home to his house. Complains at length to his old teacher and recently appointed Supreme Mugwump about the rampant unfairness toward splendid beasts and nonhuman persons he sees every day on the job, when Albus drops by with cake to have tea and double-check the wards Hagrid’s cast to keep any of his rescues from getting out of the woods around his house.
Is eventually fired, but not for the creature-hoarding because that would probably get him jail time.
Now-Headmaster Dumbledore convinces Professor Kettleburn, who has just lost an arm, that an Adjunct Professor who’s practically indestructible would be just the thing.
By 1970 Rubeus Hagrid is the main CMC Professor and Kettleburn does periodic safety lectures (directed mostly toward Hagrid with the kids learning sort of incidentally; it actually stick with them better that way) and some of the advanced theory topics, and spends the rest of his time doing research in the Forbidden Forest. (Binns is now also a Professor Emeritus and delivers most of his lectures to rooms full of marble busts. He doesn’t seem to have noticed.)
Lily Evans is one of his favorite students. Remus Lupin is teacher’s pet.
Rubeus Hagrid, fully accredited wizard who can shrug off stunners even without any kind of armor, is a battle tank of the Order of the Phoenix. He and Moody take down enough Death Eaters together to have Voldemort wishing he’d killed that ugly half-giant kid when they were in school, instead of the useless Ravenclaw girl.
As a certified Responsible Adult and a dear old friend of Lily Potter-née-Evans, Hagrid ends up being named Harry’s godfather rather than Sirius (who, though dearly beloved, is also young and reckless and probably going to get himself killed before James and Lily at the current rate - the guy who shrugs off stunning spells and can literally crush Death Eaters’ skulls with his bare hands, however, seems like a solid bet for durability). When they ask him to take on the role, Hagrid cries buckets.
But he never actually expects to be called upon, because he never expects that anyone would betray James and Lily.
Dumbledore tries to talk him into sending Harry to stay with his relatives, and Hagrid caves at first, because. Well. Mostly because he’s spent his whole life hearing that he’s clumsy and oafish and worth less than other wizards, and normally he can shrug it off, but raising a whole other person is a very high-stakes sort of situation, and Dumbledore knows how to press on the right self-doubts to achieve what he thinks is the best outcome.
Hagrid promised Lily and James that he’d look out for Harry, though, and as a grown and legal wizard of his own means, no one can really stop him from going where he pleases. And if he pleases to go to Privet Drive, and check in, then those illusion spells he’s learned for fighting Death Eaters are at least going to keep Petunia from shrieking about giants in the neighbourhood. So Hagrid sees the Dursleys and sees how little they love baby Harry, hears how they talk about him as a burden and being from ‘bad stock’ and all their other obvious red flags, and it’s not long before he finds himself sneaking another mistreated and ill-fated little creature back home with him.
Dumbledore argues with him, of course. Hagrid can’t provide blood protection - well, Hogwarts is the next safest place for Harry then, isn’t it? Hagrid can’t shield Harry from the consequences of his fame and reputation - no sir, he can’t do that, that’s true enough. But he knows plenty of places where fame and reputation don’t hardly matter none. He’ll take Harry camping, once he starts getting older. Show him dragons and the deep, wild forests, old caverns and other places where nature and raw magic know how to humble a person in the biggest of ways. Hagrid can’t give him a normal childhood - but what’s normal anyway? The Dursleys? Does Dumbledore think Lily and James would want their son raised in a house where he’s called ‘freak’?
Hagrid’s been called freak, and worse, and he knows that nothing ever feels like ‘normal’ when you’re always being branded as the odd man out.
No sir, Professor Dumbledore, sir, with all due respect - Hagrid’s spent a lot of years looking after living creatures despite the better wisdom of others, and he’s never once had cause to regret it. He won’t do less by Harry.
So Dumbledore has no recourse but to either stoop to measures that really are beyond his moral conscience, or else concede. He chooses to concede, and Hagrid takes a summer job as groundskeeper so he can stay year round at the school, and raise Harry within the wards. Encouraging Harry’s inquisitiveness and intuition, and taking him out to little muggle preschool events where he solicits advice from the parents there and tries to fake being ‘normal’. He never entirely succeeds, of course, but that’s not new, and he discovers movies and more importantly, documentaries, which swiftly make figuring out how to get televisions to work on Hogwarts’ grounds a pet hobby of Hagrid’s.
By the time Harry is eleven and Voldemort is a problem again, the school governors have been fretting over the students at Hogwarts having ‘muggle tekno-ology’ in the dormitories, Harry Potter is a happy and well-adjusted child, and Hagrid’s figured out how to make a working magical tranquilizer gun that he can shoot like some kind of wizard sniper and hide in his umbrella.
Harry discovers the basilisk when he’s nine and exploring the grounds (it gets taken out to a reserve), Quirrell doesn’t make it halfway through his first year before getting a tranq dart in the back of his head, third year goes about the same but nobody bats an eye at Hagrid getting yet another scruffy-looking dog at the end of it, but Fourth Year is the kicker, when Rubeus Hagrid invokes his guardianship rights and substitutes himself for Harry in the Triwizard Tournament. Barty Crouch ends up trying to knock him out and lock him up with the real Moody in order to force Harry to compete in the final event, but Harry’s so worried about Hagrid going missing that he just forfeits. And Hagrid breaks out of the locked chest midway through the maze competition anyway, and they manage to stop the whole thing before anybody can touch the portkey’d trophy.
Voldemort hates Hagrid so effing much.
Sometimes,
someone comes into your life,
so unexpectedly,
takes your heart by surprise
and changes your life forever.
| Thorin Oakenshield & Bilbo Baggins
sir thats my emotional support projection character
NEW CAPTAIN MARVEL POSTERS!
