not sure what should happen next in your story?

distroubling:

  1. Embarrass your protagonist. Make them seem weak and vulnerable in some way.
  2. Shoot someone. That always takes the reader by surprise. 
  3. In relation, kidnap someone. Or, rather, make it seem to your protagonist like someone has been kidnapped. 
  4. Have one of your side characters disappear or become unavailable for some reason. This will frustrate your protagonist.
  5. Have someone kiss the wrong girl, boy, or person, especially if you’ve been setting up a romance angle. It’s annoying.
  6. If this story involves parents, have them argue. Push the threat of divorce, even if you know it won’t ever happen. It’ll make your readers nervous.
  7. Have someone frame your protagonist for a crime they didn’t commit. This could range from a dispute to a minor crime to a full-blown felony.
  8. If this is a fantasy story involving magic or witchcraft, create a terrible accident that’s a direct result of their spell-casting. 
  9. Injure your protagonist in some way, or push them into a treacherous scenario where they might not make it out alive. 
  10. Have two side characters who are both close to the protagonist get into a literal fist-fight. This creates tension for the reader, especially if these characters are well-developed, because they won’t know who to root for.
  11. Make your protagonist get lost somewhere (at night in the middle of town, in the woods, in someone else’s house, etc.) 
  12. Involve a murder. It can be as in-depth and as important as you want it to be. 
  13. Introduce a new character that seems to prey on your protagonist’s flaws and bring them out to light.
  14. If it’s in-character, have one of your characters get drunk or take drugs. Show the fallout of that decision through your protagonist. 
  15. Spread a rumor about your protagonist. 
  16. If your protagonist is in high-school, create drama in the school atmosphere. A death of a student, even if your protagonist didn’t know them personally, changes the vibe. 
  17. If your story involves children, have one of them do something dangerous (touch a hot stove, run out into the road, etc.) and show how the protagonist responds to this, even if the child isn’t related to them. 
  18. In a fantasy story, toss out the idea of a rebellion or war between clans or villages (or whatever units you are working with). 
  19. Add a scenario where your protagonist has to make a choice. We all have watched movies where we have screamed don’t go in there! at the top of our lungs at the main character. Make them go in there. 
  20. Have your protagonist find something, even if they don’t understand the importance of it yet. A key, a document, an old stuffed animal, etc. 
  21. Foreshadow later events in some way. (Need help? Ask me!)
  22. Have your protagonist get involved in some sort of verbal altercation with someone else, even if they weren’t the one who started it. 
  23. Let your protagonist get sick. No, but really, this happens in real life all the time and it’s rarely ever talked about in literature, unless it’s at its extremes. It could range from a common cold to pneumonia. Maybe they end up in the hospital because of it. Maybe they are unable to do that one thing (whatever that may be) because of it.
  24. Have someone unexpected knock on your protagonist’s door. 
  25. Introduce a character that takes immediate interest in your protagonist’s past, which might trigger a flashback.
  26. Have your protagonist try to hide something from someone else and fail.
  27. Formulate some sort of argument or dispute between your protagonist and their love interest to push them apart. 
  28. Have your protagonist lose something of great value in their house and show their struggle to find it. This will frustrate the reader just as much as the protagonist.
  29. Create a situation where your protagonist needs to sneak out in the middle of the night for some reason.
  30. Prevent your character from getting home or to an important destination in some way (a car accident, a bad storm, flat tire, running out of gas, etc.)

letters-to-lgbt-kids:

My dear lgbt+ kids, 

Something I’ve been thinking about lately is how I often try to “justify” my attraction to women – even when nobody judges me for it. 

Even silently in my head. 

I found a dance video on youtube the other day and I really loved it. It was a really challenging choreography and they were dancing in high heels. It wasn’t a sexual video in any sense, I was just really impressed by their talent and… I do it right now, don’t I?

I instantly jump to making up some excuse on why I’m “allowed” to enjoy that video, to explain that I’m not gross for liking that video. 

You know, I could just say “I loved that video because it’s so attractive when women dance like that”. I wouldn’t need to apologize for that. Yes, they were talented – and they were hot. So what. The world’s not going to end. 

But I guess a part of me doesn’t trust in that. That part heard my mom tell me I’m disgusting, heard people say “Eww, are you lesbian”, heard people compare my attraction to bestiality, heard guys say “Can I watch”… and it believed them. It believed them that my attraction is something weird, gross, freaky, kinky, wrong. 

The part isn’t as loud anymore as it used to be, I know that it’s lying. I know that they are lying. That little voice in my head isn’t me and it certainly isn’t the voice of reason – it’s just all the homophobic bullsh*t I heard and internalized. 

I believe that most of us hear that voice sometimes. If you catch yourself, listening to it, I want to give you the advice to not get angry at yourself for it. I never found “You need to fight your internalized homophobia!” very helpful – you’re not the villian here. It’s not your fault that you’ve been exposed to hate. 

You don’t “need to fight”, you deserve to heal. And that doesn’t happen over night or with a loud bang. Instead, it might be a soft anyway. 

They made me feel like I’m gross – I will love women anyway. 

With all my love, 

Your Tumblr Mom 

I have a lot of asthetic attraction to women, and I thought for a long time that there was something “wrong” for enjoying the beauty of something like a woman dancing! Its still there but not as much any more…

thingsthatgobumpinthenightbang:

thingsthatgobumpinthenightbang:

Registration is now OPEN

That’s right! All writers, artist and betas can now register for the first run of the @thingsthatgobumpinthenightbang!

ALL SHIPS WELCOME

This is not a ship specific bang! The only specifics we have is that the monster is the focus and a canon monster (Got Witch!Sam falling for his brother? How about Demon!Dean taking Abbadon up on her offer? Maybe a fluffy little day in the life of Were!Garth and his pups!)

acesam:

no but ace!sam whose first pride was a truth and dare game with jess gone wrong and he’s sweaty and nervous thorough the whole event because eventhough he came to terms with it a lot time ago, asexuality’s still a touchy subject for some people, so he feels super awkward and insecure about the whole thing and hopes no one here knows what the colours black, white, grey and purple mean.

jess being there in her own colourful costume helps kinda, but still he feels like crawling out of his own skin. that is, until he sees a little stand that has “ASEXUALITY AWARANESS” written on a big poster and sells all sorts of stuff. jess convinces him to take a look while she stands back and watches, there as a safety net.

the first t-shirt he sees has “Don’t fuck with asexuals – we’re not into that” on it and he can hardly suppress his laughter so it comes out sort of as a half snort haf giggle. somehow that starts a conversation with the person selling these items. it starts off innocent enough, with things like “hey there” or “you too, huh?” but it turns into a full blown discussion about just anything, really. sam is just mindblown how easy it is to talk to this person, how secure and proud he feels, now that he knows he’s not alone anymore.

during the conversation, sam accidently misgenders them and they politely correct him (and no, he so totally did not google ‘genderfluid’ once he was back in his dorm, ‘course not) and that sort of causes the conversation to take a different direction. they talk about being bombarded with sex, about getting strange looks from their family (sam doesn’t talk about his, the wound’s still too fresh, but he nods along), about misgendering (sam also did not apologize 5 or 6 times, he didn’t), about the A being mistaken for ally so very often.

they exchange phone numbers but don’t talk/meet up other than the occasional skype calls and angry rants via email. that whole part of sam’s life, however, gets burned to ashes alongside jessica and gets buried deep inside him. it’s not like it’s important, they’ve got bigger things to do.

years after sam still has their number safely tucked away, and once they’re working a case in a city with a current pride event going on and the event calls for help with stands (particularly stuff like asexuality, pansexuality, and the sort).

their so-called “case” is most definitely nothing and doesn’t require as much attention so one time he sneaks out of their shady motel room to go to a meeting for particpants. yet again, he is stunned how many people there are that feel the exact same things he does, that somehow don’t think of him as weird, that get him on a level dean would never really understand, if he told him.

so he participates. makes posters with catchy puns about asexuality and prints out stickers and the whole shebang, and it’s surprising how much fun he has standing in a crowded alley along with a thousand people, sweating profusely. his eyes keep looking out for them, the person from his first pride, but eventhough they’re not there, he still meets a lot of new people regardless. his stand gets the occasional confused stare but that’s nothing he can’t handle, growing up like he did.

dean is furious when he comes home full of glitter and sweat, and just falls into bed, exhausted. his brother thinks he’s gotten himself into trouble, or was abducted by fairies, or whatever.

doesn’t matter to him, though. even with the ache in his legs and his head vibrating with pain, sam has never slept this good in years.

Can I be polyamorous if I want multiple committed, long-term relationships that are not sexual?

polyadvice:

Can you be polyamorous if you’re asexual? Because I’ve been sort of fantasizing about living with 2-4 friends and we’d own a house that we couldn’t afford independently ever since I was a kid. (I was even okay with them marrying and having kids with their spouses as long as we could afford it.) It sounds silly doesn’t it. Some of my friends, well, I love them like family; I don’t want to lose them to the tides of the sea or the gusts of the wind.

It does not sound silly at all! It is bizarre and frustrating, but very true, that our society assigns a lot more weight and privilege to romantic/sexual relationships than to other ones. There are active steps you can take to cement commitment in a romantic/sexual relationship that are not available outside of those relationships. So relationships, commitments, and even love that is not romantic/sexual can feel a lot more precarious. It takes an active ‘breakup’ to end a romantic/sexual relationship; friendships can ‘drift apart’ more passively. And this can feel maddeningly insecure!

If identifying as polyamorous feels right to you, and helps you establish the reality and future that you want, then it’s a perfectly acceptable and helpful identity to claim. You may also want to look into relationship anarchy, which captures a wider breadth of thought around this idea that each relationship should be defined by its own terms and needs, not socially pre-determined levels of seriousness. There are some people I like to date and have sex with who I might not want to live with or raise kids with. There are some people I don’t feel romantic/sexual attraction to, but love deeply and want to share a life with! Relationship anarchy makes room and language to validate and think about relationships in this new way. Another concept you may find helpful to look into is queerplatonic. 

But in the end, whatever words you choose are secondary. “Chosen family” or “life partners” or “deep friendship” or whatever – having the right words is just a tool to allow you to do the real work of building these relationships. Be open with the people you want to create a life with. Talk about what commitment means to you, how you see your future together, your concerns about what might threaten the friendship, what you do and don’t want from the relationship. Whether or not you identify as polyamorous is less important than whether or not you have the words to let you talk about who you are and what you want.