@siraj2024s And His Family Have Not Had Bread For Days Now. They Are Malnourished And Urgently Need Money

(a realization about dialogue formatting, from a comic artist turned novelist.)

One of the first things a novice writer learns about speech tags is that they’re part of the “scaffolding” of prose. They should be largely invisible to the reader: use them when necessary, omit them when not, and be sparing in the application of verbs other than “said”. They serve only the function of clarifying who is speaking when it is necessary to do so.

Except:

Sometimes you might want to use a speech tag in spite of the redundancy. The fact that the reader’s eyes slide right over them is an exploitable property. By slicing a line of dialogue in half with a speech tag, you can force the reader to perceive a meaningful pause between two utterances—and the effect is much stronger than you might get out of an ellipsis or an em dash. Developing an intuition for when and how to do this is a huge part of learning to write dialogue, I think.

(And yes: if you ever wondered, this is exactly same the reason why comic artists sometimes “double bubble” their speech bubbles. Same end, different means!)

switching blogs to this one, so i’ll quickly reblog all the posts we’ve made so far  - Peasant Artist Willow

first drawing of 2023! finished it at like 2am precious baby boy; this is like his… fifth rendition? y’all don’t need to see my previous failures rn, but maybe eventually i’ll collect all his design concepts and post em -Peasant Artist Willow

Are you trapped on tumblr right now?

Is there something you planned to do before you got trapped in the endless tumblr scroll?

Are you yelling at yourself to get up and do the thing, but you can’t, because you’re trapped in the endless tumblr scroll?

Consider this your save point.

Put tumblr down, stand up, stretch, and go do the thing you planned to do. Future you will be incredibly grateful.

ancient greek word of the day: κακοθερής (kakotherēs), unfitted to endure summer heat

made these studying cat genetics over the past 2 weeks!

i felt like there weren't enough visual guides of cat genetics so i went ahead and made some simple ones, my main references were Sparrow's Garden the website, Sparrow's Garden the blog, Messybeast, and The Little Carnivore.

Please only use these for general reference and not for tracing, using as a base, or reposting!! You can trace the poses for practice, but please don't post them if you do so. Please don't use them as a free Base, either.

If you fall for a social media prank, do you reblog/pass it on to your followers?

“I don’t want to be a burden” you’re more like a relief, a gift, a blessing actually

This is still one of the greatest things ever made.

this might be a stretch but hi hello im autistic and my spec. interest is cats and like cat genetics! I saw you posted the cool diagram of all the different phenotypes coat pattern wise and was curious as to if you know anything about how specific domestic breeds might have a preferred style of play (i.e airborne or ground)

i was just wondering if there is a link (from their ancestors situation or smth) or if its individual to the cat

hi!! I'm also autistic and cat genetics are one of my special interests + common hyperfixations!

as far as I can tell from doing a few hours of research, no. it seems to be largely due to the cat's personality and environment, and there's not really any specific ways different breeds like to play, or at least there haven't been any studies done on it. some cats are more energetic and that's linked to genetics, but that's about it! thank you for the question, it was really fun to research!