By TarataraStudio

TIL that a recent study out of the University of Kansas found that it takes about 50 hours of socializing to go from acquaintance to casual friend, an additional 40 hours to become a “real” friend, and a total of 200 hours to become a close friend.

via reddit.com

The Causal Chain And Why Your Story Needs It

The most obnoxious thing my writing teacher taught me every story needed, that I absolutely loathed studying in the moment and that only later, after months of resisting and fighting realized she was right, was something called the causal chain.

Simply put, the causal chain is the linked cause-and-effect that must logically connect every event, reaction, and beat that takes place in your story to the ones before and after.

The Causal Chain is exhausting to go through. It is infuriating when someone points out that an event or a character beat comes out of nowhere, unmoored from events around it.

It is profoundly necessary to learn and include because a cause-and-effect chain is what allows readers to follow your story logically which means they can start anticipating what happens next, which is what is required for a writer to be able to build suspense and cognitively engage the audience, to surprise them, and to not infuriate them with random coincidences that hurt or help the characters in order to clumsily advance the author's goals.

By all means, write your story as you want to write it in the first draft, and don't worry about this principle too much. This is an editing tool, not a first draft tool. But one of the first things you should do when retroactively begin preparing your story to be read by others is going step by step through each event and confirming that a previous event leads to it and that subsequent events are impacted by it on the page.

Rereading Harry Potter trying to figure out what makes him special. Is he charismatic? Kind? Perceptive? Is he a talented leader, is he smarter than he looks, is he a gifted ——? Nothing’s catching so far, which is a problem if I’m gonna write anything respecting him, his attitude, and his status as the Chosen One.

Any input, guys?

Very quick fan art for the latest chapter (ch 6) of Better Halves (and other such falsehoods) by @aster-draws

Shits already been great in this fic, but we’re about to go to troupe heaven (I.e. I love ‘there was only one bed’ so much.) I’m so excited for the next chapter

zlibrary gone... FUCK TIKTOK FUCK BOOKTOK I hope that app burns in hell

Something i haven't seen yet in Peter in gotahm fics (wink wink)

Batman, holding a phat envelope out to spider-man: here, this week's pay

Spider-man, skeptically: with all do respect, I don't do this to get paid

Batman: I fund the justice league, who do you think signs off their checks?

This was supposed to be convincing.

Spider-man, entirely aghast: the justice league is a corporate scam too??

Batman, clearly struggling: no, it's—

Spider-man, swinging away, yelling about "not being put under uncle Sam's thumb":

Slow clapping erupts from behind Batman. He turns dramatically to reveal Red Hood laughing his ass off.

Do You Feel That?

Idea. So imagine the bats are going to Amity (or a place nearby) to investigate something. A building that had very strange readings, maybe even investigating a case. Probbaly starting in a forest. So this place is haunted naturally, and the ghosts can’t be perceived by the human eye. In this universe, Danny can technically become visible in his ghost form if he concentrates, along with many powerful ghosts, but their default is intangibility and invisibility and it’s just inefficient to use a that much power just to be seen. So most things that happen in Amity are not seen by normal people. Those infected by ectoplasm (the pits and ectoplasm being two separate things in this) are able to see ghosts after enough exposure. So if a hero were to come to Amity, they would see the destruction happening but it would look like some kind of invisible force, and then if they ask why others aren’t panicking, they just say Phantom is taking care of it.

Anyways, so the bats do not know about ghosts and are investigating this house and basically every kind of malevolent spirit you can think of is there and trying to mess with them. After all, even if they can’t see a ghost, that ghost can still affect them. And Phantom sees these idiots getting closer to one of the designated danger zones in his territory. (Or he was visiting a nearby haunted area due to the rising danger level and sees the bats right in the middle of it) The place all natives know to avoid at all costs. So the bats go anyways, completly oblivious to the danger. Danny arrives just in time to stop a ghost who was inches away from digging their claws into Red Robin.

And it goes on with Danny desperately keeping the ghosts back, tackling them, shooting them, growling and hissing and doing everything in his power to shield the oblivious heroes and keep them safe. He can’t even warn them because he’s spending too much power just keeping them alive in the woods. Because of course they decide to investigate the most haunted woods near Amity. Most of these spirits are old, angry, and wild.

And the bats are just casually going about their buisness, discussing the case and the evidence they found.

Danny tackles a ghost wolf to keep them from biting their fangs into Red Hood’s neck.

They follow some tracks.

Danny grabbing the shadowing tendrils attempting to strangle Nightwing.

They even joke around and push each other.

Someone temporarily possessed Red Robin and he starts reaching for a batarang with bloodlust in his eyes, before Danny digs his hands into the bat’s chest and rips out the foreign entity.

There is screaming, snarling, screeches, and lots of punches thrown, all unheard by the bats.

By the end, Danny is panting as they finally made it out of the forest. The bats are tracking a signal, and heading towards an abandoned house. Danny looks up and sees the place absolutly overflowing with spirits. They are crawling up the sides, eyes and teeth and tentacles moving through the wooden boards. Banshees and wraiths, eyeing them through the windows. Skinny limbs with barely any form creaking as their claws try to escape the house and reach towards the group below. Hundreds upon hundreds of spirits all confined to this small hut and ready to tear apart any who enter.

Danny takes one look at them, overhears the bats say that they have to head inside, and decide that he’s not dealing with this today. So he shoots a small laser to cut their power. No signal? No lights? No search.

He can hear the bats complaining but eventually, they have to turn back as they lost the signal and they are unable to continue. And hears them talk about how the place was so weird. Almost like something was watching them.

Phantom sags in relief once they are finally gone.

While they leave, Danny squares his shoulders because he needs to deal with all these ghosts before they get back.

Later, after not finding anything strange about the house or forest or the cause of their case (possibly a death? Or maybe just trying to find information connecting to something else?) and all the previous evidence and traces were gone. So they call in the magic users to use a spell to show the past and figure out what happened. And they can see the group in a sort of 3D holographic image as they investigated. But the spell doesn’t just show them, it shows every being from that time….so the group gets to see just exactly how close they all came to dying.

WOWOWOW I WANT A BOOK RIGHT NOW. IMMEDIATELY

You never knew your birth parents, growing up across the country in orphanages. While alone you learned to cook and shared your meals across the world, eventually owning your own business. One day you suddenly find out what your parents were. They were Fae… you’ve fed thousands Fae Food.

I like that mcu peter's canonically a huge bitch but only over text. like flash talks to him in real life and he's like 😕 but over text he does this: