bonegard

[bonegard]

Todays doodles are Myras personal Horse Acting Guide! 🐴

DISCLAIMER: im not a horse expert, but i’ve been hobby riding for 13 years and read some books through the years, so it’s just my personal experience. I dont know everything and people have different ways!

#horses #art tips

[bonegard]

Heeeey everything's alright? Jsut wanted to tell you that you're an amazing person! Really! Totally amazing! And awesome!

Yup! Just left tumblr is all. Occasionally hop on here but not super often anymore. Just keeping it here in case Tumblr ends up getting their shit together. And Youre jsut as awesome my dude :3

#spottyakuma

[bonegard]

how to draw arms ? ? 

#art tips #legs #arms #proportions

[bonegard]

Gay culture is wishing you could go all the way back and be yourself from the beginning

#important #transgender #lgbt

[bonegard]

Hey ya’ll. I’m prepping to move to twitter due to the new no-nsfw ruling that tumblr put out. Just find me at @bonegards on twitter! Don’t have a lot there yet, but I’ll be there!

[bonegard]

hot new tumblr discourse

put in the tags your opinions on wearing shoes in the house and why

#fuck shoes period #ill wear them outside (sometimes) #but wear them to town

[bonegard]

That feel when one of your fav stories just has absolutely no online fandom. On DA, tumblr, and AO3 there are a total of 16 things. It’s sad cause like, it’s one of my favest series and no one to talk about it with ;u;

[bonegard]

You’re writing PTSD dreams wrong

But don’t worry, most writers are and I’m here to help because reading them is making me cRAzY.

I’m writing this because I’ve read three otherwise great romance novels back to back featuring characters dealing with PTSD (or PTSD symptoms) and each one of them made the same dream mistakes. I honestly can’t think of a fiction book I’ve read that didn’t make these mistakes, so I thought I’d compile a handy dandy list of mistakes and how to fix them. 

Lucky for you, I have PTSD and a ton of fellow veteran friends who deal with these symptoms. 

*This is based on my experience and things told to me by friends. This is not to say that the below doesn’t happen in real life, only that it’s not as common as you might think.

The issue with these dreams is twofold: on one side is the psychological accuracy of the dream and on the other side is how you’re using the dream within the narrative.

Oh an Black Sails spoilers-ish ahead. 

1) Stop writing the dream as a shot-by-shot accurate retelling of Traumatic Event.

Listen, not only do dreams seldom follow reality, but our own memories are tricky at best. I don’t remember getting beaten up because a) it was horrifying and we block stuff like that out and b) I was going in and out of consciousness. It would be pretty strange for me to dream something I don’t even fully remember. Our brains are simply not wired to do these vivid factually-accurate cinematic retellings.

My friend dreams things that did happen, but in his own words those dreams are always wrong in some noticeable or bizarre way. For instance, he’s getting chased through the streets of Iraq by a werewolf. 

2) Dreams are informed by reality, not direct reflections of it. 

It’s entirely likely my friend dreamt of a werewolf in Iraq because I got him binge watching Supernatural and the two ideas merged in his dreamstate. But see, that’s how dreams work. 

The trauma event exists as a constant in his subconscious, but he has all this other information right there in his conscious mind all day, every day. In dreams, there isn’t a clear delineation between that information.

My dreams are often dependent on whatever I’ve fallen asleep watching on television. The themes are consistent, but not the content.

In Black Sails, Captain Flint’s trauma dreams feature his dead partner and friend following him around his empty ship. You have an element of the trauma (the animated corpse of his friend) + his daily existence (his ship). The two things intersect to form these unsettling nightmares as expressions of his fears and grief. He never once relives the event itself in his dreams as shown on screen.

Speaking of…

3) Trauma dreams often revolve around feelings, not necessarily the events themselves.

The PTSD package generally includes heaps of shame, guilt, anger and fear. As someone who survived a beating when I should have had control of the situation, my dreams tend to revolve around fear that people will know I’m a fraud or being unable to act in a dangerous situation. 

Again, it’s entirely common for trauma victims to not remember large chunks (or the whole thing) of the trauma event. So why should their dreams be stunningly accurate? What we remember are feelings. Real strong feelings.

You cannot go wrong if you write your trauma dream around feelings, not a specific event.

4) If you present trauma dreams as expressions of themes, you can let go of the trauma dream as an exposition dump/way overused suspense trope.

You know you’ve read this: MC has dreams that are a shot-by-shot retelling of Traumatic Event that always cut off right before Traumatic Event, so that the Big Reveal must happen by a discovery later in the novel. 

If I were the MC in a book, the easy and common thing would be to use the “dream sequence” as an expository retelling of Traumatic Event as a way to give some backstory to why I might be surly, mistrustful, afraid to try something new, whatever, and to clumsily shoehorn in suspense where there doesn’t need to be.

The much more interesting thing might be if my dreams were inconsistent in content but consistent in theme. In one I’m on an alien planet (because I fell asleep watching the Science Channel again) and the ground opens up and I fall into a pit from which I can’t escape because I am helpless. In another a man is watching me while I sleep where I am again frozen and helpless. This would force the reader to think: what is the recurring issue in these dreams? Why is it important? What is this telling me about this character and what happened to her? 

It could be a personal preference, but I’d rather see the Traumatic Event either told in narrative flashbacks (not dreams) or verbally retold by the character in question. Let the dreams tell me something deeper about the character. It’s not that I was beat up, it’s that I feel like a failure because of it. One of these things is a shallow factual detail, the other tells you something about me as a person that I’m sharing with you, gentle reader, because talking about this stuff is healthy.

5) The Traumatic Event doesn’t have to be a big secret. 

In Black Sails, we know what happened to Captain Flint’s partner. It happened in real time in the show. That didn’t make his uber disturbing dreams less disturbing or mysterious. Fans still debate exactly what the symbolism was and what they were telling us about James Flint in those moments. We do know from the dreams that he was disturbed, obsessed, and also monumentally guilty and blaming himself for what happened. 

The mystery was perhaps more heightened by the fact that the dreams weren’t direct reflections of reality. We know who this person was, what she believed, and why she died. That Flint is imagining her screaming silently in his ear is horrifying and discordant with what we know to be factual. This adds emotional complexity to his character and the decisions he’s making while suffering these dreams. 

^^^this didn’t happen. It was a dream. A real unsettling dream.

Once you let go of the concept of the trauma dream as a literal retelling and exposition dump, you have the entire dreamscape to work in other narrative elements, like symbolism, metaphor, foreshadowing, etc. 

*1st gif source: @idontwikeit

#on writing #ptsd

[bonegard]

Just a reminder that I am not going to be offended by you writing a character that has flaws, negative personality traits, prejudices and or general pitfalls in personality or mentality.

     This culture of politically correct / glossing over the bad parts of characters out of fear of offending someone is honestly so frustrating as a writer and a role player and a general lover of media and fiction and drama and tension and angst and all of those things that create ebb and flow and character / plot dynamics in writing and media as a whole. People are allowed to be flawed. Real people are flawed and no one is perfect and if you take away all the negative traits there’s nothing left for conflict or development for that character or the people that interact with them. 

     You are going to find characters that are prejudiced against religious groups or skin color or sexual orientation. You are going to find characters that commit robberies and murders and violent crimes - for any and all sorts of reasons including just because they want to. You are going to have characters that commit mass murder or that incite wars just for profit. You are going to have characters that use slurs and insults that are offensive. It’s gotten to the point where people are being attacked for their characters doing something that is offensive or rude or evil when ? What exactly is the point of writing or role playing if there isn’t some conflict interpersonal or external? 

     It’s getting to the point where tumblr gets offended by a bad guy being a bad guy or a character being innately flawed because hey guess what - we all are - and it’s just to the point of ridiculous. Every story in the history of fiction has a problem, has a source of conflict, had an adversary, a bad guy, a bad group of guys, an empire of bad guys doing bad things and making bad choices. And no they aren’t always going to be redeemed. And no they aren’t always going to be stopped or defeated. There would be no story arcs, no plot lines and no true development without someone to be the bad guy in your story. Remember that.

#ye #anti-anti #fuck purity culture #purity culture #purity wank #on writing

[bonegard]

Don’t talk shit about people’s teeth. Seriously.

Speaking as a major dental hygiene enthusiast…

Great-looking teeth come from two things: luck and money (which is also a function of luck).

Dental procedures tend to be very, very expensive, and are almost never covered by insurance.

Healthy teeth aren’t necessarily big, straight or bright white. Depending on what someone’s natural teeth are like, achieving that look may require a significant downgrade in their dental health; unnecessary crowns and veneers cause damage.

Do not underestimate genetics’ role in determining teeth’s appearance, or how prone teeth are to problems. Genes and early development, i.e. things people get zero control over, can outweigh all else.

A wide range of chronic conditions impact oral health and teeth’s appearance, too, and may contraindicate various types of work or raise procedures’ cost even more.

Finally, for many people and many reasons, celebrity-looking teeth just aren’t a priority (even when they’re attainable; some people might want, y’know, a new car instead).

Regardless, don’t be an asshole. Not even very attractive teeth look good on those.

#bless this post #spent all my life super depressed and stil ldepresse but to a point im able to worry about it now #and poor so its hard af to get a dentist

[bonegard]

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[bonegard]

Hey guys! Dont forget that this site is selling neat LGBT dice and at discount for blackfrieday!

#lgbt #d&d #rpg #tabletop #dice

[bonegard]

finding out people dont usually add numbers by first adding something to make a ten (for example 7+6= 7 plus 3 is 10 plus another 3 is 13) & that its actually an adhd thing is the WILDEST shit literally ive lived like 10 years (or however old i was when i learned to add and stuff) thinking thats how everyone does it. what the fuck

#LOL how to people count then? #do you just add shit as is? like??? #ADHD