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Ask the wave as it withdraws what freedom is.

How to write a kiss

Rebloggable version, as requested by davrosbro. :)

Oooh!  Yes!  I love kisses.  Kisses are where it all starts ;).

Okay, first, remember that a kiss is much, much more than just lips.  It is lips, but also tongues, teeth, eyes, faces, hands, noses, bodies, heartbeats,  breath, voice- and most importantly, a kiss is emotions.  A kiss without emotion is just wet mushy lips stuck together.  Ew.  Gross.  The most important part of a kiss isn’t the how, but the who- because of the emotions between the two people.

Okay so:

lips- Lips can slide, glide over each other smoothly, or they can be chapped and rough and dry and get stuck on each other.  They can match, top-to-top and bottom-to-bottom, or they can overlap, with one person’s top or bottom lip captured between the other person’s lips (yummy).  If there is lipstick or chapstick there is lipstick or chapstick flavor, otherwise, lips don’t have a taste (can you taste yours?).  Lips also can smack- the sound of two of them coming together or pulling apart, because they’re wet and warm and soft.

tongue- Tongues are always wet, and always warm.  They’re very versatile.  They can trace over lips, teeth, or another tongue.  They can be smooth and graceful or teasing and flicking.  When tongues are involved, there is drool.  It’s only sexy when you like the person you’re kissing, or else it’s kinda gross. :P

teeth- teeth can clack together awkwardly, or teeth can bite down sensually.  A person biting their own lip is cute, a person biting another’s lips is sexy.  A person biting gently is sensual, a person biting roughly is sexual.

eyes- Eyes can be wide open with surprise, half-lidded with desire, fully closed with pleasure.  Eyes can gaze lovingly, lustfully, wistfully, hungrily, seductively- it all depends upon the emotions of your characters.  Have them do whatever you like, but don’t leave them out- give them at least a mention!

faces- Faces are what the lips are attached to.  Noses bump, cheeks flush, ears turn red, foreheads either wrinkle or relax.  Kisses can leave lips, quite easily, and become kisses on chins, cheeks, noses, foreheads, ears, necks, throats.  Kisses on noses or foreheads are cute and adorable, kisses on cheeks are sweet, kisses on chins, ears, and throats are very sexual.  And a kiss on the lips can be all of those! <3

hands- Hands are super-important.  In order to describe a kiss, usually you want to also describe the hands.  Where are they?  Does one character have their hand behind the other’s head or back, holding them close?  Are they on someone’s shoulders pulling them near, or pushing them away?  Fingers brushing someone’s cheek or palms grabbing someone’s ass convey two very different kinds of situations, even if the kiss itself is exactly the same.

noses- Noses are annoying.  They easily get in the way, especially for first kisses!  People have to tilt their head to one side or the other, and if they don’t, noses bump.  I’d only mention noses if a kiss is supposed to be awkward or uncertain or nervous.

bodies- bodies are either close together, or far away.  Someone can be surrounded comfortingly by someone’s arms, or terrifyingly trapped by them.  Bodies are warm or hot, they are calm or nervous, relaxed or tense.  Body language says a lot.  Is your character pulling away, or moving closer?

heartbeat- Hearts can beat fast or slow, and that’s about all they can do- but there are lots of reasons why they do!  A heart can beat fast with fear or excitement or nervousness; a heart can pound with lust or race with terror or sing with joy.  Hearts can glow, cower, or shatter.  When you really want to drive the emotions of a character home, mention the heart.

breath- To me, the most consuming part of a kiss is the breath.  The air that someone else has just breathed going deep into your lungs is very intimate.  Lips and tongues don’t have a taste, but breath does.  Each person’s breath tastes different, smells different, and surrounds a person differently than anyone else’s breath.  Breath can be warm and sweet, breath can be hot and sexy, breath can be hot and frightening.  It is something that is very present and should not be left out.  A lot of writers leave breath out.  And it’s so important; it’s the most intimate part of a kiss.  Someone else is breathing into your lungs, and it’s either heaven or it’s hell.

voice- Voice conveys much, even without words.  A voice can groan, whimper, gasp, moan, catch, whine, scream, sigh.  Voice can convey emotion powerfully, and while some kisses are silent, usually they’re not.

emotion-  Emotion is the most important- and the thing you try not to say.  You want to describe it, through all of the things above, so that it’s perfectly clear what your characters are feeling, without you ever using the “feelings words”.  If they’re in love, their bodies will lean close, their eyes will smile, their voices will giggle softly.  If they’re nervous, their palms will sweat, their noses will bump, their voices will shudder.  If they’re afraid, their muscles will be tense, their faces will grimace, their lips will not open.  Emotion is the color that you keep inside your mind as you write; it’s the base line that drives the description behind everything else you say.

Wow, that was a lot!  Gosh I hope it wasn’t too much!  Keep in mind not every kiss has all these things- this is just a list of things to consider when writing a kiss, and based on how long of a kiss you want to make.  Keep in mind that typing “they kissed for a long time”…that’s six words, it takes half a second to read, so that’s a short kiss!  If you want a long kiss, you need long sentences that make the reader linger.

So maybe to start off, pick three things on the list to describe in your first kiss.  Don’t try to do it all- that would be too much for even the most epic kiss.  Just pick what’s most important to this particular scene, to these particular characters, and describe those parts along with the lips, and you’ve got yourself an awesome, emotional kiss. <3

One of my favorite devices in fics is when the narrator contradicts a character's internal monologue:

Character: I do not have a crush

Narrator: it was more like a demolition

___________________________________

Character: I'm absolutely, under no circumstances going after him/ her/ them

Narrator: I give it 3 minutes before he cracks

__________________________________

Character: I'm not whipped

Narrator: he was whipped like cream

AZULA & KATARA PARALLELS

2.20 THE CROSSROADS OF DESTINY // 3.21 SOZIN’S COMET PT 4: AVATAR AANG

OKAY, BUT CONSIDER AND AU WHERE ZUKO IS THE YOUNGER SIBLING BY A LOT LIKE AZULA IS 16 AND HE'S 10 AND SHE'S REALLY PROTECTIVE AND CARING IN A CONDESCENDING WAY

for every "🌹" received in my inbox i'll post one random sentence of a random WIP i'm currently writing

Okay, but only if everytime he makes a akuma his hands are swollen the next day so thats why he has his hands behind his back.

Miraculous but Gabriel is allergic to butterflies

Mental Crop Rotation

When farmers grow the same crop too many years in a row, it can leave their soil depleted of minerals and other nutrients that are vital to the health of their fields.

To avoid this, farmers will often alternate the crops that they grow because some plants will use up different minerals (such as nitrogen) while other plants replenish those minerals. This process is known as “crop rotation.”

So the next time you find that you need to step away from a project to work on something else for a while, don’t beat yourself up for “quitting” that project. Give yourself permission to practice “mental crop rotation” to maintain a healthy brain field.

Because I’ve found that when that unnecessary guilt and pressure are removed from the process, a good mental crop rotation can help you feel more energized and invigorated than ever once you’re ready to rotate back to that project.

Here’s the first half of slides from my comic class on Lettering! 

Rest of the slides: https://gingersnappish.tumblr.com/post/616487287636803584/the-rest-of-the-comic-lettering-slides-first

I declare this cannon

Post canon Toph who doesn’t want to go back to her shitty parents so she just decides to stay in the Fire Nation and bum off Zuko’s hospitality.

Zuko’s like no, yeah, I totally get it, and just makes her one of his advisors. At first it’s just so she has a good excuse to stay but after the first meeting Toph storms out shouting about how EVERYONE was lying why would you even need to lie about what kind of tea you want??

Zuko: I mean they’re politicians.....but also who, and when, and in what way

They make a subtle Morse code system so Toph can warn him when someone is lying to him without tipping anyone off that she can sense lies.

Zuko gets a reputation for somehow being both extremely socially inept and yet somehow disgustingly perceptive?? You can’t get ANYTHING by him???

"the trauma made you kind" fuck that. no. i am kind because i cannot allow anyone to go through what i did. i am soft because i chose to be.

It’s going to be a bad night.

Tony Stark + PTSD

I declare this cannon !!!

You've all heard of "Batman accidentally uses his suave playboy voice instead of his intimidating growly one while interrogating a thug" but now I present you: BATMAN ACCIDENTALLY USES HIS TIRED DAD™ VOICE.

I-been-working-on-this-case-for-76-hours-straight-Batman: *sigh* what did you do

Suddenly-guilty-feeling-Riddler: I can explain

A Knight in shining armor is a man whose metal has never been tested.

i can’t talk shit about the pirates of the caribbean films as if elizabeth swann becoming pirate king didn’t hand my entire ass to me and make me the gay i am today

Okay, I’ve been sitting on (no pun intended) this theory for awhile now because it’s not even really a theory, so much as it is speculation. (”Uncle, that’s what all theories are!”) Anyway, hear me out:

tl;dr: Iroh was depressed, and thus in a passive state, up until the end of Book One, whereupon Zhao’s act of violence snapped him out of it.

We know that Lu Ten died during the original Siege on Ba Sing Se and it’s heavily implied that losing Lu Ten caused Iroh to “fall apart” and ultimately end the Siege itself:

(Image Descriptions: First two images are of Iroh chained, saying, “I acknowledge my defeat at Ba Sing Se. My men was tired and I was tired.” The third image is of Iroh at Lu Ten’s grave. The fourth and fifth images are of Young Azula talking to Young Zuko: “He found out his son died and he just fell apart. A real general would stay and burn Ba Sing Se to the ground.”)

He didn’t have the mental strength to fight at Ba Sing Se, but that’s not the only time that he refused to fight.

He never tried to take the throne from Ozai. He never once tried to find out what happened to Ursa. And I hate to do this, but he didn’t even put up that much of a fight when a thirteen-year-old asked to attend a war meeting. And when they were in that war meeting, who was the one to speak out against the immorality of war? Zuko. Not Iroh, even though he was sitting right next to him.

(Image description: Zuko standing up at the war meeting. We can see that Iroh is sitting next to him.)

When Zuko was in the Agni Kai Chamber, on his hands and knees, crying, begging for mercy…Iroh just…looks away…

(Image description: Iroh looking away.)

And I’m not going to lie, this theory was originally just going to be a post talking about how guilty Iroh must have felt, but I think it goes a lot deeper than that. I could make a post arguing that Iroh’s misjudgement and lack of action were what led to Zuko being scarred, but to do so would be to blame Iroh, and I don’t want to blame Iroh. Because it’s not his fault. I think that, in this moment, he’s still in a depressive, passive, state from what happened to Lu Ten. Iroh essentially has PTSD. He saw what war can do, so he freezes and backs down at any sign of a fight.

And we see, all throughout Book One, how many times Iroh tries to actively stop Zuko from fighting:

(Image descriptions: Two nearly-identical shots of Iroh breaking up a fight between Zuko and another character, the Pirate Captain and Lieutenant Jee, respectively.)

He only fights when he has to, such as when the Earth Kingdom soldiers capture him in Winter Solstice. Even then, he uses his chains to disarm two of them and knock them unconscious (a waterbender technique btw) while Zuko takes out the third. By all accounts, Iroh is a pacifist during Book One. He’s certainly passive. I really think it’s because Lu Ten’s death (which, remember, only took place a few years prior) is still bothering him. Hence my original claim that Iroh’s essentially in a depressive state during Book One.

So, what happens?

Zhao happens.

This image has haunted me for a decade and a half:

(Image description: Iroh looking absolutely devastated.)

This is right after Zhao kills the Moon Spirit koi fish. Something about this has always gotten to me. It’s just so intense. It’s like you see this other side of Iroh that you had never seen before. (Remember, at this point, any viewers wouldn’t know about Lu Ten.) And what happens right after?

(Image descriptions: #1: Iroh attacking multiple soldiers. #2: General Zhao looking horrified. #3: A shot of Iroh standing over multiple bodies on the ground.)

Iroh starts actively attacking them all, to the point where Zhao backs away, horrified, because he’s never seen this side of Iroh. Neither has the audience. For the first time, Iroh is actively attacking someone, triggered by Zhao’s violence. I don’t know if it was just the cosmic stakes of the spirit being killed that triggered his anger, if it was the straw on the ostrich-horse’s back, if the way that the koi fish was killed was somehow reminiscent of Lu Ten’s death, or if it was a combination of reasons. Either way, Zhao snaps Iroh out of whatever passive funk he was in.

From that moment on, Iroh acts like a man who was a general for years. In the very first episode of Book Two (the next canonical episode), we see that Iroh doesn’t trust Azula and is on guard, even jaded:

(Image descriptions: Two shots of Iroh looking around suspiciously.)

Then, when it’s revealed that Azula had tricked them, Iroh wastes no time in attacking multiple guards:

(Image descriptions. #1: Iroh kicking a guard off the ship entrance. #2: Iroh firebending at three separate guards surrounding him.)

In a later episode, when Zuko thinks that Iroh’s going to say that he should be nice to Azula because she’s family, what does Iroh say, instead?

No. She’s crazy and she needs to go down.

This Iroh is a completely different person than the Iroh that we saw in Book One, because this Iroh has been snapped out of his depressed, passive, funk by the senseless act of violence that he witnessed. This Iroh is willing to fight and be an active participant in creating change. This Iroh is a General. This Iroh is the Dragon of the West. Incidentally, we see Iroh call himself that when he actively attacks a full room of Dai Li soldiers:

(Image description: Iroh breathing fire onto a room filled with soldiers.)

And we all know how fitting it is that Iroh is the one to liberate Ba Sing Se, but just think about the difference. The original Siege on Ba Sing Se took him 600 days, nearly two years, and he still wasn’t able to break through. In the final battle (albeit with a little help from the comet), Iroh was able to effectively create a fireball and blast through the wall in a single moment:

And that is my speculation…analysis…theory…thing of how Iroh went from being a fighter to being a depressed pacifist to being a better fighter, all in the background of a series that focuses on a dozen other well-rounded characters. It really is the show that keeps on giving…

Reblog for luck

My fortune cookie wants me to write fanfic

Growing up batman was the one i loved most in justice leauge. To me he was the over worked dad who loved kids but at the same time he seemed like a hard ass.

I missed this version of batman.

Hi, Clair. I’d like to come in and talk with you. Would that be all right?