Philippine Myth Creatures Gothic

Okay. If you are doing research - especially history research, here are a couple steps to possibly save your life.

1) Get thee to wikipedia.

Seriously. You can’t site it because it has the academic credibility of some random graffitti, and you can’t quote it because the exact writing and content changes every time it gets edited, BUT:

It will almost certainly be more accurate than printed encyclopedias, which are updated every ten years or so, and only require a few eyes compared to wikipedia, where any trolling will probably get you banned or suspended in hours. Not to mention it’s getting a LOT more peer reviews. So you can’t quote it, but it’s probably fairly accurate.

And the best part? After just about every tidbit of information, there’s going to be a little citation number. If you click it, it’ll take you down to the references section (and even highlight the relevant one). You can then go to the original source - which will be much more credible. What’s more is you’ll have specific page numbers (if it’s a book), and you’ll know exactly what kind of information you’re looking for.

2) If it’s a book, Internet Archive is your best friend

The search function isn’t great if you’re looking up questions like you would into your google (or ecosia - if you want to do a good thing for the earth) search bar, but if you know the author and year the book was published, it’s great. You’ll have this information already on hand from step one, if that’s how you found the book in the first place.

There are about 30 million books on Internet Archive and counting, so there’s a good chance they’re going to have what you’re looking for. However, about half of them are check-out only. Checking out is actually easy. You need to set up a free account, and make sure to give them a valid email address because they will send you a verification email. After that, you can check out any book you want for an hour. (excelent for focus!)

If you are only looking at specific pages, you should be fine, but there’s also other longer options for checking stuff out for some books. (I think?)

Also, in many books, you can search for specific keywords within the book, and there’s a little slider at the bottom to find pages.

3) watch Overly Sarcastic Production’s “How to do research”

Seriously. It’s amazing. My first point is confirmed in the video which is just more proof that I’m right /hj

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Hi!! Your tips really helps me out very much and im thankful for that and your hard work :)) Do you have any ideas on how I can begin my story without making it boring for the readers? Like make it more intressting when you read the first pagragh, etc.

Writing an Interesting Beginning

Thank you so much for your kind words! ♥

There are three things that are especially helpful for creating an interesting beginning:

finding the right place to start your story

beginning when something interesting is happening

beginning when things are in motion

Let's Start with Basic Story Structure

Before we get started, it's worthwhile to revisit basic story structure. Although there are a variety of different story structures, most stories more or less fit this basic structure:

The rising action of your story is set off by the "inciting incident," or in other words, the thing that happens that turns your character's life upside down or sets them off on a new path. Everything before that is setup, introducing the protagonist, the world and setting, anyone who is important to the protagonist at the start of the story, and moving the pieces into place for the inciting incident to occur.

Finding the Right Place to Start Your Story

The first thing you might want to do here is make a list of the things you need to accomplish before the inciting incident. Which characters need to be introduced? What parts of the world and setting need to be setup? What does the reader need to know about the character's situation? What else do they need to know before the inciting incident happens?

The next thing you want to do is think about your character's normal life, before the inciting incident. What does an average day look like for them? Do they do anything unusual, like play a sport, sing in a band, or work at an amusement park?

Beginning When Something Interesting is Happening

Your goal is to look at their everyday life and find something interesting that could be happening. Ultimately, you're looking for something that:

provides an overview of the protagonist and their normal life

introduces the setting and story world

introduces any other characters important at the beginning

introduces the protagonist's internal conflict

illustrates something about protagonist's life that needs to change

highlights any existing traits or skills that will be important later

introduces important back story details

starts laying the foundation for the inciting incident

is so interesting it hooks the reader's attention instantly

Beginning When Things Are in Motion

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater begins with horses racing along a beach. The first chapter of Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman starts with a girl running through tunnels, finally finding a hiding place. L.M. Montgomery opened Anne of Green Gables by describing the course of the brook that runs past the home of Mrs. Rachel Lynde. The Road by Cormac McCarthy begins with a father reaching out in the night to check on his sleeping son, to make sure he's still safe. Movement draws your reader into the story. It's like opening a play with a dance number rather than a narrator standing on stage, rattling off a bunch of information.

Even if your story has to open in a moment where there's not anything really exciting going on, finding a way to add movement is still helpful. In The Road, the man and his son are asleep and nothing of particular interest is happening in that moment, but the man reaching into the darkness to make sure his son is still there--that's still movement, and the desperation of that moment is interesting in and of itself.

Other Helpful Posts:

Tips for Writing a Strong First Chapter Starting the Story with Exposition Writing Great Beginnings and Endings Figuring Out Where to Start a Story Deciding How to Open Your Book

Good luck with your story!

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#creating

I remember watching this interview of Hajime Isayama where he said that, when he presented the story of Attack on Titan to its current publishers, he was at the lowest possible point of self-esteem in his life, about himself and about his work, so much so that he was on the brink of giving it all up. It marked me so much because… I was watching this interview precisely because I deeply admired this man’s artistic work. I could not fathom that he would have ever doubted it himself.

It reminded me that you can only trust the work. It really doesn’t matter what your opinion of yourself or your abilities as a creator is. It is entirely irrelevant, even. Worse: it gets in the way of creation. When you focus too much on it, you stop trying and doing. And if there is one thing that cannot be doubted, it is that nothing is achieved without trying and doing. Nothing bad and nothing good.

So really, as long as the desire to create burns your insides and keeps you awake at night and makes your fingers shiver from the need to grab a pen or a brush, there is only one option: keep making. Doubt won’t ever disappear. Creating shall remain this uneasy, vertiginous activity, keeping you on the brink of the abyss.

Follow your guts and have faith in the process. Trust that the work needs to be done, no matter the whims of self-confidence. At the end of the day, your creation may have sprung out of your mind and your knowledge, your experiences and your emotions, your time and your dedication, but it is not you. It may be better; it may be worse; but it is a thing of its own that needs to be done and that only you can do.

they deserve each other

“To Love an Aswang”

The bells were ringing too the day I met her. The first time I met her, it was a cloudy day and I had just come from mass, passing by some carts that sold food outside the old church. She was sitting behind the cart that sold fried potatoes on a skewer, and she eyed each person that passed by with interest, her silky voice calling out, “Ale, ale, bili kayo oh.” I stopped in front of her cart and bought two of the food she was selling. While we waited for the potatoes to fry, I casually made small talk with her.

“Ate, do you always sell here?” I asked.

She smile a tiny smile before answering, “Not always. Every other day and only before the sun goes down. At night, I head home.”

“Do you live near here?”

“Yes, I do.”

Once the potatoes were done, she put them in a brown paper bag and I gave her twenty pesos. Before I went on my way, I ventured on another question, not thinking much of it as I asked it. “Do you do this for a living or is this just a side job?”

She answered, “It’s more of a side job. After all, I have other means of getting my food. This just covers some of my other expenses.”

I gave a non-committal answer and proceeded to walk away when she said it.

“I’m an aswang.”

I didn’t think much of it, and I just thought it was the silly rambling of a creative woman with a quirky sense of humour.

I had started going to church in the mornings before I work at the nearest bank, and just as she said, the woman was there every other day, but never outside the church at night once I began my walk home after a long day at work. Every time I saw her, I bought some of her potatoes and talked with her, slowly beginning an odd friendship.

We chatted about anything and everything, except for each other’s personal lives. I regaled her with tales of my co-workers, occasionally complaining about them on a particularly harrowing day, and I shared with her my musings about life in general. She never asks about church, and I don’t say anything about it either. On the other hand, she tells me of silly adventures she has while selling the potatoes and of customers that particularly caught her eye. She once told me about this pregnant lady who reeked of perfume, that it hurt her nose and probably did the opposite of beckoning others to her. She told the story with a laugh, saying that perfume was meant to enhance and not to soak. We talked about anything and everything, Anna and I.

She said it again one day. “You know, I’m an aswang.”

I laughed at that and said, “Sure. You’re an aswang and you fly around at night looking for babies to devour.” I kept laughing.

She answered quite seriously, “Exactly.”

That was when I felt an odd chill run down my spine. I tried to cover up the following awkward silence with a cough and a shaky question. “If you really are one, why would you tell me?”

She shrugged at that and said, “You deserve to know, You’re not like other humans. Here you go.” She then handed me my usual brown bag of fried potatoes and I hesitantly began my walk to work, all the while turning over in my head what she said.

The next time I saw her, we spent a good deal of time discussing about trivial things, as if the past conversation never happened. It felt normal. Just two friends chatting about anything and everything. But then I worked up the courage to bring it up. “So you really are an aswang?”

I told myself I didn’t believe her, that I was just playing along to hear more of what she has to say. She was eccentric, that’s for sure.

“Mhm,” she chirped, turning over the skewers to let the other side of the potatoes fry. “I do eat babies, but only the unborn ones. I don’t like them outside their mother’s bellies. Too big to eat and less tasty. Not to mention that it makes more of a mess than when they’re inside waiting to be sucked out.”

I shuddered at her nonchalance and the graphic details of her supposed eating habits. “So you’re evil then?”

She gave an irritated click of her tongue at that. “Evil, you say? What exactly is evil? I am an aswang and you are a human. We are different. So I eat unborn babies. Is that evil? You eat unborn duck embryo, is that evil? It simply is the way it is. I may not know much but even I know about the food chain.”

“But you take the babies from their mothers. Who could do such a thing?”

She smiled meanly at that. “Careful, my dear. You’re about to venture into a question I don’t think you’re prepared to hear the answer to.”

I stopped at that, and for a few moments the only sounds were the chattering of other people outside the church and the sizzling of the frying oil. “I guess you’re right,” I said.

“But tell me,” I continued, “do you hate humans?”

She gave another annoyed grunt, rolling her eyes at the same time. “Hating humans would imply I have any sort of feeling toward them. Humans to me are nothing but a source of my food and my income.” She nodded toward a couple who stopped by in front of the cart next to me to buy Anna’s goods. They left, and Anna continued, “It’s like if I asked you, do you hate ducks because you eat balut? I have a certain apathy toward humanity, if that’s what you mean.”

Her answers were as eccentric as she was; as absurd as the notion that she was an aswang as she said. Still, I let the concept settle into my mind, no matter how uneasy it made me. “Well, what about me?”

“What about you?” she asked.

I didn’t know what came over me, but as I looked into Anna’s eyes, I felt a sort of calm and peace, even though she kept claiming she was this dangerous powerful creature that I didn’t believe in. I asked her quietly, “Do you feel nothing toward me?”

That’s when she stopped turning over the potato skewers to really look at me. Her eyes shone under the shade of the umbrella on her cart, and her shoulders sagged in a strange resignation before answering, “I guess not. You are my friend, after all.”

Friend. Her answer surprised me very much. Did this woman, who claimed she was an aswang, really consider me as a friend? A human and an aswang as friends was almost as laughable as me believing in the idea itself. But still, something in me was touched. If this beautiful woman was really an aswang, a more powerful creature than me, her choosing to befriend me was a feat in itself that touched me in no other way that my normal friendships did. I remembered all the conversations we’ve ever had here, about anything and everything, about life and its adventures… She made me rethink everything I knew before. Before I met her.

“You still don’t believe me, do you?” she asked once again.

I gave a shuddering breath, placing a hand on her cart to steady myself. “If I do believe you, that creatures like aswang exist and you are one of them, how can we be friends, Anna?”

“Is being an aswang really that bad?” Anna answered quietly. She resumed cooking her potatoes and serving one or two customers that stopped by.

“I am terrified, Anna. Frankly, I am. You eat unborn babies. You are a creature of the night.”

She did not like what I said. She stood up abruptly, her arms falling to her sides in annoyance. “This again? You have nothing to fear from me! Humanity is a much more terrifying evil than I can ever be! I’m still me, dear. Why would being an aswang change that?”

We didn’t say anything for a while. She scared me that day. I looked at the old looming church while feeling her glare. Her glare held no malice, only annoyance and a flash of pain. Still, she scared me.

“What if I had a baby and you ate it before it even got to live outside the womb? What then, Anna? I don’t think I’d ever be able to bear that. If you were really an aswang, why would you befriend me? Why?”

She sat back down, her beautiful face scrunched up in…pain? She wiped her tears, and she said quietly, “Do you really think I would do that to you? To you? You are different from all other humans. You are different from me, and yet…I have grown to love you despite our short time. I have grown to love you. Tell me, am I really as terrible as you think I am? Am I evil for being different than you?”

“Anna,” I said. “How can you love me? How can I love you?”

She didn’t answer. She never did. I left to go to work, and when I was on my way home that day with the moon already peeking out in the sky, she was gone. She never appeared again. Some days, when I pass by where her cart used to be and hear the ringing of the bells, I remember her silky voice and all the stories we used to tell each other. I would think of our last conversation and ask myself, “What is love? And what is evil?”

I still don’t have an answer.

Hua Cheng Book 1: *afraid to touch his highness, believes he’s unworthy of xie lian’s kindness and touch, hides his devotion and love in fear of rejection*

Hua Cheng Book 5: “you’re leaving? gege, where’s my goodbye kiss? i’m so lonely without you. why do you only kiss me when you need smth? sigh”

their love quarrel is in a different kind of level

REBLOG IF ITS OKAY TO TALK TO YOU.

Please.

Moments of Erens bond with Annie

Another Bakunawa drawing! I wanted to change up my artstyle and I really liked this