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Decided to draw Felix again ayeee

(Experimenting a different painting style + used a reference for the pose)

ahh yes, the inseparable combo of quidditch jocks and sexual awakening…

I also have a big crush on our potion genius Penny

wait, it seems like unless you’re in SLytherin (we have to sneak into Gryffindors’ common room) you have to sneak and steal in Slytherin common room? what even?

I’m sorry if I don’t want to bully innocent Slytherins and start a tremendous amount of drama for no particular reason, Chester!

With all this wit and wisdom around, one would think you would have the brains to be the better person and find more efficient ways to channel out your immature and neglected anger, Chester!

And you have the audacity to talk to ME, the SCHOLAR who currently has 123 house points that skyrockets Ravenclaw house AND myself to the very top of the leaderboard, CHESTER!

Slytherin cuddling with a Ravenclaw

Slytherin: *face pressed to Ravenclaw’s neck*

Slytherin: You know, you really have to trust someone to let them get this close to your throat.

Ravenclaw: … uuuuuhhhhhmmmmmm….

I was at Hogwarts and someone had been posting pictures of the cartoon snake that says “pwease no steppy” all over the Slytherin common room.

a hard pill to swallow: if an audience can pick up on where the story is going, it’s a good story.

How to Kick a Reader in the Gut

Disrupt the reader’s sense of justice. 

This generally means setting a character up to deserve one thing and then giving them the exact opposite. 

Kill a character off before they can achieve their goal. 

Let the bad guy get an extremely important win. 

Set up a coup against a tyrannical king. The coup fails miserably.

Don’t always give characters closure. 

(Excluding the end of the book, obviously)

A beloved friend dies in battle and there’s no time to mourn him.

A random tryst between two main characters is not (or cannot be) brought up again.

A character suddenly loses their job or can otherwise no longer keep up their old routine

Make it the main character’s fault sometimes. 

And not in an “imposter syndrome” way. Make your MC do something bad, and make the blame they shoulder for it heavy and tangible.

MC must choose the lesser of two evils.

MC kills someone they believe to be a bad guy, only to later discover the bad guy was a different person altogether.

Rejection is a powerful tool. 

People generally want to be understood, and if you can make a character think they are Known, and then rip that away from them with a rejection (romantic or platonic) people will empathize with it.

MC is finally accepting the Thing They Must Do/Become, and their love interest decides that that’s not a path they want to be on and breaks up with them

MC makes a decision they believe is right, everyone around them thinks they chose wrong.

MC finds kinship with someone Like Them, at long last, but that person later discovers that there is some inherent aspect of MC that they wholly reject. (Perhaps it was MC’s fault that their family member died, they have important religious differences, or WERE THE BAD GUY ALL ALONG!)

On the flipside, make your main character keep going. 

Push them beyond what they are capable of, and then push them farther. Make them want something so deeply that they are willing to do literally anything to get it. Give them passion and drive and grit and more of that than they have fear.

“But what if my MC is quiet and meek?” Even better. They want something so deeply that every single moment they push themselves toward it is a moment spent outside their comfort zone. What must that do to a person?

Obviously, don’t do all of these things, or the story can begin to feel tedious or overly dramatic, and make sure that every decision you make is informed by your plot first and foremost. 

Also remember that the things that make us sad, angry, or otherwise emotional as readers are the same things that make us feel that way in our day-to-day lives. Creating an empathetic main character is the foundation for all of the above tips.

“happy endings” this “sad endings” that– you can debate the relative merits of each till your mouth goes dry and it’s still not a meaningful binary. Is the ending coherent and emotionally appropriate for the story? Cool.