Give the Dog a Biscuit

February 23 is National Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day! In honor of the holiday, I have a prompt. A man walks into a pet store with his Tamaskan Dog (hooray obscure dog breeds!) and they look around the dog treat section. The man picks one up and asks the Tamaskan, "What about this one?" The dogs says that it has too many calories and doesn't defend against tartar. A clerk comes over and asks if he's looking for anything specific, and the Tamaskan says to the clerk, "Yeah, this guy over here is all out of treats and he won't shut up about it! What kind of biscuit is right for humans?"

Take it from there.

Close Enough

This is wonderful.

January 18 is National Polygraph Day. I decided to give you, as a writer, another kind of test. The Mary-Sue Litmus Test. This is a test designed to figure out whether your character is guilty of being a Mary-Sue, or "perfect" character. There are three main types: average, who is perfect in every way, shape, and form; clone, which is the author inserting themselves into a main character; and trauma, who has had an undeserved amount of abuse, has infinite mental disorders, and uses that as an excuse to either do horrible things or cry in a corner the whole time.

The most in-depth and my favorite is http://www.springhole.net/writing/marysue.htm, but a close second is http://www.katfeete.net/writing/marysue.html. Please note that those two strictly apply to humanoid creatures. For a wolf one, I found http://quizilla.teennick.com/quizzes/8164465/the-mary-sue-test-wolf-versionrequired-for-entrance-to-ethereal. While it is supposed to be for entrance to a roleplay, you can still get a pretty accurate score.

If you're looking to find out if a whole race in your fantasy story is too perfect, you may be looking for http://www.springhole.net/writing/marysuerace.htm.

My Opinion on Vampires

This is nothing but a (hopefully) humorous opinion on fiction and vampires.

 

This is a vampire:

 

So is this:

 

I'm willing to call this a vampire:

This one is a little iffy:



 

This is my favorite vampire:

 

This is not a vampire:

The directly above is a human with sparkly skin and superpowers. He is not a vampire because he possesses little to no interest in the death and destruction of humanity and could not be a successful horror antagonist in the least. The others above, particularly Kurt Barlow (my favorite vampire, the bluish one), could/are terrifying antagonists. They don't sparkle. If Barlow sparkled, I would punch Stephen King in the face.