Reblogged runwithskizzers
nacho-joe-yo-deactivated2022012
Monster fucker this, monster fucker that. What if I want a monster RELATIONSHIP huh?! Monster HAND HOLDING, monster INTIMATE CONVERSATIONS, monster COMFORTABLE SILENCE??
Reblogged adibkhorram
the untamed + text posts
Reblogged
no writing workshop can help you improve your writing as much as this screenshot can
Oh gods. (hides eyes)
…I’ve been coughing my lungs up for the last three days now and am sick and tired of it, and seriously weary, but THIS makes me want to sit up and start ragetyping.
(reaches down into drafts folder, rummages around to grab hold of the screed I wrote in, dear sweet Thoth on his ebike, January) and then decided not to post in the heat of the moment)
(oh, and prev tags, which were good)
#this screenshot punched me in the face#war flashbacks#my immortal#writing#don't be afraid to use 'said'#the brain just skips over filler words like that#it can't skip over whatever nonsense 'he whimpered ... I roared' is#also words convey specific things such as emotions and how loud someone is speaking and you can't just use them at random#don't just use a random word from a list of 'alternatives for said' you found online#use words intentionally
Right. (pauses to cough) Now then—
Something trundled by on my dash some days back. And I got all ready to write a post about it, and then Peter had his accident in the kitchen and it got jarred out of my head for days. Until now, in fact..
Anyway. The "something" was a beautifully made chart of "dialogue tags". Someone had gone to a lot of trouble over it, clearly with the intention of helping other people. And after I spent a while admiring the design (and the ingenuity of it), I nonetheless started having, yet again, the same set of annoyed and frustrated misgivings I get every time one of these substitutes-for-“said” or suggested-dialogue-tags lists crosses my path.
These lists aren’t a new phenomenon by any means. In the last century you could buy whole books of them. They were called "saidbooks", which is kind of ironic, since "said" was about the only word they didn't include. (Look, hello-delicious-tea over here knows about them too.) But their purpose was to provide people who were nervous about repeating themselves—and thought they'd be mistaken for bad writers when they did—with lots of other words to use.
(sigh) Plainly this misapprehension is still with us.
Am I about to get prescriptive? Depends on your definition of the term. (Though it's also true that in New York state, where I was licensed, properly trained nurses can prescribe. And in this paradigm, after nearly fifty years of doing this work, and various bestseller lists, blah blah blah, maybe I can be considered properly trained.) Anyway:
(adding a cut here, as I got distracted from doing so earlier by yet another spell of coughing)
Reblogged jediemma
Honestly not being a killjoy, but do we have photos on what the protests were like in Republican territory? That seems more significant than the numbers in liberal zones like DC/NYC/Boston/Portland/Philly/etc.
This is a photo from the protest I attended at the KS Capitol building in Topeka as well as estimates from a local group as to the size of protests around the state.
Kansans were OUT
Reblogged seananmcguire
I would dearly love for more people to be capable of differentiating between public risk and personal risk.
Examples: drinking is a personal risk. Drinking and driving is a public risk. Going scuba diving is a personal risk. Running a scuba shop with faulty equipment is a public risk. Riding a bicycle without a helmet is a personal risk. Not maintaining public transport safety standards is a public risk. Foraging for mushrooms is a personal risk. Advertising a mushroom identification app that uses shoddy AI is a public risk. Elective surgery is a personal risk. Not wearing a mask in a doctor's waiting room when you are sick with a contagious illness is a public risk.
I could go on just about forever here. But it's a really important distinction and it drives me nuts when they get conflated, and it's so common.
"Your Liberty To Swing Your Fist Ends Just Where My Nose Begins"
Reblogged jediemma
Reblog to cast.
Reblogged
How Mexicans feel about duendes too.
True. Most Irish people, as Norwegians do with Trolls, will happily let the 'fairies' be a thing to make tours for tourists and idle threats to make children behave. Most Irish people will have a very normal and mature explanation of fairies as a common folk mythology that expresses some dimension of Irish culture but are not, obviously, to be taken literally.
And most Irish people, if you ask them to move a stone from a fairy circle will immoveably, flatly respond with 'absolutely fucking not'.
Construction projects have had to halt and be abandoned for it.
At work me and a couple coworkers (black, white, and mexican) had a fun discussion on whether there are more ghosts at a hospital or a cemetery.
everyone individually took a moment to specify that ghosts probably aren't REAL real. then weighed in on where and why.
for the record my position was that there's probably way more ghosts in hospitals because that's where people die horribly, but since you can only see ghosts in dark, solitary conditions, graveyards at night is where the majority of ghost sightings occur. hospitals are usually well lit and busy, so even if they're crammed with ghosts the living are too damn busy to see them. meanwhile if a cemetery has even one ghost that followed her corpse there from the hospital, she'll be spotted because that's where all the ghost hunters go to look.
this theory was received as extremely sensible, and a coworker drew the conclusion that that's why abandoned hospitals are even scarier than graveyards. once the place gets abandoned then you can tell how much ghosts got built up.
we all liked this explanation a lot and explained it to everyone else all night. and of course, none of us believe in ghosts.
me, Irish: of course I do not believe in fairies. My American peers: sexy fairies?
Me: You are all deranged as a box of frogs. The fairies will steal your skin and wear it as a cloak. Don’t go into a fairy ring. There are no fairies, this is just sense.
Reblogged
argumate:
anghraine:
[snip]
[snip]
That’s just, like, a lot of backflipping to ignore the fact that Darcy flat-out says he did it because Jane and Elizabeth’s family is objectionable. He was being “kinder to Bingley than to himself,” as he puts it when telling Elizabeth about it. Like, displacement is usually something happening subconsciously, and Darcy’s 100% above-board and completely self-aware on this front. He’s aware of his attachment to Elizabeth, and he’s super-unthrilled about it because her family’s fuckups.
And this really doesn’t require a lot of second-guessing from the text? I mean, even from Lizzy’s perspective, her mother and sisters are pretty embarrassing, and her ostensibly reasonable father’s pretty much abdicated all responsibility for his daughters’ upbringing to his queen-of-inappropes wife. And they’re kind of broke, in comparison? (I mean, obviously, they do okay, but they had too many kids trying for a son, and Mr. Bennet flat-out confesses he’s been pretty shit at handling the finances for long-term income health and daughter-supporting.)
So Darcy’s looking at his super-rich, handsome, charming bestie with his good family name and his occasionally-assholish-but-in-a-socially-acceptable-sort-of-way relatives and looking at Jane who would have to be fucking Wonder Woman to make up for her lack of inheritance and obnoxious relatives and going “Oh Jesus fucking Christ.” I mean, when you look at Bingley and you sketch out what sort of woman, just in the abstract, he could expect to be accepted by, you get a reasonably pretty, accomplished, pleasant woman with a significant amount of property to her own name, maybe a decent title if not, no major black sheep in the immediate family, etc. Which is what a responsible friend would point out, if asked.
And instead of being Wonder Woman, Jane is Jane, so on top of all this, she’s being her normal, chilled-out self and refraining from riding past Netherfield and catcalling Bingley during rowdy pheasant-hunts or sending him racy letters or whatever would indicate an appropriately strong interest and add ‘love match’ to the pro side of the list.
So Darcy’s looking at the Bennets and going “well these people would be objectively terrible to have as in-laws.” Again, none of this is subconscious. He says flat-out he’s been trying to talk himself out of liking Lizzy because of it, when he’s 100% sure she’ll marry him the second he lowers himself to ask. Given that his own prospects are a lot better than Bingley’s (richer, more established family, better lineage, blah blah blah), and he’s a lot pricklier about social decorum and status, and his basic behavior, Darcy seems to feel like Bingley’s situation has all this going on, plus Darcy’s looking at Jane and not entirely sure Bingley’s number one with a bullet*.
And then Bingley asks for Darcy’s opinion, and he’s like “Oh thank fucking God, Bingley, you cannot do this. You have met everyone else in that woman’s family. They are terrible. Also like are you sure she even wants a mustache-ride, my guy?”
Again, this is right there in the text. Darcy has a good, solid reason for being all “oh jeez” over his own attachment to Elizabeth, and he articulates it repeatedly. It’s not like he’s having some weird melt-down about how Bingley can’t marry into the family because nobody can marry into that family, have you met them, they are awful! Awful, Bingley! You’d be making such a huge mistake! No matter how pretty her eyes are or how much you just want to kiss her hand or sit in the parlor and stare at her without talking for an hour until she asks you what the fuck you want, it would be a terrible, terrible mistake! What do you mean, what am I talking about? Of course you’ve sat there staring at her without speaking for an hour, Bingley, what else would a man do when he’s grown inappropriately fond of a woman with a terrible family? Stop laughing, man, this is serious!
Darcy never makes any mention of liking Bingley for his sister; that’s Bingley’s douchebag sisters, who hope that marrying their brother off to Georgiana will result in Caroline bagging Darcy, who she wants to climb like a tree. Like, I don’t know, maybe there was some rule where you could just yell “Tradesies!” at a wedding and then the minister had to marry the bride and groom’s siblings to each other, who the fuck even knows.
[snip]
…nope.
The narrator explicitly says that Darcy did want Bingley to marry Georgiana, though he tried to keep it from influencing him:
Not a syllable had ever reached her [Caroline] of Miss Darcy’s meditated elopement. To no creature had it been revealed, where secrecy was possible, except to Elizabeth; and from all Bingley’s connections her brother [Darcy] was particularly anxious to conceal it, from that very wish which Elizabeth had long ago attributed to him, of their [the Bingley family] becoming hereafter her [Georgiana’s] own. He had certainly formed such a plan, and without meaning that it should affect his endeavour to separate him from Miss Bennet, it is probable that it might add something to his lively concern for the welfare of his friend.
This is my night for Pride and Prejudice posting! I like this discussion a lot and have only one thing to add to it which is that I like that the book is subtle about how sympathetic Darcy’s wish for Bingley to marry Georgiana (which of course despite what he thinks is influencing his desire to believe Jane’s not into Bingley) is.
Because objectively Georgiana can do better, she and Darcy are fancy with an estate and aristocratic connections and wild money. Bingley’s very well off but not landed and would have to sink a bunch of money into becoming so, and definitely has no aristocratic connections. But he’s Darcy’s friend, he’s notably sweet-tempered, he’s obviously easily led by Darcy, he’s great in social situations while Georgiana Darcy is shy. Georgiana has reason to be, as an orphan who got preyed on when she was 15 by someone she grew up with and who undoubtedly she trusted - her dead father loved Wickham, and this girl loves Elizabeth sight unseen because Darcy does. Bingley is someone Darcy has selected as someone who would be good and gentle to his little sister.
And that’s high-handed but sweet. This is one reason we love Darcy that isn’t discussed enough. Austen is keenly aware of how vulnerable women are. So too is Fitzwilliam Darcy.
Reblogged
fattyatomicmutant
Jfc that kitty parade music justmakes it hilarious
raccoonnation
I can’t believe this is an actual event that has taken place.
with the music that might actually be the most surreal thing i’ve ever watched
I love this song and also humans.
Source: youtube.com
Reblogged runwithskizzers
Justin Mays
Source: instagram.com
Reblogged adibkhorram
You better start getting comfortable with the idea of an extremely broad anti-fascist coalition that includes tons of people who you strongly disagree with, because buddy, you're in one
Reblogged runwithskizzers
Reblogged runwithskizzers
We are coming. Fascists beware.
Join the correct side of history.
Chicago:
Reblogged
“It is said that, during the fantasy book in the late eighties, publishers would maybe get a box containing two or three runic alphabets, four maps of the major areas covered by the sweep of the narrative, a pronunciation guide to the names of the main characters and, at the bottom of the box, the manuscript. Please… there is no need to go that far. There is a term that readers have been known to apply to fantasy that is sometimes an unquestioning echo of better work gone before, with a static society, conveniently ugly ‘bad’ races, magic that works like electricity and horses that work like cars. It’s EFP, or Extruded Fantasy Product. It can be recognized by the fact that you can’t tell it apart form all the other EFP. Do not write it, and try not to read it. Read widely outside the genre. Read about the Old West (a fantasy in itself) or Georgian London or how Nelson’s navy was victualled or the history of alchemy or clock-making or the mail coach system. Read with the mindset of a carpenter looking at trees. Apply logic in places where it wasn’t intended to exist. If assured that the Queen of the Fairies has a necklace made of broken promises, ask yourself what it looks like. If there is magic, where does it come from? Why isn’t everyone using it? What rules will you have to give it to allow some tension in your story? How does society operate? Where does the food come from? You need to know how your world works. I can’t stress that last point enough. Fantasy works best when you take it seriously (it can also become a lot funnier, but that’s another story). Taking it seriously means that there must be rules. If anything can happen, then there is no real suspense. You are allowed to make pigs fly, but you must take into account the depredations on the local bird life and the need for people in heavily over-flown areas to carry stout umbrellas at all times. Joking aside, that sort of thinking is the motor that has kept the Discworld series moving for twenty-two years.”
— “Notes from a Successful Fantasy Author: Keep It Real” (2007), Terry Pratchett. (via the-library-and-step-on-it)
This will look different for every writer, too. Some people write background material. Some people make it up in the first draft and make it work in the second. Some people do a special third thing. Everyone decides where they’re going to cut corners, and that’s okay. People will tell you Sanderson invented every common sense thing anyway, so: build your own road through your book.
Reblogged cicerfics
🖤💜 Happy international asexuality day! 🖤💜🐀
Asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction to others, or low or absent interest in or desire for sexual activity 🖤💜
WOOOOO i am valid <3