pumpkinleif

[pumpkinleif]

Heyoooo!

Heads up that in the spirit of trying to get a bit more organized and a bit less... 10+ years of Homestuck-themed post backlog... I made another Tumblr for art and writing things! Hopefully this’ll make it a bit easier to go through. I’ll be reposting a bunch of old art and crafts there, as well as some BIG NEWS~~, so give it a looksee!

https://www.tumblr.com/natalieleif

#leif babbles

[pumpkinleif]

marie howe, in an interview with krista tippett of on being

[pumpkinleif]

[pumpkinleif]

I miss when library books used to have little paper pockets inside with a list of all the people who borrowed it and when... I hate that this is now exclusive knowledge of librarians. I do care that a miss Mariana borrowed this book in 1985 and then Dario in 1997. They're my brothers and sisters

[pumpkinleif]

the actual reason I consume mediocre media is because I have bad taste. the deeper secret pretentious reason is because I think there’s something very revealing about bad media that you don’t get with good media. when you watch a poorly executed plot point unfold, you see the machinery behind it. you see the gap between what’s actually on screen and the true goal the author is striving for. if it’s particularly awful, you can even measure just how poorly mismatched the author’s skills are with the story they’re trying to tell you. watching a poorly executed narrative play out feels like you’re discovering something, because you see all the wiring and guts underneath that better authors hide from you, in the same way that movies hide boom mics and books make you forget you’re turning the pages. if a story is good and executed well you just see the story. but I want to see the guts and wires!

[pumpkinleif]

[pumpkinleif]

Wait a second...

I RECOGNIZE this sword!

THAT'S THE EXACT SAME CRAPPY GOODWILL HALLOWEEN SWORD I USED FOR MY KRIS DELTARUNE COSPLAY

AMAZING

#deltarune #kris deltarune #cosplay #tumblr ads

[pumpkinleif]

I'm screaming from this post on a librariam group

[pumpkinleif]

you have to pretend to be a wizard sometimes, for your health. the obvious method is d&d, but you can also open the dishwasher on cold mornings and raise your arms dramatically as you're enveloped in the steam, or you can find a really good stick to walk around in the woods with, or you can run a bizarrely dedicated rp blog on tumblr. but it's an important component of human well being to occasionally pretend to be a wizard.

[pumpkinleif]

On a lighter + adjacent note i love dis tweet + these QRTs of it ^_^... literally...

[pumpkinleif]

I literally spit water all over my screen.

[pumpkinleif]

Calling my OCs bastards is so amusing. Sir. Sir you created them. You are their only parent

[pumpkinleif]

i love having ocs with professions i know nothing about its like This is Scientist Sam she works at the Science Factory

[pumpkinleif]

It's been a while, y'all. Life is going... Not great but not awful. I had an unexpected bill a few weeks ago that I'm still hurting from, and I fudged my budget this week by mistake (bad mathing moment). I've not wanted to ask for help from anyone, but I finally opened my little shop so... If you need some stocking stuffers or whatnot, check it out? It's a little sparse at the moment, but that should hopefully change soon.

Check out my little shop on Ki-fi if you'd like to help me out and pick up something cute in the process!

[pumpkinleif]

“One more thing, sir. You told me you couldn’t possibly have been at the crime scene at that time on account of your alibi, that being that you were at home playing your PlayStation 3. Now, forgive me, but if that’s true, I just gotta ask– how could you have been playing your PS3 if the PS3 has no games?”

[pumpkinleif]

all stories need "stopping at Burger King", anyone who went to english class knows this. it can be a metaphorical burger king, or a metaphorical stopping, and they don't have to order the whopper, but all stories must stop at burger king at some point

[pumpkinleif]

Pro Tip: The Way You End a Sentence Matters

Here is a quick and dirty writing tip that will strengthen your writing.

In English, the word at the end of a sentence carries more weight or emphasis than the rest of the sentence. You can use that to your advantage in modifying tone.

Consider:

In the end, what you said didn't matter.

It didn't matter what you said in the end.

In the end, it didn't matter what you said.

Do you pick up the subtle differences in meaning between these three sentences?

The first one feels a little angry, doesn't it? And the third one feels a little softer? There's a gulf of meaning between "what you said didn't matter" (it's not important!) and "it didn't matter what you said" (the end result would've never changed).

Let's try it again:

When her mother died, she couldn't even cry.

She couldn't even cry when her mother died.

That first example seems to kind of side with her, right? Whereas the second example seems to hold a little bit of judgment or accusation? The first phrase kind of seems to suggest that she was so sad she couldn't cry, whereas the second kind of seems to suggest that she's not sad and that's the problem.

The effect is super subtle and very hard to put into words, but you'll feel it when you're reading something. Changing up the order of your sentences to shift the focus can have a huge effect on tone even when the exact same words are used.

In linguistics, this is referred to as "end focus," and it's a nightmare for ESL students because it's so subtle and hard to explain. But a lot goes into it, and it's a tool worth keeping in your pocket if you're a creative writer or someone otherwise trying to create a specific effect with your words :)