#also known as there are a lot of really important details in this that are very easy to miss on purpose. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

arcielee · 13 hours

Text

Interview With a Writer

It is that blessed time when the wonderful and talented Miss Maggie, @inthedayswhenlandswerefew, gives us some behind-the-scenes insight to her latest brilliant narration. [Feel free to check out the Spotify playlist of all the songs mentioned and let me know if I forgot one!]

Here is masterlist to my Interview With a Writer series and the other talented individuals who allow me to continue this self-indulgent series! 💜 Picture(s) source.

Name: inthedayswhenlandswerefew

Story: 1968

Paring: modern Aemond Targaryen x female!reader, modern Aegon Targaryen x female!reader

Warnings: 18+ mature themes. Be mindful of chapter warnings.

Where did the idea for 1968 come from?

I am a high school social studies teacher by trade, and my absolute favorite class to teach is American History. The 1960s and 70s were actually one of my weak spots when I got my first teaching job back in 2020, so I ended up researching a lot about that period of time and got absolutely obsessed with it. In my American History class, I spend a whole lesson on JUST 1968, because so many important events happened in that year that are emblematic of broader trends and tensions.

One day I was re-reading one of my favorite books, The Other Mrs. Kennedy by Jerry Oppenheimer, which is specifically about Bobby Kennedy’s wife Ethel, but also gives a lot of insight into the Kennedy family generally and what it was like to live through that era. The idea of using this setting as a fic AU occurred to me, and I ruminated on it for a few weeks while finishing up Napoleonville.

Eventually, I had a revelation of the ending of 1968 (true to my usual pattern), and then knew I’d have to write the fic! I was actually really worried about all the political and historical details being too boring and/or confusing (especially for non-U.S. readers), so I was relieved that so many people gave it a chance. 🥰

Honestly, it was brilliant with the similarities to the Kennedys and Targaryens in the story. Were there any historical cameos in 1968 that you enjoyed channeling? Or perhaps struggled with?

I find LBJ super fascinating, and I feel that because of the Vietnam War he really doesn’t get a fair assessment when people look back on his presidency. His work for civil rights and the Great Society (SNAP, Medicaid, Head Start, Job Corps, PBS, etc.) was truly revolutionary, and as someone who grew up in poverty and benefitted from a lot of those programs, I don’t think LBJ’s contributions get the recognition and praise they deserve. I perceive him as a haunted sort of figure, and I really enjoyed his cameos. (To be clear, he was also super problematic and bizarre personally, and I don’t mean to excuse any of that 😂).

As for someone who was difficult to write about…honestly, the George Wallace research I did was super depressing, so while he was necessary to include, I didn’t really enjoy working on those parts!

Was there anything in specific that inspired your Reader portrayal?

Io is a bit of a composite sketch. Ethel Kennedy was known as doggedly committed to her husband’s career above all else (despite eventually being the mother of 11 children!!), and I think that inspired Io’s single-minded determination to help Aemond win the election in the first few chapters. Ethel was traditional in the sense that her husband was the center of her world and made all the important decisions, as was expected of women of her social class in that time period. But Io is also a manifestation of the counterculture of the late-60s. She is young, educated, genuinely progressive politically, and likes to party. She tries to reconcile the expectations of her family/time period and her actual personality by intentionally choosing a husband with whom she can have an equal partnership making the world a better place. And…we all know how that worked out.

[Photo Ethel and Bobby Kennedy, m. 1950]

Can you explain your interpretation of Aegon? How does he compare and contrast to Aemond? What drives them? Why are they the way that they are?

In 1968, Aegon is 40 years old, and so his role in the Targaryen political dynasty is very well-established: once his family realized he couldn’t be weaponized for their purposes, he was largely disposed of, and lives this aimless, uninspired, self-loathing sort of existence. He does have some genuine love for his family—missing Daeron and feeling guilt over him being sent to Vietnam, a vague sort of fondness for Mimi and the kids, distress when Aemond is shot in Palm Beach, an apology of sorts to Alicent by performing “Mama Tried” at her birthday party—but Aegon exists on the periphery, and he knows this, and while he doesn’t want to be a politician the rejection still stings.

At first, he perceives Io as yet another person who makes him feel inadequate and unloved; and in fairness, she is cruel to him, in fact more so than Aegon is to Io in return. It is noteworthy that in Chapter 1, she viciously criticizes Aegon in front of everyone in the waiting room (“if someone had to get killed tonight it should have been you”), but he doesn’t return fire until they are alone (the infamous cow comment), and even then he seems to regret it immediately.

Aegon, fundamentally, is more sad than mean. When in Chapters 2 and 3 Io abruptly reveals herself to be someone who is vulnerable, wounded, abandoned, and kind of a hippie lowkey, Aegon begins to perceive her differently, and she becomes an opportunity for him to be truly understood, protected, and loved for the first time in his life.

I think we would all describe Aemond as ambitious and ruthless, determined to prove that he is the best to compensate for deep, lifelong insecurities. He is a progressive politically because he sees a path to build a winning coalition, and perhaps in small part because of the whole Greeks-being-despised immigrants thing. But in 1968 there is a sense that you never fully understand who he is as a person. This is intentional! 1968 is Io’s story, and she never gets to see the whole Aemond. She sees parts of the picture, but never the full image. As awful as he is to Io, there is also a side of Aemond that truly (even if in an…unorthodox way 😂) loves Alys and their child, and there are clues that Alys understands him like no one else can (that Ouija board message… 👀). He’s by no means a good guy, but he is multifaceted. I think the stress of the presidency, and his long separation from Alys, ends up softening Aemond a bit, hence him defending Io’s reputation and ultimately letting her go.

Did anything inspire your other OCs? Specifically "The Ones Who Married In" club?

I didn’t sit down and plan what sorts of characters would be in the “The Ones Who Married In” club. I was possessed by these random visions of them: a perpetually drunk Mimi, a perhaps not too bright but very sweet Fosco, and Malibu Barbie but make her Polish Ludwika, and I was thinking: “These people are ridiculous, this will never work!” But then when I thought about it more, I realized that Mimi, Fosco, Ludwika, and Io all serve strategic roles to help advance Aemond’s career, and so it would make sense that Otto and Aemond cobbled them together and shoved them into the family portraits. I ended up really loving them, but they weren’t a big part of my original outline for 1968. 🙂

How would Io rate them based on her friendship with each of them?

Fosco is definitely #1; they connect on an emotional level that is deep but also largely unspoken. Ludwika is a close #2; she’s Io’s shopping buddy but also witty, supportive, and very feminist in her own way. And then Mimi is a distant #3. Io pities Mimi and feels loyalty to her as a fellow Targaryen, and goes out of her way to try to protect Mimi from her own self-destructive tendencies. But Io, as a collected and self-reliant person, also has difficulty understanding and dealing with someone as messy as Mimi. And of course, once Io realizes she is super into Aegon, that creates some one-sided resentment of Mimi!

Do you have a feeling of what happened after chapter 12? What is the ending you vaguely see with Aegon and Io? What about Aemond and Alys?

Where I end a fic is really the last clear image I see of the characters, so I sadly don’t have a lot of specifics to offer. What I do feel is that Io and Aegon have children of their own (like, several children, maybe even 5+ children) and Aegon is present for their early years in a way he wasn’t able to be for his kids with Mimi. Io is a stepmom to Aegon’s OG kids and has a good relationship with them, but she’s only really close with Cosmo.

I also sense that Aemond has basically no contact with Io or Aegon, which makes sense considering his abuse of Io and the lifelong fury Aegon would therefore have towards him. Aemond is happy with Alys and their son (as happy as someone like him is capable of being); he does the ex-president thing and settles into a largely ceremonial role and advises Democratic politicians, although he is not very friendly with President Reagan.

And then my wild theory is that a Daeron/John McCain ticket ends up winning the 2000 election and the War On Terror plays out completely differently!

And finally... 1968 seemed to pour from you like a fever dream. Does this mean something else might be coming to continue the Maggie's Suffering Sunday tradition?

1968 did seem to fly by, despite it being a longer fic at 12 chapters! I do have something planned for this Sunday... 😉 All I can say for now is that it is very weird, totally unexpected, and tonally a mashup of Comet Donati and When The World Is Crashing Down.

Does that seem impossible?? Think again 😏 I will be reblogging hints until Sunday! I hope you enjoy this new journey 🥰🐍

#interview with a writer #iwaw 25 #bts #of their brilliant writing #writing community #writers on tumblr

19 notes · View notes

justanotherbirdbrain-blog · 4 months

Text

A Workshop for Creating Magical/ Fictional Crystals: A Guide from a Geologist

Hi folks, its me, here to talk about fictional writing again! Today I'm just tackling the idea of magical stones/mana stones by looking at existing minerals today and some neat properties that they have, and how you can apply these things to a fictional world. The goal is mainly to help you if you are stuck trying to come up with a unique magic system, or a unique identification/characteristic of your mineral.

First Things First: Mineral Shapes

I am exhausted, petered out, down-right fatigued by seeing every mineral depicted with having the crystal structure of calcite and quartz. There are soooooo many cooler, more interesting crystal structures, don't you think you would stop and take a look at a perfect cube in nature? It is completely unsettling.

Second: Color

Color within minerals can either be really important, or not important at all! It is your choice to decide if color is going to be something that means something to your mineral. But what are some times when the color is important? Well.... there are some elements that are called chromophores, this classification just indicates that these elements, when present, will determine the color of whatever they are in. So, if you wanted to treat mana like a chromophore, you could say, "Oh everything that contains mana turns green!" This could mean that regardless of the mineral, if that mineral is a specific color, it means it contains mana. This concept is exciting because you can just stop here and use minerals that already exist! You can also use it as an indicator for a magical ore! Chromophores are typically metals, so if you are making a new metal weapon, making the ore of that metal a unique color would make a lot of sense!

However, your mineral can also just be every color of the rainbow like quartz and perhaps that's what makes identifying your mana stones elusive and create an illusion of scarcity that your character can solve.

There are other things that can change the colors of minerals, like radiation damage, and electron exchange, but I think that is beyond what would be helpful! So lets talk about some unique color properties that happen in nature that seem magical in the first place! Maybe you don't need to design a mana stone, but you want a unique gemstone that only the royal family passes down or something (IDK).

The first one is the alexandrite effect! This is where a mineral can change color in natural light vs. incandescent light. (the mineral itself is not changing, but the lights contain different amounts of different colors that then get absorbed by the stone). Even if you don't use electricity in your fictional world, you could have the colors change in the presence of light magic. This could create fun misunderstandings about what the mineral is reacting to!

Pleochroism

Pleochroism is something that most minerals have, it is frequently used to help identify minerals in thin sections, however minerals are usually not pleochroic enough for it to be visible to the naked eye! Pleochroism is just a fancy name to describe the change in how light is absorbed based on the angle of the mineral! So if you scroll up to the first image where I showed a lot of crystal shapes, most of them have angles where they are longer and shorter! This will effect the way light travels in the crystal. Tanzanite is a popular mineral that does this.

Photochromism

This is when a mineral will change color (in a reversible way) when exposed to UV light (or sunlight), I am not going to go too into the details of why this is happening because it would require me to read some research papers and I just don't feel like it. The mineral that is best known for this is Hackmanite!

Alright! These are all the really cool color effects that might inspire you or maybe not, but now I am going to talk about how you might find your minerals within a rock!

When I see a lot of magical caves/mines, typically I see them with some variation of a geode honestly, but most minerals are not found like that! Now I am sure most of you guys have seen a geode, so I will not really talk about those, but I will talk briefly about porphyroblasts which is when the mineral grows larger than the minerals around it, this happens in metamorphic minerals!

sorry random stranger, but this is an image of garnets inside a finer-grained rock at gore mountain in New York!

Another way you might find minerals is in a pegmatite! This is when all minerals are really large! This is a formed from really slow crystalizing magma!

But something else to think about is that your mineral might just be massive, it doesn't have to have distinct crystals, it may be similar to jadeite where small grains grow together which leaves it looking smooth and seamless! A note about all of these is that you would have to mine into the rock to find these, there would not be any natural caves in these rocks! Caves are only ever really formed in limestones and maybe marbles (rocks that react with acid).

How can your characters identify these minerals?

Typically when you are out in the field you will look to see what type of rocks the minerals are found in (The overall texture of the rock will tell you how it formed). If you know how the rock formed, it will narrow down the amount of minerals you need to think about by quite a bit! Next, you are going to look closely at it and observe its crystal structure, does it have an obvious crystal? if so what is the general shape? If it is broken, how did it break? Did it fracture like glass or did it break along uniform planes. Some minerals have a thing called cleavage (breaks along planes of weakness). If a mineral exhibits this habit, it will again help narrow this down. Next we can look at color. Color can be misleading, because minerals like quartz can be any color imaginable, but minerals like olivine will always be green! The next thing your character can do is test for hardness, minerals all have a specific hardness that can help identify it as well.

After you go through all of this, your mineral might have some special property! This could be magnetism, fluorescence, reactions to acid, or any of the color changing effects I mentioned above! Other than that, your character can take it back to a lab and do a number of things to identify it, but the most typical thing would be for them to make a thin section (very thin piece of the rock) and observe it under a cross polarized microscope!

On that note folks! I hope this helped in some way in thinking of new magic mineral properties! I have other guides that explore some different fictional worldbuilding issues you might run into, but if you have any topics you would like me to cover please that I haven't mentioned already, let me know!

#geology #rocks #creative writing #fictional world #worldbuilding #dnd #dnd worldbuilding #worldbuilding stuff #writing resources #info post #information #writing

5K notes · View notes

uyuforu · 4 months

Text

Juno, Groom, Briede by Signs, Houses, Degrees

Juno (3) is an asteroid discovered in 1804 by Karl Ludwig Harding. It represents another part of the person we will marry as it represents destined partner, our soulmate, "the one" for us. Briede (19029) & Groom (5129) asteroids are more about just the FS. But Juno has a more destiny message, more of a spiritual link. To see more about this person, looking at our Juno Persona Chart is recommended! You can also check Briede or Groom Persona Charts. Checking the signs, houses and degrees are important as it represents all the details about one's future spouse.

Book a private reading: menus ; Q&A ; rules

FS= Future Spouse

✧˖° Aries, 1H, 1°, 13°, 25°

FS could have Aries, Mars, 1H, 1°, 13°, 25° prominent placements in their chart. Your FS is passionate, quick, they can talk fast, walk fast, do things too fast, they are not patient, and they might pursue you. They are the type to "chase". Despite that, they are someone independent. They could have a quick temper too. Someone who feel very passionately their feelings. This person could also show their love physically. They might not be good with words. This person might care about health, and sport can be very important in this person. They might also not scared of confrontation and fights. They def seem confident, they can also be confident. They can be loud, or laugh very loud too. They can take things personally pretty quick too. They don't have their tongue in their pocket. They could also be extrovert, and being very passionate about what they talk about. They could also want to be with you very quickly. You could meet your FS at work, gym, the streets, you could be in a rush the moment you meet. It could also be a sign of love at first sight. Both or one of you could have it. If you are in a culture that still does it, it's also a sign of arranged marriage. The house here could also be a sign of a quick relationship, so you could be together really quick, or just feelings appear very quickly. It could also be a sign of friends with benefits, big flirt, rizz, or one night stands. The person could appear as a player. Take it lightly. You could meet them at a party or where people gather. Since it's also about the body, where people show they body, where people fight, where people get physical, where people dance, etc. also 1H placement for other details. Your FS could be someone very confident, or seems this way, someone who may enjoys fight sports, someone who does not giving up, someone who is not afraid to take action. It can also be someone who may struggle with jealousy, anger issues. It could also mean someone who is a leader.

✧˖° Taurus, 2H, 2°, 14°, 26°

FS could have Taurus, Venus, 2H, 2°, 14°, 26° prominent placements in their chart. Your FS could have a very harmonious face or way to live. Someone stable, someone who wants to provide. They could want to spend time with you, and even hanging out at your or their place is a date. Your routine is even a date for them. So grocery shopping? a date! Taking a walk outside? a date! This person can enjoy good things from life, so they might like to cook, or to eat, they could love to do shopping, or like fashion, like to take care of themselves. They look neat, they look nice and always put together. They can also love to smell good, and they could have a thing for singing. Don't be surprised if they have a good voice too, even outside of singing abilities. Taurus placements are known for having a very attractive voice. This placement also is a way to consider that your FS has money. The Taurus is also the 2H, and it means this person could be wealthy, comes from a wealthy family, or will eventually have a lot of money. It could also be that your FS is good with managing money, and could be into trading, etc. Possible job could be related to money, working in a bank for ex. or living based on trades, they could have a stable job and income. This person doesn't seem to worry much, they are not loud and don't overtake about themselves. It's a very collected energy. You could meet in the nature, in your daily life, walking in the streets, in a park, while chilling somewhere, also doing grocery shopping, or going to the bank. It could also meeting because of money matters. You could also meet this person at a restaurant, a café, something related to food. It can also be at a shopping center, a mall, somewhere luxurious. It could be at a moment you live a simple life, or when you are stable, or searching for stability. It can be at a concert too, but also you could meet them on the phone, or at karaoke.

✧˖° Gemini, 3H, 3°, 15°, 27°

FS could have Gemini, Mercury, 3H, 3°, 15°, 27° prominent placements in their chart. Your FS could be someone who speaks a lot, like they are very passionate about what they talk about, and can speak non stop about any topics. Someone who loves to give details about stories they tell. They are very curious, love to learn a lot about different topics. It's the kind of person to tell you random informations about many different topics, and you wonder where they got that very random information. The fun fact person. This person can be very smart, and it's not even academically, it can just be very smart in everyday life. They have a thirst for knowledge, and they can be good at analyzing. They are very good at learning in general, and they get stuff quickly. They can be very good at learning languages, and any informations. This person can be very funny, have a witty humor. This can be a sign they are bored easily, in their daily life, or even with people around them. They are easily bored if the person they hang out with doesn't make them laugh, or don't challenge them mentally. They need someone with whom they can have discussions and debates. Someone who knows a lot of stuff. Someone who makes them laugh. They are funny too and want someone who will laugh and joke around with them. Big plus if you get their references or witty jokes, they will love you so much. They want an emotional and intellectual connection with someone. You will know if they are falling in love with you if they keep talking about you. They will know every facts and details about you by heart. They may also love to gossip lol. They can have a thing with their voice, or you could love their voice, the way they talk, or their brain. It's a sign of meeting your FS online, on social medias. it can happen at a party, with friends, or your siblings can present them to you. They can also be a neighbor. You could meet them at the library, or while buying books. You could meet them at a club, college, school, anywhere you learn or get en education. You could meet them because of technologies or phones matters. Karaoke, concert, speeches can be a thing here.

✧˖° Cancer, 4H, 4°, 16°, 28°

FS could have Cancer, Moon, 4H, 4°, 16°, 28° prominent placements in their chart. Your FS could be someone very nurturing, someone who is very sweet, nice, and gentle. They could look super young, or just so cute, it makes you want to take care of them. This is not an aggressive person, they are actually very sensible. This could mean they could cry easily too. They can look very feminine, or just be in tune and harmony with their feminine side. They can love their family, loved ones a lot. They could love home things, stay at home too. Food is one of their biggest love story, and if they are feeling sad, food can bring comfort. Their mother can be very important to them, play a big role in their life, or they grew up with a lot of feminine figures. They could love children, want children, or even grew up with children around them. It's someone with whom you will want to make children. Pregnancy can be a theme here too. This person can be very secretive, as they may be scared to be hurt. They can look innocent, and it can lead people to be scared they will be hurt by the world. You could want to protect them. They could also want to nurture and protect you. Water can be important for them, they could love it or love to swim too. Living by the sea too. This person is very loyal, not only to you but also to their family, people they love and hold dearly in their heart. Because of their loyalty, they can even be loyal to traditions. They will maybe want to create their own traditions with you too. This person can be moody too, or over sensitive. Because of that, they can be often in different kind of moods. You could meet them in your homeland, you could meet their family first, or they could meet your family first. This could also be meeting in their homeland. Family could introduce you two. You could meet because of babies and pregnancies, you could meet because of a woman, or around women. You could meet during a full moon or a new moon. Something about food too like a family reunion, or at church, or in a restaurant. You could meet around water too.

✧˖° Leo, 5H, 5°, 17°, 29°

FS could have Leo, Sun, 5H, 5°, 17°, 29° prominent placements in their chart. So, your FS could be someone famous, successful, someone who has a certain popularity. They can come from a successful family, rich or important one too. They could have been always popular in their life, always being the center of attention while not necessarily searching for it. But they can enjoy that. This person is very fun to hang out with, they can be loud, and laugh a lot. People just notice them when they enter a room, people look at them. You will see them right away and may know they are your FS. They could also feel the same about you. They just shine in society, and it's important for them to be seen and desirable. They could love children, love to play with them, and make them laugh. A baby or child smiling to them makes their day. They could be in tune with their inner child, and not afraid to let it out. This person can be or seem confident. But they can also have a big ego, or show some selfish behavior. If you hurt their ego, they will be deeply hurt. They can be very creative, have a lot of imagination. They can also love music a lot. This aspect make them also very loyal, so if you betray them, it's gonna be hard for them to move on or give you a second chance. They can be quite moody if you don't give them attention too. They can have a very royal vibe to them. They own every places they go to, and they expect people to respect them. They are respectful too. They can have thick hair, and their hair can be prominent. They can physically be very attractive, have a warm aura. They can be seen as a player too, or you could see them this way, someone cocky too. They could be a leader and not be scared to lead people. They can also easily get noticed in a crowd. They want to feel unique and seen. This could mean also them being a celebrity, but be careful about this one. This could meet them through fame, meeting them at day time, or a sunny day. Meeting them during summer season. Meeting them and having love at first sight, or finding them super hot. Or this is how they could feel about you. Meeting them at a concert, a party, somewhere people dance, have fun, laugh, somewhere loud. Meeting them and laughing a lot with them. They could be very smiley around you. Meeting them around children, or you feel your inner child being at peace with them. Meeting them at the theater too. Somewhere they are the star of it, or somewhere you are the main character. This could also indicate meeting them and the moment feels like a movie.

✧˖° Virgo, 6H, 6°, 18°

FS could have Virgo, Mercury, 6H, 6°, 18° prominent placements in their chart. FS could be someone who is very perfectionist, someone who works very hard and for whom working is important. They want stability, and a routine. They can't live a life full of spontaneity, and they like predictability, they like to organize things. It's a placement that make them very neat. Hygiene and health are very important to them. They can be very much into control and can be anxious person, but it's because they have an eyes for details and perfection. They hate lazy people, and may actually feel bad when they do nothing. Changing their routine may take a lot for them. They love details, and they will remember every single details about you, even some you didn't notice. If they love you, they will love every flaws of you, and in fact, it's not even flaws for them. Their love is realistic, and they are romantic in their own way. Could love act of service. Love to help you improve yourself, and they make want to take care of you too. They also want to help you in your daily life and at work. This person may love pets. They can be introvert too, love to stay at home, love to stay by themselves. They are someone who love to help people in general, so it can make them very much into giving to people. They can also care a lot about mental health. This is the kind of person who wants to improve a lot about themselves, they always think they can be better than who they are already. When you talk to them, they can tell you things they will do to improve themselves like a to do list. Ah yes, and they love those. They can exercise often too. They are organized too and may hate loud places or people. You could meet them at work, they can be a colleague or your boss, or you can be their boss. You could meet them at the hospital, or at the doctor, they can be your doctor, your nurse, or someone who works in the medical field. You could meet them at the gym, or while working out, they can also be a gym instructor. They can also be a psychologist, you could meet them in that field too. You could also meet them somewhere you do volunteering. You could meet them also in your everyday life.

✧˖°Libra, 7H, 7°, 19°

FS could have Libra, Venus, 7H, 7°, 19° prominent placements in their chart. Your FS can be someone very attractive, very neat and charismatic. You could be very attracted to them when you meet, or you could feel like they look very good. You may also get a feeling they can be a player, or someone who attracts a lot of people. You can sense many people have a crush on them. They can be popular too, but they can also be very charming. They love that people love them, or people think of them as good person. They could care a lot about beauty, fashion, physical appearances, looking good and presentable. They don't are if they spend money into that, because it's a need for them. They could hate injustice, and may prefer harmonious situations. They hate conflicts too and will try to avoid it. They can have a thing for business, contracts. They lay be good at attracting those. They could love this idea of marriage and romance, this is someone who will not be able to think of their life without marriage. They love the idea of being a couple, and may be a very romantic partner. But it can also mean someone who love romance so much that they are more in love with the idea of romance and love itself than the actual person. But you will find them very romantic. They maybe have a thing for beauty, but it also means beautiful souls. So this is someone who believes in real kindness. This person may also love art very much, and may find beauty in a lot of details. They can tend to romances a lot of things or people around them, or even some situations and memories of their. You could meet them in a shopping mall, somewhere people dress nice and fancy, at a party, you could meet them at court, when signing a contract, when starting a business, at a wedding, or with friends, something can be linked to law, or marriage, or justice. you could meet them at a beauty shop, at a concert, or a museum. You could meet them somewhere linked to art, fashion, beauty, maybe a school specialized in those areas. You could have love at first sight, or they could for you, or it means you will find them very attractive.

✧˖°Scorpio, 8H, 8°, 20°

FS could have Scorpio, Mars, Pluto, 8H, 8°, 20° prominent placements in their chart. FS could be very good looking, very hot, someone who looks dark, charismatic, someone to whom you feel an instant pull. Someone who attracts people like a magnet. This person could be someone so attractive a lot of people are almost obsessed with them. They could be shy, or private. Introvert, and someone who doesn't speak much at first. They can seem closed. Scorpio or Pluto vibes to me feel like someone who always look depressive. They always seem bored, or just down. They may look tired too. They can be someone who is better to show their love through physical intimacy than actual words. You could have an intense physical pull towards this person when you meet. They look very mysterious. You could have manifested this person. They can care a lot about money, how to manage it. This could mean an intense connection between you too, you can't get your bodies away from each other, but it could go beyond physical intimacy. There is a true feelings of wanting to make one with this person. This could feel very spiritual, with a soul connection. This person could be secretive and not want to reveal those, and they could also want to keep their flaws and dark sides to themselves. They can be possessive and jealous too. They can be very passionate and intense too, even in their eyes you can feel it. This person may have been hurt a lot in the past, or you just feel like they are lonely. They could be very sensible too, and may prefer to be alone in order to not be hurt anymore. They could be a player, or just sleep with different people when you meet. You could meet them at night, somewhere you are lost or somewhere you don't know. You could meet them when getting money, or when you get wealthy. There could be a contract involved too. You could have manifested them, or you could meet them once you do your shadow work. You could also meet them through vivid dreams or meditation, or through 5D. Pregnancy could be involved too. You could meet them somewhere considered taboo too. You guys could start in a taboo way, or as fwb, ons. Or this person will want to try that with you. Just possibilities.

✧˖°Sagittarius, 9H, 9°, 21°

FS could have Sagittarius, Jupiter, 9H, 9°, 21° prominent placements in their chart. FS could be someone very mature, or there is something very wise about them. You could meet them at a moment you are more mature, or wiser. You could meet them later in life too. They could be very smart, and even emotionally speaking. They could be good at school. They can teach you a lot and you can teach them a lot. They could be a teacher. They could love the college life, or made important memories there. Studying ma be something they love, and you could meet while studying, it can also be abroad. FS could be a foreigner, and live abroad. Or they could come study in your country for example. They truly believe in the sense of learning from life lessons, and that life is more an adventure than an hardship. This person can be quite optimistic. You could find them pretty lucky too. This person can be considered very funny, and they may make words funny. They have a good way to express themselves and you could find them super funny. They are quite curious and spontaneous. They want to experience different things, they want to see the world, and learn many things. They may believe that's how you get wiser. They may love to travel. They could be spiritual, or believe in spirituality. You guys could have a spiritual bond too. Shadow work could be involved too. You could meet them at college, school, while learning something. You could meet them at work too. You could also meet them abroad, while studying a language, or they could come to your country. You could meet them while you both travel. You could meet them somewhere unexpected, or when you try something new or totally random. You could meet them in 5D, dreams, or meditation.

✧˖°Capricorn, 10H, 10°, 22°

FS could have Capricorn, Saturn, 10H, 10°, 22° prominent placements in their chart. FS could be older than you, or they look older than their age. They could also look tired, and that would be why they look older. They could look like they are depressed, sad, or just tired. They can look like they have a lot on their plate, like life is hard. They could find their work to be super important to them, they could have an important job, or an important position in their career. They are very hardworking, and are not lazy at all. Making money is very important to them, they know how to manage it well. They could be into trading too. They want to live a good and luxurious life style, but just knowing they have a lot of money makes them feel very relaxed. They can look cold at first or just not talk much. They can also not be that expressive. They can be witty, they have a certain sense of humor but not everyone can understand it, some people may think it's very harsh. They could love to take control, and hate someone to try to control them. Their reputation could be very good, and they may have a lot of respect from people. People may think of this person one of the best at their job, and they could be famous too, or just very successful in their career field. Some people may fear them. They could have public attention. They are very ambitious, a true leader. Their father could be famous too, successful, they could love their father very much, it could be their role model. You could meet because of a father figure. This can mean this person is very much in tune with their masculine side, and they could look very masculine. They really want to marry too. They are also very much into traditions. You could meet them at work, they can be your boss, or someone who has a higher position than yours. You could meet them while working, while they are working. Something can be related to money too here. You could meet them while you are tired or depressed (I know it's strange sorry). You could meet them during a stressful time in your life. Also, you could meet them when you are in your ambition era, when you are older, or later in life. You could meet them though family, mostly father figures. You could meet them through fame too, or when you are successful in your career.

✧˖°Aquarius, 11H, 11°, 23°

FS could have Aquarius, Uranus, Saturn, 11H, 11°, 23° prominent placements in their chart. FS is unique, someone who hates to follow the crowd. This person can be said to be weird, but they actually love to be considered as someone who is not like the other. Something they actually hate is to fit in the box. They want to be different and will always search for that. It's another way for them to make themselves seen. They have different tastes than the other, but they are very good at making friends. They are very social people, and they may have friends from different kind of cultures, who have different tastes, or just friends who are very different from each other. They are very spontaneous, and love to surprise people with their ideas, thoughts and actions. They just love to be themselves. They could be into humanitarian actions. They can be on social medias often, or either hate them. They have a very different perspective about things in life, so it's a totally new point of view. They could spend a lot of time in the internet too, or they love new technologies. They could have a thing for building too, so for example building their own computer. Creating too, they are very creative, but in their own ways. Very smart too. You could meet them during volunteering, through friends, this person can be a childhood friend too. You could meet them out of nowhere, unexpectedly, in foreign lands or while traveling. You could meet them during protests, on social medias, on the Internet, you guys could be friends online first. You could have a unique relationship when you meet. You could also just bump into each other at the weirdest moment.

✧˖°Pisces, 12H, 12°, 24°

FS could have Pisces, Neptune, Jupiter, 12H, 12°, 24° prominent placements in their chart. FS could be someone who look like an angel, someone who look dreamy, and very good. They may look innocent and very beautiful. They could be very romantic, daydreamer, and may love to spend time alone. When alone they can let their creative side get crazy. They could be very much an art lover, and may be very creative. They could have a poetic side. They could love to imagine a lot of things, and their imagination can be really one of their hobby. They could be very good at manifesting. They can be very sensitive people, and live their emotions intensely. They could have addictions too, like drugs or alcohol. Or this is a very sensitive matters for them, they may haver lived with someone who had addictions. They could have very specific dreams, vivid or you met through dreams before meeting in person. You could need to do shadow work before meeting this person. This placement can also mean having a very intense soul connection to your FS, like karmics, soulmates, twin flames, etc. They could be into spirituality, esotericism, astrology, etc. You may have met In 5D before meeting in person too. You could live a true ending before meeting this person. They could live next to water, or they could love water too, swimming, etc. Water may calm them a lot. They could cry easily. You could meet them in foreign lands, in 5D dreams, you could also do a lot of tarot or astrology researches and feel like you already know them when you meet them. You could know a lot about them through meditation too. They could also do the same for you, they could a psychic too. Or they have psychic abilities. You could meet them at night, near water, at the swimming pool, at the sea, a waterpark, aquariums. You could meet them at the museum. There is something very divine about your meeting too. As if it was fated.

-> If Juno, Groom or Briede conjunct your Sun, it can mean your FS is someone who is a soul connection, a soulmate or a twin flame. You will mirror each other and be very similar.

Thank you for reading!

back to index ; ask ; request ; rules

1K notes · View notes

lethesbeastie · 16 days

Note

Hi, I saw your post about practicing drawing fat people and I was wondering if you could compile like a list of resources or references?

It can be difficult to find resources for drawing the wide variety of forms fat bodies can occupy, so I've done my best to bring together some resources I've been able to prove have some degree of diversity in the references they offer!

My primary resource recommendation for drawing fat people is Morpho Anatomy For Artists: Fat And Skin Folds! It does a wonderful job breaking down where fat accumulates on the body, how it interacts with the familiar landmarks of human anatomy, and what sort of shapes it tends to form under the influence of gravity. It's a phenomenal reference and my top recommendation for anyone seeking to improve at drawing fat people!

When it comes to finding decent photo references for fat people, the pickings are frustratingly slim. Most sites that specialize in pose references either don't have fat models or have all their images behind paywalls. Of the resources I looked through, the best sources for pose references were Adorkastock and Line of Action.

@adorkastock actively seeks to provide an incredible profile of pose references with diverse body types, and as an added bonus you can access a lot of their images for free on their site/Tumblr or join their patreon for early access to images! Line of action is a site aimed towards practicing figure drawing, providing images and a timed function to challenge artists to sketch within a set time limit. I took the time to go through roughly 300+ images and was pleased to find that during my session around two-to-three out of every ten photos were fat models. The only caveats to this was the fact that most of the images were of the same individual, limiting the applications for studying the variants of fat bodies. Still, it's an amazing tool that has a free mode and allows you to filter the types of references you want based on age and level of nudity.

Beyond sites that specialize in art reference photography, there's also the ever popular Pinterest, which is the site where I typically seek references for my personal studies. Due to the nature of Pinterest's extensive collection, there's a vast variety of references for different fat body types that includes a lot more "everyday" people. The primary issue with Pinterest however is the rampant reposting and lack of proper credits for images, which can make things dicey depending on how you wish to use the references you find. For personal studies this isn't really an issue, but for any sort of professional or paid work is something to be aware of just for the sake of accountability.

* For those who are 18+, porn photography of real people also offers an incredible wealth of visual resources for fat bodies and how they interact with gravity/movement/etc. The variety of positions and angles offer many opportunities to study human anatomy, and it's a pretty well-known fact that drawing NSFW art can be an important learning experience for those struggling with drawing anatomy. In the end, it depends on your personal level of comfort with viewing/drawing explicit images, but it's not something you should completely overlook.

Last but not least, look at the work of artists you admire who draw fat people! While I typically recommend sticking to photo references for learning anatomy, studying artist's portrayals of fat people is also incredibly helpful for learning different tactics for simplifying and/or stylizing fat bodies to better fit ones own style. There are also plenty of artists who've crafted tutorials detailing their approach to drawing fat folks, so I highly recommend you check them out as well! I hope the resources I've linked here can help you in your studies, and feel free to drop another ask if you have any more questions! I'm planning on posting a tutorial on how I do studies for fat people soon, so that will be an additional resource for you once I've got it posted!

#artists on tumblr #beastiebites #asks #art resources #drawing fat people #thank you for the ask! lemme know if u have any more questions!#im working on drawing up a tutorial for another ask so that resource will also be available!#let me know if any of the links fail #tumblr is trying to kill them but i stay silly :3

726 notes · View notes

kaijutegu · 4 months

Text

Happy Valentine's Day! When you think about love and the animal kingdom, are alligators an animal that comes to mind? No? Well, they should be, because they have some of the most interesting courtship behavior of any non-bird. (Bird displays are something else entirely.) I think it's time that you all are introduced to the Big Gay Alligator Sex Study, more properly known as Courtship Behavior of American Alligators (Alligator mississipiensis), written by Kent Vliet. You can get the paper at the link below!

This was a study done over a 3-year period in the 80s with a population of captive American alligators to look at how they interacted. Alligators are incredibly social and have complex behavioral dynamics, and their courtship rituals and routines are pretty dang interesting. In general, crocodilians spend a great deal of time interacting with each other when compared to other reptiles, and the courtship behavior of a few species is well-documented. But in this post, I'm mostly going to talk about the American alligator (with a quick detour into Cuban crocs).

Why Do We Care About Courtship?

So before I dive into talking about this study, let's talk about why we care about courtship (the social behavior that leads to mating) and mating (sexual interaction that could, hypothetically, lead to reproduction). Courtship and mating are extremely important when studying animal behavior- honestly, they're extremely important when studying zoology in general. In some cases, understanding this behavior actually a major conservation concern! For example, the Cuban crocodile is an endangered species. They're largely constricted to two swampy areas of Cuba, both of which also have American crocodiles present. And unfortunately, the female Cuban crocs find the male American crocs really, really sexy. This is a big problem, because with only about 3-4,000 Cuban crocs left in the wild (possibly even fewer), they need to be breeding with their own species to make more Cubanitos.

These. Make more of them.

But what scientists have found is that not only are there hybrid crocs in the wild, the Cuban population of American crocodiles is more closely related to Cuban crocodiles than other populations of American crocodiles, suggesting this has been going on for a very long time.

You can read more about that here if you want, but back to the gay alligators.

Alligator? More Like Alli-GAY-tor, amiright?

(actually that IS wrong it's more like alli-bisexual-tor, but that doesn't sound like alligator)

So how does a study like this happen? Back in the 80s, the American population was Feeling A Way about alligators. Something that you gotta understand when you're doing any kind of conservation is that people protect what they love, and they love what they understand. Alligators are a major conservation success story today- there's millions in the wild- but they were in serious danger of extinction in the 1960s, and it was a combination of legislation, awareness campaigns, and captive breeding at both zoological parks and commercial gator farms that helped bring them back. As a result, they were one of the first species to be de-listed from the ESA!

All of this attention meant that alligator science was flourishing in the late 70s and 80s, and that's where this study comes into being. This post is long enough so I'm not gonna go into all the details and methodology- you can find that in the paper I linked up top!

However, there is one piece of methodology we should talk about, and that's the choice of study population. It's part of what makes this particular study so interesting!. See, in a lot of cases, captive behavior really differs from wild behavior. This can be impacted by captivity conditions- what other animals the study animal has access to, what behaviors the animal has learned in captivity, even down to things like how the animals are fed. For example, some courtship behavior in captive animals can be the result of unnatural habitat conditions or limited social groupings. If you only have access to a couple of conspecifics, you don't have the same choices that you do if you have access to something closer to a wild population. If you've got a breeding group with one male and a handful of females, you can't ask or answer any questions about male/male interactions! Crowding is also an issue- too many animals in a space can be stressful, and lead to atypical sexual behavior.

But that's one of the cool elements of this study: the alligators in question live in a large social group in a lagoon that's basically just natural habitat with a boardwalk going around it. It's about as close to studying a wild population as you can get, with the advantage that it's far more accessible. And what this leads to is that that the researchers were able to see a really wide range of behavior, because all of the alligators had lots of access to lots of different mates. They were able to make choices that you wouldn't see in a smaller group. There's a trade-off that Vliet notes, and that is the population density and captive situation means that results might not quite work out the way they do in the wild- but in the years since, the results of the study have been vindicated with research into wild populations.

So, what are alligators into? Gay sex, group sex, yelling real loud, and lots and lots of... gentle caressing.

that's not a euphemism they spend a lot of time gently rubbing each others' faces

So first things first, it turns out that the vast majority of alligator mounting, which occurs after courtship behaviors like jaw rubbing, bellowing, head rubbing, and swimming together is male/male. Over the three year study period, an average of 68% of all sexual interactions were male/male. However, what they don't really notice is exclusivity, because when it comes to the sex of their sex partner, alligators... well. They aren't all that picky.

Another fascinating aspect of alligator courtship is what's called courtship groups. These are readily observed in captive settings (and in the wild, too, as mentioned in Dragon Songs), and are mixed-sex groups that spontaneously form. As other alligators approach a mounting pair, the original pair will happily split up and switch partners. Usually what happens is that the alligator on top slides off to initiate courtship with a newly-arrived individual. What's really interesting here is that, as the author notes, "males engaged in courtship with a female readily terminate that interaction and initiate interactions with males." Another fun element of alligator courtship is that while in most vertebrates, males approach females, alligator females often approach males. Usually it's the males approaching, but for many crocodilians, courtship initiation is an equal-opportunity affair.

Alligators are also really vocal during courtship! This is pretty unusual for a reptile- usually they're a quiet bunch. But crocodilians are pretty chatty. And during the breeding season, something pretty spectacular happens: infrasonic communication, better known as bellowing. This is sometimes called water dancing, due to the ripple patterns it makes. It's a loud, low-pitched rumble that conveys information about size and location, and is used for territorial displays and as a mating call. During the not-breeding season, a bellow means "stay away!" During the breeding season, it means "HOT ALLIGATOR SINGLES IN YOUR AREA."

Here's some pretty spectacular videos showing you what this looks and sounds like. The vibrations make the water above their backs splash up.

youtube

Alligators are also extremely tactile during courtship. The study has detailed analysis of touch in specific tactile zones along the head and neck of the alligators. Vliet notes "These sites have increased numbers of swollen pustular scale organs, the function of which is unknown."

What's kinda funny about this to me is that now, the functions of these organs are known- they're highly innervated tissues that help alligators detect prey in murky water. An alligator's jaws are more sensitive than a human fingertip due to the sheer number of nerve endings! So of course these areas are going to be highly sensitive, and to me it makes perfect sense that they feature so heavily in courtship.

So what can we take away from this 40-year-old study? Quite a bit! First, it's a great reminder that humans aren't special. We see same-sex mating behavior in pretty much every species we look at. We see it in cockroaches, spiders, and butterflies. We see it in sheep. We see it in alligators. We see it in every other species of great ape. Of course we also see it in humans! There's nothing that special about same-sex sexual behavior. It's a part of... pretty much everybody's evolutionary history.

Another thing I think is really important is that while this is an old study, it was absolutely pivotal as a turning point in helping people understand alligators. Remember how I said earlier that we protect what we love, and we love what we understand? This study showed the world that alligators weren't just mindless eating machines. They're socially complex! Understanding alligator sociality and how they choose mates and interact helped us care for them better. It told us more about how to keep them happy in captivity. Alligators are smart, communicative creatures. They don't always get along, but they don't always fight, either. (Don't get me wrong: they will fight each other, and they've actually evolved some pretty specific anti-other-alligator defenses... but they don't always fight, even during the breeding season.) This is interesting to me because in mammals, it's hypothesized that same-sex sexual behavior may have evolved for prosocial reasons; that is, it helps reduce conflicts. Perhaps it does the same for alligators.

In conclusion:

If you want to know more about alligator courtship and mating rituals, I can't recommend Vladimir Dinets's Dragon Songs: Love and Adventure Among Crocodiles, Alligators, and Other Dinosaur Relations highly enough. I know I talk about this book all the time, but it's easily the most accessible writing on crocodilian social behavior. It will change the way you think about and understand these animals.

Another phenomenal book is Alligators: The Illustrated Guide to Their Biology, Behavior, and Conservation by Kent Vliet. (Hm, wonder if he's written anything else...) This is basically the Bible for gator behavior. The photographs are absolutely gorgeous, too.

#alligators #reptiblr #reptile #long post #Youtube

834 notes · View notes

rheya28 · 7 months

Text

Darlington Castle [ Wedding Venue ] ♥ The Sims 4: Speed Build // CC

Welcome to Darlington Castle, a beautiful wedding venue located on the Island of Windenburg. This one of a kind venue is known for not only its iconic architecture and stunning views but also for its timeless elegance and romantic atmosphere, making a popular destination to hold weddings and other occasions. Whether you’re planning an intimate ceremony or a grand celebration, Darlington Castle is the perfect setting for your sims dream wedding.

Programming includes an indoor and outdoor ceremonial space, an indoor and outdoor reception hall, suites for both the bride's and the groom's bridal party. Additionally, this venue also include a kitchen and multiple private bedrooms for the newly weds and their wedding entourage.

NOTE: The exterior of this venue was based on Villa Erba

As I'm posting this, I realize there's so much more I wanna add, so maybe I'll do a part 2

♥ Please make sure to turn bb.moveobjects on! ♥ Please DO NOT reupload or claim as your own. ♥ Feel free to tag me if you are using it, I love seeing my build in other peoples save file ♥ Feel free to edit/tweak my builds, but please make sure to credit me as the original creator! ♥ Thank you to all CC Creators ♥ Please let me know if there's any problem with the build!

♥ SPEED BUILD VIDEO 00:00 Beginning 00:02 Intro 1:11 Speed Build 25:26Photos

♥ LOT DETAILS Lot Name: Darlington Castle Lot type: Wedding Venue Lot size: 64x64 Location: Windenburg Island

♥ MODS: TOOL MOD by TwistedMexi

♥ CC LIST:

Note: I reuse a lot of the same cc in all my builds, specifically cc's from felixandre, HeyHarrie, and Pierisim so if you're interested in downloading past, present, future build from me i suggest getting all their cc sets to make life a little easier! other creators include Sooky, Charlypancakes, Sixam, Thecluttercat, Myshunosun, awingedllama.

Joyceisfox: Simple Live (Bathroom, Blooming plant) S- Imagination: Rutland Kitchen Felixandre: Colonial (all), Chateau (all), Fayun, Berlin pt (1), Florence (all), Georgian, Gothic Revival, Grove (all), Kyoto pt (2), London exterior & interior, Paris (all), Jardane, Shop the look, SOHO, Tudor Sooky: Horizontal oil Painting (Landscape, Still life), Vertical oil paintings (landscape, still life, portrait) Awingedllama: Nostaligia Living Felixandre x Harrie: Baysic, Harluxe, Livin Rum, Orjanic (all) Bbygyal123: Minimal Prints Charlypancakes: Chalk, Lavish, Miscellanea, Smoll, Telly Harrie: Heritage, Brownstone Collection, Brutalist, Coastal (all), Shop the look 2, Spoons Madame Ria: Back to basic floor Myshunosun: Midsummer Eve Arsbotanica: Peonies bouquet Pierisim: Auntie Vera, Coldbrew (all), Domain du clos (all), MCM pt (2)(3), Oak house (all), Winter garden pt (1), Woodland ranch (all) Charlypancakes x Pierisim: Precious Promises Simplistic: Magnolia Cottage Rugs, Rug Holland Sixam: Stylistwood Nursery Simten: Playable Harp (mod) thecluttercat: Sunnysundae pt (3), Dandy Diary Syboulette: Nothing to wear Taurus Design: Eliza walk in closet Other CC Cowbuild: Family Kitchen (sink flowers only), Blooming Garden cafe (Hanging wisteria only) [ I think these are locked behind paywall, but you dont really need to download as they are not too important. howeber, If you do wanna dl it....iykyk]

♥Tray File: x ♥Origin ID: Applez ♥Twitter: Rheya28__ ♥Tiktok: Rheya28__ ♥Patreon: Rheya28 ♥Youtube: Rheya28__

#ts4 #sims 4 #thesims4 #sims #thesims #showusyourbuilds #sims 4 cc #sims 4 builds #builds #sims 4 screenshots #simblr #the sims 4 builds #build

1K notes · View notes

weirdmarioenemies · 3 months

Text

Name: Hot-Hot Rock Debut: Super Mario Bros. Wonder

You know something I love about the Mario series? Its tendency to use reduplication to put emphasis on certain words. You thought your average everyday mountain was tall? Well this is a Tall Tall Mountain. You've never seen docks quite this dire before! And it's not even just adjectives that get in on the fun! Rock Rock Mountain, Ice Ice Outpost, I love that something can be more "rock" or "ice" than something else. Sometimes a word is so nice, you just wanna say it twice twice.

Hot-Hot Rocks are one of the latest additions to this long-running Mario trend, and also one of our latest Cubic Companions! You know, Blocks are very important to the Mario franchise, but how many enemies can you think of that are blocks...? The answer should be a lot. This was a Mod Hooligon Trick and you may or may not have fallen for it. I can't tell unless you tell me, alright?

Hot-Hot Rocks first appear in the level Hot-Hot Hot! (this is an example of a linguistic phenomenon known as "threeduplication"), where they serve as one of the primary obstacles. As long as Hot-Hot Rocks are Not-Hot, you can stand on them like any other platform. But when they start glowing red, you better get out of the kitchen, because Mario and friends can't stand the heat!

Of course, a little water is all it takes to turn Hot-Hot Rocks into Not-Hot Rocks for good, so spray them with Elephant Mario's trunk or a precariously placed pot of water, and they won't be able to hurt you anymore!

Hot-Hot Rocks have a symbiotic relationship with another new enemy called Kerpop, which will probably get its own post someday, likely courtesy of Mod Chikako. These guys act like Goombas most of the time, but when they touch a hot Hot-Hot Rock, they will pop and begin jumping around! How cute! This attention to detail is what makes Super Mario Bros. Wonder truly special.

That's about all there is to Hot-Hot Rocks, but we're not quite done yet, because this post is about to get all philisolophical(sic)! Because as Weird Mario Enemies, an important part of that title-we-love-to-defy-and-love-bringing-up-how-much-we-love-to-defy-it is knowing what an "enemy" is to begin with. And so we must ask ourselves: what is an enemy? What separates an enemy from an obstacle? And is there even a meaningful difference...?

I can't say I can give you an answer. But I can give you a bunch of thought exercises under the cut! You like those, right?

You do like those! Thanks for looking under the cut, I really appreciate it.

So if we want to have a discussion of what counts as an "enemy" in the context of a video game, we should probably have a rough definition of what we think an "enemy" is in the first place. It's tough to look for edge cases of something that doesn't have any edges.

I personally think a good starting definition is along the lines of "a character designed with the intent of hurting the player," or something roughly like that. And now that we have a definition, we can scrutinize the hell out of it!

On the left we have Thwomp. Thwomp is a classic Mario Enemy. The kind you'd see featured on @regularmarioenemies. We invite Thwomp over for dinner every Sunday, and Thwomp always smashes the dinner table because that's just what Thwomp does. On the right we have Karamenbo. Karamenbo does the exact same thing that Thwomp does, but it doesn't have a face! And despite the fact they act the exact same way, this simple design difference leads to most people considering Thwomp an "enemy" and Karamenbo an "obstacle"!

Is the difference between an enemy and an obstacle really something so simple as having a face? And if so...

What do we make of Lava Bubble, another Classic Mario Enemy that only sometimes has a face? Are they only an enemy when they have a face? Or are they allowed to always be enemies in spite of their occasional facelessness? Or alternatively, are they prohibited from being enemies despite their occasional befacedness? I don't know, and my "the fact I am writing for this blog" tells me I should probably be an expert in this field!

And what about Moonsnake? What could easily be dismissed as a simple obstacle like a Spike Bar is revealed by in-game text to be a living creature! Does this allow it to be classified as an enemy instead? Does something become an enemy just because there's text saying it's alive? Do ghosts and robots count as alive? Is a thorny flower an enemy instead of an obstacle, or does the specific choice of the word "creature" make a meaningful distinction here?

What if I told you there's official text calling Karamenbo a type of Thwomp, does that change your perception of it?

And we haven't even started touching on the idea of whether or not enemies need to hurt you. Let me ask you an important question...

Are Hoppos enemies? They can not hurt you. Whenever you touch them, you just bounce off, and sure, you might be bounced into something that can hurt you, but Hoppo is just an animal. Is it really Hoppo's fault? Could Hoppo be charged with manslaughter for bouncing Mario into a bottomless pit? Are bottomless pits a type of enemy?

Flomps, Bomps, these can not hurt you directly, but they can cause you to get hurt! And they're relatives of Thwomp, too! Do these factors matter in defining them as an enemy? Bomps act basically the same as the Push-Blocks from Super Mario Odyssey, and the wiki classifies those as mere platforms!

Is mayonnaise an enemy? I don't even know anymore!

Basically, enemies are a subclass of obstacle but there's not really a meaningful distinction that separates them. Literally the only thing that separates an enemy from an obstacle is the Vibes. Nothing else matters! Sorry! But what does that mean for our blog...?

Absolutely nothing! As I've said multiple times, we stopped caring about that distinction ages ago. We're hardly even a Mario blog anymore! I just wanted to subject you to my ramblings because I've had this in the back of my mind for a while now and well I had to say it somewhere.

And since I subjected you to several paragraphs of ramblings that amount to basically nothing... am I an enemy...?

#hot-hot rock #super mario bros wonder #mario #mario enemies #mario obstacles?#mod hooligon

501 notes · View notes

hatchetmanofficial · 2 months

Note

Hi I just played this game recently but I'm curious about the lore and idk where to find it i see a lot of people mentioning boss stu (I keep reading stfu) and idk who those are do i have to read all the asked questions to get the lore going on or I can find it somewhere else? (Anyway here's a squished alan holding a red flag)

MDHM LORE (no spoilers for the actual game):

This is only going to cover the backstories/extra details and the world of MDHM but does not touch what is going to happen in the game. Some TW for the lore, will contain stuff like substance abuse, suicide, toxic relationships, gore and child abuse.

Alan is the main love interest of the game. He is an assassin who lives in the woods in the town that set in the game, far from society but occasionally visits when he has "important" stuff to do. He is the second youngest of four brothers. Claude, Jules, and James. Alan has a pretty strained relationship with them especially after their mother passed away from suicide. Alan ran away during high school and has no connections to the current culture in the modern world.

Erika is a new college friend/classmate you encounter in your English class. She is the only adopted child of two dads with whom she is currently keeping secrets to not disappoint them. She works as an employee in the local skater rink and volunteers at the rescue cat shelter. Erika is very fashion-forward and is pretty smart when it comes to problem-solving and has a hobby of solving mysteries. She has a six-legged cat named Loki and lives with her roommate Rosie.

Stu is a child friend who harbors feelings for the player. He hasn't been in contact with them since they left for college as he stayed in their old town behind. He has an older sister named Toni who also left for university, his mom, and his dad who had a pretty unhealthy and dysfunctional relationship until he moved out. Stu lives in a frat house on school grounds and is a part of a band called the Critters of Wreckage (CoW). Stu struggles with pornography addiction as well as drinking as he became very isolated after not talking with the player.

Carver is Alan's coworker. I have not revealed much about him, other than he has the most trauma, especially during childhood, out of everyone. He has an estranged past he can't quite remember after being hired as an assassin. He is missing pupils but is still able to see. He has a fascination for experimenting and dissecting his victims, even though he really isn't allowed to. I would love to point out that Carver doesn't call the player "Guinea Pig". That name is for his OWN person of interest who he has yet to find. He still calls the player "Doe-Eyes" simply because Alan calls them that. His real name is Calvin and he is 31 years old.

Stitches is another coworker of Alan and Carver. Not much is known about him. He isn't human although he appears to be. Stitches, is in fact, made up of three different body parts from three different people. His head, the torso, and his legs. Stitches was created by Boss.

Boss is, obviously, the boss of Alan. No, he doesn't have a name as he simply just goes by "Boss". He is older than the town, older than time actually. He doesn't have much of a physical form but used roadsigns as a body for him to use. He communicates through images or texts from the signs.

Buck is Alan's dad. He doesn't know that Ophelia has passed away since their separation and is still in love with her. He hasn't seen Alan either but still wants to connect with his son.

#there you go #the official MDHM lore #lore drop everyone!

584 notes · View notes

confused-wanderer · 11 months

Text

Batman and superman are their opposite personalities in civilian form.

.. so this gives us a perfect opportunity for the most disastrously chaotic dynamic (and love square) EVER.

ESPECIALLY if they don’t know the others true identities, or even they did and are just being lil shits anyways

Give me:

grumpy skeptical Clark to Bruce’s sunshine playboy persona.

Clark *trying to down as many aspirins as he can, half tempted to throw himself into the sun* : Bruce we needed to surround the enemy, not SEDUCE them!

Bruce *currently on his way to a dinner wearing the most seductive outfit known to man* : Well, you know the saying. We can’t gatekeep or manslaughter our way out of it. Girlboss it is.

Clark: Bruce you are going on a date with a STRAIGHT MAN

Bruce: Give me five minutes and then I’ll let you hear him scream my name

*horrified Clark noises*

==================================

Brooding and detective Batman meeting lie-detector and very effective investigator journalist Clark Kent

Batman: Tell me where the bombs are Riddler!

Riddler *currently tied up* : Hehe you’ll never find them~

Clark: Mind if I record this session Mr. Riddler?

Batman:

Riddler:

Clark:

Riddler: Who the hell-

Batman: .. Kent. How’d you even get here?

Clark: Irrelevant questions. *waves recorder* so..?

Riddler: Sure..tell the public I’m going to paint the walls red-

Clark *in investigative journalist mode* : So which devastating rock bottom led you to lose your mind and pursue this as a career?

Riddler:

Riddler: hey wait hang on this is a fulfilling career!

Clark *raising a judgemental eyebrow*: So.. you fighting a man dressed as a bat, with that atrocious outfit you must’ve gotten from hell and riddles that you’ll give him the answer to anyway.. this is fulfilling?

Riddler *voice breaking* : .. yes?

*questioning and judgemental silence*

Few hours later

Red Robin: .. why is Riddler crying and why does he also have a career counselling book in his hand?

Batman *just as surprised and kind of disturbed at how methodical and impressive Clark was in breaking down Riddlers plan based on evidence and connecting the dots* : Honestly I thought he was here for me and he started ignoring me so out of concern for his safety I demanded he paid attention

Red robin: And?

Batman: and he said “oh you don’t want me to pay attention to you” and showed me.. a lot of details and screenshots I don’t know how he got his hands on

Red robin:

Batman: Riddler also then attempted to escape and Clark just.. punched him so hard Riddler still doesn’t know which universe he’s in..

Red robin: well it could’ve been worse.. Clark could’ve pulled out a gun

Batman: .. he has a flamethrower

Red Robin: IM SORRY WHAT

Batman: .. and he told me we should work together sometimes, and I gave him few crime stories and plots to help raise awareness for the public and stop them.

Red robin:

Batman: also he gave me a therapy card.

=========

Give me ray of sunshine and leader Superman with no sense of self preservation Bruce Wayne

Superman: Good evening Mr. Wayne, there’s a credible threat against you so I’ll be on the lookout for today-

Bruce *sidling upto him* : .. damn.. when I said send your hottest stripper you did deliver..

Superman *beet red* : Im not the stripper sir!

Bruce: Really?

Superman *furious nodding*

Bruce: okay then.. hey listen, I’ve been learning about important dates in history lately.. do you wanna be one of them?

Superman. Exe has stopped functioning

Later

Superman: Mr. Wayne there’s a blackout and the building is under attack! Evacuate!

Bruce *running with gunshots behind* : Are you outside? You’re invulnerable right? Nothing can hurt you? Not even gunpowder or explosives?!

Superman *touched and pleasantly surprised* : yes.. so you don’t have to worry about me Mr. Wayn-

*glass breaks and Superman catches the dark mass falling in the air*

Superman: See? You’re safe-

*realises he’s holding a huge bomb about to detonate*

One explosion later

Superman: … you threw a bomb at me

Bruce: What?? You said you were invulnerable! I didn’t know what else to do with it??

Superman: So you didn’t think to tell me? Not even a warning?

Bruce: Listen that bomb was hot but compared to how smoking hot you were I didn’t think it ever stood a change

Superman: Mr. Wayne, listen. You should’ve atleast yelled or said something so I could’ve gotten it away in time. What if I hadn’t?

Bruce: I did! I yelled GET READY FOR A BLOWJOB

Superman:

Bruce:

Superman:

Bruce: ?? Did I do something wrong?

========

And obviously.. the usual golden retriever Superman x black cat Batman that we all know and love so I’m just going to leave it at:

Batman: Someone is going to die.

Superman: Of fun!

Batman: Sure if you consider burning to death fun

Superman:

Superman: Oh come on be a little optimistic! We must have hope! We will persevere!

Batman: we are literally being held hostages by aliens

Superman: ..listen okay, let me do the talking. We just gotta de-escalate the situation

Alien: You intruders! You will never get our superior defender systems-

Batman *done with this bullshit* : I already hacked into it twenty days ago and found all of your identities, families and now have full control over your systems of defends and weapons. If I wanted to hurt somebody.. I would’ve done so already.

Alien *tries to punch him, gets headbutted instead*

Alien *chuckles* : You have a thick skull Batman..

Batman:

Superman *frantic whispering*: Dontsayitdontsayitdontsayitdontsayit-

Batman: .. atleast mines protecting a brain. Wish I could say the same for yours

Superman *heavy sigh*

2K notes · View notes

kikitakite · 5 days

Note

I saw your callout in the Gale tag for that one user (no comment on them, tho ty for the callout bc i'd seen them in the notes of my fics) and was curious if you could elaborate on some of the Mystra incidents you described towards the end of the post? I'm new to the lore of the setting and find it hard to research (which makes sense given its importance to dnd), so I've heard a lot of conflicting things about Mystra's portrayal in the wider series. No pressure, obviously!

No problem! And yea, I've seen her arguing in the posts of a few people I follow or just Gale-related posts I find interesting. Usually I don't get involved in stuff like this, but I noticed a constant pattern and then all the homophobic shit so I went off a little.

Unfortunately it's hard to find exact examples of the Mystra lore because certain modules aren't very popular or even free to access, but if you're interested the best way to learn about her is by reading the Elminster novels. There's twelve total, dating all the way back to 1994, and they detail Elminster's adventures. I'll be honest though, some of them are a hard read and written through the lens of a man who's admitted very creative, but also has a lot of problematic ideas.

In the first book Elminster is a child. His entire town gets wiped out by mages, thereby making him hostile toward magic. He sneaks into Mystra's temple to deface her statue one night, but she appears before him and basically gaslights him into learning magic and becoming her rare Chosen. He becomes a wizard and cleric basically overnight, until eventually he multiclasses into pretty much every class type in DnD. As you can imagine a lot of players aren't too fond of Elminster, as he's a well known self-insert of the author and pretty annoying to run into during campaigns. None of my dungeon masters like him anyway.

He also becomes one of Mystra's most loyal followers, but she fucks with him over and over, turning him into a woman to teach him a lesson and SLEEPING with him in that form, berating him when he struggles with the torture he endures when he gets stuck in the hells, making him reproduce without his knowledge and getting jealous when he gives his partners more attention. Because she's a very jealous goddess, which I think the game vaguely touches on but not really.

I wish I had the time to flip through all the novels and give exact citations but the best I can do is suggest them, because they're so eye opening. She's considered a neutral good goddess, but neutral gods often do terrible things for the sake of their domain. I think it needs to be noted that Mystra, as with all gods in the pantheon, only cares about her portfolio. She isn't wrong for that, but it doesn't mean she's blameless when she messes with people's lives. She's done a lot of good but she's also made horrible decisions, especially where her followers are concerned.

For example, Elminster having children he doesn't know about. He has a daughter named Narnra. Her conception was... pretty fucked up. Basically a song dragon named Ammaratha Cyndusk was an occasional lover of Elminster's (he has a lot of those because of course he does) and she wanted to bear his child, but since he's a Chosen of Mystra he can control his fertility. Magic birth control, basically. He didn't want a kid so Ammaratha went behind his back to learn a counterspell that would make him fertile during sex. The man she asked refused to teach her because...duh that's messed up, but then Mystra intervened and told him to teach her the spell because she wanted Elminster's "seed to spread". Ammaratha never told him and neither did Mystra. No matter what the reasons, that was NOT consensual on Elminster's part, and it happened two more times, resulting in two more daughters with different women. If I remember correctly Elminster did eventually find out waaaaay later when they were all adults, but it never amounted to anything.

The sisters I was taking about are the Seven Sisters, Mystra's "daughters". And I put "daughters" in quotations because Mystra possessed the body of a woman named Elué and impregnated her without her consent. She slept with the woman's husband (again, while possessing her body) and made them sire seven children. This of course lead to Elué's death because the constant flow of magic in her body was too much for her to handle. Her grieving husband broke after she died and eventually left, abandoning his daughters and earning Mystra's scorn...as if he was in the wrong. The sisters were then orphaned and raised by foster families.

That said, most of the awful things anyone can say about Mystra were the doings of her previous incarnations so ultimately it doesn't apply to the Mystra of BG3. In fact, this third Mystra is supposed to be a new and improved goddess who's nicer to her followers. So her portrayal in BG3 annoyed a lot of DnD fans. I should also point out that Mystra has two types of fans: ones who will defend everything she does, even when it's fucked up beyond all comprehension, and the ones who will tell you she's a true neutral goddess capable of good and bad. I'm the latter. There are plenty examples of Mystra sticking her neck out for innocents, but there's also examples of her doing the most horrendous shit imaginable.

A lot of veteran players, at least the ones I know, are upset with the portrayal of Mystra in BG3 because her plan to end the Absolute is, quite frankly, stupid. Your party is the best chance anyone has of ending the threat, but she asks Gale to nuke himself and possibly tens of thousands, which makes no sense because she could've just sent her mages/clerics to deal with the problem. And there was no guarantee the bomb would've worked anyway. She put all the responsibility on one man and it DEFINITELY comes off as vindictive. That isn't out if character for her but she's not SUPPOSED to be that bad anymore. For a lot of DnD players it felt like she was reverting back to her old habits.

I think there's also a part in the game where you can directly ask Gale why she doesn't just blip the Absolute out of existence and he says something like, "She could but Ao won't allow it." That was also really strange for a lot of veteran players to hear because Gale drops Ao's name like it's nothing. Most people (especially if they're new to the franchise) wouldn't know this but most people in Faerûn don't know who Ao is! Because he wiped people's memories of his existence! I suppose it does make sense for Gale to know that name, since Mystra probably explained the pantheon to him, but it's VERY unlikely tav would know it. So during that conversation all I could picture was tav tilting their head like, "Huh? Who? Whaaa?"

And on top of that......Ao absolutely WOULD allow it because the Absolute effects the Weave and every other god! It had the potential to ruin the balance of the universe, which makes Ao a very angry boy. Balance is one of the ONLY things he cares about. The Dead Three were stealing souls and worshippers, which gods needs to survive, and dying gods disrupts the balance. It's a whole circle of chaos. So the only conclusion left for me to extrapolate is this: Mystra just really, really wanted Gale to kill himself to prove his devotion to her. Which...isn't great. Bad look for her.

It's kind of like how Raphael thinks the Crown of Karsus is going to help him end the Blood War and take over the hells. DnD players laughed during his epilogue because...no it won't lol. He doesn't stand a chance even with the crown. He's arrogant and he's gonna get slapped by his daddy and all the other archdevils, the same way Gale gets slapped by Mystra if he ascends. Even the Absolute ending of the game wouldn't last long because the gods would go to war with the Dead Three, wipe them out and rebuild Faerûn, which has happened many times in past DnD campaigns. Mystra alone has torn worlds apart and glued them back together. The main crisis of BG3 is saving the world you live in or everybody dies. For the gods it's just a Tuesday. I mean look at how Withers owns the Dead Three with a wave of his hand at the end of the game. Mystra COULD'VE killed the Absolute, just as she could've removed the orb from Gale's chest the moment it happened. She just didn't WANT to. She wanted him to die. She wanted him to chastise himself. She wanted him to suffer and come crawling back to her as an obedient follower. She wanted him to learn a harsh and honestly unfair lesson, which is a terrible throwback to her previous incarnations.

#mystra #gale of waterdeep #gale dekarios #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #elminster #dnd #dungeons and dragons #raphael

291 notes · View notes

intergalacticfop · 8 months

Text

Minoan Kilt

The large, structural skirt worn by Minoan women in art is instantly recognizable, and when I made my own I combined current best guesses with my own personal tastes.

My kilt shape follows the hypothesis laid out by Bernice Jones in her book Ariadne's Threads: The Construction and Significance of Clothes in the Aegean Bronze Age. She describes the shape of that of a labrys, a double-headed axe with apparent ceremonial significance in Ancient Minoan culture. This garment may be depicted in Linear-B logogram *166 + we, we-being the backwards-s-shaped squiggle in the center which identifies the piece as a garment.

See pages 336 and 341 in Marie-Louise B. Nosch, The Textile Logograms in the Linear B Tablets

Actual details on construction and materials below the cut:

Construction:

The top and bottom edges of the kilt are concave, so the sides are longer than the middle. This gives the chevron-shape seen on layered kilts in art. In addition, the curved top half makes the skirt flare out, accommodating the hips and giving more freedom of movement to the legs. My kilt measured from my waist to my anklebone at the longest point, and about 1.5 times around my waist.

I chose to make a flounced kilt, with smaller strips of fabric and trim applied to a large base piece, rather than a tiered kilt, in which multiple kilt shapes of varying length are layered one on top of the other, so you end up wrangling 3 layers of fabric around the waist. The flounced kilt saves fabric and gives you a lot more freedom with whatever trim you might want. Jones' diagram for a flounced kilt is seen below:

Unlike the version in the diagram above, I chose not to attach ties to the garment itself both because the linen I used was very heavy and I was concerned about weight, and also because folding the skirt and securing it with a separate tie worked just fine for my tastes. In total I had four flounces: 2 alternating rows each of fabric and fringe.

The vertical edges of most kilts are left plain, probably representing either the selvage or an edge otherwise finished off to prevent fraying. For my kilt, however, I ended up with a couple inches of self-fringe on either side as I adjusted the fabric to the correct width. At least three examples of kilts with fringed vertical edges are known, all three from the so-called "House of the Ladies" in Akrotiri

Photos from Wikimedia Commons. Image 1. Image 2.

The vertical edges of these kilts are reinforced with a colored band or tape, probably to keep the garment from unintentional further fraying. Accordingly, I did the same on my kilt. I also like that it gave a nice vertical diagonal to counterbalance the horizontal ones.

Materials

I tried to use mainly linen and wool, the fibers most available on Ancient Crete, but some of my trim was cotton because sometimes you just have to use what's cheap and available in the today times.

The base of my kilt is a heavy, patterned linen in what's called a diaper weave, meaning that a repeating diamond pattern is woven into the pattern itself. A lot of the Minoan textiles depicted in frescoes are characterized by repeating geometric patterns, likely woven into the fabric itself, and that was something I wanted to capture in my own piece. My linen is woven with both cream and natural colored threads. The heavy weight is important to give structure to the garment--otherwise it would be kind of limp. My linen was from Burnley & Trowbridge (shameless plug), as was the plain cotton twill tape I used to bind the top and bottom edges of the kilt, and the dark red wool twill tape I used along the vertical edges.

I bought my cotton fringe from a rug supply store. I had to search a while to find a fringe that would work for me, and I ultimately chose fringes with a woven header rather than the more common knotted one, so that it would lay flat against the kilt. I hid the woven header under a layer of cotton fringed trim from Michaels (yes, Michaels) with this really great diamond and dots pattern woven in black.

The blue layers are from a bolt of vintage wool Kimono fabric. Blue appears frequently in frescoes, likely achieved with indigo or woad dye, or even murex/mollusk dye. The fabric is printed with an imitation ikat pattern of diamonds and squares that made me think "the vibes seem right!" because quite frankly, you aren't going to get "historically accurate" Minoan textiles (which there probably isn't enough archaeological evidence to definitively describe) without, like, hand-weaving it yourself or paying someone hundreds of dollars to do it for you (and that price is if the weaver really likes you). Neither of which appealed to my desire to just make a fun, low stress project. Good enough is good enough.

The narrow trim on the bottom of the blue flounces is vintage cotton/poly woven trim. This trim, while narrow, was quite thick and stiff, which was great because it added more weight and structure to the end of my flounces since the wool fabric itself was quite thin.

The top layer is a custom tablet-woven wool trim that I commissioned from MAHTAVAhandicraft on Etsy. I imagined this as the "centerpiece" of my kilt, and I'd arrange everything to complement it.

It's a kivrim pattern, which has itself only been traced to 19th-century Anatolia, but I didn't care. The way it looks like waves reminded me of how central the sea was to life in the Ancient Aegean and Mediterranean and it captured the idea and aesthetic I was pursuing. I mean, doesn't it remind you of these dolphins?

(I like the dolphins)

The whole thing was machine sewn with the exception of hemming and adding trim to the blue flounces. If you were to look at it from the back, you'd see lots of zigzag stitches, because i wanted to be fast! and have fun! not chase some unreachable ideal of "accurate."

As for wearing it, I chose to wear it with the top part folded/rolled down over a belt, so I have a thick tube of fabric around my waist. Many images, like the frescoes above of women with fringed kilts, appear to just show the kilt being tied closed. Other images are so fragmented or stylized that it's unclear what kind of skirt closure was used. Sculptures and figurines definitely show some kind of SOMETHING around the waist, whether this is folded fabric or a kind of belt is unclear. Different art could show different things!

I think I see evidence of a continuous line from the skirt to the waist-roll on the figure on the left, found in Troas, which I think indicates some kind of skirt-folding situation. The woman on the right, found in Crete, looks more like she's wearing some kind of long coiled belt, or perhaps snakes. Who knows? I don't! For my own part, I found the combination of rolled waist + tie belt the most secure for doing things like kneeling, stomping around, and wading into rivers to rescue bees. I also liked that it gave me the bulk around the hips that gives Minoan figurines such a powerful silhouette, and proportionally gives more of an hourglass shape. If you wanted to do something more firmly grounded in the sources, stick just with the waist tie or belt, wrapped around a couple times and tied in back. If you want to be like me, just say "well we don't KNOW it didn't happen" and just do whatever you want. Have fun! Whatever happens, it should be fairly easy to move around in the kilt--this is not a restrictive garment, just a heavy one.

#minoan #minoan crete #historical costuming #bronze age #reference #resources

824 notes · View notes

writingwithfolklore · 2 months

Text

Writing Fictional News

Eee this is one of my biggest pet peeves in movies, games, stories, anything… As someone who reads and edits a lot of news articles for my job, I can tell soo instantly when fictional news articles or broadcasts were written by someone who has never written news before. I’m constantly saying, “hmm, they’d never publish that.”

So here’s what you gotta know about writing (fictional) news stories.

1. They’re to the point… but not like that

This is the biggest thing I see in fiction that has news in it. People tend to write headlines that have the worst, gory details. For example,

“Student Sadie Walker murdered by 50 stabbings last night.”

While dramatic (and informative), I don’t see this as a news headline. The same situation (Sorry Sadie) may actually be reported as,

“Young woman passed away after involvement in stabbing late last night.”

While news articles are to the point and informative, remember that they’re written for the general public. We often don’t get the super gory details (at least, not in the headline).

2. They have a pretty specific voice

While most journalism is meant to be free of bias, news is the most importantly objective. This tends to result in articles written in a more formal tone. They also follow a structure: the most specific details to the most general.

Imagine you’re writing a piece that you’re expecting the reader to drop out at any moment. The headline is the attention grabber so your first line has the most important details of the story, so that someone can read it and know the jist.

Following our example, the first paragraph might be,

“Last night in June County a young woman was found unconscious, having suffered severe injuries. The woman was identified as Sadie Walker, a 21-year-old student attending June County University nearby. According to police reports, Walker had been walking between campus and the student dorms around midnight when she was struck and stabbed 30-50 times in the chest and back. Walker was found by a peer returning home an estimated hour after the attack and taken straight to Red Mill General hospital, where she passed away shortly after. The perpetrator is still unknown at this time.”

Remember the 5 W’s and 1 H. Your first few lines should inform the reader of Who, What happened, Where did it happen, When did it happen, how it happened, and maybe why if you know—though since news is so timely, often the answer isn’t known right away.

3. Where the article is found in the news is telling

While a story like our example might make the front page of the paper (especially if nothing else is really going on in June County), only one story can make this top spot. Some papers are divided between the top and bottom of the page, known as “above the fold” and “below the fold”. It’s a bit more traditional format, but the ‘above the fold’ spot is the best one, because that’s the story people see when they’re passing by the newsstand, while ‘below the fold’ is another important story making the front page, but one would have to pick up the paper and unfold it to read it.

Not to mention all the stories found inside the paper. Consider how important your article is--not to your characters/plot, but to the general society your fictional newspaper is serving. Would your MC’s win at the local dog competition make the front page of big city news?

Any other news writers on here? What did I miss?

#creative writing #writing #writers #writing community #screenwriting #writing inspiration #filmmaking #books #film #writing advice #writing news #writing fictional news #news writing

342 notes · View notes

cherllyio · 5 days

Text

Macaque will be trapped in The Underworld - A season 5 theory

Now, why would this make sense? Because it would fit perfectly with his characther devolpemt so far.

So, lets look at the evidence for that.

Macaque has through these 4 seasons gone from someone who does everything for his own sake, because of his own personal trauma, to someone who is starting to develop direct friendships with our main cast. (which this person talks more about in depth)

Therefore, it would make sense, if we start going into the most mysterious part of this monkey’s past: His time in the Underworld.

This would make sense for two reasons:

We could get answers on how he ended up in The Underworld in the first place (aka Shadowpeach lore)

We could get answers on WHY all our mystic monkeys are getting accused of breaking the sky, but we would also get some more answers about this guy, The Traitor.

The Shadowpeach part makes sense, therefore I want to go into more details with the whole “Macaque meeting The Traitor” - part of this theory, because they are actual scenes that indicates this in the trailer.

As this person mentioned in a breakdown of the trailer, it looks a lot like here that Macaque is getting sucked into Li Jing's Pagoda (because of that flashing light that looks awfully similar),

and after I made a timeline of the trailer, I realized that Macaque doesn’t really show up in the following scenes after he supposetly gets trapped in the Pagoda.

So, from a story perspective, it looks like Macaque stayed behind to fight off Li Jing, while the others got away in the car, while he himself got captured. This would then lead to Macaque again getting trapped in The Underworld, so they could keep an eye (pun intended) on him.

This would then result in Macaque getting (PTSD) flashbacks to his time in The Underworld, where there is a pretty realistic chance, in that time, he MET the Traitor.

Think about it. The Traitors whole goal is “chaos”, and our mystic monkeys are nothing but CHAOS. (talked more about this here)

There is also the fact that a theory (you can find it here) going around that The Traitor was the one who released Azure Lion from his prison, but erased his memory so he didn’t remember how he even got out:

(Season 4, ep 10)

Wukong: Wait, how are you here?

Azure: What, what kind of question is that?! You know exactly how-

Wukong: No, here and now. I put you in The Underworld myself. How did you get out? How did you get the scroll? I know for sure you didn’t steal it, you couldn’t have.

Azure Lion: I- I don’t know… I was…

Wukong: Azure! Who gave you that scroll? Because whoever it was, they must have known this would happen. WANTED this to happen, and they used you to do it.

Azure: I just wanted to make the world a better place.

There is then a good chance that he did something similar to Macaques memory, where one of thoughs memories could be his final fight with Wukong.

The Traitor could have made it so that Macaque remembers it as Wukong DIRECTLY killing him, but as David Breen mentioned, that’s just how Macaque views it.

Therefore, that’s what is going to be Macaque next character development in this season:

What happened in the past? More specifically what ACTUALLY between him and Wukong. Because we, the fandom, don’t know, but maybe MACAQUE doesn’t even know himself.

We can also, with this new information, figure out another important of his next arc: The theme of understanding.

We also know that a lot of the reasons for Wukong and Macaques fallout, is because they MISUNDERSTOOD a lot what the other actually intended.

We also know that Macaque is starting to realize that too, in the way he reacted when he saw his and Wukongs fight again: He realized HE MISUNDERSTOOD what Wukong had meant.

The seeds have been planted everyone, and we are know going to see what they are turning into. And that is a story of Understanding, growth, and friendship (or whatever the hell their realtionship is at this point).

231 notes · View notes

valassky-archived · 1 year

Text

Hi, so some people were asking about my tapestry class final, so here are some closer photos and a little more details just about the project in general!

turned in titled "The Last Enjoyable Summer Spent with My Father" this work for me mostly explored kind of just what limitations i had as a first time weaver really playing in the medium.

Originally this idea had began as my desire to explore the weaving technique known as leno, I had wanted to weave a fish and then layer it into a complex leno "net." But throughout the entire semester I had already been heavily exploring ideas of flesh and meat in my sample weavings, because of this me and my professor had agreed that at the heart of the matter nearly all art of mine seems to center in some way around flesh/meat/bodies.

So then i had the idea of a gutted fish, held in suspension via fish-hooks and fishing line. So i began to weave this! Based loosely off the Red-Tail Catfish, very quickly just thinking about how fishing and Catfish especially relates to my life began to become very important to me. Fishing has always been an extremely important activity between me and my father, some of my earliest memories are of going out into the Kentucky River to fish for Cats with my dad, be that with rods, or even a few times by noodling. As i worked the ideas of how my relationship with my father has developed became the heart of this work for me.

There was a point where the body of the fish was intended to be much more detailed and complex in the depth of colors that were to be implemented, but i realized after some conversation with my friend in the class that i enjoyed how the flatness of the body of the fish really called to mind those singing mounted fish ("Billy Bass") and how that flatness housing the more complex guts of the fish was just a really literal representation of that relationship with my father. I also really enjoyed turning the warp threads of this piece into the fish guts, it felt like another very literal statement of what is considered the "insides" of a weaving.

As for the choice of mounting & background, I chose materials that loosely reminded me of my childhood dinner table, with the lighter cloth being quite literally the exact same patterning as an old table-runner my mother used to own.

So really all in all this piece just has a lot to do with how i've lately been navigating the ways my father and i have connected always through activities that maybe are viewed by many today as being "destructive" tasks (ie: fishing & processing fish, slaughtering livestock, processing hunts, other such activities) and using a purely entirely "constructive" processing (the weaving) to create a dialogue for myself between all these different relationships :-)

#zpráva #moje kresby #long post #sowwy

1K notes · View notes

sebscore · 1 year

Note

hi ! I love your gen z driver series so much !!

i have a request that she and zhou show up to the padock in the same outfit unplanned

like i feel this would happen - they both fancy showing up in something so different and the other would be wearing the same thing !! <3 fashion icons think the same 😌

THE HELMET BET

pairings: zhou guanyu x driver!reader / f1 grid x driver!reader

warnings: swearing. based on the 2022 grid. mention of sexism and racism. joke about doing an orgy.

author's note: idk if this is what you had in mind, but I had already written a small part of this fic and then your ask came in and I couldn't help myself. I love zhou so much, ugh thats my man fr. also, thank you for loving the series, it means a lot to me 💞

masterlist

• • • • • • •

''We're gonna get in trouble.'' Zhou said, shaking his head.

Y/N frowned at his words. ''Why would we get in trouble? It's always super boring and our bet can at least spice it up a little.'' She reasoned, using a lot of hand gestures to show how serious she was.

''You know those meetings are about our safety, right? We should take them serious.'' The Chinese driver didn't want to get in hot water with the stewards.

''But this is a serious matter! We're putting an end to the debate,'' she retorted back, not seeing the harm in using the upcoming driver's briefing for their bet, ''lately, I've been seeing way too many people saying you've got better style than me and I've had enough of it.''

The female driver had seen the countless online discussions between fans regarding the most stylish driver on the grid, the winner usually switching between herself, Lewis and Zhou. In her opinion, Lewis had the best style, she didn't need to think twice about it. But it is important for her to know who his successor is, who is the number 2?

To answer that question, she had come up with a brilliant idea: her and Zhou wear their best outfit to the next driver's briefing, not some team merchandising, and they get the other drivers to vote on which outfit is the best and therefore, which person has the best style. The person with the most votes gets to design a helmet for the loser and they have to wear it at the next racing weekend.

''Okay, I'm in,'' Zhou admitted, shaking hands to commemorate the challenge, ''be prepared to lose, Y/N.''

''Don't worry about me, Guanyu.''

Y/N was confident in her win. The young woman knows she has style, her several brand deals with high-respected fashion houses being the proof of that. However, she knew not to underestimate her rookie friend, Zhou has had some killer outfits in the ongoing season.

They had known each other for some years, but it was only this year that the pair had gotten close. Y/N broke the ice by complimenting one of his outfits at the start of the season and the rest was history.

The outfit she had gone with was simple, but she looked good and she felt great in it. It was inspired by one of Michael Schumacher's paddock outfits (reference), knowing she would at least have Mick and Seb's vote with that one.

Y/N got out of her car, ready to make her way to the F1 paddock and straight to the driver's briefing. In the corner of her eye she noticed Zhou's car pull up, his performance coach waving at her through the window. She reciprocated the action and decided to wait for him, thinking it would be nice for the two of them to enter together. She was curious as to what her friend would be wearing, secretly hoping he had fumbled the bag really hard.

Her hopes came crashing down as Zhou got out of the car, observing the clothes he was wearing and noticing one clear detail.

They were wearing the same outfit.

Her eyes seemed ready to bulge out of her head, in complete disbelief. ''Are you fucking kidding me, Zhou?''

The Chinese man appeared to be much more amused by the situation, covering his laughter with his hand. ''You look very nice, Y/N.'' He giggled, greeting her with a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

''It's turned into a ''who wears it better'' challenge, what the heck.'' She commented, eyeing him up and down before glancing at her own fit.

Zhou chuckled. ''Well either way, I'm winning.'' A small smirk appeared on his face, still sure of his win over his friend. Y/N simply scoffed, grabbing her pass from her purse and walking to the entrance. Zhou and his coach followed her steps, still entertained by her annoyance.

As soon as the paddock reporters noticed the sight of the two drivers, their cameras were whipped out from their bags and they began taking candid shots of the pair. Zhou and Y/N played along for the cameras, pointing at each other's outfits and pretending to look annoyed.

Eventually they made it to the right room, already seeing most of the drivers waiting inside. Zhou went in and greeted the others, while Y/N waited outside, ready to lock the door as soon as everyone had arrived and was inside.

Lando had been the last one to walk down the hallway. ''Hurry up, Norris!'' She exclaimed, her hand motioning for him to pick up the pace.

''Why? I'm on time.'' He replied a bit agitated, it was a bit too early in the morning for him to be scolded by his friend.

Y/N didn't respond to him, simply pushing him into the room and locking the door, making several drivers look up from where they were sitting or standing.

''Y/N, what are you doing?'' Sebastian spoke up, curious as to what she was up to this time.

The young woman urged Zhou to get up from his seat and to stand next to her. The man felt a bit embarrassed, but followed her orders. Y/N stood in the place where their director normally sat when he answered the drivers' questions or listened to their concerns. She placed both her hands on the desk, looking like a teacher that was about to scold her students.

''As we all know, Mr. Hamilton over there is widely accepted as the driver with the best style,'' she pointed at Lewis, who nervously smiled as the other drivers glanced at him, ''but that's not why we are gathered here today! We are gathered here today to decide who his successor is. Who is the most stylish person after Lewis? That's a question that we will settle once and for all, here, now, in this room.'' She finished her monologue.

''Me and Mr. Guanyu found ourselves in a battle for the title of second most stylish driver of the grid, so I challenged him. We would wear our best outfits today and have our lovely colleagues vote for who had the best one. But as you all can see, me and Mr. Dior over here, are wearing the same exact fit.'' Y/N waved her hand between herself and Zhou.

''So, instead of you deciding who is wearing the best outfit, you'll be voting for the person you think is wearing the outfit best.'' She concluded.

The crowd had mixed reactions: some looked confused, some seemed entertained by what Y/N had told them and others appeared to not care.

Kevin was the first one to speak, getting up from his seat and walking towards the door. ''Y/N, this is not the time to do this, we're here to talk about the race.'' He was about to turn the lock when her voice stopped him.

''Magnussen, you're being a party pooper- do you want to be a party pooper?'' She looked at him sternly, trying to convince him to sit back down and go along with her antics. ''Don't pretend like you're not secretly enjoying this.'' The Haas driver rolled his eyes, but defeatedly put his arms up and went back to his seat.

''Alright, we'll go around the room and each person says either my name or Zhou's.'' She explained further, moving in front of the desk.

Checo's hand went up in the air. ''Can we also pass?'' He asked, looking at Y/N.

''If you refuse to choose, we will consider it sexist and racist as I am a woman and Zhou's Asian.'' She answered him, garnering chuckles around the room and a nervous-looking Zhou who hoped people took it as a joke, since he didn't want to be making enemies as a rookie.

Y/N clapped her hands together. ''Okay, we'll start with our party pooper, KMag! Me or Zhou?''

''Zhou, since he didn't yell at me and didn't call me a party pooper.'' He chose, making the female driver narrow her eyes at him. ''Alright, 1 for Zhou.''

The person sat next to Kevin was his teammate, Mick. ''Schumacher!'' He was about to speak, but the woman interrupted him. ''Before you choose, I took inspiration from one of your dad's outfits.'' Y/N tried influencing his decision.

''I was gonna choose you anyway.'' He told her, making her jump up as her and Zhou had an equal score. ''Thank you, Mickie.'' She smiled brightly at him.

''Valtteri?''

''I choose Zhou, I'm loyal to my teammate.'' He answered, smiling at the man in question.

''Lando?''

''Zhou, because he doesn't humiliate me in front of the entire internet.'' The McLaren driver said, referring to their regular back-and-forths on social media.

Y/N rolled her eyes. ''You're such a crybaby, Rumplestiltskin.'' Her words caused Lando to give her the middle finger, but it was all in good fun.

''Anyway, Daniel?''

The Australian pretended to think hard about his answer, looking in-between her and Zhou. ''I'm gonna go with Y/N, cause I'm kinda scared what she'll do to me if I don't choose her.'' His answer got a laugh out of the other drivers, some of them nodding their heads.

Y/N herself couldn't help but break a smile at Daniel's words, happy her friend had chosen her. ''Okay, next one.''

The voting was nearing its end and there was a tie, 9 people had chosen Zhou and 9 others had voted for Y/N. It all came down to one person.

Sir Lewis Hamilton.

Despite some of the drivers' dislike for the bet at the beginning of the meeting, everyone had gotten pretty invested. ''The maestro himself has to choose his next prodigy.'' Daniel joked, looking at the 7x world champion.

Lewis shifted in his seat, not too fond of having the last vote on the matter. ''Can't I just say both of you? The two of you look very good.''

''No, mate! You have to choose.'' George argued, the others agreeing with him.

Y/N was quite sure that Lewis would choose her. She was much closer to him than Zhou and the pair had talked about fashion before, discussing how it was a great way to express yourself. She was already designing Zhou's helmet in her mind.

''Well, then… I guess Zhou.''

Her mouth dropped open, shocked that the senior driver had chosen the rookie over her. She wasn't the only one that seemed surprised by his choice, Seb turned around in his seat and Pierre's eyes had widened, mouthing ''wow''.

The young man next to her, lightly slapped her arm. ''I'll send the design to your team next week, Y/N.'' He teasingly laughed, a big smirk present on his face.

''This is a joke, right? I can't be number 3!'' She dramatically stated.

''Hey! What's wrong with being the number 3?'' Daniel looked up, feigning being offended by her words.

She was about to give another monologue about betrayal and how men are all the same, but several loud knocks on the door interrupted that from happening. Y/N sighed, but took a few steps to turn the lock.

Their director didn't look too happy. ''Why was the door locked?''

''We were having an orgy.'' She sarcastically answered him, not planning on explaining to him why she had blocked the door from opening.

''Y/N!''

The actual driver's briefing began and soon enough most drivers were already dozing off, some of them even wishing Y/N and Zhou's bet had taken a bit longer. They wouldn't admit it to the young woman, but ever since she'd made her arrival to these briefings, her unserious antics had made them much more bearable. Some drivers had even started looking forward to the meetings, because the girl always had something up her sleeve.

As soon as the last issue was resolved, the meeting ended and everyone was out the door. When Zhou saw Y/N talking with Mick and Esteban, he swiftly moved next to Lewis. ''Hey, man,'' he patted the Brit's shoulder, ''thanks for that, I really appreciate it.''

''No problem,'' Lewis smiled, ''we made a deal, I'm keeping my word.''

Zhou nodded. ''Yeah, you vote for me and I let you help me design her helmet.'' He recalled the promise they had made a day earlier.

''Great! I was thinking we just collect all kinds of embarrassing pictures of her and plaster them all around her helmet…''

#f1 fic #f1 fics #f1 x reader #formula 1 fic #f1 x oc #f1 female driver #female f1 driver #zhou guanyu x reader #zhou guanyu x oc #f1 grid x oc #f1 grid x reader

2K notes · View notes