#writing refs

[just-shipgirl-thoughts]

Tips for my artist friends drawing melee weapons/A gigantic rant about medieval weapons

Dunno how much this'll help you, but I have so much about weapons and I can't not expound upon it, so, I'm putting it into something that you can hopefully use for art refs!

So, melee weapons, with a focus on medieval stuff for my more fantasy inclined friends!

The first thing to remember about a weapon is leverage.

Physics plays are very large part in how a weapon is used and how effective they are.

Take a straight sword for example.

The power and force behind the sword is all going to be in the hilt and the tip.

Because the hilt is heavier than the blade and that's where it's held, that's where all the driving force behind it is going to be. The sides of the blade are going to carry little of that energy, but the tip is going to be carrying a lot of it, which makes it really damn good at THRUSTING attacks, big ol' forward pokes. Cutting through something with the long side takes a lot of brute force, and it can't do crap against armor, but with the tip it's easy to slash at something rather than cutting through with the long side of the blade.

Basically, they poke real well but can't smash worth a damn!

Now compare that to something like, say, a mace!

See, unlike what most video games and such would have you believe, polearms like these are actually incredibly light compared to a sword.

Unlike the sword, which can change directions very fluidly because the blade is much lighter than the handle, something like a mace cannot do that as well because the head is much heavier than the handle.

A mace's power comes from the head being heavy, and when it's in motion, the weight is what adds so much force to it, because very little of the weight is in the handle, which acts as a lever when it's in motion, giving it devastating swinging power.

Unlike a sword, you can't block a mace, at least not without great difficulty. A sword can easily be deflected away by another sword, but a mace will just straight up bat it out of the way, and if it doesn't, it definitely will damage your wrists, if not straight up break them. Even then, the metal might just buckle because of the sheer smashing force.

Maces were created as anti-armor weapons, and that's why they're designed this way, a big ol' heavy head of metal that swings and hits really fuck off hard, and it can dent and go through metal because of the sheer brute force behind it.

You can't outright block the mace without risking serious damage, so you have to sidestep it or dodge it, which is what it's weak to, because it can't change directions as easily with the heavier head and lighter hilt, which means each swing has to be a commitment.

If they miss, they have to quickly get out of the gutting range, but if they're too slow, there is a small window to shank the bastard for the mistake.

Still, they are by no means slow, and there are definitely means to mitigate it. Especially on horseback, when weapons like these are twice as dangerous.

Basically, trade some agility for raw strength and anti-armour abilities/clobbering the fuck out of somebody.

Now, polearms! Or, as I belovedly refer to them, the Long Bois! Featuring, the Poleaxe! (Not the halberd)

You can do so much fucken shit with these things.

You have the axe head, which, because the haft is very long and very light, hits like a truck and has massive cleaving/bludgeoning power power behind it.

You have the BIG poke, which has a lot of piercing power and is excellent for going through armor or chinks in it.

And the Smol poke, which you can use to also go right through armor and hook into things to trip them up!

They have massive utility, and are excellent specialised anti-armor weapons. On horseback or on foot, it's a force to be reckoned with.

It has all the parts of a thrusting and a stabbing weapon, just on a much, much longer platform, and a heavy head of steel that is great for bashing in armored skulls. You can also trip people up with it using the edges!

The smol poke on the back is also great for acting as a miniature hammer, like a Horseman's Pick, which can be used to go through chainmail and armor with sheer piercing power.

Polearms are also typically very tall, and it gives them a reach advantage. They can block more effectively with the long haft, and if it breaks, you still have the other half with the metal bits on it to hit things with.

-

So, what you have to remember about weapons, is where the lever is, how it'll swing, and how to connect it to a pose. A sword thrusts, a mace swings, some can do both, others cannot, etc, etc.

I heavily encourage you to do research into different types of polearms, swords and the like, because all of them have a purpose and many act differently than their kin.

I hope this helps you depict weapons more accurately or just helps in general.

Ciao, folks!

#weapon design #art inspiration #art tips #artists on tumblr #writing refs #art refs #art reference #bis rants

[poppy5991]

Wow! The last post on this topic was quite popular! So here’s another from a person that actually does emergency response for a living…

Writing PTSD in first responders/emergency personnel accurately: Trauma Thresholds

(I called them out in the tags last time for Owen’s PTSD portrayal, but this is one thing Grey’s anatomy does quite well.)

One mistake I see in media/writing is a character being traumatized by something that an average person would find traumatic…but probably not an experienced responder.

We do expect to see and are trained to cope with some level of trauma in our jobs. You anticipate witnessing injury, illness, death, and grief. So things that the average civilian finds disturbing don’t phase us so much. But there are specific things that can trigger a trauma response, mainly:

Moral injury: Witnessing or being put in a situation that violates your deeply held moral values or sense of self

Projecting loved ones on to a trauma (I.e. what if that was my kid/they are the same age as my sister/my loved one was at that event)

Experiencing/witnessing violence or harassment on the job

Out of my depth: asked to work without the necessary tools, rest, or training

Here’s a couple examples of what might be par for the course versus what will fuck you (or your character) up….

Scenario 1: Paramedic responds to a heart attack on a middle aged man. Performs CPR while wife wails in the background.

Traumatic? Probably not

Scenario 2: Paramedic responds to a sudden infant death call on a six month old. Performs infant CPR. Mom is wailing in the background. Paramedic has a newborn at home with their spouse, born a few weeks ago.

Traumatic? Yep!

-

Scenario 1: ED nurse works a gunshot victim on their shift. Standard case that they see frequently in an urban ED.

Traumatic? Probably not.

Scenario 2: There is a mass shooting at a local event. Sudden influx of multiple gunshot victims. The ED is overwhelmed and understaffed. Family are showing up at the ED screaming and looking for loved ones. The shooter is still at large.

Traumatic? Yep.

-

Scenario 1: Public Health worker is doing shelter surveillance and interviewing people on their disease exposures and medical needs. Hears harrowing stories about the disaster from traumatized and scared people who may be separated from loved ones/witnessed death/lost their homes.

Traumatic? Probably not.

Scenario 2: Public Health worker is doing shelter surveillance and interviewing people on their disease exposures and medical needs. There is an unaccompanied child/dementia patient wandering around. They realize that this person’s family have left without notifying anyone and have abandoned their loved one during the disaster. The person is anxious/inconsolable and asking the worker where their family has gone.

Traumatic? Yep.

-

Scenario 1: Disaster animal shelter worker is doing intake for animals after an evacuation. Both the people and animals are traumatized and stressed, anxious about being separated.

Traumatic? Probably not.

Scenario 2: Disaster animal shelter worker is doing intake for animals after an evacuation. A man comes in and aggressively demands to be given his purebred dog. Refuses to show ID. He becomes increasingly aggressive, threatening workers but departs when police are called. Police inform worker that the man was probably trying to steal a purebred dog from the shelter to sell. When checking the microchip, realizes they are correct- they remember the owner and it is not that man.

Traumatic? Yep.

-

These are just a few examples of things that happen in real life. It can be different if you are new to the field and witnessing things for the first time, but if you’re writing an experienced responder experiencing trauma make sure to give context as to why a certain event was traumatic as compared to their normal work threshold.

Also make sure not to fall into the trap of writing “perfect victims.” People in stressful situations can and do act very poorly out of fear and often we take the brunt of it. It’s not realistic to write all the victims that your character is helping as calm, compliant, rational, and kind. They are more likely confused, angry, combative, dazed, and upset. And they are likely to view their problem or loved one as more important than everyone else’s in that moment. And to act in accordance. No matter how insignificant.

Lastly don’t forget that in addition to work, we have personal lives. While working stressful situations, we too have loved ones pass, pets get sick, have relationship problems, etc. so you can write that in to flesh out the character. It’s very much true that people with children have a harder time dealing with situations involving harm to kids, people with pets struggle more with helping in situations involving animals, etc.

#writing #ptsd #writing first responders #writing trauma #writing ptsd #writing refs #writing reference #writing disasters #greys anatomy

[swordsmans]

hi! can you explain a little more about what you mean by writing warmups and puzzles? are they practice?

yes! they're practice!!! this started getting long so i'll put more info below a cut, but basically: exercises help with creativity, puzzles help with form, and i learned to do this by mimicking fan-artists.

imagery exercise - basically, describe a really vivid environment in extreme detail and try to evoke emotion and character ONLY with objects/scene. think "howl's room" or "howl's bathroom" from howl's moving castle. describe the objects/environment of a single still "image" or moment and try to paint a character picture from it. this is one of a few exercises i use to practice avoiding reliance on internal monologue or narration to portray emotion/character (which helps keep characters out of The Void in "real" stuff), because you can't use dialogue or internal narration. Scene only, baby!

sense exercise - try to focus entirely on one non-visual sense in a single moment in time for as long as you can (touch, taste, smell, sound); the imagery exercise covers the "visual" sense. basically, try to paint an emotional picture with something other than visuals or explicit emotions (e.g. no "this smell makes me sad", explain the smell itself, etc. etc.). the "touch" version of this exercise is great practice for bringing physicality into your writing, too, if you feel like your characters are talking but not interacting.

dialogue exercise - start a conversation in the middle and try to give context only through dialogue, no info-dumps allowed, making it as realistic as possible. the conversation itself doesn't matter so much as practicing natural speech patterns and conversation flow. think about how conversation flows when you are talking to someone IRL and try to mimic that instead of trying to write "story dialogue". (i probably do this exercise the most frequently because i find it the most entertaining; it's great for practicing comedy!)

metaphor puzzle - this one is for practicing emotional lyrical writing the same way the imagery exercise practices physical lyrical writing, this time with a focus on consistency. basically, take an abstract image and use it as the baseline for a much larger, longer metaphor and make word salad about it. the most important part about this is going back to the beginning after you've finished to make sure your metaphor stays consistent the entire time. if you start off talking about the body and randomly switch to an ocean metaphor halfway through, figure out how to turn the ocean back into the body.

line puzzle - like the metaphor puzzle, this one is about staying consistent/concise/impactful. basically, take a line that doesn't sound exactly the way you want it to (maybe it doesn't have the right punch? maybe its flow is off?) and pull it out. then rewrite the sentence in as many different ways as you can possibly think of. change words, change the order, condense or expand as needed. this helps practice "honing" your language.

voice exercise - simple and straightforward; pick a character POV you don't normally work with and try to write something entirely in their voice. this often involves a very short "research" portion where i go back and read dialogue, etc. from that character beforehand, but not always.

outsider exercise - also known as "voice exercise 2". write a scene, internal monologue, observation, etc. of your character(s) from an outsider's perspective. the outsider character itself doesn't matter at all and should basically just be a vessel for their observations, because the point of this is to help you work on external character traits/behavior. basically--no matter what your character is thinking or feeling internally (and no matter how your character interacts with their friends or w/e) how does the world see that character with little/no prior knowledge. this is really helpful for establishing consistent character behavior without leaning on the "crutch" of internal monologue or narration. it's essentially the character version of the imagery and sense exercises.

ouroboros puzzle - basically, write a full-circle "piece" that ends where it begins. you can either start in media res and mess with time, put your character in a "habitual loop", go totally abstract with it, whatever. this one is hard to explain, but once you get the hang of it it's really fun and can help you work on adding temporal depth to your stories. like, it helps you work on the sense of scale/time before and after your story's physical boundaries, if that makes sense. the best example i can offer is that i once wrote a short horror piece about a possessed victorian lady who keeps killing every priest who tries to exorcise her because she doesn't understand that she's possessed, but i had to convey the "loop" of that through one interaction with one priest.

AU prompts - also straightforward, pick two characters and write an interaction with them in an AU setting while trying to keep them as close to their "actual" character as possible, and/or use an AU setting to tease out a part of their character that is harder to address in canon. This works for both fanfic and original stuff too! this is basically an alternate version of the "voice" exercise for characters that you are more familiar with and want to poke around with at an intermediate level.

read "regular" books a few times a year - okay, okay hear me out. even if you read like four non-fanfic books in the entire year, i cannot stress enough how exposure to different writing styles can help break you out of rut. i'm not even saying literary fiction or w/e here, it could be anything fiction. just immerse yourself in someone else's writing style for a bit because it can absolutely help get you out of your own head. fantasy/scifi is good for action, mystery/thriller is good for plot structure, romance is good for dialogue, horror is good for emotion/voice, etc. etc. also, it's fun! and i swear to you no "regular" book is going to be more time consuming than the 80k fanfic you can chew through at 2:00AM.

so, yes, they are basically practice! i have spoken about them before, but looking back it's usually in the same breath as other writing stuff (specifically re: the 250k+ fic). essentially whenever i am feeling bored or stuck (or like i want to write but don't have any ideas), i will pick an exercise to keep my brain "in practice" even if it doesn't amount to anything. they're not "stories" so much as ficlets. usually they're between 200-1.5k words, but i have had some go on for much longer if i keep poking at them for a few days. pretty much everything under 20k on my ao3 was once a warm-up/puzzle/exercise that i thought was decent enough to post, including the last two chapters of "harbor lights". almost all of them usually get scrapped, though.

if you've been around for a hot minute, you know that i didn't have a lot of so-called "formal" training until i was in my mid-twenties, so most of what i learned about "the writing process" actually came from mimicking fan-artists! drabbles and ficlets were basically it on livejournal, and i watched my artist friends on dA/tumblr doing doodle warmups for years. it's really helped a lot over the past 10+ years. i tried to take the same philosophy of like "lighting practice" or "background practice" or "perspective practice" along with like... fic prompt challenges or w/e and apply it to everyday writing, and these are some of the prompts/exercises that i've come up with.

of course, you can find a million different lists of fanfic or original writing exercises online, but i sometimes struggle with stuff like that because i think that's because most of what's out there are more prompts than exercises. personally, i do feel like i get more creativity out of flexing my technical muscles. i know i'm not breaking new ground here, but i think you are never too good or too experienced to stop practicing!

so, yeah! _(:3 」∠)_

#sorry this is long! #and sorry for the delay #thank u for your question asldkfj #i assume this is in reference to the little zoro piece i added to hylianane's post #last night #it's always fun to talk about this stuff #esp since i will probably never resurrect the old writing blog #lemme know if i should move the read more if this is still too long #answers #writing refs #writing #gyro.odt

[whomst-the-hell]

do yall want to see the coolest article ive ever read

#cool #writing refs #worldbuilding #but also #mythology #folklore #edit: it seems like this has been debunked and was either exaggerated or fictional but its still super cool as a piece of creative writing #so i stand by what i said

[snobgoblin]

Dexter talks kinda weird and a grammar thing he'll do is like.. Well i dont know enough about grammar to identify it but for example, instead of saying "get out!" he says "remove yourself!" instead of saying "calm down!" he says "calm yourself!" "silence yourself!" etc

#writing refs #thisll be useful later bc i really struggle with capturing voices #dexter #and instead of saying fuck you he says fuck yourself #dexter's laboratory

[ghoulangerlee]

turning this around in my brain as i write this fic

my perceived height difference between the four ghouls summoned already + copia

#this is legit just for me and me only & based on my own ideas for how tall the ghouls are (not related to who plays them) #this is also a ref ill look back at to figure things out #my brain trying to figure out where Copia would come up to Mountain's chest @ when Mountain isn't glamoured lmao #writing refs #copia #mountain #dew #aether #rain

[chopper-witch]

I’m learning people thought they were setting Eddie up to be a villain and I’m lowkey shocked af.

The 80s and 90s was satanic panic era and Eddie is like peak 80s looking dude who would be a target for the satanic panic shit. My whole family spotted it from a mile away. We knew he was gonna be framed for murder or blamed for devil worship or something.

If you don’t know about the satanic panic at all or not a lot and want to learn (like, people were jailed over this shit and lost years of their lives, jobs, etc), here are some suggested reads that are shorter:

The wikipedia page (which is honestly super great)

A brief history of satanic panic in the 1980s

Dunno the title but this is from PBS and its very short

America's Satanic Panic Returns — This Time Through QAnon

Two Decades After McMartin: A Follow-up of 22 Convicted Day Care Employees

The Real Victims of Satanic Ritual Abuse

Michelle Remembers and the Satanic Panic (this is the third part to an okay series about religious minorities being depicted as violent against white women and children in America and the disproportionate reaction that occurs because of that. Part 1 is not great imo but 2 and 3 are stellar.)

HOW ‘SATANIC PANIC’ CAME TO ROIL THE NATION DURING THE 1980S

And some nonsense (and sense) from that era to show you how bonkers it was:

The wikipedia on Michelle Remembers - the book that kicked this all off and includes info on the debunking. Wikipedia is honestly the shit instead of shit at this point.

Satanic ritual abuse: A cause of multiple personality disorder. (Just the abstract - but satanic ritual abuse and all memories of it have been proven factually false in the ways people were describing it at the time. Leading questions were being used by docs and therapists and such)

Satanism, Ritual Abuse, and Multiple Personality Disorder: A Sociohistorical Perspective (again, an abstract primarily)

Sociological Views on the Controversial Issue of Satanic Ritual Abuse: Three Faces of the Devil

#stranger things #stranger things 4 #eddie munson #satanic panic #netflix #writing refs #impressed my mom was never accused of satanism or smth #she… #yeah #lmfao old photos of her #wowza!

[doodle-girl]

Hey can I get a quick tip from the professional writing/medical side of tumblr, if a person (teenage) were to get impaled, how long would it take for them to die?

For more specifics I’d say about

like this scene, impaled by something about as big as the thing shown in the image, but instead of the shoulder area it’s the chest area

#writing #health #ffudge how do i tag this to get seen #medical care #girl help #writing refs #thanks for any help! #writeblr

[voxvenati]

#writing ref #twitter #ghost #ghosts #wedding

[jstor]

Searching best practices on JSTOR

Hi Tumblr researchers,

As promised, we're going to dive into some best practices for searching on JSTOR. This'll be a long one!

The first thing to note is that JSTOR is not Google, so searches should not be conducted in the same way.

More on that in this video:

Basic Search on JSTOR

To search for exact phrases, enclose the words within quotation marks, like "to be or not to be".

To construct a more effective search, utilize Boolean operators, such as "tea trade" AND china.

Advanced Searching on JSTOR

Utilize the drop-down menus to refine your search parameters, limiting them to the title, author, abstract, or caption text.

Combine search terms using Boolean operators like AND/OR/NOT and NEAR 5/10/25. The NEAR operator finds keyword combinations within 5, 10, or 25 words of each other. It applies only when searching for single keyword combinations, such as "cat NEAR 5 dog," but not for phrases like "domesticated cat" NEAR 5 dog.

Utilize the "Narrow by" options to search for articles exclusively, include/exclude book reviews, narrow your search to a specific time frame or language.

To focus your article search on specific disciplines and titles, select the appropriate checkboxes. Please note that discipline searching is currently limited to journal content, excluding ebooks from the search.

Finding Content You Have Access To

To discover downloadable articles, chapters, and pamphlets for reading, you have the option to narrow down your search to accessible content. Simply navigate to the Advanced Search page and locate the "Select an access type" feature, which offers the following choices:

All Content will show you all of the relevant search results on JSTOR, regardless of whether or not you can access it.

Content I can access will show you content you can download or read online. This will include Early Journal Content and journals/books publishers have made freely available.

Once you've refined your search, simply select an option that aligns with your needs and discover the most relevant items. Additionally, you have the option to further narrow down your search results after conducting an initial search. Look for this option located below the "access type" checkbox, situated at the bottom left-hand side of the page.

Additional resources

For more search recommendations, feel free to explore this page on JSTOR searching. There, you will find information on truncation, wildcards, and proximity, using fields, and metadata hyperlinks.

#happy researching!!! #jstor #research #academic research #academic writing #academia #academic database #searching #higher education #students #colleges #university #learning #teaching #librarians #libraries #Youtube #studyblr #ref

[lucidmagic]

Repeat after me:

The first draft just needs to exist

The second draft needs to be functional

The third draft needs to be effective

The first draft just needs to exist

The second draft needs to be functional

The third draft needs to be effective

The first draft just needs to exist

The second draft needs to be functional

The third draft needs to be effective

Remember, the second and third can't happen if you don't have something to work with. Your first draft will always be shit compared to your third, but at least it exists. The worst first draft is an unfinished one. The best first draft is a just completed one.

You read books/stories not in their first draft form-- only in their finished form (third, fourth, sometimes fifteenth draft). So stop comparing your first draft with a final one.

So, just write--you can make it better later. Perfectionism is the greatest weight a creator can carry.

#writing is hard but it is harder to have stories that aren't shared #writing #my writing #writeblr #writers on tumblr #book writing #authors #author of tumblr #I needed to hype myself up so I made this post #hopefully it helps someone else too #writing ref #lucidmagic

[lulilak]

#i promise i’ll post something cool soon… #vampire #vampire aesthetic #vampirecore #gothic #victorian aesthetic #goth #dark acadamia aesthetic #dark academia #vampyre #aesthetic #clothing #drawing reference #art ref #clothes #clothing reference #art reference #writing ref #writing reference #historical clothing #history #historical reference

[blumineck]

hi! you're great I love your work! I've got a weirdly specific archery question and thought I'd send it to you in case you'd find it fun to have a crack at

say you're an expert archer originally from Vietnam sometime in the late bronze age. say you're a super duper expert archer because it turns out you're immortal, and so you do your archery across Eurasia through the first millennium BCE and the first millennium CE and into the age where gunpowder weapons are evolving into cannons. that's a long time to be alive and you do lots of hunting and fighting with all kinds of bows and shooting styles, especially war archery on horseback. then you're out of the picture for a while, let's say you're peacefully sleeping for a handful of centuries. (this is about Quynh from The Old Guard who alas was not peacefully sleeping)

all of a sudden you blink and you've gone from the era where firearms were just starting to develop and maybe with this new flintlock thing guns could eventually get good enough to rival a bow and arrows— bam, now you're in the 21st century. what kinds of modern archery tech would you be most excited to try out? what would you think of a compound bow? Olympic style archery? plastic fletching?? how about the modern reproductions of what are now considered historical bows and shooting styles? is there anything about 21st century archery that you'd want to rant about at length? other opinions about these newfangled takes on your trusty old bow and arrows you care to share?

This is a phenomenal question, and thank you for asking it! Here’s my 2 cents:

The thing about modern archery is that for the most part, modern bows are designed to make it easier to be accurate, to the stage that modern target accuracy is probably better than it’s ever been historically.

BUT, if we assume Quynh is capable of feats of archery that match the level of melee combat skill that e.g. Andy has, then she doesn’t NEED it to be easier to be accurate.

My guess is that someone like her would actually find most modern archery developments needlessly slow and awkward. Compound bows and Olympic recurves are NOT designed for instinctive, fast shooting, and would probably feel quite restrictive once she got over how easy they made accuracy.

BUT, I imagine she would be blown away by the range and arrow speed that modern bows can generate, and there are some recurves (and at least one compound bow), that have been designed to make use of the efficiency of modern materials and bow design, while still allowing traditional shooting styles, and those, THOSE are something an ancient immortal archer might fall in love with! (FWIW, my own go-to is a horsebow made with carbon-fibre limbs and a modern limb profile, and for impact energy it can match some traditional bows with a draw weight that’s 50% greater. The Oneida eagle compound could trump that).

So yeah, it might take her a bit, but once she gets her hands on the right equipment, she’d be (even more) TERRIFYING!

#archery #bows #arrows #writing ref #the old guard

[snobgoblin]

new tag its [#writing refs] where i post random things related to like, writing a characters voice

#writing refs

[galaxy-koi]

WFRP is Warhammer Fantasy Role play. If you want to look into it I recommend either tracking down old second edition PDFs or picking up 4e (2e is my preference but 4's fine)

Oh neat, thank you!

#fave #writing refs

[silvermoon424]

Magical girl-themed generators I found

These can help you brainstorm ideas for your magical girl OCs!

Magical Girl Team Generator

Magical Girl Weapon Creator

Magical Girl Generator (1)

Magical Girl Generator (2)

Magical Girl Generator (3)

PMMM Magical Girl Generator

Magical Knight Generator (basically a Magical Boy generator)

Anime Power Generator (get those crazy attack names!)

Magical Girl Title Generator

Magical Knight Title Generator

Fantasy Name Generators (not a specific generator but has hundreds of them that can easily be used to think of names, weapons, etc for your magical girl as well as location names and the like)

Magical Guardian Element Generator

Fantastic Weapon Generator

Puella Magi Generator

Magical Girl Series Prompt

Magical Girl Generator (4)

PMMM Witch Creator

Magical Girl Outfit Generator

Magical Girl Raising Project OC Creator

Precure Maker

Magical Girl Team Generator (2)

Feel free to add your own!

EDIT 7/15/2023: Just added a bunch more!

#magical girls #magical girl #oc creation #oc help #writing help #writing reference #oc reference #name generator #reference #refs #anime #1k #2k