whyylois

[whyylois]

look ye upon this monolith a monument of alabaster, of marble, of stone carved, chiseled, hammered strength imbued with a chip of a chisel and the touch of a hammer piece by piece a pièce de résistance released

you see, sculptors work in the space between find the form and figure between fissures and fractures coax them out of the rough it is not the stroke of a paintbrush but the strike of a mallet not the addition but the subtraction

there is no room for error granite does not forgive (not least of all because of its stony centre) once it is carved away, you are either left with form or nothing

-ylm

Prompt: grecian - @nosebleedclub

#poetry #poemsbyme #poemsbyylois #self-reboop

[whyylois]

Please go and read the og poem that inspired this piece because it is EPIC (mythologically and literally)

isn't it funny how we give gods blood? how we give them the life force that flows through us even though they are supposed to be the source.

in all our stories and ballads we show their pulse, spill their guts. a reminder that we can make them bleed if we wanted to. a reminder that they can also be hung to dry.

isn't it fun to thumb the pressure point? feel the bob of an adam's apple on a god who created it. what came first - the apple or the pulse?

it is through our lives that the gods are granted immortality. they say ichor runs through their veins but no one ever told you that ichor tastes a lot like ink.

so wet the nib. prepare the parchment. be ready to carve flesh from words and don't stop until the ink bleeds through the page and stains your fingertips.

-after this incedible poem by @glasswaters, ylm

#poetry #self-reboop #after poetry #after poem #mythology #greek mythology #poemsbyylois #poemsbyme

[whyylois]

#:') #atla #reminders

[whyylois]

Vernal Equinox, Kyla Jamieson

#MMMMMMM #other people's words #this <3

[whyylois]

Are you kept alive by a fantasy?

#*jaw drops* #holy hellfire this- #this is so fckn cool - i'm in awe #yo if my free write ever read this well- goddamn i'd be set #other people's words

[whyylois]

History student falls in love with astrophysics student by Keaton St. James

(patreon)

[poem text: listen, nine hundred and fifty years before jesus was a child shaking willow leaves out of his tangled curls, the author of the song of solomon wrote: behold, you are beautiful; your eyes are doves.

what i’m trying to say is that, in this universe which sculpted itself from a baptism of fire, i am the moon swept up by your tenderness. you’ve got me dreaming foreign words: gravity, ellipsis, perigee, until all i can think about is becoming anchored into orbit around the saltwater-green landscape of your laughter.

listen, plato of ancient greece wrote that the souls we each have now are only halves. that in a frenzy of blood zeus severed us from each other, so we rely on the blind tugging of our hearts. you say my name and i want to knit my bones into your bones, smooth away the boundaries of our heartbeats.

what i’m trying to say is that if the temperature inside those wild pockets of interstellar dust hits right near absolute zero, carbon monoxide and dihydrogen molecules condense together in the dark nebula to form stars. if you’re ready, i want to make you shiver like that. /end poem text.]

#OOF #oh my godddddd #other people's words #i love this format so much #goddamn

[whyylois]

Were the early days kind?

#other people's words #oh my god i forgot how good poets on tumblr were holyyyy

[whyylois]

Do you have a personal mythology?

#WOW #we love a personal mythology holyyyy #other people's words

[whyylois]

Reblog to kill it faster

[whyylois]

site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

site that gives you synonyms and antonyms

[whyylois]

Pro-writing tip: if your story doesn't need a number, don't put a fucking number in it.

Nothing, I mean nothing, activates reader pedantry like a number.

I have seen it a thousand times in writing workshops. People just can't resist nitpicking a number. For example, "This scifi story takes place 200 years in the future and they have faster than light travel because it's plot convenient," will immediately drag every armchair scientist out of the woodwork to say why there's no way that technology would exist in only 200 years.

Dates, ages, math, spans of time, I don't know what it is but the second a specific number shows up, your reader is thinking, and they're thinking critically but it's about whether that information is correct. They are now doing the math and have gone off drawing conclusions and getting distracted from your story or worse, putting it down entirely because umm, that sword could not have existed in that Medieval year, or this character couldn't be this old because it means they were an infant when this other story event happened that they're supposed to know about, or these two events now overlap in the timeline, or... etc etc etc.

Unless you are 1000% certain that a specific number is adding to your narrative, and you know rock-solid, backwards and forwards that the information attached to that number is correct and consistent throughout the entire story, do yourself a favor, and don't bring that evil down upon your head.

[whyylois]

 Hey, to you sci-fi/fantasy writers out there (and maybe some others, but this is mainly for things that can’t really be researched irl), if you want to write a character who is a driven, passionate expert on something, don’t write about them rambling indifferently about some boring, mundane part of it. Give them a deep, intense hatred of some oddly specific wow-I-did-not-even-know-that-was-a-thing-and-it-would-have-never-occurred-to-me-that-it’s-a-bad-thing thing they’ll gladly rant about.

 Write a dragon rider who really fucking hates it when a dragon is trained to bow while being reined. A space ship engineer who is pissed off when perfectly good antimatter ship has been adapted to run on neutral matter. A historian who is still not over the massive failures of a general who lost a specific battle 300 years before she was born.

 The guy currently giving us a series of lectures on the restoration of historical buildings really, really hates polymer paint. At the artisan school our stained glass teacher really hated this one specific Belgian artist - we never really figured out what did that guy even do, but he’s been dead for over 200 years and our teacher was glad that at least he’s dead.

 Experts don’t just know things you’ve never thought about. They’ve got strong opinions about it.

[whyylois]

Here's THE masterpost of free and full adaptations, by which I mean that it's a post made by the master.

Anthony and Cleopatra: here's the BBC version, here's a 2017 version.

As you like it: you'll find here an outdoor stage adaptation and here the BBC version. Here's Kenneth Brannagh's 2006 one.

Coriolanus: Here's a college play, here's the 1984 telefilm, here's the 2014 one with tom hiddleston. Here's the Ralph Fiennes 2011 one.

Cymbelline: Here's the 2014 one.

Hamlet: the 1948 Laurence Olivier one is here. The 1964 russian version is here and the 1964 american version is here. The 1964 Broadway production is here, the 1969 Williamson-Parfitt-Hopkins one is there, and the 1980 version is here. Here are part 1 and 2 of the 1990 BBC adaptation, the Kenneth Branagh 1996 Hamlet is here, the 2000 Ethan Hawke one is here. 2009 Tennant's here. And have the 2018 Almeida version here. On a sidenote, here's A Midwinter's Tale, about a man trying to make Hamlet. Andrew Scott's Hamlet is here.

Henry IV: part 1 and part 2 of the BBC 1989 version. And here's part 1 of a corwall school version.

Henry V: Laurence Olivier (who would have guessed) 1944 version. The 1989 Branagh version here. The BBC version is here.

Julius Caesar: here's the 1979 BBC adaptation, here the 1970 John Gielgud one. A theater Live from the late 2010's here.

King Lear: Laurence Olivier once again plays in here. And Gregory Kozintsev, who was I think in charge of the russian hamlet, has a king lear here. The 1975 BBC version is here. The Royal Shakespeare Compagny's 2008 version is here. The 1974 version with James Earl Jones is here. The 1953 Orson Wells one is here.

Macbeth: Here's the 1948 one, there the 1955 Joe McBeth. Here's the 1961 one with Sean Connery, and the 1966 BBC version is here. The 1969 radio one with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench is here, here's the 1971 by Roman Polanski, with spanish subtitles. The 1988 BBC one with portugese subtitles, and here the 2001 one). Here's Scotland, PA, the 2001 modern retelling. Rave Macbeth for anyone interested is here. And 2017 brings you this.

Measure for Measure: BBC version here. Hugo Weaving here.

The Merchant of Venice: here's a stage version, here's the 1980 movie, here the 1973 Lawrence Olivier movie, here's the 2004 movie with Al Pacino. The 2001 movie is here.

The Merry Wives of Windsor: the Royal Shakespeare Compagny gives you this movie.

A Midsummer Night's Dream: have this sponsored by the City of Columbia, and here the BBC version. Have the 1986 Duncan-Jennings version here. 2019 Live Theater version? Have it here!

Much Ado About Nothing: Here is the kenneth branagh version and here the Tennant and Tate 2011 version. Here's the 1984 version.

Othello: A Massachussets Performance here, the 2001 movie her is the Orson Wells movie with portuguese subtitles theree, and a fifteen minutes long lego adaptation here. THen if you want more good ole reliable you've got the BBC version here and there.

Richard II: here is the BBC version. If you want a more meta approach, here's the commentary for the Tennant version. 1997 one here.

Richard III: here's the 1955 one with Laurence Olivier. The 1995 one with Ian McKellen is no longer available at the previous link but I found it HERE.

Romeo and Juliet: here's the 1988 BBC version. Here's a stage production. 1954 brings you this. The french musical with english subtitles is here!

The Taming of the Shrew: the 1980 BBC version here and the 1988 one is here, sorry for the prior confusion. The 1929 version here, some Ontario stuff here, and here is the 1967 one with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. This one is the Shakespeare Retold modern retelling.

The Tempest: the 1979 one is here, the 2010 is here. Here is the 1988 one. Theater Live did a show of it in the late 2010's too.

Timon of Athens: here is the 1981 movie with Jonathan Pryce,

Troilus and Cressida can be found here

Titus Andronicus: the 1999 movie with Anthony Hopkins here

Twelfth night: here for the BBC, here for the 1970 version with Alec Guinness, Joan Plowright and Ralph Richardson.

Two Gentlemen of Verona: have the 2018 one here. The BBC version is here.

The Winter's Tale: the BBC version is here

Please do contribute if you find more. This is far from exhaustive.

(also look up the original post from time to time for more plays)

#shakespeare #oh bless you op for this!!!!

[whyylois]

I was getting pretty fed up with links and generators with very general and overused weapons and superpowers and what have you for characters so:

Here is a page for premodern weapons, broken down into a ton of subcategories, with the weapon’s region of origin. 

Here is a page of medieval weapons.

Here is a page of just about every conceived superpower.

Here is a page for legendary creatures and their regions of origin.

Here are some gemstones.

Here is a bunch of Greek legends, including monsters, gods, nymphs, heroes, and so on. 

Here is a website with a ton of (legally attained, don’t worry) information about the black market.

Here is a website with information about forensic science and cases of death. Discretion advised. 

Here is every religion in the world. 

Here is every language in the world.

Here are methods of torture. Discretion advised.

Here are descriptions of the various methods used for the death penalty. Discretion advised.

Here are poisonous plants.

Here are plants in general.

Feel free to add more to this!

#writing resources

[whyylois]

Relatives tend to share mannerisms and if you want a nice little detail for your stories, I recommend including that.

A father and son share the same restless or anxious movement like chewing on the inside of their lip or tapping their fingers. A mother and daughter both raise their eyebrows when they’re in deep thought. Two siblings both tilt their heads when something is intriguing. A younger brother copies his older brother’s posture. A grandchild copies the way their grandfather crosses his arms behind his back when he walks. A father throws his hat down when his sports team loses and his child grows up to do the same.

Adding niche similarities between my characters and their families is one of my favourite things to develop and one of my favourite ways to connect them despite whatever relationship and differences they may have.

They could hate their family and yet they tap their foot side to side when they’re standing in one spot like their father does, and they scrunch their nose when they close their eyes like their mother did. This can be used to portray your character’s struggle with their family, and amplify their fear over ending up like their family. It’s a subtle addition and yet it adds more depth to their turmoil.

Or on the flip side, it can help show how much your character admires their family by emulating them. It can help show how important their bond with their family is to them by showing those shared, unconscious similarities.

Shared mannerisms are a small detail but they will be noticed by somebody and appreciated.

#writing advice

[whyylois]

And this here is what we in the writing industry call "a display of hubris that may or may not have karmic consequences but is very, very fun".

[ID: a screenshot of white text on a black background reading "All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The sole exception for the ocean, the ocean is The Pacific Ocean from real life. If it is unhappy with its portrayal it can settle the matter personally." /end ID]

#*snickers* #well played #writing

[whyylois]

"All that pain, that misery, that loneliness, and it just made him kind." - Amy Pond, Doctor Who, season 5, episode 2, "The Beast Below" written by Steven Moffat

Pain sits on a chest too frail to lift it, its mouth split by teeth. it digs curved claws into sinew and bone and untwists nerves where they lie blank in its hands. Misery, hollow cheeked and hollowed bare, keeps its stomach concave, starving for company. A rattle in your lungs. Weeping sores on your skin.

What are you thinking? What are you feeling?

It hurts.

What are you thinking? What are you learning?

Make for me a map of the starving thing shredding your muscles. Hold open the puncture wounds, and pull out the claws.

Or else leave them in and let them fester. Watch your skin go blue and yellow, watch the flesh swell where they lay buried somewhere deep inside of you. Feel your tongue grow heavy and drop down your esophagus. Won't you lift your head?

Pain pulls from your head every thought before it's formed. Pain threads a needle from the spool of your words and stitches closed your lips. Tiny, and neat, a surgeon's touch. Pain takes your hands and holds them, fast and steady. Let me teach you, it says, and presses its splintering bones into the skin of your back.

What are you feeling? What are you learning?

It hurts.

-oh, my darling. pain doesn't have anything to teach. it just hurts.

#other people's words #oof straight for the heart with this one