Hesper Leveret

Speculative fiction writer. She/her. This blog is for memes and stuff, for Serious Grownup Stuff see hesperleveret.com

[hesperleveret]

My publications masterpost

“At Dragonbone Bay” is an epic fantasy story (in 2,500 words) about a princess fighting for her birthright in a bay where the skeletons of long-dead dragons lie beneath the waves 🌊 🐉🦈

It’s published in this anthology: https://wyldblood.com/product/from-the-depths/

From the Depths | Wyldblood Press

Fifteen brand new stories of the watery depths featuring sea monsters, selkies, pirates, mermaids and more. A Wyldblood Press fantasy anthol

“Our Lady of the Void” is a tale of folk horror… in SPACE!!!

Featuring singing, spaceship shenanigans, and even a cat!

It appears in Interzone Issue#296 (June 2023), order your copy here: https://interzone.press/iz-296/

“A Banquet in Turquoise and Indigo” is a fantasy tale of poison, swordfighting, and sapphic romance.

It appears in the “Prismatic Dreams” anthology from All Worlds Wayfarer, order your copy here: http://www.allworldswayfarer.com/anthology-prismatic-dreams/

“Not A Basking Shark” is a tale about how the sea is beautiful and also terrifying. It features a marine biologist’s encounter on a Cornish beach with a mysterious creature from the depths. Spoiler: it’s not a basking shark.

It appears in the February 2022 issue of Fireside, read it here: https://firesidefiction.com/not-a-basking-shark

“We Who Are Left On This Dying Earth” is a gentle and bittersweet tale of the climate apocalypse and the last survivors clinging to life at the end of the world.

It appears in the June 2021 issue of Luna Station Quarterly, read it here: https://lunastationquarterly.com/story/we-who-are-left-on-this-dying-earth/

Non-fiction

“Why Space Sweepers is the Future of the Future” is an assessment of the 2021 Korean science fiction film that provides food for thought as well as popcorn fodder. Read it here: https://medium.com/interstellar-flight-press/why-space-sweepers-is-the-future-of-the-future-f0d0eb3ea82e

“How Dungeons & Dragons Saved Life in Lockdown” is the story of how an online D&D game helped save me from depression, boredom and loneliness in the year of the plague. Read it here: https://medium.com/interstellar-flight-press/how-dungeons-dragons-saved-life-in-lockdown-43681a4e013

Both these articles appear in the November 2021 edition of Interstellar Flight Magazine.

[apathetic-revenant]

“oh no, my audience has begun to guess the big twists of my story and are accurately predicting what will happen!”

incorrect response: write the rest of the story to be as twisty, shocking and counter to expectations as possible, regardless of whether this is a logical or satisfying way for the plot to go

correct response:

[thebourneultimatum]

can someone elaborate on the “make hoax” and “post angry tweet about “leak”“ part. i’m stupid and don’t understand things

[apathetic-revenant]

sure!

(you’re not stupid. I posted this thinking it would amuse a handful of mutuals who all knew the context and that would be about it, so I didn’t think about providing any other explanation. I had no idea it would spread this far.)

I’ll start from the very beginning just to be thorough. so this is Alex Hirsch, creator and head writer of Gravity Falls, a show which had a big focus on mystery, conspiracies, codes and ciphers, etc. the whole plot is kicked off by one of the main characters finding a mysterious old journal in the woods, which detailed all kinds of weird and supernatural things, but then ended abruptly with the author saying they had to hide the journal because they were being watched. the central driving mystery of the show, therefore, was the question of who wrote the journal and what happened to them.

now, the thing about Gravity Falls is that, while it must be said that the writers weren’t always quite as sure of their plans as we tend to like to think they are, it is very much a fair play mystery, with legitimate clues to what was going on. but the writers were caught off guard by how quickly the show attracted a dedicated audience, including a lot of people outside the primary presumed demographic, who started solving the clues faster than expected. so some of the fans were able to correctly guess who the author was before it was revealed in the show, and the theory started spreading. this put the writers in something of a panic, because this was THE mystery that the whole story revolved around, with ¾ of the show building up to the dramatic reveal in the middle of season 2. they wanted it to be a mystery that could be figured out, sure, but they weren’t prepared for people to solve it so far in advance of when it was planned to be revealed, which would have really taken away from the big moment. they weren’t going to change the main story itself, but having been caught unaware by how much attention the fans were paying, they wanted to up the ante and make the mystery more complex to solve going forward–but first they needed to buy some time and throw the fandom off the scent for a little longer.

hence, Alex’s plan as described above. they whipped up a fake shot that appears to give away the identity of the author as being another character in the show, put it on a screen in the studio as if it was a real animation frame, took a picture of it, and ‘leaked’ it online. it was initially decided to be a hoax (albeit, I think, presumed to be a hoax originating from outside the production team), until Alex posted this tweet:

…before quickly deleting it (though not so quickly that it didn’t get seen, of course).

it worked well enough to distract most people for a while, and wasn’t revealed as a hoax until a year later, when an episode aired that definitively proved that the supposed screenshot could never have happened, at which point Alex owned up to the whole thing as seen in the tweet above. by then the episode with the real reveal wasn’t far off, and while people did still work it out ahead of time, it was more of an “OH MY GOD I KNEW IT!” moment than a “booooooring, we’ve known that for ages” moment, which of course was what the writers wanted all along.

personally I find this a fascinating approach to dealing with the problem of spoilers, because it doesn’t affect the story itself at all; if you watch Gravity Falls today–or if you were watching it when it aired without any significant contact with the fandom–you’d never know about it. ultimately, the problem the writers were facing wasn’t that some people might guess the answer to the mystery–they never wanted to make it completely impossible to predict–so much as it was that they hadn’t designed the story to stand up to so many people working on the puzzle together, which resulted in a sort of total output of puzzle-solving ability that far outstripped the capability of any one solo human being. so their solution is something that’s very much targeted toward delaying that group problem-solving, without actually affecting the experience of any individual person watching the show.

plus, it’s very in keeping with the overall tone of the show.

and now you know!

[notaplaceofhonour]

if your audience guesses the ending of your story

don’t:

change the ending

do:

gaslight them

[karis-the-feral-sideblog]

[lurker-lenore]

[clinticalthinkr]

For anyone wondering what Wild Rabbit could be writing about if not minotaur smut.

[necromancelena]

Die temu ad die

[necromancelena]

Hmm. Accidentally looks like latin.

[chef-boy-ar-girl]

It accidentally is latin

[saanah]

Accidental latin is my new favourite thing.

[santapau]

Found this in the margins of a medieval manuscript.

[qqueenofhades]

This is a very charming illustration and I do approve of Accidental Latin, but unfortunately, that is not what this (Fake) Accidental Latin actually says. Google Translate seems to think "temu" is identical to "timor" (infinitive, "to fear"), which would then be conjugated in first-person singular as "timeo" ("I fear"). "Temu" is not a word in Latin. So that is a very weird leap on Google Translate's part to turn gibberish into... something vaguely etymologically similar sounding? Hmm.

Next, "die" does mean "day," though nominative singular is "dies," i.e. "dies irae." It could be conjugated "die" if it was in ablative or locative case, but "die ad die" would mean something more like "day to day." "Ad" is in a "to" direction and "ab" is from, i.e. "ab urbis," and ablative case is used to indicate the movement of a thing. In short, "by" is not really a way to translate "ad"; we might want "per" here? (Through, by means of, etc.)

Not to mention, it would be weird to put one "die" at the start and another at the end The verb also usually goes at the end in Latin sentences, just for that extra bit of fun. So yes, in short, this is not actually Latin, and Google Translate is very bad at Latin in particular. Nonetheless, still charming.

[nudistcat]

@theshitpostcalligrapher

[sekkitsune]

Agree, @qqueenofhades, except on the matter of breaking “die ad die” apart. It’s a common structure in poetic and oratorical Latin to jam one phrase in the middle of another. I can’t think of an example exactly parallel to this construction, but I could believe a Roman poet would write it!

[qqueenofhades]

Ah, that is true. My Latin is of the reading-medieval-documents (particularly charters and/or chronicles) variety, where the sentence and usage structures are often more formulaic and there is less poetic license to move words around. There is obviously far less fixity for word order in Latin, since the conjugations explain how they grammatically relate to each other rather than placement in the sentence. (Coincidentally, this is why I used to say that the best feeling in the world was walking past a Latin classroom and not having to go inside it. Ahem.)

So yes: true that poetical Latin might be more at liberty to split the "die"-s up that far, though "timeo" (verb) is still more likely in most cases to go at the end, which would place them together anyway ("die ad die timeo," "day to day I fear" if translated in strict word order, which would make sense to an English speaker and sound more poetic anyway). Keep in mind, however, that my Latin is a) fairly rusty and b) mostly used for said formulaic legal document reading rather than freeform verse, so don't super-hard quote me on this.

[sekkitsune]

I saw that ablative “die” and that final -u on “temu” and thought of the ablative supine (as in “mirabile dictu”) but as you observe, there isn’t a verb that “temu” could be, and then also, the ablative supine requires an adjective, as far as I know.

But perhaps “temu” is a hapax legomenon (in which case we would need the rest of the text to gloss it) or a scribal error for temeratu, from temero, “I defile or disgrace”. In that case, and in true Tumblr form, I might translate it as “daily I disgrace, in the manner of the day”, with some errors attributable to the scribe.

[qqueenofhades]

....oh my god. You might be a genius. Because what else does Tumblr do but daily disgrace [itself, oneself, and/or numerous others] in the manner of the day, and make numerous scribal errors.

[laurenthemself]

how dare you say we error on the scribes

[jtimu]

this is what happens when you buy your latin on temu

[pmamtraveller]

The Great Mosque of Samarra during fog, Samarra, Iraq

[random-brushstrokes]

Leonid Pasternak  (Ukrainian, 1862–1945) - The Torments of Creative Work

[caressthosecheekbones]

oh leonid, we're really in it now

[wintersmitth]

Leonid, you really understand it.

[alexaloraetheris]

Save me Leonid, from my empty Word document

[elodieunderglass]

Leonid what should I do about the emails

[letitrainathousandflames]

Babe are you okay? you reblogged Leonid Pasternak's Torments of Creative Work again

[weonsinnombre]

[shieldfoss]

oH RIGHT This was before LotR pioneered cgi for massed crowd behavior

There was so much cool cgi in those movies I just assumed all the clones were too but back then I guess they still couldn’t really be

[chilewithcarnage]

this is so sexy

[luckyladylily]

I wonder what happened to all the agent smith masks

[roomtemperaturesuperconductor]

I can actually answer this! So the latex/rubber they used, while standard for Hollywood at the time, reacted REALLY BADLY to being doused in pouring water nonstop for an entire day of shooting. They ended up corroding, which caused them to stink really badly and glob together at the seams. The original plan was to hand out masks to various crew members on the final day of shooting as souvenirs, but the sopping wet, melting, rotting rubber got so gross that by the end of that shooting day they’d already thrown most of them out. Somewhere in a landfill are hundreds of disgusting, bloated, slimey Hugo weaving heads fused together into a nightmarish rotting amalgam :)

[roach-works]

it’s what he would have wanted

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

kind of making me insane that people have been thinking about grief and death like this for thousands of years

[elisary01]

“has turned to clay” I know exactly what theyre referring to but there’s also something about the epic being written in clay. like. like. enkidu can only now be remembered. his story can only be preserved, in clay. there’s nothing left for him, except clay

[jusjuiceboxbox]

Welcome to being an adult! Featuring such injury causing events as

- sneezed wrong

- turned your neck a little too fast

- slept weird

- took the trash out to the curb and stepped at a slightly different angle than usual

- breathed

- failed to breathe properly

- breathed in the wrong stuff. Allergy time

- looked too hard at something too far away

- knees

[buttpoems]

[horreurscopes]

starting a collection for my anthropology class can you guys send me more posts like these

[horreurscopes]

[puppydog-pyrolosis]

Here's a few I have

[threefeline]

"You will often be subjected to uncomfortable situations in public and you should learn to navigate that" and "if you play your music out loud in a public hike then the other hikers should be allowed to hunt you for sport" are two sentiments that can and should co-exist

[personsonable-deactivated201908]

me holding a gun to a mushroom: tell me the name of god you fungal piece of shit

mushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters

me cocking the gun, tears streaming down my face: I’M NOT FUCKING SCARED OF YOU

[miaislying]

Hey OP? What the FUCK does this mean?

[personsonable-deactivated201908]

decay exists as an extant form of life

[miaislying]

That’s a terrifying answer, have a nice day

[haystarlight]

THE ORIGINAL?!?!!!!!!!!;!!!!!!!!???

[shower-thoughts-last-responder]

On my dash!??!

Please hold

[hazard-symbols-that-fuck-hard]

No clue where I saved the image from, but I sure am feeling warned

[bo-an-aro]

“sex/romance/empathy makes us human,” they say. awful. pathetic. what makes us human is the urge to set things on fire

[sullina]

you’re actually correct!

Cooking is the one thing that only humans do and can be directly linked to the increase in our brain size

[detrout]

Burning the mammoth flank just a lirtle instead of eating it raw gives grug more calorie to think. Grug thinking about color symbolism in silence of the lambs

[leveragehunters]

Behold, a (hu)man!

[kirkegarde]

The bird that torments Prometheus learned something

[shithowdy]

[speedlimit15]

[395nm]

Fuck Meyer-Briggs whatever typology. This INTFP shit is only for redditors up their own asses to substitute for a personality. Use my new typology instead!

Your ideal environment is:

Hot/Cold

Wet/Dry

Bright/Dark

Loud/Quiet

[bedupolker]

HWBL - beach boy

HWBQ - tropical fish

HWDL - dingy club bathroom hookup

HWDQ - the swamp woman

HDBL - CoachellaBurningmanSouthbysouthwestACL attendee

HDBQ - Lizard

HDDL - Vegas babeyyyy

HDDQ - Trapped in a slot canyon

CWBL - Rowdy Lobsterman Crew

CWBQ - penguin living

CWDL - port angeles basement show

CWDQ - bruminating amphibian/hypothermic mammal

CDBL - ski resort

CDBQ - Christmas in Nebraska

CDDL - mcmurdo station rave

CDDQ - corpse