Art & stupid stuff @ihsgang - Tumblr Blog

A good, healthy, holy family is such a powerful and beautiful thing. To have a mother and father who love one another so much because of God and to pour that love onto their children, and to see that love flower into the generations, is something that points to something beyond ourselves and it is such a wonderful thing.

Please don’t ever apologize for dreaming for a family or hoping for a good marriage. Please don’t ever think that focusing on your kids is something less than. Please don’t think you are foolish for wanting to protect this natural good. Love your family and uplift them and never stop doing it.

#inspirational #helpful

writing-questions-answered

Guide: Naming a Town or City

There are many things to keep in mind when naming the town or city in your novel:

1) Genre/Theme/Tone

It’s very important to consider the genre and theme of your story when choosing a town name. Take these names for example, each of which indicates the genre or theme of the story: King’s Landing (sounds fantastical) Cloud City (sounds futuristic) Silent Hill (sounds scary) Sweet Valley (sounds happy and upbeat) Bikini Bottom (sounds funny) Radiator Springs (sounds car-related) Halloween Town (sounds Halloween-related) Storybrooke (sounds fairytale-related) 2) Time/Place It’s also important to consider the time and place where your story takes place. For example, you wouldn’t use “Vista Gulch” as a name for a town in Victorian England. You probably wouldn’t use it for a town in modern day North Carolina, either. Vista is a Spanish word and would normally be found in places where Spanish names are common, like Spain, Central and South America, the southwest United States (including southern California), Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and Florida. 3) Size/Settlement Type An isolated town of 300 people probably won’t be Valley City, but a sprawling metropolis of 30 million could be called Windyville, because it could have started out as a small town and grew into a large city. 4) Geography Words like gulch, butte,and bayou tend to be regional terms. You probably wouldn’t find Berle’s Bayou in Idaho, or Windy Butte in Rhode Island. Words like mount, cape, and valley are dependent upon terrain. Most of the time, you won’t have a town named “mount” something unless there are hills or mountains nearby. You wouldn’t use “cape” unless the town was on a cape, which requires a large body of water. 5) History Is there a historical person or event that your town might be named after? The Simpsons’ hometown of Springfield is ironically named after its founder, Jebediah Springfield. Chattanooga, Tennessee is named after the Cherokee town that was there first. Nargothrond, in The Lord of the Rings, is an Elvish town with an Elvish name. 6) Combination of Words

person name + geographical term = Smithfield, Smith Creek

group name + geographical term = Pioneer Valley, Settlers’ Ridge

descriptive word + geographical term = Mystic Falls, Smoky Hill

person name + settlement type = Smithton, Claraville

landmark + settlement type = Bridgton, Beaconville

Word Lists: Types of Settlements

Geographical Features

Place Words

Common Suffixes

Other Descriptors

Try a combination of two words from any of these lists. :)

writingquestionsanswered

Yaaay! I was looking for this forever! No need to update this one. :)

#concepts #tips #helpful

wildsurvival

bear--hearted

This is a beautiful graphic but it doesn’t explain the pros and cons of each fire type.

The Swedish torch is good for an efficient and contained fire, it’s controlled and good for cooking over and produces less light and heat than other fires. It can be difficult to keep going once you burn through the original log

The teepee is your traditional campfire. Good for heat and light not great for cooking, burns through fuel fairly quickly

The star fire is one of the slowest burning and not well protected but provides an even heat good for slow cooking and is excellent if you have limited fuel and need the protection a fire can provide

The lean to is a compact and efficient fire that evolves into a dense and hot bed of coals. The structure creates a good source of air flow which can help damp wood burn. A slightly better cooking fire that isn’t as bright. It also provides protection from wind on one side

The platform fire is incredibly hot and will create a very thick bed of coals but it doesn’t have a lot of air flow and is a little harder to get started.

The log cabin is big and bright and has lots of air flow which again is good for damp logs. You can also use this structure to start a smaller fire in the middle while drying out bigger logs. This fire will crumble into a messier bed of coals that don’t produce particularly even heat for cooking.

The modified leanto is excellent if you need it to perform multiple functions. The side with more fuel will burn bright and hot and the side with less fuel will burn less hot but more evenly and controlled, this gives you different cooking options.

rinitachan

reblogging for writing purposes. the exact reason will come soon enough.

#concepts #other #tips

bunjywunjy

Its been 6 hours thats later in the week... why is the earth Juicy?? 🌎💦🌍💦🌏

GOOD QUESTION I'M GLAD YOU ASKED.

it's true, compared to literally every other rocky planet and planetoid in our solar system, Earth is just extremely... liquidous.

(and I'm not just talking about about our extremely spicy liquid iron core, either)

stuff MOVES here, where it really has no business doing so if you compare Earth to the rest of the solar system on paper.

continents skitter their way across the surface in a billion-year-long dance, smashing together, breaking apart, smashing together again.

on the other rocky planets, tectonic plates are locked tightly in place against their neighbors, or never even existed in the first place.

so what gives? why is Earth letting gigantic sections of its outer crust bonk around unsupervised in a way that would get it shouted at in a busy supermarket?

maybe invest in a couple of these, Earth

well, like just about every other weird goddam thing on this planet, it's because of water!

I'm sure you know about plate tectonics at this point, where the great continental plates float around on top of Earth's mantle aimlessly and sometimes make your house fall down when they bonk into each other? well, turns out it's a little more complicated than that!

see, they aren't really "floating" on top of Earth's mantle, because the mantle is a plastic solid, like a stiff putty. if enough pressure is applied to it it'll deform, but it's definitely nowhere NEAR liquid.

sorry to bust every single scifi planet-destruction scene ever, I guess?

so what the hell is going on with the tectonic plates? why are they so peppy and fresh? well, it's because the entire ocean snuck down there when we weren't looking, that's why.

see, the places where tectonic plates meet often aren't exactly geologically stable (as you probably know if you live anywhere near one) and they're DEFINITELY not waterproof. which is funny, actually, because most of them are... on the seafloor...

so what's been happening over the past, oh, 4 billion years or so, is that water has just been leaking down out of the oceans and into the mantle itself, creating a thick layer of mantle that's been completely saturated with superheated water!

there is more water in this layer of rock than in all the surface oceans of the Earth combined.

so the tectonic plates aren't really skidding around on top of the MANTLE, they're hydroplaning on the water IN THE MANTLE. which explains why they hit each other so much, actually. hope Planetary Triple-A covers that.

yowch.

anyway, the moral of the story is that Planet Earth contains more than twice as much water as you thought it did, and it makes the continents go brrrrr.

surprise?

#concepts

thecollectibles

Enhanced skeleton by TERU

#artists works

secret--psalms--saturn

Jesus was loving and he did indeed reached out to sinners and the marginalized and those who were deemed less to society. But remember He ALWAYS shared the gospel to everyone. He told them to repent. He told them to turn away from their sins.

Love doesnt mean an approval of sin.

breannacarroll-blog

Publishing for Fun and Profit

So there was a list going around tumblr for a while that made it to my dash of literary journals that accept open submissions (and will pay!), but upon inspection about half of them were closed indefinitely, and I found quite a few other places that looked interesting through further research, so I wanted to post my own list.

I tried to focus on things that paid professional grade (at least 6 cents per word), were friendly to speculative fiction, and specifically encouraged diversity and writing about marginalized groups.

(Please note that as of right now I have never submitted or been published with any of these, so if anyone has experience with them, good or bad, please feel free to message or reblog this with your experiences.)

Speculative Fiction

Strange Horizons — Speculative fiction (broadly defined) with an emphasis on diversity, unusual styles, and stories that address politics in nuanced ways. 8c per word. Up to 10,000 words, under 5,000 preferred. Responds within 40 days. LGBT+ positive.

Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine — Sci-fi, fantasy, horror, etc. 7-12c per word. Up to 25,000 words. No response times listed.

Asimov’s Science Fiction — Primarily sci-fi but accepts fantasy and surreal fiction, but no high fantasy/sword and sorcery. Prefers writing that is character driven. 8-10c per word. 1,000-20,000 words. Responds in about five weeks.

Evil Girlfriend Media — Horror and urban fantasy centered on female empowerment and defying gender stereotypes. $100 flat payment. 4,000-7,000 words. No response times given. LGBT+ friendly.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies — Fantasy with a focus on secondary worlds and characters. 6c per word. Up to 10,000 words. Average response time 2-4 weeks.

Fantastic Stories — Speculative fiction with an emphasis on diversity and literary style. 15c per word. Up to 3,000 words. Responds within two weeks. LGBT+ positive.

Fiction Vortex — Serialized fantasy and speculative fiction. $300 for featured stories, $50 otherwise. 3,500 words or less. No response times given.

Shimmer — Speculative fiction with an emphasis on diversity, strong plots, vivid characters, and beautiful writing. 5c per word. 7,500 words or less (will consider longer words with query letter). Usually responds within two weeks. LGBT+ positive.

Clarkesworld Magazine — Sci-fi, fantasy, and other speculative fiction. 10c per word up to 5,000 words, 8c per word after. 1,000-16,000 words. Responds within days usually, gives a tracking number.

Apex Magazine — Speculative fiction of all kinds. 6c per word, +1c per word for podcast stories. Up to 7,500 words, all submissions over will be auto-rejected. Responds within 30 days.

Heliotrope Magazine — Speculative fiction of all kinds. 10c per word. Up to 5,000 words. Responds within 30 days.

Lightspeed Magazine — Speculative fiction of all kinds, with creativity and originality in terms of style and format encouraged. 8c per word. 1,500-10,000 words, under 5,000 preferred. LGBT+ positive. Submissions temporarily closed for their main magazine but is accepting for their People of Color Destroy Science Fiction special.

General Fiction

The Sun Magazine — General fiction, likes personal writing or writing of a cultural/political significance. $300-$1500 flat payment and a one year subscription to the magazine for fiction (also accepts essays and poetry). No minimum or maximum lengths but over 7,000 words discouraged. Responds in 3-6 months. Physical submissions only.

One Story — Any and all varieties of fiction, “unique and interesting” stories encouraged. $500 payment plus 25 contributor copies. 3,000-8,000 words. Usually responds in 2-3 months.

Camera Obscura — General fiction. $1000 for featured story, $50 for “Bridge the Gap” award, no payment for other contributors. 250-8,000 words. Response time vary, running just over two months as of now.

Flash Fiction

Daily Science Fiction — Speculative flash fiction (including sci-fi, fantasy, slipstream, etc.). 8c per word. Up to 1,500 words, but shorter stories given priority. Response times not listed.

Vestral Review — General flash fiction. 3-10c per word depending on length to a max of $25. Up to 500 words. Response within four months.

Flash Fiction Online — General flash fiction. $60 flat payment. 500-1,000 words. Response times not listed.

Novels/Novella

Riptide Publishing — Any LGBTQ manuscripts between 15,000 and 150,000 words. Currently especially interested in lesbian romances, trans stories, asexual/aromantic stories, romances with a happy ending, and genre fiction such as urban fantasy. Also has a YA branch. LGBT+ positive.

Crimson Romance — Romance stories of all kinds, currently seeking LGBT+ stories with a focus on emotional connections and relationships, especially m/m romance. Novel (55,000-90,000 words) or novella (20,000-50,000 words) length. LGBT+ positive.

Kindle Direct Publishing

Kindle Direct Publishing — Allows you to set your own prices, create your own cover art, and make royalties off of each sell. Any and all genres are welcome and if you’re prolific and smart about how you’re publishing you can make pretty good money.

General Guide to Kindle Publishing — Gives a good rundown of the publishing process on Kindle.

101 Guide to Kindle Erotica — Great guide with lots of resources about how to make money publishing erotica on Kindle.

Publishing Comics/Graphic Novels

Here is a list of potential comic companies and what kind of open submissions they accept.

Here is a list of literary agents who accept graphic novels.

#helpful #artists works #concepts

stimman3000

magnumpicactus-deactivated20230

somebody tell me wtf this is

aaronbuzz

@magnumpicactus the sand is on top of really hot coal and is pretty much boiling. The dude is dragging the pot of coffee on it to boil it. Its a traditional turkish way to make turkish coffee and its really good.

mondengel-deactivated20231111

i love seeing the amazingly unique, traditional ways different cultures have of achieving the same thing.

#concepts

theartofanimation

Xi Zhang - http://atara.lofter.com - https://www.instagram.com/zhangxii_art - https://www.weibo.com/zhangxii?is_hot=1

#artists works

theliteraryarchitect

Fiction Writing Advice Posts

Hey all, Some of you know that in addition to this Tumblr blog I also keep a blog on my website. A lot of the posts overlap, but not all of them, so I’ve made this list for your reading pleasure:

How to Control Your Pacing

How to Write During a Pandemic

How to Read Like a Writer

What if Your First Draft DOESN’T Suck?

How to Do World-Building Research

How to Properly Format a Manuscript for Submission

10 Questions to Ask an Editor Before Hiring Them

Creating Character Arcs with the DCAST Method

How to Choose the Right Point of View for Your Story

A Beginner’s Guide to Multiple Point of View

Show Don’t Tell? Not Always. Here’s When to Use Summary

8 Ways to Improve Your Fiction Writing

How to Spot Bad Writing Advice: 6 Red Flags to Look For

5 Reasons to Kill Your Critique Group

Are You Using Too Much Stage Direction?

Why Nobody Cares About Your Plot

How to Use Adverbs Like a Pro

How to Activate Your Passive Characters, One Verb at a Time

3 Easy Ways to Transform Boring Descriptions

3 Ways to Increase Conflict in Your Dialogue

A Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Killer Feedback from Beta Readers

How to Know What Kind of Editing You Need

10 Best Books About Fiction Writing

xoxo

Here, a cheater course on caring for natural fibers!

1. Wool. Treat it like it has the delicate constitution of a Victorian lady and the conviction that baths are evil of a 17th century noble. (If I get in WATER my PORES will OPEN and I will CATCH ILL AND DIE.)

2. Cotton; easygoing. Will shrink a bit if washed and dried hot.

3. Silk; people think it’s like wool and has the constitution of a fashionably dying of consumption Victorian lady, but actually it’s quite tough. Can be washed in an ordinary washer, and either tumbled dry without heat or hung to dry.

4. Linen; it doesn’t give a shit. Beat the hell out of it. Historically was laundered by dousing it in lye and beating the shit out of it with wooden paddles, which only makes it look better. The masochist of the natural fiber world. Beat the fuck out of it linen doesn’t care. Considerably stronger than cotton. Linen sheet sets can last literal decades in more or less pristine shape because of that strength.The most likely natural fiber to own a ball gag.

tamartia

why are all my thrifted linen clothes dry-clean only ? is that fake ? is it a linen blend ?

systlin

That is a blatant lie. Throw that shit in the wash and iron it as hot as you can once it comes out and bam presto good as new.

dancing-thru-clouds

Also important fabric note: cotton, wool, and sufficiently thick silk can be torn, for a nice straight line. Linen cannot. Linen laughs at your puny mortal strength. You have to cut linen

systlin

Truth.

Your puny mortal hands will give out before the linen does.

dancing-thru-clouds

Hell, for a truly awesome finish on your linen, throw it into a pot of boiling water, stir it around vigorously, haul it out, wring EXTREMELY firmly once it’s cool enough to safely handle, hang dry, iron as hot as your iron will go while it’s still slightly damp. Your linen will thank you. Your hands might not

systlin

Truth.

This is why heirloom linens are a thing. Your great-grandmothers linens outlived her, your grandma, and with proper care will also outlive you.

dancing-thru-clouds

Also! If your linen is only lightly worn and you didn’t sweat much while wearing it? Just soak it down with water, wring it out, and hang it in the sun. It’ll take care of any weird smells on its own

assessthatdress

all this^^^ about linen YES it is a miracle fiber!

but… i really feel like wool gets an unfairly bad rep, especially since it is also very easy to sew with, and wool naturally inhibits the growth of mold, mildew and bacteria, i.e. the reasons fabrics tend to get (and stay) stinky.

I dyed 2 pair of hand-knit 100% wool socks this week and the process consists of putting the socks in almost-but-not-quite boiling water, adding acid in addition to the harsh aniline dye and then keeping it in there for the better part of an hour.

… which… sort of belies the ‘delicate Victorian lady constitution’ as outlined above.

If you don’t understand wool it can absolutely be frustrating to work with, but like other natural fibers wool is quite forgiving if you know its nuances and preferences.

SO! behold this super cool image of different fibers under a microscope!

See all those ‘scales’ on the animal hair fibers (image left)? when you expose that fiber structure to wet + heat the fiber swells and those scales extend out, then when you introduce agitation (see: ‘beat the hell out of it’ above) the scales on neighboring fibers catch and lock together - the fabric then shrinks and you get felt (if you’re doing it with non-woven fiber) or felted fabric (if you’re doing it with woven or knitted fabric).

Sometimes you want felting - felted fabric tends to be denser, warmer, and more waterproof.

but if you’ve just spent 40 hours hand knitting a pair of socks with intricate lace and cable detailing you really don’t want felting. So the key is just to remove one of the two main elements that lead to felting - hot water or agitation (and really agitation is the main culprit).

Since wool naturally resists getting stinky, all you have do to is hand wash your wool garments periodically - immerse them in a sink or bath or bucket of cold water, add a little delicate detergent or shampoo (it’s formulated for hair, wool is hair, no special fancy laundry detergent needed!) and just kind of swish it around gently with your hands, then rinse and hang or lay flat (in the case of knitted garments) to dry. Now that I have a tub in my bath I usually wait till i have a pile of woolens that need cleaning and do a tub-full at a time. Easy peasy.

janey-jane

also side note the ‘dry clean only’ tag is often a ‘cover our ass’ tag. I never dry clean anything but heavily tailored things like suits and winter coats. everything else can be hand washed tbh.

punsbulletsandpointythings

One note with linen, cheap linen tends to be made of the remnants of higher quality linen; aka short strands spun into longer threads. This means it’s a bit weaker than other linen, so be careful putting it in a dryer too often, as it may eventually start weaken the fabric.

(I work in a fabric store that specializes in natural fiber and you can absolutely feel the difference between the short strand linen and the long strand linen)

a-ginger-in-black

The reason linen and silk tends to have the dry-clean-only tag isn’t the fiber.

Many expensive clothing items, such as the ones that you tend to be able to buy made of linen or silk, have stuff Done To Them as part of the design; this can be a bunch of things, but a decent general term is ‘sizing’. If you wash the item in water, the sizing will come out. It won’t damage the fiber, but the way the garment behaves may change - generally, it will be less stiff and not hold its shape as well. So if you’ve got a store-bought garment made of silk or linen, you can totally wash it in water, but be prepared for it to change a bit.

None of this applies to things made from yardage; when you buy fabric to sew with, the first thing you do is wash and dry it, in the manner you’ll use to wash the resulting clothing (wool) or very very harshly (the other three). That way it does all the shrinking it’s going to do before it’s sewn up, and there will be no unpleasant surprises the first time you try to put it on after it comes out of the laundry…

princeofsparkles

Saw this without the notes, so reblogging with one of the (many) helpful note chains. (If you go into the notes there’s actually a bunch of helpful ones. )

But also, yeah silk varies wildly by item in terms of how well it will wash.

#concepts

cosmos-kitty

Here’s the process behind a quick eye painting I did last weekend - I always seem to go to back to eyes for a relaxing subject to draw, there’s just something about the way they catch the light 💙

How to Organize a Zine 101 - Masterpost

I am writing a series of posts, all talking about things that I hope will help people organise their own zines, especially when they’re new to this. I am talking mostly from my own experience and mistakes we did with our first zine.

I will update this post as soon as I wrote the next installment, so remember to save the latest version!

Part 1: Phase 1 - The Planning

Part 2: The Job Interview

Part 3: Web Presence

Part 4: Finding Your Printing Service

Part 5: ALL the Merch

Part 6: Phase 2 - Applications

Part 7: Application Form

Part 8: What the FAQ?!

Part 9: Call for Submission

Part 10: Finding your Contributors and Sending Rejections

Part 11: How to Apply & Contributor Etiquette