Gallivant With Me!

An intrepid vulpine with a hunger for exploration wishes to share his adventures

[kestinfox]

It wasn’t yet dark as I trudged up the steps in the park, barely able to see my breath as it swirled away from my lips. Head ducked against the lightly falling snow and my collar turned up to keep it out of my neck fur, I kept my eyes on my heavy boots as they scrunched through the thick snow, the sound filling my ears in the silence of winter.

The loose belt of my overcoat bumped against my hip, reminding me of the empty holster there. I would regret not bringing my handgun with me later, but for now it was just a note of annoyance in the cold. Digging my gloved paws deeper into the pockets of my coat, I flicked my long ears back against my skull. I could feel snow gathering in my fur, threatening to sap my warmth. Why was I out here? What would I learn from this? A hunch, hopefully one that lead to more than a sour stomach. She hadn’t been forthcoming, but the hint of contact in the deserted park from the man I pursued was more than enough motivation for me.

The final step, and I stood at the top of the stairs, tail swaying through the quietly falling snow. I looked up and saw - nothing. Aside from the irregular layer of soft white covering the round platform of concrete, there was nothing else. No one here. Not a sound, either. After catching my breath, I held it for a moment as I scanned the naked forest of the park, eyes darting between black spindly trunks in the weakening light. Nothing. I stepped to the center of the platform, scrunch, scrunch, scrunch. Silence weighed on my shoulders like a second warmless coat.

I turned in a slow circle, annoyance burbling up within my gut to become the hint of anger. She’d lied to me, then. Did I expect anything else? Of course she would protect her man, that bitch. I’d been played for a fool, led to believe in a parlay in the park while the villain escaped with his treasure, henchmen dancing to the beat of an evil drum.

The tension in my jaw burned, and it fueled my anger as I railed against myself.

Why even talk to her? Because she was your only lead

Why believe her? Because you had nothing else

Why did I come here instead of following her?

At that, I stopped. Why did I come out here, if I had no reason to believe her? Did I enjoy flights of fancy? No. There was something. There had to be. My gut was never wrong. I would find him.

I blinked, coming back to myself. Snow melted on the end of my nose and I licked at the cold. I lifted a paw to brush away the collected flakes from my whiskers, but froze as my eyes focused past my snout. White fur blended into the drifts, of course I hadn’t seen him. The darkness of the shifting night allowed his form to stand out against the grey of the sky behind him. He stood just beyond the platform, piercing amber eyes bright as they burrowed into my skull, the barest hint of breath puffing away into the air around his fanged maw.

I hadn’t found him. He’d found me.

[kestintravel]

It would be easy to say I was frozen there, in the snow. So, I won’t. I could move. But where to? I had no idea what this monster could do, what he was planning. From the list of crimes attributed to him, I knew exactly what he could do. It wasn’t that hard to come up with something he could do to me. Any number of gruesome images spun through my mind, I could describe them for you, but you’ve probably just eaten. Maybe he wanted me to run, to have an excuse to do to me what he’d done to all those victims.

So, I chose not to move. I stayed still, standing calmly in the snow, planning against an attack that never came. Not from him, anyway. My eyes scanned his face, though I’d always found it difficult to pick out emotions in wolfkind. There were canine tells that translated across species, but I could find none in that moment. The sun slipped further below the horizon and the lamp lights glowed sickly across the covered ground as we stood there, watching one another.

My instincts told me to run, but I didn’t. I’d come here to…what? Catch him? No, I’d come here to talk. It was always my intention to talk to him, after hearing the skeleton of a story from her. And despite my hackles buzzing with electric warning on the back of my neck, I spoke up.

“Hey.” Not the most eloquent of greetings, but it did the job. The wolf blinked, the first movement I’d seen of his. “I’m here for your deal.”

Confusion. There, finally - definitely one of the major canine tells - a slight tilt of the head, pricking of the dominant ear. Younger pups show it more openly, turning their heads back and forth while their floppy ears alternate between attention and not. Adorable even. But here, amidst the snow, it was only a way of sharpening the senses for finding a weakness in your prey.

After a geologic age to me, he spoke. His voice rattled the bottom of my rib cage and my liver hid behind my spleen. That full-throated growl and the sheer river of power behind it made it all but impossible to stay out in the open. Somehow,  I did.

“You don’t want to hear my story, fox. I know you. Hunting me for atrocities, I know you. Take me in, make me pay. I know you.”

Strange emphasis on certain vowels and consonants, I couldn’t place the accent. Baltic? Norwegian? Something up north I figured. It’d been a while since he had been there, I could tell, but how long that was I couldn’t figure exactly. Still, it was more information on him than anything we had stuck to the cork board in the chief’s office.

“You might know what I represent,” I countered. “But you don’t know me. I’m my own, and I do what needs to be done to- “

“For justice?” He spat. Another canine tell, anger. His lips curled and I could see the root of his teeth, especially his fangs.

“-to make things right,” I snarled at the interruption, anger flaring up once more. “To find the truth.” I held out my paws to take in the city. “I work and live here, but I’m not blind and deaf. There’s more to this than I know. But right now, all I know is that you were seen fleeing several murder scenes. Murders of important men. Powerful men. All I want is to know what happened. What really happened. The law can protect you.”

His laugh - eventually I figured out it was a laugh - boiled and spilled out of his thick barrel chest, ugly, dark and heavy. His eyes narrowed and he hunched his shoulders as he flexed his claws, long razors on the ends of even longer fingers. Tools of destruction.

“The law cannot help me, little detective. What I have done is beyond the law. I did not kill those people. I tell you, I did not - I swear it. But I will kill one man. That, I can promise you.”

I sighed at his confession of a future crime. I couldn’t help it. Revenge, always it seemed, factored in at one point or another.

“Why do you need to kill him?” I asked, keeping my tone level, trying to keep him talking. I needed to know motive, to know what drove this creature into the night. Money? Land? Drugs? I’d run this beat long enough to know that greed is a powerful motivator in the city. One dealer moves in on another’s turf, the other won’t tolerate it. Subordinate finds a lucrative contract for himself, and the head honcho has him disappeared. Gang wars, corporate buyouts - insanity, all of it. It’s what the streets ran on, what keeps me employed. But the jaded shields of my soul weren’t prepared for his next statement.

“That man…tortured and kidnapped my mate. I need to bring her home, once I have made sure he cannot do anything to anyone, ever again.”

[kestintravel]

The silence folded around us again. I didn’t know what to say. What does one say to that? ‘Oh man, that sucks. Well, don’t kill him – whoever he is - and we still need to bring you in for questioning.’ I wanted to, believe me. One side of me was sorely tempted to end this right then and there; to avoid a messy journey I could feel brewing behind this wolf. But I couldn’t help the side of me that needed to know the truth, the whole story. Sometimes I hated that part of me. But I knew that following it kept me from loathing myself.

So, I made a decision.

“All right,” I called reluctantly, weary of myself. “I need to know the whole story, just tell me everything. I’m not gonna bring you in. We can…figure that out later.”

His eyes watched me, cold and emotionless.

I held up my paws, showing there was nothing in them, then lowered my left and calmly drew back my overcoat, showing my empty holster at my hip.

“I talked with your woman on the phone. It’s why I’m here. Her story…well, it was nothing. I couldn’t tell anything from what she gave me. But she told me you’d be able to fill in the blanks.”

At this distance, I couldn’t see his expression change at all but the slight movement of his ears - I definitely caught that. A slight droop in both, indicating a relaxation from alert posture. Another canine tell. Something drew his attention, his gaze flicking up to a spot over my head. I saw his muscles tense a second before I heard the rifle shot ring out through the empty park. My instincts kicked in and I found myself eating snow, my body flat against the ground, ears laid back against my skull. My heart pounded in my chest as I lifted my head slightly, looking up to where the wolf had stood.

Gone.

I cursed furiously under my breath, spitting out a mouthful of slush. Why the fuck did I leave my gun in the car?! Another shot echoed across the blanketed field and I army-crawled to the edge of the concrete. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the wolf as a streak of lucent fur weaving across the field to the south, toward the parking lot I knew lay beyond a copse of mulberry trees. More curses behind gritted teeth. I hadn’t seen any cars in the lot beyond mine, he must have parked further down –

My head cocked slightly as the unmistakable roar of a four-stroke motorcycle engine carried across the field, revving up. I watched the wolf peel out of a thicket near the mulberry trees, fishtail for a second, then rise up over an embankment and disappear heading toward the city, bent low over the handlebars. I held my breath as I focused on the sound of its engine, memorizing it. What little my father had passed on to me, the one thing I could never forget was his love of motorcycles. Countless days spent helping him strip and rebuilding them in my early years had given me an ear for the different types of engines, along with my father’s insistence on dragging me to motorcycle shows and events with him, against my mother’s wishes. I preferred good, solid four wheels, especially after the way he died, but what I learned stuck with me. As the sound of the engine faded, I became aware of two sets of crunching footsteps in the snow coming toward me and I kept still, splayed out in the snow playing dead, feeling the meltwater from my body heat soaking into my clothes and fur beneath.

A gruff voice drifted to my ears, muffled and growling. “Shit. You got the cop.”

Another voice, pinched and stuffy, snapped back. “I swear I didn’t! I mighta grazed ‘im – “

“He ain’t movin’ fuckhead. We gotta get out of here before someone comes lookin’.”

“I didn’t hit ‘im, I swear - !”

“Shut up, moron! You think I fuckin’ care?! One less deadbeat cop on the streets, one less we gotta worry about payin’ off. Hell, Boss’ll probably be happy ‘bout that.”

“You think so?”

“No! Fuckin’…just shut your stupid mouth…”

The voices faded into the night and I stayed where I was until I was sure the chattering of my teeth could be heard in the next county. I gathered myself up and pushed myself to my feet, the light breeze sharp against my soaked front, my fingers stiff and starting to shake in my gloves as I yanked my overcoat tight around me, cinching up its belt to keep it closed. My legs almost refused to move in the cold, but I managed to coax motion out of them by promising a hot bath and beer. Down the steps and back the way I came, I stumbled through the snow, my steps becoming more sure as my heartbeat rose. Halfway to the parking lot, I heard another engine - this time the low grumbling beat of a V8 sedan - fire up and then drift rapidly away, presumably following the wolf.

“They must have come in after I did,” I muttered darkly, jamming my paws into the pockets of my overcoat. “No wonder I didn’t see anyone. Hell, some detective I am - one good tip and I fall apart.”

The final slog to my car seemed to stretch on forever, and after slipping in the parking lot and spraining my tail, I was done with everything. Teeth rattling, arms shaking, fingers numb, I managed to unlock my car. As I yanked on the handle to open it though, it refused to budge. I let out a yelp as the stubborn door nearly made me pull a muscle.

“For fuck’s sake!” I roared, slamming my fist on the roof of my Thunderbird, frustration overflowing my limits and overriding the pain shooting up from my elbow to my shoulder. “Open, damn you!” Another yank and the frozen rubber seals finally relented, hinges protesting as the door swung wide. “Finally.” I clambered into my Ford and slammmed the door shut, the body swaying on its springs as I huddled in the driver’s seat, stripping off my gloves and breathing into my cupped paws to try and thaw them. After a few minutes, feeling began to return and I pumped the gas before turning the key in the ignition. The car shuddered with a whining groan, but nothing happened. I tried again, clenching my jaw. More noises, but no progress. “I know, I know,” I growled in exasperation through my teeth, desperate as my paw gripped the steering wheel. “I shoulda had your carburetor rebuilt in the summer, but I need you to fucking WORK right now. Please! Just fucking-” Jamming my booted footpaw on the pedal, I twisted the ignition viciously once more and the engine roared angrily to life, belts squealing, the whoosh of the fan I’d forgotten to turn off blowing frigid air in my face. Flicking the controls off with an annoyed swipe of a claw, I let out a ragged sigh as I let the car warm up, running a paw over my face.

“Could this day get any worse?” I muttered, staring blankly into the frozen park beyond the windshield. I hadn’t noticed the white ghost standing at the passenger’s side door, with all the drama. The firm knock on my window nearly made me piss myself, my body throwing itself against the driver’s side door in an instinctual reaction, eyes wide. I recovered quickly, but then I saw who it was and I cursed some more under my breath. Why not? Seemed to be what I did now. Sure, slander my grandparents too, they had a part in this. All roads led to me getting brutally murdered in a parking lot after Christmas. If good ol’ Grandpop and Grandmum hadn’t beaten my parents and they hadn’t beat me, maybe I would have chosen a different path in life. One that ended with me in a brownstone with a wife and sixteen grandkits on the way and a pension. Sure. Maybe.

Yellow eyes peered at me through the passenger window, unblinking.

The wolf.

He knocked on the glass again with the same pressure, same cadence. Insistent.

I remembered my gun, sitting on the backseat where I’d tossed it for safekeeping before the meeting, and I considered snatching it up. Another knock and I threw away the idea. He’d probably eat me before I got a shot in, anyway. “Fine!” I barked, throwing my paws up in defeat. “Fine, fine, fine…”

I leaned over and opened the door for him. He slid into the passenger seat beside me, his bulky frame taking up most of the space as he turned his head, fixing me with his eyes.

“I will talk to you,” he said simply, his voice low. “I will tell you my story.” A beat, then – “But first, I must see a doctor.”

I wrinkled my snout, looking him up and down incredulously. “A doctor?! What do I look like, a charity service–“

He tapped his shoulder closest to me with a claw and leaned forward slightly, twisting away to give a good view of his back. There, just above his shoulderblade, bloomed a crimson flower in his fur.

I let out a breath in a low groan. “Fuck.”

[kestinfox]

I finally know what I want to do with my detective story! It hit me this morning, as I was getting ready. I think I finally have a good idea for moving forward on it.

I was thinking about movies that people don’t really talk about, and there’s one I love that I used to watch all the time. And I realized it slotted in perfectly with the scene I wrote earlier, so I’m going to try and integrate it as best I can.

Hopefully soon there will be a story update! First one in a long time. 😅

[torchwood-99]

"I love you but you're doing wrong in a way I cannot condone" and "I hate you but you're being wronged in a way I cannot stomach" are top tier and I need more of them.

[rederiswrites]

There used to be a lot of activities that took place around a populated area like a village or town, which you would encounter before you reached the town itself. Most of those crafts have either been eliminated in the developed world or now take place out of view on private land, and so modern authors don't think of them when creating fantasy worlds or writing historical fiction. I think that sprinkling those in could both enrich the worlds you're writing in and, potentially, add useful plot devices.

For example, your travelers might know that they're near civilization when they start finding trees in the woods that have been tapped, for pitch or for sap. They might find a forester's trap line and trace it back to his hut to get medical care. Maybe they retrace the passage of a peasant and his pig out hunting for truffles. If they're coming along a coast, maybe your travelers come across the pools where sea water is dried down to salt, or the furnaces where bog iron ore is smelted.

Maybe they see a column of smoke and follow it to the house-sized kilns of a potter's yard where men work making bricks or roof tiles. From miles away they could smell the unmistakeable odor of pine sap being rendered down into pitch, and follow that to a village. Or they hear the flute playing of a shepherd boy whiling away the hours in the high pasture.

They could find the clearing where the charcoal burners recently broke down an earth kiln, and follow the hoof prints and drag marks of their horse and sledge as they hauled the charcoal back to civilization. Or follow the sound of metal on stone to a quarry or gravel pit. Maybe they know they're nearly to town when they come across a clay bank with signs of recent clay gathering.

Of course around every town and city there will be farms, more densely packed the closer you are. But don't just think of fields of grains or vegetables. Think of managed woodlands, like maybe trees coppiced-- cut and then regrown--to customize the shape or size of the branches. Cows being grazed in a communal green. Waiting as a huge flock of ducks is driven across the road. Orchards in bloom.

If they're approaching by road, there will be things best done out of town. The threshing floor where grain is beaten with flails or run through crushing wheels to separate the grain from its casing, and then winnowed, using the wind to carry away the chaff. Laundresses working in the river, their linens bleaching on the grass at the drying yard. The stench of the tanners, barred from town for stinking so badly. The rushing wheel-race and great creaking wheel of the flour mill.

If it's a larger town, there might be a livestock market outside the gates, with goats milling in woven willow pens or chickens in wooden cages. Or a line of horses for the wealthier buyer or your desperate travelers. There might be a red light district, escaping the regulations of the city proper, or plain old slums. More industrial yards, like the yards where fabric is dyed (these might also smell quite bad, like rotting plant material, or urine).

There are so many things that preindustrial people did and would find familiar that we just don't know about now. So much of life was lived out in the open for anyone to see. Make your world busy and loud and colorful!

[ahedderick]

This is a big reason that I have always loved the Brother Cadfael novels, set in the mid 1100s. Written by Ellis Peters, each book has such a vivid sense of the place and the time period. Many different settings around Shrewsbury are described, along with the people and their various jobs.

[toooldfortumbling]

I love that kind of world building and would add that many resources were tightly regulated that we don't consider nowadays. Examples are the right to herd your pigs in an oak forest belonging to a specific monastery (saw an example where an altar piece had a carved pig to make sure the claim was known and advertised) or down to which farmers had the right to tree leaves in the fall (shortage of other animal bedding in certain Swiss valleys). The idea of a wilderness in a medieval setting is not what we think.

[rederiswrites]

Great points! Thank you.

[batbetbitbotbut]

Forever recommending A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry as an introductory resource for this! The author is a historian of the ancient mediterranean and he has a lengthy two-part blog post on "lonely cities": how fictional cities tend to look in pseudomedieval fantasy versus how real cities actually worked, specifically how they reshaped the land use for many miles around. Part I, part II, or available read aloud on YouTube here.

[prokopetz]

"But how can you justify a player character with a (non-disinherited) noble background in a dungeon-crawling fantasy game" well, the most obvious approach is a fantasy setting whose nobility practices cognatic primogeniture where, instead of "first son inherits, second son goes into the military, third son becomes a priest", it's "first son inherits, second son goes into the military, third son becomes an adventurer". From the player's perspective, it handily explains why the title comes with little material support from the family; from the family's perspective, there's an unspoken understanding that most of the spare heirs will be eaten by a dragon (or whatever), thereby simplifying the inheritance situation, and the few survivors will become great assets.

(There is, of course, the possibility that a surviving third son, having grown powerful and understandably harbouring some slight resentment, may return, kill his elder brothers with dark magic, and take over the dynasty, but in practice this almost never happens.)

[therealbeachfox]

As an added bonus, if you, the first born son, ever run into -true- trouble, you probably have a few aunts/uncles/second-cousins hanging around who can bring utterly insane amounts of force (political, physical, magical, whichever) down upon it for you.

Very few adventuring-third-children nobles have any desire to take on all the hassle and responsibility of running a noble estate when they finally return home after years of seducing dragons and fighting gods. They just want a nice comfy chair, lots of respect, and all the wine they can drink. And in exchange, they occasionally pull a few fistfuls of gems out of the ol Bag of Infinite Holding, tell stories about that time they cut the head off that giant dragon whole's bones are a mountain range now, and head on down to the Senate Chambers to incinerate whoever's making their sweet nephew so upset these days.

[yamino]

I have made a pay-what-you-want zine about... How To Make Zines!

I go over my entire process, so you too can learn how to supplement your income with zines. Please give it a look, and share if you find it helpful!

[tinyghosts]

“I want you to do this with me for one month. One month. Write 10 observations a week and by the end of four weeks, you will have an answer. Because when someone writes about the rustic gutter and the water pouring through it onto the muddy grass, the real pours into the room. And it’s thrilling. We’re all enlivened by it. We don’t have to find more than the rustic gutter and the muddy grass and the pouring cold water.”

— Marie Howe, Boston University’s 2016 Theopoetics Conference  (via mothersofmyheart)

[artemis-howl]

Marie Howe:

I ask my students every week to write 10 observations of the actual world. It’s very hard for them.

Ms. Tippett:

Really?

Ms. Howe:

They really find it hard.

Ms. Tippett:

What do you mean? What is the assignment? 10 observations of their actual world?

Ms. Howe:

Just tell me what you saw this morning like in two lines. I saw a water glass on a brown tablecloth, and the light came through it in three places. No metaphor. And to resist metaphor is very difficult because you have to actually endure the thing itself, which hurts us for some reason.

Ms. Tippett:

It does.

Ms. Howe:

It hurts us.

Ms. Tippett:

You naming something.

Ms. Howe:

We want to say, “It was like this; it was like that.” We want to look away. And to be with a glass of water or to be with anything — and then they say, “Well, there’s nothing important enough.” And that’s whole thing. It’s the point.

Ms. Howe:

It’s the this, right?

Ms. Howe:

Right, the this, whatever. And then they say, “Oh, I saw a lot of people who really want” — and, “No, no, no. No abstractions, no interpretations.” But then this amazing thing happens, Krista. The fourth week or so, they come in and clinkety, clank, clank, clank, onto the table pours all this stuff. And it so thrilling. I mean, it is thrilling. Everybody can feel it. Everyone is just like, “Wow.” The slice of apple, and then that gleam of the knife, and the sound of the trashcan closing, and the maple tree outside, and the blue jay. I mean, it almost comes clanking into the room. And it’s just amazing.

Ms. Tippett:

In some basic level, what they’ve done is just engage with their senses.

Ms. Howe:

Yeah, and have been present out of their minds and just noticing what’s around them, which is — we don’t do. And again, not to compare it to anything. They’re not allowed. And that’s very hard for them. And then on the fifth or sixth week, I say, “OK, use metaphors.” And they don’t want to. They don’t know how. They’re like, “Why would I? Why would I compare that to anything when it’s itself?” Exactly. Good question.

So then you think, why the necessity of a metaphor? Why do you have to use a metaphor now? Not just to do it to avoid it, but to do it to make it more there. And it’s very interesting.

Marie Howe — The Power of Words to Save Us | The On Being Project

The words and silences we live by. The rituals that sustain us. The poetry of ordinary time.

[chipper-smol]

fun behaviors to give dragons that aren't feline/canine based

cause as much as i love dragons purring and roaring i wish there was just more variety in how they would act

clacking their teeth together to show contentedness/happiness (budgies)

using tails as a defensive weapon in a whip like fashion (iguana)

twitching to express that they're not a threat to members of their species (hognose snake)

feeling calm when eyes are hooded/covered (birds of prey)

head bobbing as a threat display (anoles/bearded dragons)

flattening neck or sides to appear bigger (snakes/lizards)

mantling over food to protect it from hatchmates (birds of prey)

wiggling neck as a courting maneuver (budgies)

audibly grinding teeth as a warning (macaques)

maintained eye contact as a challenge (gorillas)

pounding wings against sides as a threat (gorillas)

slapping other dragons with their claws when their personal bubble is invaded (seals)

hoards used as a site to impress mates (birds of paradise)

snorting when undergoing heightened stress (horses)

making repeated loud noises with surroundings to establish territory (woodpeckers)

loud constant arguments with other dragons when roosting (bats)

building lairs that cause a domino effect of change in the land around them (beavers)

slapping their tails against the ground/water as a warning (beavers)

wiggling tail tip to attract prey (various animals)

wiggling tail tip as a warning (snakes)

plucking or scraping off scales as a sign of stress (parrots)

raising spines/frills as a response to danger and carrying on with their usual business as they believe they're protected (lionfish)

and im not saying canine and feline behaviors are wrong or bad to give a dragon (people wouldn't write dragons with those behaviors if they weren't fun in the first place!) but i feel for creatures that are mythological giant winged lizards that you can do more and get experimental with it. often the more unfamiliar behavior the more dragony the dragon feels

[teaboot]

Word mixup pet peeves: a personal list

Warily VS Wearily- Suspicious VS Tired

Limbs VS Limps- Arms and legs VS “staggers”

Scoff VS Scarf*- Skepticism VS Eating quickly* (European VS North American English?)

‘Nip it in the bud’ VS ‘Nip it in the butt’- To stop something at first sign, like cutting a plant, VS to bite something’s ass

Wanton VS Wonton- uninhibited VS a dumpling

Balls VS Bawls- A number of spheres VS crying

[captain-ultimat-doggo]

Humans entering space and realizing we are so small. We are mice compared to these giant races with their advanced machinery and technologies and experiences beyond us- except that we're humans. And our engineers dive into the new tech and once we learn the principles we also soon realize how Inefficient everything is. Their "microchips" are the size of cars, their storage drives are basically buildings, and they somehow store less data than ours. So, human companies take advantage, and tech starts rolling out. Massive and there's a lot of wasted space so that it can be managed with larger hands/pincers/claws/tentacles, but also so much more efficient than anything the galaxy has seen before.

Human technicians start hopping ships and upkeeping the general maintenance, the stuff that most aliens put off or don't notice because they never access the crevices of their ships. As human companies become more popular and lead the tech world in everything from warp cores to game stations ("it's so compact! How are the graphics so good?" Says a 60' tall grimbleback, holding a new VR headset that has all of its components included because it's so BIG by our tech standards), soon many things have accessibility ports for humans to be able to use as well. This means that these shiprats hoping ship to ship cause such a huge improvement in everything running smoothly, and there's a huge downtick in pests on ships because those "pests" are not only big enough and aggressive enough to bite a pitbull or a person in half, they're invasive to so many planets and humans hate nothing more than dog killing planet overrunning monsters.

All the while, from the Aliens perspective, humans are an elusive race that don't fraternize much with them. You almost never see a human as most places aren't exactly safe for the little things to run around in. They do export so much stuff though, and the custodial staff at the Central Galactic Outpost insists that there's more humans around than any other race if you just know where to look.

And sure it's somewhat known that some of the little daredevils hop ships and help out in exchange for room and board, usually without permission, but that can't be that common, can it?

Maybe your ship is running better this cycle ever since you stopped at the last station, that just means that tuneup was better than you thought. And maybe for some reason that program you were working on last night is finished when you wake up, but you're so tired maybe you finished it before you passed out. Somehow that faulty light in the galley has fixed itself as well, which is odd, but maybe the Engineer finally got to it. You'd know if there was someone else on your ship.

Right?

... You leave a little bowl of berries out as a thank you, just in case. You're not sure what humans like but you've heard they have a sweet tooth.

[sassycolortheorist101-blog]

some fucking resources for all ur writing fuckin needs

* body language masterlist

* a translator that doesn’t eat ass like google translate does

* a reverse dictionary for when ur brain freezes

* 550 words to say instead of fuckin said

* 638 character traits for when ur brain freezes again

* some more body language help

(hope this helps some ppl)

[sparrowlucero]

i know why this is less common but i kind of wish more spec bio adjacent worldbuilding was less about the ways a species' society was built around their natural behaviors and more about how it failed to accommodate them

[sparrowlucero]

i don't mean this in a "what if the norms of a species don't consider queer or disabled people (etc)?" way (even though that's obviously interesting in and of itself/a related point) but more like "in what ways are the modern social norms of a species completely at odds with their basic natural behaviors?". People tend to focus on the way biology and ecology has shaped a society, which makes sense - it's fun and more straightforward and show don't tell to portray the social dynamics of the Pod in a hypothetical whale society or what the politics of queens are in a race of sapient bees - but I find the other, somewhat rarer, side of this really interesting, the way the ecology has been suppressed to suit the society in ways that are maybe uncomfortable or liable to cause alienation and anxiety in the average normal socially adept guy, even if they don't quite realize it (we are, after all, a species of large-group-dwelling nomads that have invented a world full of nuclear families and border checkpoints...). I just kind of dig the idea that the dynamic of the Pod is an entirely alien concept to the modern sapient whale because they stopped doing that for complicated religious and practical reasons 2000 years ago and, also, they sometimes feel very lonely for some reason.

[danielle-writes]

Some advice for when you’re writing and find yourself stuck in the middle of a scene:

kill someone

ask this question: “What could go wrong?” and write exactly how it goes wrong

switch the POV from your current character to another - a minor character, the antagonist, anyone

stop writing whatever scene you’re struggling with and skip to the next one you want to write

write the ending

write a sex scene

use a scene prompt

use sentence starters

read someone else’s writing

Never delete. Never read what you’ve already written. Pass Go, collect your $200, and keep going.

[bookcharactersthough]

This is the literal best writing advice I have ever read. Period.

[anexperimentallife]

Special note: “Kill someone” means kill someone in the story. Please do not kill random real life passers by every time you hit a block. My lawyer says misunderstanding writing advice is not an acceptable defense. See you all in 25 to 50 years.

[vvulturesque]

have you ever thought about dragons

- desert dragons rolling in sand to polish their scales

- dragons cleaning themselves like a cat

- frorest dragons finding a creek to jump into and splash around in

- strong, burly dragons ramming into trees and toppling them over to build a den

- hatchlings wrestling with their siblings, practicing their menacing roar

- dragons befriending smaller animals

- dragons with odd hoards; hoards of sticks and rocks, hoards of animal bones, hoards of old car wheels, hoards of tattered books

- old dragons who live on the beach and collect seashells

- dragons with long necks who eat like giraffes

- dragons digging deep holes in the ground and storing food for a later time

- massive groups of dragons, running together like wolves, helping each other and keeping each other company

- dragons breathing fire onto the floor of their cave to make it hot, and then sleeping on it

- dragons

-dragons are great

(feel free to add more!!!)

[that-dreaming-dragon]

- star dragons traversing the milky way, trailing star matters behind.

- slime dragon slithering across undergrowth, popping back up in various shape.

- mirage dragon going in and out of focus, blink and it is gone.

- snow dragon with their soft snow fluff, are those fine fur, or actual snow on them?

- dragons that have horns blossoming, stationary, large as mountains, and the flower petals flowing in the wind on top of their slumpering forms.

- massive creature of the depth, you can only watch as the giant eye open to stare. And as you back up, more and more of the creature came into form, a draconic behemoth with too long a body, glowing luminences trailing down the length of its body as if breathing.

- Sitting atop the ruins is a chimeric creature, with snake tail, massive wings, poweful arms, and a humanoid head. The dragon deity that guards this place.

- A bunch of tiny dragons scuttling about like little menance. Toppling pots and plants, small enough they can be scoop up with mugs, but far too fast.

- dragons that float around like balloons, the wings are but decorations.

- It’s hard to tell the matter this long serpentine dragons is made of, light particle dancing across it’s many scales? feathers? spikes?

- dragons, various shape and sizes, features and traits, unimaginable, limitless, diverse and expansive

[pyvorak]

A short explanation of my layer by layer drawing of Central/Eastern Ukrainian folk attire, for anyone who might be interested.

[vampirejuno]

One thing I didn’t expect from my new worldbuilding book is the author, roughly my dad’s age, including his opinions on furries

[vampirejuno]

I’m liking this guy more and more

[vampirejuno]

I have a new favorite author.

[stickthisbig]

This is from Mark Rosenfelder of the Language Construction Kit, because of course it is

[blujayonthewing]

this guy rules

[feluka]

we need more pathetic female characters written by authors who don't hate women

[feluka]

to be clear since this is making the rounds: she has to be an absolute loser in no way that can be pinned on her gender. no "i'm just a girl tee-hee" stuff. straight up just a loser (nondenominational)

[feluka]

addendum: she must be the most important person in the whole narrative

[feluka]

I decided to sit down and concentrate and properly write the list of rules that qualify a character for this role.

FIRST LAW: This character must be a woman.

SECOND LAW: This character must be a loser, but not in a way that can be pinned on her gender. Misogynistic response from the audience does not disqualify the character.

THIRD LAW: If the audience does not enjoy this character, then it becomes impossible to enjoy the show/film/book/game altogether. It is not possible to ignore this character, for better or for worse.

FOURTH LAW: The character must make bad decisions, and not just be a victim of poor circumstances outside of her control. The character can also be a victim of poor circumstances outside of her control, but it has to be primarily her personal choices that deem her a loser.