always outnumbered, never outgothed

Alex, he/him ★ 28 ★ Hungarian ★ this is my writing blog! ★ avatar by jeannedarcprice ★ main blog ★ detroit: become human ★ dragon age ★ ADHD stuff

[waterloggedsoliloquy]

i think its sooooo important to have your ocs suck in little mundane ways. and i DONT mean that they shouldnt be cool awesome mary sues with a bajillion powers! i mean you gotta give them cringefail interests. embarrassing memories. bad taste in music. there is something fantastic and immaculate about a pink-haired magical catgirl who is the savior of the world AND who got scurvy in college because she cant feed herself and she drives a pt cruiser covered in sanrio decals.

[lunati0ns]

so we r sharing favorite shipping tropes huh. hands you my extremely specific favorite ot3 dynamic

[erosofthepen]

LETS TALK ABOUT SPARRING

I’ve read a lot of fics, have seen many shows, and have watched many movies that are completely inaccurate when it comes to sparring. NOW, i know it’s fiction, and I greatly enjoy it nonetheless, but I would like to share a few things with you, as a person who trains in Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA). There are a few general things in this, as well as stuff more focused to a certain european weapon. (this is all Historical European stuff, obviously if you’re writing for a different region, this probably won’t apply that much.)

SPARRING

-you don’t practice with real sharp swords. Never. It’s incredibly dangerous, especially since sparring is trying to practice your killing/injuring skills. In older times, you would use wood, maybe wrapped in leather or canvas to practice. Today, you use weighted nylon swords/weapons, and you usually wear a mask while doing so. Steel is and was an option, but the blade will be completely dull, and the tip will be bent over itself.

-It’s practically impossible to knock someone off their feet while sparring, unless you are hooking your foot or weapon behind their leg. It’s hard to push back and cause someone to fall, since they can just retreat back a bit.

-YOU. DON’T. SPEND. HOURS. SPARRING. ESPECIALLY WITHOUT A BREAK. It’s exhausting, the most people usually go is 10 minutes before they have a break. During Training, you only spar for about 2-5 minutes before stopping and having a rest.

-You try your hardest never to cross your feet. It’s dangerous and it unbalances you. Your opponent can take advantage of you easily.

-Usually, you want to strike your opponent with the last ¼ of your blade, basically just the tip and a little below. That’s the sharpest point, and you get the most force behind it.

-Swords aren’t super heavy. Stop the giant, huge, I-can-barely-lift-this trope. Longswords are usually 3lbs. It’s not heavy when you pick it up. However, it gets heavy when you’re holding it up above your head for a while. Swords were not made to be heavy, especially since you would have to hold them up in battle for sometimes hours.

-It’s incredibly hard to engage in witty banter and such. You are constantly moving and trying to strike your opponent. Since it’s fiction, you can do what you want, but just know that trying to have a conversation while sparring is like trying to have one while running. It tires you out even more, and usually just comes out breathless and wheezy.

-Swords are not lightsabers. You cannot try and hurt someone with just any part of your blade. It will just annoy your opponent. Now, for sparring, you will want to focus on hitting your opponent with the edge of your blade, and you won’t really ever be trying to hit someone with the flat of your blade.

-In sparring, you will get hit. And get bruises. I count five from just 2 days ago. (Also reminder that bruises don’t form for 1-3 days.) If you happened to get a hard thrust to the ribs, they will probably fracture. It happens. I haven’t had it personally, but those who’ve trained longer have. The worst injury I’ve gotten is a bruise on my chest that didn’t fade for nearly a month.

-Grip!!! You don’t clutch your sword super tight. No. It limits movement. My instructor taught me to hold firmly with the thumb, pointer, and middle finger, and use the other two as more guiding fingers. You swing your sword with your wrist, not a big giant arm movement. That is tiring and slow. 

I will be focusing on using a one handed sword in this next bit, specifically a Scottish Regimental Broadsword. A basic sword to build off of.

-FOOTWORK. It’s not a super complicated series of perfectly planned out steps. It just isn’t. With Regimental Broadsword (which is what I will focus on, since it’s what I’ve trained with most), you have to have a good base (rear-weighted stance, front foot pointed at your opponent, back foot turned sideways), and then once you have that, you just have to move around and try not to get hit.

-Slipping. (Continuation of footwork). With a rear-weighted stance, the goal is to be able to move the front foot anywhere. You should actually be able to keep your front foot an inch off the ground without having to adjust your back foot. Slipping is when this comes in handy. If your opponent takes a swing at your front leg, you should be able to just slip it back to go next to your other foot, and swing your sword up to get your opponents head. Slipping is really important.

-Advance and Retreat (other continuation of footwork). While moving forward or back, you always want to feel the ground with a heel-toe movement, so you can tell if there are rocks or branches and such. Advancing, you want to move your front leg first. Retreating, your back leg.

-Traversing (last continuation of footwork)(maybe). Transversing is basically advancing in on your opponent in a circular motion. You’re trying to get close and personal. Reminder to not cross your feet. You will loose balance and probably end up getting whacked with a sword. Traversing is a spiral motion sort of. Your opponent can avoid getting trapped If they do it as well.

I will probably come back and add more soon, because there’s more I know, but can’t remember at the moment.

[colubrina]

for the love of god, write all the self-indulgent scenes you want.  be utterly  shameless about including every last fantasy.  i know everyone likes to share quotes and quips about how miserably hard writing is, but please please try thinking of it as a joyful act where you get to be a messy human who makes art rather than some pain filled quest for icy perfection.

[colubrina]

“authenticity looks an awful lot like self-indulgence but it is the only way to find your true audience”

[indecentpause]

“Method actors like to talk about something called “public solitude” — that is, the ability to seem alone onstage. Really, to be alone, without wondering how you look to the audience. They will tell you this is the basis of naturalistic acting: to forget about the audience. Only then can you build a character, pay attention to others onstage and act out a scene. To write a story also requires public solitude. You can’t be worrying how you sound. You can’t wonder whether you or your characters are likable or smart or interesting. You have to be inside the scene — the tactile world of tables and chairs and sunlight — attending to your characters, people who exist for you in nonvirtual reality. This takes weird brain chemistry. (A surprising number of novelists hear voice, and not metaphorically. They hear voice in their heads.) It also takes years of reading — solitary reading. For all these reasons, writing fiction is pretty much the opposite of writing a good tweet, or curating an Instagram feed. It’s the opposite of the personal-­­­slash-professional writing that is now part of our everyday lives. More than ever, we need writers who are unprofessional, whose private worlds come first.”

— Lorin Stein, “Words Unwired” (via dduane)

[pointnclick]

whenever i see a noir detective in the rain i’m like yeah man… that’s exactly where you’re supposed to be

[pointnclick]

[screechingcollectivecollectorus]

Noir detectives are actually meant to be stressed, it’s their natural state. A Noir detective with nothing to be stressed about, will quickly revert to a more highly stressed state than normal.

[elidyce]

Noir detectives require stress to be healthy, that’s why it’s a good idea to make sure that an Inside Detective has access to regular difficult and alarming cases to solve and also a shower they can stand in (fully clothed or not) to agonize, since they can’t go out in the rain. Don’t be alarmed if they bang their little fists on the tile and howl, that’s a normal part of the display. If they sit on the floor and cry, though, they may be overstimulated and need some hard alcohol and a nap to help them settle down. 

[jraker4]

It can be difficult, but if you have a friend with a Femme Fatale, arranging a (supervised) playdate can be enriching to both of them.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

it’s important to allow your Noir Detective to bundle your Femme Fatale into an airplane at night at least once a year, as it provides them both with a rare excuse to let themselves openly cry for emotional catharsis and clear out vestigial tear ducts, which are dangerous to clean at home. in particularly difficult cases where neither has cried for years, artificial rain may be required to provide some cover (and will also provide a humidity boost, an underlooked but important part of trenchcoat health). Be sure to provide your Noir Detective with additional replacement trenchcoats after airplane enrichment, as the Femme Fatale will probably steal his to line her nest.

[theglowpt2-deactivated20200101]

every word out of guillermo del toro’s mouth is the most hardcore thing i’ve ever heard and he says it all so casually like he doesn’t even realize how much of a gothic visionary he is 

[theglowpt2-deactivated20200101]

“Since childhood, I’ve been faithful to monsters. I have been saved and absolved by them, because monsters, I believe, are patron saints of our blissful imperfection, and they allow and embody the possibility of failing”

I STILL THINK ABOUT THIS EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE

[stuck-in-jelly]

Yo okie Guillermo has some of the best quotes and lines I’ve ever heard, here are just a few of his quotes that have me questioning life:

“What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? A moment of pain, perhaps. Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph. Like an insect trapped in amber.”

“I knew that monsters were far more gentle and more desirable than the monsters living inside ‘nice people.’ Accepting that you are a monster gives you the leeway to not behave like one. When you deny being a monster, you behave like one.”

“When you see something or experience something extraordinary, you can’t go back to normal… I think that that’s the way I see the supernatural-as happening in mundane circumstances or to people who are unprepared”

“To learn what we fear is to learn who we are. Horror defines our boundaries and illuminates our souls”

“Any legend, any creature, any symbol we ever stumble on, already exists in a vast cosmic reservoir where archetypes wait. Shapes looming outside our Platonic cave. We naturally believe ourselves clever and wise, so advanced, and those who came before us so naïve and simple…when all we truly do is echo the order of the universe, as it guides us…”

And the last but certainly not the least:

“In fairy tales, monsters exist to be a manifestation of something that we need to understand, not only a problem we need to overcome, but also they need to represent, much like angels represent the beautiful, pure, eternal side of the human spirit, monsters need to represent a more tangible, more mortal side of being human: aging, decay, darkness and so forth. And I believe that monsters originally, when we were cavemen and you know, sitting around a fire, we needed to explain the birth of the sun and the death of the moon and the phases of the moon and rain and thunder. And we invented creatures that made sense of the world: a serpent that ate the sun, a creature that ate the moon, a man in the moon living there, things like that. And as we became more and more sophisticated and created sort of a social structure, the real enigmas started not to be outside. The rain and the thunder were logical now. But the real enigmas became social. All those impulses that we were repressing: cannibalism, murder, these things needed an explanation. The sex drive, the need to hunt, the need to kill, these things then became personified in monsters. Werewolves, vampires, ogres, this and that. I feel that monsters are here in our world to help us understand it. They are an essential part of a fable.”

[hgk477]

Nine things about being brought back from the dead

You will be cold

You will wake up screaming, you all do.

Your entire body will throb, the pain will eventually subside; being brought back is never a painless task.

Do not get up immediately, you will be nauseous and your body will need time to readjust to this realm.

Ask for more blankets, you will feel very cold.

You will not remember how you died, do not ask.

Do not ask the practitioner how they performed the ritual, this is considered bad luck and you will not last long.

Your loved ones will be ecstatic to have you back, consider this a blessing.

Thank the practitioner and let them be on their way, if they do not look you in the eye consider this a bad omen.

More guides

How to feel again

If you wake up in a pitch black room

If you are a researcher or adventurer and want to share a guide, join our subreddit!

[problemsleuth]

a girl who is a noir detective man and a guy who is a femme fatale

[transmasc-wizard]

yr main character does not have to be the pinnacle of morality lol. for certain stories, they can't be in the first place. if you have ever worried that your character is too immoral... calm down. read a book that isn't a YA fantasy by an author who's afraid of being cancelled on twitter. let your MC kill a couple people and be an asshole and not feel bad about it (if you want). it's freeing i promise

[coldresolve]

'people can write whatever the fuck they want' and 'its good to approach writing about sensitive topics with some diligence and forethought' are statements which can and do coexist

[990000]

simongerman600

[brunhiddensmusings]

i was going to say ‘i have no idea what to do with this information’ but then i realized its a handy guide to generate fake words that sound english

[holdup-andrememberthetime]

“What to do with this information”: kick ass at hangman

[thehmn]

Reading about old Scandinavian/Nordic folk-magic before it got influenced by modern Wicca for a comic I’ll hopefully make and it’s fascinating.

For example, binding knots was extremely powerful and was used for almost everything from trapping bad spirits to getting rid of warts, and the four corners of the world were all connected to the element of Air/Wind instead of Water, Air, Earth and Fire so people did certain types of magic depending on the direction of the wind (North for Resistance/Trouble/Harming Others, South for Personal Growth/Happiness/Health, East for Solutions/Luck/Love, West for Darkness/Evil/Illness) and while I know it will be tempting for people to connect this to the four elements that’s not how people at the time thought of it at all. It was all Wind to them.

This style of folk-magic is just intended to act as background flavour to give the world a more distinct Scandinavian feeling but it’s super fun to read about anyway.

[shadow-banned-the-hedgehog]

[overpoweredoriginalposter]

I submit: character takes off their glasses when shit gets real, patiently cleans them, puts them back on with a weary sigh, goes completely feral

[janetm74]

Brains.

[variablejabberwocky]

#gotta have crisp 20/20 for this assbeating i’m about to give you

[whetstonefires]

see there’s totally shit i’m going to take my glasses off for because i don’t want the glasses to get hurt

[crouton-knight]

For consideration: Character removes glasses because they are too exhausted to deal with this shit and don’t want to see it.

[lemon-embalmer]

fantasy characters: “Geez”

me: who the fuck spread Christianity there

[lemon-embalmer]

this two-years-old shitpost just gained a hundred notes who the snickerdoodles dug it up

[she-who-fights-and-writes]

W H A T

[slumpyspaceprincess]

@rogha

[thewhisperingescapes]

[mirkwoodest]

In moments like this I always fall back on the fact that they also aren’t speaking English because they don’t have England or the many languages and conquering peoples that contributed to the creation of the English language and therefore the work musr be a translation into recognizable terms in our world’s terms. Call that Tolkien Brainrot.

[bellbottom-jeans]

Definitely funnier if you make fantasy explanations though,

Champagne is a wizard who sells bubbly alcohol.

It’s called English because of the original Lish people, all languages start with En here.

French fries are not potatoes they’re roots of the french plant.

Goodbye is now short for ‘good be your eye’ wishing you luck seeing the path ahead.

Jesus Christ is a long dead lich who used to cause everyone problems and we haven’t stopped saying her name when things go wrong.

[thatgaydemigodnerd]

And that’s the Pratchett approach

[bisexualbaker]

[Image: Screencap from Shrek 2; the text, “They don’t even have dental!” was changed to “They don’t even have France!”]

[drunktuesdays]

everyone is fucking but no one is horny

one of my twitter friends recently said that if she could order up a fic it would be a story written by someone who has only ever read the classics, 1.5 star trek novelizations, and their mother's romance novels from 1970, written about two people are so out of their minds horny for each other it causes them to make the absolute worst choices anyone's ever made.

and i almost lost my mind laughing because i do know exactly what she means. there is a weird vibe i can sometimes sense within the first few paragraphs a fic that really bums me out. it's almost like i can tell the author is thinking way too much about what i'm thinking about their id and it's suddenly like we're all suddenly wondering how riding a bicycle works when we're mid-ride. when you start worrying too much audience interpretation or how a fic is going to do or play or ugh marketability, it genuinely adds some weird self-conscious distance to whatever you're doing. and it's the pits from the reader side because it removes so much horniness from your story even if the idea you have is genuinely good! i know this is not a niche complaint--you find it literally everywhere as every sector of the creative internet gets #content-ed and people can't escape the stats of how any given creative outlet does.

but god there's literally nothing better than sitting down and reading some freaknasty person's art where they do not give a single shit if you like it. they had something to say and my god they were gonna say it. i've accidentally acquired so many kinks by clicking on a story where someone took me on the most insane ride of my life and i thrilled about it. i don't wanna read about polite normal regular love. i don't wanna read about people using therapy-speak on each other. i wanna read about two people feeling the biggest craziest feelings of their entire life and they cannot do anything about it except bang it out. what else are we doing here? if they're not fucking down an entire house, well jed i don't even wanna read it.

[drunktuesdays]

three thousand notes into this, i would like to reflect on a few things happening in this post.

To the people who made the point that this post does not only apply to sex in fic but in fact applies to emotionally horny stories as well--correct. if you are writing any story and you find yourself wanting to apologize for the story's existence--stop!

there's A LOT of people that are harboring a lot of story ideas that thrill them, and they're too ashamed to post it on main. so post it anonymously! post it on a second unconnected account! showing your vulnerable underbelly is a skill, and one that you don't develop overnight. you have to do it again and again, and if the way you start is by making a secondary pervert identity? good for you! do it! be free!

i started getting some real negative feedback around the 2000 marker, most of which centered on people not being "thrilled" with the west wing reference at the end of the post. sorry i made you think about mrs landingham being horny. always listening and learning.

to the person actually named jed and who freaked out when this post got reblogged onto his dash because he thought i was calling him out specifically--i'm sorry buddy. that was uncool. i would have freaked out too. my bad, i'm sure you're doing your horny best.

[thatwritergirlsblog]

10 worst ways to start a book

1. An irrelevant point of view

It’s extremely frustrating as a reader to read the opening scene of a novel, get invested in the story and start rooting for the POV character, only to have that character never show up again or show up as an unimportant character.

Your readers will feel betrayed. Why did they get emotionally invested in this character? Why did they care?

One of the most important functions of your first scene or chapter is introducing your main character and getting the reader to root for them.

Don’t waste that crucial moment on an unimportant POV.

2. Too many characters

Starting to read a new book is usually a bit confusing. You have to get to know new characters, a new world, a new writing style etc.

Don’t add to that confusion by introducing two dozen characters in the opening scene. Readers won’t remember their names or care about them; they’ll just feel overwhelmed and confused.

Additionally, readers will also struggle to root for the main character, because there are too many other people crowding the scene.

3. Telling

My name is Lisa. I’m a short, feisty brunette who loves horse riding. I have two best friends called Anna and Daniel, and we carpool to college every day. I have a crush on Josh, one of my tutors, but he’s twenty-seven and isn’t interested in me.

Telling is boring. It has its place, but the start of your novel is not it. The above paragraph could have been an interesting scene in which you showed the reader all the information via action and dialogue.

Unless you’re using subversion to surprise the reader, e.g., My name is Lisa and I’m a class-three demon, don’t start with telling. 

Immerse the reader in the story through action, dialogue and the senses. Show us who the main character is, don’t just tell us.

4. Description

Please don’t start your book with a page-long description of the setting. In fact, I would recommend not starting with description at all. 

Yes, a few lines of description later in the opening scene is fine. But the reader needs to care first. 

No matter how beautiful your writing is, readers won’t be sucked in by a five-paragraph description of a field.

5. Worldbuilding info dump

Please don’t start your book with an explanation of your world’s climate, politics, history, magic system etc. 

Once again, the reader needs to care first. 

There needs to be action and conflict and a compelling plot. The world exists as a backdrop for the story and the characters – it’s not the protagonist and it shouldn’t take up the opening scene.

6. The dream sequence

The main reason that this is a bad way to start your book is that it’s been done way too many times.

But that’s not the only reason.

It also feels like a betrayal to the reader, because they got invested in the story and the character and the events, and then you tell them it was never real.

And oftentimes the storyline and world of the dream is much more interesting than the actual story, which makes the latter look very boring in comparison.

7. Looking in a mirror

Once again, it’s just been done too much: A character looking in a mirror and describing their physical appearance to the reader. 

Firstly, no one describes their appearance in detail when they look in the mirror.

Secondly, the reader doesn’t even know who this person is. We don’t know if we’re interested in the character yet. We don’t know why we should care. So, we don’t want a detailed description of the character’s appearance right off the bat.

Show us interesting aspects of your main character’s personality, hobbies and life. Weave in physical description as it becomes relevant. It’s not important enough for the very first paragraph.

8. Starting way too early

Yes, most books don’t start with the inciting incident (although I recommend that they do), but the start of your book shouldn’t be too far away from your inciting incident.

So, don’t start with a long scene describing the main character’s everyday life. The readers want the thing to happen.

Providing context and introducing the main character is fine, but don’t leave the reader hanging for too long before you get to the good stuff.

9. Trying too hard

“Your first line has to be amazing and hook the reader. It needs to be something no one has ever read before.”

I bet you’ve heard that piece of advice hundreds of times. It’s not bad advice, but taken to the extreme, it creates an opening that is disjointed, conflated and confusing.

Your first scene should introduce your character, story and voice. So, don’t write a single line of profound purple prose that has very little to do with your actual story as a first line.

Focus on writing a good story. Introduce the reader to the book and make the main character intriguing. You don’t need a mind-blowing first line.

10. The lesson

Most books have a theme or something the author wants to say. Oftentimes, that takes the form of a life lesson.

This is good, but the lesson needs to be subtly woven into the story.

It should not be forced down the reader’s throat in the very first scene.

Don’t tell me what I’m going to learn, show me the lesson through the story.

If you’d like to read a Fantasy Adventure novel that does not have any of these opening mistakes, check out my debut To Wear A Crown.

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