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🩵 avery cochrane 🩵
EXPECTATIONS
Mike Driver
tannertan36
Origami Around
shark vs the universe
bliss lane
Cosmic Funnies
🪼
Today's Document
One Nice Bug Per Day
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
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KIROKAZE
d e v o n
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
Interview Vampire Daily
macklin celebrini has autism
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from Colombia
seen from Ecuador
seen from Singapore
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Jordan
seen from United States
seen from France
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Chile
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from Germany
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seen from India
@noneofyourboxesfit
reblog to give your headache to elon musk instead
I’d just like to point out the growth in this post has mostly coincided with elon’s public spiral downward and I’d like to think we’re all a small part of that
bro can’t think because he’s just got a rager of a migraine 24/7
yes I would like to give elon musk my menstrual pain. I think he deserves it
Reblog to also give Elon Musk your menstrual pain.
THERE MUST BE A PARAGRAPH BREAK EVERY TIME A NEW CHARACTER SPEAKS
THIS IS NOT OPTIONAL
NO ONE WANTS TO READ ONE BIG BLOCK OF TEXT JESUS CHRIST
REMEMBER TIP TOP OK:
Make a paragraph every time that any of these things change!
Ti me
P lace
To pic
P erson
reblogging again because this is IMPORTANT
THIS IS SO IMPORTANT, PEOPLE! REBLOG TO SAVE A WRITER’S LIFE!
There is nothing that will make me backspace on a fic faster than a lack of paragraph breaks
@worldtrappedinaperson
A room called ‘The Doll Room’ that’s full of dolls is… mundane.
But a room called ‘The Doll Room’ that only has one doll in it? That’s fresh
If a person shows you their Doll Room and it’s full of dolls, they probably just like dolls, y’know? It’s normal, it’s a hobby
But if they show you their Doll Room and it only has one doll… something’s going on with that one doll!
room called the doll room and theres a mirror and nothing else. the door closes
Limits of the Human Body
Body Heat = 107.6 F
Cold Water = 40 F
Hot Air = 300 F
High Altitude = 15,000 ft
Starvation = 45 days
Diving Depth = 282 ft
Lack of Oxygen = 11 minutes
Blood Loss = 40%
Dehydration = 7 days
Writers finding this post:
Europeans finding that post :
This Post, But In Metric:
Body Heat: 42°C
Cold Water: 4.4°C
Hot Air: 149°C
High Altitude: 4572m
Diving Depth: 86.3m
Speaking of crocodile mummies: The “sacred crocodile” is a recently-described cryptic species from remote desert oases in the Sahara; this was apparently the crocodile species venerated in Sobek-worship ceremonies in Ancient Egypt, and DNA from crocodile mummies helped reveal the species. They’re smaller and much friendlier than Nile crocodiles.
This is a mummified crocodile from Egypt, about 2,500 years old, now at the British Museum. The museum put scans of the crocodile on display in 2015-2016. The species is probably the “sacred crocodile.”
And here’s a living sacred crocodile.
They’re (relatively) friendly, respected by some modern West African people, and docile enough to have been housed by Ancient Egyptians.
An excerpt:
There was anecdotal evidence about the weird behaviour of this crocodile. Many people, from Herodotus to current researchers, have described a sort of Nile crocodile that behaved differently. From my reading of the earlier literature about the exploration of the Nile, there were some suggestions of a smaller crocodile hanging out in the estuaries while the large, aggressive ones that everyone was afraid of lived in the middle of the Nile. Matt Shirley and I have thought about analysing the fine-scale ecological differences between the two to see if you could tap into how they could have overlapped in the Nile for so long before the recent period. Did they use different habitats or have different prey?
Tara Shine found these crocs living in caves in Mauritania that initially appeared to be sluggish because they were hanging out at the hottest time of the year. But people could feed them and come up to them and they weren’t aggressive at all. And some of the local populations apparently consider these crocs sacred. She took some samples and we now know that these are C.suchus.
Were the Egyptians aware of the differences between the two species?
Herodotus wrote that the ancient Egyptians recognised one crocodile that was larger and aggressive and another that was tamer and considered sacred, which they raised in temples. That’s part of what Geoffrey St Hilaire used in his description of the species.
(End of excerpt.)
Y’all like Sobek, the Egyptian crocodile deity, right? It had always been assumed by Western scientists that the crocodile living in Egypt and in oases in the Sahara were Nile crocodiles (Crocodylus niloticus). But it turns out that a smaller, more docile, cryptic species was hiding in plain sight. This crocodile has since been recognized as a distinct species - Crocodylus suchus. Its common name is sometimes given as “West African crocodile” and sometimes given as “sacred crocodile” - an allusion to its heightened status in Ancient Egypt.
Here’s ya boy, Sobek (from the mortuary temple of Amenemhet III at Kom Ombo).
And here’s a living sacred crocodile.
How was it determined to be a different species than the Nile crocodile?
An excerpt:
In Chad, Klemens had stumbled across six crocodiles in a small oasis and, at his guide’s recommendation, jumped in with them. Puzzled by their docile behaviour, Klemens took tissue from a dead one. (…)
The iconic Nile crocodile actually comprises two different species — and they are only distantly related. The large east African Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus) is in fact more closely related to four species of Caribbean crocodile than to its small west African neighbour, which has been named (Crocodylus suchus).
Evon Hekkala of Fordham University in New York and her colleagues revealed evidence for the existence of the second species by sequencing the genes of 123 living Nile crocodiles and 57 museum specimens, including several 2,000-year-old crocodile mummies.
“It wasn’t even remotely related to the Nile crocodile samples I had been working on.”
Hekkala’s group collected as many Nile crocodile samples as they could find, including several from ancient mummified animals. All of the mummies were of C. suchus, indicating that the ancient Egyptians had recognized the differences between the two reptiles. Indeed, the ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote that the Egyptians selectively used a smaller, tamer crocodile in ceremonies and regarded it as sacred.
(End of excerpt.)
The preserved DNA in mummified crocodiles from Ancient Egyptian sites helped taxonomists to determine that crocodiles used in Egyptian ceremony were distinctly different from the Nile crocodiles of East Africa.
These are crocodile mummies, prepared by Ancient Egyptians, on display at the museum at the Kom Ombo temple.
How do they occupy the desert?
During the early Holocene, the Sahara was much wetter, with some broad lakes and swamps occurring throughout the huge desert region. Over the past several thousand years, as these swamps disappeared, underground waterways continued to feed some oases. This resulted in the isolation of small pockets of some freshwater animals. There are genetic lineages of pygmy hippopotamus and desert crocodiles that have persisted in remote oases in the desert.
Outside of the Sahara, the sacred crocodile appears to be present across West Africa. Here’s a comparison between the distribution of the sacred crocodile and Nile crocodile.
Here’s where the sacred crocodile lives in the Sahara at present, including known sites that they used to inhabit over the past couple thousand years when the Sahara was much wetter. Though the crocodile used to live throughout the Sahara, notice that the crocodile is now mostly limited to Mauritania, though it’s possible that the Tibesti of Chad still hosts some crocodiles. They certainly used to be present in Egypt near Thebes and the Nile Delta.
Here are some examples of the desert oases where the crocodile persists.
Look at these little crocodiles and their desert oasis cave habitat!
-
They’re less massive than Nile crocodiles, which I think makes them c u t e r.
#you just made it a higher stakes game of hide and seek
Having gone to this University, and having personally played hide and seek in the Harris Fine Arts Center, I guarantee you that NOBODY finds hiders unless they, too, are familiar with the bowels of the HFAC. Once you get down to the practice-room levels, time stops completely and you could walk up the back stair and end up in 1967. The halls change at least 8 times an hour, there’s no way you’re getting back out the same way you came in. When the lights start going off at 10 the whole bottom 3 floors descend into some subsection of the fey realm. I once hid up on the balcony stage access fire-escape thing of a lower-level theater, and 3 faculty walked by under me and not a one of them noticed the hulking, wheezing asthmatic lurking above them, half dangling off a rickety metal ladder that probably wasn’t supposed to be climbed. A fellow hider friend came and found me, and we sat up there for 30 minutes listening to some distant clicking sound before we realized nobody was actually going to find us. We had no cell service, and no internet to reach anyone. We got lost trying to get back out, and once we resurfaced, everyone else was gone, the building was empty, and we just went home to eat ice cream. Nobody knew where we had disappeared to, and nobody bothered to check if we were there before leaving. For all I know, they just assumed we had been lost to the gaping maw of the HFAC basement and when they saw us at church on Sunday it was probably like they’d seen a ghost. None of us ever mentioned it again.
Basically what I’m saying is Campus Police had no hope of finding them in the first place and probably lost an officer or two if they actually conducted a real search, because nobody except Senior art majors or veteran custodians actually knows how to navigate that building and make it out in the same dimension they entered from. Not at 11pm anyway.
I mean that’s some fine scenario material, isn’t it?
geisha are absolutely not prostitutes btw
They are the equivalent to strippers here. They never engaged in sex acts but if you look throughout their history they were not treated well. Most being sold into that profession.
If by “here” you mean Japan, i’d just like to say that it is well known that not even the average Japanese citizen is aware of the true nature of the Geisha, Geiko and Maiko. they are not strippers and to say things like this is demeaning to the women who work hard and are trained in the arts (dance, music, tea ceremony, etc.).
Geisha became what they are known as today in the mid-1700s. the first actual geisha were men and they entertained shogun and samurai (and other wealthy men) with dance, music and the art of tea ceremony and theater. when courtesans were losing money to these male geisha, a few of them broke away from being in the sex business and became female geisha. therefore, geisha as an occupation never was a thing of the sex trade/prostitution and absolutely NOT stripping.
let me dispel some common misconceptions:
so, geisha were never prostitutes, never perform sex acts or even accept relationships/marriage proposals until after they retire from being a geisha (usually in their 30s, tho some women stay geisha until death by choice).
while geisha in the past (we are talking almost 100 years ago by now) have been given to Okiya (geisha houses) by their families, it was usually due to the families inability to afford their child and rather than let the child be homeless and starve, they gave them to an Okiya where they would live a much better life (Okiya housed other geisha within that Okiya’s special “familiy”; the Okasan–”Mother”–of the house protected them, gave them a comfortable living, fed them, sent them to all their classes, spent money on their personal kimono and make-up, and who arrange their finances and plan their parties and events). Nowadays, and pretty much since the 1940s, Geisha become Geisha by choice and enter into the profession after they graduate middle school (it is even required in most cases that they complete at least that level of schooling before becoming a Geisha) willingly.
GEISHA wear their Obi belts tied tightly in the back to hold together their Kimono; these belts are so long and heavy that the Okiya hires a male dresser to assist in tying these Obi every night before a party or event. a geisha could not strip or easily take off her many layers of Kimono/undergarments and so the assumption that they are strippers just doesn’t make any sense. a traditional courtesan or TAYUU/OIRAN wore her Obi belt loosely tied in the front so that she could easily untie it for a customer.
There is no empirical evidence of there being any such thing as “mizuage” (as referred to by Arthur Golden in ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’) in the geisha world. there is however evidence of the ritual of mizuage in the Tayuu (or Oiran depending on the region, i think) courtesan tradition. a courtesan who was being initiated would have a ceremony where wealthy men bid for her virginity, with the highest bid being the winner. These Tayuu (or Oiran) are absolutely NOT in any form in relation to a Geisha. i will also mention that prostitution in Japan has been illegal since 1959, officially.
“Comfort Women” from the WWII era were prostitutes that told American GIs that they were “geisha” in order to make more money and to play on the exoticism that was so popular in the US at the time. this is where a big portion of the “Geisha are prostitutes” misconception came from.
“Hot Springs Geisha” and Bar Hostesses in Tokyo are trained in a similar way to traditional Geisha in that they have skills in the art of conversation and even some musical skill, however these women are NOT Geisha. “Hot Springs Geisha” are also known to engage in sex acts with hot springs patrons (though it is frowned upon) and so bring another incorrect image of sex-acts to the name of Geisha.
While there have I’m sure been cases of abuse from an Okasan to her Geisha throughout the history of the profession, this is usually not the case, and to say that “many or all Okasan are abusive and manipulative to their Geisha” is ignorant and offensive.
DO NOT READ “MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA”!! If you already have, I would strongly suggest you read other books on the subject of Geisha. Arthur Golden (a white man) wrote this book to make money off of the many misconceptions about Geisha, Geiko and Maiko. Everything he says about the Geisha tradition is incorrect, from the part where he explains why “some Geisha” wear lipstick only on the bottom lip (this actually signifies that a Maiko has only been in training for under a year) to his horrible, offensive and incorrect description of a Geisha going through mizuage. He interviewed a very well-known geisha named Mineko Iwasaki for his book, which he then exploited and changed around for his benefit. She even tried to sue him for libel for taking stories from her personal life, twisting it and turning it into a book that lies about the fundamentals of being a Geisha. I would recommend reading, “Geisha, A Life” by Mineko Iwasaki. she has written about what it really means to be a Geisha.
Here are is a picture of a Geiko (a fully-fledged Geisha who has completed most of her training and has become a professional):
Here is a picture of a Maiko (a Geisha-in-training who is still an apprentice and usually works alongside her “Older Sister” or her assigned Geiko partner; her Older Sister is in charge of most of a Maiko’s social training):
Here is the difference in dress between a Geiko and a Maiko:
Here is a Tayuu courtesan (high end prostitute); this profession no longer exists, any modern photographs of one is of an actress for historical theater purposes. Notice the Obi belt tied in front and the overall difference in dress. This was what courtesans looked like:
This is a photo of “Hot Springs Geisha” in the 60s. Notice the women serving drinks and entertaining men at the tables:
Here is a picture of an Ozashiki (party, event or gathering where Geisha are hired to entertain with music, dance, conversation and drink serving) today. It is much, much, much different (and more expensive) than an average hostess bar, and takes place within an Ochaya (traditional teahouse). As you can see, men are not the only ones who have booked an Ozashiki with Geisha:
Please do not spread misconceptions about these hard-working women artists. They deserve respect and have persevered for centuries with women at the forefront of these professions. Not only are these women trained to entertain party patrons, but they are also highly skilled in theater and the performing arts. Surrounding the Geisha are women wigmakers, female Shamisen, drum, flute ensembles, hairdressers, kimono artisans, well-respected dance/music/tea ceremony teachers, jewelry and hair accessory makers, Okobo and Zori footwear artisans, teahouse staff and Ozashiki planners, instrument craftsmen, and many, many more. If you would like to know more about Geisha, there are many books written by former Geisha out there.
Here is a short video of a Geisha performance, it is the annual Miyako Odori (”Cherry Blossom” Dance):
Thanks.
GEISHA FAQ
^ I still want to thank this person for giving me a knowledge blast so I can correct other people for having my original opinion.
Types of Ships
Parts of the Ship
Wind Directions
Sides of Boats
my bad, should have reblogged from here.
Oh my gods, guys, this looks so useful!!
Reblogging for future reference.
A reference I desperately needed
For all those seafaring adventurers.
Irish people; The faeries aren’t real
Irish people; No fucking way will I go in that faerie ring
#look#you don’t go in a fairy ring and you don’t fuck with a stone in the middle of a field#these are just facts#nobody does it#fairies will fuck you up#Ireland#folklore#fairies (Via @false-dawn)
Look, I don’t believe in God, but I will not disrespect the Good Gentlemen of the Hills. That’s just common sense.
Between this and the Icelanders with their elves I do not understand what is going on above the 50th parallel.
My general rule of thumb: you don’t have to believe in everything, but don’t fuck with it, just in case.
^^^ that part
This is truer than true. Especially the Irish part.
Let me tell you what I know about this after living here for nearly thirty years.
This is a modern European country, the home of hot net startups, of Internet giants and (in some places, some very few places) the fastest broadband on Earth. People here live in this century, HARD.
Yet they get nervous about walking up that one hill close to their home after dark, because, you know… stuff happens there.
I know this because Peter and I live next to One Of Those Hills. There are people in our locality who wouldn’t go up our tiny country road on a dark night for love or money. What they make of us being so close to it for so long without harm coming to us, I have no idea. For all I know, it’s ascribed to us being writers (i.e. sort of bards) or mad folk (also in some kind of positive relationship with the Dangerous Side: don’t forget that the root word of “silly”, which used to be English for “crazy”, is the Old English _saelig_, “holy”…) or otherwise somehow weirdly exempt.
And you know what? I’m never going to ask. Because one does not discuss such things. Lest people from outside get the wrong idea about us, about normal modern Irish people living in normal modern Ireland.
You hear about this in whispers, though, in the pub, late at night, when all the tourists have gone to bed or gone away and no one but the locals are around. That hill. That curve in the road. That cold feeling you get in that one place. There is a deep understanding that there is something here older than us, that doesn’t care about us particularly, that (when we obtrude on it) is as willing to kick us in the slats as to let us pass by unmolested.
So you greet the magpies, singly or otherwise. You let stones in the middle of fields be. You apologize to the hawthorn bush when you’re pruning it. If you see something peculiar that cannot be otherwise explained, you are polite to it and pass onward about your business without further comment. And you don’t go on about it afterwards. Because it’s… unwise. Not that you personally know any examples of people who’ve screwed it up, of course. But you don’t meddle, and you learn when to look the other way, not to see, not to hear. Some things have just been here (for various values of “here” and various values of “been”) a lot longer than you have, and will be here still after you’re gone. That’s the way of it. When you hear the story about the idiots who for a prank chainsawed the centuries-old fairy tree a couple of counties over, you say – if asked by a neighbor – exactly what they’re probably thinking: “Poor fuckers. They’re doomed.” And if asked by anybody else you shake your head and say something anodyne about Kids These Days. (While thinking DOOMED all over again, because there are some particularly self-destructive ways to increase entropy.)
Meanwhile, in Iceland: the county council that carelessly knocked a known elf rock off a hillside when repairing a road has had to go dig the rock up from where it got buried during construction, because that road has had the most impossible damn stuff happen to it since that you ever heard of. Doubtless some nice person (maybe they’ll send out for the Priest of Thor or some such) will come along and do a little propitiatory sacrifice of some kind to the alfar, belatedly begging their pardon for the inconvenience.
They’re building the alfar a new temple, too.
Atlantic islands. Faerie: we haz it.
The Southwest is like this in some ways. You don’t go traveling along the highways at night with an empty car seat. Because an empty car seat is an invitation. You stick your luggage, your laptop bag, whatever you got in that seat. Else something best left undiscussed and unnamed (because to discuss it by name is to go ‘AY WE’RE TALKING BOUT YA WE’RE HERE AND ALSO IGNORANT OF WHAT YOU’RE CAPABLE OF’ at the top of your damn lungs at them) will jump in to the car, after which you’re gonna have a bad time.
If you’re out in the woods, you keep constant, consistent count of your party and make sure you know everyone well enough that you can ID them by face alone, lest something imitating a person get at you. They like to insert themselves in the party and just observe before they strike. It’s a game to them. In general you don’t fuck with the weird, you ignore the lights in the sky (no, this isn’t a god damn night vale reference, yes I’m serious) and the woods, you lock up at night and you don’t answer the door for love or money. Whatever or whoever’s knocking ain’t your buddy.
^ So much good advice in this post right here
I live in the south and… you just… don’t go into the woods or fields at night.
Don’t go near big trees in the night
If you live on a farm, don’t look outside the windows at night
I have broken all these rules.
I’ve seen some shit.
If it sounds like your mom, but you didn’t realize your mom is home…. it’s not your mom. Promise.
One walked onto the porch once. Wasn’t fun. But they’re not super keen on guns. Typically bolt when they see one.
You think it’s the neighbor kids.
It’s not the neighbor kids.
Might sound like coyotes but you never really /see/ the coyotes but then wow that one cow was reaaaaaally fucked up this morning. The next night when you hear another one screaming you just turn the tv up a little more. Maybe fire a gun in the air but you don’t go after it. If it is coyotes then it’s probably a pack and you seriously don’t want to fuck with that and if it’s the other thing you seriously REALLY don’t want to fuck with that.
So in the south, especially near the mountains, you just go straight from your car to inside your house, draw your curtains and watch tv.
If you see lights in the fields just fucking leave it alone.
Eyes forward. Don’t be fucking stupid. Mind your own business. Call your neighbors and tell them to bring the cats in. There’s coyotes out. Some of them know. Most of them don’t.
Other than that everything’s a ghost and they died in the civil war. Literally all of everything else is just the civil war. We used to smell old perfume and pipe tobacco in the weeks leading up to the battle anniversaries.
Shit’s wild and I sound fucking crazy but I swear to god it’s true.
Every time this post comes around, it’s my favorite to open up the notes and read the stories. Probably shouldn’t have since I’m sleeping alone tonight, but you know, it’s fine. 😂
Austrian girl here who has lived in Ireland for 5+ years. This shit is LEGIT. I’ve seen it with my own two Catholic eyes.
Sure, visit during the day. That’s alright as long as you’re respectful. But you couldn’t PAY ME ENOUGH to go there at night. These are also the last places where you wanna start littering.
I grew up in southwest Pennsylvania which is a weird mixture of American cultures and environments. I was in the heavily forested mountains (northern Appalachia) but had lots and lots of corn fields and cow pastures. Like the Smoky Mountains and fields of Kansas combined. And being so cut off from a lot of the world, we had our fair share of ghost stories.
We had ‘witches’ in the mountains (more like ghost-women who will snatch you up by making you wander in a daze around the forest like the Blair Witch before killing you or letting you back out into society but you’re… different). Or devils in springs or abandoned wells (don’t look too long into one or something will follow you).
But we also had the cornfield demons. I’ve witnessed this many times. You’ll be in the passenger seat looking out the window and see red glowing eyes in the cornfield. No light shining in that direction. Just two red dots a few inches apart faintly glowing in a pitch black cornfield. They’re not the glow of deer eyes in the headlights. More like the embers of a dying fire. Sometimes, as you drive away, you’ll look out the back window or side mirror and you can see the eyes have moved to the edge of the corn field, still watching you. If you bring it up with the driver, they’ll call you paranoid, but grip the wheel a bit tighter and driver a little faster.
I was walking to a friend’s house one night. It was about 20 minutes down a dirt road with forest on one side and a cornfield on the other. I’ve walked past it many times and wasn’t really concerned. My main worry was coming across a skunk or porcupine. I didn’t have a flashlight because the moonlight was bright enough and I knew the walk really well. Then I saw the eyes. I immediately averted mine (because for some reason that’s how to not annoy it) but they kept wandering back. They were still there, watching. I heard rustling and saw the eyes come closer and I took off running. I got to my friends without a scratch, but I was terrified. I mentioned it to my friend and that’s when I found out it was A Thing. Her parents agreed and shared their stories. I brought it up more and almost everyone knew what I was talking about. It was a phenomenon a lot of folks around town experienced but never mentioned. To this day, I don’t linger around poorly light cornfields at night.
@thedevilinthealchemy and I are very old friends. I used to live in the same town as her, in Southern California. One night, a few years ago, we were celebrating the end of finals and the start of winter break, and we just hanging out in her car, killing ourselves with late night Taco Bell. Well, we decide we don’t want to go home just yet, so we start driving. We drive up a canyon, near her place. Now, we both had made this trip many, many times, in daylight and dark. A local tourist trap is in that canyon, and there’s a shortcut to a college campus that goes through that canyon. It was a normal winter night in SoCal.
Well, about halfway through I start to get scared. For no reason. Within the span of two heartbeats I grew so terrified that my palms were shaking and my mouth was dry and for some reason I couldn’t take my eyes off the wood to the driver’s side.
“Turn around.” I say, quickly.
“Dude, already on it.” Kama said, doing a quick three point turn. I look in the mirror as she’s pealing away and see the creature. It was vaguely humanoid, and hairless, with elongated limbs and pitch black eyes, on all four limbs, loping after us. Now, if you’re in the know, you might be thinking “hey that’s like the creatures from Until Dawn, I call bullshit on this.” Well, Until Dawn was four years away, and it wasn’t even in development yet, so shush.
I rip my eyes away from it and hold on tight as she drives. Then, at the same time, both of us get this instinct and we speak.
“Don’t look in the backseat.” Needless to say, neither of us did. She drove damn near 90 on a dark canyon until we saw the lights of her complex at the mouth of it.
I haven’t gone back in there since, and that canyon got shut down about a year ago due to a landslide and it hasn’t opened back up. I’m a history major, and research always has been my first love, so I go digging. I visit the local history society, talk about my tale. Turns out the whole valley used to belong to a people called the Tativam. One day, after the Spanish arrived, they vanished. Without a trace. We have a graveyard of theirs that we know of. One of my professors was trying to stop the houses that were being built on it. Spoiler alert: he didn’t, and the houses are hella haunted, and nobody wants to live there.
Personally I do think the creature is a wendigo. That chain of mountains is park of unbroken chain that leads right up the Serra Nevadas and Donner Pass.
THE Donner Pass.
You do the math.
@carolinemb88
I’m from Northern California myself, state capitol, and while we don’t have much by way of critters (sure, we’ve got Bigfoot up in the redwoods, but those guys are mostly harmless).
Most of what we’ve got is due to the Gold Rush, and not just the hauntings (though there are plenty of those, a great many of them are theatre ghosts, most of whom are harmless, though some are very particular). What we’ve got by way of Things were brought along on the trail from the Old Country to the East Coast and then along thousands of miles of wagon trail.
We’ve got our fair share of phantom hitchhikers and women in white, but mostly what we’ve got are the Things That Survived The Flood. There was a flood in the early 1860s, one that caused the state capitol to actually be relocated for a while, and when it was over and the floodwaters receded, there was enough sediment left behind that what had been the second floor of buildings was now the ground floor.
There are a handful of places in Old Town that you Do Not Go after dark (despite being safe during the day). When I worked in Old Town, giving comedic history tours, we started from and returned to a restaurant that had a club downstairs (in what had been the ground floor before The Flood) and there was a storeroom down there that got locked at sunset and no one questioned it, but the door to that storeroom was pretty much right next to the portable shed we changed clothes in, and I know, more than once, I heard knocking and scratching and one of my very last tours I got a facefull of wet-plant rot smell (not quite mildew, but not stinky like rotting meat gets) so bad I couldn’t breathe. It’s one of the reasons I stopped doing the tours, really, because I was starting to get the feeling I was being singled out, and I didn’t want to find out what by.
When I was like 17, I lived in the woods on the northwest coast of canada. One day, I decided to go for a walk in a part of the woods I had never been to before. Because sometimes I see weird things out there, I made sure to bring my grandma’s dog with me, just running free and off-leash. These are wild woods, too, not parkland, so the only clear areas are deer trails. I stuck along to those because, you know, I don’t want to get lost, and about an hour in I hear this strange whistling. Just a short call- One long, sharp whistle followed quickly by a short, piping one. Now, I’m in a good mood and I figure it must be some new kind of bird, so I whistle back: long call, short call. It whistles again. I’m amused, so I whistle again. Long call, short call, and then just to be fun, I throw in a little trill at the end. It whistles back. It whistles back the exact same pattern. Now, normally that would freak me out, but I was in a REALLY good mood. A really weirdly good mood. So, I whistled again. And when it whistled back to me, I giggled. I… Don’t giggle. Not alone in the woods over basically nothing. The whistle came again, and there was a rustle in the distance. Seeing a shady outcrop, I ran to hide, feeling like I was playing hide-and-seek with someone. It whistled, I whistled back. Another rustle. Closer. I suddenly realized I hadn’t seen the dog in a while. I looked around, and saw him a few feet away, staring point-blank and totally still into the forest. The whistle came again, closer this time, and suddenly my weirdly bubbly feeling was gone. Instant fear. I got the dog’s attention and we absolutely booked it out of there, all the way back to the eight-foot-high gate that marked the start of the wild land. I locked it behind me, and we never went back. I never really had any idea what was whistling with me in the forest. Maybe some kind of mimic bird that had escaped home, or a squatter hiding out there sewhere messing with this kid and their dog. I only just remembered that when I was a kid, we learned about the Tsonoqua woman. The Tsonoqua woman is supposed to be an old woman who lives in the woods. She carries a basket on her back and has long, tangled hair. When children wander away from camp, it is said that she snatches them up in her basket and steals them away forever. But because she has bad sight, she uses her keen ears to hunt, and calls out with a birdlike whistle.
I have lived in southern California for a lifetime. There are things here that even I don’t understand. Things I can’t describe. If you ever take any advice from my blog, please, please, remember this.
Coyotes don’t hunt in packs.
It’s never too late to change one’s ways. The sooner the better.
Dazai Osamu, Pandora’s Box
(via bsd-bibliophile)
I’m a sucker for characters who see troubled kids in dangerous situations and basically go “they need parents, guess that’s me now”
Or how about tough characters who don’t want kids, but will still protect them if they’re in a dangerous situation, AND then check up on them to make sure they’re taking care of themselves. “I’m not your dad. Here, I brought you a snack bar. Thought you might be hungry”
Why can’t people get along without criticizing one another?..Each individual has his own way of living. Can we not learn to respect one another’s chosen way? One makes every effort to live in a dignified and proper manner, without harming anyone else, yet people will carp and cavil and try to tear one down. It’s most vexing.
Dazai Osamu, “Urashima-san” from Otogizoshi
(via bsd-bibliophile)
Helpful things for action writers to remember
Sticking a landing will royally fuck up your joints and possibly shatter your ankles, depending on how high you’re jumping/falling from. There’s a very good reason free-runners dive and roll.
Hand-to-hand fights usually only last a matter of seconds, sometimes a few minutes. It’s exhausting work and unless you have a lot of training and history with hand-to-hand combat, you’re going to tire out really fast.
Arrows are very effective and you can’t just yank them out without doing a lot of damage. Most of the time the head of the arrow will break off inside the body if you try pulling it out, and arrows are built to pierce deep. An arrow wound demands medical attention.
Throwing your opponent across the room is really not all that smart. You’re giving them the chance to get up and run away. Unless you’re trying to put distance between you so you can shoot them or something, don’t throw them.
Everyone has something called a “flinch response” when they fight. This is pretty much the brain’s way of telling you “get the fuck out of here or we’re gonna die.” Experienced fighters have trained to suppress this. Think about how long your character has been fighting. A character in a fist fight for the first time is going to take a few hits before their survival instinct kicks in and they start hitting back. A character in a fist fight for the eighth time that week is going to respond a little differently.
ADRENALINE WORKS AGAINST YOU WHEN YOU FIGHT. THIS IS IMPORTANT. A lot of times people think that adrenaline will kick in and give you some badass fighting skills, but it’s actually the opposite. Adrenaline is what tires you out in a battle and it also affects the fighter’s efficacy - meaning it makes them shaky and inaccurate, and overall they lose about 60% of their fighting skill because their brain is focusing on not dying. Adrenaline keeps you alive, it doesn’t give you the skill to pull off a perfect roundhouse kick to the opponent’s face.
Swords WILL bend or break if you hit something hard enough. They also dull easily and take a lot of maintenance. In reality, someone who fights with a sword would have to have to repair or replace it constantly.
Fights get messy. There’s blood and sweat everywhere, and that will make it hard to hold your weapon or get a good grip on someone.
A serious battle also smells horrible. There’s lots of sweat, but also the smell of urine and feces. After someone dies, their bowels and bladder empty. There might also be some questionable things on the ground which can be very psychologically traumatizing. Remember to think about all of the character’s senses when they’re in a fight. Everything WILL affect them in some way.
If your sword is sharpened down to a fine edge, the rest of the blade can’t go through the cut you make. You’ll just end up putting a tiny, shallow scratch in the surface of whatever you strike, and you could probably break your sword.
ARCHERS ARE STRONG TOO. Have you ever drawn a bow? It takes a lot of strength, especially when you’re shooting a bow with a higher draw weight. Draw weight basically means “the amount of force you have to use to pull this sucker back enough to fire it.” To give you an idea of how that works, here’s a helpful link to tell you about finding bow sizes and draw weights for your characters. (CLICK ME)
If an archer has to use a bow they’re not used to, it will probably throw them off a little until they’ve done a few practice shots with it and figured out its draw weight and stability.
People bleed. If they get punched in the face, they’ll probably get a bloody nose. If they get stabbed or cut somehow, they’ll bleed accordingly. And if they’ve been fighting for a while, they’ve got a LOT of blood rushing around to provide them with oxygen. They’re going to bleed a lot.
Here’s a link to a chart to show you how much blood a person can lose without dying. (CLICK ME)
If you want a more in-depth medical chart, try this one. (CLICK ME)
Hopefully this helps someone out there. If you reblog, feel free to add more tips for writers or correct anything I’ve gotten wrong here.
How to apply Writing techniques for action scenes:
- Short sentences. Choppy. One action, then another. When there’s a lull in the fight, take a moment, using longer phrases to analyze the situation–then dive back in. Snap, snap, snap. - Same thing with words - short, simple, and strong in the thick of battle. Save the longer syllables for elsewhere. - Characters do not dwell on things when they are in the heat of the moment. They will get punched in the face. Focus on actions, not thoughts. - Go back and cut out as many adverbs as possible. - No seriously, if there’s ever a time to use the strongest verbs in your vocabulary - Bellow, thrash, heave, shriek, snarl, splinter, bolt, hurtle, crumble, shatter, charge, raze - it’s now. - Don’t forget your other senses. People might not even be sure what they saw during a fight, but they always know how they felt. - Taste: Dry mouth, salt from sweat, copper tang from blood, etc - Smell: OP nailed it - Touch: Headache, sore muscles, tense muscles, exhaustion, blood pounding. Bruised knuckles/bowstring fingers. Injuries that ache and pulse, sting and flare white hot with pain. - Pain will stay with a character. Even if it’s minor. - Sound and sight might blur or sharpen depending on the character and their experience/exhaustion. Colors and quick movements will catch the eye. Loud sounds or noises from behind may serve as a fighter’s only alert before an attack. - If something unexpected happens, shifting the character’s whole attention to that thing will shift the Audience’s attention, too. - Aftermath. This is where the details resurface, the characters pick up things they cast aside during the fight, both literally and metaphorically. Fights are chaotic, fast paced, and self-centered. Characters know only their self, their goals, what’s in their way, and the quickest way around those threats. The aftermath is when people can regain their emotions, their relationships, their rationality/introspection, and anything else they couldn’t afford to think or feel while their lives were on the line.
Do everything you can to keep the fight here and now. Maximize the physical, minimize the theoretical. Keep things immediate - no theories or what ifs.
If writing a strategist, who needs to think ahead, try this: keep strategy to before-and-after fights. Lay out plans in calm periods, try to guess what enemies are thinking or what they will do. During combat, however, the character should think about his options, enemies, and terrain in immediate terms; that is, in shapes and direction. (Large enemy rushing me; dive left, circle around / Scaffolding on fire, pool below me / two foes helping each other, separate them.)
Lastly, after writing, read it aloud. Anyplace your tongue catches up on a fast moving scene, edit. Smooth action scenes rarely come on the first try.
Sometimes blood isn’t thicker than water. Family isn’t about being blood, family is about people who are there for through thick and thin. People who got your back no matter what. That’s family. ”
thisvinncent (via poetryandromanticism)
Doop is a very obscure/weird Marvel character, who worked as X-Force’s cameraman and later as Jean Grey’s secretary.
He speaks Doopspeak so we don’t know a ton about him. He apparently smells “green” and taste like spiced peanut butter. His race appear to be all hermaphrodites who reproduce asexually, yet they care about gender and sexuality, changing their gender expression depending on their partner. Doop however sleeps with both men and women and always identify as male which apparently makes him a sexual deviant in the eyes of his own kind. His mother calls him a “sexually confused freak”.
He is very sexually active though and his love-making is topnotch. Even if people feel weird about sleeping with a green blob, they always get over it and return for more. Bonus info: unknown to Doop, Wolverine was apparently in love with him back in the day (according to Wolverine’s son, Raze)
Despite his drinking, smoking, being a lazy secretary, swearing, and occasional rudeness, Doop only wants the best for people around him and has a tendency to stretch himself thin to please and help everyone.
