The Other Corner

Old fogey tech with too much time on her hands.

[cuppydogshane]

when everything feels like the movies you bleed just to know youre alive. or so ive heard.

[hotshotriot]

its like strippers and the economy to me

[rhymingteelookatme]

#eorzean proverb: one scion is happenstance two is coincidence three is impending calamity

via @ofdarklands

[scrollsfromarebornrealm]

Wolstinien Week 2: Scales/Scars

-------

The Fo'ward Cabins

"Riven."

"Mngghhh." Riven rolled over, shoving her face into her pillow. It was too early and the bed felt too good.

"Riven."

"Estinien, go back to sleep."

"Riven, the bird is pecking me." More specifically, his scales. Estinien yanked his arm back. He glared at Quetzy, who glared right back at him.

"He has a name and you're not using it, that's the reason why he's pecking you." Came the muffled response. Quetzy seemed to fluff up in agreement. Estinien glared at the bird.

"What did I say about pecking me?" He challenged. Quetzy fluffed up again. Not that the pecking hurt, it felt more like tiny vibrations. Estinien glowered at the bird, then moved to roll over and drape his arm over Riven.

Quetzy took immediate offense.

"BIRD!"

"You two!" Riven snapped, pushing herself up onto her elbows. Quetzy immediately assumed innocence from his new perch on the bed's headboard, all feathery fluff and beady black eyes. Estinien was glaring, a hand covering the scale patch that a feathery green, red, and white missile had attempted to strafe.

"He starts it!"

"For the love of the…" Riven growled, getting out of bed. Clearly sleeping in was not going to be an option this morning. She stalked over to the window, opening it wider. Behind her, Estinien and Quetzy shared a mutual glare of distrust.

"Quetzy, if you want out, there's the window. Estinien, he has a name, he gets annoyed if it's not used." Elezen and bird glared at each other, and then Quetzy launched himself towards the opening, fluttering out into the morning Turali sun.

"That bird has it in for me."

"You keep showing fear." Riven retorted, coming back over to the bed.

"I'm not showing fear! It's like my very existence offends him!" Estinien trailed off as Riven pressed a kiss to a small patch of scales on his belly.

"Did that make it feel better?" She asked saucily, looking up at him.

"…He pecked me on the arm." Estinien countered. "Kiss there." Riven grinned, taking his arm and giving the scale patch a smooch.

"There. All better." She declared.

"Kiss it again, he went after it a second time." Riven straddled the dragoon instead, taking his face in-between her palms and giving him a long, sweet kiss.

"Better?" She murmured.

"Considerably." Estinien replied, his voice a husky growl. Riven smiled. It had taken time for Estinien to adjust to his scales, but the fact that he felt comfortable enough in his skin to gripe at Quetzy meant that considerable progress had been made.

"You need to stop showing fear. Quetzy can sense it. And he'd never seen you patch out before. He probably was curious."

"Why do I have to be the one showing fear? Why can't the bird show fear?" Estinien couldn't help but complain.

"Keep calling him 'the bird' and he's still gonna be mad at you." Riven patted Estinien's stomach, then slid off her lover.

[sibyllance]

Apparently someone got their car stuck on the light rail tracks at Mt. Baker. For those unfamiliar this is 35 feet up in the air

[officialboredom]

First test flight of a flying car by Mazda partially a success

[tuulikki]

I feel like the Arizona license plate should take some place in our analysis of whatever in the goddam fuck we’re looking at here

[snommelp]

...that's a Utah plate

[wrigglewormz]

I'm perfectly fine with people criticizing my favorite stories and frequently do it myself but can you stop being so boring about it

[wrigglewormz]

"This scene made me so uncomfortable" given the subject matter, it would be really, really badly written if it wasn't.

[driftward]

2. THEATER

[avoid-avoidance]

When Grace picks the name "Rocky", to a human audience, it's kind of like a little joke, right? Oh haha, it's because he looks like a rock, plus a movie reference, right?

But what if the Eridians hear it very, very differently?

Eridians kind of ARE rocks, in more than one way, aren't they? Their outer appearance resembles rocks; and (this might be fanon, I don't recall right now) their *brains* are crystalline structures. They hatch from eggs that probably look like rocks. The environment they live in presumably contains rocks.

What if Eridians view rocks in a kind of reverent, aspirational way? Like "For rocks you are, and to rocks you shall return" but with less of a dismissive/humble tone and more of a "we are fundamental building blocks of reality in every form we take" thing.

And then Rocky is explaining to Eridian linguists who are studying Grace's English what his "human name" means, in English, and the linguists are giving him scandalized side-eye and going "So you met an alien and you told him that THAT was your name? [Wow, what kind of arrogant prick would do that?]" And Rocky is like, "no no nonono, I absolutely did not tell him that was my name. I gave him my real name! Grace picked that name for me, he didn't even ask me for suggestions, I had nothing to do with it! It was like right after we first met properly -- it didn't seem like he even had to think very hard about it."

The linguists question Grace about his reasoning, of course, and Grace is a little embarrassed because he thinks this is a "haha our human is bad at naming things, he found a Tau Ceti amoeba and named it Taumoeba, silly human!"

(Also, he does not want this to end up leading to a movie night where the first movie he has to show a bunch of ALIEN LINGUISTS is Rocky. Just seems like kind of a genre-mismatch, right? And Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire is *right there*. Or he could pick some movie that showcases a bunch of different real human languages really well, or... Something that's not a sports drama film.)

So he brushes it off a little, saying something like "Well, sure, it wasn't hard for me to decide to call him Rocky. I mean, it's kind of the obvious choice, yeah?"

And the thing is. It's established knowledge now that all humans can perceive things that Eridians can't perceive. It's not even like superstitious "ooh spooky aliens" woo-woo. Respected, credentialed Eridian biologists have confirmed that humans have *actual, physical organs* that let them detect phenomena that Eridians cannot detect.

So what the Eridian linguists are hearing is that this alien met Rocky, observed Rocky with its strange alien powers of perception, and immediately chose to give Rocky a name that conveys "you resemble the fundamental core of what all your people essentially are and aspire to be". And he said it was obvious.

[yorgen-sh]

[sayhelloanimalfriends]

this is the first time in my life i thought oh i hope there’s music

[yorgen-sh]

[sayhelloanimalfriends]

this is the first time in my life i thought oh i hope there’s music

[moniquill]

[infinitemachine]

That is wild. I love it.

[just-alex-iguess]

They never made another "Zagreus death recount" after that

[gumy-shark]

sometimes my Beloved Mutuals will rb a post about a certain character archetype and i will have to physically restrain myself from saying “yeah you would say that wouldn’t you”

[gumy-shark]

jasper you don’t get to get away with this that easily.

new ask game: what’s the character archetype that makes you go “of course you would say that” when i post about it?

[shegs]

I FOUMDH IT

[princess-anri]

Regular Couple

[pawhold-deactivated20180415]

this ended homophobia

[nikoni]

happy pride month

[pirateprincessjess]

Been getting a lot of offers to do “collabs” with ai brands. They always want me to shill their dog shit products in exchange for money.

Their emails are clearly written by an ai chatbot because they usually talk about how they think I’d be a great fit for their brand since I talk about AI. I specifically make anti ai content, but they don’t seem to know this.

Here is my new standard email response when these weird geeks reach out to me.

My hope is that one of these stupid PR companies has an ai bot handling their marketing and that I can get it to give me an automated approval so they pay me to take talk about how shitty their ai slop product is.

[ralfmaximus]

PLEASE keep us updated!

[cheaphalloweencostume]

horrible fucking partner just said apropos of nothing “and i’ll SUCK, and i’ll FUCK, and i’ll BLOW YOUR BACK OUT” like the big bad wolf.

[writingmaz]

Writing Tips

Punctuating Dialogue

✧

➸ “This is a sentence.”

➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.

➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”

➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”

➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”

➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”

➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.

“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.

“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”

➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”

➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”

However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can also be “outside”!

➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.

If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)

➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations dashes typically express—“

“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.

➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.

➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”

➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.

“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”

➸ “If it’s the same speaker but different paragraph, keep the closing quotation off.

“This shows it’s the same character continuing to speak.”

[pointnclick]

hello male writer. before you is a typewriter. you have one day to write a novella with a woman as the protagonist without describing her breasts. the timer begins now

[yebisu]

Her ass was like a peach, and brother I’m in her pit.

[pointnclick]

well. that one’s on me