Silcah the Great

This is, quite simply, a blog of anything that I like or find entertaining; anything that amuses me.

[deadghostgirl12345]

[terpsikeraunos]

ancient greek word of the day: κακοθερής (kakotherēs), unfitted to endure summer heat

[aphilologicalbatman-deactivated]

this literally means “bad at summer” pass it on

[zipstick]

Reblog if you, too, are bad at summer

[silcah]

Yuuuup definitely me.

[cheyla-v]

I love having another writer as a best friend because I get SUCH relatable texts such as this: “Anyone who calls me stupid for owning swords or calls them decorational can suck my hickory dickory dong because I just used the katana I have to work through the rest of this fight because fuck aphantasia.”

Highlight of my week so far. 

And seriously, fuck aphantasia. Writing is hard enough, but then I/we also have to deal with that crap. 

[silcah]

This was me! 🤣

[littlegreenplasticsoldier]

[really-saraleee]

True

[merytsetesh]

Things I Have Learned Writing Smut:

1. There is a Goldilocks zone, or “sweet spot” if you will, for writing smut. On one end of the spectrum is Purple Prose. This is where you get laughable euphemisms like “polishing her pearl” and “love lance” and stuff like that. On the other end is Too Raunchy, where the author violently yanks you out of the narrative by slapping you in the face with someone using butter for lube, or going from anal penetration to some other hole with no concern for bacteria. Personally I like to err on the side of Raunchy, because the dirtier it is the more exciting! The problem is that everyone’s Nope limit is different, so your Goldilocks zone might be much bigger than your reader. This is getting into Your Milage May Vary and Your Kink Is Not My Kink/Dead Dove Do Not Eat territory, which is why fanfiction authors try so hard to tag appropriately. Professional authors, however, tend to err on the side of Purple Prose, or write repulsive/sad sex scenes like Ryan Boyd how mentions above.

2. You are writing an action scene. Only instead of throwing punches you are trying to find synonyms for thrust and groan without sounding like a thesaurus. How specific do you need to be in describing body and limb position for your audience to effectively visualize what’s happening? Can your audience infer that there was lube in the bedside table, or do you need to specifically mention somebody got it out of the drawer so the audience does not think the lube magically appeared? Is your pacing too slow because you are including these details? No one knows! 

3. Speaking of synonyms, you only get about a dozen words for genitals. That’s it. You get penis, dick, cock, balls, sac, clitoris, labia, vagina, pussy, cunt, anus, and asshole. Any others are Forbidden because they sound ridiculous (Purlple Prose territory) or as unsexy (twat is Too Raunchy), both of which ruin the mood. Exceptions to this rule are regional or period appropriate words. For example, the U.K. get to add prick and arse to the list. If you are writing a period piece, you can get away with slang from that time period, like cunny. Then once you have been allotted your ration of words for genitals you must strategically place them throughout your narrative. Because you don’t want to sound like you are deliberately trying to use a different term each time, because it becomes noticeable and jarring. But you don’t want to use the same terms over and over, because the repetition will be noticeable and jarring. *screams*

In conclusion, the enjoyment derived from reading smut is equal and opposite to the frustration of writing smut.

[one-time-i-dreamt]

[jennamoreci-deactivated20260404]

It’s never too late to support a great cause - BUUUUUUT if you want a chance to win some awesome books, tomorrow is your last day to enter my raffle! Donate to one of the amazing causes supporting black communities, show your proof of purchase, and be in the running to win books by incredible black authors. These are just a few of the prizes up for grabs 😊 All the details are available in my video: https://youtu.be/BbIzqGX_scI https://www.instagram.com/p/CCAq-Pgg9lK/?igshid=r7ladd8qun2k

[funnymemes-and-kinkydreams]

[one-time-i-dreamt]

All of us on 4th of July:

[neechees]

I keep seeing actresses or models who are trying to get the role of Katara and are trying to catch the attention of casting directors for Netflix despite the fact that they're not Native or dark skinned, let alone Inuit/Inupiat/Yupik Native

[neechees]

On one Tiktok where somebody actually points out how this actress shouldnt audition for Katara because she's not Inuk and the Water tribe definitely is, some weirdo is like "how do you know they're inuit -_-" like UHHHH??

Probably all the imagery that's nearly exactly copied from Northern Indigenous (namely Inuit) culture(s)??? And that's not even getting into the written dialogue & world building that mimics Northern Indigenous culture like Sokka mentioning eating seal blubber, the near genocide of the Southern water tribe, the landscape etc etc literally the ONLY thing that's asian about Sokka and Katara are their names and KIND OF the clothes they wear

[faithfire-writes]

PLEASE NETFLIX, CAST INUIT/INUPIAT/YUPIK ACTORS/ACTRESSES AS THE WATER TRIBE!!!

[one-time-i-dreamt]

[one-time-i-dreamt]

[pockicchi-backup]

happy fathers day to the best dad in the world !!!!!!!! 🥰🥰🥰

[dollopheadedmerlin]

I have … a tip.

If you’re writing something that involves an aspect of life that you have not experienced, you obviously have to do research on it. You have to find other examples of it in order to accurately incorporate it into your story realistically.

But don’t just look at professional write ups. Don’t stop at wikepedia or webMD. Look up first person accounts.

I wrote a fic once where a character has frequent seizures. Naturally, I was all over the wikipedia page for seizures, the related pages, other medical websites, etc.

But I also looked at Yahoo asks where people where asking more obscure questions, sometimes asked by people who were experiencing seizures, sometimes answered by people who have had seizures.

I looked to YouTube. Found a few individual videos of people detailing how their seizures usually played out. So found a few channels that were mostly dedicated to displaying the daily habits of someone who was epileptic.

I looked at blogs and articles written by people who have had seizures regularly for as long as they can remember. But I also read the frantic posts from people who were newly diagnosed or had only had one and were worried about another.

When I wrote that fic, I got a comment from someone saying that I had touched upon aspects of movement disorders that they had never seen portrayed in media and that they had found representation in my art that they just never had before. And I think it’s because of the details. The little things.

The wiki page for seizures tells you the technicalities of it all, the terminology. It tells you what can cause them and what the symptoms are. It tells you how to deal with them, how to prevent them.

But it doesn’t tell you how some people with seizures are wary of holding sharp objects or hot liquids. It doesn’t tell you how epileptics feel when they’ve just found out that they’re prone to fits. It doesn’t tell you how their friends and family react to the news.

This applies to any and all writing. And any and all subjects. Disabilities. Sexualities. Ethnicities. Cultures. Professions. Hobbies. Traumas. If you haven’t experienced something first hand, talk to people that have. Listen to people that have. Don’t stop at the scholarly sources. They don’t always have all that you need.

[dollopheadedmerlin]

I … LOVE reading the replies and tags for this post! I’m happy that, out of all my posts, this is the one that’s blown up so quickly. 

I love the people who are a part of a minority, that are gushing about their favorite fics or books that seem to have done this and offer proper representation. 

I love the people who are bringing up the toxic mindset that is very popular on tumblr, the “you can’t write about it if you haven’t lived it” ideology that makes writers feel guilty for providing representation.

I especially love the people who are mentioning how they should start doing this. I love the people who are probably young or inexperienced writers that are seeing this and thinking of doing this for the first time. I love that there are people who read this and then think to better their writing because of it.

[tomhardysteeth]

have i ever told y’all about the greatest moment of my academic career

i was a freshman in college and i had this history teacher who was ~edgy~ and his hotness level on ratemyprofessor was off the charts and he was the first teacher i ever heard use the word “fuck.” anyway he would do this thing every so often where we’d have a “quiz” and the first two questions were always really easy and the last one was hard - they were all similar questions, and the point was to show what you learn about history and what you don’t. 

so one day he’s like okay kids time for a quiz and the first question was who killed abraham lincoln. the second question was who killed JFK. third question was who killed william mckinley. 

we all take a few minutes and write down our answers, and then the teacher asks the questions again so we can shout out the answers. everybody answered the first two with really no problem.

now, keep in mind that this class was at 9 a.m. and i was exhausted All The Time during my freshman year of college so i sat in the back in my sweats and never said a word and the teacher definitely had no clue who i was. 

so you can imagine his surprise when he asked the class who shot william mckinley and without missing a beat i said, “czolgosz,” pronounced correctly and everything. 

my teacher froze and in a very stern voice asked, “what was that? what did someone just say?”

i repeated: czolgosz.

my teacher: “who said that?”

i raised my hand, and my super cool history teacher glared at me. he then asked me how the hell i knew the answer. he said that in the TWENTY YEARS he’d been teaching this stupid class, nobody, not A SINGLE PERSON, had ever known the answer to that question.

i then had to quietly explain to a room full of people that there’s a musical called assassins and there’s a song about czolgosz shooting william mckinley at the great pan american exposition in buffaloooooooo (in buffaloooooooo)

[kamicokrolock]

The arts are important.

I shocked a teacher once because I could recite the preamble to the US Constitution (got bonus points to), She asked why I’d taken it upon myself to memorize it. I had to explain it was in a School House Rock song….

[sparringwoodpecker]

I shocked church with my ‘math skills’ when they were asking how many seconds in a minute, minutes in an hour, hours in a day, days in a year, now how about minutes in a year - and I call out five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes without pausing to think, cos Rent

[housetohalf]

Once aced a religion class pop quiz that asked me to list all of Jacob’s sons since they’re the names of the 12 tribes of Israel. The one and only time I’ve been thankful for Andrew Lloyd Webber. I even got points for getting the birth order correct.

[archivistofnerddom]

My little brother got extra points in a social studies class once for knowing “O Canada” in its entirely (we’re American and grew up in Maryland, for context) because my older sister went to undergrad in Maine and her acapella group learned the Canadian National Anthem could sing it whenever the hockey teams played Canadian teams.

Who says the arts don’t have real world benefits?

[ignescent]

When i was in high school, my history teacher asked what historic technology caused the biggest alteration in military tactics. I answered stirrups, and explained that the ability to brace against the horse to use a weapon and the better maneuverability vs a chariot created the entire concept of cavalry, which led to modern tactics, etc. The teacher said I was the first student to ever give that answer and that I was basically correct, and then asked where I had found that out. I then had to explain I had read it in a Star Trek novel.

[animation-is-my-life]

My APUS teacher in HS made a deal with all his students: if you get an A on the first test of the year, your lowest test for the year gets dropped. He said he almost never had students get A’s on the first test.

I was one of 3 kids in APUS my year to get an A on our first exam (all three were in my class because we were NERDS). When the test scores came in he called the tree of us up to his desk and said he’d never had THREE kids in the same class make A’s on the test and that either we were REALLY smart or REALLY good at cheating (we sat in 3 of the corners of the room so we weren’t copying off eachother or anything).

I don’t think I ever told him that I got an A on the first 2 tests because one of my favorite cartoons when I was a kid was Liberty’s Kids and I had the series on DVD and literally watched it to study for the test.

[sauntervaguelydown]

You know the thing about the songs part of this is that humans have been using poetry and songs to remember large numbers and historical facts since the dawn of time, and I honestly think it’s insane that we don’t value that as a culture anymore to the degree that teachers are surprised by it

[aalikane88]

My brother and i were watching Jeopardy a few years ago. Final category was Secretaries of State.

He says “Well I only know of two, Clinton and Hamilton.”

Now i did the same thing im sure most of you musical theater nerds are doing right now, i cried out “no!!! Hamilton was Secretary of the Treasury. Jefferson was State.”

My brother looking at me funny asked “how do you remember that?”

I reply, “because ive been listening to Hamilton Non Stop everyday for months now.”

He thought i meant i never stopped listening to the soundtrack. My parents were both in the room. None of them got the double meaning.

[silcah]

I knew a couple of these for the same reason. The Hamilton one though XD

[stevethompson-art]

Artwork I created for the latest a disney Store Designer Collection. Midnight Masquerade. Find me @sthompsonart on Instagram . ✍🏻🎨✍🏻

[skreamingninja]

[autohaste]

If depression was a musical

[capacity]

This is a bop

[ghostbustinggays]

ok this keeps coming on my dash and every time the notes are filled with people being like WHAT IS THIS so i am HERE TO ENLIGHTEN YOU, FRIENDS

this is from the musical Firebringer which is free to watch on Youtube. it’s by Team StarKid of A Very Potter Musical fame (think you recognize the girl singing? that’s Lauren Lopez, also known as the funniest Draco Malfoy the world has ever seen)

anyway, Firebringer is a female-driven, hilarious musical about bisexual cavewomen and you are going to want to watch it. trust me.

WATCH FIREBRINGER!

[bookwyrm-in-space]

Our entire office sings this at least once a week.

[budgetrealgood-deactivated20210]

“Self-care is often a very unbeautiful thing.

It is making a spreadsheet of your debt and enforcing a morning routine and cooking yourself healthy meals and no longer just running from your problems and calling the distraction a solution.

It is often doing the ugliest thing that you have to do, like sweat through another workout or tell a toxic friend you don’t want to see them anymore or get a second job so you can have a savings account or figure out a way to accept yourself so that you’re not constantly exhausted from trying to be everything, all the time and then needing to take deliberate, mandated breaks from living to do basic things like drop some oil into a bath and read Marie Claire and turn your phone off for the day.

A world in which self-care has to be such a trendy topic is a world that is sick. Self-care should not be something we resort to because we are so absolutely exhausted that we need some reprieve from our own relentless internal pressure.

True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from.

And that often takes doing the thing you least want to do.

It often means looking your failures and disappointments square in the eye and re-strategizing. It is not satiating your immediate desires. It is letting go. It is choosing new. It is disappointing some people. It is making sacrifices for others. It is living a way that other people won’t, so maybe you can live in a way that other people can’t.

It is letting yourself be normal. Regular. Unexceptional. It is sometimes having a dirty kitchen and deciding your ultimate goal in life isn’t going to be having abs and keeping up with your fake friends. It is deciding how much of your anxiety comes from not actualizing your latent potential, and how much comes from the way you were being trained to think before you even knew what was happening.

If you find yourself having to regularly indulge in consumer self-care, it’s because you are disconnected from actual self-care, which has very little to do with “treating yourself” and a whole lot do with parenting yourself and making choices for your long-term wellness.

It is no longer using your hectic and unreasonable life as justification for self-sabotage in the form of liquor and procrastination. It is learning how to stop trying to “fix yourself” and start trying to take care of yourself… and maybe finding that taking care lovingly attends to a lot of the problems you were trying to fix in the first place.

It means being the hero of your life, not the victim. It means rewiring what you have until your everyday life isn’t something you need therapy to recover from. It is no longer choosing a life that looks good over a life that feels good. It is giving the hell up on some goals so you can care about others. It is being honest even if that means you aren’t universally liked. It is meeting your own needs so you aren’t anxious and dependent on other people.

It is becoming the person you know you want and are meant to be. Someone who knows that salt baths and chocolate cake are ways to enjoy life – not escape from it.”

-Brianna Wiest, in Thought Catalog

[silcah]

It’s here!!!!! #nanowrimo2018 #amwriting #authorslife https://www.instagram.com/p/BpoDC4bH-s5h2hVlqQ5iq3QrQo6zs_DMivs2Fk0/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=16fkox8hzjttl