stuck in the aether

silver ??? / other more random, much more active and remarkably fun blog is @silvermeww / minor-coded but only in height/ too cool for school / certificated fanfic-tor and writer / prev. @theoldsilverartistcat  

[tempusedax-rerum]

Words that I see used incorrectly in fanfic a lot

Disclaimer: language is always changing. Words are made up. You can do whatever you want forever. HOWEVER if you want to write in a way that ensures others will be able to easily understand you, it might be helpful to know the following.

Disassociate: an intentional choice to stop associating with someone or something, often an organization or a cause. "He disassociated from the company after the scandal." Dissociate: a psychological defence mechanism involving mental/emotional disconnection from oneself or reality. "After he quit his job, he sat down on the couch and dissociated for thirteen and a half hours."

Addicting: a verb. "Cocaine addicts people to itself. It is addicting those people." It's a very unusual verb, as you can see. If you find yourself about to use this word in your writing (especially in porn, where I see it SO much), you probably shouldn't. If you could say "causing to develop an addiction" or something like that, then phrase it that way instead. If you say "[Sex thing] was so addicting" that's a little like saying it was so "running." You can totally say that, but it does feel odd... Addictive: an adjective! It describes nouns! "[Sex thing] was so addictive." Nice.👍

Affect: usually a verb. "She was affected by the sad movie. Movies often affect people's emotions." In psychology, it can also act as noun, referring to a person's general emotional presentation. "Her affect was muted." Effect: a noun. This is the stuff you experience. "The effects of the movie were long-lasting." Affectation: also a noun. A way of behaving that's different from your normal way of behaving, usually intentional and meant to impress or fool others. "She put on the affectation of a movie critic when she wrote her review online."

Allude: to indirectly reference something. "He alluded to past criminal activity." Elude: to evade. "He eluded the police."

Compliment: a nice thing to say to someone. "I complimented her new shoes." Complement: a way to say that something that goes well with something else. "Her new shoes complemented her dress." You might recognize it from "complementary colours." Can also refer to free stuff, as in the "complementary coffee" you get at events (the coffee complements the event).

Elicit: a verb. To bring out something, like a reaction. "He elicited the jury's sympathy by telling a sad story." Illicit: an adjective. Judged to be illegal or immoral, as in "illicit drugs" or "illicit affair." "The judge found him in contempt of court for illicit use of emotionally manipulative story-telling."

Conscience: a noun. This is the thing that (purportedly) tells you right from wrong. "His conscience told him he needed to apologize." Conscious: an adjective. This refers to someone or something that is aware of something and/or capable of thinking. "He was conscious of an urge to apologize."

Taught: a verb. Past-tense of teach. "They taught a course on knot-tying." Taut: an adjective. Describes tightness or tenseness, often of something which can be relaxed. "The students pulled their ropes taut to tighten their knots."

Lathe: a noun. This is a machine that carves wood or metal. "The lathe operators wore gloves to protect their hands from the dangerous machine." Lave: a verb meaning to wash or bathe. This is what tongues do. "I laved at my wound (which I got from the aforementioned lathe because I am committing to this bit now)." Lather: a noun or a verb describing bubbles, especially when referring to soap. "I rubbed my soapy hands together to form a lather so I could clean my now horribly infected lathe wound."

Consolidation: the noun form of consolidate, which means to combine. "The two kingdoms consolidated their armies." Consolation: the noun form of console, which means to comfort someone. Might recognize it from the term "consolation prize" – a prize you get when you lose or fail at something. "It was a small consolation that the war would be over soon."

Lose: the verb form of the word loss. "Don't lose your brand new horse, Julia!" Loose: an adjective meaning not tight or contained. "Predictably, Julia's new horse was now loose in the streets of the city."

Ensuring: to make certain of something or to guarantee something. "He handed her the knife, ensuring that the handle was presented first." Ensuing: to take place afterwards or as a result of something else. "The ensuing knife fight was a bloody duel to the death."

Whose: this is the possessive form. "Whose car is that?" Who's: this is the contraction form of "who is/was/has" "Who's driving that car?" Whom: this is the object form of the pronoun "who." It functions like the pronouns him, her, them, me, and us. If your sentence could be restructured to use any of those, then "whom" is correct. Compare "Whom should I blame for the crash?" ("I should blame him.") and "I wondered who had crashed the car." ("He had crashed the car.")

Those are the common mistakes I've noticed. Feel free to suggest more if you've noticed other commonly mixed up words!

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Word Alternatives: Colours

BLACK atramentous, charcoal, coal, crow, darksomeness, denigration, duskiness, ebony, funereal, jet, inkiness, melanism, melanotic, midnight, niello, obsidian, pitch, raven, sable, singe, sloe, smirch, smoke, sombrous, soot, swarthiness, swartness, tar

BLUE aquamarine, azure, berylline, cerulean, cerulescent, cyan, cyanosis, cyanotic, electric blue, ice-blue, indigo, lividity, midnight, navy, Oxford blue, pavonian, pavonine, peacock blue, robin's egg blue, royal blue, sapphire, turquoise, ultramarine

BROWN adust, auburn, beige, biscuit, braise, bay, bronze, brune, brunette, buff, burnt umber, burnt sienna, caramel, castaneous, chestnut, chocolate, cinnamon, cocoa, coffee, drab, dun, embrown, fawn, grege, hazel, henna, infuscation, khaki, mushroom, ochre, paper bag, pumpernickel, raw sienna, raw umber, roan, rubiginous, rufous, russet, rust, scorch, seal, sepia, sorrel, suntan, sunburn, tan, taupe, toast, umber, walnut

GRAY ashiness, canescence, cinereous, cineritious, dullness, ecru, fuscous, glaucescence, greige, grisaille, gunmetal, hoar, iron, lead, mousiness, oyster, pewter, slatiness, smokiness, steel, taupe

GREEN aerugo, aestival, avocado, beryl, chartreuse, chloremia, chlorophyll, chlorosis, chlorotic, emerald, foliaged, glaucescence, grass, greensickness, ivy, jade, loden green, holly, olivaceous, olive, patina, patinate, pea-green, smaragdine, springlike, verdancy, verdantness, verdigris, verdure, vernal, virescence, viridescence, viridity

ORANGE apricot, cantaloupe, carotene, carroty, ochreous, ochroid, pumpkin, saffron, tangerine, terracotta, Titian

PINK carnation, coral, coralline, flesh-pink, incarnadine, peach, primrose, roseate, rosy, salmon

PURPLE amethystine, aubergine, bruise, empurple, fuchsia, lavender, lilac, lividity, magenta, mauve, mulberry, orchid, pansy, plum, puce, purpure, purpureous, raisin, violaceous, violet

RED beet, blowzy, cardinal, carmine, carnation, carnelian, cerise, cherry, copper, crimson, damask, encrimson, erubescence, erythema, erythematous, erythrism, erythroderma, ferruginous, fire, floridity, floridness, flushing, gules, hectic, henna, incarnadine, infrared, laky, lateritious, lobster, lurid, magenta, mantling, maroon, miniate, port, puce, raddle, rose, rosiness, rouge, rubefaction, rubicundity, rubor, rubricity, ruby, ruddiness, rufescence, rufosity, russet, rust, sanguine, scarlet, stammel, vermeil, vermilion, vinaceous

YELLOW aureateness, auric, aurify, banana, begild, bilious, biliousness, cadmium, canary, chartreuse, citreous, citrine, citron, engild, fallowness, flavescent, flaxen, fulvous, gildedness, gilt, goldenness, honey, icteric, icterus, jaundice, lemon, lutescent, luteous, luteolous, mustard, ochroid, old gold, primrose yellow, saffron, sallowness, sandy, straw, sulfur, topaz, xanthism, xanthochroism, xanthoderma

WHITE achromatic, alabaster, albescent, albinic, besnow, blanch, bleach, bone, calcimine, chalk, cream, cretaceous, eggshell, etiolate, ghastly, ivory, lactescent, lily, lime, milk, pearl, sheet, swan, sheep, fleece, flour, foam, marmoreal, niveous, paper, pearl, phantom, silver, snow, driven snow, tallow, teeth, wax, wool

VARIEGATION (diversity of colors) spectrum, rainbow, iris, chameleon, leopard, jaguar, cheetah, ocelot, zebra, barber pole, candy cane, Dalmatian, firedog, peacock, butterfly, mother-of-pearl, nacre, tortoise shell, opal, kaleidoscope, stained glass, serpentine, calico cat, marble, mackerel sky, confetti, crazy quilt, patchwork quilt, shot silk, moire, watered silk, marbled paper, Joseph's coat, harlequin, tapestry; bar code, checkerboard

variegation, multicolor; parti-color; medley or mixture of colors, spectrum, rainbow of colors, riot of color; polychrome, polychromatism; dichromatism, trichromatism; dichroism, trichroism

iridescence, iridization, irisation, opalescence, nacreousness, pearliness, chatoyancy, play of colors or light; light show; moire pattern, tabby; burelé or burelage

spottiness, maculation, freckliness, speckliness, mottledness, mottlement, dappleness, dappledness, stippledness, spottedness, dottedness; fleck, speck, speckle; freckle; spot, dot, polka dot, macula, macule, blotch, splotch, patch, splash; mottle, dapple; brindle; stipple, stippling, pointillism, pointillage

check, checker, checks, checking, checkerboard, chessboard; plaid, tartan; checker-work, variegated pattern, harlequin, colors in patches, crazy-work, patchwork; parquet, parquetry, marquetry, mosaic, tesserae, tessellation; crazy-paving; hound's tooth; inlay, damascene

stripe, striping, candy-stripe, pinstripe; barber pole; streak, streaking; striation, striature, stria; striola, striga; crack, craze, crackle, reticulation; bar, band, belt, list

mottled, motley; pied, piebald, skewbald, pinto; dappled, dapple; calico; marbled; clouded; salt-and-pepper

Source: The Concise Roget's International Thesaurus, Revised & Updated (6th Edition) More: Writing Notes & References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

[boilingheart-archive]

Y’all little writers go on and have fun now

[luna-azzurra]

Tips for Writing Small Towns!!

⋆˙⟡ Everyone knows everyone and they have for forty years. The history is load-bearing. In a small town, the guy who runs the hardware store and the woman who teaches third grade went to prom together in 1987 and had a falling out over something no one talks about directly. The person behind the diner counter is the cousin of the person who sold you your house. Nothing is without CONTEXT. Every interaction carries a decade of subtext. Writers often write small-town characters like they just met each other. BUT Real small-town social life happens almost entirely in implication, in what you don't say, in who you happen to be standing next to when you say it.

⋆˙⟡ The gossip network is fast, imprecise, and almost impossible to correct. Information in small communities travels faster than in cities because the network is dense, EVERYONE has direct ties to almost everyone else. But it also distorts rapidly. By the time something gets around, it may be only vaguely related to what actually happened. And correcting a rumor is exponentially harder than spreading one, because corrections aren't interesting. If your character does something embarrassing on a Monday, by Thursday half the town has a version of it, and no version is quite right. The original fact may be less damaging than what it became. This is just how information behaves in a closed system.

⋆˙⟡ People who grew up there and people who moved there live in parallel versions of the same town. Longtime residents navigate the town through memory, that means every building has a history and every corner has a former version. The old pharmacy that's now a coffee shop is still "the old pharmacy" to someone who grew up there. New arrivals navigate the town as it exists now, without the palimpsest. These two groups see each other and don't quite connect, and there's a specific low-grade tension in it that isn't unfriendliness exactly, it's more like speaking slightly different dialects. The newcomer who thinks they've been accepted into the community is usually still a newcomer in the eyes of people who've been there for three generations.

⋆˙⟡ There is no anonymity, and some people are destroyed by that. Others thrive. Being known everywhere you go is experienced radically differently depending on who you are and what your history is. For someone who is liked, trusted, in good social standing, it's warm and a safety net. For someone who made a mistake, has a stigmatized identity, or just doesn't fit, it's a trap you cannot escape without physically leaving. The family with the father who was arrested. The person who had a public breakdown. They are permanently known as that thing. The smallness is indifferent to whether it's kind or cruel to you specifically.

⋆˙⟡ People who live rurally organize their lives around weather, seasons, and land in ways that urban writers often don't account for. A bad winter IS A FINANCIAL THREAT. The soil condition matters. What the river is doing matters. Whether the deer are bad this year matters. There's a literacy to the natural environment that rural people have and that outsiders don't (reading the sky, reading the fields, knowing what certain sounds mean, knowing when something is wrong with the land before you can articulate why.) Writing a rural character who doesn't have this relationship to their physical environment makes them feel like a city person who happened to move somewhere with a longer driveway.

⋆˙⟡ There are almost no strangers, which means crime and conflict work differently. When something bad happens in a small town (theft, assault, betrayal etc.) the suspect pool is tiny and largely known. Everyone is someone's cousin or former coworker or neighbor. The person who did the thing is someone whose name you know, whose mother you know, who you've been at the same table with. This is much more psychologically complicated than anonymous crime. It's not just WHO did it, it's the rearrangement of every relationship once you know. And there's immense social pressure to not pursue it, to not break the fabric, to let it go for the sake of everyone having to continue living next to each other.

[bucketofdeltav]

So my beta reader for the Big Fics is an astrophysicist, right. Who is currently also writing a hard sci-fi novel about the exploration of Phobos (more power to them, I cannot with the physics required for that, best I can do is soft sci-fi/fantasy and that reminds me I should finish that story).

Anyway I was bitching about how hard it is to come up with feasible planets in Star Wars because sometimes you need a new planet from scratch and sometimes you need to know more about a planet than the 'has jungles, is probably a moon technically' than Wookieepedia will give you, and they're like 'oh yeah I can do something about that'.

So they've written (in Matlab but they swear it will run as a .exe as well and I may be conscripted to embed it as a web tool at some point) a star system generator.

You input what you know about the planet (ecosystem, population, sun colour, does it have liquid water, does it have a moon or moons, is it a moon or moons, temperature averages, atmosphere, you get me) and it will give you the... everything else about the star system, in obedience to real-universe physics. And if you input nothing you get a randomly generated star system.

And I’m like oh I know people who will be into this with a vengeance, and they're not on Tumblr, so this is me seeing who exactly would be keen on, and I cannot stress this enough, a real-physics comprehensive star system generator.

It's still in the debugging phase (last error fixed: every planet wants to have a population of exactly 5000 regardless of other factors, turned out to be a missing equals sign somewhere), but I'm psyched for this and trying to gauge interest for how high a priority 'make this an accessible web tool' needs to be.

[melyzard]

[elodieunderglass]

@bucketofdeltav says the URL is here: http://tumblr.com/star-system-generator

okay it has its own blog now (@star-system-generator) on Tumblr

Follow @star-system-generator and get more of the good stuff by joining Tumblr today. Dive in!

[what-even-is-thiss]

I think a lot of writers might benefit from giving themselves permission to get weird with format.

Use second person, drop classic rising action and climax format, write backwards, just sit in a moment, tell all you want and refuse to show, make an entire book that’s just one run on sentence, reject tropes, use all tropes, cliche yourself to death, produce something that’s completely gibberish. Break all the rules of marketability. Become ungovernable.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Write a story that just takes place inside one pathetic little person’s head. Do it. It’s enrichment in your enclosure.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Do the writer’s equivalent of playing with finger paints. Do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it

[what-even-is-thiss]

It’s the middle of the night and I should be sleeping but listen. Listen. Just get weird with it. Open your soul up a little bit. Like actually don’t worry about it being palatable. I’m serious. Get weirder. Get weirder right now. I’m demanding that you get weirder right now. It’s not your responsibility to make your reader feel good. It’s your job to make art, goddamnit. Make art. Make weird art. Open up your third eye and eat an entire cheesecake.

[luna-azzurra]

Tips for writing Hospital/medical scenes!!

Spent way too long researching this before posting lol. but please, if something's wrong, tell me. i'd rather be corrected than spread misinformation.

⋆˙⟡ Doctors don't run. Almost ever. Running in a hospital is a safety hazard, knocks into patients and equipment, and signals panic to everyone who sees it, which is the opposite of what hospital staff want to project. In a true code blue situation, there is urgency, but it looks more like extremely fast, purposeful walking and a kind of controlled chaos where everyone knows their role. The sprinting attending dramatically sliding to a bedside is a TV invention.

⋆˙⟡ "She flatlined" does not mean what you think it means. A flatline (a straight line on a heart monitor) means asystole: the heart has stopped producing electrical activity. You don't shock a flatline. CPR, yes. Epinephrine, yes. But the dramatic defibrillator moment everyone loves? That's for ventricular fibrillation, which looks like chaotic scribble on the monitor, not a flat line. Shocking a flatline in real life does nothing. Your doctor character would know this. Your nurse would know this. Your paramedic absolutely knows this.

⋆˙⟡ Medical professionals have a dark, dry humor and it's a coping mechanism, not a character flaw. People who work in high-stress, high-death environments often develop humor that sounds brutal to outsiders. BUT It's not callousness, it's a pressure valve.

⋆˙⟡ Hospitals are obscenely loud and smell very specific. Writers default to clinical silence and "the sharp smell of antiseptic." Real hospitals smell like a combination of cleaning fluid, stale air, cafeteria food leaking through vents, and occasionally something you don't want to identify. They're also constantly noisy. Intercoms, rolling carts, the beep of a dozen different monitors all slightly out of sync with each other, people talking too loudly, visitors crying in hallways. The silence only comes in very specific moments, and it's jarring precisely because it's unusual.

⋆˙⟡ Waking up from a coma is not waking up from a nap. Someone who has been unconscious for more than a day or two will have profound muscle weakness, and they often can't hold their own head up. They'll be confused, possibly for days. They won't be able to speak normally if they had a breathing tube, because their throat will be raw and damaged. They won't recognize people immediately and then have a tearful reunion five minutes later. The brain coming back online is slow, strange, and disorienting in ways that aren't photogenic. Patients frequently don't remember the first several days of recovery at all.

⋆˙⟡ There's a specific hierarchy and it matters to the people inside it. Attending physician, fellow, resident, intern, these are not interchangeable words for "doctor." An intern on their third week is legally a doctor and can barely order a sandwich without second-guessing themselves. An attending has full clinical responsibility and has seen everything. A fellow is post-residency, specializing, somewhere in between. Nurses operate in their own parallel hierarchy that intersects with but is absolutely not subordinate to doctors in the way TV suggests. Experienced nurses regularly catch errors that residents make, and both parties know it.

⋆˙⟡ Patients are almost never alone in their room doing emotional things. Nurses check vitals. Phlebotomists come for blood draws at ungodly hours. Housekeeping rolls in. A different doctor than the one managing the case comes to consult. Meals appear. An orderly needs to take them to imaging. The room itself is rarely private for long. The idea of a character lying in a hospital bed having a long, uninterrupted emotional conversation is something that mostly happens in fiction. In reality, someone knocks and enters approximately every 40 minutes, sometimes more.

⋆˙⟡ Paperwork and insurance are a constant, grinding presence. Discharge doesn't happen because the patient is better. It happens when it's approved, when a bed is needed, when insurance says so. Patients are sometimes sent home earlier than feels safe because the system demands it. Doctors spend an enormous, demoralizing amount of time on documentation, estimates suggest 2 hours of paperwork for every hour of patient care. The administrative weight of hospital medicine is a slow-burn horror that almost no fiction touches, which means the moment you do, it feels startlingly real.

⋆˙⟡ Prognosis conversations are never one clean scene. When a doctor tells a family that someone is dying, there isn't a single moment of devastation and then forward motion. People mishear. They ask the same question rephrased five different ways hoping for a different answer. They argue with the information. Someone pulls out their phone to Google the diagnosis. Someone else goes completely silent and leaves the room. A week later, one family member still believes recovery is possible and another has accepted the death entirely, and they haven't been able to talk about it. Information lands at different speeds for different people and the gap between them is its own source of suffering.

[luna-azzurra]

A List of VOICE QUALITIES!!

₊˚⊹⋆ Raspy voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Smooth voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Gravelly voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Honeyed voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Silky voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Husky voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Breathy voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Nasal voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Melodic voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Monotone voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Scratchy voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Throaty voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Whisper-soft voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Booming voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Crisp voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Musical voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Warm voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Cold voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Sharp voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Lilting voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Drawling voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Tinkling voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Thunderous voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Delicate voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Commanding voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Timid voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Trembling voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Steady voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Crackling voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Brittle voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Rich voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Thin voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Reedy voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Sonorous voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Whiny voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Cigarette-worn voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Youthful voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Weathered voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Crystalline voice

₊˚⊹⋆ Rough-edged voice

[promptcalender]

How to not run out of ideas as a writer

allow yourself to be bored: keeping your mind occupied at all times with music, podcasts, books, shows, tv, social media feeds, or whatever won’t allow it to process the input and develop new ideas. next time you’re on the bus and bored, just let your mind wander

consume media: read articles, books, wikipedia pages, folklore… draw inspiration from anything and everything

curate playlists and pinterest boards

every time you have an idea about a plot, a story idea or even just one line of dialogue, put it in a long list that you can come back to any time

create a rich world with a lot of fleshed out characters and details. it is easier to create a story when you actually know what you are working with rather than having to come up with everything alongside your plot

[Prompt Calender: April 21st, World Creativity and Innovation Day]

[concerningwolves]

Full offense but your writing style is for you and nobody else. Use the words you want to use; play with language, experiment, use said, use adverbs, use “unrealistic” writing patterns, slap words you don’t even know are words on the page. Language is a sandbox and you, as the author, are at liberty to shape it however you wish. Build castles. Build a hovel. Build a mountain on a mountain or make a tiny cottage on a hill. Whatever it is you want to do. Write.

[davycoquette]

Your voice is what makes your writing kickass. Do not do not do not strive to make it sound like everyone else’s.

[clevermanka]

🍁 Xavier 🍁 (@xavierck.com)

Here are 543 images (1.5GB) of items at the Philadelphia Museum of Art arms and armor exhibit You're free to use them for anything, even c

[the-ocean-is-trans]

casual reminder that this museum has their entire collection digitized and available free for public use: https://art.thewalters.org/ and they have armor/weapons there

[cantankerouscanuck]

@inky-duchess

[inky-duchess]

Oooooooo

[20th-centuryghost]

HEY ARTISTS!

Do you design a lot of characters living in not-modern eras and you’re tired of combing through google for the perfect outfit references? Well I got good news for you kiddo, this website has you covered! Originally @modmad made a post about it, but her link stopped working and I managed to fix it, so here’s a new post. Basically, this is a costume rental website for plays and stage shows and what not, they have outfits for several different decades from medieval to the 1980s. LOOK AT THIS SELECTION:

OPEN ANY CATEGORY AND OH LORDY–

There’s a lot of really specific stuff in here, I design a lot of 1930s characters for my ask blog and with more chapters on the way for the game it belongs to I’m gonna be designing more, and this website is going to be an invaluable reference. I hope this can be useful to my other fellow artists as well! :)

[horsefigureoftheday]

Sucks how many people were taught that "horses put their ears back when they're mad" but then never taught the difference between "angry backwards ears," "mildly annoyed backwards ears," "pain backwards ears," "concentrated backwards ears," "sleepy backwards ears" and "just happens to be listening to something behind it."

"Horses put their ears back when they're mad" idk man i think it depends

[horsefigureoftheday]

These are all completely different expressions in completely different scenarios, and only two of them are decidedly negative.

[horsefigureoftheday]

Actually, I wanna talk about the third horse, the one putting its ears back in pain. Over the last 15 years veterinarians and animal scientists have worked out pain scales for most domestic animals by taking photos of the during routine procedures.

We know vaccines painful, and by comparing horses at rest with horses getting vaccinated, we've been able to determine how they express pain visually. By looking at horses with disorders like colic, broken bones, wounds, and so on, we can determine their facial expressions during more severe pain.

At zookeeper school we were drilled through the pain faces of the most common lab animals and livestock. Nowadays I believe this has become a routine lesson in all animal related fields, but the general public still doesn't know that this is a thing that exists.

Here are all the pain face/grimace scales I've been able to find. Please study them if you interact with any of these animals on a regular basis:

[getvalentined]

PSA For Digital Artists

Unless your tablet or monitor has some kind of fancy "paper white" lighting option (is that even a thing?) I need you to STOP DRAWING ON A WHITE CANVAS. You are essentially STARING AT A LAMP FOR HOURS.

Save your eyes and use a middle grey canvas instead! My default is hex #8A909B, but you can find what works for you!

I am being so serious right now please stop drawing on a white canvas oh my god you're damaging your eyes no wonder so many digital artists get migraines I thought this was common knowledge but apparently not so please please please take care of your eyes you only get two of them in your whole life and I am begging you to be good to them—

[promptcalender]

Wedding Ring Alternatives

For characters who may not want to wear rings, or a fantasy culture with different customs!

ankle bracelets or cuffs

blood oaths

charm bracelets, which you add onto with each relationship milestone (10/20/… years, kids, grandparents, …)

combining their families’s crests into a new symbol, which is engraved on all important possessions

custom weapons

exchanging each other’s favored weapon

head bands

lighting an eternal fire which shall not die until their love does

magical bonds / oaths

matching tattoos, either somewhere visible to show off, or hidden because of the intimate nature

necklaces without a clasp, that would have to be cut off to be taken off

pieces of armor

planting a tree / flowers in the garden of their new home

sacrificial and ritualistic scarring / branding

temporary ink marks which will fade if the work to upkeep them is not consistently put in

[Prompt Calender: February 3rd, National Wedding Ring Day]

[palemoonpersephone]

Writing Advice: Riding/Horses

Following the popularity of my ‘Writing Advice: Archery’ I thought it might be useful to do a similar piece about horse riding. I’m not claiming to be an expert in the area but I have been riding/around horses for many years, and again there have been several misconceptions on this subject in literature/TV/movies. So here are a few tips if you’re including horse riding in your writing.

Riding

It is not easy, or simple, and takes a lot of practice (Norman knights would begin training at 5 years old, for example). Anyone can sit on a horse and kick it ‘til it goes but this is most definitely not riding - think of it as sitting in the passenger seat of a car and claiming you’re the one driving. 

A connection with your horse is extremely underestimated. You need good communication and to trust one another. Respect your horse, they’ll respect you, and work with them. Trust me, if you try and fight a horse for dominance, you will lose. 

Be familiar with riding equipment, saddles, bridles, boots/leg wraps, helmets, body protectors, boots and chaps etc. and what they’re used for, and tailor to your setting. It would be slightly amiss to have a dressage saddle in a battle setting, or a Western/cowboy saddle in a medieval setting. There are many variations of riding equipment and should be fit to both horse and rider. For example, martingales are useful for horses that tend to lift their heads beyond the point of the bit and/or for horses who are young and strong and need a bit more guidance from the rider.

Know what kind of riding your character is going to be getting involved with. What’s their endgame Are they a dressage rider, a show jumper, a soldier, a messenger, are they training a horse to work well? You don’t gotta worry about looking pretty and essentially doing horse-ballet if you’ve got to get that urgent message delivered asap! 

Do research on riding theory, if you’re not a rider yourself, maybe watch videos/tutorials to visualise it more easily.

Know your aids. These are, basically, physical pressures to manoeuvre the horse. There are five different types: artificial (i.e. whips/spurs), voice, hand, leg and seat. There are lots of good sites to research aids and how to use them. (Half-halt ammirite?) 

Riders tend to always mount from the left side. This is because in the past, typically, a rider would be right-handed and therefore their sword would be on their left side. It was far more practical to swing your right leg up and over and not risk getting your weapon in the way, and it’s one of those things that have just sort of stuck.

Horses

Horses are not stupid. They can suss you out in a heartbeat. If they know you’re not serious, they will mess with you, they will know they can get away with not working and plod ‘round like a giraffe with their hind legs slugging along about a mile behind :P 

While not stupid, they can be skittish and highly strung. They have personalities. Take a bit of time to consider what kind of horse you have - are they experienced/inexperienced, responsive/unresponsive, are they gentle and relaxed or do they spook easily, are they aggressive, are they cheeky? Also there are huge differences between wild and domesticated horses.

There are many different breeds of horse (god, so many) so, again, take this into account. It might not be the best idea to ride a big ploddy cart-horse into battle, or use a thoroughbred for plowing a field. 

Be familiar with their body language. For example, blowing softly through their noses is their way of saying ‘hello’ - do it back! A few signs that your horse is happy include: a loose lower lip, soft round nostrils, a relaxed loosely swinging tail, if they’re happy to feed with you close by. The most classically known sign that a horse is unhappy/angry is having their ears back, and this is true but don’t mistake upright and alert ears for this signal. Alert and upright is good, especially when riding since it means they’re listening to you. It’s when their ears are pinned flat back against their heads. Also if they swivel their back legs towards you then step the fuck back. 

They’re a big responsibility. They need feeding, grooming, maintenance, a warm/dry place to sleep etc. and, most importantly, they need love!

If you’re in doubt about anything, research it!

Hope this was helpful! If you found this useful then feel free to check out my other writing tips/advice/prompts :) 

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[sonneillonv]

As a Dungeon Master I nearly scrolled past this before my brain kicked my own ass and reminded me that I have tried looking up 'Blue Gemstones' at LEAST a dozen times in the last six months and never found anything this helpful.

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