AZIMUTH

this is presumably a writing blog, but it's more like 90% aesthetics and 10% screaming. mainly runs on queue. artblog over at viurasart.

[writingwithfolklore]

Writing Resources to use instead of AI

For coming up with character names:

Behind the name (my absolute fav)

Allows you to choose the origin of where you want the name to be from, whether you want a more feminine vs masculine vs androgenous name (as voted by users), random surname generator, and clicking on the name gives you important info like if there are any famous people with the same name, where it’s from, how common it is, and how people tend to see it, etc.

You can also search their name database by letter or meaning or origin, so if you know you want a character who has a name/surname that starts with an A from Ireland, there’s a whole list for you to choose from.

Census sites

Especially useful if you’re looking for a name from a specific place and/or time period. Just search “(country) census (year)” and you’ll find a database of real people who lived in that place at that time. No one can ever call your names unrealistic again.

For coming up with place names:

Fantasy name generator

This site can basically come up with any name for any person, place, or thing you might ever need. There are also specific generators for different fandoms if you’re looking to make an OC in an established world.

For finding that one word on the tip of your tongue:

One Look Thesaurus

This is my go-to. Not only can you find synonyms like a regular thesaurus, but you can also describe words like “unhappy smile” or “quiet laugh” to find the more specific word you’re looking for.

For coming up with ideas:

Word cloud

When I need to inspire a new idea, I write down all the things I’m interested in (hauntings, academia, lesbians, etc.) and put them into a word cloud to shuffle them next to each other. Sometimes seeing a concept in a new context can spark new ideas!

WWF Discord

This is my discord channel (shameless plug) for when you need to brainstorm off other people but don’t have anyone irl to talk to. We’re also happy to read and give feedback on writing, answer writing questions, or just chat!

For visualizing places and characters:

Pinterest

Pinterest can at times be a bit too sterile for my tastes, but if you use the right words, you can find more realistic photos of places. For example, adding “aesthetic” after basically any word will bring up a more broad collection of photos to help you flesh out places.

This is also a great way to find photos of people and fashion to help visualize characters. I’m bad at describing clothes, so I usually collect photos of outfits to help me know what my characters are wearing. Searching up “character inspiration” will collect more interesting photos and drawings of people who might not exactly be of our world.

(However, to make Pinterest not show you AI results, you have to go into your settings and check the “reduce AI” box. Luckily, it does mostly work.)

Death to Stock

Like pinterest but completely AI free (hooray!) Only drawback is that you have to pay a monthly subscription (about $20 CAD).

Cosmos

Very similar to pinterest but slightly more "artsy". I'm not super familiar with this one but I believe all the photos are human and you can save them and create collections with a free account.

Dupe Photos

Royalty-free stock image site with very Pinterest-core photos!

Minecraft

If you haven’t built your entire fictional city in Minecraft instead of writing, why not? It’s fun.

The Sims

This one is dual purpose because you can not only create your characters in Create a Sim, but you can design their houses. If you really want to go for it, you can bulldoze all the lots in your town and build your world from scratch.

For checking grammar:

Grammar Girl

Easy to follow definitions and examples, and if you learn better by listening, every article comes with a podcast to follow along with instead.

Grammar Monster

This one is my favourite for checking grammar rules because there’s tons of examples in graphics that helps for any situation.

Reedsy

Among other things, reedsy can connect you to professional editors within your budget.

For writing advice:

One Stop for Writers

This one was recommended from my discord channel and has all sorts of tutorials and resources for the writing craft.

My Blog Directory

Another shameless plug, but if you need writing advice on something specific, you can search through my directory to see if it’s there. If it isn’t, you can always send me an ask about it!

For an alternative to Google Docs:

Ellipsus

Think google docs but without AI. Yay!

(will update this list with any more suggestions or resources I discover 😊)

[just-a-readthrough]

A great resource

[papayajuan2019]

the world is running out of glassblowers and yet you want to become a fucking doctor

[sniperserpent]

One of the most jarring moments of my university education was in a physics class when I was given a device that measures gravity and was told “this cost the university sixteen thousand dollars, but the only glass blower in the world who could make the glass springs inside it died so it’s literally irreplaceable. If you drop it those springs will shatter. Go fuck around with it for a day and take some measurements”

[nothingbutthedreams]

In the UK there's a thing called the endangered crafts list which I highly recommend if you fancy discovering some crafts you never even knew existed. Scientific and optical instrument making is considered 'critically endangered' and glassworking (scientific glassware) is just considered endangered, which is for 'crafts with a shrinking market share, an ageing demographic or crafts with a declining number of practitioners.' There's some other crafts in that category which are easier to teach yourself or go to classes on that list, like lithography, marbling or block printing on fabric, so it might be worth considering those if you're looking for something to try.

[downton-not-downtown-smh]

what about blorbhov from my complicated russian novel though

[judasconcrete-deactivated202306]

blorbeaux from my nilihist french plays

[sprachgefuehle]

blorbón from my weird latin american magical realist novels

[hearteyedraccoon]

blorbug from my kafkaesque short stories

[unscharf-an-den-raendern]

von blorbow from my german sturm und drang novel

[dichterfuerstin]

Don Blorbo from my opera

[toomanystoryideas]

błórbżo from my polish poetry

[velociraptrix]

blorbocles from my ancient greek epics

[amarguerite]

Mr. Blorby from my Jane Austen novels

[stripedroseandsketchpads]

Blorbio from my early modern plays

[stripedroseandsketchpads]

Assembling some more from the notes:

[stripedroseandsketchpads]

And the kicker:

[lastvalyrian]

useless rosetta stone

[tarysande]

Waiting for Blorbot

[and-fishing-equipment]

in 2026 DO NOT ask yourself whether your art is GOOD

instead ask:

is it SINCERE

was it CATHARTIC

was it FUN TO MAKE

is it MADE BY ME

and don't forget to stay silly

[yuumei-art]

Inner Rage Because we can't always let it out, so it just grows and grows until it consumes us.

[wifehaver103947]

the new york times is now charging money for my favorite chocolate cake recipe so i bought a subscription and screenshotted it and canceled my subscription and now it's here for you for free

i do a mixture of red wine and fresh squeezed navel orange juice for the liquid, plus the zest of one large orange. now you make the cake

[kindsokind]

Gang, whenever evil nyt tries to prevent you from seeing a delicious recipe, copy the URL. Go to https://archive.ph/ and paste it into the 2nd search box entitled "I want to search the archive for saved snapshots" and you'll get it, free of ads. This works for nearly every paywalled site. You may have to delete the tail of your url if you're following a shared link, fyi

archive.ph

archive.ph allows you to create a copy of a webpage that will always be up even if the original link is down

[darkaviarymc]

Tragedy alignment chart. Feel free to use, but please reblog if you do.

[mikkeneko]

And of course the second part of the tragedy, which is: which quadrant did you think you were in vs. which one you were really in

[mynameisrocks]

[kitbulls]

me: i really dont get why non-floridians lose their fucking shit when they see a beach. it’s just sand and water. who gives a fuck

also me: *sees one (1) mountain* ohohohoohohohohoh holy SHIT holy fuck that’s a big fuCKING ROCK

[newtgeiszler]

i love this post. i have never related to anything less

[dragontatoes]

me, grown up in the Cascades range: *sees open plains*

me: oohhoh no. no ba.d . where . are teh rocks. wheres the woter. oh god it’s just drit everywhere for a million miles I need TREES dammit where are my lumber guardians

[flippityflapjack]

Me, grew up in Nebraska, the Great Plains: *see a forest*

Me: wHy ar e there s.o man y trEes??? They all g.ott so BiG wher is th skY

[zarohk]

Me: Grows up in Boston, mostly travels to cities and Central America: *travels to the Southwest*

Me: where is everyone? Where is everything? What great calamity flatten this world?

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Me: Grows up in rural Australia, travels to Europe: Green? How so much green?? Paddocks aren’t green! Why is it full of green grass like a cartoon??

[bunjywunjy]

Me: Grew up in the American Midwest *arrives on the coastline of any ocean, sprinting up and down the beach very fast* SHARKS? SHARKS?SHARKS? SHARKS? SHARKS? SHARKS?

[gallusrostromegalus]

Monkey very excited about exploring new biome.

[prismatic-bell]

Me: grew up on the Great Lakes, now lives homesick in a desert.

Maple tree: *exists*

Me: IT’S GREEN IT’S SO GREEEEEEEENNN OMG CAN I CLIMB YOU I LOVE YOUUUU

[caffeinewitchcraft]

Me, grew up in a valley and now lives in a flood plain: where the fuck are the walls? Anything can just get in here, we are going to slide off the earth

[selfship-quotes]

making a collection

[selfship-quotes]

adding to the collection

[inbabylontheywept]

People are so much more sad, and desparate, and lonely than you think. I have had three incidents in the last four months were a technician I was working with was being either dangerously unfocused (we work with high voltage), or just flat out angry with their coworkers, and every time when I just pulled them aside to say hey, this isn't you, you're nice, and you're competent, so something must be up - what can I do to help - they have responded by bursting into tears. One guy was struggling to get his wife moved into a care home, one guy just got served divorce papers, and the other hadn't slept a wink the night before because his daughter had the pukes.

I haven't spent my whole life responding to people being rude, or stupid, or dangerous with knee jerk compassion. It's a new habit. The first time I did that as the lead for my lab, it was because the guy genuinely was so good natured that I knew something had to be off. But the other two times were just me going, alright, lets see if it always goes this well, and so far, it has. I'm almost 30, and I just figured out that the #1 reason people are shitty are because they are going through shit.

I don't think you have, like, a moral obligation to respond to people being jerks with knee jerk compassion. But it has made my life so much easier the last four months that I would recommend trying. For your own sake. Please.

(I'll step off my soapbox now. Enjoy your Sunday.)

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

personally I think an underutilized ship dynamic is "this is so ill-advised that we are both aware on some level that it cannot possibly end in anything but a breakup so acrimonious that we'll spend the rest of our lives hunting each other for sport, but we have decided to keep making out with each other anyway."

[oysters-aint-for-me]

BJ has a very clear understanding of Objectives unfortunately he lacks that level of comprehension when it comes to tactics methods procedures etc. Thus: his Behaviors.

[oysters-aint-for-me]

[chemicalcain]

this is the single best description i have ever heard for a cat

[ariadne-mouse]

he is Calculating

[magnetictapedatastorage]

The equivalent of Antarctic research stations but in fantasy worlds like for example there’s an evil terrible region of rotting and nightmares but like nine miles from the edge there’s a very ugly little building optimistically called Observation Center 1 and it’s full of normal humans just vibing. for like 90% of the year they can’t leave because that’s Death Fog Season but it balances out because they can study the ghost migrations and also hear the whalesong-like calls of The Unspeakable Ones asking you to come outside for a game of checkers but thankfully the checkers set is kept locked up to slow down anyone that gets tempted

[narutoheretic]

It's always been fascinating to me that Danzo has a baku summon and I wanted to talk about that a sec. We observe early on - and it continues to be obvious - that the animal associated via summon tells us something about that person. Danzo could have had any animal that could create a wind somehow, but we get

a mythical creature, which I think might be the only non-basic animal we see aside from the bizarre stuff Pain summons (my personal headcanon is that Danzo's summoning contract originally came from Uzushiogakure)

a creature with very positive associations, originally cited as a protector against pestilence and death and going on to more popularly be a guardian of dreams, which is such a charged concept in Naruto, where 'dreams' large and small are so often spoken of, albeit in a different sense of the word than the baku's nightmare-eater job

The one potentially negative trait of baku (according to the wiki page this is not a deep dive lol) makes this even more interesting, and gives a possible insight into Danzo's character

A child having a nightmare in Japan will wake up and repeat three times, "Baku-san, come eat my dream." Legends say that the baku will come into the child's room and devour the bad dream, allowing the child to go back to sleep peacefully. However, calling to the baku must be done sparingly, because if he remains hungry after eating one's nightmare, he may also devour their hopes and desires as well, leaving them to live an empty life.

in other words... Danzo is associated with an entity that protects, but in the course of protecting from 'bad dreams' can also destroy hopes and desires for the future. Zealous defense against threats, born from being a genuine protector (of children, notably, since valuing children as the most essential part of the village is a concept brought up several times in Naruto) that can go too far and damage the very thing you're protecting by eliminating the feelings that make life worth living and the future possible... I feel like I'm onto something here.

[thisisalovestry]

file -> phrases that are going to shift something in me forever

[insomniparty]

[probuccalfat]

this tweet is on par with “omg you people can’t do anything” in terms of how it changed the way i think and move about the world because now when i tell people i’ve only had my doppio espresso i hear this tweet word for word

[bpd-dylan-hall-deactivated20190]

“our teeth and ambitions are bared” is a zeugma

and it’s a zeugma where one of the words is literal and one is metaphorical which is the BEST KIND

[tuesdayisfordancing]

I didn’t know about zeugmas until just now! That is so awesome, everybody: 

zeug·ma ˈzo͞oɡmə/

noun

a figure of speech in which a word applies to two others in different senses (e.g.,John and his license expired last week ) or to two others of which it semantically suits only one (e.g., with weeping eyes and hearts ).

ISN’T THAT AWESOME??

[professorsparklepants]

#in english class in high school my teacher had us write our own zeugmas in class#and one guy came up with ‘he fell from her favor… and the window’#i am forever looking for opportunities to use that one

[siesiegirl]

She dropped her dress and inhibitions at the door.

[crumbvulet]

What’s this? My favorite rhetorical device showing up on my dashboard?

[thranduilland]

IT HAS A NAMEEEE!! OH MY GOD!!!

[candiikismet]

I LOVE THIIIIIS!!!

[orriculum]

One I’ve loved was “on their weekend trip they caught three fish and a cold”

I love these they’re like a pun and a metaphor wrapped up into one neat phrase

[the-problematic-trolley]

I, this feather, and your fly are down.

[foxytonic]

I broke my vows and my chains.