strawberryamanita:

Observation #1: The prefix “a-” means “none”, such as in “asexual”, “apolitical” and “Atheism”.

Observation: The word “unicorn” is a combination of “uni”, meaning “one”, and “cornus”, meaning “horn”.

Conclusion:

ALT

This is an acorn.

shatterpath:

sazandorable:

mathiasandthefinntrolls:

Please return us to a world where Notp and squick are used for a ship you don’t like instead of just making up a load of bullshit about how immoral it is or w/e lol 

a short selection of concepts and phrases that used to be commonplace in fandom and we’d really benefit from making that a thing again:

NOTP: the opposite of an OTP (One True Pairing). It is a ship a fan strongly dislikes. The word is a portmanteau of ‘no’ and ‘OTP’ and thus is not a contraction of any particular phrase.

Squick: anything that is a deep-seated, visceral turn-off. Squicks may be shared by many fans or be specific to one; one person’s kink may be another person’s squick.

YKINMKATO, or kink-tomato: Your Kink Is Not My Kink, And That’s Okay: used to indicate support for fannish diversity and to distinguish between disapproval or kink shaming and simply having different taste.

DLDR: Don’t Like, Don’t Read: a phrase used to warn against complaints about an aspect of fic or meta. A “live and let live” philosophy of fandom, which places the responsability for avoiding content one doesn’t want to see on the side of the fanwork consumer, rather that on the creator’s.

SALS: Ship And Let Ship: similar to the above specifically about shipping tastes.

YMMV: Your Mileage May Vary: a phrase used to acknowledge that any given individual’s personal opinion on the topic at hand may differ due to their own tastes, standards, values, experiences, etc.

As the OP points out, all of these crucially imply no moral judgment of what they’re designing.

(definitions lifted more or less wholesale from fanlore’s relevant pages)

bring the healthy fun back to fandom!

butterfly-dimensions:

lyralit:

traits turned sour

• honest - insensitive
• persuasive - manipulative
• caring - overprotective
• confidence - arrogance
• fearless - cocky
• loyalty - an excuse
• devotion - obsession
• agreeable - lazy
• perfectionism - insatisfaction
• reserved - aloof
• cautious - skeptical
• self loved - selfish
• available - distractible
• emotional - dramatic
• humble - attention-seeking
• diligent - imposing
• dutiful - submissive
• assertive - bossy
• strategic - calculated
• truthful - cruel

Great list for romance writers, for example. Rose-colored glasses might make a character see another character as having some [trait from the left column] even though they’re actually [trait from the right column].

fitgothgirl:

kleefkruid:

Every fun post on here that encourages people to have hobbies/be creative always gets an avalanche of “Some people are poor Karen” type reactions and respectfully, you’re all super annoying. I’ve never lived above the poverty line and this is a list of hobbies I have that were cheap or entirely free:

• Read books: Go to the library, lend a book from a friend
• knitting, crochet, embroidery: Get some needles from the bargan store and ask around, people have leftovers from projects they’ll happily give you. Thrift stores also often carry leftover fabric and other supplies. And talk about your hobby loud enough and an old lady will show up and gift you their whole collection, because there are way more old ladies with a closet full of wool than there are grandchildren who want to take up the hobby.
• Origami/paper crafts: get some scrap paper and scissors, watch a youtube tutorial
• walking: put on shoes open door
• pilates/yoga/etc: get a mat or just use your carpet, watch a youtube tutorial
• Houseplants: look online for people that swap plant cuttings. There are always people giving out stuff for free to get you started. If you’re nice enough you’ll probably get extra
• gardening: You’re gonna need some space for this one of course but you can just play around with seeds and cuttings from your grocery vegetables.
• aquarium keeping is a bit of an obscure one but I got most of my stuff second hand for cheap or free and now I have a few thousand euro worth of material and plants.
• drawing/art: You get very far just playing with bargan store materials. I did my entire art degree with mostly those.
• writing: Rotate a cow in your head for free
• cooking: again one you can make very expensive, but there are many budget recipes online for free. Look for African or Asian shops to get good rice and cheap spices.
• Join a non-profit: Cities will have creative organisations who let you use woodworking machines or screen presses or laser cutters or 3D printers etc etc etc for a small fee. Some libraries also lend out materials.
• candle making: You need some molds (cheap), wick, two old cooking pots for au bain marie melting and a ton of scrap candles, ask people to keep them aside for you.
• a herbarium, flower pressing: Leaves are free, wildflowers too, ask if you can take from peoples gardens.
• puzzles: thrift stores, your grandma probably
• Citizen science: look for projects in your area or get the iNaturalist app

And lastly and most importantly: Share! Share your supllies, share your knowledge. Surround yourself with other creative people and before you know it someone will give you a pot of homemade jam and when you want to paint your kabinet someone will have leftover paint in just the right color and you can give them a homemade candle in return and everyone is having fun and building skills and friendships and not a cent is exchanged. We have always lived like this, it’s what humans are build to do.

And all of it sure beats sitting behind a computer going “No stranger, I refuse to let myself have a good time.”

Anyway I’m logging off bc I’m making some badges for a friend who cooked for me and then I’m going to fix some holes in everyones clothes.

• Birdwatching - download a free app for identifying and/or logging and go for walks or hikes or just sit in your yard/at your window depending on where you live. (My biologist friend uses the Merlin Bird ID app for identifying and eBird for logging, so that’s what I got now that I’m getting into it. These apps are associated btw, both by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology). A cheap/basic pair of binoculars helps too.
• Crosswords and other word puzzles - lots of free sites
• Learn a language - Duolingo is free, among other apps
• Photography - Most people have smartphones these days that actually have decent enough cameras that could suffice for beginners and intermediates - the important part is your eye and the composition, etc. Plus there are free Photoshop-like sites for editing, like pixlr.com. Also you can find old, great quality DSLRs that still work for cheap! They’re not like cell phones lol; my Canon is almost 20 years old and works like a charm. And good ol’ YouTube University can give you beginner lessons if you don’t know what to look for or how to get started.
• Journaling (and/or bullet journaling)
• Read lyrics along with songs while listening to them. If you don’t have Spotify, there are tons of free lyric websites out there.
• Research an unfamiliar topic either online at home or at the library.

Also for any hobby or just life, there’s always the Buy Nothing Project and freecycle and Trash Nothing where people exchange things rather than throwing away stuff they don’t need!

roguecompanion1812:

rjeddystone:

rooksandravens:

homeworkforpigeons:

me: *writes fic*

me: great! time to post to ao3-

ao3 summary box: *exists*

me: 

ao3 summary box:

me:

ao3 summary box: 

me:

Ooh, this is actually kinda a neat thing, because you can think of it as a checklist:

• Who: Main character(s)
• Why: Character goal or desire (stated)
  
• Why: Character need (implied)
• When: Inciting Incident
• What: Means (that achieves the goal/need)
  
• Where: Place A >> Place B
• How: The Plan
• Obstacle(s): antagonist or challenge

For example:

• Who: Bilbo Baggins, a respectable hobbit of Hobbiton
• Why: Treasure, wealth (stated)
  
• Why: Adventure, self-respect (implied)
• When: After supper
• What: Quest
• Where: Hobbiton >> The Lonely Mountain
• How: A company of dwarves, a wizard, and an ancient map and key
  
• Main antagonist(s): a dragon

Thus, in less than 100 words:

• Bilbo Baggins is a respectable hobbit in Hobbiton, never making any trouble or having any adventures. But when a wizard and a company of dwarves invite themselves to dinner, Bilbo finds himself joining their quest from the shires of Hobbiton to the legendary Lonely Mountain, the home of a long lost treasure, and quite, possibly, a dragon.  

~~~~

The Anatomy of Story by John Truby is a really good book by the by, if anyone’s interested in this sort of thing.

This is super helpful!’

potsiepumpkin:

Useful information

mightofmerchants:

Some people have asked me if I can publish my mapmaking tools. So I developed a software. 🙂

Here is the result:

Canvas of Kings on Steam

Canvas of Kings is a minimalistic mapmaking tool that focuses on randomness and auto-generated elements on user-definable and interactive pa

store.steampowered.com

adorkastock:

Do you need some facial expressions references?
😭😔😝🙄😐😁😗😫😬🥺😠

I have an Expressions Pack!

You can now get a $0+ preview in my Ko-fi that has 25 expressions from three different angles.

Or you can grab the full 399 image pack with 133 expressions for $12USD

HAPPY DRAWING! 😱✨

dainesanddaffodils:

One of my favorite phrases my Creative Writing professor had for when you’re writing fantasy is ‘giving your story a Flux Capacitor’.

Because it’s not real, it doesn’t exist. But the way it’s thrown into Back to the Future, at no point does it throw the audience off or suspend any more disbelief than time travel would. You believe Doc when he says he created the Flux Capacitor - the thing that makes time travel possible, because the universe never questions him. 

So it essentially means like, there are going to be elements to your universe that are just not gonna make any sense, even if you set up a whole system based on it. And the only way to make it work is completely own it. You cannot second-guess your system or else the reader will too. You can give it the strangest explanation, but write it like you own it.