honestly it was a red flag when bbc sherlock went “well obviously the word written in blood isn’t the german word for revenge, it’s clearly the beginning of the name ‘rachel’, what absolute idiot would fail to see that” when in the original novel it is, in fact, the german word for revenge, which sherlock points out gleefully to a roomful of policemen who all figure it’s the beginning of the name ‘rachel.’

and by red flag I mean it was a clear sign that the adaptation was trying to one-up the source material, instead of engaging with it with love.

wip wednesday was fun and useful, but time is fake and weekdays are busy, so now every day is wip wednesday! by which I mean I'm going to pin this list of wips, and y'all can put any one in my inbox whenever you like and I'll write three sentences for it and post them. and if you want to join in, tag me and we can trade prompts back and forth!

college shenanigans

Kindrie settles in

Ink Upon the Moon

Whistle Up A Bad Idea

wolfin' time

a secret sixth thing (just prompt me whatever)

The plan is to change the list every week or so, but we've already established that this plan does not play to my strengths, so I for one am not holding my breath. The plan is also to roll a die and prompt myself at least once a day, but, well, see above! Still, I think this'll be fun ^^

i was tagged by @finxwrites (and also @tanoraqui, a million years ago) to post the last line i wrote!

Natasha glances up to catch Clint’s eye. She writes, As long as I can.

(i think that's going to be the last line of the fic hehe)

i'm tagging @alwinfy, @paperairplanesopenwindows, @cassiesinsanity, @arithmonym, @aurorashard, and anyone else who wants to share :D

Personal shit under the cut. Gets pretty heavy. 

I’m fairly open about this stuff in general but I just had to let it out. I’m still on my first cup of coffee so I get rambly :P

I have so many different pains I’m embarrassed to bring up new ones anymore. I feel like a burden bringing it up to others (which so many assure me that they’re fine with. and I do appreciate that. But it still feels like I shouldn't. I mean hell I almost left an apology for getting rambly last paragraph.)

Aside from the mental BS I have to fight: combating if I’m “good enough”/imposters syndrome. Trying to focus on the positives in life (there are so many, I really do love my life. I wouldn't change any of it honestly aside from the pains). Constant anxiety making me second guess everything. 3 classes making me feel eternally behind. It’s already a lot but

My physical state wants to play too.

My allergies are on high alert because not only am I allergic to cats (and yes I DO have one, my roommates have two. I WILL put my face in their bellies and you can not stop me. I didn’t know about it until after I got Finx and he is my child. It’s worth it) BUT I’m also allergic to grass pollen??? So summer kicks my ass by sneezing more than usual AND I need to wear long pants the entire time because I’ll break out pretty bad.

My kidneys are still shit. But I need coffee to just get myself through the day.

My shoulders and knees are garbage thanks to my old job. I used to have a personal trainer but he moved/school has made it so I cant continue practicing it

Probably have carpel tunnel in both wrists. (Combo of old job and drawing) 

My jaw started to feel disconnected when I lay down? Thats a fun new one. I had to take a week off of weed to see if it was just me being high (which is making the anxiety and depression so much worse cause)

My ribs feel like they’re on fire. It’s very hard to sleep, sit, hell even wear shirts. Comes in waves where I feel like my ribs will burst through my chest. The doctor has 0 clue whats wrong, all tests and xrays look fine which is like...I SHOULD be in perfect health. Why does it feel like I’m dying?

It’s probably stress? I’d love to think most of this will go away after I graduate.

Some probably will but...

I’d like to go to bed without feeling pain.

I’d like to go through a day and feel...good. Fully. It’s been a long time since I have. Despite everything, I still go on my normal busy life. I try to balance school and social life. I never really have downtime to myself, and when I do I have a constant voice telling me what ELSE I should be doing or who I’m “blowing off” or missing out on. Trying to keep mental breakdowns from showing since I’m constantly around people but needing to focus on projects. 

Of course, all this affects my relationship. So that's some more fun added stress. He’s super nice about it but...

I am so tired.

I really hope in a year, after I graduate, some of these things will go away.

I really fucking do.

if you’re ever in doubt about what pov to write a scene from, a good rule of thumb is to pick the person who knows the least about what’s going on. lots of pros!

you automatically have some level of tension in the scene, as they either struggle to figure out what’s happening or completely fail to notice it

if they know as much or barely more than the reader, the reader is learning things alongside them, which will help make exposition feel more natural

if they know less than the reader you now have dramatic irony! great for humor and/or agonizing tension

helps you keep secrets from the reader longer, since your pov character doesn’t know them either. (I mean you could also just carefully omit major info and pretend you thought it was obvious. see the Queen’s Thief series for several examples that span a whole novel!)

helps add a fun little mystery for the reader as they try to figure out those secrets (fun little mysteries are great attention hooks!)

“what’s going on” can mean anything btw, it could be the plot or the worldbuilding or another character’s motivation or the location of the buried treasure.

for best results, think about what each character in the scene wants to get out of this scene, and then pick the pov of the person who has least control over/knowledge of whether they get what they want. failing that, figure out which character has the most important secret that’s affecting the course of the scene, and write from the pov of someone who doesn’t know the secret. (the secret can be stuff like “I’m in love with you,” “I’m a spy for the spider queen,” “I’m the one who stole the muffins,” just whatever’s adding an undercurrent of tension to the conversation.)

this rule won’t be right for every occasion and you should trust your gut, but it’s served me well for years, so I encourage all you writers to consider it when figuring out how to approach a scene :)

A neat thing about The Goblin Emperor is that while it's a classic trope of the lost heir plunged into a morass of courtly intrigue where he has no idea whom he can trust, the very first thing it does is emphasize how much he has to choose to trust anyway. Maia has to trust the head of his household to appoint his body servants, and he has to trust those servants. He has to trust the adremaza to appoint his nohecharei, and he has to trust his nohecharei. Any one of these people could kill him. Any one of them could carry gossip to his enemies, or make him look bad in public and thus weaken him in the eyes of the court. But if he so much as implies a discomfort with these choices, he'll offend powerful people without cause – and anyway, how could he possibly pick better? He has no idea what he's doing. He's forced to rely on people. He's forced to trust. The only person he actually personally chooses is Csevet, and what he chooses to do is essentially hand Csevet the keys to the empire. He got so fucking lucky there, that could have gone so incredibly badly.

But it didn't. Because, as the book emphasizes, trust is the right choice. Even when it does go badly, even when he is betrayed, that doesn't mean the trust was wrong. Because when one person betrays him, every single other person around him shows how truly loyal they are, not only by rushing to his aid, but by caring so deeply and obviously about him.

That's why this book feels so odd for its genre: there's a bunch of complex courtly intrigue going on, but Maia never plays the game. He never schemes, he's never playing 5D chess with his enemies. He has to navigate the factions of the court and try to win them to his side, but he does so by being kind and forthright. He's completely blindsided by the coup attempts, and frankly so are we, because he's just been focusing on other stuff! And he survives them, not through his own cunning, but through the love of those he placed his trust in.

It’s kind of interesting that Dracula goes on and on about how being notably foreign in England will make him friendless, for “a stranger in a strange land, he is no one; men know him not—and to know not is to care not for.” Meanwhile no one in Bistritz knows Jonathan, and yet they weep for him, press gifts upon him, beg him to turn back, and even risk their lives to try to get him away from danger.

Maybe the count makes no friends in strange lands because he just sucks.

so if the May 3rd entry was about entering into “the orient,” May 4th is about the ultimately doomed attempt to prize Civilized Reason over backward superstition. and it’s just such an incredibly classic horror trope, isn’t it? a carful of city slicker teenagers are driving to a cabin in the woods, and when they stop for directions the menacing old hillbilly tells them to turn back now if they value their lives. a young woman traveling alone mentions offhand that she’s staying at the old motel on the outskirts of town, and the gas station cashier grips her hand and begs her not to go. the locals Know Something, and our modern enlightened protagonists are certain it’s just unfounded superstition. 

and this is the first thrill of fear, before we get to the monsters or demons or serial killers or whatever. this is the hook that catches the audience, because it taps into an anxiety woven through the very foundations of our oh-so-modern society: what if we’re wrong? what if the things we left behind in the name of progress were actually important? what if, in making ourselves suited for this brave new world we’ve built, we’ve left ourselves vulnerable?

we are masters of the world, we tell ourselves. we’ve cracked the codes of chemistry, biology, physics – all the secrets of the universe laid bare, and we have used that knowledge to stripe the landscape with roads and railways, fill the air with radio waves, conquer the skies and the seas and all that lies between. we rule it all, and nothing can surpass us anymore.

right?

etiquette for copying tags

you can and should copy tags onto the body of the post if you think they’re cool! the only rule for doing this is you should @ the person you got the tags from to give credit. this is polite! do this!!

but I’m persnickety so here are some lesser rules, which are not essential but which I think you should also follow bc they make the site experience nicer

1. if you can, copy-paste the tags directly, don’t screenshot. this makes the tags accessible for everyone using e-readers! I say “if you can” bc I’m given to understand this is basically impossible on tumblr mobile. rip everyone using the mobile app, braver than any us marine

2. the format™ for tags is to have a # in front of every line. sometimes you will copy-paste the tags and they won’t look that way, for mysterious reasons knowable only to software devs. you should tidy them up so they do, bc if there’s nothing clearly demarcating the start of a tag, it’s all just a weird river of words. it’s like removing all the periods from a paragraph.

3. it’s common practice to just paste the whole thing as a block of text, but in my opinion it’s nice sometimes to break it up into paragraphs, especially if it’s a lot of tags. improves readability, you know? more pleasant than reading a massive block of text

4. it is good and right to add image descriptions to screenshotted tags if you encounter them in the wild, to make the post accessible for everyone using e-readers. good samaritan behavior, we love you

5. don’t screenshot and then add an image description in the same reblog?? just paste the tags in directly?? why would you take up twice the space you need to and make everyone read the thing twice??? if you have the capacity to show the tags as text, then you...have the capacity to show the tags as text??? clown behavior, this baffles me

6. ‘prev tags’ has been outlawed by tumblr staff

devastating to go into the tag for an obscure vampire movie I've been quietly obsessed with for years to find mostly gifsets of minor characters (played by big-name actors) and review blogs saying they didn't like it :(

@ everyone who made a post saying "I liked it :)" I am blowing you a kiss. everyone who made a lovely gifset or photoset of the cinematography I am tipping my hat. that one poster that said "bro did y'all just miss the Entire Message about class and race or???" I am shaking your hand with enthusiasm there was SUCH a message about class and race

anyway everybody should watch Night Teeth and revel in glitzy flashy modern vampires in LA with me

potato suggestion

boil the potatoes as usual (chop till they're all about the same size, put them in water that just covers them all, lid, cook on high heat until soft), then cut them into cubes and fry in olive oil. (butter would be nice too probably. other cooking oils won't taste quite as nice but will undoubtedly still be good.) sprinkle on salt and pepper as they're in the frying pan, plus anything else your heart requires

that's it that's the recipe. I got this off a clickbaity article saying "for perfect home fries, do them the french way!" and calling these pommes persillade, and they do recommend specifically sprinkling on parsley (persille) as they're frying. but I did just salt and pepper and they were delicious, so. follow your bliss

I'm pretty sure if you cook the potatoes just a smidge too much, so they're over-soft when you fry them, the bits that come in direct contact with the frying pan will be tastier & crispier. so that's a tip. just be careful not to cook them so much that they fall apart when you try to chop them into cubes

but hey if you do, you can always make mashed potatoes

reason #354 why my ancestors were stronger than me

if I had to cut up fabric I had spun and woven by hand to make my garments, I would cry real tears, so many that the garments would become stiff with salt and then I'd have to launder the fabric, by hand,

you know that thing where kids read about children fighting monsters or whatever and feel empowered, while adults read that same story and go "oh god why is no one protecting these kids"? I'm calling it the Child Hero Endangerment effect

A useful thing to internalize is that everything has a physical component. Smells are airborne particulates that enter your nose. Emotions are chemicals traveling through your brain. Thoughts are electric pulses traveling through cells in your body. Electric pulses are a transfer of electrons between atoms. Light is made up of photons that bounce off of or pass through objects, and they physically enter your eyes to allow for sight. Every bit of data in your computer is stored in a specific location in your hard drive. Data in ‘the cloud’ is also in a physical location on a hard drive, it’s just someone else’s hard drive, and it’s transferred to your computer by radio waves, which exist physically in the air. The air is made up of molecules, and when you breathe they enter your lungs and some of the oxygen molecules get grabbed for chemical reactions with your cells to produce energy. 

Sometimes this will help you grasp ephemeral systems, like the internet or weather patterns. Sometimes it can be existentially terrifying, like how your entire personality can be permanently altered by a brain injury. But it’s always a good thing to keep in mind when you’re facing a complex problem you want to solve, or just understand.

I’m reading A Study In Scarlet and I understand now what that poster meant about Holmes not having any asshole energy at all, but radiating absolutely lethal levels of bitch energy

the trouble with writing a story is that it is so much easier to instead read a story that already exists. but the trouble with doing that is I really want to read this story, the one I’m working on, and I can’t because it doesn’t exist >:(