“This is your daily, friendly reminder to use commas instead of periods during the dialogue of your story,” she said with a smile.
“Unless you are following the dialogue with an action and not a dialogue tag.” He took a deep breath and sat back down after making the clarifying statement.
“However,” she added, shifting in her seat, “it’s appropriate to use a comma if there’s action in the middle of a sentence.”
“True.” She glanced at the others. “You can also end with a period if you include an action between two separate statements.”
Things I didn’t know
“And–” she waved a pen as though to underline her statement–“if you’re interrupting a sentence with an action, you need to type two hyphens to make an en-dash.”
listen… harry potter is the most savage person in the entire series like this kid decimates people with one comeback can you imagine james potter would have been so proud like
“they stuff people’s heads down the toilet the first day at stonewall. want to come upstairs and practice?” "no, thanks. the poor toilet’s never had anything as horrible as your head down it – it might be sick.” fucking eleven year old harry!! already a lil mini savage!!!!!
“listening to the news! again?“ "well, it changes every day, you see” my boy!!! mouthing off to the dursleys!! who gives a fuck?? not harry potter
“’congratulations, harry! i wonder if you could give me a quick word? how you felt facing that dragon? how do you feel now about the fairness of the scoring?’ ‘yeah, you can have a word,’ said harry savagely. ‘goodbye!’” holy fuck!! when harry potter literally does not give a shit anymore and jk rowling knows it and literally!!! canonically!!! makes him a savage harry is literally savage it says it right there in the goblet of fire
“it’s time you learned some respect!” “it’s time you earned it.” mouthing off to the minister of magic damn harry authority who????? what??? respecting your elders??? harry doesn’t give a shit!!!!
“sure you can manage that broom, potter? got plenty of special features, hasn’t it? shame it doesn’t come with a parachute - in case you get too near a dementor.“
“pity you can’t attach an extra arm to yours, malfoy, then it could catch the snitch for you.” oh shit!!!! legit how many times do u think malfoy literally cried to his dad because harry burned him!!!! where’s the aloe vera!!!!
“yes, sir.“ "there’s no need to call me ‘sir’ professor.” oh fucking shit!!!! did you think i was gonna forget this!!! the holy grail of harry being savage as fuck oh my god!!!! james potter is fucking cheering in heaven!!!! he made a cake to commemorate this moment!!!! three years later lily’s chillin and james comes up and he’s like “holy fuck lil remember that one time harry was like ‘no need to call me sir professor’ and snape like flipped shit!!! that was fucking awesome” and lily is like “shut the fuck up we get it your son is a savage”
- the rise of old friends senior dog sanctuary
- Hamilton
- pokemon go
- female ghostbusters
- i don’t give a fuck im outta here Obama
- captain america civil war
- girl, black guy and latino guy leads in new star wars
- deadpool
- lemonade
- literally???! Nothing??? Else????
… . and this is just what I came up with in a pretty lazy google search in an hour, including distractions where I went down the research rabbit-hole for a bit because holy crap some of that stuff’s NEAT, guys!
And I know I’m missing stuff, because I wanted a citation for every single thing I put on there.
And like I do actually get the sudden overwhelmed feeling of EVERYTHING SUCKS? but that mindset is, at this point, literally our worst enemy. “Everything is terrible somebody do something” helplessness is what will in fact consign us to everything BEING terrible.
Everything is not terrible. In fact there are new ways, every single month, wherein new opportunities and miracles are happening and no that does not balance out the bad shit but it gives every reason to FIGHT the bad shit, and to get past the bad shit, and to make sure the bad shit ISN’T the overwhelming stain.
So.
I want EVERY single one of my followers to read this. PLEASE I know a lot of bad things happened this year and it’s ok to be upset but all of this pessimism is only making things worse
- good grades are important, but so is experience. your 4.0 is exceptional, but your resume is an entire page and that incredible gpa takes up very little space. so take full advantage of internships, clubs, research opportunities, volunteer work, anything you can that pertains to your major. you’ll thank yourself when you start applying for jobs.
- if you are passionate about a club or organization that has nothing to do with your future career path, that is perfectly okay! stick with it every year, hold leadership positions, do the best you can in it. the passion, leadership, and loyalty speaks volumes.
- get to know the professors in your major classes and let them get to know you too. go talk to them, even if you don’t have any questions about the class. one day you’re going to need references and letters of recommendations and their words carry weight.
- learn how to study. it’s different for everyone. if studying with other people is unproductive for you, then don’t feel bad about not going to the study group that your classmates organized. studying hard is good, but studying smart is better.
- sometimes you have to stay in and study for your huge exam while your friends go out to dinner. but sometimes you just have to say screw it and go with them anyway. you’re in college to learn, but the spontaneous late night runs to taco bell is something you’ll cherish for a lifetime.
- if your college has some sort of career center, take advantage of it. they can help you with your resume, your interview skills, your cover letter, everything. they can point you in the direction of internships and companies that are hiring. career centers are incredible resources that your tuition paid for, so you might as well use it.
- always keep an umbrella, a water bottle, and some snacks in your backpack. you’ll thank yourself.
- in every class, make at least one friend and get their number. it’s helpful to have someone in your classes that can send you notes if you overslept or can clarify assignments. these people are absolutely crucial – they will save your butt more times than once.
- if you come really close to making that grade that you really needed on a certain exam, don’t give up on it. follow through. don’t email your professor – go talk to them about it. see where you went wrong, understand the mistakes that you made and explain to them why the question tricked you. tell them that the question you missed will keep you from making a certain grade in the class. don’t beg them for mercy, don’t ask them to boost your grade. groveling isn’t as appealing as a student who is genuinely interested to see where they went wrong. teachers appreciate students who care enough to follow up. and they just might end up changing your grade because of it. it’s happened to me before. and if they don’t end up changing it, then you did all that you could. the world will go on. i promise.
- before an interview, go into a bathroom stall and assume a superhero pose. legs apart, hands on your hips, head held high. hold it for a couple minutes. this boosts your testosterone and lowers your cortisol, which increases your confidence and decreases anxiety. after the pose, do a little dance with your limbs out long. i don’t know if this does anything for you physiologically, but it helps with the jitters. take a few deep breaths and tell yourself you got this one in the bag. it may sound silly but it really works, i swear by it.
- make the most of these 4 years. i know you’ve heard people say it goes by fast, but you don’t realize how fast it’s gone until you’re two months away from your graduation and your mind is completely blown. so milk it for all it’s worth and don’t waste any time – start the first day of your freshman year. put yourself out there, try something new, make mistakes, meet as many people as you can, go to the football games and the basketball games and the equestrian meets, stay up all night and climb the buildings on campus and watch the sunrise, go to the library during finals week even though it’s crowded - there’s this odd comfort and unity that comes from being among all the other stressed out students, study hard, play hard, don’t wish away your week and look forward to the weekend – use every single day as an opportunity to do something you’ll remember, something you’ll thank yourself for, something new.
- the moral of the story is that you have four years to do everything you possibly can so that when graduation is right around the corner, you can look back and have zero regrets – or maybe a couple drunken ones, but no need to dwell on those. you did it and you did it well. that’s the feeling you want.
A friend of mine is taking an astronomy class, and she was telling me about some of the impressively large telescopes that exist throughout the world. These are the sorts of things that cost hundreds-of-millions, sometimes billions of dollars, and see into the deepest, farthest, most distant recesses of space, beyond anything even conceivable in human imagination.
And of course, for projects that take many years, hundreds of people, and billions of dollars, that broaden the entire realm of human understanding, the telescopes need names. And no one tops astronomers at naming.
Ask yourself, what should one call a very large telescope? Something cool? Something unique? Something meaningful. Well ask no more, as astronomers have solved that problem. Allow me to introduce you to the
Brilliant. Beautiful. Send it to the presses Jim. But wait! What about a telescope that’s even larger! Worry not Jim, as we’ve got that covered:
Of course. Exceptional. Elegant. But wait! What if there’s one even larg–
ok so story time because i absolutely cannot keep my mouth shut about this!
i work for a lab at my school which happens to be an astrophysics lab, and we work with gamma rays on the order of over 100 TeV. we call this VHEGRP or Very High Energy Gamma Ray Physics. The group I work for? VERITAS, or the
Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System.
but that’s not the funny part
recently (and I say summer of 2015 recently) more telescopes have been in the works to expand VEHGR research, and more specifically CTA (The Cherenkov Telescope Array) is working towards making telescope arrays all around the globe so that we may see the entirety of the gamma ray sky. It’s all very exciting, and loads of us were pooled together to solder parts for the Schwarzschild-Couder telescope
the hilarious part
was coming up with names for all this
I kid you not. Imagine if you will several older professors who are Very Important and take Business Skype Meetings and you can never see them because they are Always Busy. now imagine if you will those same professors coming up to a bunch of college kids and asking us to name their groups, while keeping a few specific words in that acronym/initialism/etc.
Yes. I’m not even joking. Half of these names are made up by overly-caffeinated 4am college kids sitting around a table saying random names and eventually those names become the actual acronym for a Very Important Scientific Group.
Now I had the pleasure (and several others of us) of being approached to create a name for a new group of people that would be in charge of debugging these new telescope systems. Yes, that’s right. An international scientist group, that will be responsible for code maintenance and technical support for telescopes with NASA and around the world was asking college kids for Names.
Our list was simple, and we had to include some of these words: debugging, quality, data, team, squad, control, effective(ness), assessing, etc
What did we come up with? several Suitably Scientific Names, like VENUS. VENAE, VIRGA, VITAL, VIVAS, VERITE
but then, there was The One
VADER, or Veritas Advanced Debugging & Examination for Resolutions
the group of five of us were crying. we had been on coding benders the entire week trying to make the deadlines for our research papers. some of us had crashed the servers while trying to do 47 runs (I had been pushing 25 on another, and had finished up what would have been over a week and a half of running time in less than 6 hours bc of using batch condor, but this other unlucky soul had gotten the yelling of a lifetime). and some of us had to resolder the over 700 parts that we had been putting together because the lasers weren’t being detected on the attached webcams. it was chaos, and from that desperation there was… this was perfection.
and you know what? the got damed nerds that those scientists are, they’re going to call themselves VADER
go outside. go on an adventure. find some people living in forests. watch your friends die. come home a changed person after witnessing the horrors of war.
I love the irish (football) fans so much. they are out of control, in the best possible way. they’re just singing and chanting and being all around genuinely good and pure
like they sing ABBA together with swedish fans
they don’t know any of the lyrics, but they still try to sing along to the opposing french team’s national anthem
serenading an old nun on the train
and serenading the french police
who also tried to get the irish fans to go back to their hotel but all they wanted to do was sing. after losing the match vs belgium 3-0 that is. in one final attempt the police tried to sing to get the message across. without any success of course
the worst insult they had for swedish fans was “go home to your sexy wives”
and finally some bonus videos just because they’re so amazing and deserve all the love
cheering on a local french guy on a balcony
a cyclist tried to get through the irish crowd. and they helped by crowd surfing him… on his bike
singing lullabies to a baby on a train
somehow this video was lost, but if they weren’t perfect enough already, they also helped clean up their empty bottles (while singing “clean up for the boys in green”)
it would suck being a new immortal. like it’d be 2109 and people would go, “what was it like seeing ancient civilizations rise and fall like that? seeing the pyramids being built? watching the expansion and growth of the new world?” and i’d just be like, “no…no i was born in 1991. so like, wow i’m gonna see some cool stuff, but, i mean i’m not that much older than just a really, really old person, you know? phones were big back then. so big. but only for like ten years, then they got like, as good as they are now. uh. rhinos existed. don’t think i ever saw one in person. cool, good talk.”
even worse, imagine being an immortal who keeps missing stuff. “What was it like seeing the pyramids being built?” “Fuck if I know, I was in Madagascar.” “Oh, okay. Well, how was the Renaissance?” “I fell down a hole in Scotland and people thought I was an enchanted well for four hundred years, it was over by the time I convinced someone to get me out.”
London ist zugegeben ziemlich smooth mit “Mind The Gap”, aber wir können das Rennen immer noch gewinnen.
Ich schlage also vor wir hängen an jeder U-Bahn-Haltestelle Schilder auf mit:
“Bedenke Den Abgrund.”
Es ist profund, dichterisch, denkerisch, leicht verstörend und wir können von Emo-Teens die sich mit den Schildern fotografieren lassen 3,50 pro Bild verlangen, 10/10 would recommend. Deutsch ist eine schöne Sprache.
I had a weird question. My character was given the ability to see into the future of he sleeps. It happens in his dreams, and the power is more like a curse than anything. He goes for days on end not sleeping because of this power. He does have a Deadpool healing factor, so his body fixes itself up quickly. Is this a "realistic" situation that could happen to someone? And what are some signs of severe sleep deprivation?
… I wouldn’t say having precognitive visions and a supernatural healing factor is particularly realistic, no. However, I’m guessing you are referring to your character not sleeping because of it. I’m not sure if he’s avoiding sleep because he doesn’t want the visions, or if he just gets visions instead of sleep, but either way, that does make sense in the scenario you’ve provided.
Here are a few infographics I found on the effects of sleep deprivation. (All rights belong to their respective copyright holders.)
However, it should be noted that most, if not all of these effects, are caused by the brain being unable to rest and maintain itself, so it’s possible that someone with supernatural healing ability wouldn’t actually need sleep to being with. Or they may need less, or the same amount of sleep as others without a supernatural healing factor. As the author, it’s your decision. Just make sure you pick your rules and stick with them.
technology related sensory memories from my childhood
sliding the metal cover on floppy disks
the slight resistance of inserting cassette and video tapes
ripping off the strips of holed paper off of dot matrix printer paper
rolling the wheel on a disposable camera to take another photo
The heaviness and rubber texture of the roller ball in a computer mouse, and the little ring of lint
Unkinking the curly cord of a telephone while you talked
The -peww sound and slowly fading image of a crt monitor turning off, and then running your finger through the static on the dusty glass
The crunch of opening or closing a plastic Disney vhs cover
The sound effects in kidpix
Extending and collapsing metal antennas and using them as magic wands
Manually rewinding cassette tapes by spinning them around my fingers
Playing with the rubber casing of the buttons on a Walkman–pulling them away, rotating them, slipping them from side to side on the stiff posts of the buttons
The audio and visual static at the end of a videotape
The satisfying thwap-thwap-thwap as you page through a well-filled CD sleeve book
How weird and small and light the first cordless phone felt
Music to write or study to! These playlists are works in progress and are continuously growing. Titled after like-themed action movie and game music, the playlists each have their own personality, and encourage different moods or activity levels. Most music is from soundtracks. The calmest playlists, Temple Ruins and Party Camp, are useful for getting into the writing or studying mood. This music is less distracting. Once your pace is set, or if you want to get in the mood to write an action scene, Boss Fight is the playlist for you. Tavern Nights, of course, is a fun-filled playlist, but it can be more distracting, and Field Music is right in the middle.
All playlists are available to follow on Spotify, and can also be accessed via the web player with a free Spotify account. Just click on the [listen] for the link. Please do not hesitate to suggest music/changes to me, either here or on Spotify.
Title: Temple Ruins Mood: tense, eerie, dark Volume: quiet, few musical swells Action: creeping through a dark ruin
Instruments: minimal orchestral Lyrics: few (non-English)
Title: Party Camp Mood: calm, mysterious, romantic Volume: soft, somewhat dynamic Action: resting after a long day traveling Instruments: minimal orchestral
Lyrics: few (mostly non-English)
Title: Field Music Mood: cheerful, adventurous Volume: low to medium, dynamic Action: traveling with your companions Instruments: orchestral Lyrics: few (non-English)
Title: Tavern Nights Mood: cheerful as well as sombre Volume: medium to high, dynamic Action: eating and drinking with the locals Instruments: mainly guitar and fiddle Lyrics: yes (including English)
It occurs to me that failure to properly worldbuild an SFFnal story is - sometimes, though not always - less reflective of a writer’s creative ability than it is a consequence of their real-world privilege. The concept of culture as something with multiple…
