its-a-writer-thing
Who the Hell Is This Person Talking to Me and How Exactly Are They Related to Me: The Chart, just in time for your Thanksgiving gathering.
(Source: Apparently commenter “Platypus Man” from this Lifehacker post)
mirrormosa
Everything you (n)ever wanted to know about archery
Don’t watch Lord of the Rings, the Hunger Games, or Avatar. At least, not for the archery. Hollywood is stock full of misinformation and misrepresentation about archery. Sadly, not a lot of writers have the opportunity to really delve into the practice. So here is my all you wanted to know primer from how bows are constructed, to lining up and releasing the shot, to treating your friend’s nasty broadhead wound.
Edit: expanded the debunking section.
legit-writing-tips
Dan Harmon’s Writing 101
By Dan Harmon.
Storytelling comes naturally to humans, but since we live in an unnatural world, we sometimes need a little help doing what we’d naturally do.
Draw a circle and divide it in half vertically.
Divide the circle again horizontally.
Starting from the 12 o clock position and going clockwise, number the 4 points where the lines cross the circle: 1, 3, 5 and 7.
Number the quarter-sections themselves 2, 4, 6 and 8.
Here we go, down and dirty:
- A character is in a zone of comfort,
- But they want something.
- They enter an unfamiliar situation,
- Adapt to it,
- Get what they wanted,
- Pay a heavy price for it,
- Then return to their familiar situation,
- Having changed.
Start thinking of as many of your favorite movies as you can, and see if they apply to this pattern. Now think of your favorite party anecdotes, your most vivid dreams, fairy tales, and listen to a popular song (the music, not necessarily the lyrics). Get used to the idea that stories follow that pattern of descent and return, diving and emerging. Demystify it. See it everywhere. Realize that it’s hardwired into your nervous system, and trust that in a vacuum, raised by wolves, your stories would follow this pattern.
I will talk in greater detail about this pattern in subsequent tutorials.
madlori
mxaether
Oooh! I really like that this chart gives (average) percentage of genetic similarity.
And confession: Despite my genealogy hobby, I can never remember what my cousins’ children are called in relation to me. (First cousin once removed, apparently.)
Protip: the 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc when referring to cousins refers to how many generations back you have to go to find a common grandparent. First cousins share a grandparent, second cousins share a great-grandparent, etc.
If you do NOT share a grandparent with the relative (for example, your grandparent is their great-grandparent) then there’s a remove involved.
disabilityhealth
hccfrenzy
todropscience
Dark ghost shark (Hydrolagus novaezealandiae) and the pale ghost shark (Hydrolagus bemisi), both are shortnose chimaera of the family Chimaeridae, found on the continental shelf around the South Island of New Zealand in depths from 30 to 850 m.
Both ghost shark species are taken almost exclusively as a bycatch of other target trawl fisheries
- video: Te Papa Research
writeworld-blog
Any story or novel is, in essence, a series of scenes strung together like beads on a wire, with narrative summary adding texture and color between. A work of fiction will comprise many scenes, and each one of these individual scenes must be built with a structure most easily described as having a beginning, middle and end. The beginning of each scene is what we’ll address here.
The word beginning is a bit misleading, since some scenes pick up in the middle of action or continue where others left off, so I prefer the term launch, which more clearly suggests the place where the reader’s attention is engaged anew.
Visually, in a manuscript a new scene is usually signified by the start of a chapter, by a break of four lines (called a soft hiatus) between the last paragraph of one scene and the first paragraph of the next one, or sometimes by a symbol such as an asterisk, to let the reader know that time has passed.
Each new scene still has a responsibility to the idea or plot you started with, and that is to communicate your idea in a way that is vivifying for the reader and that provides an experience, not a lecture. Scene launches, therefore, pave the way for all the robust consequences of the idea or plot to unfurl. Each scene launch is a reintroduction, capturing your reader’s attention all over again. Start each scene by asking yourself two key questions:
- Where are my characters in the plot? Where did I leave them and what are they doing now?
- What is the most important piece of information that needs to be revealed in this scene?
Only you and the course of your narrative can decide which kinds of launches will work best for each scene, and choosing the right launch often takes some experimentation. Here we’ll cover 10 key techniques for launching scenes in three main ways: with action, narrative summary or setting.
everything4writers
transformativeworks
upagainstabookcase
A Sociological Look at Soulmate Universes
I want to take some time to think about Soulmate AUs in broader social and historical context. (I’m sticking to the ‘first words written on your body’ version of those aus)
Thoughts on Society:
- In a soulmate universe there would be distinctly less homophobia because queerness would be both normalized and no one would be able to argue that it isn’t natural. (Not that there wouldn’t be any because people are assholes).
- Religion would be structured differently - destiny would be seen as an incontrovertible subject. “Of course you have a destiny and a place in God’s plan, just look at those words on your arm.” What words were written on the arms of Messiahs and prophets?
- Scientists attempting to explain it through genetics and physics.
- The culture of introductions would be essential. What you say to new people would be built into the culture of what is polite and it would change society by society.
- Societies with strict verbal introduction rules that limit the finding of soul mates (because what would disrupt strict social stratification than princes discovering that their soul mate is a maid).
- Societies where people craft personalized introductions and use the same line like a personal signature each time they meet someone new.
- First day of school or college or a new job being almost all meeting rituals.
- Special festivals that are dedicated to meeting new people and talking to them. Pilgrimages for young adults to go town by town to meet as many people as possible.
Pop Culture
- Massive online databases full of those first words.
- Books dedicated to the first words of famous people.
- Analyses of your words (a la astrology: because you have the word ‘time’ in your words it means…)
- Matchmakers who promise they’ll find you Your Soulmate!
- Imagine the shipping debates around TV shows: “Her words haven’t been revealed yet! So she could be his match!” or “They revealed his words in season 2 so we know his match isn’t Fred!”
Interpersonal:
- Imagine the pressure to find your match
- People who claim children raised outside of matches are more destructive and less well adjusted and at a disadvantage
- “If you have sex outside a Match you will catch chlamydia and you will DIE”
- Special marriages for matches.
- Support groups for those who find their Matches late in life.
- Imagine the family pressure in some families to never meet anyone unapproved by the family. “Your father speaks to everyone first!”
- Different marriage systems
- Flexible ones where every non-match marriage is considered voidable if a soulmate match is found. Imagine being the person left behind by someone you love and trust because of words on their skin.
- Or a system of different marriages where people have different partners for different contexts: This is my household wife June and my Match wife Alice her household husband Larry and we all make it work.
- Or systems where you can’t legally marry unless you can both show your words and prove you are a match.
- People who lie about it to avoid the social pressure inherent in finding your match. “Of course my husband and I are a match!” Or teens who lie to their parents that someone is their match because their parents disapprove of their new date.
- Parents who worry like hell about their kid’s words.
- People who fall in love with the “wrong person” because this social system means that there is literally a wrong person. But they truly fall in love. Who try and scratch off their soulmate words from their skin because FUCK destiny, we’re making our own.
- Imagine how broken you would feel if you were asexual/aromantic and you didn’t have words.
- Imagine having words that you hated. Imagine having words on your skin that were a slur or an insult or a threat and knowing that someday you will meet someone who will say that to you and they are someone you are supposed to love.
It fascinates me because the idea is so much bigger than just meet-cute scenarios and fluff fics. It would change society from the ground up.
I want to write the one in bold a little bit.
I would love to read in-depth discussion about each of these ideas. Sadly, there’s not much available. What does exist, though, is discussion about fannish tattoos, which are voluntary physical marks of things we value. Transformative Works and Cultures has a couple of interesting articles on this topic by Bethan Jones, which you can read here and here.
yourfavouritedoll