sweetlittlevampire
I’m spending the night at the girlfriend’s, so I won’t be around much. Feel free to tag me in stuff and/or send me things so I can have a look at them tomorrow.
See you next year. Have fun, and stay safe! :D
its-a-writer-thing
creativeprompts
When I was growing up, the visions of writers floating around in my mind were full of glorious chaos. They wrote notes on whatever paper/napkin/skin/piece of furniture was handy, had a pen in every room except the one they were in at the time, and were surrounded by precarious stacks of books.
As I got a little older and became a writer myself, I realized that … well … it’s not necessarily that far off from the truth. We’re a little more careful with our books, precious goods such as they are, but for many writers, chaos feels inextricably linked with creativity.
Words like “order” and “organization” fight against that romantic image of the scattered but brilliant writer, and so we burrow deeper into bedlam until suddenly, one day, we realize we’re spending more time trying to find that bit of research or that character idea or the most recent story draft than we are actually writing.
Is this realization always so sudden? I doubt it. The important thing, no matter how much time it takes, is recognizing that you need a change, and sometimes the best way to figure that out is by looking at everything you stand to gain.
Read the full article at Something Delicious
its-a-writer-thing
fixyourwritinghabits
You can follow the tag #Swords for Fics if you want to keep up without following me :)
Available Chapters:
1: Dumb Ways to Die 2.May Your Blade Be True! 3.On Your Guard!
4. Making the Cut 5.Stick ‘em With the Pointy End 6. It’s Like a Dance
7. The Measure of A Man 8.A Crossing of Blades 9.Like Chess, but with Knives
An Interlude About Story Telling
10. You Can Barely Lift Your Sword 11.Buckle Some Swash 12.Dual Wielding
Fighting with a dagger in the offhand instead of a shield was a common practice. A long dagger made an excellent tool for catching the opponent’s weapon while attacking with your own. While attacks were made with the dagger, it’s greatest benefit was as a defensive tool.
Here the dagger is being used to restrain the attacker’s weapon (note: The big guy’s sword is pointed away from the dagger guy. Again, the problem with flat images and flat swords is swords tend to disappear in perspective. My apologies for the unclear drawing.) The dagger user is now free to attack with their sword in their next action.
I have more experience with double swords so we’ll be talking mostly about that now. We both know that’s why you’re reading this chapter anyways.
Two Swords are used like off-sync partners, with one movement slightly behind the other while they’re in motion. One might temporarily stay still to cover a line while the other attacks, but you’re not going to be fighting two battles at once except for in exaggerated cartoon circumstances. We’ll talk about fighting multiple opponents in “I’ll Take You All On” (chapter coming soon)
As an example, if two downward cutting attacks are being used, what this off sync movement achieves is that as the first sword finishes it’s blow, it deals with the opponent’s weapon. The second sword is a split second behind the first, and now has a clear path to finish it’s blow. The first sword continues to restrain the opponent’s weapon.
In one pattern of attack, the lower sword begins with a thrust, forcing a defence from the opponent then the upper sword begins it’s preparation. The lower sword then follows and does it’s own cut ending as the new top sword. Beginning with the thrust provokes a reaction from the defender and buys time for the first sword to swing back in preparation while the attacker remains covered.
When defending with two swords you can use any of your usual defences as outlined in “A Crossing of Blades” but you need to be careful that you’re not criss crossing your arms and getting tangled up. That’s another reason for the off sync movements. If they follow their patterns and both do the same action, the arms will stay untangled.
Crossing the blades to collect the attacker’s sword is one of the coolest looking defences you can do with two weapons. This one also works well with a dagger in the offhand.
Things get more complicated when both opponents are dual wielding. Now each opponent can restrain with one sword and attack with the other. Even so, they’ll still be following those same slightly out of sync patterns.
It might feel like we can do two things at once, but really we’re just switching quickly between two tasks. It’s better to have two swords working towards one goal then trying to have them both achieve two different things.
Often in one action you’ll still be catching both of your opponent’s swords in the defence.
I’m not feeling ambitious enough to try breaking down two dual wielding fighters anymore than that though, so we’ll leave off here. In the next chapter we’ll look into things you can do with a free hand that’s not holding anything.
alexreadsboooks
My best nine posts of 2016. Thanks a lot to everyone who liked my posts! 😊
#2016bestnine #bookstagram #bookish #booklover #bookworm #booklr #books #bibliophile #bookstagrammer #booklove #booksofinstagram #instabook #read #reading #reader #buch #bücher #lesen #bookphotography #leser #igbooks
sweetlittlevampire
What´s this? Hand written holiday greetings on the packaging of my order?
That´s what I call customer service!
Thank you Elbenwald.de ! <3
sweetlittlevampire
Salut,
Méng Frendin huet grad hiren eegene Cat-Sitting Service opgemeet. De Business stécht nach an de Kannerschung, d´Websäit ass am Developpement, mee d´facebook-Säit ass grad online gaangen.
Kommt gäre laanscht a kuckt iech et un! :)
De Business heescht “Purrrfect” an d´facebook-Säit ass dei vum Jill Mannes.
writingwithcolor
Hello!
I am writing a fantasy story and am worldbuilding. The planet is earthlike in nature (liquid water, oxygen atmosphere, etc). The people on the planet (humans) were created by the four gods that created the planet (earth, air, fire, water deities) and the people were born from the land which they inhabit. To clarify, people living in a tropical rainforest climate have dark brown/ reddish brown skin to blend in with the trees while people living in a desert climate have beige-y bronzed skin to blend in with the sand.
I study evolutionary biology, so I’m using that to help create the races of people on the planet. They are adapted to their environments, accounting for skin color, muscle tone, eyesight, etc (kind of like how animals adapt to their environments, but not in a derogatory way or anything) Each race has their own culture stemming from the geography and the resources available to them.
My problem comes when trying to name people/places/things. My first instinct is to draw upon existing languages and adapt them. Ex: tundra/snow inhabiting peoples speak a language similar to existing scandinavian/russian/eastern european languages and tropical inhabiting peoples speak a language similar to pourtuguese/spanish or telugu/malay/javanese and so on and so forth
However, I’m trying to make the cultures of my peoples unique, drawing upon multiple cultures and my own imagination for inspiration and not simply coding one specific race or ethnic group. How should I go about naming people and places of different races without alluding to an existing culture? Is that even possible? For example, would it be rude to draw upon traditional west african languages for inspiration of naming places and people in a tropical setting if the culture I create is nothing like the culture of west africans?
Or am I just over analyzing things? *sigh*
Howdy, @thebiomaster!
There are plenty of worldbuilding and culture-coding articles on WritingWithColor (look in the tags), but in regards to your primary concern of naming things, there is a subject that I don’t think we’ve gone over too often: phonotactics.
Phonotactics is basically …The “rules” of what can be a word in a given language. It’s a study of the patterns and constraints in a language’s soundset, a sort of quantifying of why “vlim” could pass for a word in English but “mtar” couldn’t. If you look up, for example, ‘Spanish phonotactic constraints’ you can find breakdowns of what consonant and vowel combinations occur and do not occur in the language, and even syllable patterns and vowel-to-consonant ratios. With some reading on phonotactic constraints, you can get the vibe of a given language and use that as a scaffolding to make up unique names that sound like they come from a real language, capture the ‘vibe’ of a given language, and yet not be an explicit (or obvious) copy.
Now, which languages would you want to pick for which cultures?
Naturally, you would do well to NOT pair cultures that have a rocky history with one another (for instance, I would not by any means use a French-based language on a Vietnamese-like culture), but picking a language based off of shared climate/terrain and not shared culture, is completely legitimate. There is study on the correlation of climate and language, after all. For example, look at the work of Caleb Everett, correlating tonal languages with humid regions.
After doing this, if you wanted to take linguistic world-building a step further you could consider the terrain of your world and identify the conquerors, the traders, and the isolationists within it, and look at the geography of the world and locate the places where these different cultures are most likely to interact and thus have a transformative effect on the languages in the regions they most commonly interact. Decide whether there is an attempt in some nations to standardize its language(s), such as through an official language or a universal writing system.
- Rodríguez
thewritershandbook
Other medieval jobs included:
tanners, soap makers, cask makers, cloth makers, candle makers (chandlers), gold and silver smiths, laundresses, bakers, grooms, pages, huntsmen, doctors, painters, plasterers, and painters, potters, brick and tile makers, glass makers, shipwrights, sailors, butchers, fishmongers, farmers, herdsmen, millers, the clergy, parish priests, members of the monastic orders, innkeepers, roadmenders, woodwards (for the forests). slingers. Other Domestic jobs inside the castle or manor:
Personal atendants- ladies-in-waiting, chamber maids, doctor.
The myriad of people involved in the preparation and serving of meals- brewers, poulterer, fruiterers, slaughterers, dispensers, cooks and the cupbearers.
yourfavouritedoll