Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

Jan 07

Humans Are Weird

galaxystew:

down-sizing:

otherwise-called-squidpope:

unicornempire:

arcticfoxbear:

the-grand-author:

wuestenratte:

val-tashoth:

crazy-pages:

radioactivepeasant:

arafaelkestra:

arcticfoxbear:

So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather? 

What if several species (including humans) land on a world and the humans are all “SCORE! Earth like world! Let’s get exploring before we get out competed!” And the planet starts offing the other aliens right and left, electric storms, hypothermia, tornadoes and the humans are just … there… counting seconds between flashes, having snowball fights, and just surviving. 

To paraphrase one of my favorite bits of a ‘humans are awesome’ fiction megapost: “you don’t know you’re from a Death World until you leave it.” For a ton of reasons, I really like the idea of Earth being Space Australia.

Earth being Space Australia Words cannot express how much I love these posts

Alien: “I’m sorry, what did you just say your comfortable temperature range is?”

Human: “Honestly we can tolerate anywhere from -40 to 50 Celcius, but we prefer the 0 to 30 range.”

Alien: “……. I’m sorry, did you just list temperatures below freezing?”

Human: “Yeah, but most of us prefer to throw on scarves or jackets at those temperatures it can be a bit nippy.” 

Other human: “Nah mate, I knew this guy in college who refused to wear anything past his knees and elbows until it was -20 at least.”

Human: “Heh. Yeah everybody knows someone like that.”

Alien: “……. And did you also say 50 Celcius? As in, half way to boiling?”

Human: “Eugh. Yes. It sucks, we sweat everywhere, and god help you if you touch a seatbelt buckle, but yes.” 

Alien: “……. We’ve got like 50 uninhabitable planets we think you might enjoy.” 

“You’re telling me that you have… settlements. On islands with active volcanism?”

“Well, yeah. I’m not about to tell Iceland and Hawaii how to live their lives. Actually, it’s kind of a tourist attraction.”

“What, the molten rock?”

“Well, yeah! It’s not every day you see a mountain spew out liquid rocks! The best one is Yellowstone, though. All these hot springs and geysers from the supervolcano–”

“You ACTIVELY SEEK OUT ACTIVE SUPERVOLCANOES?”

“Shit, man, we swim in the groundwater near them.”

Sounds like the “Damned” trilogy by Alan Dean Foster.

“And you say the poles of your world would get as low as negative one hundred with wind chill?” 

“Yup, with blizzards you cant see through every other day just about.”

“Amazing! when did you manage to send drones that could survive such temperatures?”

“… well, actually…”

“… what?”

“…we kinda……. sent……….. people…..”

“…”

“…”

“…what?”

“we sent-”

“no yeah I heard you I just- what? You sent… HUMANS… to a place one hundred degrees below freezing?”

“y-yeah”

“and they didn’t… die?”

“Well the first few did”

“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE???!?!?!?”

My new favorite Humans are Weird quote

“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE?”

aka The History of Russia

aka Arctic Exploration

aka The History of Alaska

Being from Alaska, this was sort of how I felt going to college in the lower 48′s and learned that no one else had been put through a literal survival camp as a regular part of their school curriculum, including but not limited to:

1. Learning to recognize all forms of animal tracks in the wild so you can avoid bears and moose and search out rabbits and other small animals to eat.

2. Extensive swimming and climbing on glacial pieces with competitions to see who could last the longest, followed by a group sit in the sauna so we wouldn’t get hypothermia (no, not kidding, I really did this many times as a kid!)

3. How to navigate using the stars to get back to civilization.

4. How to select the right type of moss from the trees to start a fire with damp wood (because, y’know, you’re in a field of snow. Nothing is dry.)

5. How to carve out a small igloo-like space to sleep in the snow to preserve body heat and reduce the windchill so you won’t freeze to death in the arctic.

“I’m telling you, I don’t think we need to worry about territory conflicts with the humans. You know all those deathtrap hell-worlds in the Argoth Cluster?”
“Those worthless rocks? Yeah.”
“80% of them are considered ‘resort destinations’ by those freaky little primates.”

“I’m telling you, they terraform for fun!”
“Don’t be ridiculous”
“No, seriously. Some of their most celebrated cultural loci are built on swamps. They have an entire city that is literally in a body of water. Not, like, an artificial pontoon city, they literally sunk the foundations into water. For Grilp’s sake, they build elaborate structures out of frozen water AND THEN SLEEP IN THEM.”
“Dear Thilak. Think we could get them to terraform our moons?”
“Psh, they’d probably pay for the privilege.”

Eventually, it occurs to someone that humans are the perfect terraforming shock troops, as it were. They think it’s fun to be sent to horrible planets! They’re really good at surviving and then taming them! All you have to do is sit back and wait until the planet is habitable, and then move there yourself! It’s genius.

It only takes one try before the reality of the situation sets in: human definitions of ‘taming’ and ‘habitable’ are woefully incomplete.

“Why did you not eliminate the venomous plant life?” Grahssk’ti moans, clutching one limb.

“Those?” The human laughs. “Why bother? They’re not that bad. And they eat the mosquitoes.”

Grahssk’ti shudders. The ‘mosquitoes’ are… not to be mentioned. Just one swarm of them caused a landing shuttle to crash three planetary daylights ago.

“And the acid storms? Why did you not warn us of them?”

“I mean, they’re annoying,” the human says, shrugging, “but we figured the cool sunsets made up for it.”

Grahssk’ti flails helplessly. “What about the ten-meter tall Fanged Death Bringers? They can eliminate an entire settlement in under an hour!”

“They’re so cute!” the human says, brightening. “Have you met mine? Her name is Spot!”

(via lathori)

littlestartopaz:

tielan:

ao3tagoftheday:

The Ao3 Tag of the Day is: Don’t be ashamed. We’re all bitter.

ALWAYS BITTER.

@words-writ-in-starlight pretty much you and age of ultron?

YOU ARE CORRECT MADAM

(via littlestartopaz)

Anonymous asked: So, you mentioned there are different type of magic users in your Alleirat story. Any chance we could get a break down of the different types?

GODDAMN RIGHT YOU CAN

So I suppose the thing that bears mentioning that the way magic works in Alleirat is that a magic user (called a ‘worker,’ except for those who use fire magic) has inherent ability for a mode of using magic—they can channel magic in fire, in water, in plants, in metal, whatever, but they can’t do magic in anything else.  Someone who can channel magic through living plants can’t do the same with thread or water or fire, and they’ll never be able to learn.  So this can get REALLY specific really fast—someone might specifically be a silk worker, for example, or a bronze worker.  It’s more common, however, to specialize into a wide category, like ‘weather’ or ‘metal,’ so I’ll cover a few of the more common and/or pertinent ones.

• Fire magic, obviously.  Fire magic is revered as blessed by the Wanderer, the Alleirai god of fire, battle, and lies.  Brenneth, the main character, is a smith, which—in this universe—means that she’s specifically a broadly trained blacksmith with the ability to work in fire magic.  (Fire magic users are called fire smiths, not fire workers.)  This is pretty much what it says on the tin, with one major exception: unlike most fantasy universes where a mage can summon and throw fireballs, this is mundane fire, which means it needs fuel.  A fire smith of sufficient power can project a pillar of fire, but it’s incredibly short lived and impractical as a weapon.  Combat fire smiths generally carry small grenade-like packages that splash flammable oil over their target, when they can then ignite with ease.  

• Brenneth is something of an exception to this rule, because her trademark is something called white fire—white in Alleirat indicating death/deadly.  White fire isn’t actually white in color, but it’s the colloquial name for dragon fire, which needs no oxygen and no fuel save for the magical power and anger of the wielder. Brenneth earned her title of Fireheart by her preferred fighting style of igniting her sword with white fire—she refuses to teach this trick to anyone on the argument that it’s a dangerous technique with the potential for mass destruction, and she expects it to die with her.

• Weather magic, also obviously.  Weather magic is revered as blessed by the Lady of Stars, the Alleirai goddess of storms, stars, and fallen things.  Crispin is a powerful weather worker—and a fallen thing, and yes I am very pleased with that goddess.  Again, pretty much what it says on the tin, although to varying degrees.  Some weather workers expend themselves completely bringing down a single lightning strike, others—like Crispin—can rally hurricanes and still be standing.  Crispin is one of only a very few weather workers in history to be powerful enough to summon winds that are sufficiently strong and precise to carry him.  Much like fire smiths, combat weather workers often use an aid to direct their magic—it’s energetically taxing to aim lightning strikes, more so the further from one’s self the strike is going, so many weather workers carry rapiers.  They strike the rapier, which is close to themselves and strongly conductive, and then direct the charge at their target.

• Plant workers are also pretty much what it says on the tin, with the exception that a lot of plant workers have actual plant heritage—briatan are tree-people, descended from the universe-equivalent of dryads.  The briatan are more powerful, but less precise than pure human planet workers.  Isla Akekrei, generally known as Krei, the daughter of Brenneth’s old right hand woman and Brenneth’s new military ally, is briatan and a powerful plant worker—akekrei means oak. Krei, like many briatan plant workers, has tattoos in various plant-based inks on her arms, which she can manipulate and move around at will, and, also like many plant workers, she wears cuttings of vines and other plants on her person, which she can use as weapons.  You know that scene in Sky High where Layla flips out?  Yeah, like that.

• Flesh workers, ironically, are probably the most feared people in Alleirat, save Crispin himself.  Flesh workers channel magic through living flesh, which means they’re the magical healers in-universe.  However, a flesh worker is equally capable of healing a mortal wound or of clapping their hand to someone’s chest and making their heart explode, making every bone in their body shatter, or flaying them alive. The moment blood stops moving through the body, a flesh worker’s power is no longer capable of affecting an individual, but up until that point…  As long as they have skin-to-skin contact, a flesh worker can do pretty much whatever they want, no matter how physiologically improbable it is.  The only thing they really can’t do is reattach a completely severed limb. Incidentally, this is the most common kind of worker overall—and again, there are degrees—and the most common type of worker to go full dark side.  There’s a whole cadre of flesh worker assassins because, shocker, they’re the best at it.

• Death workers, on the other hand, are viewed in a similar way to healers in most fantasy universes—people literally cannot fathom a death worker going dark side.  Death workers are basically a variant on necromancers, with the ability to see spirits who’ve become trapped on the “wrong side of the day” (Alleirai religion says that spirits exist between days/on the other side of a day, and keep watch on their loved ones) and raise the dead as…puppets, I guess.  It’s very rare that the latter ability is used, and generally death workers are sort of like grief counselors/priests, responsible for performing funerals and speaking to the bereaved.  

• That being said, death workers are fearsome in combat.  There are stories from back when Alleirat was a bunch of small warring city-states, millennia ago, about death workers at war, and this is how they usually go.

• Two armies have been at war for years, and one, City-State A, is finally losing.  They know that if City-State B wins the war, they’ll sweep in and slaughter everyone left in City-State A, burn their cities—the traditional Sack of Magdeburg-esque situation.  So, a powerful death worker who’s been serving to ensure that all the spirits of the dead are safely on the other side of the day goes to her lord.
• “Lord,” she inevitably says, “I have the power to end this war, here and now.”  
• Her lord demurs, because what she’s offering is horrific in the Alleirai culture—you never ever tamper with a dead body except to put them to rest in the manner specified by the dead person.  This is a capital crime.
• “I will do this, and you cannot stop me,” she says.  “So bring in all the guards and tell the camp to go to sleep, and I will save us, and then I will die for what I’ve done.”
• Her lord agrees, because what other choice is there?  And the camp goes to sleep, and the death worker walks out onto the battlefield, where the bodies of the dead are neatly laid out and waiting to be laid to rest.  She stands in the middle of the dead, and she reaches out her hands, and all around her, they stand and take up weapons and march toward the enemy lines.  There is a single night of battle.  Every enemy soldier who falls is raised to march in the death worker’s army, and there are always more dead bodies to drive forward.
• The sun rises. The camp wakes.  The enemy lines are decimated, littered with dead bodies, and some distance away, somewhere with a clear view of the entire battle, the death worker lies dead.

• The worker wreaking havoc as a weapon of a lordling when Brenneth and Crispin come back to Alleirat?  A death worker fallen through from Earth named Hoshiko, with no friends, no support, and a conviction that she’s going insane.  ILY Shiko, I’m sorry I’m mean.

callipygianflamingo asked: hi, i just wanted to pop by and say that things we lost in the fire is an amazing fic! not many people can successfully write angst in fics without turning the character into a pathetic woobie drowning in wangst and manpain but you do it incredibly well! you're a super talented writer and i hope you have a wonderful day!!! :D :D :D

THANK YOU SO MUCH, oh my God I’m so glad you think the angst thing is going well.  I have a POWERFUL aversion to the woobie trope and I LIVE IN FEAR, okay, IN FEAR.  I’m so thrilled that people seem to be of the opinion that Grantaire is a well-executed character in ‘things we lost in the fire’, I’m???  I’m not a supremely coherent recipient of compliments, not gonna lie, but THANK YOU SO MUCH.

callipygianflamingo asked: of course! :) i'm kind of a weenie when it comes to this sort of stuff so i tend to hide behind the anon button because interacting with other humans is terrifying, even over the internet, but today seems to be a good day cause i'm not panicking at all so feel free to publish the ask! :D

My buddy, I feel you so hard, I basically live behind the anon button.  But thank you so much for your permission, I love getting to collect people’s responses to my fic!

maddersahatter:

cannibalcoalition:

Reminder to self:

Your writing seems boring and predictable because 

• You wrote it
  
• You’ve read it like eight million times.

A person who has never read it before does not have this problem. 

Great encouragement for writers

Pass it on

(via dyinghistoric)

rederiswrites:

Okay guys, for writing/general reference, a bit about what a ‘blacksmith’ is and isn’t:

A blacksmith is a generalist, a person who uses tools and fire to work iron.  Some blacksmiths work more specifically, so you get, say, an architectural blacksmith, who focuses more or less exclusively on things like gates, rails, fences, or an artist blacksmith, who makes wacky sculptures or what have you.  These days, though, that’s a pretty blurry line.  ‘Blacksmith’ is a pretty damn broad term, but it’s nowhere near broad enough to cover everything encompassed in ‘metalworker’, which is how I often see it used.  There are a LOT of different skills for working metal, and no one knows them all.  Some other terms:

A farrier shoes horses.  They may make the shoes, or they may buy them and then size them, but they actually do the shoeing.  Unless the blacksmith is also a farrier, they don’t know shit about horses’ hooves and are not qualified to deal with them and probably don’t want to.

A blacksmith works IRON (or steel), usually almost exclusively.  They might work with bronze or do a bit of brazing, but those are really separate skillsets.  If you work, say, tin and/or pewter, you are in fact a whitesmith.  You could also be a silversmith or a coppersmith, and so on.

Knifemakers and swordsmiths have their own highly specialized and fairly complex specialties, and usually a blacksmith wouldn’t mess with that unless they want to pick up a new skillset or if they’re really the only game going for a long way around.  By the same token, a swordsmith might never have learned the more general blacksmithing skills.  They’re not the same thing is what I’m trying to say here.  Likewise armorers.  There’s overlap but it’s not the same thing.

If you make metal items via molds and casting, you work at a foundry and are a foundryman.

Look, when metalworkers and individual shops and masters were the height of industry, this shit got REALLY specific.  There were people who spent their whole lives making pins.  Just pins.  Foundries specialized and made only bells, only cannon, only cauldrons, etc.  This is scratching the surface, I just wanted to make the point that ‘blacksmith’ is not the same thing as ‘magical muscly person who knows how to do everything related to metal’.

(via skymurdock)

Reblog if you write fan fiction

sskywanker:

Doesn’t matter if you write in a frequent basis, or once in a blue moon, just how many of us are there?

(via primarybufferpanel)

Jan 06

Anonymous asked: SAY, WHAT IS YOUR THESIS ABOUT? IF YOU DONT MIND.

FOR ALL MY BITCHING, I REALLY DO LOVE MY THESIS, SO.

I’m a pre-med major, but I discovered over the summer that I really, really hate research.  Which I pretty much knew already but now I have proof, so.  But the point is that when I picked my thesis topic I said flat out that I would do an experimental thesis when Satan built a snow fort, and the guy in charge of the pre-medical studies division was my Orgo teacher so he knew not to fuck with me.  (Teachers tend to fall into one of two categories with me: they get angry about butting heads with me nonstop OR they come to terms with the fact that it’s kind of like trying to corral a hurricane and thereupon give up.)

So I thought about what I could stand doing for a full year and decided that things I like include:

• Medicine
  
• History
• Military history
• Weird facts about old battle tactics
• Things that make other people’s eyes bug out when I tell them
• The Princess Bride
• Being a fucking smart-ass

And subsequently I am writing my thesis on the development of battlefield medicine through American history and I’m gonna title that bitch Only Mostly Dead.

snakeassassins:

one thing that’s always bothered me about most people’s depiction of Holmes’s usage of cocaine is that most people in Victorian England were only just beginning to realize how badly it affected people???

like tbh I feel like a better modern equivalent would just be Holmes dumping a five hour energy into his fifth cup of coffee while Watson, a trained medical professional, stares at him in horror

(via princehal9000)