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

mustangsally78:

animate-mush:

transgirlsamwinchester:

clairwitch:

mylordshesacactus:

charamei:

transgirlsamwinchester:

stop telling ppl to write like hemingway i promise u adverbs are not another face of the dark lord satan its ok

If writers took every bit of writing advice that was in the format ‘Don’t use X part of the English language’, all English fiction would read like Spot the dog

#Spot chases the ball#the ball chases Spot#the ball conquers nations#the ball still chases spot#see spot run#run spot run#the ball is coming

IMO Adverbs can be pretty nasty sometimes (”’I can’t wait!’ said Tom excitedly” is still a pretty bad sentence) but it all comes down to how you use them, and what words you put them together with.

Generally, you should try to avoid using adverbs in phrases like ‘she said happily’ or ‘he screamed loudly’. Aside from that, adverbs aren’t inheritly bad. 

And ‘So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past’ isn’t a bad sentence at all. 

thats not really anything inherent to adverbs, it’s just redundancy. the dialogue is speaking for itself. ’“i can’t wait,” said tom excitedly’ is a bad sentence, but ’“i cant wait,” said tom flatly’ is chill. id probably throw a comma in there before ‘flatly’ for pacing but u do u

“dont use adverbs” is basically a really shitty way to verbalize “redundancy is often awkward and makes your audience feel condescended to if it’s not done well”–because lgr there are times when redundancy is okay, there are times when literally everything is okay

break the rules of literature. theyre shitty rules anyway

First they came for the verbs, and I said nothing, because verbing weirds language

Then they arrival for the nouns, and I speech nothing, because no verbs

Then they for the descriptive, and I silent because verbless and nounless

Then they for me, and, but no

REBLOGGING BECAUSE THE LAST POST IS BRILLIANT.

(Source: patrexes, via unpretty)

Fantasy Pet Peeve #347

jumpingjacktrash:

the-real-seebs:

operativesurprise:

vorpalgirl:

geekhyena:

bronzedragon:

danbensen:

ladydomini:

danbensen:

Made-up bullshit names for plants and herbs. 

Unless in your world you get milk from a “milk-beast” you don’t put people to sleep with “sleep-weed.” There are dozens of real plants that actually put people to sleep:
Lemon balm
Valerian
Passion Flower
Chamomile
Poppy
Lavender
Catnip
Hops
Rooibos
Skullcap
Virgin’s bower
Lady’s slipper
Feverfew
Motherwort
Bee-balm
bergamot
perilla
figwort
I found them after 0.35 seconds of googling.

(herbologists out there: I know there are probably some mistakes there. Feel free to correct me)

On one hand, yeah, I get it that it’s nice to learn about something real in fantasy books.

But on the other hand…I am NEVER going to throw real herbs into my stories. Not unless I know it’ll be near-impossible for a child to overdose. Not unless I know I can take time (without an editor removing it) to explain how to safely prepare these tisanes.

Food preparations are one of the most easily made “fan creations” you can have rise out of a book series, since everyone has food on hand or can run out to a store to buy it, or go outside to try to forage it (if they see the internet says they have it living wild in their area). And you really, REALLY don’t want to accidentally lead someone who is young, or who just doesn’t know shit about cooking or chemistry or foraging, down a path where they poison themselves trying to make something. And that’s not even touching on foraging and “false friends”, where a plant might look one way in your area and be safe to eat, but might be poisonous elsewhere in the world where a similar-looking plant is found. There’s a mushroom in the united states that looks similar to an edible variety in Asia. As I understand it, a lot of poisonings occur among immigrants to the US from the region that has the friendly, edible type of mushrooms because they think the US variety is just as safe to eat, and it’s not. I would hate, hate, hate to set up a situation like that as an author, by assuming that a friendly, edible plant in my backyard doesn’t have false-friends elsewhere in the world.

J. K. Rowling handled this by making her potion ingredients fake or improbable to use. She could have had Snape talking about deadly nightshade, but he’s introduced talking about bezoars.  Bezoars are from an animal’s stomach–hard to get, and gross.

Patrick Rothfuss handled it by making sure the dangers of fucking chemistry up were very firmly highlighted.

Unless I have a lot of time and place to safely explain how to use a plant, I’m absolutely going to go the “safe” route (”cheap” route to some of you) of using made-up herbs. I’d rather people be irritated with me being cheap or having weak worldbuilding than finding out some reader went and made themselves ill or dead because they trusted that information from my work was complete or correct.

Sure, some or all of those in the list above might be perfectly safe with no poison lookalikes around. I drink Rooibos tea myself–although I’ve never gotten sleepy from it.

But I’m just not educated enough about plants–even after having lurked on several sites online for months–to take a chance in my writing, since it’s just not me that’ll be taking a chance, but possibly readers who assume I know what the fuck I’m talking about. (When I might not!)

A very interesting response. I admit I hadn’t thought of the dangers of realistic herbology, but you’re right, especially for children’s books. I think there’s a more elegant solution than just making up a name, though. Say “a certain herb” rather than the specific plant’s name and you’re fine. Or smudge the details. 

Steven King does something similar with the crimes in his book—describing hotwiring a car in great detail but getting some things intentionally wrong so you can’t go out and do it.

In the vein of ladydomini’s response, I’d favor made-up herb names for an additional medical reason - even if something is super-safe or fairly benign in terms of side effect profiles, people generally don’t take these things in a vacuum, and you can never, ever cover drug-herb interactions in a fantasy world. (You can’t stop and say “Aeryn used St. John’s wort to help her mood, but wouldn’t have if she’d been on SSRIs like Prozac because of the risk of serotonin syndrome, or if she was on birth control, certain HIV meds, transplant drugs…”)

But there’s a second reason why you might choose to make up names, and that’s etymology. (It’s also why I picked St. John’s wort instead of going with one of the above herbs.) Because if you’re in a fantasy world where there are neither saints nor dudes named John, St. John’s wort doesn’t make a lot of sense to name-check, and referring to hypericum perforatum wouldn’t be any better. That’s not going to come up as *much,* but it’s definitely another reason.

(A third might be that you want an herb that has fantasy-world properties - something that doesn’t exist in the real world. Granted, you could randomly say valerian has magic-nullifying powers, but you might want magical plants for a magical reason - or maybe you want a plant with a pharmacological profile that doesn’t exist in the real world. I’m thinking here of ASOIAF’s moon tea and the tansy plant - it’s apparently both a very effective contraceptive and an abortifacient.)

So, yeah, this aspect of fantasy has never bothered me - I’d be more bothered by seeing real-world herbs incorrectly used, especially given the potential for RL trouble. (I guess whether you’d want your healers to be super non-specific or to say “I used tansy and athelas” is a matter of preference at that point; given the abundance of made-up names in the rest of fantasy, made-up herbs don’t bother me.)

Given how many times I read stories like that as a kid and tried to recreate ‘potions’ in the backyard….yeah I’m glad a lot of them were made-up names because me being a clever kid, I would have gone looking. Especially if I’d had the internet. Unless it’s like a practical, safe, real-world use (like “Annie put aloe leaves on her burn to help it heal” or “Margaret drank ginger and hibiscus tea to help her get over a cold”), I’d not include it. Made-up herbs work nicely and less chance of too-clever kids getting Ideas that could be a problem later. 

Hell, the side effects make this a valid concern even with ‘harmless’ innocent ones. Did you know for instance that only SOME hibiscus flowers are edible for humans? Or that parts of Dandelion or Aloe if consumed can be a diuretic – which can be dangerous if one is dehydrated? Even aspirin (or ‘willow bark’ if we’re going with old-school herbs) can be dangerous to the wrong person – it happens to be a blood thinner, which is sometimes good if you are having a heart attack, but not so good (i.e. potentially dangerous) if you are menstruating, hemophiliac, bleeding or anemic. 

I’d actually urge similar caution with crystals and rocks btw; some stones cannot be safely exposed to sweaty skin or water or heat or what not, because they produce unsafe chemical reactions under the wrong circumstances. 

as a former dumbass kid that had to be stopped from drinking poison nettle tea after reading a YA wiccan flavored book, 

please. Use fake names of plants. 

This is the kind of thing I would never even have thought of, but it’s a really interesting and valid concern.

i have indeed thought of it, and would like to propose a solution to satisfy both parties:

use made up plants, but put some effort into designing them.

don’t call it ‘sleep-weed’, call it ‘slugbane’ or ‘ketterling’s false poppy’ or ‘somniflora’ or ‘purple fretleaf’. give it a name that sounds like a real plant name. problem fucking solved.

God bless

(via littlestartopaz)

val-tashoth:

val-tashoth:

Robes are stupid. My sorcerer dresses like Petyr Baelish.

To expand: if you are a mage, dress like a noble. Do not dress like a wizard. Pointy conical hat and sky-blue robes is medieval semaphore for “kill first and with extreme prejudice.” Tailored black silk over cloth-of-gold and studded with rubies says “Harmless, but valuable; ransom if possible or kill last.” 

If you dress like a noble, they’re not going to pay attention as you take a turn or two to back away from the melee and prepare yourself. The ruse is only broken when you reveal yourself, at which point 8d6 fire damage is screaming toward them at Mach Fuck anyway, so no big.

(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)

notthepopeiv:

dadrielle:

notbecauseofvictories:

if you are going to do historical inaccuracy, then go big. Just take it to a whole ‘nother level.

I mean like Knight’s Tale “chanting Queen at the jousting tournament ‘foxy lady’” levels of anachronism. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters with Hansel injecting himself with insulin and Gretel wielding a multiple-shot crossbow levels of anachronism. Go for Blazing Saddles, Blackadder, Jack of All Trades, Connecticut Yankee levels of anachronism

you either have to play by the rules or throw out the book.

Go full on Xena. All of history happened at the same time. Get your legs broken by Caesar and find out Lao Tzu didn’t write that book, his wife did, and she hitting on you…all 10 years before you go meet up with Helen at Troy. Fight with Beowulf and commission Sappho within a few months of each other. Abraham and Issac? Only like 2 years before Jesus. Invent CPR and the kite during the bronze age. Watch your gal pal teach Homer how to be a better bard. Have a fucking battle of the bands in Ancient Greece. TIME IS MEANINGLESS.

Go Full On Xena

EXCELLENT.  Either admit that you’re basically not following any rules ever, that you’re going Full Xena and inventing the tracheotomy the year before the Trojan War, which is also just a few years before Caesar and at the same time as Homer, or DO YOUR GODDAMN RESEARCH.  Also, if your only ‘historically accurate’ thing is sexism/rape, I will sideeye the fuck out of you.  

(via rosalui)

athenaltena:

ubercream:

mister-smalls:

ubercream:

mister-smalls:

Petition to sit down all the people who make coma theories about Adventure Time and tell them “listen, this fucking show is about the last human living in a post-apocalyptic world where deadly magic has been reawakened following a global thermonuclear war that wiped out the rest of the human species, how much fucking darker do you want it to be”

Even though I thought my first Creative Writing professor was kind of a douche, he made a good point about this. One of our first assignments was to write in this eerie, otherworldly style (we were mimicking a specific author whose name escapes me), so we had to write about eerie otherworldly things happening. It’s no exaggeration to say that more than half the class had a “big reveal” where we find out that the story’s strange events and themes are all in the mind of some person in an insane asylum, or someone having a drug trip.

My professor said something like, “you just successfully wrote a world that feels separate from our own, but got frightened last minute and shoe-horned in normalcy. You showed that you were afraid to commit to something different and interesting.” Though I’m typically a contrarian and a piece of garbage, I am inclined to agree with my professor. I feel like people who write coma theories and the like are afraid to accept that the world of the story is separate from our own. They like everything wrapped up in this crazy little realism box where nothing out of the ordinary happens in fiction.

you win the Best Addition to a Post prize

Thank you :)

This pretty well hits the nail on the head as to why I generally hate coma/dream theories and people who think they’re so fucking deep for coming up with it. In my book it’s LAZY, plain and simple.

(Source: frog-and-toad-are-friends, via cthulhu-with-a-fez)

writing tip #700:

danekez:

gallifreyanlanterns:

gr8writingtips:

your characters are like geodes

if you want to see what they’re really made of

you must break them

this is the best writing tip ive heard in ages

Rebecca Sugar may have taken this a little too seriously

(via words-writ-in-starlight)

ceruleancynic:

gaymergirls:

aww nasa has a page for space technology terms you can use in science fiction

nerds

THIS IS THE BEST THING

AAAAAAHHH

(via princehal9000)