For the record while ATLA is an excellent show and Zukos redemption arc was perfectly paced, I would kill to have had Zuko join the Gaang at the end of book two, because the first half of book three would have been the funniest thing on the planet. Like. Just picture it. A bunch of unsupervised teenagers travelling undercover through enemy territory, trying to blend in… and the only people who have even been there before are 1. A guy who hasnt been there in a century, and 2. The former crown prince who has literally never spoken to a fire nation citizen who wasnt nobility, military, or one of his servants.
Like. Neither of them have any idea what they’re doing, or how normal fire nation citizens act, but they’re pretty sure the other one is wrong. Rest of the gaang knows even less. No adults. Zuko and Aang getting into a shouting debate over the finer points of fire nation culture is a nightly event. They are both so wrong, and so, so awkward
Zuko, for the fifth and probably not last time: FOR THE LAST TIME, NOBODY USES THE PHRASE ‘FLAMEO HOTMAN’!
Aang, aware of that fact but in too deep to back out now: OH YEAH? THEN WHAT DO THEY SAY!?
Zuko, clueless and bluffing: …Something about glory to the Fire Lord?
Toph, well aware that both are lying through their teeth and have no idea what they’re talking about, and fucking loving every second of this train wreck: Clearly the only solution is for both of you to go into town tomorrow and test your theories out.
And the side taking, oh my god the side taking from the other three. Katara sides with Aang every single time. Does she honestly believe that the people of the Fire Nation greet each other with ‘Flame on, my em-brother’? Hell no. Would she rather die than say that Zuko’s correct? Yes.
Sokka usually sides with Zuko, unless he comes up with something astoundingly stupid. Zuko’s thoughts, while usually wrong, sound a lot more plausible then Aangs, and fuck it he’s willing to take a gamble.
Toph is the closest thing to a neutral party they have, in that she knows damn well they’re all full of shit, and has chosen to instead egg them on to make it worse. She’s an agent of chaos, and this is free nightly entertainment. She’s having the time of her life right now.
The debate takes a brief pause once they stop going undercover and get to the business of actually saving the world, but holy shit. once things have settled down? it’s back on with a vengeance. Except now Aang and Zuko aren’t the two most wanted people in the Fire Nation, they’re the two most influential people in the world. They are trendsetters. They can make slang become a thing.
When Zuko first hears the phrase ‘flameo, hotman’ being thrown around casually, it takes a lot of deep breathing exercises to not immediately return to his previous occupation of hunting the Avatar.
Iroh: I’m so proud of the way you’ve been ruling, nephew. Flameo, hotman!
When you meet me you think I’m quiet, when you talk to me you wish I was quiet, when you know me you get scared when I’m quiet.
ARIES - CANCER - LEO - LIBRA - SAGITTARIUS - SCORPIO - CAPRICORN
I HATE EVERYTHING! I JUST GRABBED A SOFT TOWEL OUT OF AN OPEN MAKEUP BAG, AND A GIANT-ASS SPIDER WAS ATTACHED, AND I NEARLY DROPPED IT IN MY LAP IN SHOCK. THANK FUCK I HAVE SOME PRESERVATION INSTINCTS. FUCK EVERYTHING, BUT ESPECIALLY FUCK SPIDERS WHO HIDE IN YOUR STUFF, INSTEAD OF DOING THE HONORABLE THING OF HIDING IN THE CORNER OF THE CEILING WHERE YOU CAN SEE WHAT THE FUCKERS ARE UP TO AT ALL TIMES!!!!!
I seriously don’t understand how people listen to podcasts and livestreams. The format seems so jumbled with everyone interrupting each other and long awkward pauses while they think of new topics… I can’t wrap my head around it, my mind would wander off into lalaland way too easily. I could probably read a transcript of the stream/podcast but I wouldn’t be able to listen to the actual thing for five hours. Even then I’d just prefer a book or lengthy article on the same subject over a jumbled transcript.
Nothing against podcasters or livestreamers obviously, I just don’t understand how the listeners work lol.
Helps when you listen to ones who know how to prevent dead air and keep the conversation going.
It’s also a bit of a skill to learning how to follow the jumbled conversations
The problem is too many people think they can just start a podcast like it’s nothing. They assume it’s just talking and figure what’s easier than that. They don’t realize it’s a performance and it takes talent not many people have to pull it off, it takes good editing and engineering to put together and be listenable. Even professional comedians are not always good at it because doing a standup routine and being interesting while having a conversation are different skill sets. I hate podcasts but love the Dick Show, Dick’s the only guy I’ve heard who can do it properly. I’ve tried listening to Rogan, Bill Burr, Marc Maron, PKA, The Drunken peasants, rooster teeth, Milo’s show that cuck Maddox’s show and a few other godawful e-celeb shows and It’s all unlistenable crap. But the Dick show is the perfect amount of banter, interesting stories, funny rants, comedy bits, musical parody and hot chicks. And even then it’s not for everyone and is just good background entertainment, I put it on while I’m playing video games where I don’t need sound or when I’m answering emails or online shopping or any task where you can have divided attention.
I’ve tried to follow loads of podcasts, but I always come back to the same two. Welcome to Night Vale is great, not just for the creepy vibes, but because it frequently uses epithets (‘John Peters, you know, the farmer’), so it’s ok if you forget a few details between episodes, because if a character comes back you’ll get a reminder of who they are again. The other is @bibliopodcast, which is brilliant, a combination of topics I’m interested in and two lovely chatty voices (plus the occasional guest). There are spoiler warnings if you want them, but I still listen to episodes where I’m not familiar with the subject because it’s so fun to hear someone else’s opinion on a book or film, especially when they get enthusiastic (no awkward pauses here). There aren’t many people in my offline life I’d listen to for media recommendations at the moment, so it’s a great resource for me!
We see them all the time - horses in fiction. And there is so much to learn about them that it can be a little overwhelming! But I work with horses a lot so I thought I’d be able to help some of you guys out by going through the basics you’ll need for writing. (by the way, I only ride English style. If somebody wants to do something similar for Western riding, by all means, fire away.)
Horses and ponies - whats the difference?
It’s the height. Horses and ponies are measured in hands - 1 hand = approx 4 inches. A pony is anything below 14.2hh,(hands), a horse is anything taller. Any pony smaller than 14hh would really only be suitable for children. A stockier 14.2hh could hold teens or small adults, but most teens and adults would probably ride horses. 16hh would be an average size.
Stallions, mares and geldings.
A Mare is a female horse. They can be quite moody sometimes - which they show by being uncooperative and putting their ears back. A Stallion is a male horse that has not been castrated. They can be very, very strong willed, and are typically not suitable for the novice rider. A gelding is a male horse that has been gelded/castrated, They often have a more relaxed, placid nature. A colt is a young male, and a filly is a young female.
Training a horse under saddle is called ‘Breaking.’ A horse is typically broken around ¾ years of age, once it has finished growing. Breaking correctly is a long and patient process - not something that your character can do in a few minutes.
Gaits
Horses have four gaits. Walk, trot, canter, and gallop - in that order of ascending speed. Nobody trots away from danger. if your characters are fleeing, they are in a flat out gallop.
The tack
For describing scenes - you’ll really only need to talk about the reins and the bit. Pressure on the reins (held by the rider) should slow the horse down. The horse feels this pressure acting through the bit.
All you really need to worry about for the saddle are the stirrups, and the girth. The girth is holding the saddle on, and the feet go into the stirrups.
Learning to ride
Is difficult! Your character won’t be a pro withing a couple of days. Its hard on your legs, and learning to balance can be tricky too. Somebody who is very comfortable in the saddle is relaxed and secure, and able to deal with however the horse acts. The rising trot, when the rider goes ‘up and down’ in sync with the horses movement in the trot, can be particularly difficult.
Ability
The average gallop is around 45km/h. So, bear i mind that a horse cannot outrun a car or anything like that. Jumping ability varies - a heavier horse will struggle over a 90cm hedge, but a quality animal could easily pop 1.60m (but only with a good rider.) If your character gallops the horse on hard ground, it could easily go lame - they aren’t invincible!
Horses don’t eat the same way as dogs or cats. They are grazers - meaning they need to eat little, and often. Your character giving them a Handel of oats once a day is really not going to keep them alive. They need forage - grass or hay - and a lot of it.
Portraying atmospheres
Showing how the horse is feeling can be a really great tool for expressing the ‘mood’ of a scene.
Relaxed - A relaxed horse will have its ears back lazily, but not pinned against its head. It will likely doze off and close its eyes, maybe while resting a hind leg.
Alert - Horses are super smart animals, and many say that they have a sixth sense that lets them know when something is coming. An alert horse stands up straight, and has its ears pricked forward.
Upset - If something bad is happening, the horse won’t be in good mood. It might pin its ears flat back against its skull, and bare its teeth. It will flick its tail irritably, and a horse will kick out or bite at something if its unhappy.
Horses are deeply empathetic animals. They are herd animals too, and can form deep connections with their people. A horse who is fond of a person may whinny when they see them, and nuzzle their face and neck. A real trust can form between horse and rider. To show this as your story progresses, the horse will become pleased to be with the character, and the character’s nerves aboard the horse will begin to fade.
—–
If you have any more specific questions, feel free to message me. All of this is very basic, and I am more than happy to help some fellow writers.
Nice! Super useful for Fantasy writers in particular :)
This is amazing! I can only think of a few points where Western riding would differ.
This is a Western saddle (I know nothing about the website, fyi). They are *much* larger and heavier than English saddles. An average-sized adult can carry one around without too much trouble, but there will be no flinging or one-handed lifts (there shouldn’t be any flinging to begin with, you could hurt the horse).
The biggest changes come in two places: the use of the pommel and horn, and the length of the stirrup strap. The pommel and horn together should reach the lower to middle abdomen. Some people like to rest their free hand on them while walking, some hold on for extra security when the horse goes faster. A comfortable rider should not feel dependent on holding the horn at speed, but tension can be created with a character holding on tightly as a horse gallops away from danger. The stirrup strap is kept much longer on a Western saddle, to the point where there is only a slight bend in the knee rather than a sharp one.
In Western riding circles the canter gait is called the lope. This gait could be used to have characters cross distances quickly (broken with bouts of walking), without exhausting the horses the way a sustained gallop would.
As noted above, horses can be a joy to bond with, and there are inexhaustible ways of allowing a horse’s personality to shine through. A playful horse might nudge their rider while being brushed, or lip at their pockets if they normally carry treats.
I’ve just seen Infinity War, and all I can feel is a stunned ‘what the fuck’.
Adulting
DO:
Find out what can be recycled in your community, and make an effort to put things in the correct location for pick-up.
DO NOT:
Leave light items, such as newspapers, at the top of open containers on windy days, lest you turn your street into a post-apocalyptic setting ready for a small group of ragtag heroes to walk through the detritus of society because everyone knows zombies don’t pick up after themselves.
Whoever’s doing the music in this bar is reading my mind, or stealing my itunes playlists, just bought the last 4-5 songs within the week.
Some of you might have spotted this week’s kerfuffle about how it if was written by a dude it can’t be fanfic, in the guise of an interview with author Lonely Christopher, who claims not to have written fan fiction of Stephen King’s The Shining. The Mary Sue article covers it pretty well (and has a link to the original interview, should you be that way inclined), but we thought we’d highlight some Fan Studies research that could help Christopher put his work in the wider fan fiction context.
Here are a couple of extracts from the interview to get us started:
“LC: The book can be read as a self-contained “novel,” but it’s more than that. I used another text conceptually, structurally, and materially to generate a resultant yet original work. That’s what I mean by “source.”
The text that I was utilizing was the novel The Shining by Stephen King and the subsequent media iterations and interpretations and its cultural ubiquity. So I wrote my story in relation to another, more specifically on top of it. I took the basic tropes of The Shining and replicated and subverted them, and I also took chunks of language and interwove material pieces of Stephen King’s novel.
(…)
Interviewer: You’ve described this book as “intertextual.” Tell us a little bit more about this book’s relationship to other literature.
LC: The book is a concerted rejection of the standards of any type of literature, so in that way it is reacting to the formal elements it eschews, and interacting with readerly expectations as well as the history of the medium.
I guess the reason why this isn’t “fan fiction” is because, first of all, it’s not enjoyable in the same way and then it’s vaguely academic. Aesthetically speaking, it owes much to Stein, Beckett, Robbe-Grillet, and Bernhard. Intellectually, it has a relationship to Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, Debord, and especially Baudrillard. So it is having conversations with different texts in different ways.”
You may recall a couple of relevant articles, such as this one by Abigail Derecho on fan fiction as “archontic literature”. One of the really interesting points Derecho makes in it is how fan fiction writers will frequently repeat the same motif, explore the same scene, but with a difference. (For those interested in the “vaguely academic”, Derecho bases on Deleuze’s concept of “repetition with a difference”.) So we may look at something from a different character’s point of view, or take a group of characters and put them in a coffee shop AU, or try to work out what would be different if a character had made a slightly different choice. You know what that does? It plays with and challenges the reader’s expectations, and allows readers to make meanings from both the similarities and the differences between the two texts.
You may also remember this paper by Mafalda Stasi which looks at fan fiction as a “palimpsest” - the medieval practice of partially erasing and writing over past manuscripts, creating layers of text and meaning. Does that sound a bit like what Christopher is doung by writing his novel “on top of” The Shining? Maybe a bit.
Fan fiction and transformative work intellectual property law scholars like Rebecca Tushnet may also have something to say about Christopher’s taking “chunks of language” and “inter[weaving] material pieces” of King’s novel, and how ideas about this both among the fan fiction community and among rightholders of the commercial works we base our fan fiction on have evolved over time to a point where Lonely Christopher can do this.
This man’s word salad is next level
“how ideas about this both among the fan fiction community and among rightholders of the commercial works we base our fan fiction on have evolved over time to a point where Lonely Christopher can do this”
This isn’t any fucking pioneering, it’s nobody wanting to admit they’re taking fanfiction seriously because fanfiction is for the WOMENS and the GAYS and the WEIRDOS and it’s INHERENTLY BAD AND STUPID and therefore a cis man doing it and being successful must be something TOTALLY DIFFERENT
Christ on a cracker, first they feed people the line about fanwork being inherently worthless so hard that “it’s just fanfiction” and “it’s just fanart” is uttered in apology over every fanwork in existence, including pieces of unspeakable skill and beauty that are 10000% “academically correct”, then when it finally hits a tipping point of fanwork being so competent they can no longer ignore it as an art form, they try to go “no this is NEW and GOOD because a MAN invented it”
Guess what? Fuck you. Is there bad fanwork? Of course there is. There’s an equal amount of bad art and writing (or moreso) not based on pre-existing comics. There’s a woman in my fandom who draws comics so intricate that each panel is a full resolution painting and it’s “just fanart” because the idea of a hobby seen as inherently female is so threatening to the world that you tried to stomp it out for literally decades, to the point that it doesn’t matter how much hard work and emotion is put into something, if it has a pre-existing character it “doesn’t matter”. And now you’re trying to make it matter even less. How. Fucking. Dare. You.
I am aware I am ranting so I’ll stop but there is no boundary to my anger over this Jesus God
And here, my good Tumblrites, we see a rare example of a particular academic animal in the wild, of the genus Theoryboy.
The Theoryboy is the particularly iteration of “insufferable fuckboy” that surfaces at least once in every English grad school cohort.
Theoryboy has read Derrida and will casually allude to it in seminar. Often, this is by restating a female colleague’s point and then making an arcane reference to a theoretical text only he has read, thereby bringing all conversation to a grinding halt.
Theoryboy is young, white and impeccably polished either in the elbowpatches-and-pocket-square or slouchy-jeans-because-professionalism-is-bourgeois way.
Theoryboy is “mainly interested in theory” and “still looking for a text” even though he is in a literature ph.d. program. He will eventually become a Victorianist (cf. pocketsquares) or a postmodernist (cf. slouchyjeans).
Signal boost. (clutches head a bit and staggers off to have more tea)
listen, there is absolutely nothing that gets me going like mutual seemingly unrequited pining like? i live for both people losing their minds over the other person in bitter silence. savoring every single accidental brush of their fingers, elbows, thighs, every stray glance, memorizing every gesture or expression they catch while the other isn’t looking, all while being absolutely convinced that it’s one-sided only to finally!! finally find out it wasn’t in a triumphant moment of bliss after years and years of delicious, soul-rending, torturous, heart-wrenching pining. i literally don’t care about the fact that this trope is predictable af and always plays out the same way i will still go wild over it every single time like they’ll be doing the same reveal scene i have seen a million times and i’m still on the edge of my seat gasping “are they gonna kiss???”
my single greatest weakness as far as love stories go
is when a story is told through one character’s (pining) point of view, but you the reader KNOW that their love interest loves them back
and the pov character casually says something that you the reader KNOW is gonna be completely devastating to their love interest, but pov character has NO IDEA, like:
“[innocently devastating thing],” said pov character
a strange look seemed to pass over love interest’s face. “yeah, [seemingly casual response that comes off as a little stilted, for reasons pov character just cannot pinpoint],” said love interest.
“uh, [joke that accidentally just DIALS UP THE AGONY TO A THOUSAND FOR LOVE INTEREST],” pov character added, to cut the tension.
love interest step’s faltered for a second. “[seemingly casual response that is FILLED WITH EXQUISITELY REPRESSED PAIN AND LONGING].” it sounded a little gruff. probably love interest was just distracted, or wanted some space. who could blame them?
hey yall just a friendly reminder on aprils fools please dont
pretend to break up with your s/o
post jumpscares
ruin someones reputation
risk someones health and well being
fake being dead
fake suicide
hurt others or urself
fake self harm
make ppl worry for ur life
make fun of someone
cause potential or lethal harm
An addition to the point about risking someone’s health–food pranks are inherently risky. If you know the person involved, great, you should have enough personal knowledge about them to proceed with care. But if the prank involves strangers (ex. mixing skittles and m&ms in an office candy bowl), or non-food items (ex. toothpaste replacing oreo cream), it’s probably not something you want to put into action. Sure, grossed-out faces are funny, but a trip to the hospital because of an allergy attack, or because someone swallowed the first bite without noticing the prank, is never worth it.
forget slow burn romance, give me slow burn found family. give me enemies to friends to siblings. tired, weary old mentors learning to live again for their plucky young apprentices. heroes sharing apartments after world saving adventures because they’re so used to living with each other. dramatic “oh shit” moments where one gets kidnapped and the other realizes “god, that’s my kid.” i want to sit and watch in agony for thirty chapters while two idiots slowly adopt each other, someone get on it
all i want is a partner who is way out of my league but thinks that i’m way out of their league and we’ll live together in perfect confused harmony with a dog
This is not a creative blog. This is a storehouse for all the wonderful, funny, thought-provoking things people have put on Tumblr that I want to keep track of for longer than a minute. That being said, feel free to follow me if I'm tracking one of your fandoms!
P.S. I am currently trying to cut my Likes back to a reasonable number, so if I Unlike something of yours please don't think it's because I don't like it or you anymore!
Some of my fandoms include:
Harry Potter, Merlin, Sherlock, Firefly/Serenity, all things Disney/Pixar, random stuff I think is pretty/funny/important
