Endless Candela Obscura
can i get a hell yea if you’re still gonna be wasting your time on this website in 2014
can i get a hell yea if you’re still gonna be wasting your time on this website in 2024
Hmm. The finnish words for "warrior" and "soldier" are both formed from the word "war" with a different suffixes, warrior with -uri and soldier with -las. Like this:
sota = war soturi = warrior sotilas = soldier
And for fun, I decided to check out what other words have those different suffixes, to kind of put together what nuance differences the suffixes mean. So, for -uri, there are:
vaate = piece of clothing/garment vaatturi = a tailor
leipoa = to bake leipuri = a baker
imeä = to suck imuri = a vacuum cleaner
nahka = leather, skin, or hide nahkuri = a tanner
And for -las, there are:
kokea = to experience, to endure, occasionally "to test" kokelas = candidate, prospect, one who is being put to the test
kuohita = to castrate a male animal Kuohilas = a castrate, eunuch, one that has been castrated
oppia = to learn oppilas = a student, pupil
toipua = to recover toipilas = convalescent, a patient in recovery
Looking at the general trend of both suffixes, the -uri suffix seems to be "one that makes the original word (happen)" type of words, while -las is "one that the original word happens to". So, in conclusion, the difference between a warrior and a soldier is that a warrior is someone who makes war happen, and a soldier is someone whom war happens to.
i love your takeaway from the JJ Abrams Mystery Box was "it's because what's in the mystery box is developed/good/exists. you wouldn't get it."
It only works if you set up several conflicting theories as to what is in the mystery box that are all equally plausible. The audience has to feasibly be able to reach the "correct" answer, but they can never be sure. That's intrigue! Otherwise, all you're doing is telling the audience that a really deep and well written story is happening just off screen I promise.
One of the writers of LOST came to speak at my school once. He told the crowd "I could totally tell you guys what the island is but I'm not gonna" And the crowd went nuts. That shit made me so mad. It has been a decade since that show went off the air. If you had an actually narratively satisfying answer for that question, you would have said it by now. Or better, you would have put it in the damn show.
The "Jopperbeasts aren't real, they're just a story" setup doesn't work if the episode always ends with the characters killing a real Jopperbeast."
Theres that story J.J. tells, about how he bought a home magic kit with a mystery box, and he loved the feeling of speculating on what might be in the box.
I agree! I think mystery can be an excellent narrative force! I love engaging with a world through speculation. But the thing about an at-home-magic kit is its a real thing that exists within the context of the real world. There's only a set amount of objects that can realistically be in there. You're not going to get a live cat, or an egg sandwich, or the country of Poland in that thing. The speculation has bounds. You can realistically guess the "correct answer."
Mystery boxes are done well when the box is opened, and you go "of course! I never would have guessed! But the pieces were all there in front of me!"
When I'm writing there's a related rule of thumb I use that I call "The Agatha Christie Principle". The rule is simple:
Anything I rely on later in the plot must be on the page somewhere before I use it. The earlier it appears in the story, the better.
IDK enough about Ms. Christie herself to know if she ever talked about it, but part of the reason she was so insanely popular as an author is that she played fair with readers. The details that allow Poirot and Miss Marple are shown to the reader when they are shown to the detectives, if not even earlier, so the reader has an edge on them! By the time we get to the famous Accusing Parlor scene, the reader has all the details that the detective will use to solve the mystery.
In that sense, the mystery in the box is not the mystery, the mystery is the connections between the evidence the detective has made.
And this relates to the Mystery Box in that the evidence itself is like the outside dimensions of the box. It gives you hints as to the shape and size of the thing inside, and raises the stakes of the guessing game. In fact, the more evidence you can provide and the more you can tell the reader about the contents of the box before the reveal, the better, because it gives them that exciting tip-of-the-tongue-I-KNOW-I-know-this! Feeling. Like how impact force is more powerful when concentrated to a small point, the emotional impact of the reveal hits so much harder when the reveal itself is only a TINY detail.
So as a writer, there's three steps to executing the mystery box well.
1. Know DAMN WELL what the actual reveal is FIRST.
IIRC, part of the reason that LOST fell apart the way it did was that nobody writing the show actually had a solid, coherent explanation of that the hell was actually going on. So they contradicted themselves every other episode and dropped plot lines they hoped the watchers would just forget, and they lost the tension of the guessing game.
Then you write the story backwards from the reveal by adding your obscuring factors like red herrings and bad witness accounts and the linear nature of time etc, to it. That way, when the reader reads the story forwards, they get to see the obfuscation come off in what looks like a very natural way, and you don't contradict yourself.
So step one is to decide on what is actually in the box, and what the box itself looks like.
Step 2: Abandon the fear of being known and not being the smartest guy in the room, and accept the love of being known. Publish, and do not retroactively edit. That's the devil talking.
This is where I think JJ fails. It's hard and frightening actually, to be a creative person and meet someone who can see right through the shiny exterior of your work and makes comments on the mechanics within, sometimes pointing out parts you didn't know you put in there. You feel extremely seen.
"Fuckor" I think the kids call it.
But listen to me.
That person who sees behind the curtain and stands there talking about the mechanisms of the Oz machine? That person loves your Oz Machine. They would not be studying it this hard if they didn't. In a parasocial sort of way, that person loves you, and the discussion of how you foreshadowed that bit and made that literary reference is a love letter to you.
Yes, this person is probably smarter than you, but what a privilege, to be adored by such a divine and enlightened being.
It's okay if the readers guess the reveal. That means you did the explanation right and they're not disappointed at how 'simple' the mystery is- they're delighted to be in on the joke with you. It's okay if you follow a trope- there's a reason it's a popular trope in the first place. We like it. We like singing and playing along with you, author.
I may have gotten off topic but you get my point. Your story should contain its own spoilers, because the audience is reading the story for those spoilers.
This sort of thing in books is the thing that's guaranteed to have me going back for multiple re-reads over and over and over again. It's why I'm such a RABID fan of the Toby Daye series by @seananmcguire. Because the author never lies but boy oh boy does she cast a spectacular "don't look here" and going back and noticing all the places she told me exactly what was going on and I just didn't notice or didn't get it, brings me endless delight.
@quiddie literally on tumblr at work ilysm
this guy's videos are stupid useful
Put here to remind myself
nothing in the world makes me more evil than just being kind of annoyed
me when i'm in genuine agonising distress: i'm so sorry if i'm bothering you with my childish histrionics :/
me when i'm just in a bit of a bad mood: i hope hydrogen bombs fall on every living thing in the universe
(source)
- Unsplash - photography, illustration, & art
- Pixabay - same as unsplash
- Pexels - stock photos and videos
- Getty Images - photography & illustration
- Veceezy - vectors and clipart
- Gumroad - photoshop brushes (and more)
- StockSnap.io - stock photos
- Canva - needs login but has lots of templates
- Library of Congress - historical posters and photos
- NASA - you guessed it
- Creative Commons - all kinds of stuff, homie
- Even Adobe has some free images
There are so many ways to make moodboards, bookcovers, and icons without plagiarizing! As artists, authors, and other creatives, we need to be especially careful not to use someone else’s work and pass it off as our own.
Please add on if you know any more resources for free images <3
the fact that we only have “herculean task” and “sisyphean task” feels so limiting. so here’s a few more tasks for your repertoire
- icarian task: when you have a task you know you’re going to fail at anyways, so why not have some fun with it before it all comes crashing down
- cassandrean task: when you have to deal with people you KNOW won’t listen to you, despite having accurate information, and having to watch them fumble about when you told them the solution from the start (most often witnessed in customer service)
feel free to chime in i ran out of ideas much faster than i anticipated
Promethean task: opposite of a Cassandraean task. You have the right information, and SOMEONE has to share it. But it's all in the delivery and if you're the person to identify the problem you WILL be hated forever.
Oedipal Task: (1) Attempting to avoid an unspeakably awful outcome and in doing so creating the circumstances that will bring it about. (2) Trying to solve an problem and discovering that you are in fact the problem you are trying to solve.
Odyssean task: you’ll complete it but it’ll take 20 times longer than it should and involve multiple side quests and mini-adventures
Pandorean task: some people fucked around and now it's your job to make sure they find out
good ref for aspiring spec authors
Folks, friends, y’all…. esk*mo is a slur. I understand a lot of people don’t know that, I don’t want to be a dick about it, but I’ve been seeing it in fics. Wanna write “esk*mo kisses”? Just say “nuzzled noses” or something.
I’m not here to call anybody out, it’s been in multiple fics, I’m not vague posting. This is just a psa. 👍🏻
If you could help me spread awareness about this by reblogging, I’d really appreciate it.
I’ve had this post on insta saved for sometime ❤️
[Text Description: “Hey! Reminder: Eskimo is a slur. It means ‘snow eaters’ in Cree and is a slur against Inuit . Also don’t use ‘Eskimo kisses’. It’s called Kunik. It is a greeting mostly used for family… Kunik was how I’d greet my mom and grandmother as a small child.” /TD]
Rebloging for the awareness and especially for the alternative words
And so people who are just learning this now know the proper usage: “Inuit” is plural. The singular is “Inuk”, as in “he is an Inuk”
Apropos of (almost) nothing: I'm the kind of pedant who dislikes calling tentacle porn "tentacle porn" not because I think it's aberrant but because, 98% of the time, what's being depicted are octoform arms or tendrils, not tentacles. Tentacles are defined by the clubbed ends, which are the only part that have suckers. If it's tapered and has suckers all the way down, it's an octoform arm; if it has no suckers at all, it's a tendril.
You're welcome.
This site has gotta be the weirdest way to learn things
No but seriously. Normalize finding love in your 40's. Normalize discovering and chasing new dreams in your 30's. Normalize finding yourself and your purpose in your 50's. Life doesn't end at 25. Let's stop acting like it does.
THIS IS A FUCKING TRAVESTY GO LISTEN TO POE RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE
GODDAMN SHE WAS DONE SO DIRTY BY THE INDUSTRY
She was so incredible
women with swords. men with swords. everyone with swords . you agree. reblog