More medieval dyes for y'all!

People in the past liked having colorful clothes, too! And the cost of (local) dye was pretty low compared to the labor required to spin fiber into thread, let alone all the other steps in making clothes.

Writing a novel when you imagine all you stories in film format is hard because there’s really no written equivalent of “lens flare” or “slow motion montage backed by Gregorian choir”

You can get the same effect of a lens flare with close-detail descriptions, combined with breaks to new paragraphs.

Your slow-motion montage backed by a Gregorian choir can be done with a few technques that all involve repetition.

First is epizeuxis, the repeating of a word for emphasis.

Example:

Then there’s anaphora, where you write a number of phrases with the same words at the beginning.

This kind of repetition effectively slows the pace of your writing and puts the focus on that small scene. That’s where you get your slow pan. The same repetition also has a subtle musicality to it depending on the words you use. That’s where you get the same vibe as you might get from a Gregorian choir.

Damn I made relatable reblog- bait post and writer Tumblr went hard with it. This is legitimately very good advice. 

For more neat tricks (aka figures of rhetoric) like epizeuxis and anaphora, read THE ELEMENTS OF ELOQUENCE by Mark Forsyth. It’s both educational and delightful, not to mention overflowing with wry wit. Great book. 

Read the first pages of some Discworld books to see even more direct ways in which cinematic openings can be done in print.

This is Shakespearian.

I never want to see another post about environmental storytelling.

but soft what ball through yonder concrete breaks

Interest Check: Community Choir for Grand Fonic Hymn (Cover)

This project has been on the backburner for a couple of years...... But since I've been sick this week and unable to art properly, I dug this out to continue arranging, and I managed to finish the first draft today!

I'll still be refining it for a bit, but I was wondering if there are other Abyss/Tales fans out there who might be interested to come join me and sing as part of a virtual choir? For those who don't read sheet music, I'll be doing demo tracks so you can learn the parts by listening to them!

It's a 3-part SSA choir arrangement, so I'll be looking for voices that can sing between E3-F4 for the lowest part, A3-C5 for the middle part, and C4-F5 for the highest part. The song is quite slow, with fairly simple rhythms, and the demo tracks will also act as a pronunciation guide. also don't worry if you're not perfectly in tune, there's a magic tool I use sparingly called pitch correction

Leave a reply or pop into my inbox or reblog with a comment if you'd be interested to have a look when the parts are ready!!

Interest Check: Community Choir for Grand Fonic Hymn (Cover)

This project has been on the backburner for a couple of years...... But since I've been sick this week and unable to art properly, I dug this out to continue arranging, and I managed to finish the first draft today!

I'll still be refining it for a bit, but I was wondering if there are other Abyss/Tales fans out there who might be interested to come join me and sing as part of a virtual choir? For those who don't read sheet music, I'll be doing demo tracks so you can learn the parts by listening to them!

It's a 3-part SSA choir arrangement, so I'll be looking for voices that can sing between E3-F4 for the lowest part, A3-C5 for the middle part, and C4-F5 for the highest part. The song is quite slow, with fairly simple rhythms, and the demo tracks will also act as a pronunciation guide. also don't worry if you're not perfectly in tune, there's a magic tool I use sparingly called pitch correction

Leave a reply or pop into my inbox or reblog with a comment if you'd be interested to have a look when the parts are ready!!

ver. 3 of wyvern lord eliane

Casually asks ‘who domesticated grain in your fantasy world?’ but while ripping her shirt off with a WWE stage and a roaring crowd just behind and slightly to the left. 

So the thing about this is that, the grain is a metaphor*. Like, the grain is very much a metaphor. I don’t need a fantasy author to look me in the eye and say it was a guy named Tim. But the everything around food usually forms an enormous part of a society’s structure and culture. What are your fantasy world/kingdom/culture’s food sources? What internal myths do they have around the production of food? Customs? How do people share meals? What’s the etiquette? What are the differences between regions, ethnic groups, or social classes? Who spends their time making meals, and how much time is it? How many people can the food sources you create support? If someone breaks bread with a stranger, is that stranger now their friend? Who disagrees? What does your protagonist think? Why does your protagonist think?

An author doesn’t have to info dump all of this in the first chapter. But there’s a helluva difference between a small agrarian village one bad harvest away from starvation, and Picard ordering ‘Earl Gray, Hot’. (Although the local blacksmith and the annoyed personnel in Engineering being asked to fix another replicator after an irate captain kicked it may share a certain common spirit lol.)

And again, the grain is a metaphor. Except for when you very much should figure out the design of your fictional country. I find designing societies from their food source up interesting. Others won’t. But there should be something that a writer finds interesting about their fantasy that they want to explore. Find your grain.

Terry Pratchett read an interesting fact about clowns and eggs once, and decided to make that everyone’s problem. He famously read constantly, always looking for interesting things to put in his books and in some cases build his plots around. Your writing would benefit from the same mentality. The reader doesn’t need an entire encyclopedia thrown at them. But you should put thought into your setting and how it interacts with your culture, history, and society. If you don’t, or even worse if you aren’t sure how all of these interact, then it doesn’t matter how interesting you make your characters or plot. Readers will identify situations in your story where the characters and plot are in conflict with the setting you didn’t pay attention to. 

It’s not that you need to fill out a hundred page questionnaire on your worldbuilding. It’s that your intellectual curiosity and eagerness to explore how things work will enrich your story for the reader. GRRM is absurdly good at the things he’s good at, a list that includes great character arcs, deftly controlling the reader’s sympathy, and intricate plots. His worldbuilding though is abysmal.** In contrast, elements of Anne Mccaffrey’s writing didn’t age well. Her first published book looks like a debut novel, her prose and characterization could have been improved on, and the pacing has issues. But she thought about how her world worked in ways that GRRM simply never bothered to. The effort she put into designing a society that would incorporate dragons into it’s structure, and the consideration she put into the needs of these dragons and their riders and how those would put stress on the social and political systems, is phenomenal. I do genuinely enjoy GRRM’s books lol. But if you wanted to read a novel that had dragons as a feature then Anne Mccaffrey’s Dragonflight is what I’ll recommend every time. Her characters actively use the clues given in how their society is designed to figure out their response to the overall plot, in a way that’s so much more rewarding then having GRRM pencil in years-long winter and then just ignore the implications. 

Absolutely get invested in your characters and your plot! The reader will enjoy them all the more for the passion you bring. But your writing will always benefit from your curiosity in how the world you design works, and in how the characters and plot are actively informed by the setting. That’s the larger point. Cultivate that curiosity and willingness to explore and experiment, because that’s what will keep your plot, characters and setting from coming into conflict with each other. 

*No it’s not, figure this out lol. Get Tim’s number. Has he figured out grain can be fermented yet. Is he free on Saturday. 

**For more, the blog A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry is fantastic reading! 

Did you know the Inca never invented the wheel?

Okay, that’s not entirely true. They did have wheeled toys for their children, like tiny little oxen you could roll along the floor. But they never invented the wheel as a means of transport.

You might think this is odd. The Inca were a very advanced people with cities, elaborate art, temples, and a “writing” system that actually involved using knotted cords and has changed our entire definition of “recorded language.”

But now I’m gonna show you something, and ask…

Does it make a little more sense now why they never bothered with the wheel?

If you were writing a book about people who lived in steep, inhospitable mountains, would it have occurred to you that “a series of terraces, via which things can be manually lowered or raised” would make more sense than wheels?

Who invented your grain?

this post is a lot of pressure but also useful

Here’s another example.

The Romans, technically, had steam power, in the form of a little gadget called the aeliopile. It was basically a party trick to demonstrate the laws of physics, for them– as far as I know, no one made a serious effort to use it to power locomotion.

This was partly because The Tech Just Wasn’t There Yet ™– even in the early days of steam power, boilers tended to explode, because it takes a huge amount of metalworking knowhow to make a boiler that can hold enough steam for thousands of tons of metal.

But it was also partly because… it wasn’t necessary. During the Pax Romana, when communication between different parts of the empire was easiest and collaboration between scientists would be most possible, the best way to send things from point A to point B was by ship. Sailing was, by the standard of the day, easy, fast, and safe. Sure, sometimes you’d sail into a storm– but there were no pirates, because the Roman navy took care of them.

Steam power only made sense as a technology you’d even want in an age where the ocean was too dangerous to travel. No one ships goods overland, pre-steam, if they can avoid it– it’s a lot of danger and effort for not much benefit. But in the early 1800s, when the steam engine was invented? The oceans weren’t safe to travel anymore, and hadn’t been for centuries. Piracy was rampant, both from independent bandits and agents of various European countries. Wars were constantly breaking out between great naval powers. It would be easier, and safer, to transport goods overland, if there was a good way to do it.

So, who didn’t invent your wheel? Who didn’t invent your steam engine? Why didn’t they do it?

The other reason that the Romans didn’t turn steam engines to practical uses is that the other major early use for steam engines is in mining: engines to power pumps to get water out of mines, engines to power the lifts to lift ore (and miners) out of the mines, engines to haul ore from the mine to the nearest port. And the Romans didn’t need that because they were a slave state, that is, a civilization where a very high percentage of the population is enslaved and it is the foundation of the economy. Labor was cheap. The kind of metallurgical work needed to take the proto-engines and turn them into something reliable was expensive. Much cheaper to simply throw a lot of slaves at the problem and work them to death. This is generally the case: when labor is cheap (either through mass enslavement or strict caste/class barriers that keeps low-caste people desperately poor), technology stagnates. The people who would most benefit from labor-saving devices have neither the time nor the resources to develop them, and the people with the time and resources have no motivation because exploiting other humans is cheaper and easier. How does your economy and your class relations affect the technology?

The other reason the Romans didn’t invent steam powered technology is a steam engine is literally not useful for any practical purpose on any fuel they were sourcing at the time. The input/output ratio does not work out in favor. You’re just expending more slave labor to keep the water boiling than you gain as force from the engine.

When the English got into steam power they had already developed a coal mining industry. And like beatrice says, one of the first things they did with the steam engine was pump water out of mines.

One of the subsequent was steam boats. Boat that goes regardless of the wind, without needing to be in range of an unobstructed mule-path with mules to drag it along like the old canal barges, and so forth.

Game-changer, but still following the existing concept of ‘boat’ and using mostly the existing navigational matrix of waterways and ports.

Trains are pretty far down the line! No one is going to jump directly from steam technology to a train system unless someone else did it first and laid out the conceptual track. Trains are very much something that are only obvious in retrospect.

No matter how Great and Powerful, things aren’t convenient unless the underlying conditions to make them useful exist before they’re adopted. Otherwise there is no extant need they can realistically fill.

A lot of states trying to modernize in the 20th century fucked themselves up real bad (or were fucked up by their colonizers but the number of self-owns is tragically high) by either trying to forcibly apply Great Modern Solutions to entirely the wrong problems, or to apply them without having done the underlying infrastructure development that would make them of any material use to anybody.

This kind of thing applies less to grain domestication as such because we a writers mostly have a decent intuitive grasp of what grain crops need and what they’re good for, but otoh it is as has been demonstrated very easy to create a ‘medieval’ city with no apparent access to the grain markets necessary to not instantly starve.

So, as with the wheel: what infrastructure does this worldbuilding element need to actually work the way you want it to, and why was that available?

It DOES apply to grain domestication! White people tend to assume grain production is necessary in a lot of contexts it REALLY isn’t.

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When colonizing the Americas, many colonizers forced the indigenous peoples to adopt farming. Or, if they HAD farming, to switch to European style farming. And it turns out that European farming requires infrastructure that the cultures involved did NOT have!

In Canada, people were forced to settle and farm. They lost access to histories and stories that were tied to physical locations. They lost access to the variety of goods they were formerly able to access through migration. They were no longer self-reliant when it came to clothing or housing, because those resources were intertwined with food gathering.

In Paraguay, people were forced to switch from low-effort crops to high effort ones. The Guaraní had periods of rest and relaxation, balanced with periods of incredibly high group effort. But, when rest periods were lost, people stopped being willing to work together in the same ways. People got HUNGRIER, because the food they grew before was more nutritious. And dietary diversity was lost, because they had designed their society around moving every 5 years, and gathering changing resources from the former settlements as the jungle recovered.

-

Is your setting actually a good fit for grain?

If they live in a jungle, it might be better to have limited agriculture. Food is LITERALLY growing on trees, all around them, so they probably only want to grow (at most) a few staple crops that don’t take up a lot of space.

If they live in an area with a short growing season and low population density, grains are probably too much work for not enough reward. Herding or hunting is much more efficient.

In both these cases, they may still MANAGE the areas they are in. Planting berries on the sides of rivers. Pulling up competing plants so the fruit trees flourish. Dropping nuts in spots with the right light level to maximize their chance of growth.

A brief look at the WIPs of my Christmas AA art I spent more than a month working on this, and it was honestly a detailing nightmare ;;; I had some help from @sylsnon, she’s probably the reason I didn’t go insane doing this hahaha…… Anyway, I’m pretty proud of how it turned out in the end! 

WIP meme

Thank you @lanxyuu for the tag! I've mostly been working on commissions recently so I can't show anything much... But I have a couple that's been lying on the bench..!!

you may or may not recognise this hehe

Otherwise, I had this sitting in my folders for the previous FE art scuffle, but it's been so long that I will probably have to uh... submit it for the next art scuffle 8'D

Life has been insanely busy due to changes in household, so I've had to focus on commissions and other work, instead of doing self-indulgent fun stuff.... But I really hope to get around to the latter soon!!

Tagging @barbieburnanator @yume-x-hanabi @meltypancake @cross-mountain @larachelledrawsfe and whomever else who wants to share their WIPs!!

Thanks for the tag @aurantia-ignis!

I don't have much to share in terms of WIPs other than some sketches of my OC Amber. Trying to draw more references of her before the next art fight.

I can't think of anyone to tag at the moment, but if you see this and wanna share your work, go for it!

I love how dynamic these references are! Your lines of action are always splendid <3

A "lizard-loving jerk" and said Lizard

Drawn for @aurantia-ignis!

rounding up the pieces i've drawn this past month and documenting my progress :] the project theme is pretty loose, but along the lines of growth / leaving the comfort zone / exploration

prompts are either art related (composition, lighting, study etc.) or entirely based on vibes and i tend to jump between WIPs a lot LOL there's around 80 more drawings on the to-do list now and i'm in relentless pursuit for them 🕺🪩💃

Sometime ago I drew this NaesaLeanne art with their heron daughter and skrunkly raven son, and people have been so, so kind with their comments, so as a result I've been having Thoughts about these children...!

Meet Leila, named (loosely) after her Aunt Lillia. Like her mother, she's curious and occasionally reckless in her search for adventure, which means she sometimes ends up hurting her naturally fragile body (much to Nealuchi's dismay). Leila has a strong sense of justice and a desire to be a hero (which may or may not be tied to her father's very blemished reputation in the past, and the way people treat ravens these days), and as a result, she often feels dissatisfied and frustrated with being born a heron.

Her clothing is mostly based on heron royals' designs, but I added little nods to Naesala's insignias(?) as well. Originally, Leanne dressed her in longer skirts, but since Leila was always running around, the excess fabric was always tripping her up. Despite her pleading, Naesala has thus far refused to give her daggers to wear (so that she could be more like papa).

We all love the beach, right? I sure do. Where the sea meets the land is a magical place. It is the overlap of two very different worlds; our sunny, sandy, beautiful home and the alien waves that beckon you into the inhospitable wilderness of the ocean. When crossing that foam-fringed boundary, one must remember that you are no longer in your world. You are entering the sea, and the sea is vast and dark and dangerous. It is more untamed than the wildest jungle and full of creatures that can kill you in a hundred different gruesome ways. Every wave whispers to you that you do not belong here, you may only visit for a brief time if you want to leave with your life. Hold tight to the warm sunlit sand that fringes the barrier of this place, or you may never see it again. Welcome to the beach. Enter at your own risk.

1. Tamarama beach, Australia

This is know as both the smallest and the most dangerous beach in NSW. There is a permanent rip current that runs along the rocky northern shore, but at any given time there could be more hidden in the surf. Large waves break just a little ways offshore, posing a hazard to swimmers but an attraction for surfers. Although there are rarely deaths here, lifeguards have to rescue multiple people a day. Interestingly, this beach is only around sometimes! Occasionally all the sand will wash away and all that’s left is a rocky outcrop. There’s no way to be certain when the beach will come back or how big it will be or what it might look like. I guess it never gets boring to visit.

2. Isle of Ré, France

This island is not the only place you can go to see square waves, but it is one of the places most famous for this strange phenomenon. This is called a cross sea, and occurs when two opposing wave patterns intersect. Although this is certainly a tourist attraction, it is best to observe from a distance, as cross seas can be very dangerous to both ships and swimmers. Cross seas can cause powerful rip currents and walls of water up to 10 feet high, rolling ships and dragging people underwater. (As a side note, my mother thought I had made up cross seas as a freaky supernatural event in my book. Unfortunately, I did not.)

3. Dumas Beach, India

This is supposedly one of the most haunted places in India. Although this beach is full of tourists during the daytime, no one remains after dark, for fear that they will become the next ghost to wander the sand. Apparently, this beach was once used as a burial ground, and said to be black due to the human ashes mixed in. At night, people report hearing voices and seeing apparitions, and even dogs behave strangely once the sun goes down. There have also been multiple unexplained disappearances and at least one recorded death. Whether you believe in ghosts or not, there definitely seems to be something eerie happening on this beach.

4. Morecambe Bay, UK

This is an interesting one, as it’s not technically the water that’s dangerous. The ground is. This estuary features extreme tides, with the water level dropping and rising up to 32 feet twice a day. This exposes an expanse of mud flats and channels which are composed of loose, wet material that can absolutely suck you in and trap you. If this happens when the tide is coming in, it can quickly turn deadly. This has happened many times going back through history, including one incident in 2004 where 23 people died. Yes, all at the same time. No, I don’t want to delve into that incident too deeply in this list as it’s extremely horrifying and tragic. Feel free to research it yourself.

5. Monastery Beach, Oregon

This has earned its nickname “mortuary beach” by being extremely dangerous. Over 30 people have died here, including people who weren’t even in the water. In 2015, a woman walking along the beach was dragged in by a wave and drowned. The beach has multiple factors that make it so deadly, including a steep drop off, unpredictable waves, and strong undertows. This beach isn’t even safe to walk on. I um. Don’t like that.

6. Hanakapiai Beach, Hawaii

Despite its beauty, this Hawaiian beach is not recommended for swimming except for expert surfers. During the summer, this beach is a popular place for hiking, sunbathing and sightseeing, but during the winter the sand is washed away and the waves crash against the cliffs directly. Even in the relatively safe summer months, this beach has no barrier reef to break up the strong waves and powerful currents, which leads to a dangerous situation where swimmers can quickly be swept out into the open ocean and drown. At least 30 people have died here, and 15 of the bodies have never been recovered.

7. Lake Michigan. Just, all of it.

Despite all the Great Lakes being somewhat terrifying, Michigan takes the title of the most dangerous lake in the country. Yearly, Lake Michigan has more drownings than all four other Great Lakes combined. The reason that Michigan is especially hazardous is that, well, it’s kind of weirdly shaped. Thanks to its 300+ miles of uninterrupted parallel shorelines running north-south, it forms huge waves and strong riptides and long shore currents. It is also a question of numbers; Lake Michigan has more public beaches and large population centers than the other Great Lakes. All in all, a recipe for disaster.

8. Playa Zipolite, Mexico

This is also called the “beach of the dead”, so it’s inclusion on this list seems pretty self-explanatory. These waters have strong undercurrents that rotate in a circular pattern, either pushing you into shore or pulling you out to sea. There is a pervasive rumor that 50 people drown at this beach a year, although this is… somewhat exaggerated. In fact, very few people drown at this beach these days, as it has actually gotten less dangerous over the years. There used to be a steep drop-off that would catch people by surprise, but due to several severe storms in the early 2000s, the beach has eroded back and now gently slopes down instead. Although very few people die at this beach nowadays, multiple rescues are performed every day due to the dangerous currents.

9. Cyclops, Australia

This is a particular type of wave that forms off the coast of Esperance, Australia, as the sea floor rapidly goes from deep, open water to a very very shallow reef. It is… unsettling. The longer I look at it, the weirder it gets. It’s like an ai generated image. I couldn’t even pick one picture of it so I made you a collage.

It is considered one of the most dangerous surf spots in the world, and can only be accessed by boat. To quote pacific surf dot com, “the reason the wave is dangerous is because it does not act like any other wave in the world. It engulfs itself due to the massive change in the ocean floor when the wave rolls up.”

10. Nazare, Portugal

This area of Portugal is home to some of the biggest waves in the world. Just offshore is an underwater canyon, plunging down to 16,000 ft deep. This allows large, fast deep-water waves to move into shore unimpeded, and when they hit the shallows close to shore all the water gets suddenly pushed up, resulting in waves up to 80 ft tall. I think the picture speaks for itself in this case. Probably best to not get in the water if you see that shit.

That was fun, wasn’t it? Before I go, let me end this on a different note than the rest of my lists; some actual advice for if you should you ever decide to visit these beaches (or any beach, really). Rip currents are incredibly strong (believe me, I know) but very narrow currents that run perpendicular to shore. To get out of a rip current, swim parallel to shore. Trying to fight the current will just tire you out and eventually leave you exhausted and way the fuck out in the ocean, which is typically when you die. Swimming parallel to shore will get you out of the current, and once you’re free you can swim back in at your leisure. And, just in general, never fight the sea. The sea will win.

Absolutely the fuck not