unstoppable soft goth

Pro-writing tip: if your story doesn't need a number, don't put a fucking number in it.

Nothing, I mean nothing, activates reader pedantry like a number.

I have seen it a thousand times in writing workshops. People just can't resist nitpicking a number. For example, "This scifi story takes place 200 years in the future and they have faster than light travel because it's plot convenient," will immediately drag every armchair scientist out of the woodwork to say why there's no way that technology would exist in only 200 years.

Dates, ages, math, spans of time, I don't know what it is but the second a specific number shows up, your reader is thinking, and they're thinking critically but it's about whether that information is correct. They are now doing the math and have gone off drawing conclusions and getting distracted from your story or worse, putting it down entirely because umm, that sword could not have existed in that Medieval year, or this character couldn't be this old because it means they were an infant when this other story event happened that they're supposed to know about, or these two events now overlap in the timeline, or... etc etc etc.

Unless you are 1000% certain that a specific number is adding to your narrative, and you know rock-solid, backwards and forwards that the information attached to that number is correct and consistent throughout the entire story, do yourself a favor, and don't bring that evil down upon your head.

Editor here. Can confirm.

"Two centuries later" just triggers a mental note to check if timing is consistent throughout the book, because it may mean more time jumps are ahead. "200 years later", or heaven forbid, "201 years later" will have me draw up a time line. The more specific the number, the more critical people become.

Strange phenomenon. Well spotted, OP.

actually i think i might have an explanation for this from linguistics? i think folks get more nitpicky if you have specific numbers because of gricean maxims, specifically the maxims of quality and quantity

basically gricean maxims are a set of guidelines that we all carry in our heads that we expect other people to follow when having a conversation in good faith - i’m copying and pasting definitions from someone else because my attempts at summing up quality and quantity weren’t going so hot

so basically, when you put a rough number in a text, people think subconsciously ‘oh, the exact number isn’t important, because if it was they would tell me an exact number, so i don’t need to worry about this’, whereas if you put something precise in, people’s brains go ‘wait, they think i need to know this information so i’ll remember it, but now it’s later and they’ve said something that contradicts it, so at least one of those times they were lying and i must figure out which time it was’

Also: don't specify data storage sizes. Just, you know, don't.

according to wikipedia there are 44-50 countries in europe so i just went with 50. have fun!

Bohemian Rhapsody. We Will Rock You. Somebody To Love. All hit singles, and all the direct product of a band that was formed when an astrophysicist and a dentistry major found a new friend in an art college, who then went on to recruit a fourth member from the electronics school. Based on this alliance I propose the rift in society between Arts and STEM students was fabricated to keep us separated so as to dilute our true power - and fabricated by who, you may ask? The business major, the only member of society who reaps no reward from art and science and thus must weaken us so as to stay ahead. In this essay I will

Yeah, a lot of what bothers me about fantasy settings (especially D&D) is that people try to run wizards like they're academics, but their only exposure to academics is authoritative professors telling them The Truth, so they don't realize that all academics are always 5 seconds away from trying to strangle each other over questions like 'does time really pass or does it just seem to pass'

What makes it even funnier is that we're dealing with people who's area of expertise is finding ways to break reality, meaning that the more entrenched you are in your wizarding studies the more likely it is that you'll find a way to make reality confirm to your inherent bias.

This leads to your tenured litches/elven archmage professors LITERALLY unable to share rooms with eachother not only because of academic rivalry but because they have conflicting (and centuries outdated) theories of how physics should work and having them get into an augment would likely rip a hole into the astral sea.

Love the idea of a magic system that’s constantly in flux relative to where the nearest wizard is, though.

#okay guys someone slew Urdalos the Undying so now our 5e game runs on pathfinder 2e rules for a bit

Who do we have to kill to get it to 3.5?

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This is better than anything Disney has produced in 5+ years

Greek novelist Auguste Corteau and his husband Anastasios Samouilidis, the first homosexual couple to be married at Athens' city hall, March 7th 2024

i've been rewatching ed edd n eddy and its got me thinking about what their unseen parents are like

It’s funny to me that I’ve met people named Grace, Faith, Patience and Chastity. It is so funny that Puritan names have survived so long and are still so popular if you take a step back and think about it. She’s getting Starbucks today and accusing a townsperson of witchcraft tomorrow.

AND DESTINY, I’ve met so many Destinys.

Nobody even chooses the COOL Puritan names like Punishment, Humiliation, Refuge, Relief, Obedience. And it’s always girls getting Puritan names nowadays. When am I going to see a baby boy named Submit To His Will.

Thats the name of an ex-fundamentalist kinky gay if ever I heard one

kinky evil former Puritan vampire

i found out i had a quaker cousin from the 1600s named Wrestling. as in, from the torah, Jacob’s wrestling with an angel. She also had a brother named Repentance and one of her sisters was named Fear.

Absolutely losing my mind over Love, Patience, Fear, Wrestling and fucking Jonathan

Hold on is this saying theure from a place called SCROOBY

Scrooby continues - in the 2021 census there were 307 scroobydoobydoobians

Tumblr already has a personalization algorithm it's called my beloved mutuals who have great taste and only wish to psychologically damage me sometimes

A comic about a pretty cute cat! 😼