#oof this was a lot of stuff

[secretmellowblog]

Me watching a Wicked bootleg and remembering the bit where they use Nessa's character to speedrun through every offensive trope and stereotype about disabled people:

[turtleblogatlast]

Leo getting hit with a truth curse but instead of forcing him to admit to super sad or worrying things it’s things like “it was me who broke the remote” “I saw Mikey prank Donnie and helped hide it because it’s way funnier if he didn’t know who it was” “I rip my clothes to look more like Raph’s because he’s really cool” “my stripes aren’t even red they’re pink!”

[bleue-flora]

Ok, I recently wrote an essay [here] talking about the definition and duties of civil engineering as well as the ethics because of the brain rot @swordfright gave me with calling Dream Sam’s ultimate engineering project. So, because I actually am a civil engineer I took it upon myself to design the title and summary of quantities sheets just like I do at work for roads but with Dream as the project instead. And in honor of angst day sponsored by @sixteenth-day-event, I figured I’d share it because I feel like it kinda works for the prison of the mind prompt.

“Sam’s “ultimate engineering project” he deemed too damaged like a bumpy road or crumbling building that wasn’t worthy of patching and filling in the cracks or reinforcing, that’s too eroded to be fixed and preserved. So, Sam strived to tear him down to the bedrock so he could remake, remold, and reengineer Dream according to his design for the common safety, public health and well-fair.”

{These are very similar to the actual sheets I make day to day, which I shall not share for the sake of doxing my location, but yea pretty much everything has a significance. Some of it doesn’t necessarily make sense but that was because I was more so taking inventory of what we see in lore (so you know I counted ;) lol)}

[leier-coyol]

Victrix guard marines

I used uv resin for the base so it looks like they are standing on water

[0yorixu]

day 5 for kanamizu week, wedding

ALSO I AM ALIVEE SRRY FOR NOT POSTING IN NEARLY 3 WEEKS

[2aceofspades]

Doodle dump from my mess of a sketchbook..

lil chapter 11 reference in there~

(:

[exasperatedoctopus]

Kira: the old Government sucked and only hurt people like us

Farmer: Your government sucks and only hurts people like me

Kira: :(

~~Three Episodes Later~~

Kira: All Cardassians are evil and should be punished for their Crimes

Random Cardassian civillain who literally couldn’t have done anything to help: All cardassians are evil and I WILL be punished for our crimes

Kira: :((((

[trophywifemac]

IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA ↳scenes that became memes: part 5/?

[snickerdoodlles]

some thoughts on writing humor for anyone interested;

if you want to incorporate more humor into your writing, what you really want to practice is timing. writing humor is rarely about writing an individual funny line-- you don't remember the punchline because of the line itself, you remember the punchline because of everything else that came before it. a punchline without a proper build up or proper timing is just a non-sequitur.

so, when writing a humor fic, a good thing to remember is that the punchline comes last. you can't have your funniest line at the start of your story. think of it like action-- if your first fight is the boss fight, any fight of lower stakes or difficulty that follows is going to feel lackluster in comparison. you want your story and your jokes to build to the final line, or else you'll step on the joke and lose its impact.

and this does take practice! putting the joke at the end doesn't always feel 'natural' at first, learning how to structure and build a humor story is a skill the same as learning how to do it for any other genre. personally, i'd also say humor is something that really comes out in the editing stage more than the initial drafts-- humor is very reliant on timing and rhythm, and it's hard to find and stick to a story's pacing when you're still working on the overall story structure. i mean, this sort of thing tends to go for any sort of writing, but nothing makes humor fall flat faster than wonky pacing and so (for me at least) editing is the stage where the story goes from "oh, haha" to actually funny.

(i also bring this up because fandom has a lot of jokes about not editing a finished draft before posting-- and like, totally feel you, i'm not huge on editing after i reach the end of the draft. however, i have noticed in fic circles where people will get caught up on and sometimes even discouraged by trying to be funny in the fic larva stages when the framework to be funny just isn't there yet. personally, i highlight the humor lines i'm unsure about and move on. then, when the fic's closer to 90% done or so, it's much easier to skim the overall story and cut/format/refine/etc any jokes because they're already highlighted for easy finding.)

another thing to keep in mind is that humor as a writing device is often used to release tension. i would say this is a large part of why humor often falls very naturally into scene transitions; that natural release of tension is very useful as an 'end bracket' to a scene while also setting up the audience to be freshly wound up again. this feature is useful for stories aiming for a more light-hearted tone overall, but in general stories often incorporate humor as a way of controlling a story's pacing so that the tension doesn't get too tight too fast. even if a punchline isn't your end goal, you're still building up to something and it's really helpful to edit your humorous lines by asking "does this fit with my scene/story's pacing, or is it disruptive to my buildup?"

it doesn't really matter how funny an individual line might be on its own-- if its disruptive to the story's overall flow, the joke's effect is going to come off as strained and forced. because humor is really an exercise in structure and story rhythm, the most ineffective way to study humor is to fixate on the individual jokes you remember in your favorite stories-- instead look for the threads that came before the joke that made it memorable, and then practice doing that in your own writing. usually when humor falls flat in a story, it's because either the specific joke pops out of nowhere (missing the build-up) or the joke is in the wrong spot in the story (disruptive, breaks reader immersion). sometimes the fix is as easy as reshuffling a few lines, other times it's a matter of adding more to the build up, or even cutting it altogether so that something else packs a bigger punch.

tl;dr-- i'm repeating the old adage "in comedy, timing is everything." if you want to get better at writing or incorporating humor into your stories, it's honestly more important to practice when to drop a joke than the specific wording of the joke itself.

[sasquach-scratches]

Man, come on....................

[xuexishijian]

So the other day I posted some linguistics terms vocab, basic terms that I was curious about. And I looked up “dialect” and my dictionary gave me 方言 fāngyán, which I didn’t really question. Like fine, sure, “local speech,” that makes sense as what we call “dialect” in English.

But I just watched this lecture on YouTube called “How Fangyan became Dialects” by historian Dr. Gina Anne Tam and turns out that’s a very loaded assumption! Because basically there’s a long history of the sort of mismatch(?) between western terms for describing linguistic varieties (languages, dialects, vernaculars, etc etc) and those used in China. I’d definitely heard other Chinese languages such as Cantonese or Hokkien described as dialects, and this mistranslation or misrepresentation of 方言 is a major part of this problem.

The idea of language vs. dialect is a complex one, and these terms in Chinese languages don’t map 1-to-1 onto existing European-language ones. Linguists in the 19th and 20th century struggled with this and often made comparisons to what they knew from Europe, imposing distinctions and hierarchies that didn’t necessarily exist prior. Language and nationalism in Europe during these years is also super interesting and something I’ve read some about, and it makes sense then that westerners would be confused by a country with many forms of speaking when Europe was (and still is?) drawing up borders along linguistic+national+ethnic lines.

The development of nationalism in China through the 20th century led to further changes in the idea of a national language, especially with the promotion of first 國語 in the Republican era and 普通话 under the Communist government.

It’s interesting that what used to be a term for a region’s language can now be used in a hierarchical way to subordinate certain linguistic varieties to others. Dr. Tam mentioned that there was an article that generated controversy years ago that said that since Cantonese was a 方言 that is wasn’t fit to be taught and couldn’t be considered anyone’s 母语 mǔy�� (mother language), that instead all Chinese people must learn and use 普通话, the national standard. This idea of course coming from the implications that 方言 now has, that it’s “merely” a dialect, that dialects aren’t “full” languages, that they’re inferior or incomplete or whatever.

Dr. Tam had a nicer way of phrasing this, but terminology is so important because these definitions—which may seem inconsequential, like we’re squabbling over minor issues that mean little—influence how we perceive and think, which in turn influences how we interact with the world. If a 方言 is just a dialect, and dialects are lower than languages, and Cantonese is a 方言, that means Cantonese is lesser. That’s a “logical” conclusion one can make, just a syllogism of X is Y, Y is Z, therefore X is Z (Cantonese is a 方言, 方言 is lesser, Cantonese is lesser). But that “logical” conclusion starts from a very very flawed premise, this definition which presupposes a hierarchy that doesn’t really exist linguistically (but then does exist socially and is justified by these “scientific” or “logical” reasons).

All that to say, this was a super interesting lecture (about her book that I might have to read!) and if you have time I would totally recommend giving it a watch. These terms are interesting and complex and nuanced, and knowing more about the history is really enlightening. I’ve been getting into language and identity lately, reading a lot about nationalism and race and the idea of “native speakers.” It feels like, while in other areas we might have made social progress, that language is one area that many people are super unaware of and take for granted their own biases without understanding these power structures and their histories.

Anyways I’d be curious to hear what anyone else has to say on the topic! And definitely if you watch her lecture let me know what you think!

[cellgatinbo]

wait just realized, was there only the one server-wide crash this whole event? when it played the first cutscene at the very start? if so i gotta say, i'm impressed

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

At The Feet Of The Sun

book 2 in a slow paced high fantasy duology*

the right hand of the emperor (who is off searching for an heir) struggles with what to do after passing on his responsibilities and also discovering various pieces of information that are mindblowing to him, personally,

after adventure is thrust upon him, he travels to find His Radiancy and they go on some otherworldly adventures while growing closer and figuring out the nature of their friendship

(*there’s extra novellas & i think another book coming? duology adjacent, currently,)

[sarastuss-a]

¹⁵. APPEARANCE STUDY : SARASTUS, AZEM, THE NEW SUN.

[rin-hanarin]

Welp, I guess it's time for me to filter out the Veilguard spoilers. I was chill with them for a while, but I'm catching some wild ones I'd rather learn from the game, there's gonna be nothing left by the time the game actually comes out. If only people weren't tagging literally everything including minor bullshit as spoilers.

[yetanothersillyboii]

if cooking was a crime, I’d be a law abiding citizen