#shakespeare summarized

[cto10121]

Reading Stalking Shakespeare by Lee Durkee and it’s a gift that keeps on giving

[thatdeadaquarius]

About your language brainrot. I see your "Reader's writing can't match tyvat's long and flowery writing" and bring you "Tyvat isn't used to books over 50 pages long so a short story to the Reader is a whole dictionary to tyvat readers".

Seriously, have you seen how thin the books are? They don't wrote novels, they write short chapters formatted in the way really old stories are. As in, summarizing all the events down into one smooth story then adding a few quotes. Fanfiction writers are insane. They will willingly sit down and write hundreds of words at a time. To them, a proper modern day story of maybe, oh 10k words or so, would probably be like the Oddessy itself.

If we were to combine the two headcanons. It would end up as many historians being intimidated by this insanely long written scripture in the language of the forgotten.

I'm going to take this a step further and say that if the creator asked some people to proofread their things, it would establish a hiarchy of who is able to actually finish the book the creator read and who isn't.

NOW THIS, THIS IS MY FUCKING JAMMMM

I'm so sorry this is so old!! u probably all know this by this point that I've really slowed down as the year has gone on, but I graduated university and then got my first job so its been pretty crazy!

Sun: Reader (you/they/them)

Orbit: Headcanons-ish

Stars: dash of all the book/nerds of Genshin, heavy on Sumeru?

Comets & Meteors: Content Warnings: Cussing, 16+ Mature Audiences, Spoliers for Sumeru Archon Quests/Scaramouche, & Trigger Warnings: mention of shipping/characters shipping themselves with you.

Comment if any missed, please.

☆

FULL STOP.

THE AKADEMIYA, FONTAINE RESEARCH INSTITUTE, HAVE BEEN WAITTTINNGGGG ON YOUR ASS LMAO

You fall from the fucking sky like a 5 star, or pop out of the Irminsul or whatever

and immediately are mobbed by scholars. LMAO jkjk (not really, bc that's what it’d feel like)

can you even imagine the dread older stories(”the classics” to them), that was instilled in the poor students around Teyvat??

id like to think ur works are the most preserved over the thousands of years of Teyvat archeologists excavating them, in comparison to other authors (teyvat just likes you more, suck it William Shakespeare)

also, bc I cant resist language differences/world building I'm sorryyyy 😭 😭

the vocab of Genshin lang vs. ours, has significantly less vocabulary like their actual dictionary is 1/3 the size of ours type of energy

(Omfg all ur fanfics being considered like insanely long realistic romantic classics or tragedies like Jane Austen-level, and only the richest and biggest play companies put on plays about ur stories bc the script goes on for hours)

(ur plays only get put on for rlly big events bc of this, like Lantern Rite or like a Summer/Winter festival/your birthday, which is, yes, an international holiday)

dude the sheer power move of anything you’ve written being essentially “Journey of the West” to them, like Damnnn.

endless like adaptations, plays, Teyvat-short stories condensing it, (THEIR OWN FANFICTION ABOUT UR STORIES)

the power is, in fact, going to your head every time another scholar both deflates at how long ur stuff is, but also lights up bc they get to read it

speaking of scholars… you know who snatched you up first. you know. you don’t even need to read the next line.

Alhaitham.

sneaky bastard he is, absolutely manipulated, mansplained (and manwhored bc he knows he’s handsome, cheeky little shit) his way into getting you to sit down with him and interview you about both translating other classics, your own, giving your own analysis of others works and ur own, and picking ur brain apart of how/why you wrote urs, etc. its fucking endless,

Kaveh had to come rescue you bc u were starving to death after getting stuck with the Haravatat scholar in his office for nearly 7 hours of interrogation discussion about literature

and Alhaitham wasn't even nearly done, he’d informed you as you left that he already had another appointment for later conversation scheduled (how?? you don't even know ur own schedule??? you have a schedule???) and was looking forward to more of your “creative and enlightening input” :)))

(you’re never going to escape him, not even Nahida herself can save you from his stubborn ass)

On another note, Xingqiu is quaking when you agree to autograph his copy of your stories (of which he has all hard covers of the first edition translations)

Zhongli/Rex Lapis is known for having a near-lifelong passion for searching for your works specifically, and learning how to translate them better into Teyvatian vernacular

like the same way he can absolutely speak on Rex Lapis facts/rocks/adepti info, is the same confidence he speaks about knowing ur work lol

(yes he did also ask for several autographs and another sit-down talk about the works, tho a lot more sneaky then Alhaitham bc he just casually gets u guys into it during dinner)

Barbatos/Venti has written some of the most famous songs based on your stuff, he has his favorites too,

but he always claims the best songs are any that have been written in the story, like either when a character sings something, or there are like quotes from songs ur fanfics are based on lol

(he also demanded to hear what they actually sound like from you, yes, you have to sing them for him lol)

Venti also can surprisingly drunkenly ramble the entirety of at least one of ur stories, like, word for word lmao

(Diluc gave in and did give him a drink on the house for that one, just once, Venti doesn’t remember it lol)

(I forgot to mention, u guys still speak the same language, just like, different versions of it)

ur works being one of the few things all the Archons can freely talk about with each other, like it’s neutral ground bc they’re all fangirling about it lmao

Furina and Neuvillette have had like,, fierce debates over the decades about character dynamics and the general drama of ur stories, they’ve gotten into it enough they’ve stopped talking to each other for a couple days a few times lol

Albedo, Sucrose, Kokomi, Yae Miko, Ei, Raiden, have read every single work they’re gotten their hands on in Teyvat (it took them like a literal year or longer)

Albedo drew you fanart for every single story, bc he’s hyperfixated on everything related to you ngl,

Kokomi had commissioned smaller pocket versions of ur works (which later got popular thanks to Yae Miko) both the OG and the Teyvat shortened versions

THE HARBINGERS ARE THE MOST DOWN BAD LMAO

Childe has literally tried to recreate battle scenes from ur works lmao

and gets especially riled up about fighting someone who resembles any characters from them (esp villains, what a cutie)

You cannot fathom the amount of research throughout Teyvat that has been secretly or indirectly funded by Pantalone/Tsaritsa

from the experts to analyze them, to funding play companies to act them out, to actually excavating places to get more of ur stuff unearthed

(the Harbingers absolutely are the first group of people that got to read several of ur stories first bc of this, like the world’s most exclusive secret book club lol)

Scaramouche used to clown on Childe all the time about how he was too impatient to even “sit down and read the King’s classics”, and he was downright insufferable when he found out about Tartaglia’s habit of recreating battle scenes/that being what motivated him to fight sometimes lol

that being said, Wanderer surprisingly never forgot ur stories.

Even when his memories were wiped for a bit, he found comfort in these fantastical epics still sticking around, even when his old names did not

(he mayyyy or mayyy nottt have secretly namedhimselfafteroneofthetragicprotagonistsherelatesto- )

oh btw, Nahida also found joy and comfort in ur stories when she was trapped, they also helped her literally grow as a person bc she had ur stories to help her sort of process the world/what life was like outside of her dreaming prison 🥺💔❤️‍🩹

◇

OMFG

ANYWAY FULL TONE SHIFT LMFAO-

the ABSOLUTE SPIRAL-RED-STRING-CONSPIRACY-THEORY-BOARD ENERGY IF THIS WAS A BLUNT LANGUAGE AU LMAOOOO

like specifically how Teyvatians like to give all the context ever thru their words, but older deities/beings like you just do simple phrases that can have deeper meanings (whereas teyvat just explains all the meanings behind their words)

STOP there’s like an official display at the Akademiya and Fontaine Institute of red string theory boards 😭😭 (look what you’ve done to themmm LMAO)

for like every story of urs, INCLUDING THE FANFICS STOP

IMAGINE THE SHIPPING WARS IF U EVER WROTE ONE THAT WASNT EXPLICIT OR LIKE ONE OF THE MAIN ROMANTIC INTERESTS HAD CHEMISTRY WITH OTHER CHARACTERS HAHAHAHAA

that's actually what Akademiya scholars argue about the most viciously, it’s like politics you can’t just bring up ships from ur stories casually in regular convos 💀

(poor Cyno has to deal with a shipping war once a year bc someone always makes the mistake of reading ur work for the first time (without being told to not talk to others abt ships lol) and it starts an all out brawl in the cafeteria every time LMAO)

Also yes.

Cyno is a fanboy.

(he has read Creator x Reader-insert fanfiction.)

(As have most of the characters mentioned, and those not lol)

…

(I'm gonna make a whole Creator x reader fanfic post one day i stg lmao)

☆

an iced coffee? for me?? :0

ok but real talk…

wtf do you guys wanna see for new years!!

i didn't do a inktober/october days thingy bc i felt too unprepared (and bc id wanted to post that 1000+ followers eldritch au for Halloween)

but now i kinda wanna, at least for a few days :o

ill post a poll in a minute, so check it out!! but still, please feel free to comment some ideas here! :)

Safe Travels Deafening Dreamer,

💀♒

If you wanna join a taglist, DM me what for! "Pspspsss, please tag me for [All SAGAU posts, Only SAGAU Language AUs, diff fandom, etc.]!"

(If you ever wanna drop, just DM me! "No more taglists/[specifically this AU/fandom] please!")

♡the beloveds♡

@karmawonders / @0rah-s / @randomnatics / @glxssynarvi / @nexylaza / @genshin-impacts-me / @wholesomey-artist / @thedevioussmirk / @the-dumber-scaramouche / @chocogi / @fallen-starr / @areaderofbooks / @devilangel657 / @esthelily

[hamletthedane]

Hamlet’s Age

Not to bring up an age-old debate that doesn’t even matter, but I have been thinking recently how interesting Hamlet’s age is both in-text and as meta-text.

To summarize a whole lot of discussion, we basically only have the following clues as to Hamlet’s age:

Hamlet and Horatio are both college students at Wittenberg. In Early Modern/Late Renaissance Europe, noble boys typically began their university education at 14 and usually completed at their Bachelor’s degree by 18 or 19. However, they may have been studying for their Master’s degrees, which was typically awarded by age 25 at the latest. For reference, contemporary Kit Marlowe was a pretty late bloomer who received a bachelor’s degree at 20 and a master’s degree at 23.

Hamlet is AGGRESSIVELY described as a “youth” by many different characters - I believe more than any other male shakespeare character (other than 16yo Romeo). While usage could vary, Shakespeare tended to use “youth” to mean a man in his late teens/very early 20s (actually, he mostly uses it to describe beardless ‘men’ who are actually crossdressing women - likely literally played by young men in their late teens)

King Hamlet is old enough to be grey-haired, but Queen Gertrude is young enough to have additional children (or so Hamlet strongly implies)

Hamlet talks about plucking out the hairs of his beard, so he is old enough to at least theoretically have a beard

In the folio version, the gravedigger says he became a gravedigger the day of Hamlet’s birth, and that he’s be “sixteene here, man and boy, thirty years.” However, it’s unclear if “sixteene” means “sixteen” or “sexton” (ie has he worked here for 16 years but is 30 years old, or has he been sexton there for thirty years?)

Hamlet knew Yorick as a young child, and the gravedigger says Yorick was buried 23 years ago. However, the first quarto version version of Hamlet says “dozen years” instead of “three and twenty.” This suggests the line changed over time. (Or that the bad quarto sucks - I really need to make that post about it, huh…)

Yorick is a skull, and according to the gravedigger’s expertise, he has thus been dead for at least 7-8 years - implying Hamlet is at least ~15yo if he remembers Yorick from his childhood

One important thing sometimes overlooked - Claudius takes the throne at King Hamlet’s death, not Prince Hamlet. That is mostly a commentary on English and French monarchist politics at the time, but it is strange within the internal text. A thirty year old Hamlet presumably would have become the new monarch, not the married-in uncle (unless Gertrude is the vehicle through which the crown passes a la Mary I/Phillip II - certainly food for thought)

Honestly, Hamlet is SO aggressively described as being very young that I’m fairly confident the in-text intention is to have him be around 18-23yo. Placing his age at 30yo simply does not make much sense in the context of his descriptors, his narrative role, and his status as a university student.

However, it doesn’t really matter what the “right” answer is, because the confusion itself is what makes the gravedigger scene so interesting and metatextual. We can basically assume one of the following, given the folio text:

Hamlet really is meant to be 30yo, and that was supposed to surprise or imply something to the contemporary audience that is now lost to us

Older actors were playing Hamlet by the time the folio was written down, and the gravedigger’s description was an in-text justification of the seeming disconnect between age of actor and description of “youth”

Older actors were playing Hamlet by the time the folio was set down, and the gravedigger’s description was an in-text JOKE making fun of the fact that a 30-something year old is playing a high-school aged boy. This makes sense, as the gravedigger is a clown and Hamlet is a play that constantly pokes fun at its own tropes and breaks the fourth wall for its audience

The gravedigger cannot count or remember how old he is, and that’s the joke (this is the most common modern interpretation whenever the line isn’t otherwise played straight). If the clown was, for example, particularly old, those lines would be very funny

Any way you look at it, I believe something is echoing there. It seems like this is one of the many moments in Hamlet where you catch a glimpse of some contemporary in-joke about theater and theater culture* that we can only try to parse out from limited context 430 years later. And honestly, that’s so interesting and cool.

*(My other favorite example of this is when Hamlet asks Polonius about what it was like to play Julius Caesar in an exchange that pokes fun of Polonius’ actor a little. This is clearly an inside-joke directed at Globe regulars - the actor who played Polonius must have also played Julius Caesar in Shakespeare’s play, and been very well reviewed. Hamlet’s joke about Brutus also implies the actor who played Brutus is one of the main cast in Hamlet - possibly even the prince himself, depending on how the line is read).

[minmin-vs-physics]

HUP, EPR, and Bell’s Theorem

Abstract

An educational document discussing the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the EPR (Einstein- Podolsky-Rosen) Paradox, and Bell’s Theorem, written for an audience without a background in physics, but with their head still screwed on right.

1 Introduction

Ah, quantum mechanics. A bizarre theory which unfortunately describes our physical world exceed- ingly well. Einstein didn’t get it. Bohr didn’t get it. I don’t get it. And soon, you won’t get it either. As the saying goes, the more you know about quantum mechanics, the less you understand it.

I will be skipping around in terms of topics covered in undergraduate quantum mechanics courses to prepare you for the actual beast, Entanglement.

Entanglement, the property of quantum systems to remain correlated even when separated, is a concept which has transformed from a worrisome byproduct of a thought experiment [1] into a cornerstone of quantum mechanics itself. What is a quantum mechanics? Google is your friend, my dear reader. My time with you is limited„ and I cannot teach you the alphabet to make you read Shakespeare. I can only explain what you directly need to understand this article. Anything else shall be your homework, and if I am feeling kind at the end, I will provide a list of accessible resources on learning quantum mechanics the RIGHT way.

As we dive into the frankly confusing world of entanglement, it is vital that you remember one thing– A quantum particle is described by a wave function, Ψ. This wave function is a solution to the Schrodinger equation.

This is what they mean when they say something is both a particle and a wave; It’s behavior can be described by a special kind of wave equation, which we all know and love as the Schrodinger Wave Equation. But that’s not important right now. I’ll explain more if I need to. We need to get to HUP.

2 Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle

Formulated by Werner Heisenberg in 1927, the Uncertainty Principle is an indomitable tenet in the field of quantum mechanics. Its premise is simple. The more precisely a particle’s momentum is determined, the less precisely is its position. In one dimension, this can be summarized with the following mathematical statement: ∆x∆p ≤ 2

Here, ∆x is the standard deviation or “spread” of the position x, while ∆p is the standard deviation of the momentum p. As the spread of one quantity decreases, the other must increase in order to maintain the inequality. I will not bother proving the Principle in full, but I have Heisenberg’s original proof in the references.

Is that it?

Ummmmm, no. An important thing to remember about HUP is that it is not exclusive to x and p. HUP applies to any two quantum mechanical operators, A, B, which do not commute with each other i.e. [A, B] = AB − BA = 0. But that’s all mathematical nonsense, Min! What does it really mean?

Fine! I’m only doing this because it will be useful when we get to measurements in the EPR paradox and Bell theorems. In order to understand what “not commuting” means in the physical sense, let’s use our favorites, position and momentum, as an example. In quantum mechanics, xˆ andpˆ are referred to as the position and momentum operators respectively. (Why the little hats? Firstly, they’re cute, and secondly, well, you’ll see.) The whole point of calling them operators is that they act on wave functions. And in the crudest sense possible (please don’t try this at home, folks), hitting an operator on a wave function and taking the expectation value, gives a measurement of the quantum mechanical system.

There is about three semesters of quantum mechanical education I’m waving off right now, but bear with me. When we act the momentum operator on the system, in some sense we extract the momentum. Same thing for position. However, the whole deal about x and p is that they do not commute. So, the order in which you conduct the measurements absolutely does matter. First measuring x and then p would give you a different answer than first measuring p and then x. This is because the very act of measuring a quantum state changes it. That’s right! It changes. This makes all the difference when you consider the standard deviation of a bunch of measurements. If my memory of introductory quantum mechanics serves me right, after about three pages of algebra you arrive at the familiar position-momentum uncertainty principle.

The moral of the story is that the non-commutativity of these operators manifests as a sort of granularity in the accuracy of measurements you can make on a physical system. This granularity is retained between any other kinds of non-commuting measurements you can make!

On second thought, do you really need this? Probably not. But, the algebra of uncertainty principles is a pet project to me. Especially the strangest of them all, the energy-time uncertainty principle. Enough on that! Here’s the main takeaway (other than the actual HUP statement) that you need from this section:

Making a measurement on a state changes its wave function. No exceptions. None. The detached observer is not a reality in the quantum mechanical world.

3 Spin

I realized that the following sections will not make any sense if you don’t at least know what spin is. So, let’s make a short pit-stop at Spin City to learn about this nonsensical physical quantity.

We’re all aware of angular momentum– its the rotational analog of linear momentum (which we talked about the previous section). We all agree that it is a property related to the motion of an object, right? WRONG! Sometime in the 1900s (Seriously, 20th Century Physicists should chill out), it was discovered this angular momentum from motion i.e. “orbital” angular momentum, as it was called in the atomic physics context it was first described, does not account for all the angular momentum of a particle. Long story short, the remaining angular momentum, which is intrinsic to a particle, is now called Spin. Every fundamental particle has a particular value of spin, which, in quantum mechanical jargon, is the eigenvalue of the spin operator.

For understanding the following sections, we really only need to care about spin-1/2 particles, which are lovingly called fermions, and are the building blocks of all ordinary matter. The shining feature of spin-1/2 particles is that their spin can either be +1 or −1 , which is often referred to as spin-up (↑) and spin-down (↓) respectively.

Physically, the up or down comes from whether the measured spin is along the axis it is measured, or opposite to it. Yes, spin is a vector, so it does have three independent components in the three spatial directions, but it is convention to consider the z-component of the spin for calculations and experiments. Any references to up and down in the next sections are along the z-direction.

Oh, and one more thing, spin-0 particles have no intrinsic spin. This will be important when we encounter the EPR Paradox.

4 EPR Paradox

After skipping a whole bunch of most-likely important concepts in the study of quantum mechanics we arrive at the EPR paradox.

The EPR paradox is a thought experiment first described in the groundbreaking paper [1] by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen in 1935. Einstein was quite vocally a hater, and the EPR paradox was proposed as evidence that the description of reality provided by quantum mechanics is incomplete. Reality doesn’t care, of course, and the EPR Paradox isn’t really a paradox. In fact, it is the foundation of entanglement– a magnificent, very real feature of reality which spans black holes, quantum computers and even my field of research: Entanglement in elementary particle physics.

In fact, I’m so self-centered that the example we will use to illustrate the EPR paradox is from particle physics. Just kidding, my explanation follows Chapter 12 in Griffiths’ Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, and is a simplified version credited to David Bohm

EPRB Paradox

Suppose a pion (funky particle with spin-0) at rest, decays to an electron and positron which fly off into opposite directions. Since the pion has spin-0, conservation of angular momentum dictates that the electron and positron occupy the following spin configuration.

√(1/2) (|↑↓⟩−|↓↑⟩)

BE NOT AFRAID of the mathematical jumpscare. The fancy bracket |·⟩ is what’s called a “ket”, and is used to denote the state of a quantum system. All the expression says is that either the electron is

spin-up (+1) and the positron is spin-down (−1) or vice-versa, because the total spin of the system 22

must add up to 0. (Since the initial state is spin zero, the system must stay spin-zero even after the decay occurs. That’s what angular momentum conservation is all about.) We don’t know which combination we will get, but it must be one of the above. Measuring the spin of one of the particles will automatically tell us what the spin of the other particle is. This means that the spins of the electron and positron are correlated. In modern terms, such a state is called entangled.

Now, let’s pretend that these particles fly off in opposite directions, until say, they are several light years apart. What would happen if we found the electron and measured its spin to be +1 ? We instantly know that the positron’s spin is −1 . This is obvious. Why are we mad about this?

Naturally, we may think that the electron really was spin-up from the moment it was created and it was only that quantum mechanics did not know until we made a measurement. But by the principles of quantum mechanics, neither particle had a definite spin, until we made a measurement, causing the wave function to “collapse” and instanteously produce the spin of the positron which is lights years away!

The EPR bros were NOT having it. Einstein famously called this phenomenon “spooky action at a distance”. They stated that the quantum mechanical standpoint must be wrong! The electron and positron must have had well-defined spins from their creation, even if quantum mechanics does not know it. Quantum mechanics is not a complete description of reality and there must be some hidden variables which describe a physical system that we do not yet know.

The fundamental assumption guiding the EPR argument is that no information can propagate faster than light. This the principle of locality. In order to appease this, we can say that the wave function collapsed at some finite velocity and is not instantaneous. However, this violates conservation– If we measured the positron spin as well before the information of collapse reached it, there is a 50–50 chance that both particles are spin-up, which means the system has total spin-1. Preposterous! You can mess with anything you want in this universe, but you don’t mess with conservation laws. What do we do now?

Okay, let’s calm down. The theorists may say whatever they want, but experiment doesn’t lie. Experiment tells us that in these cases, spin is perfectly correlated. The wave function collapse is instantaneous. That’s crazy. Call your mom and tell her you want to go home. The EPR Bros are frightening you— Quantum Mechanics is NOT local so it is NOT complete.

...Except. It is. Enter, Bell’s Theorem.

5 Bell’s Theorem

Now, what’s the situation? The EPR gang is not happy. I’m not happy. You’re not happy. Is quantum mechanics wrong? No, silly! EPR said it themselves: they think it’s merely incomplete. So, in order to completely describe a quantum mechanical state, you not only need the wave function Ψ, you also need some unknown, hidden variable λ. Lots of hidden variable theories were proposed after the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paper, but none of them ever gained traction. It was still a respectable area of study until 1964, when J.S. Bell proved that any local (Remember locality from the last section?) hidden variable theory is incompatible with quantum mechanics.

I’ll spare you the details of Bell’s work, dear reader. One thought experiment in an essay is gruesome enough. (It is also getting quite late and I still didn’t code my calculations. I have spent far too much time on this already.)

Bell’s proof involves the wonderful use of probability, and the barest assumptions that can be made about local hidden variable theories. Basically, in any local hidden variable theory, the probabilities of various outcomes are related by what’s known as a Bell inequality. If EPR’s conjecture is right, and there really are hidden variables we don’t know about, then any physical system must obey its Bell inequality.

Except, there have been various experiments since the 1960s confirming that Bell’s inequality is indeed violated. This came as a rude shock to scientists as it is not fun to learn that reality is very much nonlocal. It was all fun and games when this was all merely a mathematical artifact, but nonlocality felt like a gateway drug to a much grimmer violation.

Causality

Bell inequality violations, no matter how surprising, are merely wonderful correlations between two sets of otherwise random data. Sure, the measurement of the spin of the electron affects the positron, but it does not cause it in any meaningful way. The person measuring the electron spin cannot use this collapse of the wave function to send a message to the person with the positron, since they don’t control the outcome of the experiment. They can decide whether to measure the electron at all, but the other person only has access to the positron’s spin and cannot tell whether the electron has been measured or not.

Phew! This sort of nonlocal influence does not transmit any energy or information, so it is exempt from the speed of light. Meanwhile, causal influences, those which do transmit information or energy, cannot travel faster than light. According to special relativity, if this was possible then, there are reference frames in which information can propagate backwards through time. And that, my dear reader, is what we call a big nono. Since the EPR paradox does not imply that causality is violated, we can lie uncomfortably on our bed of nonlocal but causal theory of quantum mechanics.

So rest easy, quantum mechanics is weird, but safe. Entanglement is not a fairytale, but also not the boogeyman. It’s probably more scared of you than you of it. Just give it some time. More answers will follow.

What Do I Do Now?

So, you want to know more? Or curl up in a ball and never think about this again? Either is fine. I won’t judge. If your answer is the former, here are some resources to guide you through the thickets of quantum mechanics.

PopSci Sources

1. IDTIMWYTIM: Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle 2. Why did Quantum Entanglement Win the Nobel Prize in Physics? 3. Bell’s Theorem: The Quantum Venn Diagram Paradox

Surely, you’ll get more out of these wonderful science Youtubers than you did from me yapping for four pages. There are a bunch more probably, but you’ll have to find them yourself.

Academic Sources

1. An Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, D.J. Griffiths.

Of course, there are other quantum mechanics textbooks that I like much more than this one. But, this is the least daunting, so I’ll leave it here.

Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more silly academic style papers.

References

[1]  A. Einstein, B. Podolsky and N. Rosen, “Can quantum mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete”? Phys. Rev. 47, 777–780 (1935) doi:10.1103/PhysRev.47.777

[2]  Heisenberg, W. “Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik”. Z. Physik 43, 172–-198 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01397280

[3]  D.J. Griffiths, D.F. Schroeter, “Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, Third Edition” Cambridge University Press (2018) 978–1–107–18963–8,

[sailorstarr-chan4]

Anime Titles Summarized (Poorly) - Part 2

Black Butler: Patent-made for Edge-lord Emo Kids of the late 2000s. But like. It's actually GOOD. Full Moon wo Sagashite: If angels worked at Make-a-Wish My Roommate is a Cat: The best way to convert cat-haters is to make them watch this show Kaichou wa Maid-Sama!: Girls sells her body to make do, but not for sex. Technically. Toradora!: Two dorks with major daddy issues play matchmaker with each other, and accidentally fall in love instead Lovely Comlex: This anime intricately understands the universal appeal of the Height Difference in a ship Romeo x Juliet: Shakespeare.... but with dragon steeds and a magic tree Rosario + Vampire: A straight cis man's idea of a "monsterfucker" show. And allllll of the pantie shots. Sekirei: Battle Royale, but with scantily clad ladies The Devil is a Part-Timer!: Satan works at McDonald's. That's it. That's the show. ef a tale of memories: Angsty teenagers need SERIOUS FUCKING THERAPY H2O Footprints in the Sand: Hate begets hate Anohana: Childhood trauma comes back to life The Pet Girl of Sakurasou: Neurodivergent teen shenanigans explore the existential crisis of Talent vs Genius Please Teacher!: Aliens + statutory rape loopholes FairyCube: Mind-fuck. Pretty fairies. More mind-fuckery. IN ONLY THREE MANGA VOLUMES. Chobits: What if sex dolls had feelings? XXXHolic: God is always drunk and her overworked, underpaid intern is perpetually Stressed Out™ and pissed off at his future boyfriend Kobato: A kindergarten school is being threatened by the local mafia to be shut down. Oh and there are talking stuffed animals, implied to be banished demons and angels. Shinobi Lie: Doctor Who meets ninjas FAKE: Two detectives making out in a alley because they're not gay-- wait, what?! Dance in the Vampire Bund: Interesting story, gorgeous animation..... deeply uncomfortable lolicon Seraph of the End: You came here for cool action against vampires, and stayed for The Gay Angel Beats!: Purgatory is high school Assassination Classroom: Exactly what it says on the tin Brothers Conflict: Why is there a fucking talking squirrel?! Charlotte: X-Men, if Magneto's fears are realized Code Geass: Fucked-up family dynamics meets the metaphysical plane Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Original Love It or Hate It anime Yashahime: *cracks knuckles* Time to destroy a fandom

Part 1 Here!

[roxannepolice]

hi!!! hows it goin i’m here to dump my thoughts about simm!master/lucy vs ten and martha cause i have MANY. also a disclaimer before i begin that i’m white and that likely does color my experience as a viewer compared to a BIPOC viewer. anyways: i’ll start with ten and martha because by sound of drums we’ve spent all season watching them and its that already established dynamic which i think lucy/saxon are meant to parallel in a way. you have ten very much still grieving rose and his entire planet, which makes him try and push away any new companions for a bit. but he’s still looking for - and i think needs, in a way - this kind of connection where he can depend on someone, and ideally they could depend on him. however. ten sucks at this second bit. for the entire season. so he’s in need of this connection despite not wanting any whatsoever, emotional intelligence completely out the window right now since he’s grieving x2, and martha unfortunately walks in right in the middle of this. so you get this dynamic really starting from i’d say the shakespeare code wherein martha is carrying a lot of the weight in their relationship. ten will entrust her with the most deeply personal shit (like his memories of gallifrey, his feelings on losing rose, even in 42 where he’s like "i’m scared i’m so scared" where he depends on martha for emotional support) and then when martha’s like hey can i get some support here or something ten’s like “uh sorry all out too busy being sad” i mean that's a bit exaggerated/summarized but thats the vibe they have. in the beginning he doesn't even admit she’s traveling with him! he’s all “just one trip” “just one more” and refuses to make a concrete decision that martha really needs him to make already. and despite this emotional unavailability shtick ten still relies on martha quite a bit! off the top of my head you have 42(martha freezing/unfreezing ten as he screams in pain), blink (they get sent back to the 1960s… and only martha gets a job???), and. human nature. wherein martha endures racial abuse alongside lesser shitty working conditions in order to ensure the doctor doesn't get his body possessed or something. and in the middle of it this human version of the doctor falls in love with another woman(after basically uh leading her on for the whole fucking season) (sure maybe unintentionally but that's not the point here) who. also was racist to her she's not even a nice person. and her only friend in this godawful place gets possessed. and human doctors a dick to her. and i think. i reflect on it and i come to the conclusion that ten very much does expect martha to just… do his job for him sometimes. handle all the dirty work like making sure human him doesn't get distracted or hurt or die. and still immediately after is like haha we are in 1960 now. i will not get a job what is that. why do you want me to “communicate” or “pull my weight” you’re traveling across space and time lol.

and the master and lucy are a darker extension of this dynamic that i actually haven't really seen people talk about much!! the master is very clear about why he married lucy, and there is no love/admiration/respect whatsoever in there. it is purely a means to an end - her family gets him influence, and she helps him carry out his plans. he gives nothing to lucy, only takes. which is in itself a mirror to ten & martha - the audience knows ten isn’t intending to be malicious in how he treats martha throughout the series, but when paralleled to lucy & the master i think you really get a sense of the harm this can cause down the line. what resentment this kind of dynamic can lead to. and ALL THE WHILE martha is walking the entire planet for a year to save all of humanity while ten hangs out aged 100 with his little tent & dog bowl & seething sorta-ex-husband-boyfriend-whatever. i mean he doesn't have the best time either but he also doesn't have to do that much and also is perhaps a bit too happy about not being the last time lord to fully grasp that hey, uh, humanity's in pretty dire straits right now. martha watches as the master turns earth into a living nightmare, slaughters millions of people on a whim, turns ten into a 900-year-old tweety bird, and tortures her family for a year, only for ten to go “guys dw i can fix him lol we’ll just live in the tardis for eternity together” as if she hadn't had to fight for that too. and ten is still shocked-pikachu-face when she goes “yeah no i’m leaving. i gotta get out.” and that is very much similar to lucy's moment in a way! where she sees the doctor forgiving(without really considering everybody else's opinion on the Past Year), martha's mom talked down from killing him, even Jack is talked down from his confusion at the whole idea, and i think in that moment she goes. okay. you guys can forgive. you guys can let him walk away having just taken, taken, taken everything without any repercussions. i meanwhile have this gun and two years of pent-up rage coursing through my veins. and both of these moments - martha leaving, lucy firing the gun - come at a shock to the doctor and the master. i mean you can see the master's little "oh" face when he gets shot. even if he plays it up like he expected it after i don't think he considered it before. and i think on a certain level neither really expected to be called out like this - ten because he’s got the emotional intelligence of a baseball bat, the master because he doesn’t think humans are capable of wiping their own asses - so in both of these moments in LoTL theyre like "wait i didn't know you could do that"

anyways tl;dr thats why i think lucy and the master are a darker parallel to the doctor and martha in their own way. which feeds into the rest of the finale where the master is just showing the natural extremes to who the doctor is - this is that toxic dependency taken to its natural worst possible place, where you treat someone as a tool rather than as a person. the master's generally a great foil to the doctor but the series 3 finale is just a fantastic example of it i think.

OMG, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts like this! And I love your thought process here so much.

First, absolutely, Martha is the case of right person, wrong time... which is probably what makes hers my favourite companion arc - as I like to put it she travelled through hell and pulled her Virgil (because yes, the Doctor absolutely always has this guide role that brings Virgil to mind, at least in companions' first episodes) to the Earthly Paradise in the process. There's a lot of debates going on about whether Ten was leading Martha on, because on the one hand - well, he's very clear he's not into her romantically, on the other - ok, bitch, you made it clear the kiss doesn't mean anything, but also you hit off with flirtatious winks and end showing off time travel while also casually showing off your Adam's apple. Yeah, a girl can make deductions. And you're right that this superficial frankness is mirrorred in Master's relation to Lucy - though if anything he's crrepily keen on playing a caring husband, what with the 100% performative hug he gives her while the Toclafane are hacking a journalist up. Though I suppose in his head this is what the Doctor does as well when they comfort their companions. And let's give it to Ten - when he said he's not going to let Martha *checks notes* fry in a small capsule in far space because of a sentient sun, he does bend head over tits and does as promised. But historically it has happened that the Doctor's reassurances were hollow (future, but kind of most painful in Twelve assuring Bill he's going to de-cybermanize her only to later admit yeah not really an option... considering Saxon was there to witness this, I wonder if he marked this in his Notebook (of Rassilon) of Spiting the Doctor).

Ten's handling of the chameleon arch is kind of pathetic, thanks for pointing that out! Like, ok - if the Family gets a whole Time Lord lifetime it is a genuine threat to the universe, but his attitude of oh I'm just going to spend three months as a human in a random timespace, what could possibly go wrong, and anyway, Martha will be there to clean up any mess? is a mess. I do like John Smith's romance with nurse Radfem, though, not in the sense of shipping them, but more of an appreciation of the concept: a classic victorian/edwardian romance, but when you look at it from the persective of a BIPOC servant... it kind of becomes apparent both parties are dickheads. This does tie back to the Master in a way, because I think... want to think... that by the time the Doctor went oh no, we're better than a tyrant maniac that spent a whole year destroying the planet and torturing everyone in the room specifically, so we're not going to execute him, I'm going to put him in my nice spaceship and we'll have nice cuddle movie evenings instead, she was already hardened by the fact that he put her in an (unintentionally) tailor made emotional torture room for three months only to later reveal oh yeah, I could absolutely have handled them all along. Is just higher moral ground, innit?

I guess as all best foils do, the clue lies in the diffrences, though, right? Both Martha and Lucy end up deeply disillusioned with their respective semi-immortal twinks from space, but in one case there is still a disillusioned friendship (Ten's surprised Pikachu face, excellent comparion) and in the other there's only hate - and for good reasons! And where the Doctor grows to really respect Martha (and I wouldn't say he started off dismissive, I mean he is impressed when she tells him oh no mister, a doctor isn't something you just are, you have to earn the title) and is not just saddened but... humbled?... by her leaving, the Master shows up in EoT and is like Hey, my widow, did you miss me, hope you haven't remarried, that would be awkward to explain in the registry office :D!

*sigh* I suppose this is why tensimm is so special to me. It's 20 seasons of foil dynamic condensed into 5 hours. It really shows how thin the difference between the Doctor and the Master is. And how in the right circumstances, including the loss of the handy mirror villain to show how things can go wrong, a madman with a box can turn into an eldritch horror deciding the future of the universe. So, again, thank you so much for poining out yet another excellent parallel!

[fortheloveofexy]

any YouTube video essay recs?

I have SO MANY. Some of these blew up enough that you've probably seen them already, but imo they're still a must-watch so I'm going to recommend them anyway.

hbomberguy - you've probably seen hbomb's video on YouTube Plagiarism (as you should, it's excellent) but I also really enjoyed his video on Vaccines and Autism. If you've ever wondered where all the anti-vax conspiracy theories originate from, this video explains it extremely well. His video on the origins of the Roblox Oof sound is incredibly funny and surprisingly thoughtful (watch it until the end, I promise you will not be disappointed). A lot of his video game critique videos are also really enjoyable.

Contrapoints - if you like video essays, then you've almost certainly seen Natalie's work. A few of my favorites include: Shame, Canceling, Gender Critical, and Incels. As you can probably tell from the titles, Natalie covers a wide array of topics - including from dissecting common far-right extremist groups to exploring the queer experience. Honestly, all of her videos are worth a watch, but the few I've listed here are some that I found most insightful and eye-opening.

Overly Sarcastic Productions - if you like literature, history and mythology, you'll enjoy Red and Blue's content! Red covers classic literature, mythology and story tropes, while Blue focuses on history. I love Red's videos especially - her series where she summarizes Shakespeare is one of my favorites.

Philosophy Tube - Do you like philosophy? What if I told you that a beautiful British trans woman could explain philosophy to you, with all the magic of theater? Some of my favorite videos from Abigail include The Rich Have Their Own Ethics and Abortion & Ben Shapiro.

Shanspeare - All of their videos are great, but a few that I remember being especially good were Tradwives and the White Supremacists Who Love Them and Disney, Race-bending and Whimsical Racism. I also really enjoyed their video dissecting the Tortured Artist Trope. Every time I rewatch one of their videos, I still feel like I'm learning something new.

[princesssarisa]

Cinderella Tales from Around the World now traces the Love Like Salt motif to England.

*Here, of course, we find the most famous example of this motif, King Lear. I won't bother to summarize it, both because it's so well-known and because it doesn't follow the typical Cinderella/Donkeyskin model of a Love Like Salt tale, but becomes a different story after using that motif at the beginning. Still, Heiner's book wouldn't be complete without it.

**This already doorstopper-sized book doesn't have room for the full text of Shakespeare's play. But it does feature the source material: the story of King Leir from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Brittaniae (History of the Kings of Britain). It also features two short prose retellings of Shakespeare's version that were written for children: one from Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare and one from E. Nesbit's Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare.

**Geoffrey of Monmouth's King Leir is interesting to compare to the more familiar Shakespeare version: it differs in more ways than just the characters' names (e.g. King Leir and his daughters Gonorilla, Regau, and Cordeilla). In the source material, the love test takes place long before the rest of the action, when none of the sisters are married yet, and Leir uses the test to decide whom to choose as their husbands as well as how to divide the kingdom. Gonorilla and Regau claim to love him "more than my own soul" and "above all creatures," and receive half the kingdom and the Dukes of Albania (sic) and Cornwall as their husbands, while Cordeilla tells Leir that "As much as you have, so much is your value, and so much do I love you," and is disinherited and unceremoniously married off to the first willing foreigner, who fortunately is king of the Franks. Meanwhile, Leir doesn't retire from power just yet: his plan is for his daughters and sons-in-law to rule half the kingdom in his lifetime while he retains the other half, which will only become theirs after his death. But many years later, when Leir has grown old and feeble, his sons-in-law rebel against him and overthrow him. Only now, as effectively a prisoner of war, does he go back and forth between living with each daughter and face their abuse. (It's interesting that Shakespeare makes Lear old, feeble, and likely in failing mental health from the start, and has him choose from the start to give up ruling and place himself in his daughters' hands. Was this a change Shakespeare made himself, or did he inherit it from other adaptations?) Nor does Leir end up out on the heath in a storm, or go mad. He simply sails to Gaul in hope of Cordeilla's forgiveness, having realized all the value of what he once possessed now that it's gone, and that his other daughters and subjects only loved him for what he could give them while Cordeilla loved him as a person. Last but not least, the ending is completely different from Shakespeare's. The army of Cordeilla and her husband succeeds in overthrowing her sisters' husbands (no mention of what happens to Gonorilla or Regau themselves), and Leir is restored to the throne. When he dies three years later, Cordeilla, who by now is a widow, succeeds him. The story still ends tragically, though: Cordeilla is eventually dethroned by her sisters' sons and commits suicide in prison.

**Since we're looking at King Lear as a Love Like Salt tale, I think it's worthwhile to compare the response of Shakespeare's Cordelia to her father's love test to that of the princess in most versions of the fairy tale, or for that matter to Cordeilla's speech in the source. When the princess in the fairy tale says she loves her father like salt, she means that she loves him more than anything, because food is tasteless without salt. The king just misunderstands her words. The same is true when Cordeilla tells Leir that she loves him as much as the value of all he possesses, and he fails to appreciate it until he loses everything, just like the fairy tale king doesn't appreciate salt until he tastes saltless food. But Shakespeare's Cordelia makes two different points in her speech: (a) that her love for her father is beyond words, and she can't truthfully express it in words more beautiful than her sisters' carefully crafted lies, as Lear expects, and (b) that a daughter has a duty to love her father a certain amount, but no more. (In the source, Cordeilla also touches on this by telling Leir that her sisters' words of love aren't trustworthy because they exceed their duty.) Unlike in the source, Goneril and Regan are already married when the love test takes place, and Cordelia emphasizes that it's wrong of them to claim to love their father more than anything else, including, implicitly, their husbands; nor can she make that claim, because when she marries, she'll owe just as much love to her husband too. In a way, the shadow of Donkeykin with its incestuous father hangs even more over King Lear than over the Love Like Salt tale, because rather than giving a profound declaration of love and having it misunderstood as the opposite, Cordelia puts a limit on the amount of love her father can demand from her (though still loving him with all her heart) in the name of propriety.

**By the way, both the Lamb and the Nesbit retellings downplay the storyline of Gloucester, Edmund, and Edgar for more exclusive focus on Lear and his daughters (and probably to avoid talking about illegitimacy and eye-gouging in retellings meant for children). Nesbit omits it altogether, only attributing Lear and Cordelia's defeat to Goneril and Regan's forces and saying that Goneril poisons Regan out of "jealousy" with no further explanation, while the Lambs only mention Edmund and Edgar in passing.

*After the Lear retellings, Heiner's book offers probably the best known fairy tale version of Love Like Salt: the tale of Cap O' Rushes from Joseph Jacobs' collection. In this tale, both the heroine's father and her eventual husband are just rich gentlemen, not royalty. When her father asks his daughters how much they love him, the older two reply "as I love my life" and "better than all the world," but the heroine says "as fresh meat loves salt." After being banished, she covers her fine gown with a hooded cloak made of rushes (obviously linking this tale to the Scottish Cinderella tales of Rashin Coatie) and becomes a scullery maid. From there the story plays out as it does in so many Donkeyskins: she attends three dances, the young master falls in love with her, at the third dance he gives her a ring, then falls ill with longing, and she sends him a bowl of gruel with the ring inside. Then when they marry, she invites her father to the wedding incognito, teaches him his lesson by serving food without salt, and then reveals her identity and happily forgives him.

*In one last, lesser-known English version, Sugar and Salt, instead of asking his two daughters how much they love him, the father asks them "What is the sweetest thing in the world?" The older sister replies "Sugar," but the younger says "Salt," so the father banishes her for stupidity. But the girl is befriended and protected by fairies in the woods, and one day a prince goes hunting in those woods, sees her, falls in love, and takes her home to marry, with the requisite invitation sent to her father and lack of salt at the feast.

The next set of tales are from Pakistan and India.

@ariel-seagull-wings, @adarkrainbow, @themousefromfantasyland

[aureatchi]

REV i need u to drop the lore abt the fyozai x reverie academia!au NOW 🙏🙏!!!!!

OKAY FINEE, here’s a brief !! summary of the academia!au bcz guess what’s (maybe) going to be written someday ;)

first of all this was all inspired by this one artist on twt who drew uni!au bsd characters; i saw fyodor’s first months ago & when i saw the info i was like I’D STILL FALL IN LOVE W/ SOMEONE LIKE HIM 😭 (btw here’s dazai’s for you + since he’s relevant too) + ofc it’s SO OBVIOUS THEY WOULD BE ACADEMIC RIVALS.

think: prestigious uni + academic vibes galore ofc !! def fall/winter setting. & you’re STRUGGLING with russian. chose to take it bcz you needed an xtra class & just wanted to appear studious :’) but ofc it was way harder than it seemed & you lowk regret it now !! backtrack btw, you’re competing w/ this one brunette all your friends r acquainted with (ada ensemble) for top of the class, & it kind of pisses you off bcz he NEVER studies & likes to tease you all day, but he still gets perfect scores. anyways, you like to study in the library. tht’s how you meet fyodor—a new transfer student—who also pisses you off !! bcz he sees you struggling & mocks you for it & says it’s so easy (duh cz it’s his native tongue).

then you decide to join the chess club and to your luck, both of them are there too !! you suspected fyodor would probably be interested, so he didn’t surprise you, but you were shocked with dazai, bcz again…he did not look like someone who would to you. but how wrong you were, about him, about fyodor—everything, once you got to know them better.

oh & btw it’s all three of you competing now ofc. and trust the dynamic here is SO IMPORTANT, (♟️ is so important !! in our dynamic in gen actually; it’s like if you ever read ‘if we were villains’ & you know how SHAKESPEARE was so important to their plot...😬) honestly i said too much but tht’s what i can summarize for now HAHA

[averygayplant]

No because the original story of Journey to the west is borderline hysterical to the point of being on par with Shakespeare comedies.

Allow me to explain- I'm only halfway through the first book, right? let me summarize how things are going so far:

Wukong (currently the stone monkey): [is born]

-- MEANWHILE, IN HEAVEN -- Heavenly Offical: Uh.... your highness? Is that gonna be a problem later? Jade Emperor: Mmmmh, nah. Bro's just a monkey.

Sun Wukong:

He Then Proceeded To Be A Problem Out Of Spite.

[weaselandfriends]

I’ve become aware, lately, that, while there exist many sources of advice on how to avoid writing bad prose (typically of the form “here are a bunch of common errors one should avoid making”), there seem to be very few sources of advice on how to write *good* prose. Do you, in your capacity as a writer-of-good-prose, happen to have shareable techniques in that field, ways to lift prose up from merely lacking obvious errors to being actively high-quality and lending impact to its containing work?

In college, after I'd already written seven novels, I took a creative writing workshop. Before then, I'd taught myself everything I knew about writing, mainly by reading classic literature and writing stories that unconsciously imitated their styles. I thought taking this workshop would elevate me to the next level, unlock new techniques and skills I hadn't even known about beforehand.

The workshop itself was modeled on MFA programs. MFA stands for Master of Fine Arts, which is a postgraduate degree specialized in creative artistic fields, such as literature, theater, visuals arts, and so on. The first rule of the course was "no genre fiction," meaning anything fantasy, sci-fi, etc., and the works we read and were expected to write were what would be described as contemporary "literary fiction," which is the kind of writing that wins awards like the Pulitzer. We read Karl Ove Knausgaard, Alice Munro (who had recently won the Nobel), and a few other more obscure contemporary writers. The professor herself was a published, award-winning author.

The professor had a particular philosophy toward writing prose, which I would summarize as the following: You focus on conveying information as clearly and simply as possible most of the time, and then at strategic points add lavish, vivid, gripping detail. The idea was that most of the reading experience would be elegant, easy-to-read, and utilitarian, but would then hit extremely hard when it was important.

It's easy to see the rationale behind this philosophy, how it lends power to a work, and it's a writing style you see in a lot of contemporary literary fiction, where the underlying aesthetic is what I would describe as "neo-realism": life stories, spanning wide amounts of time, of a person or family, where there is less emphasis on "plot" than on delving into the relationships and existence of these people as they are. The "intergenerational family epic," you might call it, with one of the favorite themes being "generational trauma" (which has more recently become a prevalent topic in pop media too). These stories often straightforwardly narrate a person's life for years in brief, summative detail before slowing down for a key moment that is expounded upon much more thoroughly. My professor's prose technique, with its modulated level of detail and potency, is specifically tailored to this type of story.

My issue is that this type of story, while currently in vogue with certain literary circles, is not the only type of story there is, and its prose style is not necessarily appropriate for other types of stories. What about Ulysses, in which a character's most irrelevant action is detailed in unique and potent prose? What about any work by Kafka, in which layers and layers of irrelevant bureaucratic trivium are heaped upon the reader in breathless comma splices, creating a labyrinth? What about As I Lay Dying, where character psychologies are detailed in muddy, ambiguous stream of consciousness? What about the maximalist epics of Thomas Pynchon or David Foster Wallace, which overload each sentence with detail and detail and detail until the sentence is about to explode? What about Hemingway, who stripped all his sentences down to their most basic essence, and who used what was stripped away and unseen by the reader to contain the true meaning of his works? What about Melville, who conveyed information in an encyclopedic fashion? What about Shakespeare, who invented a brand new word whenever he felt like it?

Prose is innately meaningful. The words you choose to use are meaningful, their arrangement is meaningful, the structure of their sentences is meaningful. I can tell you a lot of specific techniques to imitate any of the authors I listed above, but what's actually important is understanding the meaning you want to convey and deciding on prose techniques that convey that meaning. Ask yourself: What does a short sentence feel like. How does a long, rambling sentence, with multiple digressions and parentheticals (perhaps even parentheticals that could be considered their own sentences nested within the original), impact the reader differently? When you repeat the same idea, and repeat it, and repeat it again, and repeat it once more, what does that do? Perhaps a more erudite (some may say pedantic!) tone conjures within the reader a certain emotional response much dissimilar to the one conveyed by a sentence that just doesn't give a fuck, dude.

With all that said, here is my actionable advice for improving your prose:

Read a lot of literature from a wide variety of authors writing in a wide variety of styles. Think about why they are writing in the styles they are, or how those styles contribute to the overall meaning of the work. A major mistake I see young writers make is that they only read fiction that is similar to the fiction they plan to write. For instance, aspiring fantasy writers only read relatively contemporary fantasy, sci-fi writers only read sci-fi, MFA writers only read MFA-style works, webfic writers only read Worm, and so on. Doing this you might learn how to imitate a singular style by rote repetition, but you'll lack versatility and have a fairly shallow bag of prose tricks to employ, which in turn limits the range of meaning and emotion you can convey.

Write imitations of a wide variety of styles. Every writer I've ever known, including myself, started out by writing imitations of something they liked. It's how you learn, and it's the starting point before you can develop your own unique style. If you try different styles you will eventually learn what works and what doesn't and synthesize that into a technique you can call your own.

Edit your writing and think about what meaning is conveyed by your prose style. You have a significantly different perspective on your writing when you write it and when you read it back. Don't just write something and never look at it again. Read through it again and make tweaks to improve the prose. Then read through it a second time. A third. Even more. Keep making changes each time. Think about what these changes mean and why they improved the work.

In general, I think any writing-related advice should boil down to: Read, Write, Edit. This is mostly how you get better at any technique: See how it was done before, do it yourself, revisit what you did and figure out how it can be improved. Then repeat. Definitely avoid platitudinous advice like "Show don't tell," "Cut every adverb," etc. That kind of advice is the get-rich-quick scheme of writing, and like get-rich-quick schemes, they never work.

[mikibwrites]

Hey Miki! Love that you took the open tag! Tell me about “A bet involving two massive egos never ends well, but somehow they both win (firstprince)” please?

I feel like I'm meeting a celebrity sorry I just love your fics :)

I'm sorry I missed this a couple weeks ago! I'm always on mobile so I apparently missed several asks 🙃🙃🙃

The wip you're referring to is a firstprince au of one of my all time favorite movies, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days :)

Henry is a soft-spoken but confident author employed by a harlequin-esque publishing company, chugging away at churning out what he feels like are absolute shite bodice-rippers for profit like a content machine until he can find a way to publish his actual life's work, a deeply personal novel. But for now bodice-rippers pay the bills.

Alex is a charismatic advertising exec who is trying to break into a new market for which his boss and coworkers think he's ill suited, and of course he MUST prove them wrong.

Henry posits to his cubicle-mate Pez that if anyone actually did anything in these books in real life their partners would die laughing or run away screaming. Pez says he'll take that bet bc he thinks Henry could literally recite Shakespeare mid-coitus (complete with plastic skull held aloft) and his partners would eat it up.

Alex says he can sell anything, up to and including himself, to anyone regardless of their initial opinion of him. His coworker Hunter, who's a little jealous of Alex's rise to success, calls his bluff.

They happen to be caught in the same bar on the same night. Bets on both sides are set in motion.

If you've seen the movie, then you know this is where the chaos ensues :)

Ask me about my badly summarized WIPs :)

[veronicaphoenix]

hello hello hello random ass question but you're an English major and I want to know what your favourite books are and why thank you very much 🥰

Dear Laura,

hi hi hi!! You just asked what's probably my favorite question ever and of course, I got carried away. I'm sorry if this is too long!

Surprisingly enough, none of the books I had to read at uni are my favorite 😅 Obviously, I had to read the classics (Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights...) and I'm not a very big fan of those. They also forced Shakespeare down my throat for a couple of years and I ended up having a love/hate relationship with his works and his persona lol (I love the town where he was born, tho, it's my favorite town in England). 🤍

I read a lot, and I read a lot of everything. If you ever see my bookshelf you will see stuff ranging from Nicholas Sparks' novels to Stephen King's works (he's one of my fav authors) to some really fucked up stories like We Need to Talk about Kevin or My Absolute Darling (I actually loved these last two).

If you ever want to know, I have a favorite book for every genre. But my absolute all time favorite books are The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, and The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (I literaly cry for days every time I read this one).

The Thirteenth Tale is, most of all, a Gothic novel, and I love all things Gothic. This is definitely my go-to comfort read at any time. It has many classic Gothic elements and it can be somewhat predictable at times, but I was not expecting the plot twist toward the end. I love it for its setting in an abandoned manor and a main character with a quiet nature, who adores books and stories, and is emotionally scarred from childhood trauma.

I would define The Time Traveler's Wife as a romance novel with magical realism, and totally heartbreaking. It's got a touch of sci-fi with the time traveling thing, but it's not exactly what you would expect. I really don't like sci-fi stories and I think one of the reasons why I fell in love with this one is because of the way the author deals with that in the book. To summarize, the story follows Henry and Clare as they navigate life while coping with Henry's genetic condition, which causes him to randomly time travel. The curious thing about his condition is that, when he time travels, he often finds himself meeting Clare at different stages of her life; when she's a little girl, then a teenager, and then when she's an adult and they're married. The first time I read this book, I was a teenager and I found it really beautiful, innovating, and sad. The second time, I had already experienced being in love, so I felt everything between Henry & Clare's relationship on a deeper level, and towards the end, the story gets so heartbreaking that I was crying for days on train journeys, at work, and at home (I have to say that I'm a very sensible person and a crybaby lol).

However, there's also one other book that I read when I was 14 or so called The Wishing Game by Patrick Redmond that I've loved ever since, but its somewhat controversial for me because I fell in love with the 'villain' and was supportive of all his crimes 🫣 I think the reason why I empathized with him was because I read the story while I was in my teenage years, in my glorious high school days, and as most of us, I didn't really fit it, and sometimes I felt really neglected and angry, so I guess it was sort of comforting to read about a boarding school where the bullies start mysteriously dying 😶‍🌫️

What about you? Any favorite books? Oh, I love talking about books! This message put a big smile on my face sfsadfnsdsdfasjn 💞

[fweet-prince]

Hi besties sorry for the bard poll delay, last week I presented my thesis and graduated and I truly thought yeah and then I’ll have time over the weekend to queue up bard poll :) and it turns out energy reserves do not work like that! Bard poll will resume when the capacity to summarize Shakespeare plays in silly little phrases returns from war

[annakayy]

Tag game: Vaguely summarized WIP

Thanks for tagging me, @tildeathiwillwrite! This one looks like a lot of fun!!

Thought I'd do this one for Rising Sun Over Setting Seas, since I've been working on it a lot lately! Alright, here we go:

🌌 inter-dimensional travel, or dying? 🤠 crazy is...fine ⚠️ civil war 🪞 magic mirror ⚰️ stop DYING ⚫️ the literal abyss 💖 star-crossed lovers 👑 future king or literal child 🎠 a prophetic horse 🩸 she needs a bandaid 🏇 I'M not the prophetic horse 🤕 HE needs a bandaid 📝 shakespeare??? 🥲 dontcrydontcry 🫠 you worry me

Tagging @faeriecinna, @verba-writing, @boltcutterparty, and @overdecorated-furniture (and ofc open tag). Happy writing! Also, if any of y'all would like to be tagged in these tag games, let me know! My tag list has been running short lately...

[mask131]

I posted about this before, but I saw someone describe this in much simpler terms, so I'll reuse the metaphor.

"Romeo and Juliet", Shakespeare's play can be summarized as such: It is a tragedy about star-crossed lovers among two feuding families.

This is what made it famous.

But what popular culture did was remove both the "tragedy" part and the "feuding family" part.

So that when you ask a random person, for them it is "The story of star-crossed lovers".

There's some people who are even SURPRISED to hear Romeo and Juliet's families dislike each other. Because of how pop culture turned the tragedy into a synonym for "perfect romance".