writingshamebox

[writingshamebox]

culture tips for writing asian settings: naming taboo

naming taboo is a big thing in the chinese cultural sphere. essentially, there's an importance attached to personal names that to certain extent makes it taboo to say the name of/name others after important persons—and by "taboo" i mean if you violated this, you would be seriously audacious

a MAJOR example of this is the name of the emperor. historically, people whose names shared the same characters as the emperor's had to change their names when he came to power. (certain benevolent emperors might change their names to obscure characters to avoid a statewide headache.)

within the family, these taboos discourage naming children after their ancestors (i was always weirded out that bella swan could name her KID after her PARENTS). there are also elaborate naming patterns for relatives, so you don't have to call older relatives by name (like "aunt lin" or "uncle mingchi")—there are terms in chinese that mean "dad's older sister's husband" etc. this is perhaps an extreme example but i only learned my grandma's name a month ago, because no one i know will say it, and it would've been rude for me to ask.

the taboo also applies to the names of famous and important people, like historical figures. this is quite different from, for instance, the catholic practice of naming children after saints.

if i had to explain the impetus behind the taboo, i would say names can be super personal in chinese culture. up until the early 20th century, chinese people could use several names in their lifetime, with different groups of people using different ones. naming someone after an important/respected person feels audacious, like you're prematurely trying to claim some of that importance

disclaimer | more tips

[writingshamebox]

When you pick up a sword for the first time you will be slow and awkward. This is frustrating, but refuse the temptation to try and become a “faster” fencer. Chasing after speed is like trying to catch smoke. If you try and pursue speed, all you will accomplish is haste. Haste is the enemy of 1st class fencing.

Speed is a lie the untrained mind tells itself when it sees an action it cannot follow. The truth is a combination of timing, control, and fluidity. Fluid motion, even done slowly, will always arrive before a hasty strike. Control will allow you to move without wasteful motion that will slow you down. Timing will eliminate the need to move fast almost entirely. There is no need to get somewhere fast so long as you get there at the right time.  

[writingshamebox]

Source

[writingshamebox]

Fic Masterpost - lol nothing here yet

Help, I'm old how does one make an introduction

Hello (・_・)ノ

Pandora / 27 / they/she / Aroace with a love for queer romance / Most of what I write is fantasy/scifi and non human

Experimenting with Y/N and 1st person POV. Nothing will be too vigorous and most sections will be under 3k for convenience and my own sanity.

Everything here will be SFW because I like cute fluff and honestly while I can write NSFW it makes me tired.

If you're old and you want some fluff, if you're young and you want some fluff, if you're temporally nonexistent and you want some fluff, I'm here for you.

Got a suggestion, if it interest me I'll take a shot. Got a question, sure send it.

More ramblings about myself

Feel old and young at the same time

Yes, I pay taxes

No, I don't know all the terms used nowadays, I just know I like nonhuman charas. So one might call me a monster lover

From the ancient lands of 2000s Gaia Online

It it's a vampire, I'll write it.

In a love hate relationship with Yandere

Write things that fit what I like

Not really in fandom anymore, but do play Arknights, Limbus Company and Onmyoji. But I'm behind on story.

Doing this stuff to let off steam between my serious projects and work

Will disappear for days at a time because of work and exhaustion.

I do, in fact, think I'm funny

As much as I love fluff I also love action and adventure. Horror, blood, emotional breaks and all that. It kind of bleeds into my fluff but it's all good, everything's HE, baby. ☆*:.｡.o(≧▽≦)o.｡.:*☆

[writingshamebox]

Kate Chopin, from The Awakening

[writingshamebox]

Suffering isn't a flex

[writingshamebox]

[writingshamebox]

The other day, I went down the rabbit hole of "cute donkeys" and came up with my head full of things I didn't know about mules (the hybrid offspring of a horse and a donkey), and why they were once so coveted as work animals.

Brace for info dump, while enjoying this lovely photo of a trio of draft mules.

The explanation is hybrid vigour, when hybrid offspring have enhanced traits compared to its parents:

Mules are stronger, hardier, healthier, have better enduranve, harder hooves, sturdier skin and can handle extreme weather better than horses or donkeys. They are also more patient, more intelligent, and easier to handle than either of their parent species. Horses may be faster, but that's about the single thing they're better at than a mule of the same size.

So mules, being all around nicer to work with and getting you more work for the same amount of feed, and with less hassle, were preferred for just about every job purpose.

Habby du Magnou, a Poitevin Mulassier mare, and her daughter Lady du Magnou, a rare Poitevin mule

But since horses have 64 chromosomes and donkeys have 62, mules end up with 63 chromosomes, which means they are almost invariably sterile. That's because biology gets very confused when trying to split an uneven number of chromosomes neatly in half to create germ cells. There are a few documented exceptions of fertile mule mares (never stallions), but they are very, very rare. So you have to keep crossbreeding the two parent species to produce them, usually by breeding a donkey sire (jack) to a horse dam (mare). This is because it's easier for a 32 chromosome egg to incorporate a 31 chromosome sperm into a viable zygote (fertilised egg) than vice versa.

Because of this, there was (and still is) in France a breed of absolutely massive draft horses, the Poitevin Mulassier, and a breed of big-ass donkeys (pun intended, but honestly, it's arguably the largest donkey in the world, and it's shaggy like Highland cattle), the Baudet du Pitou, two breeds whose main purpose was to breed the enormous and super-strong Poitevin mule.

The Poitevin mule

This absolute unit was the must-have work-animal for all kinds of farm and industrial work for centuries, and a significant French export, until mechanisation made these magnificent creatures obsolete.

With no demand for the Poitevin mule , its parent breeds dwindled, almost to the brink of extinction. Determined conservation efforts during the last few decades are slowly bringing their numbers back up, but they're very far from their heyday, when some 20,000 Poitevin mules were born annually.

The Poitevin Mulassier

Both the parent breeds are still endangered, which means most of the current effort is directed into bringing up the numbers of Poitevin horses and Pitou donkeys. This means breeding horses to horses and donkeys to donkeys, with very few breeding opportunities allowed to produce the Poitevin mule. Only about 20 of those are born each year.

The Baudet du Pitou

[writingshamebox]

just wanted a visual demonstration since I was talking about how much I love them

[writingshamebox]

uh, okay. i'm very scared to ask but : rabbit that's not really a rabbit...?

yeah, there's, like. a small god, shaped like a rabbit, that lives in my yard. I would say it's a normal rabbit except it's not. It won't move from my driveway if I'm trying to drive out and it was there first. I can walk up within a few feet of it, and it will turn and just look at me like what do you want? It's the only rabbit that freaks the hell out of all my birds, they CANNOT be directed or communicated with when this rabbit comes around, they will do nothing but stand on alert and stare at it making a soft warning call. I've caught it SEVERAL times now standing nose to nose with one of my peacocks, and it just looks at me and walks away when I catch them. hawks and falcons and eagles and owls constantly pass over my yard, and it is full of rabbits that do not hide from them, and I've never seen evidence of one being taken. You know the moment you walk into a very dark room and maybe it's a room you've been in before and maybe you don't believe in ghosts, but also it's still dark and your little leftover lizard hindbrain goes "anything could be inside of here waiting for me" the second before you turn on the light? It's like that feeling, except in the shape of a rabbit. i didn't ask for any of that.

[writingshamebox]

characters who view themselves as tools/weapons first and people second... characters who martyr themselves for a cause because they think that's the only way they can be worth something... characters who push themselves past their breaking point again and again and again... characters for whom devotion and masochism are inseparable... characters whose self-sacrifice becomes self-annihilation...... what was my point again? i had a point. anyway.

[writingshamebox]

Fun little thing about medieval medicine.

So there’s this old German remedy for getting rid of boils. A mix of eggshells, egg whites, and sulfur rubbed into the boil while reciting the incantation and saying five Paternosters. And according to my prof’s friend (a doctor), it’s all very sensible. The eggshells abrade the skin so the sulfur can sink in and fry the boil. The egg white forms a flexible protective barrier. The incantation and prayers are important because you need to rub it in for a certain amount of time.

It’s easy to take the magic words as superstition, but they’re important.

[writingshamebox]

Found this far funnier than I should have

[writingshamebox]

affectionate things that makes me fall in love:

(tag me when yall writeee, feel free to use <3 @urfriendlywriter )

hugs. warm hugs.

when they accidentally fall asleep in your arms

just looking at each other fondly :(

holding hands !!

giving head or shoulder massages

when they're so patient, and understanding with you

cuddling and eventually falling asleep

when they're always giggling at your behavior

when it's hard for them to contain a smile, so they grin so wide it lights up your world >>>

the kindest "i hate you" followed by a contagious laugh

shifting glances all around the room when they get caught staring at you

the hand behind their nape, when they're embarrassed

they have never raised their voice around you, always talks softly

"I'm eternally yours, sweetheart" ^~^

when they lie on your lap

feeding you their cooking and hoping you'll like it

cheek kisses (can i pls evaporate)

adorable big eyes that widens a little when they listen to your rant keenly

the corners of their lips turning up before showing the most beautiful smile

the way their hair looks in the morning :')

when they play with your hair

gets shy or easily amused around you

says random "i love you"s throughout the day

the way their eyes crinkle when they smile

back hugsssssss

[writingshamebox]

Burning Your Boats The Collected Short Stories, Black Venus, Angela Carter / Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery / Unknown / Tell Me No Secrets, Joy Fielding / Stop the World and Get Off, Peggy Toney Horton / Grief, Barbera Crooker / Unknown / A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf / Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery / William Stanley Merwin / Maurice, E. M. Forster / Dear Would be Wife, Gala Mukomolova / Unknown / Anne of Avonlea, L.M. Montgomery / Anvita Bhogadi / Peace Like a River, Leif Enger / Unknown / Unknown / The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Elizabeth George Speare / @honeytuesdy / October, Robert Frost / The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot / Georgia Grace / Alexander Smith / Unknown / Insta: sarahkjp

[writingshamebox]

If your plot feels flat, STUDY it! Your story might be lacking...

Stakes - What would happen if the protagonist failed? Would it really be such a bad thing if it happened?

Thematic relevance - Do the events of the story speak to a greater emotional or moral message? Is the conflict resolved in a way that befits the theme?

Urgency - How much time does the protagonist have to complete their goal? Are there multiple factors complicating the situation?

Drive - What motivates the protagonist? Are they an active player in the story, or are they repeatedly getting pushed around by external forces? Could you swap them out for a different character with no impact on the plot? On the flip side, do the other characters have sensible motivations of their own?

Yield - Is there foreshadowing? Do the protagonist's choices have unforeseen consequences down the road? Do they use knowledge or clues from the beginning, to help them in the end? Do they learn things about the other characters that weren't immediately obvious?

[writingshamebox]

Literally creating a history of the writing system, including the social progression that came with writing accessibility, for this fantasy setting just because I didn’t want them to use paper made from tree and forgot about paper made from cotton and linen. As well as thought vellum and parchment wouldn’t work for a growing industrial magic setting because of how difficult it is to produce a stable amount of either to have writing be accessible to commonfolk. And all of this is just for like four sentences and a few interesting scene details. God I love writing.