dracaspina:

goodticklebrain:

For some reason, I thought it would be good to do a comic about archaic English grammar. Just roll with it, could you?

It takes a very special sort of person to follow a stick figure Shakespeare webcomic in the first place, so I’m sure most of you already knew this, but I just wanted to spread the word, as I love following the “you” and “thou” usage in Shakespeare’s plays.

If you want a more coherent overview of the you/thou thing, check out this page on Shakespeare’s Words for a more informed viewpoint, plus a lot of cool examples of it in action.

I remember the use of “thee” and “thou” being explained as the same way a formal person would use first names.

Children and close family members get the “thee”s (addressed by first name). And everyone else gets “you” (as opposed to Mr., Ms., or Miss.)

@deadcatwithaflamethrower – language porn!

Fandom Etiquette

fixomnia-scribble:

memorizingthedigitsofpi:

I’ve been around for a really long time in various fandoms, and no one ever writes this stuff down. I’ll start. Please add to the list. We can’t expect people to follow “rules” they don’t know exist. 

written with the help of @unbreakablejemmasimmons

Fanart

  • if you like something, reblog it. Help the artist get their work out there in front of more people. Share the joy that it brought you. 
  • if you want more of it, support it. This can be via commissions, reblogs, recommending the artist to other people, shouting in the tags, or sending the artist asks/messages. 
  • if you hate it, keep scrolling. Keep the hate in a message window with a friend, not in the artist’s notes. 
  • if you want to use it, ask permission. Artwork is beautiful and you want to show it off. But please ask the artist before you throw it into your header or your icon. 
  • if you use it, give credit. And not just a post where you say “Do you like my new icon? X made it!”. Put it in your blog description, that way when someone rolls around your blog three months from now, they also know where your icon/header came from. 

Fanfic

  • if you like something, reblog it. Help the author get their work out there in front of more people. Share the joy that it brought you.
  • if you want more of it, support it. Kudos are fine, but if you want more of the thing you like, you should comment. Subscribe to the story or the author. Send them a message about how much you like what they wrote. 
  • if you read it, kudos it. Or give it a thumbs up. And this is just if you managed to get all the way to the end. If you finished the story and you actually liked it? Comment and reblog. 
  • don’t demand content. Be patient. Stories take time. You can encourage without being demanding. Show your love for what’s there without telling them to post more often. 
  • be gentle with criticism. Some people want it and some people run away from it. If you don’t know what type of person the author is, it’s best not to go there. “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything.”

Fandom

  • ship and let ship. You love your ship and other people love theirs. No one needs to “win” when we’re all going to end up in tears anyway. 
  • if you hate it, stay out of the tag. This has two meanings: 1) don’t deliberately put hateful commentary in a tag and 2) if you  hate a tag, don’t go and read through that tag just to make yourself angry
  • if someone makes you something, appreciate it. Read and comment the fic. Like and reblog the artwork. Pimp it out and tell them how much you loved it. It’s a gift, treat it like one. 
  • if it’s a gift, put some effort into it. You signed up for that exchange three months ago and now it’s a week before you have to send the gift and you don’t have the time or the inclination to do the thing. Well too bad. Someone out there has been working hard in your gift, so you should do the same for them. 
  • none of us are “better” than anyone else. We’re all trash for our particular show/film/book/ship/artist/what-have-you. My fave is no better than yours and yours is no better than mine. 
  • actors are not their characters. They are people. Treat them like people. 

*gently slams the reblog button*

Not on my own account, but writers I know have been on the receiving end of more unwarranted and plain rude crap than usual lately…

Recipe for the world’s oldest bread revealed

amemait:

copperbadge:

hxans:

historyisntboring:

“Jordanian bread recipe from 14,000 years ago

  • Make flour from wild wheat and wild barley
  • Pound tubers (roots) of wild plants that grow in water (sedges or club- or bull-rushes) to a dry pulp
  • Mix together with water to make a batter or dough
  • Bake on hot stones around a fire.


The people living in the area at the time were hunter gatherers.

(…)
This happened before the advent of farming, when people started growing cereal crops and keeping animals. (…)

Our ancestors may have used the bread as a wrap for roasted meat.
Thus, as well as being the oldest bread, it may also have been the
oldest sandwich. “This is the earliest evidence we have for what
we could really call a cuisine, in that it’s a mixed food product,” Prof Dorian Fuller of University College London told BBC News. “They’ve got flatbreads, and they’ve got roasted gazelle and so forth, and that’s something they are then using to make a meal.“”

@copperbadge ancient bread!

I wonder what the tubers did – I would guess they add flavor and possibly some elasticity? Mainly I wonder because while the crumbs apparently clearly indicate flatbread, I know that one way to grow wild yeast is to let mashed potatoes sit out for a while. So I wonder if the tubers aren’t some kind of cross-pollination with someone who had semi-leavened bread. 

Gastropod had a podcast a while back about mustard which indicated that very early people were combining foods and flavors in a very chef-like fashion, so I think it’s good to remember that hunter-gatherers weren’t just eating food, they were intentionally cooking food and doing culinary experiments!

But as this article suggests: Is it a sandwich?

Recipe for the world’s oldest bread revealed

may-shepard:

curlicuecal:

adamussutekh:

I just wanna let y’all know that you do fanfic tropes all of the time, we just don’t describe them like beginning writers do. You:

  • Push your shoes off with your toes or with the tip of your shoe, most likely. Props for drama if you yank your converse or your vans or your boots off like a soldier in a scyfi drama, but otherwise, you’re “toeing your shoes off”
  • Humans are much better at dissecting scents than we give ourselves credit for. If you sit there long enough, you could dissect how your friend smells. I smell like “old, beat up cars, the sour citrus he isn’t supposed to have, and something musty and natural and unique to him that clings to all of his clothes.” In order that’s old flannel, three day old hair mousse, and fish tank water. Smells like cigarettes and oils cling to your clothes, stuff like fishtanks and the food in your kitchen seeps into your belongings. Don’t feel bad about describing scents, people carry our houses with us everywhere. 
  • Have you ever pet someone else’s hair? That’s “carding your fingers through.” That’s it. It’s the same thing.
  • Ever walked around barefoot? Its three am and you’re trying to make Dark Lunch? You’ve padded around. You signal to other people nonverbally whether its coughing or sighing that you’re there so that you don’t scare them. 
  • Smirking is a thing most of us do with our face. Grinning, looking cheeky, and raising our eyebrows are also all things your face does. Sorry :/
  • You might not get this if you’re a straight girl whose never had sex, but sometimes that little strip of skin between ya shirt and ya hips? The mouth can go there. That’s an intimate place to touch and its a vulnerable place to be exposed. Overused maybe, but a valid way to show a shift in the situation. 
  • We all sigh!! Are some of y’all really saying that sighing isn’t a thing you do ten thousand times a week?? You don’t sigh when someone says something stupid as shit?? You don’t sigh when you gotta get up?? 
  • SAID IS A VALID WORD
  • Everything on your face casts shadows, I’m sorry you have weak eyelashes, or that somehow your brows are flat with your eyeballs
  • People laugh silently! I’m sorry you’ve never laughed that hard!! People giggle! People snort! People double over and move and flail! Have you ever fucking laughed?
  • For that matter how do y’all not blush and can you teach me
  • I’d also like to say sorry if: your heart has never skipped a beat reading something terrible, or when you saw someone you liked even platonically, or if you’ve never been so surprised all you could do was blink, that you never looked at someone like you loved them, and that you somehow never fucking show any emotion in your voice or your posture at all

Tl;Dr: Some of y’all are dragging people for shit you don’t know how to describe and damn if you ain’t still reading things and then telling beginning writers that they’re describing impossible things and writing weirdly when y’all don’t even write shit, its obnoxious as hell. To y’all that do write and are aggressively against this post, I bet you sure as hell use EPITHETS INAPPROPRIATELY ANYWAY, DON’T YA?

You look up through your lashes when you half-lid your eyes to obscure your expression, sneak eye contact, or be coy.

People’s eyes darken and lighten because of pupils contracting and expanding. They brighten or sparkle because of same, or b/c of moisture building in eyes from laughing or being emotional.

Eyes shift colors in different lights and based on the colors around them.

Also (many) people are just really fucking good at reading microexpressions from the muscles around the eyes, we’re a uniquely social animal, yes your emotions show in your eyes.

Damn! This is a good post.

pikestaff:

ouijubell:

halftruthsandhyperbole:

Today I learned

Free Audiobooks and Ebooks on OVERDRIVE.

Free Graphic Novels (DC, Marvel, Image, etc), Music, TV shows, and music on HOOPLA.

Free music that you can KEEP on FREEGAL

You are PAYING for all this with your tax money – USE THEM. Most likely systems will have all 3 or 2 out of 3, so if you aren’t sure call your local library’s reference/information desk and how you can get set-up or started.

Helpful links to all of the above:

Overdrive: https://www.overdrive.com/

Hoopla: https://www.hoopladigital.com/

Freegal: https://www.freegalmusic.com/home

–

More places to find FREE EBOOKS:

Standard eBooks (basically stuff off of Project Gutenberg, but prettified)

Baen Free Library

Book Bub – Free eBooks and Free Kindle books

Bubblin Books

–

Useful if you’re an ebook power user: Calibre

fieldbears:

fullmetalquest:

robotsandfrippary:

99laundry:

gogomrbrown:

I learned in a Latin Studies class (with a chill white dude professor) that when the Europeans first saw Aztec cities they were stunned by the grid. The Aztecs had city planning and that there was no rational lay out to European cities at the time. No organization.

When the Spanish first arrived in Tenochtitlan (now downtown mexico city) they thought they were dreaming. They had arrived from incredibly unsanitary medieval Europe to a city five times the size of that century’s london with a working sewage system, artificial “floating gardens” (chinampas), a grid system, and aqueducts providing fresh water. Which wasn’t even for drinking! Water from the aqueducts was used for washing and bathing- they preferred using nearby mountain springs for drinking. Hygiene was a huge part if their culture, most people bathed twice a day while the king bathed at least four times a day.
Located on an island in the middle of a lake, they used advanced causeways to allow access to the mainland that could be cut off to let canoes through or to defend the city. The Spanish saw their buildings and towers and thought they were rising out of the water. The city was one of the most advanced societies at the time.

Anyone who thinks that Native Americans were the savages instead of the filthy, disease ridden colonizers who appeared on their land is a damn fool.

They’ve also recently discovered a lost Native American city in Kansas called Etzanoa It rivals the size of Cahokia, which was very large as well.

Makes me happy to see people learn about the culture of my country 😀

Also, please remember that the idea of a nomadic or semi-nomadic culture being “less intelligent”, “less civilized” (and please unpack that word) was invented by people who wanted to make a graph where they were on the top.

Societies that functioned without 1) staying exclusively in one location or 2) having to make complicated, difficult-to-construct tools to go about their daily lives… were not somehow less valid than others.

writertobridge:

ameerawritesstuff:

nooneknowiblogthis:

s-q-u-e-e-m-i-s-h:

thebluemeany:

spyrograph:

tagged by @adigeon
  1. Dune except it takes place on Hoth and the protagonist is Voltaire.
  2. An omnipotent being plays n-dimensional-space-jenga with some non-linear aliens and looses.
  3. An alien uses space!Grinder for the first time and hooks up with a foot fetishist.
  4. A lich gets dragged back into the family drama because somebody found a loophole in the inheritance laws.

tagging @dayoldhakarl @borg-apologist @savory-breakfasts @thebluemeany @cerebrosbeforehoes

tagged y @spyrograph

Trying to turn Human Marmite Doctor
into the Murder Lizard whilst running a very slow burn romance, a burn on canon
and burn on the world of 2018…all at the same time.

(It seemed like a good idea
when I started…)

I tag @s-q-u-e-e-m-i-s-h, @eilupt , @adigeon @alphacygni-8 and @agrippaspoleto

Tagged by @thebluemeany, thank you!

1. A deeply traumatized twink keeps sassing his future father-in-law while in prison and becomes friends with a cool murdery muncher, a sarcastic twerp and the weird uncle who gets you an axe/knife/sword for your birthday.

2. A deeply disastrous witch moves into town with his worm sister and a pet bear, immeadiately proceeds to chase the tail of a pretty disaster lizard, falling into a deep, melodramatic disaster love.

I tag @crisisoninfintefandoms, @vanillatumbleweedscoffee, @yammisama, @thornfield13713, @nooneknowiblogthis, @trans-julian and @edosianorchids901!

Tagged by @s-q-u-e-e-m-i-s-h

1. I started this to try to encourage fanart and here we are over a year later and it’s not done yet.

2. Self-indulgence x 2

3. I torture a character while claiming to love him dearly.

4. I miss my boyfriend and write out my feelings using the usual pairing.

5. I torture the same character from earlier, but in a different way.

I tag @ameerawritesstuff

Tagged by @nooneknowiblogthis

1. Young boi, old boi and old boi, young boi.

2. Huh, what do you know? Straights can be cute too, I guess.

3. Stockholm Syndrome? In my me? It’s more likely than you think!

4. Pen pals do the do.

5. Emotionally compromised spies.

6. Horny and depressed? BANG A LIZARD.

I tag @writertobridge

Tagged by @ameerawritesstuff.

1. Doctor haunted by ghost gets exorcised by lizard boyfriend.

2. Prince and half-dragon boyfriend come to non-magical world looking for help with fungal disease.

3. Eye implant goes wrong, makes hallucinating man believe he’s god.

I tag @morgynleri.

(I have entirely too many, but how about five of them?)

1. Witch adopts hero, annoys everyone.

2. Dead people get fresh start in new digs.

3. Romance, politics, philosophy, and religion.

4. How many time lines can I fit into one AU?

5. Accidental time travelers free progenitors from slavery, plan to burn the galaxy down.

Tagging whoever wants to do this.

imyourliquor-youremypoison:

astronomifier:

rachelhaimowitz:

obsessionisaperfume:

deadcatwithaflamethrower:

queensimia:

palavenblues:

holy shit there is a name for it

Well damn. Explains a lot.

Suddenly I understand some of my fan base a LOT better.  That is Awesome. 

“holy shit there is a name for it” was my reaction before I even scrolled down to the comments.

I just need to keep reblogging this because I cannot even begin to tell you how profound a feeling of YES and THIS and THERE IS A WORD FOR ME OMG I get every time I see this, and I hope it helps others too.

seriously, anytime you see a post with a comment saying “theres a name for it?!” reblog that post because even if it doesnt apply to you any of your followers could be waiting for that revelation.

i was waiting for that revelation