gmkz

[gmkz]

I want to write a book called “your character dies in the woods” that details all the pitfalls and dangers of being out on the road & in the wild for people without outdoors/wilderness experience bc I cannot keep reading narratives brush over life threatening conditions like nothing is happening.

I just read a book by one of my favorite authors whose plots are essentially airtight, but the MC was walking on a country road on a cold winter night and she was knocked down and fell into a drainage ditch covered in ice, broke through and got covered in icy mud and water.

Then she had a “miserable” 3 more miles to walk to the inn.

Babes she would not MAKE it to that inn.

[gmkz]

I often think about that post that was a fake dating profile for a cat that was all about chickens, like wanting someone with posable thumbs for opening chickens.

[gmkz]

The harvest mouse (German: Zwergmaus, dwarf mouse) is the smallest mouse species living in Germany, with adult individuals weighing only about 4 grams. Its habitat are areas with dense and high herbaceous vegetation. In the summer, they don't dig holes, but they sleep in ball-shaped coccoons woven from grass blades hung up high in the vegetation. They have a prehensile tail, which they use as a "fifth limb" for climbing.

[gmkz]

WITCHCRAFT!!!!!!!!

[gmkz]

reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

[gmkz]

me trying to convince myself that the whole spectrum of human emotions is a good and necessary thing to feel even if its not comfortable while im actively experiencing emotions that make me feel like my bones are being dissolved in acid

[gmkz]

[gmkz]

A helpful guide to some common birds here in the western US

[gmkz]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

#aro ace and i would totally marry a friend if it’d be handy

[gmkz]

NO ONE knows how to use thou/thee/thy/thine and i need to see that change if ur going to keep making “talking like a medieval peasant” jokes. /lh

They play the same roles as I/me/my/mine. In modern english, we use “you” for both the subject and the direct object/object of preposition/etc, so it’s difficult to compare “thou” to “you”.

So the trick is this: if you are trying to turn something Olde, first turn every “you” into first-person and then replace it like so:

“I” →  “thou”

“Me” →  “thee”

“My” →  “thy”

“Mine” →  “thine”

Let’s suppose we had the sentences “You have a cow. He gave it to you. It is your cow. The cow is yours”.

We could first imagine it in the first person-

“I have a cow. He gave it to me. It is my cow. The cow is mine”.

And then replace it-

“Thou hast a cow. He gave it to thee. It is thy cow. The cow is thine.”

[gmkz]

A boy can dream, can't he?

[gmkz]

The name of this creature is YOTAcat or POTOOcat.

This creature is a combination of Yotaka (potoo) and cat.

His true identity is one of an alien reconnaissance unit that plans to invade the earth.

His body can change its shape at will by copying other creatures and objects.

When he came to Earth, he first tried to copy the appearance of the planet's main life form.

However, the first thing he saw there was a cat. He decided that the creature was the main life form and tried to copy the cat's form.

However, by some accident, he also copied the information of Potoo, and his body became a chimera of cat and Potoo.

What was even more unexpected for these aliens was that once they copied the earth creatures, the original spirit invaded their psyche.

His spirit was about to be taken over by cats and POTOO!

The human who found the strange creature brought it home out of curiosity. Not knowing it was a vicious alien.......

[gmkz]

Hey btw, here's a piece of life advice:

If you know what you'd have to do to solve a problem, but you just don't want to do it, your main problem isn't the problem itself. Your problem is figuring out how to get yourself to do the solution.

If your problem is not eating enough vegetables, the problem you should be solving is "how do I make vegetables stop being yucky". If your problem is not getting enough exercise, the problem you should be solving is "how do I make exercise stop sucking ass". You're not supposed to just be doing things that are awful and suck all the time forever, you're supposed to figure out how to make it stop being so awful all the time.

I used to hate wearing sunscreen because it's sticky and slimy and disgusting and it feels bad and it smells bad, so I neglected to wear it even if I needed to. Then I found one that isn't like that, and doesn't smell and feel gross. Problem solved.

There is no correct way to live that's just supposed to suck and feel bad all the time. You're allowed to figure out how to make it not suck so bad.

[gmkz]

Bronze incense burner in the form of a peacock, Seljuk Empire, 12th-13th century

from The Brooklyn Museum of Art

[gmkz]

GUMROAD IS BANNING NSFW CONTENT IN THE NEXT 24 HOURS

I haven't seen anyone talk about this yet, so I might as well.

They've updated their content policy to comply with payment processor Stripe and Paypal's censorhip. They gave 24 hours. On March 16th 2024, Gumroad TOS will no longer allows sales of any written or drawn nsfw content.

This is going to hurt for so many creators. Giving that little time leaves people's source of income wildly unstable, especially with such a huge overhaul of what content is allowed.

I hate this. I hate what censorship is turning the internet into. I hate that nsfw content creators keeo getting pushed to the fringes, that they need to digitally migrate so often, because nowhere can be trusted to allow their art for long.

I don't know what to do next, there isn't some sort of "here's what you can do to help!" People just deserve to know.

[gmkz]

Writing advice from my uni teachers:

If your dialog feels flat, rewrite the scene pretending the characters cannot at any cost say exactly what they mean. No one says “I’m mad” but they can say it in 100 other ways.

Wrote a chapter but you dislike it? Rewrite it again from memory. That way you’re only remembering the main parts and can fill in extra details. My teacher who was a playwright literally writes every single script twice because of this.

Don’t overuse metaphors, or they lose their potency. Limit yourself.

Before you write your novel, write a page of anything from your characters POV so you can get their voice right. Do this for every main character introduced.

[gmkz]

guy who is definitely not about to fall into a surprise midday nap with an aftermath worse than a hangover: it seems like a really good idea to lay in bed and get cozy under the blanket as part of my plan not to fall asleep. I do not know why.