Reminder That Capitalism Is The Death Of Art

I was getting pretty fed up with links and generators with very general and overused weapons and superpowers and what have you for characters so:

Here is a page for premodern weapons, broken down into a ton of subcategories, with the weapon’s region of origin. 

Here is a page of medieval weapons.

Here is a page of just about every conceived superpower.

Here is a page for legendary creatures and their regions of origin.

Here are some gemstones.

Here is a bunch of Greek legends, including monsters, gods, nymphs, heroes, and so on. 

Here is a website with a ton of (legally attained, don’t worry) information about the black market.

Here is a website with information about forensic science and cases of death. Discretion advised. 

Here is every religion in the world. 

Here is every language in the world.

Here are methods of torture. Discretion advised.

Here are descriptions of the various methods used for the death penalty. Discretion advised.

Here are poisonous plants.

Here are plants in general.

Feel free to add more to this!

Glaze is out!

Tired of having your artwork used for AI training but find watermarks dismaying and ineffective?

Well check this out! Software that makes your Art look messed up to training AIs and unusable in a data set but nearly unchanged to human eyes.

I just learned about this. It's in Beta. Please read all the information before using.

Aight y'all. Here’s a lesson I learned from my wife, and I wish I’d learned it years ago:

Before you buy anything, take 5 minutes to search (preferably with a non-Google search engine like DuckDuckGo) “best [whatever] for [specific purpose if necessary].”

Make sure you look at who the reviews are from; there are a lot of bad spam sites out there, but you can find good lists on reputable sites. However, you’ll get some of the best lists on Reddit.

Most of what you’ll find at the top of the lists on Amazon (and Walmart) are people who have paid for that spot. You’ll still have to use discernment to make sure you’re picking a good review site, but I’m not kidding when i say that the last time we had to buy a plunger, I ended up on a thread on a plumber’s forum where they were discussing which plunger they keep in their own bathroom. (The overwhelming winner was something called a Toilet Saber, and… it’s much easier to use than the usual style of plunger, actually.)

She searches “best potato peeler” and “best pastry blender” and “best standing desk” and it seems so obvious, right, but she does it for literally everything and the average quality of things I own has gone way, way up since I started taking 5 minutes to search “best yoga socks” and “best cuticle trimmers” and then going to buy whatever it is.

Her research skills go into overdrive when it comes to big purchases; she’s the one who researched our sublimation printer and found the desk I currently use. If there’s an extremely passionate subreddit out there about the thing she wants to buy, she’ll find it and then read half a dozen reviews.

I cannot stress enough how much she does this. About. Everything. And how much everything we own is better as a result.

It’s amazing, honestly.

My favourite Game Changer quotes in no particular order:

“Take my points, you twee bitch, take my points away!”

“TIMBS! TIMBS, BITCH!”

“I haven't been able to since the HRT.” / “That's so interesting; I have the opposite problem.”

“He wanted to see his son fall, fall from the sky, oh how CLOSE to the SUN he FLEW, but Daedalus our little master craftsman over here had some WAX WINGS OF HIS OWN–”

“The lady said butthole, Sam.”

“Beardsley left this for me.” / “But you voted them out!” / “I am aware of that, yes.”

“Call your dad! Call your dad!” / “Call his... Dad?”

“I'm hungie :(”

“My period started during the break and I am in immense pain right now. This is not a bit.”

“Hey! Timothy! You're not allowed on the street anymore, and you know why?” / “Why?” / “On account of the crimes!”

“Can I solve it? Can I solve the thing?” / “WHAT?” (...) “That was a real Jewel moment right there, to go to so far at the top from so far at the bottom.”

“If Ally Beardsley comes out with a crown on their head I'm going to lose it.”

“Yes, of course I flinched. I'm not gonna stand here and pretend I didn't flinch, that was terrifying.”

“Just give it to me now, we all know I can do this.”

“You're gonna get Josh Ruben in here and not give him a seagull to do? Okay.”

“There is a big difference between walking into an escape room and finding yourself inside one.”

“Zac is running down the street? Jacob is driving home, and Ally is on their way to the airport.”

“Byoooouh.”✋😐✋“Did you factor in the antlers?”

“I am also 31. It's important to know there are three men in their thirties here today.”

“I think... You did this, and you're a bad man.”

“Was it writing Katie's name down and letting everyone think it was the art department?”

“The dungeon master is now my prisoner, it's Brennan Lee Mulligan!”

“There's gonna be a loop-de-loop.”

Writing Tips

Punctuating Dialogue

✧

➸ “This is a sentence.”

➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.

➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”

➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”

➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”

➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”

➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.

“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.

“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”

➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”

➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”

However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can ask be “outside”!

➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.

If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)

➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations, dashes typically express—“

“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.

➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.

➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”

➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.

“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”

Salamander’s Eyes compliment can only work once in a lifetime. It just did

cause of death: newtina

*spoilers for crimes of grindelwald

newt looking for tina when jacob and queenie arrived

narrow feet

jacob being a wingman

salamander’s eyes

“tall, dark-” “-beautiful”

tina’s jealousy

newt trying to tell tina the truth

newt and tina’s reunion

mr. scamander

newt’s expression when tina called him her fiance

newt + his appreciation for tina’s eyes

newt showing tina her photo

when newt finally told tina he wasn’t engaged

legit thought he was going to turn and snog her after the ‘I’ll think of something’

newt tracking tina

rescue attempt

they’re in love

and I’m dead

IT au where Olaf is a cannibalistic clown

mary maclane, the story of mary maclane / pierre bonnard - jeune femme écrivant, 1908 / louise fitzhugh, harriet the spy / phil grey - two photos from will self’s writing room: a 360 degree view in 71 photos, 2007 / tom astor - susie boyt’s notebooks, 2018 / stephen king, on writing / jill krementz - stephen king at his home office with his corgi marlowe, 1995 / joan didion - “on keeping a notebook” / wayne miller - author and poet maya angelou, 1974 / photo of sylvia plath from the everett collection / anne carson in a 2016 interview with NPR / octavia butler’s motivational notes to self / jim carroll, the basketball diaries / benjamin garcia - writing painting, 2012 / wayne pascal - writer’s block, 2019 / louisa may alcott, little women / little women (2019) / mary shelley (2017) / dickinson (2019) / anne lamott, bird by bird

on writing