Text: Don’t act like everyone loved my father. He was assassinated. A 1967 poll reflected that he was one of the most hated men in America. Most hated. Many who quote him now and evoke him to deter justice today would likely hate, and may already hate, the authentic King.
using a cane opens up a myriad of new gestures, such as rap against ground (imperious), rap against ground (petulant), and drop the fucking thing (oh god oh god that was so loud everyone's looking i hope nobody tries to pick it up for me fuck my stupid life-
most fantasy books or fics i’ve read that contained a desert biome fell back on real world prejudice and misconceptions in place of authentic worldbuilding for a place and people, and it is so telling that the trope seems to repeat itself
things like
- the desert as a lifeless wasteland where ‘life is crushed underneath the shifting sands and blazing sun’ blah blah blah. deserts are full of life and they are beautiful and people have lived and prospered in them for eons. please read a book
- the desert as an ugly or barren terrain where everything is harsh and threatening
- the desert as something scary
- the inhabitants as backwards religious zealots
- the men as overly violent and oppressive
- the inhabitants in need of outside instruction/intervention, i.e. “civilizing the savage”
- the “harem” and women as exotic, sensual, mysterious
- writing tribalism with no knowledge of how tribes actually function
- djinn (or for the westerners, genies)
- Islam Lite (the aesthetics or spiritual practices appropriated and stripped of meaning)
- sprinkling random arabic words for ✨flavor✨instead of expanding your worldbuilding to include language as well
- clothing as oppressive or mysterious, instead of serving its actual purpose (protecting you from the elements, which should be obvious but i guess it isn’t. covering your skin keeps you cooler and safer in most deserts)
- people who live in deserts as ignorant, superstitious, uneducated
this isn’t worldbuilding, it’s just ignorance and bigotry
So true!
To anyone writing stuff set in the Mojave/Sonoran Deserts (and maybe the Colorado?) Please please please look up Palo Verde forests!! The trees are green but completely bare of leaves- they photosynthesize directly through their bark. And instead of leaves they have spikes! It's so trippy and cool to be walking through a lush green forest knowing that the nearest water is 50+ miles away.
Other Mojave/Sonoran specific things:
- There's tortoises! They're pretty rare to see but you can often find their burrows, or sometimes skeletons
- Nightjars will wait till you get super close and then fly up, scaring the crap out of you
- There are areas called 'desert asphalt', which are large expanses of black volcanic rock. Looks totally different from any other part of the desert
- There are jackrabbits everywhere
- Everywhere there aren't jackrabbits there's lizards
- It's actually pretty loud; there's loads of insects- mainly crickets and the like- but also lots of birds! You won't see them but by God you will hear them
- Wildflower blooms in the rainy season are the most beautiful thing you'll ever see in your life. There will be so many flowers that you never even knew existed
- If you live near any mountain range, you'll actually see thunderstorms fairly often. You'll never actually get rained on, but there's almost always thunder on the mountains, especially in the evening. Idk maybe that's a metaphor or something
Source: I lived on the edge of the Mojave and Sonoran for a bit, and most of my job involved wandering around the desert for 8 hours a day
I want to see a work of fiction that reverses the "vampires are snobby upper class, werewolves are brutish lower class" stereotypes
Consider a vampire's reliance on blood as a metaphor for living paycheck-to-paycheck and depending on the kindness of others to get by, and the desparation that can make one slip into taking.
ALTtags from tiredspacedragon
I'm thinking miku miku 🎵
more redraws of katamari line stickers! 🍜🩹🐄🌈
hungarian words you should probably try not to confuse: vérmérgezés (lit. 'blood poisoning'; means sepsis) and vérfertőzés (lit. 'blood infection'; incest)
Sepsis and stepsis. got it
do you think when they release the anchor it bonks a fish on the head sometimes . sorry thats probably sad to think about. maybe jf we imagine the funny coconut bonk sound and the fish is only a little annoyed. lets keep it PG no blood. they have a date at the anemone fields tomorrow it wouldnt be fair. oh fuck a second anchor
I can’t speak for other social media webbed sites but I really enjoy how tumblr seems to just completely spin a wheel on whatever media is hot right now. Like yeah sometimes it’s a new show that’s big and actively coming out but also sometimes there will be a solid month where half my dash is Columbo memes. Defy authority. Get really into an book from the 1800s. Watch shows that haven’t aired in 40 years. Celebrate the anniversary of the Boston Molasses Flood. Become unmarketable
oh shit i almost missed it!
