How To Outline A Story:

i’m OBSESSED

darling boy.

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Once you start noticing the passive voice being used for men's actions, you can't unsee it. In history class it was always "women weren't seen as equal human beings" or "women weren't able to own property or have jobs or get education" rather than men legally considered women their property and banned them from work, school, and property rights.

In the news it's always "girl raped in park" or "woman killed in home" which would make some sense if the perpetrator was unknown, but they often have already caught the culprit by the time the article comes out and it's always a man.

The amount of times I've seen a headline about a man murdering his entire family before killing himself being titled "man commits suicide after family is killed" with a nice little family photo of them is absolutely absurd.

Hell, just last night I saw an article titled, "3 kids killed after mom let ex-partner take them to get food." Her male ex took the kids to get food and murdered them before killing himself. Not only is the headline passive, but it also phrases it in a way that makes the mother somehow look guilty like she knew what he had planned or knew he was insane.

To top it off, people get really uncomfortable if you stop using the passive voice for this stuff. They start squirming if you straight up say "men wrote laws banning women from voting" even when that is literally what happened. BOTH men and women act this way. It's like we're all just supposed to pretend that rape, enslavement, murder, and other human rights violations against women just fell from the sky.

fellow writers, how do you properly research translations / language info? lately i’ve been googling, not just using google translate, but different sources give me different translations. how do you go about translating? help!

Writing References: World-Building

20 Questions

Basics: World-building ⚜ Places ⚜ Imagery ⚜ Setting

Exploring your Setting ⚜ Kinds of Fantasy Worlds

Editing

Setting & Pacing Issues

Writing Notes

Animal Culture ⚜ Autopsy

Alchemy ⚜ Creating a Magic System

Art: Elements ⚜ Principles ⚜ Photographs ⚜ Watercolour

Creating Fictional Items ⚜ Fictional Poisons

Cruise Ships ⚜ Dystopian World

Culture ⚜ Culture Shock ⚜ Ethnocentrism & Cultural Relativism

Food: How to Describe ⚜ Word Lists: Part 1 2 3 4 5

Food: Cooking Basics ⚜ Herbs & Spices ⚜ Sauces ⚜ Wine-tasting

Food: Aphrodisiacs ⚜ List of Aphrodisiacs

Food: Uncommon Fruits & Vegetables

Greek Vases ⚜ Sapphire ⚜ Relics

Hate ⚜ Love ⚜ Kinds of Love

Medieval Art & Architecture: Part 1 ⚜ Part 2 ⚜ Some Vocabulary

Mystical Items & Objects ⚜ Talisman

Moon: Part 1 ⚜ Part 2

Seasons: Spring ⚜ Summer

Shapes of Symbols ⚜ Symbolism

Slang: 1930s

Symbolism: Of Colors Part 1 2 ⚜ Of Food ⚜ Of Storms

Topics List ⚜ Write Room Syndrome

Vocabulary

Agrostology ⚜ Architecture ⚜ Art Part 1 2 ⚜ European Renaissance Art ⚜ Fashion ⚜ Gemology ⚜ Geology Part 1 2 ⚜ Greek Art ⚜ Law ⚜ Literature Part 1 2 ⚜ Poetry ⚜ Science

Writing References: Plot ⚜ Character Development

Forward, but Never Forget/XOXO - Ch: 33 - Blood Game

Snippet:

"Thanks for the tip," Vi says, rising to her feet. "I'd do the same for you, if I had any fucks left to give."

"Is that right?" Sevika's eyes glow, a pair of ashed-out cigarettes. "If I were you, sweetie, I'd save my fucks for a fight I can win."

"Funny. I seem to recall kicking your ass at least once before."

"Once. With the element of surprise." The glow hardens. "Not to mention an Uppside bitch playing back-up."

"You saying you'd beat me in a fair fight?"

"In a fair fight, Vi, you'd be a smear on the floor." Sevika's eyes cut her up and down. "I've had bigger and badder than little shit-kickers like you come to heel."

"That a fact?" Vi takes a step closer. She's a good head shorter, but doesn't miss the subtle flexing of Sevika's jaw. "'Cause I've got no problem taking a run at it."

They stand face-to-face. A breath away from collision.

The sun, blood-red, crests over the Aerie.

Vi swears she glimpses her sister's silhouette against the sky.

A crow readying for flight.

Sevika's right fist dry-gulches Vi—a nasty suckerpunch straight to her ribs. The blow would've laid Vi out flat. Except her reflexes have already kicked into gear. She rolls with the punch, torquing her hips at the last minute. Her uppercut, meeting Sevika's momentum, connects her knuckles solidly with the underside of Sevika's jaw.

Sevika's head snaps back. Blood and spittle spray. A split-second later, the shocked glaze fades from her eyes, and she lets loose a war-whoop that could rattle the joists of a steel-walled battleship. Then she's coming at Vi with a haymaker that collides straight into the gut. The blow drops Vi to her knees. Arctic spiders crawl up her sides; her insides are aflame.

Her stare connects with Sevika's. The older woman shrugs, and her mouth curls. A succinct two syllable taunt—

"Square up."

—And she kicks Vi hard enough to send her skidding across the courtyard.

The rest of the recruits, their game suspended, stare in stunned silence. Ran and Dustin, locked in a rowdy clinch, fall apart. Lock, sensing a real match in the offing, sensibly retreats from the fray. Others crowd in a loose circle. The betting begins in a hushed buzz of coins passing from hand to hand.

It's one thing to have the blackguard brass at each other's throats. It's another thing entirely to bear witness to a no-holds-barred showdown between Zaun's two most formidable combatants.

One: the daughter of the Wharfside Devil. The other: the whelp of the Hound of the Underground.

A grudge-match for the ages.

AO3 - Forward, But Never Forget/XOXO

FFnet - Forward, But Never Forget (XOXO)

More Fanfic + Tidbits

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I really needed to see something like this today! Thank you @reasonsforhope for all that you do

If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

The Conversation

Explainer: what is citizen science?

Public participation in science is increasing, and citizen science has a central part in this. It is a contribution by the public to researc

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.

In which, at some point between his brother’s death and the first book, kaz actually had somehow become a demon or something not-quite-human

Thierry Mugler - Fall 1995 Couture