You Don’t Need Purity In The Material You Consume

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Something like this would be so colossally helpful. I'm sick and tired of trying to research specific clothing from any given culture and being met with either racist stereotypical costumes worn by yt people or ai generated garbage nonsense, and trying to be hyper specific with searches yields fuck all. Like I generally just cannot trust the legitimacy of most search results at this point. It's extremely frustrating. If there are good resources for this then they're buried deep under all the other bullshit, and idk where to start looking.

the avatar, and the last airbender :: an aang meta

I’ve been wanting to write this meta for about six years, and now seems like as good a time as any, so without further ado: Why Aang Sparing Ozai is the Most Important Scene in ATLA, from both a Character and a Thematic Standpoint.

And with that thesis out of the way, let’s go all the way back to the beginning.

Aang is the titular character of the series, two fold. He is both the Avatar, and the last airbender, and it’s these two facets of identity that inform his arc as much as the duality of Zuko’s scar informs his. So why then, is one arc written about and praised endlessly and the former is rather left in the dust, so to speak? 

There’s a few reasons for that, I think. The first is that Zuko is a more traditionally masculine and therefore Western protagonist. He has a more understandable loss, too. People can relate to losing a parent, or to an abusive household. These are traumas and ghosts, the brooding nature, that we are regularly shown in Western media, over and over again. The angry man who lost his wife/daughter/sister. Who does bad things like burning down villages and kidnapping people, but can’t you see that he’s just sad inside? And I’m not saying that’s all Zuko is. There are plenty of subversive things about him, his arc, and his poignant story of overcoming emotional and physical abuse. He is an incredibly important character and deserves all the praise he gets.

I just think Aang is just as noteworthy, and doesn’t get nearly the amount of credit he deserves. Aang is not a traditional Western protagonist at all. He makes jewelry, is vegetarian, loves animals, cries easily, tries to avoid violence, and has a fun loving nature. Many people deride Aang’s behaviour as childish - and sometimes it is - but the best parts of him, his forgiving nature, his fun loving nature and compassion, isn’t because he’s young. They come from him being an Air Nomad. And without those same traits being displayed towards him, Zuko never would have become the character we know and love (but more on that, later).

So yes, as above, Aang’s arc is about the reconciliation of him being the Avatar, and him being the last Airbender. Each part is equally as important as the other. If you can’t understand that, then you don’t understand the show, full stop. 

Okay? Okay.

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Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

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Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

Me: *tries to fall asleep with my glasses on*

Me: “hmmm, I should probably take these off”

Husband: “but then how will you see in your dreams?”

Me: “I wear contacts”

My new Roman Empire cured my seasonal depression for a week

Writing advice you're not going to like.

People sometimes send me Asks wanting writing advice.  I suck at it.  I don’t really know how I do the writing, or how one should do the writing, or what one should do to get better at the writing.  All I can ever think to say is “write a lot of stuff and you will get better at the writing.”  Which is true, but hardly a bolt from the sky.

Well, as it turns out, I do have one piece of Legit Writing Advice, and I am going to share it with you, right now.  If you were in any of my writing workshop groups at a con, you’ve heard this advice already.

Warning: you’re going to fucking hate it.  But if you do it, you will thank me.

If you have a piece of fiction you’re serious about, something you might want to actually shop around, or just something you really are into and want to make it as good as you can…do NOT edit it.

Repeat.  DO NOT EDIT.

REWRITE.

As in, print out the whole fucking thing and re-enter it, every word (or use two screens).  Retype the whole thing.  Recreate it from the ground up using your first draft as a template.  Start with a blank page and re-enter every. single. word.

I hear you screaming.  OH MY GOD THAT’S INSANE.

Yes.  Yes, it is.

It is also the most powerful thing you will ever do for a piece of fiction that you are serious about.

Now, let’s get real.  I don’t do this for most things.  I don’t do it for my fanfiction.  But if it’s something original, something I might like to get to a professional level - I do it.  You absolutely COULD do it for fanfiction.  It’s just up to you and how much time you want to sink into a piece.

You can edit, sure.  But you WILL NOT get down to the level of change that needs to happen in a second draft.  You will let things slide.  Your eyes will miss things.  You will say “eh, good enough.”

The first time I did this, on someone else’s advice, I was dubious.  Within two pages, I was saying WHY HAVE I NOT BEEN DOING THIS ALL THE TIME.  I was amazed at how much change was happening.  By the time I got to the end, I had an entirely different novel than the one I’d started with.  When you’re already re-entering every single word, it’s easy to make deep changes.  You’ll reformat sentences, you’ll switch phrases around, you’ll massage your word choice.  You’ll discover whole paragraphs that don’t need to be there at all because they became redundant.  You’ll find dialogue exchanges that need reimagining.  Whole plot points will suddenly be different, whole story arcs will reveal their flaws and get re-drawn.

You cannot get down to the fundamental level of change that’s required just by editing an existing document.  You have to rebuild it if you really want your story to evolve.  You will be AMAZED at the difference it will make.

It will take time.  It will seem like a huge, Herculean task.  I’m not saying it’s easy.  It isn’t.  But it is absolutely revolutionary.

Try it.  I promise, you will see what I mean.

*PSA: Tipsy!Lori wrote this post.  In case you couldn’t tell.

More out-of-context dnd quotes

* “ignite the wolf”

* “What if we kissed in the Ravenloft castle and we were both evil?”

* “Three votes for swamp of death”

* “You sound a bit hoarse” “I’m a cow, thank you very much”

* “Too angry to die”

* “I just wanna die and become a chat box on Microsoft”

* “The frog is a better antagonist than Strahd”

* “Why don’t we let the ranger do ranger shit?”

Random mansion generator

The Procgen Mansion Generator produces large three-dee dwellings to toy with your imagination, offering various architectural styles and other options. Each mansion even comes with floorplans:

https://boingboing.net/2019/07/12/random-mansion-generator.html

Update: I just overheard a coworker say “what she’s wearing is gonna be the dress code to my funeral. I want it to be the most dramatic thing, rain and umbrellas and the whole shebang”

I don’t like to interrupt people and so if someone is having a conversation while standing in the way of something I need I’ll just tend to awkwardly stand there until they move or notice me. This is also how I end up accidentally eavesdropping on really strange and/or important conversations which makes it even more awkward and I just.......

What is going on with the world??