gearedgoress

[gearedgoress]

That's the face of someone who says: "I'm hungwy."

Wacholderdrossel 🐣 (fieldfare) an der Universität Stuttgart, Vaihingen.

[gearedgoress]

The haunting ancient Celtic carnyx being played for an audience. This is the sound Roman soldiers would have heard their Celtic enemies make.

[gearedgoress]

Okay, another little lesson for fic writers since I see it come up sometimes in fics: wine in restaurants.

When you buy a bottle of wine in a (nicer) restaurant, generally (please note my emphasis there, this is a generalization for most restaurants, but not all restaurants, especially non-US ones) you may see a waiter do a few things when they bring you the bottle.

The waiter presents the bottle to the person who ordered it

The waiter uncorks the bottle in order to serve it

The waiter hands the cork to the person who ordered the bottle

The waiter pours a small portion of the wine (barely a splash) and waits for the person who ordered it to taste it

The waiter then pours glasses for everyone else at the table, and then returns to fill up the initial taster's glass

Now, you might be thinking -- that's all pretty obvious, right? They're bringing you what you ordered, making sure you liked it, and then pouring it for the group. Wrong. It's actually a little bit more complicated than that.

The waiter presents the bottle to the person who ordered it so that they can inspect the label and vintage and make sure it's the bottle they actually ordered off the menu

The waiter uncorks the bottle so that the table can see it was unopened before this moment (i.e., not another wine they poured into an empty bottle) and well-sealed

The waiter hands the cork to the person who ordered the bottle so that they can inspect the label on the cork and determine if it matches up; they can also smell/feel the cork to see if there is any dergradation or mold that might impact the wine itself

The waiter pours a small portion for the person who ordered to taste NOT to see if they liked it -- that's a common misconception. Yes, sometimes when house wine is served by the glass, waiters will pour a portion for people to taste and agree to. But when you order a bottle, the taste isn't for approval -- you've already bought the bottle at this point! You don't get to refuse it if you don't like it. Rather, the tasting is to determine if the wine is "corked", a term that refers to when a wine is contaminated by TCA, a chemical compound that causes a specific taste/flavor. TCA can be caused by mold in corks, and is one of the only reasons you can (generally) refuse a bottle of wine you have already purchased. Most people can taste or smell TCA if they are trained for it; other people might drink the wine for a few minutes before noticing a damp, basement-like smell on the aftertaste. Once you've tasted it, you'll remember it. That first sip is your opportunity to take one for the table and save them from a possibly corked bottle of wine, which is absolutely no fun.

If you've sipped the wine (I generally smell it, I've found it's easier to smell than taste) and determined that it is safe, you then nod to your waiter. The waiter will then pour glasses for everyone else at the table. If the wine is corked, you would refuse the bottle and ask the waiter for a new bottle. If there is no new bottle, you'll either get a refund or they'll ask you to choose another option on their wine list. A good restaurant will understand that corked bottles happen randomly, and will leap at the opportunity to replace it; a bad restaurant or a restaurant with poor training will sometimes try to argue with you about whether or not it's corked. Again, it can be a subtle, subjective taste, so proceed carefully.

In restaurants, this process can happen very quickly! It's elegant and practiced. The waiter will generally uncork the bottle without setting the bottle down or bracing it against themselves. They will remove the cork without breaking it, and they will pour the wine without dripping it down the label or on the table.

[gearedgoress]

THE ENTIRE WEST IS BEING PUT UP FOR SALE AND I AM BEGGING YOU TO CALL YOUR SENATORS

Trump’s budget bill has many, many things in it, but buried amongst it is the MILLIONS OF ACRES OF PUBLIC LAND FOR SALE.

This is the entirety of the Arizona state forests, the entire Cascades mountain range. Swathes of pristine desert around the national parks in Utah. On the doorstep of Jackson Hole.

THIS BILL IS BIG, BUT IT CAN BE AMENDED AND ABSOLUTELY MUST NOT PASS AS IS please.

If you have ever enjoyed the wilderness, we stand to lose it all forever.

CALLING your senators - NOT JUST IN THE WEST. ALL SENATORS, is CRUCIAL.

Outdoor alliance has a great resource for reaching out.

I don’t have a huge following but please, everywhere I have ever loved, the forests I grew up playing in, the land I got married on, is all at risk and I am begging.

[gearedgoress]

THE ENTIRE WEST IS BEING PUT UP FOR SALE AND I AM BEGGING YOU TO CALL YOUR SENATORS

Trump’s budget bill has many, many things in it, but buried amongst it is the MILLIONS OF ACRES OF PUBLIC LAND FOR SALE.

This is the entirety of the Arizona state forests, the entire Cascades mountain range. Swathes of pristine desert around the national parks in Utah. On the doorstep of Jackson Hole.

THIS BILL IS BIG, BUT IT CAN BE AMENDED AND ABSOLUTELY MUST NOT PASS AS IS please.

If you have ever enjoyed the wilderness, we stand to lose it all forever.

CALLING your senators - NOT JUST IN THE WEST. ALL SENATORS, is CRUCIAL.

Outdoor alliance has a great resource for reaching out.

I don’t have a huge following but please, everywhere I have ever loved, the forests I grew up playing in, the land I got married on, is all at risk and I am begging.

[gearedgoress]

Hubble's new 35th anniversary images ©

[gearedgoress]

getting a new interest that it feels like nobody gaf about is so excruciating what do you mean people aren't going ham nuts over this thing. please start losing your minds

[gearedgoress]

weeks 11-20 on my weekly poster challenge this year, crazy I've actually managed almost half a year of getting these done. 1-10 here.

[gearedgoress]

ordering a pup cup for my chikorita in lumiose

[gearedgoress]

The Causal Chain And Why Your Story Needs It

The most obnoxious thing my writing teacher taught me every story needed, that I absolutely loathed studying in the moment and that only later, after months of resisting and fighting realized she was right, was something called the causal chain.

Simply put, the causal chain is the linked cause-and-effect that must logically connect every event, reaction, and beat that takes place in your story to the ones before and after.

The Causal Chain is exhausting to go through. It is infuriating when someone points out that an event or a character beat comes out of nowhere, unmoored from events around it.

It is profoundly necessary to learn and include because a cause-and-effect chain is what allows readers to follow your story logically which means they can start anticipating what happens next, which is what is required for a writer to be able to build suspense and cognitively engage the audience, to surprise them, and to not infuriate them with random coincidences that hurt or help the characters in order to clumsily advance the author's goals.

By all means, write your story as you want to write it in the first draft, and don't worry about this principle too much. This is an editing tool, not a first draft tool. But one of the first things you should do when retroactively begin preparing your story to be read by others is going step by step through each event and confirming that a previous event leads to it and that subsequent events are impacted by it on the page.

[gearedgoress]

You don't actually write creative enough

Read your work again. You see: does, goes, places, etc. Red, blue, ugly, smelly. Authors often take shortcuts when writing and while it gets the job done, it doesn't give the power that it should. Sometimes, the word count is sacrificed for the greater good.

He ran to get her He lunged to steal her, or He charged to catch her

Once you have that, maybe you're still not writing creative. You can use synonyms, it's the easiest path to do. Yet, you can rephrase for a more unique sentence. Walk =/ strut. Do =/ act.

It smelled of decaying bodies Your smell soured of death's traces, or The air soured of death's traces

Describing things doesn't need to be flat either. It's a struggle to describe certain things—hair, eyes, height, posture, rooms, walls, etc.

The room was extremely red The room drowns her with fever-inducing red, or Every surface imaginable bleeds my eyes with red

This can easily become an overbearing way to attempt to reach the word count. However, it does help in situations where the writing has been too flat for too long and the narrator needs to show that this thing holds significance.

[gearedgoress]

this doesn't seem to be widespread knowledge around here yet but there's a big trend among dogshit content scraper accounts to grab a real photo (usually of ✨Aesthetic Nature™✨ or something similar, which is why it's relevant to me) somewhere, and recreate it using AI to avoid crediting the photographer. this can even trick people who are somewhat familiar with the subject matter if they're not paying attention but looks incredibly wrong upon closer inspection

here is some complete garbage as an example. because these "photos" are not completely made up by AI, people into spiders know the species and will recognize their features without looking closely, getting tricked in the process. if you know spider anatomy and look closely though, both of those look like utter abominations. the original photos these two were based on are here and here, by the way

these just so happen to be things i'm familiar with and i would probably get easily fooled by AI recreations of plants or fish or whatever. my point is that if you're not an expert on everything that exists you're not immune to these, so i would probably recommend caring about photo sources unless you actively want to look at this repulsive trash

[gearedgoress]

West Coast BC, Canada (OC)(1520x1900) - Author: DMD_Cine_Attic

[gearedgoress]

Sh2-240/ The Spaghetti nebula

[gearedgoress]

Some Things I Wish I Knew as a Baby Writer

You can find writing advice of every shape and form online, and most of it will never fit your process entirely.

I wish someone had told me that it's ok to disagree with the advice you see, even if the person is more experienced than you.

I wish someone had told me that writing is part craft part art; there is no right way to build a fictional concept, only tried and tested ways to bring it to life.

I wish someone had told me that it's ok to fail.

So I'm telling all of you this:

Failure is a blessing because we can learn from it

Success is dangerous because it can make us complacent

The joy of creation outweighs the comfort of acclaim

Persistence matters more than talent in most cases

Writing as a hobby and writing as a job are two different beasts, neither is better or worse

The stories you hate most may be your best because they have tried you and frustrated you; we rarely see the beauty in our own faces - our writing is no different.

You deserve to love your stories, but it's not the only way to measure growth.