pachiinso-shad

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Heartwarming story: Little girl doesn’t have to do anything to fund her dad’s surgery because his expenses are covered by his country’s universal healthcare.

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Girls who get excited over small things are so fucking adorable. Like you’re freaking out over how cute that stuffed mammoth in the museum gift shop is? Hold on let me ask if they sell rings too cause imma need to propose to you right fucking now.

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Please memorize some "i desperately need out of this conversation because I cannot behave like a human any more" scripts. Please. I can even supply some. Let me get on my computer but, my god, there are formulaic ways to say 'i have no ppl juice rn and you speaking to me any more will cause me to conjure vivid, beautiful images of me THROTTLING YOU" without being a giant douchebag and it worries me that you don't know this

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So Your Temperate Home is Suddenly an Arctic Hellscape

As -10F hits area’s of the US who’ve never seen such temperatures in living memory, I wanted to give some tips from a Minnesotan who’s lived with these temps as a part of my life for 37 years.

1) Don’t Get Cocky. People used to these temps may laugh at our southern neighbors freaking out about the cold because yes, some parts of the US get such temps regularly every year. These people are being ignorant assholes. Our houses are mandated to have insulation that few of your homes will have. We pretty much all have huge puffy coats, and have well established winter weather gear drives for homeless and poor folks every year. We have expensive, well equipped infrastructure for cope with these temps and with large amounts of snow. You don’t. When it comes down to it, Minnesotans know to respect the cold temps- it’s just that a lot of the ways that do it are so commonplace as to be invisible to those who already have these habits.

2) Don’t go out wet. Dry your hair or stay inside. You will loose a lot of heat if you’re wet. Same for sweat, and wet diapers. And clothes with snow on them are now WET CLOTHES. Change into dry clothes as soon as possible.

3) If you have a shitty car battery or a car that sometimes struggles to start, then try not to use it. You’re unlikely to get the kind of temps where it’s impossible to start an engine (I’ve only experienced those temps a few times. Once my eyelashes froze shut and I almost froze to death in my own back yard. Don’t be like young me. Respect the cold.) If your car doesn’t start, you could be stranded somewhere, and realistically your area’s emergency services may be pretty overrun. 

4) Very cold air doesn’t hold moisture well. Plan for extra hydration for people, pets, and plants. Even if your staying in- most home heaters pull cold air from outside, then dry it out even MORE in the process of heating it. Dehydration is a thing. Even if your home’s heater has a humidifier attached to it (if you’re not sure, then it probably doesn’t.) it’s a good idea to drink extra water. Right now I have a few pots of water just left out by heaters to evaporate as much as possible. My mom used to just heat huge camping pots on the stove all day in cold temps. Remember, dry nasal passages really muck up your bodies ability to fight airborne illness. This is not a great time for that.

5) Help out homeless folks in your area in any way you can. These temps can and do kill. And since we have more evictions than any society can conscionably defend this year, we have high numbers of homeless people. Which means area supports for unhoused folks are often underfunded and over-taxed. 

6) Let your faucets drip. I know nobody likes to waste water but if your pipes freeze they will literally explode. Your home will flood. My mother’s kitchen got completely destroyed and it traumatized my childhood dog. Justa  bit of moving warm water will safeguard you from that.

7) Do. Not. Burn. Propane. Indoors. 

8) Plan for potential power outages. Ice on the lines can cause this and again, your infrastructure isn’t prepped for this. Unplug anything in your home you’re not using to do your part to help prevent rolling blackouts.

9) Driving on ice is a SKILL. Your roads may be filled with people who do not have that skill. Please please, stay off the roads if you can- even if you have this skill these roads will not be prepped and will, again, be full of people who don’t know how to do this because it just hasn’t come up that much in their life.

Stay safe and stay kind, folks! 

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cute weekly self care checklist:

♡ read one chapter of a book  ♡ practice a new skill of your choice every day for 15 minutes ♡ clean & tidy your room  ♡ exercise daily with a workout video  ♡ take a picture of the sky ♡ write a small poem or story  ♡ make your bed & fold your clothes every morning ♡ make one playlist of songs that you like ♡ check up on a friend  ♡ draw a picture of anything ♡ take a nice stroll around the block if it’s sunny ♡ go to bed at the same time each night ♡ write a list of nice things that happened this week ♡ bake a sweet dessert you like

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soft reminders:

you have value even when you can’t get out bed.

you will always have inherent worth, unaffected by your level of functioning or productivity.

you are deserving of love, kindness and time.

you are worth the ‘burden’ of getting help and recovering.

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AU prompts: masterlist of lists

Okay so if you’re anything like me you see those lists of au ideas floating around and you like them but when it comes time to write something and you need an idea you have no idea what you tagged them as or if they’re buried somewhere in your likes so….have a list of some of the ones I’ve come across! This is updated with new lists and fixed links fairly frequently so check back here if you’d like more! 

also: there are a few lists that people have requested that i have not been able to find so if you know of one/write one, please send it to me. my messages/ask/submit are all open. WANTED: expectant parents/parents with newborns aus, historical aus

 (updated on november 6th, 2016) 

(current count: ~163 lists + 39 individual prompts)

themed:

super long list of college aus

more college aus

even more college aus

autumn aus

it’s really cold outside aus

meet-ugly

art school aus

femslash aus

they know each other but don’t know that they know each other aus

awkward first meeting aus

MORE college aus

airport related aus

fake married/dating trope

pub aus (here for halloween season)

royal aus

assassin aus

opposites attract

lots more under the cut, the post was getting unwieldy

Keep reading

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How to write better descriptions

1. Avoid weak words

Compare these:

He ate the sandwich

She walked towards the lake.

to these: 

He devoured the sandwich 

She strolled towards the lake. 

Which sentences tells you more? The latter ones. Why? Because devoured and strolled are stronger words than ate and walked. They’re more specific, so they give you more information. To get across the same information with ate and walked, you’d have to add more words: ‘she walked slowly,’ ‘he ate quickly.’

Obviously this isn’t saying you can only ever use strong words–that would likely quickly devolve into purple prose–but If your descriptions only ever include general terms: ‘it smelled good’ ‘he walked over to greet her’ etc. you’re making it harder for your reader to get an accurate picture of whatever is happening in your scene. 

So how do you spot a weak word? The biggest problem with (and easiest way to spot) a weak word is that it needs support from other words to really get its meaning across. If you find yourself adding adverbs and adjectives to a term, question whether or not there’s a more concise way to get your point across instead. 

2. Be Specific Where Details Are Important

This isn’t to say you should describe everything in every scene in perfect detail, but being specific matters. 

Which is more engaging? 

He devoured the sandwich 

The book smelled magical.

or

He devoured the sandwich, stopping only to lick up the melted cheese that seeped through his fingers and ran down his palm. 

The book smelled like a sunlit afternoon. 

Again, the latter ones. They take you into the scene. They evoke the senses. It’s the difference between telling and showing. Devoured is a strong verb, but it doesn’t give us a clear image of what is happening. Showing the character licking away the cheese gives the reader a sense of the desperation and hunger of the action. Evoking a sunlit afternoon is evoking your reader’s memories of their own sunny afternoons.These examples are statements with evidence. They provide details. 

You want to invite your reader into the scene, not give them a summary of the events.

Additionally, specifics make the world feel real. They convince readers that the world actually exists. They keep the story in your readers’ minds once they’ve finished reading. 

This being said, don’t pull a GRRM and describe every meal your characters eat. Some things just aren’t that important. There are MANY occasions when it’s okay to tell instead of show. 

3. Remember the point of view.

Who is giving the description? 

If you’re writing in 1st person or 3rd person limited, remember how your character feels about what you’re describing. If you’re describing a strawberry field, a person who was raised on a strawberry farm is going to see it differently than someone who is deathly allergic to strawberries, who is going to see it differently from a Beatles fanatic. 

Maybe the Beatles fanatic is deathly allergic to strawberries and this field brings up a whole bucketful of conflicting emotions.

Which is all to say: 

Good descriptions reveal character as well as scene. 

If this description is coming from a character’s point of view: what is that point of view? What is this scene making your character feel? Don’t let your narrator slip away from the page. 

This connects to my last point. 

4. Remember why you’re including it. 

Novel writing is persuasive writing. It’s an exercise in persuading your reader that your story is true, that your characters are real people. It’s an exercise in persuading your readers to feel what you want them to feel. 

(There’s a well-known quote about this somewhere, but I can’t remember it exactly.)

Every description must add to the story. It should be doing something: working for some larger goal, advancing the plot, revealing character. 

Maybe you’re describing a house because you want your reader to see why your character doesn’t want to move.  

Maybe you’re describing this lovely-smelling book because you want the reader to know that it’s important to the character. That her favorite memories are of reading it in the attic of her grandmother’s house. 

When you’re writing out a description, identify its purpose and make sure it fulfils it. 

It’s okay if at first you don’t know how the house makes the character feel, or if she’s running or strolling towards the lake, or why the book is so important. Sometimes you just know it’s there. That something happened. Usually things become clearer as you write further and get to know the story and characters yourself. 

Once you do know what you’re trying to say with your story, make sure you say it with every chapter, every description, and every word. 

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There are hardly any female werewolves because they break all the classic rules of femininity. They force you to confront female violence, strength, size, grotesqueness and uncontrollability. Historically female shapeshifters always shift into something dangerous (snake) or sleek (cat) or dainty (bird) but female werewolves ignore the masculine gaze completely. They’re distorted beasts that have no ulterior motive except to destroy. Nothing about them is nurturing or modest. They’re the opposite of what a woman “should be.” Their omission from pop culture is not an accident.

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as someone who has experienced a redeemed abuser in the family, you have no right to say endeavor was being manipulative.

he is not "evil", he's a broken man, for crying out loud. his intentions might have come out as selfish in your eyes, but he wasn't thinking about hurting his family in that moment, he was lost in his own mind thinking about his past actions, not his rank, which hello??? that's a good thing.

can you imagine how many kids out there want their parents to change their ways, and then they don't??

i am not an abuse apologist for supporting this fictional character because i know fully well how this can go if he continues his efforts. just like your irredeemable abusers are real in your world, so are redeemable ones. they're both real.

hori's writing is realistic. i can vouch, so stop projecting your own experiences because this not your story, nor is it mine.

you can relate to it, sure! but ultimately, it might not go the way you want it to, and you need to accept that.

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I love Bernie now

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that one fucking concept art of the dragon age races that depicts dwarves like this:

you suck and i defy you

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not to prove my last post correct immediately but wow like thousands of people on this site saw a post that basically says "yeah, history happened. colonization happened. it's in the past, get over it and move on" because a few Maori people on this site pointed out that a SEA SHANTY you people recently decided you love is very racist. a sea shanty. we are defending colonialism and making lengthy, multi-paragraph posts about "woke-scolding" over a sea shanty. the way you reveal how little you actually care about any of the things you claim to believe in is because someone said a sea shanty you didn't know existed until last week is racist. I'm sorry but like a SEA SHANTY.

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“don’t reduce this female character down to a love interest” does not translate into “this female character shouldn’t have a love interest.”

preventing female characters with strong, compelling narratives from experiencing love, intimacy, and affection is just as regressive as reducing them down to sexual accessories for male characters. it assumes that women must choose between a romantic interest and depth of character and ignores a far more productive message: that women are capable of possessing both. 

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Happy birthday to the most precious soul out there, to our Snow Flower! 
I wish you a beautiful day filled with warm hugs, bright smiles, strawberry cakes and only pleasant surprises. We love you more than you can ever imagine, stay safe, dear Taehyung.

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my heart aches

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could i offer you some round bears in these trying times?