sam-ph

[sam-ph]

Another fantasy trope story:

A story where a prominent prophesy very clearly states that this specific important thing Must Be Done by the firstborn of one specific guy. So three young heroes head out to fix this: This Guy's official firstborn heir, his bastard he didn't even know about before getting married, and his unofficially adopted orphan kid who just started living with him at some point, who is the oldest of the three so technically speaking is still the one who was born first. And all three must go because while the meaning of the prophesy itself is very clear, it's an utter mystery to everyone which one of them counts as their father's firstborn.

[sam-ph]

A wizard that regularly breaks into the gem shop where magical gemstones are cut from rough stone into their more commonly known sparkly faceted shapes - but he doesn't steal any of them. He sweeps the floor. Bags the stone crumbs and shards and dust he sweeps up. Breaks out again. The goblins who run the gem shop never bother to investigate why the floor just cleans up on its own, they assume that they've got a house elf or something.

So the wizard takes the shards and all, and grinds them all into evenly sized teeny tiny crumbs, and mixes them all together. The magic gemstone chips and crumbs become something new: magic pocket sand. Nobody knows what it'll do to you if he throws it at you. Least of all him.

[sam-ph]

Everyone meet just a normal goose :)

[sam-ph]

I continue to run into people that are confused as to why Americans have screens on our windows and it’s really quite simple.

Bugs

Diseases carried by bugs

Other assorted wildlife such as dogs and teenagers

[sam-ph]

Anna Haifisch

[sam-ph]

[sam-ph]

[sam-ph]

Illustration by Sophie Lucido Johnson

[sam-ph]

something fun about all those "could granny weatherwax defeat kira" "could the infinity train fix izzy hands" sort of tumblr polls is like. there's a smug answer that's just "it depends whose story they're in," like, bugs bunny always wins if the genre is a looney tunes short but if he's in some sort of grimdark action drama then he's just a rabbit and gets shot by a hunter. but the other way to look at those polls is that's the whole question: whose genre rules have priority? there are some characters whose genre rules take priority over whatever story they're in.

here's what i say, granny weatherwax would always defeat kira precisely because granny can't exist in the death note universe without her own genre rules taking over; there's no "if it's a light yagami story then light wins" here because if granny's there it isn't a light yagami story. bugs bunny always wins because whatever story he enters becomes a looney tunes short, he cannot by his nature exist in any other context. the answer to "which our flag means death character could survive black sails?" is stede bonnet and only stede bonnet, because if any other ofmd character enters black sails they become a black sails character and most black sails characters die. but stede is the one who carries the romcom aura and that's part of who he is, if stede enters the world of black sails then black sails is now a romcom, and he's absolutely fine

[sam-ph]

decentralize and clean up your life!!!

use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.

use firefox instead of chrome or opera (both are made with chromium, which blocks functionality for ad-blockers. firefox isn't based on chromium).

use mega or proton drive instead of google drive.

get rid of bloatware

use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite

use vetted sites on r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH for free movies, books, games, etc.

use trakt or letterboxd instead of imdb.

use storygraph instead of goodreads.

use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions

use ground news to read unbiased news and find blind spots in news stories.

use mediahuman or cobalt to download music, or support your favorite artists directly through bandcamp

make youtube bearable by using mtube, newpipe, or the unhook extension on chrome, firefox, or microsoft edge

use search for a cause or ecosia to support the environment instead of google

use thriftbooks to buy new or used books (they also have manga, textbooks, home goods, CDs, DVDs, and blurays)

use flashpoint to play archived online flash games

find books, movies, games, etc. on the internet archive! for starters, here's a bunch of David Attenborough documentaries and all of the Animorphs books

burn your music onto cds

use pdf24 (available online or as a desktop app) instead of adobe

use unroll.me to clean your email inboxes

use thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, tuta, or proton mail instead of gmail

remove bloatware on windows PC, macOS, and iOS X

remove bloatware on samsung X

use pixelfed instead of instagram or meta

use NCH suite for free software like a file converter, image editor, video editors, pdf editor, etc.

feel free to add more alternatives, resources or advice in the reblogs or replies, and i'll add them to the main post <3

last updated: march 18th 2025

[sam-ph]

I didn't touch this page for now 2 weeks, mainly because I had to craft the latin text, and had a newborn in the meantime, so the brain power wasn't really there...

I hope to finish it soon, now that I don't have to think to continue it.

[sam-ph]

I don't know how to convey how WORN OUT i am. Like, I get enough sleep (at least enough when you have a newborn), but i don't have time to do much of anything creative, and that's eating me (oddly, not only because of the newborn, but the fact that I have now 2 kids... and that's time consuming)

[sam-ph]

You know I will actually

[sam-ph]

Tumblr is the reason why I have something I call the cashier test which is, if i told this to a random cashier at the grocery store, would they think you're crazy at best or at worst would they be warranted in leaping over the counter and beating the shit out of you. Karl Marx mpreg is crazy, but not beating the shit out of you crazy. The cashier will probably talk about you to their coworkers and it might even make their day. Telling someone they're complicit in their own oppression by working a minimum wage job at a grocery store makes them warranted in leaping over the counter to beat the shit out of you.

[sam-ph]

[sam-ph]

Last year I finally had an excuse to illustrate this simple little Tumblr story by @bees-with-swords I've had bookmarked forever for class.

I hope you like it :]

Image ID under the cut

[id: a series of five watercolor and guache paintings with digital text added to each one. the paintings depict the conversation between the whale, the tuna, and the salmon from the story in the post.

the first painting shows a humpback whale swimming with a bluefin tuna as they talk, with a skeleton of a whale in a small panel above them. the skeleton is labeled to note the skull, ribcage, spine, pelvis, and other major structures. "Do you ever dream of land?" the whale asks the tuna. "No." says the tuna, "Do you?" "I have never seen it." says the whale, "but deep in my body, I remember it." "Why do you care," says the tuna, "if you will never see it?"

the second painting shows the humpback and the tuna from a different angle, the faint impression of trees surrounding them in the water. the humpback has a series of skeletons extending behind it, each showing a progressively older evolutionary ancestor and showing the change from land animal to ocean animal. it also notes the whale's own small but still present pelvis and femur bones. "There are bones in my body built to walk through the forests and the mountains." says the whale. "They will disappear." says the tuna. "One day, your body will forget the forests and the mountains."

the third painting shows a whale skeleton at the bottom of the ocean being picked at by scavengers. a small panel below the skeleton shows the salmon joining the conversation. "Maybe I don't want to forget," says the whale. "The forests were once my home." "I have seen the forests." whispers the salmon, almost to itself.

the fourth painting shows the progression of a salmon growing from egg to adulthood as it swims downstream, with panels showing the eye of the whale and the salmon looking at one another. "Tell me what you have seen," says the whale. "The forests spawned me." says the salmon. "They sent me to the ocean to grow. When I am fat with the bounty of the ocean, I will bring it home."

the fifth and final painting shows the whale, the tuna, and the salmon from below, backlit by filtering sunlight and surrounded by other silhouettes of fish. in the foreground are tiny, microscopic plants labeled "proterocladus antiquus, oldest land plant ancestor, alive one billion years ago." "Why would the forests seek the bounty of the oceans?" asks the whale. "They have bounty of their own." "You forget," says the salmon, "That the oceans were once their home."

/end id.]

(Thank you @saffronlesbian for the beautifully descriptive id)

[sam-ph]

I've already said that my number one piece of writing advice is to read.

But my number two piece of advice is this: be deliberate.

Honestly this would fix so many pieces of bad writing advice. Don't forbid people from doing something, tell them to be conscious and deliberate about it. This could help stop people from falling into common mistakes without limiting their creativity. Black and white imperatives may stop a few annoying beginner habits, but ultimately they will restrict artistic expression.

Instead of "don't use epithets": "Know the effect epithets have and be deliberate about using them." Because yes, beginners often misuse them, but they can be useful when a character's name isn't known or when you want to reduce them to a particular trait they have.

Instead of "don't use 'said'" or "just use 'said'": "Be deliberate about your use of dialogue tags." Because sometimes you'll want "said" which fades into the background nicely, but sometimes you will need a more descriptive alternative to convey what a character is doing.

Instead of "don't use passive voice": "Be deliberate about when you use passive voice." Because using it when it's not needed can detract from your writing, but sometimes it can be useful to change the emphasis of a sentence or to portray a particular state of mind.

Instead of blindly following or ignorantly neglecting the rules of writing, familiarize yourself with them and their consequences so you can choose when and if breaking them would serve what you're trying to get across.

Your writing is yours. Take control of it.

It probably sounds like I'm preaching to the choir here because most of my mutuals are already great writers. But I'm hoping this will make it to the right people.