thehelfinna

[thehelfinna]

[thehelfinna]

[thehelfinna]

THESE OLD MEN (THE NORTHERN BOYS) SHOULD BE DOING NUMBERS HERE ON TUMBLR DOT COM !!!!!!!!!

PENANICAL VAGANICAL MECHANICAL MAN!!!!!!!! C'MON!!!

[thehelfinna]

For the uneducated and the idiots out there. And yes, there's a difference between the two.

The rest of the thread is here.

tl;dr: Don’t monetize AO3, kids.  You won’t like what happens next.

[thehelfinna]

Saved for later

So You Want to Read More about Chinese Mythos: a rough list of primary sources

"How/Where can I learn more about Chinese mythology?" is a question I saw a lot on other sites, back when I was venturing outside of Shenmo novel booksphere and into IRL folk religions + general mythos, but had rarely found satisfying answers.

As such, this is my attempt at writing something past me will find useful.

(Built into it is the assumption that you can read Chinese, which I only realized after writing the post. I try to amend for it by adding links to existing translations, as well as links to digitalized Chinese versions when there doesn't seem to be one.)

The thing about all mythologies and legends is that they are 1) complicated, and 2) are products of their times. As such, it is very important to specify the "when" and "wheres" and "what are you looking for" when answering a question as broad as this.

-Do you want one or more "books with an overarching story"?

In that case, Journey to the West and Investiture of the Gods (Fengshen Yanyi) serve as good starting points, made more accessible for general readers by the fact that they both had English translations——Anthony C. Yu's JTTW translation is very good, Gu Zhizhong's FSYY one, not so much.

Crucially, they are both Ming vernacular novels. Though they are fictional works that are not on the same level of "seriousness" as actual religious scriptures, these books still took inspiration from the popular religion of their times, at a point where the blending of the Three Teachings (Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism) had become truly mainstream.

And for FSYY specifically, the book had a huge influence on subsequent popular worship because of its "pantheon-building" aspect, to the point of some Daoists actually putting characters from the novel into their temples.

(Vernacular novels + operas being a medium for the spread of popular worship and popular fictional characters eventually being worshipped IRL is a thing in Ming-Qing China. Meir Shahar has a paper that goes into detail about the relationship between the two.)

After that, if you want to read other Shenmo novels, works that are much less well-written but may be more reflective of Ming folk religions at the time, check out Journey to the North/South/East (named as such bc of what basically amounted to a Ming print house marketing strategy) too.

-Do you want to know about the priestly Daoist side of things, the "how the deities are organized and worshipped in a somewhat more formal setting" vs "how the stories are told"?

Though I won't recommend diving straight into the entire Daozang or Yunji Qiqian or some other books compiled in the Daoist text collections, I can think of a few "list of gods/immortals" type works, like Liexian Zhuan and Zhenling Weiye Tu.

Also, though it is much closer to the folk religion side than the organized Daoist side, the Yuan-Ming era Grand Compendium of the Three Religions' Deities, aka Sanjiao Soushen Daquan, is invaluable in understanding the origins and evolutions of certain popular deities.

(A quirk of historical Daoist scriptures is that they often come up with giant lists of gods that have never appeared in other prior texts, or enjoy any actual worship in temples.)

(The "organized/folk" divide is itself a dubious one, seeing how both state religion and "priestly" Daoism had channels to incorporate popular deities and practices into their systems. But if you are just looking at written materials, I feel like there is still a noticeable difference.)

Lastly, if you want to know more about Daoist immortal-hood and how to attain it: Ge Hong's Baopuzi (N & S. dynasty) and Zhonglv Chuandao Ji (late Tang/Five Dynasties) are both texts about external and internal alchemy with English translations.

-Do you want something older, more ancient, from Warring States and Qin-Han Era China?

Classics of Mountains and Seas, aka Shanhai Jing, is the way to go. It also reads like a bestiary-slash-fantastical cookbook, full of strange beasts, plants, kingdoms of unusual humanoids, and the occasional half-man, half-beast gods.

A later work, the Han-dynasty Huai Nan Zi, is an even denser read, being a collection of essays, but it's also where a lot of ancient legends like "Nvwa patches the sky" and "Chang'e steals the elixir of immortality" can be first found in bits and pieces.

Shenyi Jing might or might not be a Northern-Southern dynasties work masquerading as a Han one. It was written in a style that emulated the Classics of Mountains and Seas, and had some neat fantastic beasts and additional descriptions of gods/beasts mentioned in the previous 2 works.

-Do you have too much time on your hands, a willingness to get through lot of classical Chinese, and an obsession over yaoguais and ghosts?

Then it's time to flip open the encyclopedic folklore compendiums——Soushen Ji (N/S dynasty), You Yang Za Zu (Tang), Taiping Guangji (early Song), Yijian Zhi (Southern Song)...

Okay, to be honest, you probably can't read all of them from start to finish. I can't either. These aren't purely folklore compendiums, but giant encyclopedias collecting matters ranging from history and biography to medicine and geography, with specific sections on yaoguais, ghosts and "strange things that happened to someone".

As such, I recommend you only check the relevant sections and use the Full Text Search function well.

Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studios, aka Liaozhai Zhiyi, is in a similar vein, but a lot more entertaining and readable. Together with Yuewei Caotang Biji and Zi Buyu, they formed the "Big Three" of Qing dynasty folktale compendiums, all of which featured a lot of stories about fox spirits and ghosts.

Lastly...

The Yuan-Ming Zajus (a sort of folk opera) get an honorable mention. Apart from JTTW Zaju, an early, pre-novel version of the story that has very different characterization of SWK, there are also a few plays centered around Erlang (specifically, Zhao Erlang) and Nezha, such as "Erlang Drunkenly Shot the Demon-locking Mirror". Sadly, none of these had an English translation.

Because of the fragmented nature of Chinese mythos, you can always find some tidbits scattered inside history books like Zuo Zhuan or poetry collections like Qu Yuan's Chuci. Since they aren't really about mythology overall and are too numerous to cite, I do not include them in this post, but if you wanna go down even deeper in this already gigantic rabbit hole, it's a good thing to keep in mind.

[thehelfinna]

i feel so bad for nikola tesla like imagine spending years beefing with a guy who has conned the public into believing he's some sort of supergenius when in reality it's his overworked employees developing all of his world-changing inventions and you end up dying broke and starving and alone and then 100 years later another guy cons the public into believing he's some sort of supergenius when in reality it's his overworked employees developing all of his world-changing inventions and he's doing it all IN YOUR NAME. he must be rolling in his grave like a fucking rotisserie chicken

[thehelfinna]

Getting added by ridiculous amounts of p0rn accounts recently and I'm damn curious as to why. I'm not a very active account, I'm very clearly and obviously ace as fuck and thus very much not into any kind of genitalia. Also student. Meaning poor. I'm literally the worst target.

[thehelfinna]

I mean, not having measels or polio or any of those really awful, potentially deadly illnesses is always going to be a good thing. And immunocompromised people not getting them (and definitely dying) is even better.

[thehelfinna]

the thing you need to realize about localization is that japanese and english are such vastly different languages that a straight translation is always going to be worse than the original script. nuance is going to be lost and, if you give a shit about your job, you should fill the gaps left with equivalent nuance in english. take ff6, my personal favorite localization of all time: in the original japanese cefca was memorable primarily for his manic, childish speaking style - but since english speaking styles arent nearly as expressive, woolsey adapted that by making the localized english kefka much more prone to making outright jokes. cefca/kefka is beloved in both regions as a result - hell, hes even more popular here

[thehelfinna]

There are many new friends on the archive, and many are young and have only known social media, which is why I wanted to say something!

Ao3 does not have an algorithm! It isn't a social media site, it's an archive.

Posting fics on Tumblr isn't the same as posting fics on Ao3

Ao3 is like a giant virtual bookshelf, and everyone is able to add their own stories to the bookshelf, all stored with different tags and different fandoms. Works are automatically sorted by newest to oldest, but filters, looking at bookmarks, and using the search function can change that.

Certain works are not pushed to the top like social media posts. More kudos and reads don't push a single work to more viewers by some algorithm. Unless otherwise filtered, works will be at the top of the page based on how recent it was posted.

Smaller fandoms get less views, less kudos, less bookmarks, and larger fandoms get more simply because of the number of people inside the fandom.

Ao3 is a giant virtual bookshelf- there is no algorithm, and there is no man behind the shelf pushing certain books forward.

Happy reading, and if you'd like to have more people notice a fic, why not share it with them! Send a dm to a fandom friend and it might turn into one of their favorite fics!

[thehelfinna]

The Lord of the Rings  by Leia Ham

1. Frodo in Hobbiton

2. the armor of Middle-Earth: Gondor, Rohan, Rivendell

3-4. Arwen & Aragorn

5. Argonath

6. in LothLorien

7. Eowyn & Theoden in Meduseld

8.  Eowyn (I am no man!)

[thehelfinna]

Saving for later

Writing Advice

I’m gonna throw in some of my favourite pieces of writing advice, since you guys liked the last post on the subject. 

1. Master the scientific method, and apply it to your writing - not only your work, but your actions as a writer, like where and when you write. Take the time to figure out what works for you, and how it works. That way, when something stops working, or you can’t do it any more, you’ll have some idea on how to address the problem. 

For example - I write best in the morning, as a rule, before I get tired, but I do some of my best dialogue in the evening, so if I’m stuck on dialogue I’ll come back to it after dinner. If I have a busy morning and can’t write then, a little nap may help to reset my brain creatively. If I can’t do that, watching or reading something particularly well-written can help inspire me to emulation. 

2. If you get really stuck, especially in a high-octane part of the narrative, go back and check how long it’s been since your character(s) last had a chance to eat, sleep, or go to the toilet. Even if you didn’t explicitly describe the action, a sentence like ‘later that day’ or ‘the next morning’ tells your readers ‘yes, they’ve had chance at a nap and a whizz’. If it’s been too long, you and your character may both have Action Fatigue, and need a down-time scene to reset. 

(One of my favourite Star Trek novels of all time features a character finding herself in the position of having to ask THE Commander Spock for permission to tinkle while on bridge duty. By the time she comes out, the Klingons have arrived. One of the best uses of ‘the bladder waits for no narrative’ I’ve ever read, and it worked perfectly as a brief break in the intensity followed by ‘oh no, now it’s worse’.) 

3. The Wall. The Wall was something we got warned about a lot in the early days of NaNoWriMo, though I don’t see it as much these days. Basically, at a point between 18K and 25K in a novel-length endeavour, most people (especially beginning writers) suddenly hit a wall and don’t know what to write next and they hate their story and everything is terrible. In NaNo, this is referred to as ‘Week Two’, and nobody likes Week Two. It’s the point at which most people quit.

This is perfectly normal and happens even to published authors. It’s basically the point at which you can’t postpone it any more and you have to shift from Act 1 (setup and introductions) to Act 2 (progressing plot), and it’s harder to do and suddenly you go from coasting along enjoying the flow to hitting the part where you have to pedal uphill. It’s the single hardest part of the whole writing process, for a lot of people. All I can tell you is that if you do that hard pedalling, the second coast is going to be even better and more fun, and we all have to do it. 

4. Save everything. Even if it’s bad. You never know when, years later, you’ll remember some idea out of the blue and be all ‘WAIT that would be the perfect b-plot for this story I’m writing now how did it go again?’ and have to go digging. (This has happened to me multiple times. An idea that didn’t work for one story might be perfect for a different one. Don’t lose it.) 

[thehelfinna]

I recently hit 1.2k followers! I can’t believe it!! (╥﹏╥) I had received so much love and support from everyone ever since i started my blog last October and i cannot thank you all enough for making my stay here amazing. Thank you, thank you! ♥ 

As a small token of thanks, i added some pastel variety to my favorite casual lolita pieces and combined them in this recolor pack. Mesh all included, except the lolita pumps! Read under the cut for more info + DOWNLOAD~ Hope you enjoy them as much as i do! (≧◡≦) ♡

Keep reading

[thehelfinna]

A Betazoid character who isn't in a nurturing profession, but is a tactical officer.

"Captain, I sense they know they're about to get their asses handed to them"

[thehelfinna]

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

[thehelfinna]

Saving for later

The double knitting technique is great. It has a light side, and a dark side, it binds the scarf together… you can see where I’m going with this can’t you. I only found out about double knitting this past summer and got monumentally carried away. This Star Wars Scarf is just one of the results.

Click on the knitting charts for full sized images. They are worked in order bottom to top.

Edit: For everyone asking I used UK size 10 (3.25mm) needles and the yarn was a reasonably priced dk weight (8ply). I used about 150g of each colour but I knit pretty tightly so you may want to get extra.