The pond is very busy today because it is super hot outside. While I am busy with work too, I cannot help but watch them do their thing in the bath every now and then too. They always look so concentrated, it cracks me up. New photos tonight or tomorrow morning.
okay but jaskier who actually knows like. A LOT of witchers. and sings their songs like…not infrequently. and geralt just HAS NO IDEA because he is THAT GOOD at tuning jaskier out bc listening to his own praises being sung is embarassing af, so he basically registers jaskier’s singing like a white noise machine now.
geralt is FUMING because jaskier just pranced on up to a Bear and jumped into a hug and what the FUCK do you mean you wintered with them last year?! they’re DANGEROUS jaskier? “aw, they’re big ole softies” what the FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT
and geralt…he JUST sang ivar’s song last night oH ARE YOU FUCKING ADMITTING YOU DON’T LISTEN TO JASKIER? IS THAT WHAT YOU’RE SAYING RIGHT NOW?
son of a bitch this just keeps happening to me
okay but jask who has NO IDEA what this is all from just thinking he must be Blessed™ and thus has even LESS self-preservation instincts because hey! food sometimes appears in his pack! he’s yet to be eaten in his sleep no matter WHERE he camps! he can do whatever he wants forever!
just some VERY harried witchers playing guardian angel for this bard who just seems SO FUCKING DETERMINED TO DO HIMSELF IN WHOMST THE FUCK CAMPS NEXT TO A GRIFFIN NEST. and they don’t want to approach out of the blue still, so jask just DOES NOT KNOW. and meanwhile beleagered witchers are just drawing up fucking Bard Watch rotas to keep this one dumbass alive who seems SO FUCKING DETERMINED TO DIE FROM DUMBASSERY and trading shifts as needed.
it’s frankly a fucking RELIEF when he finally meets up with geralt again on the Path so that everyone else can finally clock out for a while.
Your pain matters, Jaskier. Don’t ever feel like you have to hide it from me. This happened because of me. And I might not deserve your forgiveness, but I would still like to have it. I’d… like to try and do better, if you’d let me.
Level Up Your Settings
When I was a younger writer I always considered my settings last in scene writing. It went action -> Characters -> Maaaaaybe setting if I felt like it. This can work—a lot of stories get by without having very memorable or strong settings—after all we’re there for the story within them. But once I got older and started moving and leaving places behind, I began to recognize how much a setting or place can hold—in memory, symbolism, feeling.
These aspects of a place are just as important to imbue in fiction—they can convey an emotional impact, reinforce the tone, provide details on background. More than anything else, I find setting is where you can imbue your story with magic.
(Specifically, I’m talking more about individual settings rather than worldbuilding. Check out my worldbuilding posts here!)
Most important to start with is consider what this place means to the character. For example, “home” is a concept as varied as the people who use it. It can mean safety, love, belonging, alienation, escape, confinement, freedom, etc. etc.
What memories reinforce that meaning of home? How does the character’s background relate to and lead up to their concept of home?
Then, once you know this, what decoration or ‘look’ would convey this? A character who views home as a temporary place to be abandoned at the drop of a hat would have very few personal items in their home. Maybe hardly any furniture—maybe they live out of a suitcase and keep only a carton of milk and a box of crackers in their kitchen.
A character who has lived in the same childhood home for their entire life may have just as much of their parents’ things as their own—their surroundings reflecting generations of loved ones.
These objects hold memory as much as their surroundings do. This is where we can really explore background and the emotional ties to a place. How loved is it? What does loving a place look like for that character? Maybe love looks like keeping it perfectly clean and tidy—maybe it looks like filling it to the brim with pretty things.
What makes two characters’ homes different? We want to avoid stating the obvious. You don’t really need to mention that your character has a bed, a nightstand, and a lamp in their bedroom—unless you’re making a point of how little or how much they have. You may want to mention which items are new and which are old—especially if it’s a room that they’ve been in since childhood, or throughout several periods of their life.
Just like levelling up description—what makes a place unique? What message are you trying to convey?
Good luck!
“When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours? And if I were to cast myself down before you and weep and tell you, what more would you know about me than you know about Hell when someone tells you it is hot and dreadful? For that reason alone we human beings ought to stand before one another as reverently, as reflectively, as lovingly, as we would before the entrance to Hell.”
— Franz Kafka
Baby Wangji coming to terms with the big gay crush he developed on the most annoying kid in class
I was talking with the moon last night. The moon told me something about the sun and I told something about you. - absolutely BRAINROTTING :)
Plaintext from the video: Please do not type out your DNIs like this. This kind of censorship is inaccessible to those with screen readers. Thank you.
I wasn't going to derail the disability pride month post for people with peanut allergies but in relation to that topic
I have never seen another allergy that has been so viscerally hated and mocked by people working in education like nut allergies. I've seen fellow teachers cringe that their classroom was the "nut free" classroom that year. Support staff that are trained and willfully don't follow cross contamination protocol in the lunchroom because it's too "tedious" or "time-consuming". Full preschools + childcare centers that refuse to accommodate nut allergies. Schools where the only free lunch is a PB&J. Before/after school programs and summer programs whose food curriculum has nuts and doesn't provide an alternative activity.
Allergy discrimination is so so insidious and prevalent. It's happening behind their back and it is everything from the exposure joke to possibly causing someone to go into anaphylaxis from willful ignorance.
Also other parents in the classroom are guilty too. The "not my child not my problem" brain rot means that those lunchboxes are like bombs for airborne exposure allergies
it took another trans man sharing his blood test results with me for me to realize my doctor was committing malpractice for the past seven years by giving me far too little testosterone
it took many trans masculine people sharing their results with me to confirm it so I knew to try to find a different doctor, and they are now doubling my testosterone
I'm going to make sure to warn as many trans people as I can, as an individual, so that other people were not hurt in the way that I was hurt
this is why it's important to build communities for trans people and include them
compulsory abledness also (partially) explains why disability aids are forced onto some people and denied from others
prosthetic limbs are forced onto amputees whether they want them or not because the goal is to make disabled people look as abled as possible. whereas, all sorts of people who would benefit from mobility aids are often denied them until it’s a “last resort” because! you guessed it! the goal is to make us look as abled as possible
neither person in this situation is privileged. it’s just that the same harmful phenomenon impacts different groups in different ways
