A ref list
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Fanfic authors: READ THE WHOLE FUCKING PAGE
THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT AND VALUABLE LESSONS YOU CAN LEARN AS A WRITER. I SAY THIS AS A READER AND A PROFESSIONAL GENRE EDITOR.
(via h-archived)
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Could you do a tutorial on how to draw body hair? like chest hair, arm hair, facial hair? I can never make it look right : (
Anonymous
here’s a short little one:
I’m sure there’s better ways out there, but this is how I do it!
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Hey~ can you tell us about the straw hats with veils coming down to cover the wearer's face we see mostly in wuxia? I have seen some very pretty ones with added accessories like pearls and flowers too. What are they called? Anonymous
Hi, thanks for the question!
The traditional Chinese veiled hats that we mostly see in Wuxia are called Weimao/帷帽. I wrote about the history of Weimao in this post. Please also see this post by fate-magical-girls for further information on the history/evolution of Chinese veiled hats.
As you’ve noticed, it’s recently become trendy among Hanfu wearers to decorate Weimao with various kinds of accessories such as pearls and flowers. The effect is really pretty!
Weimao can be worn by men as well:
For more references, please check out my Weimao tag!
Hope this helps!
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A small tip: if your characters have a traumatic experience, and they have nightmares about it, more often than not, those dreams will not be a play by play of what happened, but will often hold symbolism to the event than the actual event itself
These dreams can often not be genuinely scary but can leave you feel shaken and unrested when you do wake up. It may take your characters hours to let go of the feeling
It is also common to have the same dream roccur often. It might be unsettling enough that your characters will try to avoid sleeping for as long as they can, or will they to self medicate in some way to try to make the dream go away
A common reoccurring dream I had after my mom died was I would be watching her die, similar to how she did, but it was faster, and then we had her cremated. But the next day [in the dream] she would be back on the couch, just like any other day, as if she had not died the day before. But then futher on into the dream she would slowly start to decinigrate into ashes, but it would be ten times slower and it would be like losing her all over again
I would sleep completely through the dream and not wake up in some cold sweat or hyperventilating, tho that’s not to say that’s never happened before , but the next morning I would be shaken when I did wake up and it took me hours to get back to normal. I had that same dream several times over the last few years, and it still makes me shaken, but not to that same extent as the first time. That can happen over time with desensitization
Flashbacks work the same way. They’re not often a perfect play by play of what happened, but can be flashes of what happened. Or it can not be visual at all
You have five senses, and certain tastes or smells or sounds or touch can be just as impactful as visual flashbacks. For the most part, unless you have a disability that prevents otherwise (like being d/Deaf, or blind), all five of those senses are working together at the same time and each can carry their own weight in trauma
Especially when traumatic things are happening, adrenaline is rushing through you, or you are in a high stress situation. Parts of you are processing things faster than other parts of you. Your brain is working to take in everything that is happening and sometimes things are not always remembered correctly
(via fixyourwritinghabits)
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Hoi!! I saw a little bit of the process on your Instagram, but could you explain how you go about making a pattern? I absolutely love how that neato cactus/desert one you did turned out! Anonymous
Alrighty!
So to make a repeating pattern:
1. Open a canvas and draw in the center WITHOUT touching any of the edges.
2. [Below: Light cyan lines] Divide your canvas into four equal parts.
Make four guides framing the canvas, and two across the middle.
For the ones in the middle, View > New Guide > Horizontal or Vertical for needed orientation > type in 50% to get the exact middle of your canvas. These are photoshop shortcuts, may be different on your programs.
3. [Above: Yellow arrows] Make sure you have ‘Snap’ checked under View > Snap, then select each quarter of your piece > layer via cut > move diagonally to the other side.
After you’re done moving things diagonally, you can either turn off Snap so your doodling won’t stick to the center lines, or toggle the guide visibility off (Ctrl+;). Merge the layers back together.
4. Draw in the middle without touching the borders, color the entire thing if you plan on doing that.
5. Setting your image as a pattern After your image is done, merge all layers into one > select the entire canvas (Ctrl+A) > Edit > Define Pattern
Open a new canvas bigger than the one you made the pattern on, and paint bucket it in! (Instead of the Foreground button at the top when paint bucket is active, select Pattern then your pattern)
If you aren’t using a program that lets you define patterns, merge everything into one layer and duplicate & tile them manually.
Cheers!
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What do you recommend for someone just starting a new webcomic but has no fanbase or people who watch their stuff? How can I reach people more? Thank you in advance Anonymous
Hey Anon! That’s really awesome you want to start a webcomic. I hope it goes well for you!
I’ve touched on building an audience before to someone who was asking about commissions and I’m sure this info might be able to help you too! I wish creating a beautiful/interesting comic was enough to draw people to it, but you have to put in effort to have it seen. So participation is key! Network with others who have webcomics, become affiliates, join communities, talk about your characters as much as possible and ask your friends or other artists if they’re willing to help out in any way. -Some people even buy affordable advertisements on comic hosting websites like Smackjeeves and Tapastic to get some extra readers.
All in all, please be patient. Some comics don’t even get noticed for a year or two after their creation! I say go for it and see what happens. Just get yourself and your great ideas out there! :) Good luck. -
Baybayin: The Lost Filipino Script (Part 1)
The Baybayin as we know it today is an ancient Philippine system of writing, a set of 17 characters or letters that had spread throughout the Philippine archipelago in the sixteenth century. The graphic contours of the Baybayin are distinguished by smoothly flowing curvilinear strokes that convey both suppleness and strength.
Take this to heart: never ever ever ever call Baybayin “
Alibata”. This name was invented by Paul Versoza who erroneously thought that Baybayin came from Arabic and thus named it Alibata from ‘Alif-bata,’ the first letters of the Arabic script. Recent studies strongly suggests that Baybayin may have come from Sanskrit, the ancient Indian script, brought to the Philippine shores by Indian traders.Where did the name Baybayin come from? The word ‘baybay’ in ancient Tagalog means ‘to spell’ or in modern Filipino, ‘syllable.’ As early as 900 AD, there are tidbits of evidences that the ancients in our islands had a sophisticated way of writing. As to why it quickly disappeared comes from the fact that we were never a print culture like China and Korea, that used paper and built large libraries of scrolls to preserve their history, their memory. Another factor is the effective colonization of Spain by the forcing of the houses of ‘natives’ to be gathered around a town-square called ‘reducciones’ close to the church and the alcaldes for the close supervision of the Spanish authorities.
Baybayin as a Syllabary
Baybayin is a syllabary, meaning unlike commonly used scripts today like the Roman Alphabet, each letter represents a complete syllable, not a phoneme which is a sound that a single letter possesses. The Roman alphabet (the one we use today) is a phonetic alphabet, with each letter having its own phoneme like the letter ‘k’ which has the sound ‘ck’. The sounds of each letter of Baybayin are just V (Vowel), and CV (Consonant and Vowel) with with our unique CV letter ‘nga’. The dilemma lies with the current Filipino language we use which has V, VC, and CVC, that is why these variations cannot be represented in the original Baybayin in the strictest sense.
Babayin’s Disappearing Consonants
A weird practice in Baybayin which completely eludes linguistic historians till today was the fact that whenever the sequence CVC occurs in one syllable, the last C (consonant) would be dropped. However, if the document is read, ancient Filipinos would seem to know the consonant that was dropped and would suddenly reappear in their reading. Imagine reading the Filipino word “bignay” (an endemic Filipino cherry). In Baybayin it would be written as “bi-na”. But when a precolonial Filipino reads it, the ‘g’ and the ‘y’ mysteriously reappears. It may have been no different from the Chinese script which entails understanding the context-clues of the whole sentence to guess the missing consonants. This is harder than doing the ‘txt msg’ which we frequently do by dropping all the vowels to save space for our text.
Certain Spaniards like Fray Francisco Lopez saw this as a ‘deficiency’ and suggested an additional kudlit or diacritic “+” to be written below the Baybayin letters to make it phonemic. These diacritic makes Baybayin usable in Modern Filipino language today. But what happened to this innovation when it was first introduced?
This is where we see the pride of the ancient Filipinos in their own way of writing:
“The experts of the time were consulted, we read in the Tagalog orthography, about this new invention with the request that they adopt and use it in writing for the convenience of everybody. But after highly praising it and expressing their thanks, they decided that it cannot be introduced into their writing system because it was against the intrinsic nature and character given the Tagalog language by God and it would be equivalent to destroying in one stroke the whole syntax, prosody and orthography of their language.” (Pedro Andres de Castro, 1776).
Baybayin through the Eyes of the Conquistadors
When the Spaniards arrived, they were shocked to find that almost all Filipinos could read and write in their own way. Ancient Philippines, to be frank, had a high sense of literacy. Read as Spanish chroniclers give us a rare glimpse of Baybayin through the people:
“So accustomed are all these islanders to writing and reading that there is scarcely a man, and much less a woman, who cannot read and write in the letters proper to the island of Manila.” – Pedro Chirino (1604)
“Throughout the islands the natives write very well using [their letters]… All the natives, women as well as men, write in this language, and there are very few who do not write well and correctly.” –Antonio de Morga (1609)
“They [the Visayans] have their letters and characters like those of the Malays, from whom they learned them.” – Miguel Lopez de Legazpi (1567)
“We will end this chapter with the characters of these natives, or, better said, those that have been in use for a few years in these parts, an art which was communicated to them from the Tagalogs, and the latter learned it from the Borneans who came from the great island of Borneo to Manila, with whom they have considerable traffic… . From these Borneans the Tagalogs learned their characters, and from them the Visayans, so they call them Moro characters or letters because the Moros taught them … they learned their letters, which many use today, and the women much more than the men, which they write and read more readily than the latter.” – Francisco Ignacio Alcina (1668)
“They have certain characters which serve them as letters with which they write whatever they wish. They are of a very different shape from any others we have known until now. The women commonly know how to write with them, and when they write, it is on some tablets made of the bamboos which they have in those islands, on the bark. In using such tablet, which is four fingers wide, they do not write with ink, but with some scribers with which they cut the surface and bark of the bamboo, and make the letters.” – Boxer Codex (1590)
An even more surprising discovery was made by William Henry Scott: “A few years later [after the Spaniards sent a Baybayin letter to Borneo] Tagalog conspirators hoping to expel their Spanish invaders communicated among themselves and their Bornean allies in [Baybayin] writing, and even sent a letter to Japan. Naturally none of this correspondence has survived, but the Spanish translation of a Bikolano letter En Letras Tagala, which contains a scathing condemnation of Spanish misconduct, is preserved in Franciscan archives in Madrid.”
Baybayin’s End
What happened to our script?
Paul Morrow, a Canadian Baybayin expert, wrote this painful fact: “The sad fact is that most forms of indigenous art in the Philippines were abandoned wherever the Spanish influence was strong and only exist today in the regions that were out of reach of the Spanish empire.” Another Baybayin expert, Hector Santos, would say that our illiteracy was caused by the growing demands of our conquerors when it came to taxes, rendering us with no time to pass our way of life to our children. He noted: “Could it be that the disappearance of the Tagalog script marked that point in history when the Filipinos’ cultural will was finally broken? Are we now forever fragmented as a nation grasping for empty symbols when there are so many real things that we should be proud of?”
Indeed it is a sad plight, a historical circumstance that we are now realizing. Baybayin is a lost script, preserved to us thanks to a lot of Spanish documents and 16th-17th century dictionaries. But Baybayin is making a comeback.
With the resurgence of Baybayin in the 21st century, I will leave that to my next post. :)
(via letsdestiny-blog)
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Helpful things for action writers to remember
- Sticking a landing will royally fuck up your joints and possibly shatter your ankles, depending on how high you’re jumping/falling from. There’s a very good reason free-runners dive and roll.
- Hand-to-hand fights usually only last a matter of seconds, sometimes a few minutes. It’s exhausting work and unless you have a lot of training and history with hand-to-hand combat, you’re going to tire out really fast.
- Arrows are very effective and you can’t just yank them out without doing a lot of damage. Most of the time the head of the arrow will break off inside the body if you try pulling it out, and arrows are built to pierce deep. An arrow wound demands medical attention.
- Throwing your opponent across the room is really not all that smart. You’re giving them the chance to get up and run away. Unless you’re trying to put distance between you so you can shoot them or something, don’t throw them.
- Everyone has something called a “flinch response” when they fight. This is pretty much the brain’s way of telling you “get the fuck out of here or we’re gonna die.” Experienced fighters have trained to suppress this. Think about how long your character has been fighting. A character in a fist fight for the first time is going to take a few hits before their survival instinct kicks in and they start hitting back. A character in a fist fight for the eighth time that week is going to respond a little differently.
- ADRENALINE WORKS AGAINST YOU WHEN YOU FIGHT. THIS IS IMPORTANT. A lot of times people think that adrenaline will kick in and give you some badass fighting skills, but it’s actually the opposite. Adrenaline is what tires you out in a battle and it also affects the fighter’s efficacy - meaning it makes them shaky and inaccurate, and overall they lose about 60% of their fighting skill because their brain is focusing on not dying. Adrenaline keeps you alive, it doesn’t give you the skill to pull off a perfect roundhouse kick to the opponent’s face.
- Swords WILL bend or break if you hit something hard enough. They also dull easily and take a lot of maintenance. In reality, someone who fights with a sword would have to have to repair or replace it constantly.
- Fights get messy. There’s blood and sweat everywhere, and that will make it hard to hold your weapon or get a good grip on someone.
- A serious battle also smells horrible. There’s lots of sweat, but also the smell of urine and feces. After someone dies, their bowels and bladder empty. There might also be some questionable things on the ground which can be very psychologically traumatizing. Remember to think about all of the character’s senses when they’re in a fight. Everything WILL affect them in some way.
- If your sword is sharpened down to a fine edge, the rest of the blade can’t go through the cut you make. You’ll just end up putting a tiny, shallow scratch in the surface of whatever you strike, and you could probably break your sword.
- ARCHERS ARE STRONG TOO. Have you ever drawn a bow? It takes a lot of strength, especially when you’re shooting a bow with a higher draw weight. Draw weight basically means “the amount of force you have to use to pull this sucker back enough to fire it.” To give you an idea of how that works, here’s a helpful link to tell you about finding bow sizes and draw weights for your characters. (CLICK ME)
- If an archer has to use a bow they’re not used to, it will probably throw them off a little until they’ve done a few practice shots with it and figured out its draw weight and stability.
- People bleed. If they get punched in the face, they’ll probably get a bloody nose. If they get stabbed or cut somehow, they’ll bleed accordingly. And if they’ve been fighting for a while, they’ve got a LOT of blood rushing around to provide them with oxygen. They’re going to bleed a lot.
Hopefully this helps someone out there. If you reblog, feel free to add more tips for writers or correct anything I’ve gotten wrong here.
How to apply Writing techniques for action scenes:
- Short sentences. Choppy. One action, then another. When there’s a lull in the fight, take a moment, using longer phrases to analyze the situation–then dive back in. Snap, snap, snap.
- Same thing with words - short, simple, and strong in the thick of battle. Save the longer syllables for elsewhere.
- Characters do not dwell on things when they are in the heat of the moment. They will get punched in the face. Focus on actions, not thoughts.
- Go back and cut out as many adverbs as possible.
- No seriously, if there’s ever a time to use the strongest verbs in your vocabulary - Bellow, thrash, heave, shriek, snarl, splinter, bolt, hurtle, crumble, shatter, charge, raze - it’s now.
- Don’t forget your other senses. People might not even be sure what they saw during a fight, but they always know how they felt.
- Taste: Dry mouth, salt from sweat, copper tang from blood, etc
- Smell: OP nailed it
- Touch: Headache, sore muscles, tense muscles, exhaustion, blood pounding. Bruised knuckles/bowstring fingers. Injuries that ache and pulse, sting and flare white hot with pain.
- Pain will stay with a character. Even if it’s minor.
- Sound and sight might blur or sharpen depending on the character and their experience/exhaustion. Colors and quick movements will catch the eye. Loud sounds or noises from behind may serve as a fighter’s only alert before an attack.
- If something unexpected happens, shifting the character’s whole attention to that thing will shift the Audience’s attention, too.
- Aftermath. This is where the details resurface, the characters pick up things they cast aside during the fight, both literally and metaphorically. Fights are chaotic, fast paced, and self-centered. Characters know only their self, their goals, what’s in their way, and the quickest way around those threats. The aftermath is when people can regain their emotions, their relationships, their rationality/introspection, and anything else they couldn’t afford to think or feel while their lives were on the line.Do everything you can to keep the fight here and now. Maximize the physical, minimize the theoretical. Keep things immediate - no theories or what ifs.
If writing a strategist, who needs to think ahead, try this: keep strategy to before-and-after fights. Lay out plans in calm periods, try to guess what enemies are thinking or what they will do. During combat, however, the character should think about his options, enemies, and terrain in immediate terms; that is, in shapes and direction. (Large enemy rushing me; dive left, circle around / Scaffolding on fire, pool below me / two foes helping each other, separate them.)
Lastly, after writing, read it aloud. Anyplace your tongue catches up on a fast moving scene, edit. Smooth action scenes rarely come on the first try.
(via fixyourwritinghabits)
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How To Write Effective Injuries For Your Characters With Samantha Keel Soooooo a couple weeks back I fulfilled one of my dreams as an indie author – getting interviewed by the amazing Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn!
We talk about injuries, LGBT characters, writer’s ethics, and representation in the interview. The podcast is about an hour long, but if you want to cut straight to the interview, it starts at 24:35 in, and the whole interview has been transcribed at the link above.
Love you guys and I hope you enjoy!
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Writing With Color – Featured Description Posts
Some of our most useful posts on describing People of Color, all in one place.
- Not Indicating Race at All – Note: You Probably Should
Specific Description Posts
- Describing Skin as Swarthy (Spoiler alert: it’s sketchy)
- Describing East Asian Skin as Porcelain (Spoiler alert: it’s also sketchy)
- Describing Skin as Russet (Spoiler alert: it’s alright)
- Describing PoC as Exotic (SA: it’s othering)
- Describing Skin as Ebony (SA: it’s cliche)
- Describing Natural Hair as Cloud-Like (SA: it’s cool)
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Describing Black Hair as Unkempt (SA: it’s offensive)
- Describing Black Hair as Kinky (SA: it depends)
- Describing Skin as “Dark as Night” (SA: it also depends)
- Describing Skin as Like Dirt or Soil (SA: See above)
- Describing Skin as just “Dark.” (SA: it’s vague)
- Describing Skin With Food (SA: it’s a no-no)
–WWC
(via jackzimmermemes)
- Not Indicating Race at All – Note: You Probably Should