I think a lot of the "writing rules suck actually" posts come from taking rules for expository writing, the kind of writing you often do in an English class, and assuming they're meant to apply to creative writing, and especially narrative fiction.

When you're writing an essay or a research report, your goal is for the text itself to be invisible, a vehicle for the information contained therein. Therefore, many of the techniques you use to add spice and tone to a narrative are bad: you don't want spice, you want clarity and easy comprehension, and everything else needs to give way to that goal. On the other hand, if you're telling a narrative, tone and pacing are every bit as important as actual content delivery, and so many of those rules meant to make the text itself invisible go right out the window.

But a lot of the resulting commentary reads like someone explaining that the rules of chess are stupid because when they play D&D, their cleric can move all sorts of directions, not just diagonally.

Meirl

LOOK AT THE LITTLE DUDE 

oh wow! hey if you take pills check this out. new medicine taking meta just dropped.

according to these models, out of the 4 tested postures, the best position to digest pills is laying on your right side. standing upright has a similar time to laying in your back at twice as much as laying on the right side, and laying on the left side is the slowest by far.

laying on right side: pill dissolves in around 10 minutes.

standing: pill dissolves in 23 minutes. laying on the back has a similar time.

laying on left side: pill dissolves in up to 100 minutes.

https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0096877

definitely worth a lot more research.

if you want your medicine to kick in fast, try laying on your right side! if you want your medicine to kick in slower, try laying on your left side.

This makes sense! I learned from a doc that if you have gas pain or nausea, you turn on your left side to make it easier for your stomach to send stuff through. The goal in turning left is to NOT absorb, but to release.

Turning on your right can make nausea/gas pain worse because it has to fight gravity to exit your stomach/body. So, yeah, lying on your right would make things absorb faster because it's going into the stomach lining, which is the point.

Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey

I was going to reblog this anyway for the useful info but the last addition fucking sent me

How people can mistakenly think or just subconsciously feel food works: there are “unhealthy” foods like pizza or fried chicken and “healthy” foods like fruit salad or steamed vegetables. Every time you eat an “unhealthy” food you’ve harmed yourself in some way.

How food actually works: foods contain carbs, proteins, fats, sugars, vitamins, minerals, fiber and/or other nutrients. Your body needs and uses all of them but it would like to have a little of everything every day. If you ate pizza or fried chicken for lunch then that’s probably your fat and protein for the day with extra that your body will make use of in time, so it’s a good idea to make your next meal something different like that fruit salad or steamed veggies. You can have that fatty lunch every single day if you just maintain balance and stay active enough to actually use what you’re stocking up on because foods aren’t “good or bad;” they just either fit into the rest of your diet and lifestyle or they don’t.

Thanks, OP. 

also your body doesn’t necessarily work on a daily cycle, it’s not so neat as to understand linear time and how we choose to divide it. You don’t have to try and find perfect balance every single day, sometimes you will go three or four days eating less or eating more. Sometimes you will crave fats or salts or sugars or greens for a few days at a time before your body will decide it’s gathered enough resources in one particular department. The balance is achieved over time and in uneven tides, and that’s good and fine.

Original post has been going around for years now but this fairly recent addition is a really good one I needed to be reminded of too. We don’t just reset to 0 every night.

We don't talk enough about Ron's mean streak

Like, I saw a lot of people talk about how funny Ron is (which is true, he's genuinely one of the funnier characters in the series), how loyal he is when it counts, he's brave as hell, and he is really smart, just not book smart. But what I don't see talked about enough (maybe it's just me though), is Ron Weasley's mean streak.

I talked about how Harry most definitely has what it takes to be a Slytherin, can be scary, and is willing to kill when push comes to shove. I also mentioned Hermione's ruthlessness, but I didn't discuss Ron's mean streak which is a joy when I see it crop up in the book. When it comes up, it always reminds me of the twins, and I feel like that's where Ron got it from.

So I'm just going to bring up a few quotes I had in my notes showing Ron's mean streak, I'm sure I missed some from the earlier books, but I find it a fun aspect of his character.

I mean, when people bash Ron by saying he's "a total jerk", that's usually what they refer to - that Ron can be mean when he wants to be.

Unlike Harry who is cooed over for being "savage" or Hermione who gets "yas kween"ed, Ron's biting retorts are - especially when he uses them on his friends, more than often in retaliation for a shitty thing they did/said to Ron - generally seen as a bad thing.

It's not nearly as accepted for Ron to be "mean" especially because fandom seems to assume that he's mean to the Hs specifically. Which... well, they ALL are mean to each other at some point, but for some reason people are much more okay with Harry and Hermione being mean to Ron than the reverse (or even more okay with Harry and Hermione being mean to people in general because they assume it's "for the greater good" bullshit, but Ron isn't allowed to use this particular smokescreen, where are we gonna get our scapegoat to project the Hs' flaws onto otherwise? /s).

While Ron is often threatening violence... he is the one who has canonically never physically attacked his friends while Harry and Hermione HAVE. A big thing to understand with Ron is that he really barks a lot more than he bites. When he does bite, as in HBP when he punches Harry after he drank expired love potion, it's that something is dreadfully wrong (the Horcrux Hunt shows us a Ron who's REALLY at the end of his rope and even then he manages to be nicer than Harry is during their argument).

However, one more thing: hating people who "deserve it" and enjoying their suffering is definitely a Rowling thing. Harry, Hermione and Ron all show this trait at various points (hell, Hermione was smug about Lavender's broken heart in HBP), it's spread all over the books and she based Snape, whom she does the utmost to make sure we hate, on her chemistry teacher because she thought he quote "deserved it" for giving her bad grades... like, you can't make this up... and then she has Hermione have perfect grades in every subject, yep, wish fulfillment indeed...

Honestly, I didn't think of Ron bashing in this context since these fics always portray him as a completely out of character type of mean. Like, yeah, while Ron does threat violence often (and he makes attempts to curse Malfoy, for example, it's not that he never follows through), Harry and Hermione do so as well.

I mentioned in the original post that Harry has a very similar "deserving it" attitude to Ron, down to them vocalising the thought at the same time in CoS regarding Lockhart. And while Hermione likes to play morality police and say: "he could've gotten seriously injured," I did mention she's a bit of a hypocrite, saying that considering what she does (Mariatta, for example along with the other examples you mentioned).

Really, the only reason you get her sometimes saying that is because she has a different method to judge who's "deserving it" from Harry and Ron.

(Definitely a JKR thing, though, considering the narrative treats it as justice)

Though I do want to note something about the Golden Trio's friendship in general in terms of Ron being mean to Harry and Hermione. Becouse he's definitely not the only one. Book Hermione doesn't call Ron and Harry "stupid" as much as movie Hermione does, but she still does. Harry often considers Ron and hermiones bantering useless and silly and often just doesn't listen when they're all talking. They fight, and they can be very scathing and mean to each other, but they are also incredibly loyal and protective of each other at the same time.

Like, Golden Trio fans sometimes like to paint their friendship as just that: "golden," but that's not what their friendship is. Harry and Ron have a bit more in common, but in general, they're not friends because they share interests the way many friendships usually form, they are friends becouse they had no one else.

All three arrived at Hogwarts incredibly lonely, and they found each other. They act more like siblings than like friends with their squabbling and mean comments and fights that are resolved and forgiven incredibly quickly. It's just how people who are very close act, that's why I call it sibling behaviour.

I have siblings, when we were younger, we'd fight over nothing because we knew it didn't matter because at the end of the day, we loved each other. The Golden Trio are kinda like that. Sure, they have their bigger fights like GoF or when Ron leaves in DH, but Harry forgives him basically instantly. Hermione takes a bit longer in DH, but forgiveness comes pretty quickly to her, too. Quick fights and quick forgiveness are the kind of fights you see within family. They are found family to the letter.

Ron is the one to start these bigger fights more often, and it might have to do with how used he is to fighting and immediately forgiving from having so many siblings. In contrast, to the only children, Harry and Hermione, who didn't really have that experience growing up. Ron even says in DH that he immediately tried to return to them. And, honestly, it was a good move on his part if they were fighting and living in the same house — go to another room to calm down for a bit and then everything goes back to normal. It's what you do with family when you fight. It just didn't work out in this context because of war, and both his friends are only children who aren't familiar with conflict resolution under the same roof.

And I like their friendship the way it is. I don't want it perfect, I want it with mean remarks and atupid arguments that they forget about an hour later. I think it's fun.

I mean, fair, and I am very wary of anything that could be construed as bashing when it comes to Ron. But fandom has long been used to declaring Ron "a jerk", even while they praise him. The number of times I've had someone say "I love Ron, even though he can be mean" as if Ron's meanness is so overwhelming we should apologize for liking him... meanwhile the first "heroic" thing Hermione does is choose violence and set someone on fire but that's just "queen" behaviour apparently.

Oh yes, he does, and the number of times he tries to punch him only to be restrained by his friends requires multiple hands to count; it's just that Ron won't go overboard. He has a hard limit. Harry has canonically succeeded in using Crucio and Hermione has, as you pointed out, the Marietta stuff and some more; I'd say Ron is more of a "talk shit get hit" knee-jerk guy while Harry and Hermione can be much more calculating - and Hermione is the only one we saw who calculatedly attacked a friend (multiple times even, as she did curse Neville in PS, long before the canaries).

Eeeeehhh not really? It might be due to her romantic feelings for Ron but she is quite harsh on him. It takes him almost dying of poison to forgive him in HBP after she iced him out for months, and in DH she gets distracted by Harry becoming obsessed by the Elder Wand. Even after Malfoy Manor, when it's pretty clear she's forgiven Ron after yet realizing their mortality, she's still quick to get on her high horse and act precious when he suggests double-crossing Griphook before he can double-cross them.

Heh, that's pretty much how I see it too but to me, there's a clear pecking order: Harry is above it all, due to being "the guy whose name is on the cover". Hermione is nearly on Harry's level and sometimes above him, especially with how much the narrative tends to coddle her and excuse her worse actions (and even when it doesn't: Rowling specifically mentions Hermione saying "you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon" "nastily", yet how many cutesy Romione edits do we have treating this line as a harmless funny quip when the text itself pointed out it was an insult?). The one who isn't given any breaks, who always has to bear the full force of the blame and doesn't get to deflect his behaviour because he is the deflection for the Hs to look "not as bad as he is", it's Ron. In the food chain of the Golden Trio, Ron is at the very bottom and when he dares try to stand as an equal to the other two, he's quickly slapped down and told he's immature for daring to want better from the people supposed to be his friends.

Ron starts a lot of the fights the three have because he is taken for granted by his friends and there's only so long one can go being called "immature" and "stupid" for completely innocuous things without going apeshit. His fight with Harry in GOF is due to Harry not being honest with him and Ron picking up on that; in DH Harry's incompetence as their leader and his dismissal of Ron's fears prompts Ron's outrage at Harry's seeming indifference to all the sacrifices and help the Weasley family made for him - something that would doubly hurt Ron as we saw his mother treat Harry better than her own children, which would hurt Ron who already feels neglected but he'd be able to bear it as long as he sees Harry enjoy a "normal" childhood. For Harry to reduce Ron's problems on the Horcrux Hunt as "mama not here to feed you", that's fucking low and I don't blame Ron for blowing a fuse.

Anyway, that is my own view of their friendship. Ron is the biggest loser here, contrary to what most of fandom seems to think because they assume he profits from Harry's status and fame - lolwut when does it ever happen in the book that Ron gets recognition based on knowing Harry? Harry uses his authority as Quidditch captain to keep Ron on the team in HBP, but no student or teacher gives Ron any kind of special treatment based on his closeness to Harry. Hermione also gets taken for granted by Harry a lot, but given how often Rowling uses her to dispense punishments to bad guys or solutions to a problem it's difficult for the reader to forget about her importance.

I definitely don't think the Golden Trio's friendship is one of equals, not as it is written in the books. There's too much dumping on Ron and dismissing his issues as "ugh when is he gonna get over it" for me to believe it's all good and well. They're all pretty damaged, even without Voldemort hanging over them, and sadly as the "quiet kid" of his family, Ron is a little more used to not rowing the boat, only taking a stand for himself when he's really feeling betrayed (Scabbers, GOF, HBP and DH) but every single time he ends having to say he was wrong even when he wasn't (Hermione may be the one apologizing in POA, but Hagrid first came along saying it was bad of Ron to prioritize his pet over his friend... but Hermione prioritizing her pet over Ron's boundaries and feelings was perfectly ok of course).

Bleh. Anyway. That's my own view and opinion of things, colored by my own experience of life and fandom.

We don't talk enough about Ron's mean streak

Like, I saw a lot of people talk about how funny Ron is (which is true, he's genuinely one of the funnier characters in the series), how loyal he is when it counts, he's brave as hell, and he is really smart, just not book smart. But what I don't see talked about enough (maybe it's just me though), is Ron Weasley's mean streak.

I talked about how Harry most definitely has what it takes to be a Slytherin, can be scary, and is willing to kill when push comes to shove. I also mentioned Hermione's ruthlessness, but I didn't discuss Ron's mean streak which is a joy when I see it crop up in the book. When it comes up, it always reminds me of the twins, and I feel like that's where Ron got it from.

So I'm just going to bring up a few quotes I had in my notes showing Ron's mean streak, I'm sure I missed some from the earlier books, but I find it a fun aspect of his character.

I mean, when people bash Ron by saying he's "a total jerk", that's usually what they refer to - that Ron can be mean when he wants to be.

Unlike Harry who is cooed over for being "savage" or Hermione who gets "yas kween"ed, Ron's biting retorts are - especially when he uses them on his friends, more than often in retaliation for a shitty thing they did/said to Ron - generally seen as a bad thing.

It's not nearly as accepted for Ron to be "mean" especially because fandom seems to assume that he's mean to the Hs specifically. Which... well, they ALL are mean to each other at some point, but for some reason people are much more okay with Harry and Hermione being mean to Ron than the reverse (or even more okay with Harry and Hermione being mean to people in general because they assume it's "for the greater good" bullshit, but Ron isn't allowed to use this particular smokescreen, where are we gonna get our scapegoat to project the Hs' flaws onto otherwise? /s).

While Ron is often threatening violence... he is the one who has canonically never physically attacked his friends while Harry and Hermione HAVE. A big thing to understand with Ron is that he really barks a lot more than he bites. When he does bite, as in HBP when he punches Harry after he drank expired love potion, it's that something is dreadfully wrong (the Horcrux Hunt shows us a Ron who's REALLY at the end of his rope and even then he manages to be nicer than Harry is during their argument).

However, one more thing: hating people who "deserve it" and enjoying their suffering is definitely a Rowling thing. Harry, Hermione and Ron all show this trait at various points (hell, Hermione was smug about Lavender's broken heart in HBP), it's spread all over the books and she based Snape, whom she does the utmost to make sure we hate, on her chemistry teacher because she thought he quote "deserved it" for giving her bad grades... like, you can't make this up... and then she has Hermione have perfect grades in every subject, yep, wish fulfillment indeed...

Imagine you're so small and cold and scared but there's smaller ones that are smaller and colder and more scared. I'm going to cry

hot take apparently but i think it's good for white people to relate to poc's art. i think it's good for straight people to relate to queer art. stop acting like we're different species who could never possibly understand each other what the fuck is wrong with you

SUE THEM INTO THE F*CKING GROUND!!!!

TAKE ALL OF THEIR SORRY ASSES TO COURT!

The way most autism literature describes "literal interpretation" is often not at all similar to how I experience it. Teenage me even thought I couldn't be autistic because I've always been able to learn metaphors easily.

In fact, I love wordplay of all kinds. Teenage me was fascinated to learn all the types of figurative language there are in poetry and literature.

But paperwork and questionnaires are hard, because there's so much they don't state clearly. Or they don't leave room for enough nuance.

"List all the jobs you've had, with start and end dates." What if I don't remember the exact day or month? Is the year enough?

"Have you been suffering from blurred vision?" Well, if I take off my glasses the whole world is blurred, but I'm fairly sure that's not what the intake form at the optometrist is asking.

Or the infamous (and infuriatingly stereotypical) "Would you rather go to a library or a party?" What sort of party? Where? Who's there? I work at a library. Am I currently at the library for work or pleasure? Does it have a good collection?

It's not common figures of speech that confound me. It's ambiguity, in situations that aren't supposed to be ambiguous.

ive been thinking about it and actually i fucking hate this post

it's such a perfect encapsulation of this annoying knee-jerk reaction people have to the term "AI" that's only matched in its uselessness by techbros cumming in their jorts every time stable diffusion returns a picture of anime girl with big boobs and 6 fingers.

1- this is a totally different type of AI. in the current climate "AI" is used for a thousand different things and let's be honest, the obfuscation is deliberate. that's how buzzwords work, it means everything and anything, the tech world loves these. AI is the new metaverse. but like, come the fuck on? what does a robot that finds waldo have to do with glorified image denoisers.

2- finding waldo faster is not good/useful, though it is a fun novelty. but that's barely the point here. the point is this robot's algorithm can be trained to find a little guy in a crowd very fast. do you not understand why someone would build this? think of using this type of thing to identify cancer cells, if you want an application for it that's good and useful. replace the where's waldo book with surveillance camera footage if you want an application for it that's bad and evil.

3- on a more personal note... does art need to be smart? does art need to have a point? does art need to be useful? does TECH need to be smart and have a point and be useful? i used to build little robots in my room and make them race or battle, that didn't have a lot of value outside of being fun. you know what's also stupid and pointless? me spending 6 hours drawing. like, let's be real, i'm not making the world a better place by depicting hatsune miku with a huge cock and tits to match no matter how many lesbians thank me for it. if you think something being stupid and pointless is bad then you're actually just as anti-art as the people who think boomer facebook memes about jesus are the future of illustration, it's literally the same attitude that leads to people dismissing the entire field.

Rereading the Lord of the Rings series recently, and it's so fascinating to me how much the series is a denial of the typical juvenile power-fantasy that is associated with the fantasy genre.

Like, the power-fantasy is the temptation the Ring uses against people It tempts Boromir with becoming the "one true king" that could save his people with fantastic power. It tempts Sam with being the savior of Middle Earth and turning the ruin that is Mordor into a great garden. It tempts Gandalf and Galadriel with being the messianic figure of legend who brings salvation to Middle Earth and great glory to herself.

The things the Ring tempts people with are becoming the typical protagonists of fantasy stories that we expect to see. and over and over we see that accepting that role, that fantasy of being the benevolent all-powerful hero, is a bad thing. LotR is about how power, even power wielded with benevolent intent, is corrupting.

And its so fascinating how so much of modern fantasy buys into the very fantasy LotR denies. Most modern fantasy is about being that Heroic power-fantasy. About good amassing power to rival evil. But LotR dares not to. It dares to be honest that there is no world where anyone amasses that power and remains good.

I guess that's one of the reasons its so compelling.

I think I've said this before, so, sorry about that. But I was taken aback when I read LOTR because I'd heard that it's a foundational work to the fantasy genre, and I was expecting it to be somewhat basic and cliché. I got the opposite experience. It read to me like a thoughtful and detailed deconstruction of the modern fantasy genre instead of the thing that spawned it. Mostly it's because Tolkien took things through to their logical conclusion where many of his imitators did not (the scouring of the shire, the lasting irreparable psychological damage to frodo, the fact that frodo actually can't bring himself to throw away the ring, etc)

JRR Tolkien’s world was shaped by war. He knew firsthand that battles are not glorious, that heroes always pay a price, that sometimes you can’t return home because either home was ruined, or you were.

He KNEW it, knew it intimately, the loss and fear and sorrow behind the propaganda. And he knew that what helped, in his time, was kindness and community and small joys and undying friendship.

Tolkien didn’t belive in epic heroics, he believed in simple humanity. Ordinarily people persevering against all odds.

His imitators missed that. Much like Sauron at the end of the trilogy, they were distracted by armies and kings and wizards.

They never really saw or understood the hobbits at all.

There's an EU initiative going on right now that essentially boils down to wanting to force videogame publishers with paid games and/or games with paid elements such as DLC, expansions and microtransactions to leave said games in a playable state after they end support, or in simpler terms, make them stop killing games.

A "playable state" would be something like an offline mode for previously always online titles, or the ability for people to host their own servers where reasonably possible just to name some examples.

I don't think I need to tell anyone that having something you paid for being taken from you is bad, which is a thing that routinely happens with live service and other always online games with a notable recent example being The Crew which is now permanently unplayable.

Any EU citizen is eligible to sign the initiative, but only once and if you mess up that's it. You can find it here. (https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2024/000007_en)

Even if you're not European or you signed it already, you can share this initiative with anyone who is, even if they don't care about videogames specifically because this needs a million signatures and there is different thresholds that need to be met for each EU country for their votes to even count and could also be a precedent for other similar practices like when Sony removed a bunch of Discovery TV content people paid for.

please i love you i'm begging you bring back suspension of disbelief bring back trusting the audience like. i cannot handle any more dialogue that sounds like a legal document. "hello, i am here to talk to you about the incident from a few minutes ago, because i feel you might be unwell, and i am invested in your personal wellbeing." "thank you, i am unwell because the incident was hurtful to me due to my childhood, which was bad." I CANT!!!!

do you know how many people are mad that authors use "growled" as a word for "said"? it's just poetics! they do not literally mean "growled," it's just a common replacement for "said with force but in a low tone." it's normal! do you hear me!! help me i love you please let me out of here!!!

Yes and

"his eyes darkened" is like a real thing actually because either the pupils are dilating or he's leaning forward and his brow shadows his eyes.

Smirking is a half smile with Malice or Mischief

"her face twisted" is also real because when your brow furrows and your lips curl and your eyes narrow all at once, the face Twists

I'll admit "uttered" is a little weird unless you're using it like "worse words never uttered in my presence, I never."

"his face fell" is because when you are disappointed or upset, your lips stop smiling (fall) and your eyebrows droop (fall) and your cheeks relax from a happy spot near your eyes (also a falling)

"her eyes softened" is because when you relax or stop being angry/upset/scared, the skin around your eyes untenses and the muscles in your face relax and your brows unfurrow and it SOFTENS

"he uncurled/ his stance opened / his posture softened / he blossomed" is because stress makes people close in Literally on themselves - like they cross their arms or hunch their shoulders or tighten their lips or cross their legs or narrow their eyes and when they relax they Very Literally open up

Like a lot of these "poetic" phrases are just body language

God yes. I've personally seen way too many reddit threads where fellow writers unload their pet peeve words/phrases, and their gripes are that the words/phrases don't follow their literal meaning, even though the criticizing person admits to knowing exactly what is meant -- they just don't like that it "doesn't make sense" because it's not a literal description and therefore is bad writing somehow.

So many of these things don't even qualify as "purple prose" -- nowhere near it. They're just turns of phrase and creative ways to evoke a feeling or image. And figures of speech have been around in language forever.

You're telling a story, not writing an instruction manual.

Media literacy has really taken a beating in recent years.

we should globally ban the introduction of more powerful computer hardware for 10-20 years, not as an AI safety thing (though we could frame it as that), but to force programmers to optimize their shit better

I reblogged this like 9 times kinda jokingly, but software should be able to run on older and less powerful hardware, and consume less power on newer hardware. Like, this is a real problem imo

I completely agree with this but I do need you to understand that the image above is 32 times the size of the lunar mission’s memory