Haha Izzy I Am Sleeping With Your Captain 

You are a person who covers your counter space in clutter and inadvertently makes a shrine to a long forgotten god who shows up to thank you.

thinking about that post of people assuming ao3 has an algorithm and also about how bonkers persistent the view is that ao3 is social media lite. like with startling regularity I get comments saying something along the lines of "it's probably weird to comment on a fic this old--" no it isn't!!!! this is an archive I am literally just assuming you searched for a selection of specific tags or sorted by kudos or looked back on my pseud or any other number of completely normal ways to use an archive site ?? kill the tiktok ghost in your brain and comment on old stuff it's NOT weird

Hello! Could you do a cowboy/wild west terms & phrases?

Thank you!

Cowboy / Wild West Terms and Phrases

-> The Chief Storyteller

-> Cowboyaccountant

A Lick and a Promise - to do haphazardly.

Above Snakes - If you were “above snakes,” you were above ground; still alive.

Acknowledge the Corn - admit the truth, to confess a lie, or acknowledge an obvious personal shortcoming.

An Invite to a Dance - could mean shooting at a man’s feet to make him dance.

Bake - to overheat a horse by riding too fast, long, or hard.

Barkin’ at a Knot - Doing something useless; wasting your time, trying something impossible.

Barn sour - horse that loves his stall; speeds up the pace as he nears the barn on the journey home.

Bedroll - Blankets rolled and carried for sleeping.  Also called sugans, soogans, hot rolls, or dream sacks.

Bee in Your Bonnet -  An idea.

Boondocks, Boonies - far from civilization.

Broom-Tail -  a negative term for an ill-behaved or ugly horse, often a horse that looks or acts like a mustang.

Burn the Breeze - ride at full speed.

Chuckwagon - A wagon used to carry food on a cattle drive, which also serves as a mobile kitchen.

Clipped his Horns -  took him down a notch or two; referring to a fight or a braggart.

Cowboss -  In charge of the cattle operation on a ranch.  They choose where the cowboys will ride and hire and fire cowboys.  Answers to the general manager or ranch owner.

Curly wolf -  real tough guy, dangerous man.

Dilly-dally - loiter or vacillate.

Flannel mouth - overly smooth or fancy talker, especially politicians or salesmen. 

Night-Wrangler -  A cowboy that herds and cares for the saddle horses during the night. 

Pull in your horns -  back off, quit looking for trouble.

Rustler -  A horse or cattle thief.

That Dog Won’t Hunt - That idea or argument isn’t going to work. Or, the person saying it doesn’t believe what you’re saying.

Will Die Standin’ Up -  brave

If you like what I do and want to support me, please consider buying me a coffee! I also offer editing services and other writing advice on my Ko-fi! Become a member to receive exclusive content, early access, and prioritized writing prompt requests.

my parents (usually my mom) will capture me in a blanket and just sorta swaddle me an say 'can we keep em ?' 'ill take care of it' and my dad will respond with things like 'i dunno.. i think it bites' and ill jus wriggle about biting the air threatening to bite them if they dont set me free,

last night my mom said that i was her most favorite critter and this will stick with me for forever i think

NO WAY

In the spirit of encouraging people to comment on fanfics while also making it easier to do so, I feel obliged to share a browser extension for ao3 that has quite literally revolutionized the comment game for me.

I present to you: the floating ao3 comment box!

From what I've seen, a big problem for many people is that once you reach the comments at the bottom of a fic, your memory of it miraculously disappears. Anything you wanted to say is stuck ten paragraphs ago, and you barely remember what you thought while reading. This fixes that!

I'll give a little explanation on the features and how it works, but if you want to skip all that, here's the link.

The extension is visible as a small blue box in the upper left corner.

(Side note: The green colouring is not from the extension, that's me.)

If you click on it, you open a comment box window at the bottom of your screen but not at the bottom of the fic. I opened my own fic for demonstrative purposes.

The website also gives explanations on how exactly it functions, but I'll summarize regardless.

insert selection -> if you highlight a sentence in the fic it will be added in italics to the comment box

add to comment box -> once you're done writing your comment, you click this button and the entire thing will automatically copied to the ao3 comment box

delete -> self explanatory

on mulitchapter fics, you will be given the option to either add the comment to just the current chapter or the entire fic

The best part? You can simply close the window the same way you opened it and your progress will automatically be saved. So you can open it, comment on a paragraph, and then close it and keep reading without having the box in your face.

Comments are what keep writers going, and as both a writer and a reader, I think it's such an easy way of showing support and enthusiasm.

Depicting Real World Religions Alongside Constructed Religions

Maya asked:

Hi WWC! Thank you so much for this blog, it's an infinitely wonderful resource! Do you have any suggestions for how I can balance representation of real religions with fantasy religions, or should I avoid including these together? Does the fact that certain things bleed over from our world into the fantasy world help legitimize the appearance of real world religions? I feel like I can come up with respectful ways to integrate representation in ways that make sense for the worldbuilding. For instance, no Muslim characters would practice magic, and both Jewish and Muslim characters would conceive of magic in ways that fit their religion (rather than trying to adapt real religions to fit my worldbuilding). I also have some ideas for how these religions came about that fit between handwave and analogous history (though I realize the Qur'an is unchangeable, so I'm guessing Islam would have come about in the same way as IRL). BTW—I'm referring to humans, not other species coded as Muslim or Jewish. I may explore the concept of jinns more (particularly as how Muslims perceive fantastical beings), but I definitely need to do a lot more research before I go down that road! Finally, I saw a post somewhere (*but* it might have been someone else's commentary) suggesting to integrate certain aspects of Judaism (e.g., skullcaps in sacred places/while praying, counting days from sundown instead of sunset) into fantasy religions (monotheistic ones, of course) to normalize these customs, but as a non-Jewish person I feel this could easily  veer into appropriation-territory.  *One of the posts that I'm referring to in case you need a better reference of *my* reference: defining coding and islam-coded-fantasy

[This long ask was redacted to pull out the core questions asked]

"Both Jewish and Muslim characters would conceive of magic in ways that fit their religion (rather than trying to adapt real religions to fit my worldbuilding)."

Just a note that while having religion be part of magic is a legitimate way to write fantasy, I want to remind people that religious characters can also perform secular magic. Sometimes I feel like people forget about that particular worldbuilding option. (I feel this one personally because in my own books I chose to make magic secular so that my nonmagical heroine wouldn’t seem less close to God somehow than her wizard adoptive dad, who is an objectively shadier person.) I’m not saying either way is more or less correct or appropriate, just that they’re both options and I think sometimes people forget about the one I chose. But anyway moving on—

Your decision to make the water spirits not actual deities is a respectful decision given the various IRL monotheistic religions in your story, so, thank you for that choice. I can see why it gets messy though, since some people in-universe treat those powers as divine. I guess as long as your fantasy Jews aren’t being depicted as backwards and wrong and ignoring in-universe reality in favor of in-universe incorrect beliefs, then you’re fine…

"I saw a post somewhere (but it might have been someone else's commentary) suggesting to integrate certain aspects of Judaism (e.g., skullcaps in sacred places/while praying, counting days from sundown instead of sunset) into fantasy religions (monotheistic ones, of course) to normalize these customs, but as a non-Jewish person I feel this could easily veer into appropriation-territory."

That was probably us, as Meir and I both feel that way. What would make it appropriative is if these very Jewish IRL markers were used to represent something other than Judaism. It's not appropriative to show Jewish or Jewish-coded characters wearing yarmulkes or marking one day a week for a special evening with two candles or anything else we do if it's connected to Jewishness! To disconnect the markers of us from us is where appropriation starts to seep in.

–Shira

To bounce off what Shira said above, the source of the magic can be religious or secular--or put another way, it can be explicitly granted be a deity or through engagement with a specific religious practice, or it can be something that can be accessed with or without engaging with a certain set of beliefs or practices. It sounds like you’re proposing the second one: the magic is there for anyone to use, but the people in this specific religion engage with it through a framework of specific ideas and practices.

If you can transform into a “spirit” by engaging with this religion, and I can transform into a “spirit” through an analogous practice through the framework of Kabbalah, for example, and an atheist can transform through a course of secular technical study, then what makes yours a religion is the belief on your part that engaging in the process in your specific way, or choosing to engage in that process over other lifestyle choices, is in some way a spiritual good, not the mechanics of the transformation. If, on the other hand, humans can only access this transformative magic through the grace of the deities that religion worships, while practitioners of other religions lack the relationship with the only gods empowered to make that magic, that’s when I’d say you had crossed into doing more harm than good by seeking to include real-world religions.

Including a link below to a post you might have already seen that included the “religion in fantasy worldbuilding alignment chart.” It sounds like you’re in the center square, which is a fine place to be. The center top and bottom squares are where I typically have warned to leave real-world religions out of it.

More reading:

Jewish characters in a universe with author-created fictional pantheons

–Meir

i think that the love we lost always come back to us eventually.

yesterday i went to visit my grandparents. they live in a minuscule town and for the first time in years there was a country fair. the inhabitants are all old people in retirement, so obviously all of them were super excited.

i invited my two flat mates whom i'm very friend with. my grandparents were a bit worried we'd get bored, but we had a great time. they welcomed us in their house, asked if we wanted some tea, my grandma was a seamstress so she made little pouches to gift to the participants, and she gave three to us. she invited us for lunch another day, and my grandad gave us a lift to the station and waited for the train to arrive. they were very lovely and cute.

one of my flatmates lost all of her grandparents and she said she almost cried when my grandma gave her the gift. that made me genuinely smile and filled my heart with warm joy. that the affection and the love and the "have you eaten well?" and the smell of a cake and the handmade gifts and the kisses on the cheeks she thought she lost forever came back, even for a single day.

love always finds a way to come back.

Izutsumi in a traditional persian dress!! Her ears poking from under the veil is so cute to me

Sort of talked about this in my last post but ! I really want to see more persian representation in media, specifically animation. Really disheartening when most of the "popular" animated movies taking place in west asia are about war, revolution or just generally orientalist D: Hopefully one day that'll change !!

But till that happens >:) ill make my own representation