Huh, This Looks Interesting Enough. If Anyone Wants To Ask Me One Of These, Go Ahead. It’ll Most Likely

Short DPXDC Prompts #191

Soulmate au: you get injured, the soulmate keeps the weapon that injures them. Danny has a drawer in his room that’s filled with used bullets and knives and every weapon under the sun and his parents and himself are VERY concerned for his soulmates being. You know when like fairies walk and flowers spring up from their footsteps? Yeah Danny is like that but with weaponry and it’s very worrying.

#crocodiles #science #cool stuff! #some crocs will totally still eat fruit #it’s rather fun to see them chomp down on a mango

Ancient crocodiles may have preferred chomping plants, not meat

Fossil teeth of ancient crocodilians suggest that some ate plants and that such green diets evolved in crocs at least three times more than 60 million years ago.

Some extinct crocs may have been salad eaters.

Studies of fossil teeth suggest some ancient kin of modern crocodiles ate plants. These ancient plant-eating crocs evolved at least three times during the Mesozoic Era. This era stretched from about 252 million to 66 million years ago. Researchers reported their findings June 27, 2019 in Current Biology.

Today’s crocodiles eat mostly meat. Their simple, cone-shaped teeth are typical of meat eaters. Those teeth were different in certain of their ancient relatives. There was “tremendous diversity [in tooth shape] that we don’t see today,” says Keegan Melstrom. This paleontologist is a coauthor on the study. He works at the University of Utah and Natural History Museum of Utah. Both are in Salt Lake City.

so uh this is an interesting one. i don't normally do these but this would technically mean that this:

would be in Monster Hunter Rise. either that or Deep Rock galactic, i'd need to check Steam to see which one of those i technically played last.

Thinking of this little puffball decked out in Monster Hunting gear ready to capture a monster like Mitsusune or the whirlwind monkey guy (etc.) or carrying a big ol' Gold Chunk/the big green ore stuff/ the big purple ore stuff/ glitchy cube is insanely fun to think about. i don't know if i could ever draw that at the skill level i'm at right now, but it is now taking up space in my head.

The last character you drew/wrote about is now stuck in the last game you played. How screwed are they?

“Politicisation of science was enthusiastically deployed by some of history’s worst autocrats and dictators, and it is now regrettably commonplace in democracies. The medical-political complex tends towards suppression of science to aggrandise and enrich those in power. And, as the powerful become more successful, richer, and further intoxicated with power, the inconvenient truths of science are suppressed. When good science is suppressed, people die.”

— Kamran Abbasi, Covid-19: politicisation, “corruption,” and suppression of science

How do you set a scene without overusing visual descriptions?

Practical Tips to Show, Don’t Tell

Show, don’t tell is probably the most common writing advice any author will ever receive. Instead of explicitly telling readers what is happening or how characters are feeling, showing allows them to experience the story firsthand. It’s good advice, and important for writers to take to heart, but sometimes it can be difficult to get the balance right. Here are some practical tips to show, don’t tell:

Set the scene

To really immerse your readers in your story, you want them to feel as if they’re in it – experiencing the world you’ve built. By writing about how characters perceive and interact with their surroundings, you’ll draw your readers in.

Examples:

Telling: It was winter, and the water was cold.

Showing: I hunched my shoulders up, burrowing deeper into my coat as my heavy boots crunched through the thin ice forming at the water’s edge.

Keep up the pace

Excess scene description will almost always bring your narrative pacing to a screeching halt. Instead of describing the scene every time, describe your characters’ actions within it.

Examples:

Telling: The lake was frozen and the trees were covered in snow.

Showing: My heart pounded as I almost lost my balance on the ice beneath my feet. I ducked and weaved my way home, dodging the snow that the howling wind shook loose from the treetops above me.

Keep your language descriptive, but simple

When it comes to show, don’t tell, it can be easy to fall into the trap of over-describing. Language that is too flowery or over the top can be just as bad as telling. You want to set a scene, not explain it to death.

Examples:

Too much: The azure-blue lake glinted like diamonds under a glittering sun that shone like a lightbulb in the darkness.

Just right: The sun reflected off the ice brightly, highlighting the deep blue of the water beneath it.

Create a sense of character

The way a character speaks and acts can be the perfect way to show your readers who they are and set a scene without over-describing it. For example, you can use body language, like gestures and posture to reveal a character’s emotions or attitude in a way you can’t reveal by simply describing the scene. Sometimes an intricate description of the location is not as important as how the character feels in the moment

Examples:

Telling: The room was the same as he remembered as a child, with its red carpets, brown-papered walls, high ceilings, and huge wooden table propped in front of large bay windows. It made him anxious.

Showing: He shuffled anxiously to the table overlooking the garden, his mind heavy with the weight of childhood memories.

i've been writing a book and the feedback i've gotten from family members is that i have been using a lot of description, that the plot is moving along pretty slowly, and "something" needs to happen. do you have any tips or advice on moving plots along quicker in order to keep the reader's attention? thanks so much!!

How to Move a Story Forward

When your character is just milling about in their world describing what they see, what they’re doing, and what’s happening to them, that’s not really a plot. It’s just a random string of events happening to your character, and typically it doesn’t make for very interesting reading. This kind of story moves slowly because nothing’s actually happening. Imagine following an average person through their average day versus following Katniss Everdeen through day three of The Hunger Games. It’s a big difference. And that’s not to say every plot has to be as exciting or dramatic as The Hunger Games, but there does need to be a conflict.

So, the first thing you have to do is sit down and figure out what your story is really about. What is going on in this person’s life that is worth writing about? Is there some sort of inner conflict they’re struggling with? Or is there an external conflict of some kind? Usually there are both with the focus being more on one than the other.

How stories begin…

Most stories start when a character’s life is still normal but just about to change. Katniss was getting ready to go hunting with Gale. Bella was settling in at her new high school after moving in with her dad, and Harry Potter was just living life as the boy in the cupboard.

What happens next…

And then something happens. This is called the “inciting incident” because it “incites” the conflict and brings on the important events of the story. Katniss volunteers as tribute when her sister is drafted into The Hunger Games. Bella meets Edward Cullen and an instant attraction develops between them. Harry Potter receives his letter to Hogwarts.

The character responds and forms a goal…

The character’s normal life has been turned upside down. Now what? For Katniss, the most important thing in the world to her was the safety and well being of her sister and mother, and since she is the one who keeps them safe and fed, her survival of The Hunger Games is vital. That’s her motivation, and her goal is to win the game. Bella becomes obsessed with learning more about Edward and who, or what, he is, and she falls for him and the magic his world brings into her otherwise boring life. Being part of that world is her motivation, staying alive in the process is her goal. Harry finally has a ticket out of his life of being abused and unloved, and he has a chance to connect with the legacy his parents left behind. Leaving his old life behind and embracing this new one is is motivation. Surviving his first year at Hogwarts is his goal.

But goals aren’t supposed to be easy to reach…

If the character can just sail smoothly right up to their goal, mission accomplished, that makes for a pretty boring story. You never hear people say, “WOW! THAT WAS AN INCREDIBLE GAME!” when the score was 20 to nothing. What makes the game exciting is when the teams are neck and neck, one getting ahead for a little while, then the other one being ahead for a little while. It’s the trying, and often failing, to get over obstacles that makes the conflict more interesting. In a lot of ways, that struggle actually is the conflict. What obstacles stand in the way of your character and their goal, and who (or what) put them there? For Katinss, the obstacles were the other tributes and all the frightening things added to the game by the gamemakers. For Bella, it was the nomad vampires who caused trouble at first for fun, and then later for revenge. The obstacles Harry faces are partly due to conflict with other students and teachers, and partly due to the first “shots fired” in what would become the overarching battle against Voldemort.

You win some, you lose some…

And it’s important that you show some wins along with the failures. Sometimes the character tries to overcome an obstacle, fails, tries again and succeeds. Sometimes they fail and have to come up with a work around. Either way, the fails add to the tension and drama while the wins add excitement and interest in what happens next.

The final showdown…

Eventually you get to the big showdown, aka “the climax.” This is when your character faces down the biggest challenge that stands in the way of reaching their goal. This could be an epic battle between your character and the villain. It could be the moment where your character realizes they’re in love with their best friend and they chase them to the airport to admit their undying love for them before they move away. Or it could be surviving one last night of a terrible storm before crawling out of hiding to assess the damage. Whatever it is, the culmination of that moment is achieving or failing to achieve their goal.

The dust settles…

Whatever crazy chain of events was set off by the inciting incident, they’ve come to an end now thanks to the actions of your protagonist and their friends. Or, if they haven’t come to an end, they’ve at least been waylaid for now, or things are at least moving in a better direction. Now your characters can clean up, rebuild, mend wounds, tie up loose threads, and get back to life as normal. Or, in the case of a series, they can re-group and figure out what happens next. And that’s the end.

… But some stories happen on the inside.

Some stories are more about people and their experiences than about any big crazy thing that happens to them. Stories like these are more emotional and are more about dealing with the inner conflict than an outer one. But even in stories like these, you’ll still have a similar structure to what I laid out above. It’s just a lot looser and tied up with an emotional journey rather than the physical one. Which isn’t to say they can’t have a parallel physical journey, but the important stuff is happening on the inside.

Whichever kind of story you’re writing, if you make sure you’re hitting the important points I’ve laid out above, whether they relate to an internal conflict, an external conflict, or a little of both, you can be sure you’re writing a story that is moving forward and will keep your audience engaged. Everything I’ve outlined above is the “something” that needs to happen to make your story interesting.

Good luck! :)

CARNIVAL AU

I wanted to try my own take at a sort of "swap au " :3! though-- it's more a "role swap" than anything else, haha!

I give yall Zooble another time cuz I'm sleepyyy

Young American Alligators Can Regrow Their Tails, Study Shows

http://www.sci-news.com/biology/young-american-alligators-can-regrow-their-tails-09084.html

This seems like something everyone should know if they’re in the sciences and/or interested in reading scientific papers.

ahh, tiny fire gator, my beloved.

🐊🌶