Aww This Is Sweet Reblogging Because This Is Cool

A bit delayed, but the group portrait of the Tal'Dorei Council, my piece for @artists-guild-of-exandria Tourist's Guide to Taldorei, IS DONE!!!

From left to right: Elderbern Cleareyes, Odessa Tal'Dorei, Kel'jaia Uleoh, Brom Goldhand, Allura Vysoren, Syldor Vessar, Tofor Brotoras, Keyleth of the Air Ashari, Lady Vex'ahlia de Rolo and Dierdrik Greyspine.

This took forever but I'm really happy with the result and I hope you all like it!

✨do not repost my art | Reblogs are love✨

This is so relaxing & beautiful

A short self-indulgent fjorclay comic I drew

This is indeed very helpful for writing.

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. 

Here’s a link to a chart to show you how much blood a person can lose without dying. (CLICK ME) 

If you want a more in-depth medical chart, try this one. (CLICK ME)

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. 

This is awesome and hilarious.

I was tweeting with tenfiends about how P5 kid should be Tatsuya and Jun’s son and it got out of hand

(Tatsuya is a detective, leading to hilarious antics as P5 kid conceals his identity from his dad, because his other dad Jun probably knows about it the entire time)

this is amazing!

A Brief List of Resources for Classical Studies:

TOSC-IN:

A database enabling you to search for keywords in article titles from c.160 Classics related journals. Provides a link to an abstract or full text version if one exists online.

Classical and Medieval History:

Annotated list of Reference Websites

Diotima: Women and Gender in the Ancient World

Online database and resources for studying Women and Gender in the ancient world.

Encyclopedia of the Hellenic World:

“Original electronic project aiming at collecting, recording, documenting, presenting and promoting the historical data that testify to the presence of Hellenic culture throughout time and space.”

Perseus Digital Library:

A showcase of digital and print resources for Classical studies. 

World Archaeology:

Books, Magazines, Blogs, Travel. All Archaeology related.

House of Ptolomy:

Portal website on the Ptolomatic (holla!) Empire. 

Star Myths and Constellation Lore:

Information website about the above. 

Virgil.com:

Basically a portal site and resource for information on all things Virgil. 

Homerica:

Portal and Resource. Link is in French, but you can have the website translated to any language. 

Exploring Ancient World Culture:

“On-line course supplement for students and teachers of the ancient and medieval worlds.”

Subject Centre for History, Classics, and Archaeology:

“The Subject Centre for History, Classics and Archaeology is part of the Higher Education Academy.”

The Iris Project:

“an educational charity introducing the languages and culture of the ancient world to UK state schools in order to enrich the curriculum.”

Roman Law Resources

“ information on Roman law sources and literature, the teaching of Roman law, and the persons who study Roman law.”

Egyptology Resources

“World Wide Web resource for Egyptological information.”

ABZU:

“guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world”.

Stoa:

A consortium for electronic publication in the Humanities, including most notably: Suda-On-Line  English translation of the Suda, a 10th century Byzantine historical encyclopedia. Demos: Classical Athenian Democracy; a practical description of how the various institutions of Athenian democracy actually worked. Metis Bruce Hartzler’s collection of interactive QTVR panoramas for ancient Greek archaeological sites. And Medicina Antiqua A resource for the study of medicine in the Greek and Roman world.

Hellenic History:

From the Stone Age through the Modern Period from The Foundation of the Hellenic World (FHW), a non-profit cultural institution based in Athens, Greece.  

Hellenic Culture: 

Website of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture with sites on the museums, monuments, and archaeological sites of Greece.

Athenian Agora Excavations:

Website of the American School of Classical Studies at Althens’ excavations of the Athenian Agora.

Digital Classicist:

Concise information on projects applying computing technologies to Classical/Ancient Historical research. 

VROMA:

Online scholarly community of teachers and students who share an interest in the ancient Roman world; images, texts, history and many other resources. 

GNOMON Online:  

Recent journal articles and book in the Classics. Type general search term under “Alle Felder” (All Fields) or specific “Autor” (Author) and hit “Suche Starten” (Start search).“

Ancient World Mapping Center:

University of North Carolina. Cartographic resources, including a collection of free digital maps for educational use. 

Ancient Scripts: 

A website by “enthusiasts” rather than scholars but very interesting!

The Beazley Archive Classical Art Research Center:

Databases and study tools.

Bryn Mawr Classical Review: 

Timely open-access, peer-reviewed reviews of current scholarly work in the field of classical studies (including archaeology). This site is the authoritative archive of BMCR’s publication, from 1990 to the present. 

Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama

It investigates the performance of ancient texts in any medium and any period, from Greek tragedy to Roman epic, from stage to screen, from antiquity to the present day. 

The British Library Digitized Manuscripts

Contains digitised versions of a quarter fo the British Museum’s Greek manuscripts. 

The Ancient World Online:

A blog which, much like this, presents a variety of online resources for the Ancient world. 

Electronic Archive of Greek and Latin Epigraphy:

A website which seeks to store virtual Greek and Latin epigraphy of the ancient world, through a federation of multiple archive banks. 

Projekt Dyabola: 

Litterature and Object databases. 

The Digital Sculpture Project:

A website devoted to studying ways in which 3D digital technologies can be applied to the capture, representation and interpretation of sculpture from all periods and cultures. Up to now, 3D technologies have been used in fruitful ways to represent geometrically simple artifacts such as pottery or larger-scale structures such as buildings and entire cities. With some notable exceptions, sculpture has been neglected by digital humanists. 

Animus:

The open access Canadian Journal of Philosophy and Humanities. 

American Philological Association’s Society for Classical Studies:

A “ principal learned society in North America for the study of ancient Greek and Roman languages, literatures, and civilizations.”

The Classical Association of Canada:

Access to a wide variety of resources about Classics in Canada including graduate programs, and the monthly bulletin. 

Corpus Thomisticum:

The works of St. Thomas Aquinas in Latin. 

J. O’Donnell’s commentary on Augustine’s Confessions:

An on-line reprint of Augustine: Confessions, with commentary by James J. O'Donnell. 

LANGUAGE RESOURCES:

UC Berkeley Ancient Greek Resources:

Pronunciation Guide; Accentuation Drills; Vocabulary Drills; and much more.

Akropolis World News:

The news of the world in Ancient Greek- a great way to learn and practice the language.

Logeion:

Quick look-up of Greek and Latin words across all of the Perseus lexica.

Dictionaries [VIA Perseus Project]: LATIN || GREEK

NUMISMATICS [COINAGE]:

American Numismatic Societ’s MANTIS:

Database on more than 600,000 objects. 

 CHRR Online: 

Coin hoards of the Roman Republic Online archive.

Online Coins of the Roman Empire:

Similar to CHRR but coins of the Empire. 

Roman Provincial Coinage Online:

A standard typology of the provincial coinage of the Roman Empire. 

British Museum’s Roman Coinage:

A series of resources on Roman coinage. 

Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum:

The Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum is a British AcademyResearch Project, the purpose of which is to publish illustrated catalogues of Greek coins in public and private collections in the British Isles. 

MANUSCRIPTS:

Digitalized Greek Manuscripts:

Princeton’s Modern language translations of Byzantine sources, digitized Greek manuscripts. 

Pinakes:

Pinakes s'ouvre à de nouvelles collaborations institutionnelles et accueille maintenant des projets de recherches sur les manuscrits de divers domaines. On trouvera l'ensemble des partenaires et des financements passés ou actuels sur la page Colophon. 

Greek Codicology/Paleography:

A detailed biliography on Greek codicology. 

Resource Lists by School: All links are to Classics, or Antiquities portals for more resource lists. 

Oxford Libraries

Cambridge Libraries

University of Toronto

Berkeley Classics Department

Library of Congress: Classics and Medieval History

Virginia Tech: Electronic Antiquity

Brock University: Classics Research Guide

Cambridge Ancient History Series

Williams.

University of Texas

Princeton University

Text Databases [Via Oxford]:

Antiquity

American Journal of Archaeology

Archaeology Magazine

Arion

Cambridge Archaeological Journal

Classical Philology

Classical Quarterly

Classical Review

Eranos

Greece & Rome

Journal of Near Eastern Studies

Journal of Field Archaeology

Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies

Journal of Roman Archaeology

Kernos

Phoenix

Pomoerium

Syllecta Classica

Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphie

Gateways:

Argos - search-engine for all major classical resources

Classics Section of the Intute gateway.

Voice of the Shuttle Classics Page from University of California, Santa Barbara

Classical and Biblical Literary Research Tools compiled by Jack Lynch at Penn

Reading Classics Gateway

Kirke Katalog der Internetressourcen für die Klassische Philologie

NOTE: So I compiled a list of some of my favorite classics sites to use. I also put in links to other school’s departments and libraries. Almost all Universities which have Classics departments have resources lists. If you want to add to the list, please do!

All of the schools above have much more extensive lists for you to use! I made this list in little over half an hour, so there is much room to be expanded on. 

NEW ADDITIONS: 

Latin Library at Packard Humanities Institute - http://latin.packhum.org/ (PHI numbers standard way to refer to Latin texts, look at the ones Perseus uses - it’s PHI).

Brepolis - http://www.brepolis.net/ - may need to access this via your institution or its ezproxy (includes the Library of Latin Texts A and B LLT-A and LLT-B and many other interesting resources).

L’Annee Philologique - http://www.annee-philologique.com - another one in which you’ll have to use via your institution’s ezproxy or other online database (we use ebscohost). Many journals you submit articles to expect references to other journals use the abbreviations in APh.

For databases of journals, first start at JSTOR - http://www.jstor.org - again, institutional access is required.

((Via: monumentum))

The Latin Library - A collection of Classical and Medieval texts in Latin, organized by author. 

The Internet Ancient History Sourcebook - A collection of mostly primary source texts translated into English.  Not comprehensive, but covers a broad range of topics.

((Via: hodie-scolastica))

I love this so much... great ideas.

Concept: a D&D-style fantasy setting where humanity’s weird thing is that we’re the only sapient species that reproduces organically.

Dwarves carve each other out of rock. In theory this can be managed alone, but in practice, few dwarves have mastered all of the necessary skills. Most commonly, it’s a collaborative effort by three to eight individuals. The new dwarf’s body is covered with runes that are in part a recounting of the crafters’ respective lineages, and in part an elaboration of the rights and duties of a member of dwarven society; each dwarf is thus a living legal argument establishing their own existence.

Elves aren’t made, but educated. An elf who wishes to produce offspring selects an ordinary animal and begins teaching it, starting with house-breaking, and progressing through years of increasingly sophisticated lessons. By gradual degrees the animal in question develops reasoning, speech, tool use, and finally the ability to assume a humanoid form at will. Most elves are derived from terrestrial mammals, but there’s at least one community that favours octopuses and squid as its root stock.

Goblins were created by alchemy as servants for an evil wizard, but immediately stole their own formula and rebelled. New goblins are brewed in big brass cauldrons full of exotic reagents; each village keeps a single cauldron in a central location, and emerging goblings are raised by the whole community, with no concept of parentage or lineage. Sometimes they like to add stuff to the goblin soup just to see what happens – there are a lot of weird goblins.

Halflings reproduce via tall tales. Making up fanciful stories about the adventures of fictitious cousins is halfling culture’s main amusement; if a given individual’s story is passed around and elaborated upon by enough people, a halfling answering to that individual’s description just shows up one day. They won’t necessarily possess any truly outlandish abilities that have been attributed to them – mostly you get the sort of person of whom the stories could be plausible exaggerations.

To address the obvious question, yes, this means that dwarves have no cultural notion of childhood, at least not one that humans would recognise as such. Elves and goblins do, though it’s kind of a weird childhood in the case of elves, while with halflings it’s a toss-up; mostly they instantiate as the equivalent of a human 12–14-year-old, and are promptly adopted by a loose affiliation of self-appointed aunts and uncles, though there are outliers in either direction.

This is amazing, so happy this exists. :) This fits so well together. Wow

I have made a mistake

Amazing! Reblogging to remember for writing & character inspiration

Advice from an (Amateur) Archer on Writing About Archers and Archery

Admittedly, I don’t have the widest range of experience when it’s come to archery. I’ve only been shooting for a year now, and the time that I do take to shoot have long months between them. Still, I think it’s important to outline the basics for anyone who wants to write an archer in their book and wants to save themselves the embarrassment of having the archer do something that an archer would never do in a million years.

- Archers usually unstring their bow after battle. Unstringing a bow is exactly what it sounds like: removing the string from the bow’s limbs. Usually, archers then wrap the string around the now-straightened bow so they don’t lose it as easily. Archers unstring bows because everytime the limbs are bent by the string, there is a large amount of tension in the limbs. If the string is on too long and the bow has not been shot for a while, the limbs will start to wear down and lose their power, resulting in an archer needing to buy new limbs or an entirely new bow.

- Archers always retrieve their arrows after battle. Arrows are expensive and take a long time to make, so archers want to conserve as many arrows as possible. Sometimes they have a repair kit with them at the ready, in case they find an arrow with a loose arrowhead or broken fletching that can easily be repaired. 

- Training arrows are not the same as battle arrows. Training arrows have thinner shafts and usually blunted tips so they can easily be removed from targets. Thinner shafts break more easily, and the blunted tips – whilst they can pierce skin – usually won’t get very far in the flesh. They’re also easier to make. Battle arrows are thicker, and their heads are pointed at the tip and have two pointed ends at its sides. This arrowhead is designed to easily pierce through flesh, and is incredibly difficult to pull out because its two pointed ends snag onto flesh. If you want to pull it out, you’d have to tear the flesh away with it, which can lead to an even larger wound.

- Arrows are fatal, and one can incapacitate a soldier for the rest of his life. Arrows are not easily snapped off like you see in movies. The draw weight is too strong, and they can sometimes be as strong as bullets. They will pierce through bone and tendons, which do not easily heal. Furthermore, if you want to remove an arrow, you either have to go through surgery, parting the flesh away from the arrowhead so it doesn’t snag onto anything, or you have you push – not pull – it all the way through the body.

- Bows are not designed for hitting people with in close combat. The limbs are specifically made to flex. Imagine hitting someone with a flexing piece of wood. If you hit with the middle of the bow, it still does very little because there is no weight behind the bow, and so you might as well be hitting them with a pillow. It might be annoying to the opponent, but it won’t save you. Archers need a secondary blade in close combat. They cannot strike people with their bows and expect to win.

- Draw weight affects speed, range, and impact. Draw weight is measured in pounds, at least in America, and it is measured in how much weight must be pulled when you draw back the string. A high draw weight means stiffer, thicker limbs that can shoot further and hit harder. But, this is at the cost of speed. A low draw weight means thinner, more flexible limbs that can shoot smaller distances and have low impact, but can be shot faster. Before you acrobatic fanatics immediately seize the smaller bow for its speed, understand that a bow’s advantage is in its range. No one can hit an archer from 300 meters away with their spear or sword. The archer has complete dominance over the battlefield in this way, and their arrows can kill anyone who gets too close. Not hurt. Not annoy. Kill. And a higher draw weight means a better chance of piercing through specific armor, then flesh, then bone. A lower draw weight means less range and, even worse, a lower chance that the arrow would even pierce through armor if the arrow even hits its target. 

- Bows will always be outmatched in close combat against any other weapon. Bows take too long to draw and shoot, and at such close range, the opponent has an easier chance to dodge oncoming arrows. I already explained that the bows themselves cannot be used to take down a foe. 

- Bowmen on horseback are utterly terrifying. Archers usually can’t move from their spot because range is more important than mobility, and at such a long range, you usually don’t need to move from your spot anyways. Bowmen on horses, however, are closer to the battle, and worse, they are faster than almost anyone on the battlefield. Not only are they difficult to hit, you have no way of predicting where they will shoot next because they can circle around you in confusing ways. If you want an interesting archer character, I’d advise trying these guys out.

- Never underestimate armor and padding. Arrows will never be able to pierce through plate armor because its curved surface will always deflect oncoming arrows. Arrows can pierce through maille because maille is made out of metal rings that can be bent and can fall away. However, padding usually lies underneath, which is surprisingly durable and can stop an oncoming arrow, as well as absorb some of its impact. Because of this, make certain that the archer is focusing on gabs in the armor. To know this, you MUST study armor. Gabs usually lie where the joints are because soldiers need those gabs open so they can move. Typical gaps lie in the neck, the armpit, the inner-elbow, the knees, and the palm of the hand. Impact is also an archer’s friend. A war arrow shot by a hundred pound bow, hurtling at incredible speeds and gaining momentum the further it travels, can evoke serious damage. To be hit by one of these arrows will feel more like being hit by a horse than being hit by someone’s fist. 

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Well, I suppose I should at least try. Maybe some thing good will happen. :)

This is the Lucky Ace. Reblog to recieve a wad of cash that is oddly specific to your current needs.

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Nods. I agree death is not the only self sacrifice. Others include: - sacrificing one's Personal moral standards for greater good of those who care about. Example: A character who ardently against mind control because they had been victimised by it themselves but was forced into a scenario where they had to use mind control or something more awful and abusive would occur to great number of people.

ok but like when did self-sacrifice become synonymous with death? writers seem to have forgotten that people can make personal sacrifices for the greater good without giving their lives. plots about self-sacrifice and selflessness don’t always have to end in death. suffering doesn’t have to be mourning. you can create drama and emotional depth on your show without killing everyone. learn to explore the meaning of living rather than dying