Sunshine Challenge 2022 #1: Amber (Preservation)

The sunshine_challenge returns, as a peaceful afternoons sort of prompting to talk about things that fit the theme for this year, which seems to focus on solid things, things that might be used as jewels, even if they're not gemstones by definition (amber is more properly a resin, and lapis lazuli, the bonus stone, is a metamorphic rock.)

Amber was believed by the Vikings to be the tears of Freyja, their goddess of love and beauty. It symbolises cleansing, healing, protection, renewal; some have believed it to symbolise a resting place for departed souls due to the preserved insects in the resin. It has been used as a talisman for courage and confidence. Amber is one of the birthstones of Taurus as it's known to increase good luck, as well as helping Taurus personalities in their practical ventures.

( #1: Amber (Preservation) )

More linkdump and tabs-cleaning - late June 02022

Hello again. We should begin with the understanding that fandom, especially teen girl fans, is always more complex than airheads screaming for their idols.

senmut is compiling a sticky post of all the Archive Of Our Own feeds that have Dreamwidth Feed accounts, which, if a particular work or pairing is something you can't get enough of, will allow you to be notified of new works/chapters to your DW reading page (or so that you can construct a Reading Page with all of the AO3 feeds you want on one, and one without that, depending on whether you want to be social or immersed in new fic possibilities.

Good criticism often comes from a place of investment in the thing, with the example of a site called Your Webcomic Is Bad And You Should Feel Bad as an example where there mostly wasn't investment in the material itself, and as such, relied on punching down about the prejudices of the reviewer. As someone who's written more than a half-million words about a series that I still think has a fantastic premise and a terrible execution, this rings pretty true to me. The people who are often the most invested in something are the ones who can provide the most thoughtful critiques of it, because it's a lot easier to see where things fall down when you've been looking at the things that have gone well.

Advice on writing characters: Their strengths are also their weaknesses, because the traits are either well-suited or ill-suited to the situation at hand, and make the background characters pop by making it obvious they're more than just whatever their primary role in the story is.

Advice on writing characters: choosing a name for a character that's Chinese involves a lot of thinking about the concepts you want to express in the name and what characters go with that, plus a whole bunch of things to both consider and do and consider and avoid. (This goes well with romanizations of ways of refering to family members and their relationships and titles and prefixes or suffixes to indicate certain kinds of people characers may meet, also romanized.)

( And all the rest of the things )

Last for tonight, several vegetables of Japan, with substitutions and recipes that use those vegetables.

Also, a proper guild for those who work at the Medieval Times themes restaurant and entertainment vernues. We hope their election succeeds and they gain the power of collective bargaining.

(Materials via adrian_turtle, azurelunatic, boxofdelights, cmcmck, conuly, cosmolinguist, elf, finch, firecat, jadelennox, jenett, jjhunter, kaberett, lilysea, oursin, rydra_wong, snowynight, sonia, thewayne, umadoshi, vass, the meta_warehouse community, and anyone else that's I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)