Credit For All Character Art: Kitkatkatee

are you happy with that?

þ!

A feature of English which I think is stupid,

If we’re carrying on with this game,

Is how we abolished the thorn and replaced it,

With two letters that meant the same.

The þ was a letter, amazing, astounding,

Perfect in every respect,

Representing the ‘th’ sound and shortening words,

The one thing it didn’t expect;

One day T and H went and burgled its meaning,

And then, thanks to the printing press,

Its symbol mutated and morphed into Y,

Which is pointless, I must confess.

Þoughtlessly, the þ was forgotten,

Þreatened as the language evolved,

Þankful for þose who knew of old English,

A topic where it was involved.

It only survived in Modern Icelandic,

In English it’s treated with scorn,

And as barely anyone knows it exists,

Please try to remember the thorn.

I will say, thank you. I've been trying to get enough info to write a reasonably historical fic for a while, and now I have somewhere to start!

Some things England/Spain shippers (and the rest of the Hetalia fandom) get wrong

“Spain’s hegemony over the seas ended after the Armada’s defea-”

“The Anglo-spanish war (1585-1604) was a victory for Engl-”

“British Empire replaced Spanish Empire after 1588”

“Both Empires (Spanish and British) were even during X perio-”

“England and Spain have always been enemi-”

“England has always beaten the crap out of Spa-”

England/Spain is my OTP, and since I’ve read too many times things like the ones listed above I think some real historical stuff would be enlightening for everybody. So, shall we?

Keep reading

Giveaway Contest: We’re giving away fifteen vintage, ‘60s-era Penguin Classics by Homer, Sophocles, Herodotus, Voltaire, Plato, and others! It took me three years to accumulate these books one by one, and I’m already starting to have separation issues. *sigh* But I know they will go to a good home. Won’t this collection look lovely on your shelf? :D To win these classics, you must: 1) be following macrolit on Tumblr (yes, we will check. :P), and 2) reblog this post. We will choose a random winner on August 27, at which time we’ll start a new giveaway. And yes, we’ll ship to any country. Easy, right? Good luck!

is it you who changed or is it me

Just believe in yourself. Even if you don’t just pretend that you do and, at some point, you will.

Venus Williams (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

We mostly agree that Will is very similar to Sarcean — he can’t tell the truth to save his life, he’s sneaky, calculated, smart, and we can’t forget his thing for blondes. But if that’s the case, how similar is James, simply personality-wise, to Anharion? How does that impact the story? James is capable of so much spite and anger and viciousness, especially at betrayal, what does his almost romantic feelings at the memory of Sarcean mean?

Something that needs to be said, over and over again

PSA

I love every fanfiction author on earth !!! Thank you so much for using your own time to provide us with a free(!) story to read that is 10x better than every book I have read put in one!

For long fic writers: Your detailed fics are so amazing and you amaze me every single time with the amount of research and time you have put into your beautiful works! Whether I am looking to kill time or just want something to distract me you have provided me with that, and I am so glad we have writers like you!

For short fic writers: Your fluffy/angsty/smutty/all of the above fics are so nice to read after a long day! When I just need something small because I don’t have the energy for something long, you wrote something for yourself and shared it with us, and I am so glad that we have writers like you!

If you write fluff; Thank you so much! I love reading your self-indulgent fics. They are so sweet and adorable and those characters definitely would do that.

If you write angst; Thank you so much! I love reading your painful fics. I’m always excited to see how it will end and if things will ever get better.

If you write smut; Thank you so much! I love reading your own fantasies(or realities, or just what you chose to write). They make me smile and blush.

If you write romance; Thank you so much! I love reading about my otp falling in love over and over. Even if it is cliché, it’s also unique and I’m still  surprised each time.

If you write about platonic relationships; Thank you so much! I love reading about my favorite best friends and siblings. You bring something not often seen and your courage is amazing.

If you write crack; Thank you so much! I love reading your random fics. They make me laugh time and time again and even if they are weird and ooc, they are amazing too.

If you write anything else; THANK YOU SO MUCH! Whatever it is you write, it is amazing and I love it. 

I know my singular opinion doesn’t mean much when there are millions of people on this earth, but I want it to be heard!

I LOVE FANFICION WRITERS. YA’LL ARE THE REAL MVPS.

on fanfic & emotional continuity

Writing and reading fanfic is a masterclass in characterisation. 

Consider: in order to successfully write two different “versions” of the same character - let alone ten, or fifty, or a hundred - you have to make an informed judgement about their core personality traits, distinguishing between the results of nature and nurture, and decide how best to replicate those conditions in a new narrative context. The character you produce has to be recognisably congruent with the canonical version, yet distinct enough to fit within a different - perhaps wildly so - story. And you physically can’t accomplish this if the character in question is poorly understood, or viewed as a stereotype, or one-dimensional. Yes, you can still produce the fic, but chances are, if your interest in or knowledge of the character(s) is that shallow, you’re not going to bother in the first place. 

Because ficwriters care about nuance, and they especially care about continuity - not just literal continuity, in the sense of corroborating established facts, but the far more important (and yet more frequently neglected) emotional continuity. Too often in film and TV canons in particular, emotional continuity is mistakenly viewed as a synonym for static characterisation, and therefore held anathema: if the character(s) don’t change, then where’s the story? But emotional continuity isn’t anti-change; it’s pro-context. It means showing how the character gets from Point A to Point B as an actual journey, not just dumping them in a new location and yelling Because Reasons! while moving on to the next development. Emotional continuity requires a close reading, not just of the letter of the canon, but its spirit - the beats between the dialogue; the implications never overtly stated, but which must logically occur off-screen. As such, emotional continuity is often the first casualty of canonical forward momentum: when each new TV season demands the creation of a new challenge for the protagonists, regardless of where and how we left them last, then dealing with the consequences of what’s already happened is automatically put on the backburner.

Fanfic does not do this. 

Fanfic embraces the gaps in the narrative, the gracenotes in characterisation that the original story glosses, forgets or simply doesn’t find time for. That’s not all it does, of course, but in the context of learning how to write characters, it’s vital, because it teaches ficwriters - and fic readers - the difference between rich and cardboard characters. A rich character is one whose original incarnation is detailed enough that, in order to put them in fanfic, the writer has to consider which elements of their personality are integral to their existence, which clash irreparably with the new setting, and which can be modified to fit, to say nothing of how this adapted version works with other similarly adapted characters. A cardboard character, by contrast, boasts so few original or distinct attributes that the ficwriter has to invent them almost out of whole cloth. Note, please, that attributes are not necessarily synonymous with details in this context: we might know a character’s favourite song and their number of siblings, but if this information gives us no actual insight into them as a person, then it’s only window-dressing. By the same token, we might know very few concrete facts about a character, but still have an incredibly well-developed sense of their personhood on the basis of their actions. 

The fact that ficwriters en masse - or even the same ficwriter in different AUs - can produce multiple contradictory yet still fundamentally believable incarnations of the same person is a testament to their understanding of characterisation, emotional continuity and narrative. 

PLEASE REPLY OR STATE IN THE REBLOG IF YOU’RE INTERESTED IN BUYING

I’ll sell this for about 7-8 USD, though, price might vary when the final product comes out, cheaper or so. Also, I’ll ship this world-wide!

There will be 

Original Version (as in the pic)

Spades Queen Version

Bunny Version

Black Top Hat Version

2P Version

Mochi Version

And still open for more suggestions

Thank you, please boost ♡