incorrigible & spoilsport

Witch edition

🌙 astrology sign?

💎 favorite crystal?

🔮 favorite form of divination?

🧘🏿‍♀️ do you look up to a guru/psychic/spiritual leader?

🧚🏻‍♀️ have you had any paranormal experiences?

🌞 are you working with a deity?

📿 describe your altar

🕯️do you have a favorite spell/ritual?

🧿 what persuaded you to start practicing?

🧝🏻‍♀️ what kind of witch are you?

🌟 are you currently manifesting anything?

🔢 do you see angel numbers?

👽 do you channel spirits/interdimensional beings?

🌀 have you had spiritual experiences under the influence?

🙏🏼 what puts you in a spiritual mood?

👁️ what are your psychic/intuitive abilities?

📌 have you ever hexed anyone?

🎶 do you chant or listen to meditation music?

🌎 what’s most profound experience spiritually?

🌑 have you experienced a “dark night of the soul” for witchcraft? How did you get back into it?

🐺 do most people know about your craft, or do you keep it a secret?

🌐 are you into spiritual conspiracies?

🐉 what are your thoughts on cryptids/magical animals?

🕊️ are you a religious witch?

🗝️ have you ever manipulated a situation to your favor using witchcraft?

🪦 do you contact your ancestors?

"When this is over, and it will be, we will fix it, I won’t go back to it Mitchell, I refuse. This isn’t the life I want, it never was. Right now it’s what I have to do, but when it isn’t, when we’ve won -"

And she kisses them, fiercely, passionately, with every fiber of her being poured into their heat. When the kiss is broken, she only backed an inch to ask,

This is a great question!

Something I've discussed before wrt economic development, is the need to avoid presentism as much as possible. So I've always taken as a central limiter of my economic development proposals that they have to fit within the boundaries of what was known/technologically feasible during the Late Middle Ages through to the Early Modern period.

In this fashion, I try to avoid the Connecticut Yankeee in King Arthur's Court scenario where all of the sudden steam engines appear hundreds of years early out of nowhere - because we shouldn't be assuming that economic development is some teleological process that has to go through the same stages as Western European economic development did in our timeline. The result is that I got really into reading about the Commercial Revolution and the technologies that drove economic development during that period - hence why I became obsessed about canal-building, because canals were a key technology that the Early Modern nation-state used to create and reshape markets.

So here is a meta-list of books I'd recommend on economic development in the Middle Ages through the Early Modern period:

books about medieval and Renaissance governments.

William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis, Lawrence Goodwyn's The Populist Moment, and Will and Wong's Nourish the People on the making and remaking and regulating of agricultural markets.

books about Medieval and Renaissance urban development.

books about medieval guilds.

Robert S. Lopez' Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages.

Joseph Gies' Merchants and Moneymen: the Commercial Revolution.

Pamela Smith, Paul Findlen ed. Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe.

Ralph Davis' A Commercial Revolution.

Anthony Burton's The Canal Pioneers and The Canal Builders.

John Blair ed. Waterways and Canal-Building in Medieval England.

gtkm meme » [2/?] characters  » Anne Bonny (Black Sails) 

I believe it’s fine to describe what your characters are wearing. However, like all things, it should serve some kind of purpose.

For instance, describing winter clothes helps impart to the reader a sense of how cold it is. Describing summer clothes helps explain how warm it is.

Describing an outfit before a social event gives a window onto the character’s sense of fashion, or explains their reverence (or lack) for the event; for example a character can wear a black suit to a funeral, or watch from a distance while wearing a t-shirt and jeans. These impart a different attitude.

An outfit may be described purely to give a little more interest to a character; to give the reader a bit more insight into who they are, through the way they present themselves. It may have no greater significance to the wider story but this is still a reason to do it.

“I was wearing a purple hoodie, black skinny jeans, and checkered converse.”

 vs 

“I wiped my palms on the thighs of my jeans. Black was the best color for when you’re going grave robbing – the dirt and blood didn’t stand out as much. Sadie flung the shovel back with a little more force than was necessary, flinging hunks of dirt onto my shoes. I paid 85$ for these limited edition checkered converse, and while perhaps I shouldn’t have been wearing them to grave rob, I didn’t have anything else. I pulled Abby’s shirt out of the pocket of my hoodie, running my fingers over the fabric. It was covered in purple lint from my jacket, but she wouldn’t care anyways. She was dead”

Unless you’re writing in the objective voice (which you probably aren’t, because it’s a. only appropriate in a few specific circumstances, and b. extremely difficult to write well), your writing is going to have an implied viewpoint character – usually but not always the focus character of the scene – so you’ve gotta ask yourself: what would my PoV character make note of?

Spending a paragraph doing a point-by-point breakdown of a character’s outfit is the equivalent of your PoV stopping to give them the full once over. Is that appropriate? Is it in character? Did they get caught doing it?

Even a flatly factual description that offers no direct opinions on what’s observed tells you something about your PoV’s personality, because now you know what sort of things they do and don’t notice.

BURN YOUR KINGDOM DOWN | a mix for the iron throne, the battling kings and queens, the ghost-fraught soldiers, and the lost children of westeros.

i. seven devils - florence + the machine | ii. sorrow - the national | iii. hero - regina spektor | iv. no one would riot for less - bright eyes | v. timshel - mumford & sons | vi. blackbird - evan rachel wood | vii. fallen - imagine dragons | viii. exile vilify - the national | ix. blood to gold - boy and bear | x. youth - daughter | xi. the wolves - ben howard | xii. mother of dragons [instrumental] - ramin djawadi