Creative Writing

A devil of a time — very difficult or causing a lot of trouble

Better the devil you know than the devil you don't — used to say that it is better to deal with a difficult person or situation one knows than with a new person or situation that could be worse

Between the devil and the deep blue sea — faced with two equally objectionable alternatives

Devil among the tailors — a firework that emits sparks, stars, and finally whirling imps

Devil-fire — will-o'-the wisp (i.e., a light that sometimes appears in the night over marshy ground and is often attributable to the combustion of gas from decomposed organic matter; a deceptive goal or hope); Saint Elmo's fire (i.e., a flaming phenomenon sometimes seen in stormy weather at prominent points on an airplane or ship and on land that is of the nature of a brush discharge of electricity)

Devil lore — demonology; often: a body of folk belief and custom concerning evil spirits or devils

Devil-may-care — easygoing, carefree

Devil to pay — severe consequences 

Devil's advocate — a person who champions the less accepted cause for the sake of argument

Devil's food cake — a rich chocolate cake

Devil's mass — indiscriminate cursing

Devil's tattoo — a drumming with or as if with fingers or feet

Devil theory —  a theory of history: political and social crises arise from the deliberate actions of evil or misguided leaders rather than as a natural result of conditions

Sell one's soul to the devil — to gain wealth, success, power, etc., by doing something bad or dishonest

Speak/talk to the devil — used in speech to say that someone one has been talking about has unexpectedly appeared

The defeat of the wizard who made people choose how they’d be to be executed

The woman who raised the changeling alongside her biological child

Cinderella finding Araura (and falling in love)

The God of Arepo (graphic novel 1 / 2 / 3) (ebook)

The Monster of Sentan

The Witch’s Cat

Raise Both Children

Stabby the Roomba (honorable mention)

Cinderella Marries the Prince (comic)

My Arch Nemesis Cynthia

Pirates and Mermaid

Eindred and the Witch

The Demon King

The Cornerwitch

Grandmother Beetroot

Apocalypse Daycare Worker

Grandmother Accidentally Summons a Demon

New Year Saga

A Story About Changelings

Ranger in the King’s Forest

The Difference Between a Hare and a Rabbit

24. The Queen with Three Cursed Children

25. Tiny Dragon with one coin hoard

26. Haunted house

27. Shark hero was about to go rogue

28. Grandma lives in the woods comic

29. A Different Aftermath comic

30. Battery (microstory but I love it so much)

31. It’s A Date comic

32. Supervillian kidnaps rival’s kid and they want to stay

33. Narrative Town

34. I have been hired to clean the wizard tower comic

35. Robot Apocalypse

36. The Statues That Do Not Weather

37. Kushiel

38. Tooth Fairy

39. Alien abduction

40. Felonious wish-granting

41. When humans met actual space orcs

so, ways to get around this:

turn off AI results. they're literally nonsense to us

don't use pinterest because the sources/provenance is often hard to trace

a standard internet search can be okay, but museum collections are the top tier (list of collections below this list)

instead of broad terms like victorian, regency, tudor, renaissance etc. try using the decade you're looking for. if you're not sure of what decade it is but have a vague image in your head, look on the fashion history timeline and just jump around until you find it. but even changing to e.g. 19th century will give better results than victorian

including terms like womenswear/menswear, daywear, formal wear, evening wear, court dress should increase the value of your search too

including "fashion plates" in your search can give you a nice impression of the intended silhouettes of the era. some of these might be a little stylised but will show you what was considered in vogue

for pre-fashion plate eras or things like makeup and styling, you'll have to look at portraiture or manuscripts. these are harder to actually find what you're looking for, but searching museum collections and limiting results to specific date ranges will be your friend

when looking at art, do bear in mind sometimes artists would paint fabric extra flow-y to show off their skills. it might not have been exactly like that in terms of fabric weight or drape. so, a pinch of salt required!

if you find something on image search where the provenance is dubious, reverse image search and you might find a source! i've been able to trace random pinterest images to real sources, but this does take a lot of time and effort and is often not worth the headache

some online resources and museum collections:

fashion history timeline is an invaluable resource if you're trying to get a feel for everything and should be your first port of call. it'll also link to good examples

the met has a vast number of extant examples of clothing, as well as fashion plates

costume institute fashion plates is a subcollection of the met for fashion plates (1800s-1922)

v&a also has many extant garments, fashion plates, and incredible articles on clothing and aesthetics. read the details of the objects because they'll often reveal a lot about the piece

lacma is good for C19th-20th pieces

nypl digital collection for photographs

national portrait gallery or similar for portraiture, or literally any museum in your country that has historical art

national museums scotland can be useful situationally but might be oddly specific

stout style history is a great collection for finding image references for fat people wearing historical clothes. survival bias of a lot of museum pieces tends towards smaller clothing that couldn't be repurposed, but this aims to counter that. it's not sortable, but is still a really nice resource

wikimedia commons is surprisingly handy! and the images, if you should need to link/repost them, are public domain

auction websites sound like a funny one to recommend. some won't have mannequins and some will. just look up historical garment auctions and you'll find some!

Love of the Half-Eaten Peach

Lee Wind (Author), Jieting Chen (Illustrated by)

Love of the Half-Eaten Peach presents an enchanting retelling of a timeless tale from ancient China.

Yuan is destined to rule a region of ancient China called Wei, circa 500 BCE.

When told by wise elders that to be an effective ruler, he must understand and strive for perfection, Yuan is baffled.

After all, nothing is perfect.

Yuan's friend Mi Zi Xia tries to help by finding something in the world that is truly perfect.

He eventually finds a peach that, upon eating some of it, he believes fits the bill.

Mi Zi Xia delivers the peach to Yuan, who does indeed find perfection - in the love he feels for the person who brought him the half-eaten fruit.

Yuan and Mi Zi Xia's story gained such fame that over the centuries, it inspired generations of people to use the expression "love of the half-eaten peach" in Chinese to describe romantic love between two men.

Love of the Half-Eaten Peach is an acclaimed, heartwarming picture book that reimagines an ancient folktale based on a true story.

The book emphasizes: History and Culture: Travel more than 2,500 years back in time to ancient China and learn about some of the people and customs of that era.

Duty and Responsibility: Watch lead character Yuan struggle with the expectations placed upon him as the future ruler of the region called Wei.

Friendship and Love: Follow Mi Zi Xia on his quest to support Yuan and watch the two friends discover how much they truly care about each other.

Folktales: See how an ancient tale inspired by actual historical events is reinterpreted for modern audiences with respect, care, and celebration.

They all hang out together when characters not around but they’re always grumbling about it and when char visits them they all spend the whole time lavishing char with praise and adoration and affection. Like some kind of tooth rotting polycule.

But it’s weirder than that cuz they all have completely platonic relationships to each other when chara not around. You’re probably thinking “ok so what it’s a harem” no your not listening. Their relationships to each other existed before this little group. They are all deeply intertwined in a way unrelated to char, and which char has never been a part of and will never be a part of and is not SUPPOSED to be apart of.

Char knows this whole ting is… bad. It hurts. Its nice. It’s scary. It’s like a scab they can’t stop picking at. Char doesn’t actually want this but it makes them feel useful and needed. So then char what a it and then char keeps going back. Friends try to stop em or talk em through like it’s a relapse.

Maybe something about the way it was filtered through chars mind meant an association of feeling normal for a while, and then occasionally indulging in something extremely pleasurable and gratifying to the more base shit. And that became a hard pattern to break. You know?

@carterkeane’s Morsel is a folk horror debut about learning to bite back when the world is determined to eat you alive. Here’s what it’s about:

Lou did what the children of parents with backbreaking, poorly paying jobs are supposed to do: pulled up her bootstraps, went to college, and got an office gig with coworkers who won’t stop talking about their multilevel marketing scheme disguised as self-betterment. When Lou accepts a property appraisal assignment in the rural hills of Ohio, she knows it's her last chance to save her job and keep making rent. But she quickly finds herself stranded in the middle of nowhere with a sabotaged truck, her dog, and someone—or something—stalking her through the ancient Appalachian woods. If she can’t escape the woods in time, she’ll see firsthand that her job isn’t the only thing that wants to eat her alive.

This is from 1966 and you can see over a hundred photos on the NYPL digital collections website. It is absolutely gorgeous. These are just a few of my favourites.

Plus Puck's face here:

I have stuff for you today about my favorite authors, but in a round about way. Simply put, here are authors who I read a lot. In fact I’ve read over 5 of their books. But that’s partly because they’ve written over 5 books! I do have other favorite authors.

10 authors by whom I’ve read at least 5 books (the way back version)

So these are authors I read a lot in my youth. This is going date me. (But, frankly, you can find out how old I actually am if you try hard enough. This is the Internet Age, there are no secrets, only lies. Good luck finding my actual birth date. That’s under lock down.)

Garth Nix

Tanya Huff 

Kate Elliott

Lee & Miller

Anne McCaffrey

Robin McKinley

Patricia Wrede

Jane Yolen

Sharon Green

Tamora Pierce

10 authors by whom I’ve read at least 5 books (the yes, really version)

Some of these authors may surprise you since, for various (probably not very valid) reasons, I don’t seem to talk about them much.

SL Viehl

Jean Johnson

Moira Moore

Eli Easton

Lyn Gala

Kim Fielding

Amy Lane

AE Via

Cat Sebastian

JD Macdonald

No one will be surprised by this last batch:

10 authors by whom I’ve read at least 5 books (the of course version)

Never say you’re surprised by any of these!

Douglas Adams

Terry Pratchett

Mercedes Lackey

Patricia Briggs

Alyssa Cole

Courtney Milan

KJ Charles

R Cooper

Alexis Hall

TJ Klune

Yours (destined to be killed by a tumbling TBR pile),

the largest eagle to ever exist (pouākai) was endemic to aotearoa

same with the tallest bird to ever exist (moa)

tuatara is only remaining species in the order sphenodontia and only exists here (for context- the other three extant reptile orders are snakes+lizards, turtles+tortoises, and crocodiles+alligators+caimans)

only two native land mammals and they're both tiny bats

kea is the only alpine parrot on earth

wētāpunga is the heaviest insect on earth

hard to condense into a quick "fun fact" but matariki is an incredibly celebration that has a lot of fascinating history and tradition behind it, totally worth researching!!

less of a fact more of a "check this out" but showing people photos of rotorua's geothermal areas is a favourite of mine

we were the first nation to give women the right to vote in 1893, almost a decade before any other country on earth!