working on draft 3 (DRDW)

Thanks for tagging me @oh-no-another-idea and @astoldbybillie!

Finlay looked out at the rain still hammering down outside. 'Is that why you're here?' he asked at length. 'Couldn't you sleep?' Edwin followed his gaze. 'No,' he said softly. 'I couldn't.' 'Well, you're welcome in the tent any time,' Finlay joked, uneasy with the sudden quietness of him. 'The door's always open. Or it would be, if I had one.'

I'll leave it open tag!

Thanks for the tag @gioia-writes-and-others

From Snow on the Pines (this provides the context to this):

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“I almost had it!”

“Really? If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to lose that one.”

“You try playing to strange rules on a layout that is an inconsistent as the weather!” Aster retorted.

“Well I guess that you northerners don’t have as firm a grasp of the game as we were led to believe.” Rime playfully teased.

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Tagging @somethingclevermahogony @kaylinalexanderbooks @orphanheirs @sunset-a-story @kitty-is-writing

a few people reblogged my original post without the further commentary w tags like this, so i'd like to clarify.

ADAPTABILITY IS recognizing that the situation you have found yourself in is making you miserable in some way and changing something, internally or externally, in order to make it tenable. changes, depending on the situation, may include but are not limited to:

looking at something ultimately harmless but frustrating to you from a different perspective and shifting your outlook towards it accordingly. for example, sometimes annoying but harmless behaviors from loved ones are genuinely how they show care and thoughtfulness, and recognizing that can genuinely make them no longer frustrating. it sounds stupid but it's true. (obviously there's nuance here, but this post isn't about that)

recognizing bodily pain from the situation and taking preventative measures in the future so that it doesn't get worse, i.e. wearing a wrist brace when drawing if you've recognized that drawing is beginning to hurt your hand, or wearing a knee brace if you work a very labor-intensive job and are experiencing knee pain

recognizing a current organizational system is no longer working in your favor and either changing the problem elements of it or finding a new one. sticking with one that doesn't work any more in the hopes that it just randomly will again is only gonna leave you in limbo, embrace the pivot.

as said in my commentary, blocking a tag or user of a website that annoys you rather than stewing in frustration every time you see them. you're on the internet to have fun, there's literally no point in letting your limited free time in this world suck when you can make it so it doesn't.

recognizing a minor annoyance your partner or friend is causing and working around this so that it is no longer a concern. key word MINOR. for example, if you're annoyed they never put the toaster back to the right setting and you keep burning your toast because of it, it's going to be better for both of you if you just realize that that's always going to happen and just double check the setting yourself before trying to make toast. (again, nuance, but this post isn't about that)

recognizing your own shortcomings as a singular person and the benefits of being a social animal and asking for outside assistance. adaptability sometimes means knowing when you can't do it by yourself. yes, really.

ADAPTABILITY IS NOT just fucking grinning and bearing it. something that is harming you actively breaks you down over time. an animal in a new environment is not adapting to that environment if it's still hurting them. either they change so that it can't hurt them any more, or they change the environment around them to suit them.

if you are able to adapt to something, you should be, baseline, comfortable with it at the end of the day. not "kinda frustrated but it's fine", not "upset but it is what it is" - you should be comfortable.

if you are living in ambient misery instead, that is not adaptability, that is tolerance, and eventually that tolerance is going to meet its threshold and you are going to crack.

For example, your travelers might know that they're near civilization when they start finding trees in the woods that have been tapped, for pitch or for sap. They might find a forester's trap line and trace it back to his hut to get medical care. Maybe they retrace the passage of a peasant and his pig out hunting for truffles. If they're coming along a coast, maybe your travelers come across the pools where sea water is dried down to salt, or the furnaces where bog iron ore is smelted.

Maybe they see a column of smoke and follow it to the house-sized kilns of a potter's yard where men work making bricks or roof tiles. From miles away they could smell the unmistakeable odor of pine sap being rendered down into pitch, and follow that to a village. Or they hear the flute playing of a shepherd boy whiling away the hours in the high pasture.

They could find the clearing where the charcoal burners recently broke down an earth kiln, and follow the hoof prints and drag marks of their horse and sledge as they hauled the charcoal back to civilization. Or follow the sound of metal on stone to a quarry or gravel pit. Maybe they know they're nearly to town when they come across a clay bank with signs of recent clay gathering.

Of course around every town and city there will be farms, more densely packed the closer you are. But don't just think of fields of grains or vegetables. Think of managed woodlands, like maybe trees coppiced-- cut and then regrown--to customize the shape or size of the branches. Cows being grazed in a communal green. Waiting as a huge flock of ducks is driven across the road. Orchards in bloom.

If they're approaching by road, there will be things best done out of town. The threshing floor where grain is beaten with flails or run through crushing wheels to separate the grain from its casing, and then winnowed, using the wind to carry away the chaff. Laundresses working in the river, their linens bleaching on the grass at the drying yard. The stench of the tanners, barred from town for stinking so badly. The rushing wheel-race and great creaking wheel of the flour mill.

If it's a larger town, there might be a livestock market outside the gates, with goats milling in woven willow pens or chickens in wooden cages. Or a line of horses for the wealthier buyer or your desperate travelers. There might be a red light district, escaping the regulations of the city proper, or plain old slums. More industrial yards, like the yards where fabric is dyed (these might also smell quite bad, like rotting plant material, or urine).

The coppice and pollard systems are one of my favorite pre-modern things, it's just so visually unique and sensible, but most people haven't heard about it.

When you coppice, you cut the tree close to the ground, so only the trunk is left, then the tree puts out fairly straight shoots that are great for firewood. They would typically have these trees harvested on rotation so new trees would be ready every year.

This is a coppiced tree:

When you pollard, you cut the tree to the trunk, but higher, and let the branches grow for longer. They'll be be nice and straight (depending on species) with fewer knots, and suitable to various crafts without much need to work the wood. Sadly seems to be etymologically unrelated to "pole", though the branches from these trees were used to make poles. Part of why you do this instead of coppicing is that the shoots are out of reach of animals.

This is a pollarded tree:

It gives you the withies for wattle and daub and fencing, basket making(which was really important - like a lot of stuff would have been wickerwork in the past, including things like furniture and fish traps), the hurdles for thatching, supports for agricultural use, poles for fencing and housing, the wood for furniture, materials for tool handles, and household items (wooden spoons, buckets, barrels). Ash gave you the shafts for arrows, and oak was used for the timbers for ships!

Also, historically, metal and fabric were expensive and a high energy things to produce - whereas wood was renewable, easily workable, and came pre-made*. As such, a lot more of the world was made of wood - buckets, machinery, etc (Have you ever seen a hazel lathe? So fucking cool.) Even things like whisks or washing up tools were often made of wood. And while a small remote, community might just be able to cut down a tree when they need wood - for a larger population, your source needs to be renewable.

Hence the coppice. (And the pollarding.)

tagged by @oh-no-another-idea, thank you! playing fast and loose with the notion of a line but i. can do what i want :p

anyway, here’s some claws bits and pieces

[ID - a red and black decorative divider]

A line with a musical instrument

The swarming spiders form shapes around them. What could be faces—what could be a face very like Vivien’s only sharper, meaner, deader. Thudding upstairs; the rhythmic thump and squeak of a bed under strain, the muffled chug of heavy electric guitars. Distorted, incomprehensible shouting: anger, disgust, and then footsteps and wailing and under it all, constant and inescapable, a steady, hungry hiss.

A line where someone is writing

He pays enough attention to take a few notes. There are slides he can look at later—or maybe get a repeat of the entire lecture in private, sup the knowledge directly from Rainier’s mouth.

A line with a pet

At last he approaches the largest tank—Bitsy’s tank. She’s larger than any of the other tarantulas in Rainier’s collection; larger, Vivien thinks, as she emerges from her burrow to greet him, than her species normally gets. Her diagonal leg span is definitely more than five inches. The namesake neon blue of her legs is so bright it almost glows in the dim light of the room, and the small cluster of her eyes glitters like black diamonds.

A line about a fight

A fight. They fought. Why? You’re not supposed to fight if you’re in love.

A line featuring the stars

Vivien’s eyes are a pulling abyss. Who has eyes like that, like the space between the stars, like bottomless pits of ichor?

[ID - a red and black decorative divider]

- It usually started to get dry about now, but this year the resumption was nearly empty and a burn ban had been put into effect

- “Clothes shopping again?”

“After what happened last summer, I decided drastic measures are needed.”

- The committee had something special planned for the first fireworks show of the year

- The canopy overhead had reduced the light to just a few shafts amongst the trunks

- Insurance. Check. Full stock. Check. Earplugs. Check. Emergency services on speed dial. Check. They were ready for the tourists.

- “Bugs are back!”

“Going to need something stronger than citronella to deal with them!”

-It was getting late. Any more delays and the crew would have to risk sailing during hurricane season.

- Character enters the gardening competition for the first time and discovers how cutthroat it actually is

- Warm air and cold water kept the harbor shrouded in mists for the better part of the day

As someone who is trying to silence the perfectionist in my brain this 'advice' is NOT helpful and I'm tired of seeing it on my dash.

In my humble opinion, you can write anything you want, no ifs or buts.

What if the children go to schools unafraid of tear gas and bullets?

What if the birds come back, and the bees are healed, and every species moves from endangered, to threatened, to thriving?

What if the rainforest ADVANCES?

What if every parking lot had solar panels? What if every structure had solar panels? What if we built climbing gyms and terraced gardens in the skeletons of old coal power plants?

What if you baked your neighbor bread, and they shared their home-grown blackberries?

What if every person who needed a home, had one? What if every person who needed healing was healed?

What if every body was treasured for what it was, not what it should be?

What if every trans child's parents attended their graduation, their wedding, their new-name-day?

What if every warehouse became a closed-circle repair station? Goods flowing out, and back, and out again? What if landfills started to SHRINK?

What if the water and air were clean? What if there was enough public transit that the cars dwindled, leaving the streets safe for kids on bikes, evening deer, midnight cats and foxes?

What if we win?

The condors are back. The whales are saved. The sea turtles are no longer endangered. The cranes are back. The bees are recovering. The air in LA and Tokyo and London is clean again. The aquifers in the LA Basin are refilling.

Children are kinder than previous generations. Parents are stopping the abuse cycle. Being trans and queer is more acceptable than ever on a ground level.

It's hard to see if you're young, if you don't know how to step back from social media and the news. But remember--bad news sells, and the algorithm knows despair keeps you scrolling. It's a skewed lens.

We are fighting and we are winning against this adminstration's bullying. We are coming together against the bullies and they are running away scared because they don't understand that we will do that.

People are working hard every day to find ways to make sure fewer animals get hit by cars and planes and rockets.

Maker spaces are more common than ever. Solar and wind are more common than ever. Coal plants are shutting down every day.

Unprecedented numbers of acres are being bought back or given back to their rightful stewards, and the world heals because of it. People are working hard every day to learn how to help a forest recover faster.

We are not at zero. We are at decades of effort to heal the world. We've come SO far.

In 1982 there were only 22 California Condors left in the world. In 1992, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), with its public and private partners, began reintroducing captive-bred condors to the wild. In 2001 the first wild nesting occurred in Grand Canyon National Park since re-introduction. In 2002 there were only 8 pairs of wild nesting birds population-wide. In 2008, for the first time since the program began, more California condors were flying free in the wild than in captivity. Today there are nearly 500 – more than half of them flying free in Arizona, Utah, California, and Baja Mexico.

When I was born, there were no condors in the wild. I'm 37 now, and there are over 250 condors flying free.

When my mom was born in 1955, there were days when she wasn't allowed to go outside to play, because of the air pollution. When I was born, that never happened anymore.

When I was born, humpback whales were critically endangered, and people thought they were going to go extinct. Today, they've recovered to exceed their recorded numbers. Other whales too!

We fixed it.

Thanks for tagging me @oh-no-another-idea!

I'll leave it open tag! New words are: front, force, flight, fright, and flee!

Do any of your characters have any traits/quirks/hobbies that they just kind of picked for themselves? What's one of the weirder ones?

*blows dust off ask*

Hello! Thank you for this ask!

I'm using Animatronic Saga characters, so let's see what I can remember. 😂

Gwen - fidgets with her clothes

Jade - tilts her head to the side when she's confused or asking something sometimes

Cass - blows at her bangs constantly

Ok, how much torture can I justify in my epic fantasy novel so that my normal readers don't suspect I'm some sadist? (which I'm not)

I think this much is not too much...

Your leather footwear does not have an infinite shelf life. It requires conditioning in addition to stuff like heel and sole replacement. I'm gonna go over the easiest way to take care of them and ensure you get your money's worth out of those spency boots you bought.

Remember: Take care of your shoes, and they'll take care of you!

brush the salt off your boots when you come in.

look at the post above for tips on how to clean off salt stuck to leather because it got wet

never ever dry your leather footwear by radiators or heater vents!! let it dry unassisted

keep your leather footwear oiled with mink oil!