In a modern context, big houses rarely serve any narrative purpose beyond jokes about rooms nobody has ever been in, but historically, all that extra space had an important function. Apart from families generally being larger and multi-generational households being the norm, hospitality was a major part of a wealthy household’s basic social obligations. Travel was time-consuming and expensive, and obviously your rich buddies couldn’t just rent a room while they were in town (how gauche!), so you’d be expected to put them up for as long as they cared to stay. Indeed, being able to put up lots and lots of guests was one of the basic ways you demonstrated your high status.

This expectation of hospitality extended beyond your immediate social circle, as well. If you were the big name around town, you could expect to have government officials, artists and philosophers, travelling nobility, and the like hitting you up for a spare room on very little notice, and you had to be very careful about saying “no” because refusal might be construed as a snub – or worse, an admission that you can’t afford it! The upshot is that, at any given time, a large household might be playing host to a bewildering assortment of friends, relatives, friends of relatives, relatives of friends, celebrities both far-ranging and local, dignitaries, con artists, miscellaneous weirdos, and that one guy who nobody can quite place, but whose presence everyone is too polite to question.

(The miscellaneous weirdos are a big part of it, in fact. If you’ve ever wondered how someone makes a career out of something like “being France’s most famous lover”, that’s basically how it worked: you’d use your outlandish reputation to prevail on some random wealthy jerk’s hospitality, hang around their house as an “honoured guest” for a couple of months, then discreetly move on before you wore out your welcome and repeat the whole process somewhere else. There was a whole class of people who made lifelong careers out of being entertainingly weird guests.)

Yes and no.

In general, you wouldn’t prevail upon the hospitality of someone too much lower than you in status, lest you be perceived as slumming it – and on the flip side, if you prevailed upon the hospitality of someone too much higher than you in status, the master of the house could tell you to fuck off without consequence, so you’d have to go out of your way to make yourself a desirable guest. (See: the “entertaining weirdo” parenthetical, above.)

The term “zombie” is both a technical term, referring to a family, and a common name, referring to a genus.

The family Zombie is a broad, overarching group that includes the genus that many people call zombie (Ghoulus, not to be confused with Ghouli, the unrelated genus of the Ghala family which also includes bogeymen and some ghosts*) as well as the Mummy genus (Pyrima), the spore-zombie genus (Fungan) and a few others.

The colloquial term “Zombie” is the common term for the genus Ghoulus, which is in the family Zombie and includes Ghoulus romero (the walking zombie), Ghoulus snydera (the running zombie), and Ghoulus smithi (the vampiric zombie, also called the legendary zombie).

Interestingly, there are several things called “zombies” that are neither Ghoulus nor Zombie, including the dancing zombie (Jacksoni thrillera), which is more closely related to (although not currently actually in the same family as) clowns.

*Note: the ghosts in the Ghala family are not true ghosts. True ghosts are in the order Spectere, which is entirely unrelated to Ghouli, Ghoulus, Pyrima, and Fungan. Ghala “ghosts” are given the common name ghost because of their superficial similarity to true ghosts.

the closest to a domesticated ghost we have is the house ghost, Phantome domus (sometimes classified as a distinct subspecies Phantome domus domesticus).

P. domus is interesting because it’s like housecats – they are technically domesticated (scans have shown that the fight-or-flight response, like in domesticated animals, is weaker in P. domus than in related species like P. majestica, the manor ghost, or P. more, the cemetary ghost), but evidence suggests that it’s a naturalistic co-evolution rather than an intentional domestication process like with sheep or dogs.

A blacksmith is a generalist, a person who uses tools and fire to work iron.  Some blacksmiths work more specifically, so you get, say, an architectural blacksmith, who focuses more or less exclusively on things like gates, rails, fences, or an artist blacksmith, who makes wacky sculptures or what have you.  These days, though, that’s a pretty blurry line.  ‘Blacksmith’ is a pretty damn broad term, but it’s nowhere near broad enough to cover everything encompassed in ‘metalworker’, which is how I often see it used.  There are a LOT of different skills for working metal, and no one knows them all.  Some other terms:

A farrier shoes horses.  They may make the shoes, or they may buy them and then size them, but they actually do the shoeing.  Unless the blacksmith is also a farrier, they don’t know shit about horses’ hooves and are not qualified to deal with them and probably don’t want to.

A blacksmith works IRON, usually almost exclusively.  They might work with bronze or do a bit of brazing, but those are really separate skillsets.  If you work, say, tin and/or pewter, you are in fact a whitesmith.  You could also be a silversmith or a coppersmith, and so on.

Knifemakers and swordsmiths have their own highly specialized and fairly complex specialties, and usually a blacksmith wouldn’t mess with that unless they want to pick up a new skillset or if they’re really the only game going for a long way around.  By the same token, a swordsmith might never have learned the more general blacksmithing skills.  They’re not the same thing is what I’m trying to say here.  Likewise armorers.  There’s overlap but it’s not the same thing.

If you make metal items via molds and casting, you work at a foundry and are a foundryman.

In fantasy, though, it’s all different.  Tolkien’s dwarves have an average lifespan of 250, so they have much longer to pick up skills (and live in an environment where probably it’s much easier and encouraged for them to do so: they live in cities that are concentrated on providing made items and skills to other species: they aren’t a generalist society, very unlike any human institution I can think of.)  They also ‘make mighty spells’ so very unlike real medieval blacksmiths, they are probably working metal with enchantment as well as tongs. 

We don’t know about their gender role situation, but I don’t think there’s anything in canon to say that the women aren’t making things (and even if there was, there are loads of dwarf cities that last for thousands of years, so no doubt there’s variation between them). 

Let’s talk first about the name!  Historically Smith would mean metal worker and the color would tell you what type of metal. Black is the designation for iron (because of the color it takes after being heated and cooled several times.)  Today Smith more generally means maker, but is still most commonly applied to metal workers.

And, as the OP said, if you need a tinker (tinsmith, also works pewter), silversmith (whitesmith), goldsmith (white- or yellow- smith), or coppersmith (red-, brown-, or green- smith), that’s a different discipline.  Not that a blacksmith has no idea how to work those metals, but his knowledge will likely be limited to how it applies to his general discipline.  For example, weapons and armor made for nobility might have precious metals used to decorate them.  (Aside: The techniques for iron vs copper are complete opposites and one of my favorite modern blacksmithing proverbs is about brass, an alloy made with copper and zinc.  It runs, “Brass, brass, what a pain in the… brain.” )

One of my choice historical bits is talking about medieval blacksmithing in England. This is something we actually have records of because of the guild structure. There were so many blacksmiths in urbanized areas that your permit to open a shop would permit you to make only a specific set of items. Pin drawers, chain makers, armorers, swordsmiths, farm tools, nails, wainwright (hoops for wagon wheels or barrels), farriers (horse shoeing)… all of those might be different shops.  And that isn’t even a complete list!  (Naturally there was a lot of overlap on high-demand items.) 

But even better, Yorkshire records that show us that women were regularly involved in the trade!  It was still male-dominated BUT several of the disciplines (nails, pins, chains) were almost exclusively women!  Women owned blacksmith shops, took apprentices, worked the forge - all of the things that mark them as “real” blacksmiths.  One of my favorite anecdotes is from William Hutton’s History of Birmingham; he encountered a nailer’s shop in which he noted “one or more females, stripped of their upper garments, and not overcharged with the lower, wielding the hammer with all the grace of the sex.”

Come yell at me about blacksmithing!  I want to learn what you know and I’d love to answer any of your questions!  I have a lot of prepared lecture snippets on a variety of smithing details:

Technological setbacks due to loss of historic metallurgical discoveries.

Why “damascus” swords are supposed to be the best.

Cultural and historical reasons for large, slow, strokes with a heavy hammer (like you see in video games) vs. small, quick strokes with a smaller hammer (like you see on YouTube).

Blacksmithing terms in modern English.  (”Keep your temper” being the most common.)

How settling America changed the Western picture to males-only generalized blacksmithing

Economic comparisons of the cost to hire a blacksmith

Apprentice vs. Journeyman vs. Master

More about female blacksmiths

What to wear in the forge (modern or historical reenactment)

How-to on a variety of subjects

Blacksmithing in movies

Why Forged in Fire doesn’t give you an accurate picture of blacksmithing or the skills of the contestants

Metallurgy (the science of metals)

Eastern vs. Western blacksmithing (Surprise!  Japan and Europe are wildly different!)

What kitchen knives do you need?  And how do you keep them sharp?

And I would note that a medieval farrier was a bit more than a modern farrier. Modern farriers make shoes and also handle a horse’s feet in much the same way as your dentist handles your teeth. A modern farrier can do things to correct crooked legs on growing foals, can advise on the best shoes for what you want to do, and is key to treating conditions such as navicular syndrome. They work with your vet to help keep your horse healthy and sound, even if the horse is not wearing shoes (many horses do indeed go barefoot, depending on their health, work load, type of work, etc). Medieval farriers were your go-to for the entire animal. They would treat lameness, administer medications, examine a horse you wanted to purchase for its suitability, euthanize wounded horses, probably pull stuck foals out of mares…

In 1356, the Company of Farriers in London was established and while we don’t know a lot about what they did thanks to the Great Fire, we do know that their 1674 charter states that their role is “preserving of horses.” In other words, farriers used to be horse vets, and remained such until the mid to late nineteenth century, when the two professions started to separate. Not coincidentally, this is about when modern human medicine began to rapidly advance, germ theory was developed, etc.

credit: writersrelief.com

After a reader finishes a story, it’s often the ending that resonates most strongly. In some ways, the whole book is about its ending: Everything leads up to the ending, and once it’s over, everything points back to it.

But, great endings are hard to do well. They require a writer to have a lot of control over the narrative tension and pacing. They often gather many plot elements together into a single moment to create a high-tension climax. No easy task! So, here are a few elements that can make for a great story ending:

The “right” ending. A good ending is in line with what came before it. The ending needs to be a logical, appropriate conclusion for what came before—not an ending that comes out of the blue.

The unpredictable element. Even though your ending needs to follow the action that came before it, the best endings aren’t predictable. This doesn’t mean you have to write a shocking plot twist; it just means the ending should incorporate some element of surprise.

The plot twist. A plot twist ending can be ginormous or subtle, but what’s most important is that it’s not expected. Some writers have reported that the best plot twists “surprise” even them. Other plots twists are scripted from the get-go. Either way, a good twist feels surprising, but it’s also natural, appropriate, and somehow right.

The dark moment. Your characters’ dark moment arrives when all is apparently lost, and the truth makes the world look doomed and bleak. The blacker your dark moment is, the bigger the emotional payoff will be if/when your characters triumph.

The emotional change. Your main character’s eureka moment can make for a good ending if the moment is big enough. The moment can be one of sudden understanding or insight. Whatever your eureka moment is, make sure it has big repercussions for your main character, but also for all the characters around him/her.

The could-have-changed-but-didn’t dead end. If your book is character-driven, this ending might be especially useful. In this scenario, your character is given a clear opportunity to turn his/her life around. Everything hangs in the emotional balance. But in the end, the character goes back to his/her old ways.

Leave room for interpretation. Some great endings are open-ended. When you leave your ending open, you get people talking, thinking, and looking for answers.

Tie up loose ends quickly. After the climactic moment, don’t linger with long explanations of “what happens next.” Once the party’s over, go home. Scenes that follow the climax tend to be low tension.

Some writers find they need to experiment with different kinds of endings before landing on the one that works best for them. Don’t be afraid of trying different endings on for size. Just pick the one that feels best.

Here are some types of endings >>

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”

How can I properly show the difference in size/ability/personality when two characters are fist fighting? Do a bigger and stronger guy throw a punch differently than his younger shorter opponent? Is that even a thing in real life?

The great irony, despite all media has taught you, is that two people of different heights, weights, and genders will actually fight (mostly) the same way if they are they are trained in the martial same style. Everybody learns the same move set, what makes the difference is how well they execute it and how disciplined they are when they start to flag.

The easiest are with people who don’t know what they’re doing versus people who do. For trained fighters, a lot of personality is going to get shed when they settle in and focus. You can have a cocky shit who talks a lot of trash outside the ring before the match and then say absolutely nothing inside it. Talk wastes air and you need oxygen to keep your endurance up. The person who talks during the fight gets punched, and should because they’re not focused. They deserve it.

No, they really do. Competitive fighters will take advantage of that kind of distraction. If someone’s talking in the ring, they’re doing it at a safe distance (at starting distance/outside arms reach) while both they and their opponent are searching for an opening.

The best fighters are the ones with the highest technical proficiency and the least amounts shits to give about their opponent’s future.

Let’s talk about technical proficiency for a second:

Technical proficiency relates to how skilled your character is i.e. how good they are at executing their techniques. What is technique?

It’s more than just a punch. It’s every minute movement involved in the movement of your body as it executes that punch. This includes

A) Your stance: the width of your feet in comparison to your shoulders, the degree at which your knees are bent, creating a centralized point of balance as you move.

B) The twist of your hips as you punch. This is, in combination with your shoulders, is your main generator of momentum i.e. power. (Yes, this has nothing to do with how many muscles you have.)

C) The position of your hands in relation to their distance from your face before you throw your punch. (This would be part of the fighting stance.)

D) The twist of your shoulders in time with your hips. Did they move together or are they out of slightly sync?

E) The position of your elbows. Were they inside or outside the body, is your arm in line with your shoulder when it extends?

F) The extension of your arm. Did you overextend past that front foot in your stance and put yourself out of balance?

G) Did you properly lock your fist when you punched? This is all five fingers clenched together when you punch, locked by your thumb. If your thumb is inside your fingers or outside your hand, you’re at risk of breaking your fingers. (Yes, beginners do this.)

H) Did you lock your wrist in line with your fist and your elbow and your shoulder? (Yes, beginners also do this.)

I) Did you do lock up at the fraction of a second before you struck your target? Thus applying maximum force? Momentum = movement + speed. If you lock too early, you slow down in the critical instant before striking and blunt your force/create more opportunity to be blocked.(Yes, beginners do this. They also flinch.) Punching a target, even a soft target, hurts. It will hurt when you do everything perfectly. That’s before we get to the psychological aspect of hurting someone else and the affect of that indecision on your physical body.

J) Did you return to resting or flow smoothly into your next combination/strike? Or did you just stand there like an idiot?

K) How quickly did you manage it? Again, this entire move happens within a fraction of a second, often too quickly for the untrained eye to follow. It’s fast. (Fun Fact: film cameras lose frames of professional martial artists/martial arts actors like Jet Li and Jackie Chan when they go full tilt.) Most of the time, audiences at professional matches mistake and respond to the secondary, follow-up strikes rather than the actual winning hit.

These are only some of the considerations toward basic technical proficiency, there are more and more ways you can screw up a simple, basic punch. When we say someone has “flawless technique,” we mean they can execute every aspect of the technique flawlessly from start to finish. The best contenders will all be in that range, especially when looked at by outsiders. A strong technical foundation is essential to success. In fact, it’s necessary. Strong foundations aren’t just needed for strong defenses, offenses, or executing your techniques successfully, they’re also energy efficient. A fighter with an excellent foundation and high technical proficiency continues when the their opponent with a shoddy foundation flags. You can win when you’re opponent is tired.

If you have a poor foundation, you are poor in everything. You’re technique is inefficient, you’re slower, your defense has more openings, your movements are bigger and thus have more tells, wasted movements means you’re wasting more energy. You’ve essentially hobbled yourself.

Now, poor foundations can be fixed. Technique is tightened with practice. The more experience a fighter has, the more they’re willing to address their flaws and work toward improvement then they have a chance to become better. Martial arts is skill based, not talent based. The person who works the hardest, the longest, and is the most determined is one who eventually stands among the best.

The best way to address this in your writing is to start looking at different how to videos on YouTube from martial arts masters discussing how to perform different techniques. You’ll be able to see the breakdowns, have them explained, and see what it looks like when a person with experience does it right. If you’re trying to write a character describing another character as inexperienced, it helps at least get a window into what the technique is supposed to look like.

I must say though, that even with a technique as simple as a single punch (whether front hand or backhand) there’s a lot of variation in technical detail between different martial styles. So, different characters could punch in different ways depending on their backgrounds.

-Michi

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That other post seems to be for people with money. But you don’t have money. So what do you actually need for your first apartment?

A bed. Not an air mattress. Not a blanket fort. Not a mattress pad with a fitted sheet over it. An actual bed. You’re going to try to avoid it, especially if you live in a city where bed bugs mean not buying a mattress from Craigslist. Beds cost money (unless you can take the one from your childhood bedroom, in which case, do that and use the couch when you visit home). But fuck it, you need one. If you’re desperate, you might go with a futon, but the futon you can afford will break with the quickness. You might also go with a mattress on the floor, which seems like a good idea until it suddenly seems really dirty, which is because mattresses need air flow to stay dry and sanitary. If you don’t have a box spring and don’t want to drop the $40 on a cheap bed frame, you can use these guys to build a platform, and if you find plastic drawers the same height, you can even build some storage in there.

A dresser. You will try to find a way around this. It will end up with your floor covered in clothes within a week. Just find a dresser on Craigslist or go to your local auction (a great place to find cheap furniture in general). And don’t buy a cheap dresser to build yourself from K-Mart or Wal-Mart, because it will break and it will likely be more expensive than a Craigslist/auction dresser anyway.

A TV. It doesn’t have to be new or huge or advanced. But you want a TV. Don’t try to skip the TV for something more trivial. You’ll regret that quick.

A couch. Specifically, an old, comfortable couch. One you don’t mind falling asleep on or letting guests sleep on. Don’t spend a lot of money. Couches will find you. Don’t overthink it. It’s your first apartment. Nobody expects you to have a perfectly curated adult home. Just get a comfy fucking couch. And if you get two, you can use cinder blocks to make stadium seating in your living room!

A table. You will ruin it, so get a shitty one. Learn your lessons on something cheap and disposable.

A full(ish) kitchen set. If these things don’t appear from your parents or your roommates’ parents, you need to buy a pot and pan set, silverware, a silverware organizer, at least one sharp knife (and let’s be honest, you’re gonna want a knife block and they’re only like $11), at least one mixing bowl, a colander, a cutting board, a couple of storage containers, plates, bowls, glasses, and mugs. You’ll figure out what else you need as you need it, based on your own kitchen habits. A lot of this can be picked up at the dollar store if you have one near you. And if you don’t bake often, disposable baking pans are your friend. 

Hand soap, dish soap, wash-your-ass soap. Nobody likes poor hygiene. You also need toothpaste and floss. And deodorant.

Flashlight and candles (nothing fancy). In case something goes wrong.

A plunger. In case something goes really wrong.

A toilet brush. Your momma probably never let the toilet form rings (or let you let that happen), so it might come as a shock how quickly and easily those shits form.

A shower curtain and liner. Or even just the liner. Don’t get the floor wet.

Sponges. You have no idea how many sponges you’ll need.

When buying used furniture: look in the cracks and under the edges for pin-sized brown/black spots. Bedbugs are tiny and they live in upholstery and any wood with enough crevices to allow it. You almost certainly won’t be able to see the bugs themselves, but they leave little spotted trails along seams and in places that don’t see a lot of light. You cannot get them out of furniture; it’s not worth the extreme measures it takes to do it.

Also, don’t forget laundry detergent and a rubbish bin and bin liners. Rubbish, laundry, and dirty dishes are 90% of the mess in a messy home and 99% of bad smells. Keep up with them and your home will always be at least clean-ish.

This particular NPC was startlingly overpowered at first, right a long the levels of 6 while everyone else was just starting out, and he helped them along in the most dire situations, healing, defeating, and even resurrecting for them. There would be periods where he would be gone, and the party would have to face a crypt full of mummies together, or dive into the deepest parts of the ocean and retrieve these milky white pearls that would give them the ability to help their friend and defeat the wicked king. Slowly, their memories came back to them, and that was a stark comfort for them, but the entire time, there seemed to be a piece missing. 

After they retrieved 5 pearls (they broke the 6th one), they journied with the man to the wicked king’s castle, and fought their way through endless ranks of guards, undead, demons, and even a lich, until they made their way to the sacred bed chamber of the king, that they all remembered the story of from before they had awoken in that garbage pile. They opened the doors, only to find it empty, save the usual furniture, marred by scratches and the ancient scrawl of demons. The man in the white armor sighed and walked into the bedroom. 

And his armor changed from white to pitch black, and the whole party remembered suddenly. That was the face of the wicked king, the face that smiled at them whenever he healed them, the face that looked stern as they suggested stupids things to find the pearls. Apparently, in lapses of the demon’s control, the king had found a way to set him self up for defeat, by bringing his wive’s pearls along with brave, powerful warriors. Every absence he felt was where he had to return to the demon’s control and become the wicked king again, but he was determined to fight himself, to rid his own evil from the world, to end this curse of immortality and see his loved one again. 

I made the party fight the final boss, and they saw the eyes of a friend. 

Why can’t these two people be together now?

Why can’t the mystery be solved now?

Why can’t they overthrow the evil overlord now?

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Princesses are placed there against their will or with the intention of ‘keeping them safe.’ This is very different from wizards, who seek out towers to hone their sorcery in solitude.

I would like a story where a princess is placed in an abandoned tower that used to belong to a wizard, and so she spends long years learning the craft of wizardry from the scraps left behind and becomes the most powerful magic wielder the world has seen in centuries, busts out of the tower and wreaks glorious, bloody vengeance on the fools that imprisoned her. 

Princess Adina was eighteen by then, and so of a marriageable age. She had grown quite beautiful, though she was more willful than winsome, and she did not care for the notion of the tower very much at all. Their mother did her best to persuade her on the subject. After all, the queen herself had been eighteen when her own parents had sent her to live in that very same tower, to be safely tucked away until her husband could be chosen, and then ride out to claim her. A tradition going back ages and ages.

Hi I’m a fantasy writer and now I need to know what potatoes do to a society

They drastically increase peasant food security and social autonomy.

The main staple of medieval agriculture was grain–wheat, barley, oats, or rye. All that grain has to be harvested in a relatively short window, about a week or two. It has to be cut down (scythed), and stored in the field in a safe and effective way (stooked); then it has to be brought to a barn and vigorously beaten (threshed) to separate the grain from the stalks and the seed husks. It can be stored for a few weeks or months in this form before it spoils or loses nutritional value. 

Then it has to be ground into flour. In the earlier middle ages, peasants could grind their own flour by hand using small querns, but landlords had realized that if they wanted to get more money out of their peasants, it was more effective for the entire village to have one large mill that everyone used. Peasants had to pay a fee to have their flour ground–and it might say something that there are practically no depictions of millers in medieval English literature in which the miller is not a corrupt thief. 

Then the flour has to be processed to make most of its nutrients edible to humans, which ideally involves yeast–either it’s made into bread which takes hours to make every time (and often involves paying to use the village’s communal bread oven) and spoils within a few days, or it’s made into weak ale, which takes several weeks to make, but can keep for several months. 

Potatoes, in comparison…

Potatoes have considerably more nutrients and calories than any similar crop available in medieval Europe–they beat turnips, carrots, parsnips, beets, or anything else all to heck. I don’t know if they beat wheat out for calories per acre, but practically…

When you dig a potato out of the ground (which you can do at any time within a span of several months), you can bury it in the ashes of a fire for an hour, or you can boil it in water for 20 minutes.

Then you eat it. Boom. Done. (I mean, if you’re not fussy, you could even eat them raw.)

You store the ones you don’t want right now in a root cellar and plant some of them in the spring to get between a fivefold and tenfold return on your crop.

Potatoes don’t just feed you–they free you. Grain-based agriculture relies on lots of people working together to get the work done in a very short length of time. It relies on common infrastructure that is outside the individual peasant’s control. The grain has to be brought to several different locations to be processed, and it can be seized or taxed at any of those points. It’s very open to exploitation.

TW: Genocide The Irish Potato Famine happened because the English colonizers of Ireland demanded rents and taxes that were paid in grain, and it ended up that you didn’t really get to keep much of the grain you grew. So the Irish farmed wheat in fields to pay the English, and then went home and ate potatoes from their gardens. And then, because they were eating only one specific breed of potatoes, a blight came through and wiped all their potatoes out, and then they starved. So English narratives about the potato famine tended to say “Oh yes, potato blight, very tragic,” and ignore the whole “The English were taking all the grain” aspect, but the subtext here is: Potatoes are much harder to tax or steal than grain.

Faster causes of of grain spoilage are visibly “something has ruined this grain”–insects, molds, or vermin get in at the grain, so your grain is much more likely to be eaten, pooped on, or rotten when you take it out of storage. 

If you can get grain to survive those quicker methods, eventually grain can spoil simply by being exposed to air. After a few months the oil inside it oxidizes, which destroys a lot of its nutrients. You might get it to sprout six months later, but it’s a lot less nutritious if you eat it, and if you grow it the plants will get less of a head start before they have to rely on their root system to bring in nutrients from the soil.

If a plant isn’t actively growing it is, in fact, decomposing - the speed at which it’s doing that depends on things like external temperature, moisture, etc and can be anywhere from very slow to very fast.

Stuff that is decomposing produces heat.

Grain is an amazing insulator, so all of that heat gets trapped in the middle of the bin.

High heat encourages more decomp. Which produces more heat. Which produces more decomp. Which, eventually, can lead to a thermal runaway, in which the grain passes its ignition point and begins to smolder. (And if you’re really unlucky, that can spark a dust explosion.)

This is one of the reasons that grain farmers are Very Concerned about moisture content - high moisture content means faster decomposition, and thus faster spoilage but also the risk of your grain bin blowing up. Modern farmers carefully control the moisture content and air circulation of their stored grain to maximize quality and shelf life, while avoiding inconvenient explosions.

You can get to the point where you can express yourself in a language by learning basic grammar and just 200 words.

My test for being able to express myself is: Can I keep a diary in this language? Can I talk about what I did today and my opinions on just about any subject?

Too often, people who have been learning a language for months or even years say “no.” However, in my experience, it’s possible after learning just basic grammar and the 200 most useful words. If you wanted to go fast and learn 20 words a day (the default rate of Anki), then you could learn 200 words in a week and a half. (In my experience, learning basic grammar doesn’t take as long as learning the words, so the total time could be three weeks. However, I didn’t teach myself my first foreign language, so I can’t speak to that case — if you’re teaching yourself your first, kudos, and let me know how long the grammar takes!)

The key is that you have to learn the right 200 words. When I was teaching myself languages before, I could never find a good answer to the question: What words should I learn first? If you use Duolingo, they’ll start by teaching you words like “apple”, which aren’t very useful. I spent a lot of time writing and talking in order to determine which 200 words would let you express the most. I think I finally got it. But don’t take my word for it — see this demonstration.

I personally tested this method out with Esperanto and French and I’m now able to keep a diary in both languages, writing about anything that happened in my day and any thought that crosses my mind.

To be clear: 200 words won’t make you fluent, but they’ll allow you to express yourself, and it’s a lot easier to keep improving from there. Feel free to adapt the method based on what works for you. Here are the steps:

If your language uses a non-Latin alphabet, learn the alphabet.

Learn basic grammar

Learn ~200 basic words

Practice writing (This method is introvert friendly! You don’t have to talk to strangers if you don’t want to. But at this stage you can also practice by speaking, if you prefer.)

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Also, please send me your feedback! I’d love to know if this works for you or if it doesn’t. I welcome all comments, criticism, and suggestions for improvement. And if you think this guide could help other people, please consider reblogging it. :)

Additional notes:

To be able to express yourself with 200 words, you’ll need to be able to rephrase things: e.g. “she comforted him” = “she caused that he felt better”. Even if it’s hard for you to rephrase things this way, the 200 basic words are a great starting vocabulary list.

As everyone knows, when anyone in pretty much anything says, “I’m fine” or some variant of that, you know it’s a lie. We’re practically programed to think that nowadays, so first, keep that in mind when you’re writing, next, let’s talk about how to get more clever than that. Let’s talk lies: 

Lies are seductive. I don’t mean that in a romantic context, though it can exist there too, but basically, the rule is that whatever is said, you’ll want to believe it. Even if it’s far-fetched. You want it to be true. 

Why is the character lying? The reason will be character development, so make it good. Explore the possibilities behind their motives, make them sneaky. 

Why is the character being lied to? What does the character want so badly that they might possibly believe this lie? This is more character development whether or not the character believes the lie. 

Plan your lies. You don’t have to plan it all out, but make sure you know who knows what about who. This is a way you can be really sneaky. Even if the reader knows everything, it’s still exciting to see how it all unfolds.