Tag: seriously

bookhobbit:

bookhobbit:

‘female’ and ‘male’ are not etymologically related but ‘beech’ and ‘book’ quite possibly are and ‘shade’ and ‘shadow’ are just two different cases of the same word fossilized into different meanings 

goes to show why you can’t just go with what sounds similar when tracing etymology

nobody asked for the Proof but I’m studying for my historical linguistics exam so you get them anyway:

female is from Old French femelle>Latin femella>diminutive of femina>from ‘the one who gives suckle [like to a baby]’ from PIE root *dhei ‘to suck’ (the dead silence of people purposefully not giggling when my professor defined this in class as ‘to give suck’ was something to behold)

male is from Old French masle>Latin masculus>diminutive of mas which we don’t know the origin of 

we should pronounce female more like ‘feml’ and we should probably spell it closer to the French, but it got respelled and repronounced based on male because of the obvious semantic relationship between the two, which is a phenomenon sometimes called contamination (and a very common one)

shade is from old english sceadu which had the oblique case ‘sceadwe’; because of a rule which makes vowels with no consonants after the end of the syllable long, and vowels that have two consonants after them short, the Great Vowel Shift applied to one and not the other, which resulted in different forms, at some point they specialized into slightly different meanings (also extremely common)

book and beech are slightly fuzzier but they might be from the same Proto-Germanic root, the idea being one of writing on beech material, also fun fact which I can’t cite bc it’s from my textbook, the plural of book used to be beech probably from vowel mutation processes (like foot/feet) combined with a particular type of consonant mutation common in Old English (which is why the English for church is ‘church’ while the Proto-Germanic was *kirika)

so I couldn’t fall asleep last night, and I started thinking

wildehack:

about a reverse little mermaid, in which the prince’s sister has always dreamed of life under the sea, and then they are in a shipwreck, and as she hangs onto a piece of driftwood, she sees her brother rescued from drowning by a mermaid. Everybody thinks she’s mad, later, after she’s been rescued. But her brother did turn up alive and unharmed on the beach, and she knows what she saw: a girl, beautiful as the dawn, with a fish’s tail, keeping her brother safe above the waves. She grows sick with longing.

So the princess goes to visit the witch who lives in the woods, and she tells her that she can give her a mermaid’s tail and a mermaid’s breath—but she will always be human in her heart and in her soul, unless she can convince one of the merfolk to fall in love with her. For humans live short lives, and their immortal souls vanish to distant realms after death, while the merfolk live for hundreds of years, and when they die they remain in the sea that is their home.

The princess agrees, and the witch tells her she will make a potion that she must swallow when she wants to transform. But then she reminds her that she must be paid—and laughs at her when she offers gold. She tells her that she will have her voice, and slowly the princess agrees, so she cuts off her tongue and throws it into a boiling pot, adds a knot of snakes and a drop of her own black blood, and gives her the resulting potion to drink.

At midnight, she takes the potion out to the jetty, and as soon as it passes her lips, her legs are bound together, becoming a mermaid’s tail. She falls—kinda ungracefully—into the ocean, and it feels unbelievably natural to dive down, and she’s shocked by how well she can see, even in the deep water, even at midnight. And then she just sort of carelessly, cluelessly swims on, and she almost gets eaten by a shark, and then she’s trailing blood in the water so she almost gets eaten by another shark, and another, and she can’t find the merfolk city she’s always been taught was under the water, and it’s late and she’s exhausted and is running from all sorts of terrifying creatures who she’d never really thought about existing before, and she only escapes the sharks by dodging past a whirlpool, and then another whirlpool, close to the ocean bottom. She passes through a series of foaming whirlpools like a labyrinth, and then she sees a white house on the ocean bottom, in the middle of a strange forest of polypi. The polypi are half animal, half plant, reaching out and grasping at anything they can touch. The princess swims carefully through it, and she sees that there are things caught in the polypi’s arms: anchors, planks, wooden chests, the white skeletons of drowned men. A little mermaid. She makes it to the house, and recoils when she realizes that it’s also made of bleached human bones.

Read More

fallen-saintsam:

Centaurlock

Centaur Kiss

George Leonnec: Cover of “La Vie Parisienne” from 1924

 I also drew Sherlock’s scarf XD

This is not what I sat down intending to write, but it’s what came out.  o_O;

—-

“I’m not a horse!”, Sherlock asserted forcefully; anger and a more subtle hint of betrayal threading through his words.  John wasn’t really surprised; they’d gotten on well enough when all they had to do was negotiate for their respective peoples – there was at least a hint of equality there, regardless of the fact that John’s position was the stronger by virtue of his manhood  – had even become friendly over time, but the prospect of being obligated to appear at the laughingly named ‘cooperative senate’, and the expected trappings thereof, was a higher hurdle than Sherlock was willing to endure. 

— Read More —

(This was supposed to be a couple of paragraphs with the express purpose of getting them to kiss.  Hahahahaha – no. *facepalm*  I don’t even know what happened here.  Saintsam, dear – I promise, I’m going back to writing you hobbitlock, now.  Really.  That was my initial intent…)

through the eyes of a dreamer: Today, we are going to talk about trigger discipline.

moonflowerlights:

roxannameta:

greatcosplay:

cosplay-help:

First, what is trigger discipline, and why is it important for cosplay?

Trigger discipline is holding the gun properly, without your finger on the trigger, which helps prevent accidental misfires.

Its connection to cosplay is very simple. If you are cosplaying a character who knows their way around guns (think Winchester brothers, Jade Harley, Solid Snake, etc.), they’ll be holding the gun properly, since they’ve been trained to do so. It adds to the feel of the character. It’s also a good habit to have if you ever pick up a real gun at any point in time. That’s called “committing to muscle memory.”

A lot of the cosplay I’ve seen involving guns have the cosplayers posed with their finger on the trigger. In the real world, this is incredibly dangerous, and you shouldn’t have your finger on the trigger until you’re ready to shoot.

So, what does good trigger discipline look like?

image

Ta-da! It’s that easy!

imageEven itty bitty Dean can do it!

It’s such a simple change that can make a huge impact on the appearance of your costume and posing. 

Happy cosplaying!

Reblogging this here because I HAVE A PET PEEVE OKAY

(I blame my fiance)

This is a great tip! I’m still grateful to Tally Justine for teaching me this one. (Unfortunately it was after the Black Widow shoot I just got around to posting. Oh well, next time.) Thanks, lady!

THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS!!!! (sorry, daughter of a cop/police commissioner means this was drilled into my head at a young age)

Yes, this! Thank you! This is a big deal that gets overlooked too often.  Hubby actually runs a panel at our convention(s) about this very thing, as well as general gun safety, and how it /needs/ to carry over to costume weapon uses.  Not just for accuracy, and for the noted point of muscle memory (and thus safety going forward if dealing with real weapons), but also – people not involved with your event, or your cosplay /may not know/ you don’t have a real gun; if you come at someone, pointing the barrel at them, thinking you’re just having a bit of in-character fun, you run the very dire risk of being treated as if you’re pointing a real weapon at them.  That effects your safety, as well as the poor person you just surprised. 

TL;DR – Even if the weapon isn’t ‘real’, it is /very/ important to use proper handling and safety rules.  If you don’t know them, learn them before you cosplay.

through the eyes of a dreamer: Today, we are going to talk about trigger discipline.

random-nexus:

lady-karasu:

lostconner:

playing  violin

I absolutely adore this.

I was informed that this needed ficcery and that some fluff was required, stat. This is the first thing the Muse offered up, hope it’ll do?

~~~

The sounds of the traffic outside fade, along with his awareness of the room in general, as Sherlock adjusts the violin under John’s chin, moves his fingers to a more proper hold on the bow, and lays one each of his fingers over John’s on the strings.

Breath just brushing his ear and cheek, Sherlock speaks in a low murmur.  “Now, no slouching, but don’t tense up.  Yes, John, just like that.”

Almost surprised into following orders, John lets himself be guided, posed.  “I just asked -“

Sherlock cuts him off, a quiet baritone rumble to which he has somehow trained himself to listen, “It’s pointless to explain if you have no basis for understanding.  Now, feel the strings, each one’s tension.  Touch the bow to them, move it…yes, very smooth for a novice, John… feel the vibrations?”

John nods the tiny increment he is allowed, violin under his chin, Sherlock’s cheek against the side of his head, and the realisation that he has no wish to dislodge either.  Nor does he mind the warm presence of Sherlock’s body, all along his back, or those longer arms curved over and around his upper arms, or having the graceful and sure touch of those long-fingered hands atop his own. 

“Now, press this finger hardest, then this… here… yes, now draw the bow steadily across those strings… no, firm enough to engage the strings properly.”  When has Sherlock ever sounded so patient?  Rarely, to be sure, and the few times John can recall were often when walking him through some convoluted deduction. 

“I’m sure to be rubbish at this, Sherlock,” John protests, aware his voice has dropped to a soft tone, too. 

A breath of a chuckle, nearly silent, tickles the hair at his temple and his ear.  “Everyone’s rubbish to start,” Sherlock retorts. 

John draws the bow across the string, a multiple tone sounds from the contact, weak and uneven, and John presses slightly more firmly, keeps his fingers tight where Sherlock’s holding them, and the tone solidifies into one long smooth note that is resonant and sweet in the quiet room.  A grin flashes across John’s mouth and he feels another soft laugh from Sherlock, this time the movement of his chest and diaphragm press against John’s back.

“Perfect,” Sherlock says, guiding John’s fingers into another configuration.  “Now, this will be—”

This time John interrupts Sherlock, “You’re not going to actually teach me how to play, are you?”

“Not this afternoon, no.”  From the drag of Sherlock’s hair against his own and the feeling of the other man’s breath against his cheek, John is sure Sherlock’s head has turned and he’s studying John, but John doesn’t return the gaze, feeling strangely unnerved. 

“I mean,” he says almost reluctantly, not even sure why he’s arguing, “this sort of thing takes years.”

Sherlock’s head moves again, and John lets his fingers be guided once more, and he is only mildly surprised when Sherlock speaks, a little more humour infusing the deep, quiet voice.  “Well, it’ll be something to fill the time between cases, won’t it?”

A smile pulls at John’s lips, accompanied by a bright, buoyant feeling in his middle.  Years.  Of cases and excitement, of squabbling over the shopping and messy experiments, of violin in the wee hours and the flickers of genius in changeable eyes that see everything. 

They bring another pure note out of Sherlock’s violin, with only a tiny hint of scratchy off-tone at the end, and John glances at Sherlock, who’s also smiling, and he gives a tiny tilt of his head.  “Better than bullet holes in the wall, yeah?”

Sherlock’s answering chuckle is low and rich, like dark chocolate and honey, and John joins in, his own lighter while being just as warm, and yet they blend almost perfectly.

~~~

(For Lady-Karasu)

Well this made my night.  ^_^  I just had to sit in awe of that for a few minutes – and when did you find time to do this, I only mentioned it maybe a half hour ago! – good lord, woman, I adore you.  *tackle hug*  Seriously, Random, you’re amazing, thank you.  ❤  *smooches head*

(‘I hope this’ll do’, she says…  *shakes head*  What am I going to do with you?  Clearly, talk you into writing more pretty things for me.  :D)