lauremaster

Latest Posts by lauremaster

 Hey, to you sci-fi/fantasy writers out there (and maybe some others, but this is mainly for things that can’t really be researched irl), if you want to write a character who is a driven, passionate expert on something, don’t write about them rambling indifferently about some boring, mundane part of it. Give them a deep, intense hatred of some oddly specific wow-I-did-not-even-know-that-was-a-thing-and-it-would-have-never-occurred-to-me-that-it’s-a-bad-thing thing they’ll gladly rant about.

 Write a dragon rider who really fucking hates it when a dragon is trained to bow while being reined. A space ship engineer who is pissed off when perfectly good antimatter ship has been adapted to run on neutral matter. A historian who is still not over the massive failures of a general who lost a specific battle 300 years before she was born.

 The guy currently giving us a series of lectures on the restoration of historical buildings really, really hates polymer paint. At the artisan school our stained glass teacher really hated this one specific Belgian artist - we never really figured out what did that guy even do, but he’s been dead for over 200 years and our teacher was glad that at least he’s dead.

 Experts don’t just know things you’ve never thought about. They’ve got strong opinions about it.

Hades v1.0 Launch Trailer (animation by @studiograckle)

Yaaaaas 😍

Finally finished! I had these sitting in my cr folder for a few months and I finally got them done. This is just a fun project where I chose outfits for the mighty nein based on stuff in my pinterest fashion board.

Edit: I’m seeing people point out that the caleb’s wearing a warrior cat shirt. Yall, I completely forgot that was the shadow clan symbol. The shirt that I based his outfit on just had a black square on it that I gave cat ears.

Billi speaks. (via billispeaks)

bruh what

woman yelling at cat meme but make it ancient greek red figure pottery

So..Blood has been used as an architectural material since ancient times. I’m saddened that this is never covered in movies or historical fantasy tv shows. What a missed opportunity. Other places to see my posts: INSTAGRAM / FACEBOOK / ETSY / KICKSTARTER

ikea released introductions on how to build different furniture forts

idk if uquizzes are still a thing that anyone cares about, but my love for quizzes will never die, so i’m back with another one! i made a dnd class quiz focused more around personality and mindset and less about what abilities you’d like to have in the game. 

also, if anyone is interested in a subclass quiz for any of the classes, let me know! i’m totally down to make those, i just don’t know which class to start with haha

link to the quiz in reblog

AU where Sokka’s high-on-cactus-juice encounter with the giant mushroom takes a dark turn. (Also he has a gun)

based on this beautiful tumblr post

bonus:

Types of matter

Jester with a few different hairstyles

Concept: Star Trek style quasi-utopian deep space drama, except all of the ship’s non-human crew members are really obviously based on particular sci-fi horror tropes.

The chief physician is an amorphous mass of tentacles and teeth that’s infested the entire medical bay, transforming it into a quivering nightmare of meat and viscera. It speaks with a conspicuously posh accent; the human crew members affectionately call it “Doc”.

The head of security is a lurking, probably humanoid something-or-other that’s mostly imperceptible in the visual spectrum, save as a faintly shimmering distortion in the air. Her lack of visibility is treated as a running gag, with the most frequent bits involving a. other crew members not realising she’s in the room until she speaks up, and b. her making reference to various unlikely anatomic features which, of course, the audience cannot see.

The ship’s computer is a blatantly rampant AI that speaks in a chorus of voices. It tends to talk in cryptic, pseudo-religious metaphors which contrast to humorous effect with the mundanity of the topic at hand, and sometimes wanders off on rambling philosophical tangents that require whoever it’s speaking with to remind it to get to the point. You can tell when it’s paying attention to a particular part of the ship because the lighting turns blood red.

The lead science officer is just a huge fucking spider.

(The captain is an apparently ordinary – albeit extremely photogenic – human. We don’t find out what their real deal is until the season finale; what’s revealed firmly establishes them as the freakiest one of the lot!)

Consider:

Victorian England: 1867-1901

American Old West: 1803-1912

Meiji Restoration: 1868-1912

French privateering in the Gulf of Mexico: ended circa 1830

Conclusion: an adventuring party consisting of a Victorian gentleman thief, an Old West gunslinger, a disgraced former samurai, and an elderly French pirate is actually 100% historically plausible.

I don’t think anime vs western animation are as different as people claim due to the fact they have inspired and fed off each other for decades (they’re friends!!), however I do think our environmental messages to kids are… significantly and interestingly different

whereas, say Ghibli films express a deep Shinto-based respect and reverence for nature:

fighting for it as a means of both self-preservation and expression of heroism revolving around justice

and a matter of other groups of humans (the government often) going up against the stalwart youth

This is contrasted to western animation which tends to be like…. hey! look at this funny bat! And pollution is an evil spirit you can fight like physically 

that isn’t to say the west doesn’t depict environmentalism as heroic and even involving collective action, Captain Planet is a good example of this

but individualism is still very present, the struggle is stalwart youths versus an individual or individual corporation, hell, sometimes you even get a sympathetic backstory for the corporation and weirdly cool rock song

to be clear, antagonists like Lady Eboshi in Princess Mononoke are sympathetic too, but it is… different, Lady Eboshi is trying to survive due to circumstances but it is all of Irontown that represents a system of corruption

In comparison, there is this western idea of corruption coming from individuals rather than systems as well as the fact they aren’t trying to save nature because we are part of it, but because nature itself is a person and thus worthy of respect

In Fern Gully the fairy’s represent nature, the Lorax represents nature, Captain Planet is literally just nature, all things we can talk to and relate to, where in Princess Mononoke and Nausicaa the ultimate nature spirits are something you can’t talk to and are frankly terrifying, awe-inspiring, and mighty

Western epistemology is heavily rooted in Christianity which says that man has dominion over fish of the sea, fowl of the air, and creatures of the land, ect, which leads to a utilitarian and separate view of nature– what can it do for us as separate (higher) beings, and the only way to combat this view is to say “actually nature is a person and thus worthy of protection”

Whereas Japanese Shintoism has much more emphasis on the idea that we are all part of a whole with nature, nature is the ultimate divine with nothing more important than the other, and something worthy of protection not because we can understand it, but because we can’t

“It’s a mistake to think about nature from the idea of efficiency, that forests should be preserved because they are essential to human beings”– Hayao Miyazaki

this is not to completely bash western animation, it does have other strengths such as emphasizing children’s relationship to empathy, empathy toward others in “Toy Story” and empathy toward themselves in “Inside Out” 

However, our methods of conveying environmentalism could use some updating and steering away from “goofy” and “relatable” and maybe a little more terror and awe involved with fighting the good fight

Local Rusałka said sapphic rights. Have a good summer this year 💮 💮

> Art blog | Originals tag | Comic tag | Ko-fi 

The Final Agni Kai is great for a lot of reasons but it’s also a great example of how to write a fight scene because it was about more than who “won” the fight.

Zuko lost that fight, technically speaking. He took a hit for Katara and wasn’t able to defeat Azula within the bounds of the Agni Kai. He got knocked out and would have died if not for Katara. You could make the argument that Azula defeated her brother here but

She didn’t win.

It’s tempting to write fight scenes as a contest of might where characters try and deplete each other’s imaginary health meters until one of them comes out on top but the most interesting fight scenes, to me, are ones where there is more at stake. Where fighting is a method to resolve a dispute of ideologies rather than a contest of physical brawn. 

This was a fight for the soul of the Fire Nation and even though Zuko ended up flat on his ass, electrocuted, with a second scar from a family member for his troubles

This is where Zuko won. 

This is where the Fire Lord sacrificed himself for a waterbender and member of an “enemy” nation. This is where he wrested the soul of his country away from a century of imperialist rule. 

Yeah, Azula got him with her fifth level Lightning Bolt spell; big whoop. She won the Agni Kai but when has an Agni Kai ever meant anything? 

From Season 1, the Agni Kai has been shown to be a futile dick-measuring contest between firebenders. Ozai “won” the Agni Kai with his son, but defeating a defenseless child is not a victory worth winning. Likewise, Azula’s defeat of Zuko here was the end of their Agni Kai but it doesn’t matter. 

Zuko doesn’t need to beat Azula to win. 

If this was a video game, this would have been the end of Zuko, but it’s not. It’s the moment where Zuko wrests control of the Fire Nation’s destiny away from his father and sister and reunites it with a whole and peaceful world by intentionally losing to protect a friend. 

The Fire Nation fell when Azula knocked Zuko out. It rose again when Katara brought him back to life. 

Azula won the final Agni Kai but in the end, Zuko won the Fire Nation’s future

swim

When we say that Ada Lovelace was arguably the world’s first computer programmer, that “arguably” isn’t thrown in there because of questions of definitions or precedence – she definitely wrote programs for a computer, and she was definitely the first.

Rather, the reason her status as the world’s first computer programmer is arguable is because during her lifetime, computers did not exist.

Yes, really: her code was intended for Charles Babbage’s difference engine, but Babbage was never able to build a working model – the material science of their time simply wasn’t up to the challenge. Lovelace’s work was thus based on a description of how the difference engine would operate.

Like, imagine being so far ahead of your time that you’re able to identify and solve fundamental problems of computer programming based on a description of the purely hypothetical device that would run the code you’re writing.

In fairy tales and fantasy, two types of people go in towers:  princesses and wizards.

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. 

That would be my kind of story.

little blue tiefling

This is actually a schoolism assignment i’ve been working on during my free time. I’ve been trying to getting better at drawing things like backgrounds and lighting.

EDIT: I saw someone tag this as Artajes; please don’t do that

https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/Ac3YnuqS0tctbxz7T8BDodYX-WnqlyEWv8G_uAehpUu8Y4fmIMIe498/

I don’ think this is true in any way shape or form, but I thought it was funny.

why you should not dismiss research unless you rly truly mean it

Internet, I am a queer researcher of queer health and I have something to say.

A few weeks back, a study went viral about the relationship between marriage equality policy and queer teen suicide rates, and a lot of people reacted thusly: “queer mental health is better when we’re not discriminated against! BREAKING: SKY IS BLUE, WATER IS WET”

This happens a lot. People see research about a thing ~Everyone Already Knows~ and they mock it. Now I want to make two things really clear:

1. Everyone does not already know.

2. This shit can lose these projects their funding.

Did you know that media coverage is a crucial factor in funding allocation? When we submit our application for grant renewal, we have to provide a list of news articles about our research so they can decide whether the public cares enough about us to let us keep doing our work. And most research doesn’t get all that much coverage, so individual reactions can really matter. If the primary reaction to our publications is eyerolling, we legitimately might not be able to continue.

I’ve seen some frustration from people who believe this research funding would be better put to use “actually helping” the affected populations instead of–I don’t know, pinning them under microscopes or whatever it is they think we do. But funding for policy initiatives is driven by research. I know you wish politicians would listen to individual voices telling them where the problems are, but that’s honestly not a smart way to direct limited resources. We need solid evidence. And a lot of the areas that need the most attention aren’t obvious–who knew bisexual people are at a much higher risk for physical and mental health disparities than gay and lesbian people? Who would have guessed that transgender folks are more likely than any other group (including straight people) to be military veterans, but overwhelmingly don’t claim their benefits? I’m sure some people noticed these patterns, but they definitely weren’t common knowledge within the queer communities I’ve grown up around, and those findings are leading to direct action as we speak.

I get that it can be frustrating to feel like your identity is being reduced to facts and figures for the benefit of red tape. But trust me, the researchers aren’t your enemy here. Most of us are queer too. All of us are just as frustrated by this crap as you are. We are doing our best, and I swear to you this work really is making a difference. Please don’t sabotage it.

Now we all know what happens if you get the Book of Peace. You return it to Syracuse and save Proteus. But if you don’t get the Book, you have a choice to make. Either sail to paradise with the woman of your dreams, or return to Syracuse to die. You’re either a thief or a hero. So here’s my question: If you don’t get the Book, will you go back to die?

SINBAD: LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SEAS (2003)

Since y’all enjoyed the warlock post I thought I’d give the same treatment to my second favorite class: the druid! The flavor of it is absolutely great and wild shaping? Amazing!

Want to be a travelling Johnny Appleseed type character that spreads the seeds of a near extinct plant?

Want to be a lycanthrope who tried communing with nature to better control their beastly nature?

Want to have been trapped within an plane of elemental chaos forcing you to familiarize yourself with the elemental forces to survive?

Want to be a traveler from a far off land with the ability to transform into strange and exotic creatures?

Want to have the spirit of some great wolf that you regretfully killed inhabit your body, pushing you to protect the wilderness it once roamed?

Want to be a gardener whose touch soothes and guides plants?

Want to be the verdant guardian of a sprawling city’s only patch of green?

Want to feel the background noise of the earth in the very depths of your bones, and channel that living sound into playing an instrument you grew and shaped from a tree?

Want to be the only surviving member of a druid circle whose forest was destroyed in some cataclysm that you seek to warn other druid circles of?

Druid! Druid! Druid!

Have I mentioned my love for the warlock class? I love the way its set up mechanic wise, the flavor potential, and the spellcasting is evocative as heck!

Want to have a pact with a cosmic being that allows you to summon shooting stars when you cast eldritch blast?

Want to be the only mortal that can comprehend the madness of the great old ones?

Want to have an archfey that abducted you as a child to be the friend of their own child?

Want to have your soul sold to the lord of the hunt before your birth and have to pay the price for it by serving them?

Want to make a pact with a storm elemental that like a symbiote lives in your body disguised as your natural bioelectricity?

Want an ancient dragon to keeps you as part of its hoard and in exchange grants you a long life and its protection?

Want some sword you picked up whisper into your mind that you need to fight against those who oppress you?

Want the spirits of your ancestors to grant you great power to protect the current member of the bloodline?

Want Asamodeus to favor you because you remind them of a mortal they once loved many eons ago?

Want to be the only survivor of a shipwreck and then have the dead souls of your crewmates grant you access to the arcane and in exchange you take care of their unfinished business on the mortal plane?

Warlock! Warlock! Warlock!

I memed

my turn on the local bog hags