For Years I Would Look At Posts And Questionnaires About Neurodivergence That Takes About Being So Focused

Via @iamdylancurran (Twitter)

TIM DRAKE READING ORDER

For those who, like me, when they like a character they need to read every single comic the character appears in, I have compiled a list of all of Tim Drake’s appearances from his debut up to the 2011 Flashpoint reboot (not including New 52 continuity).

✨ new article ✨

making an entire visual novel is hard, so is it even possible to make one solo, entirely by yourself?? I surveyed over 30 solo visual novel developers to get their advice!

read it here:

arimia

How to Make a Visual Novel Solo - arimia

Making an entire visual novel is hard enough, so could you imagine making one by yourself? Solo visual novel development is hard, but not as

Ah, I see. Thank you for your honesty. Please, take as much as you need. There will be enough for everyone.

A change of scenery. Simple, but marvelous.

A glimpse into your future, for you brave souls! (Divination is tricky business, tread carefully my dear!)

Knowledge from the universe, eh? Perhaps this will be of interest to you.

Rest for the weary, right this way. It's a personal favourite of mine.

A home-cooked meal you say? I like how you think! A labour of love worth savoring (and sharing with friends!)

For something to pass the time, try looking here, or if that doesn't hit the spot, here.

Seeking adventure to a far-off place? I know a way to get you there.

✨

I hope you found what you were looking for!

I stumbled across this blog on accident, but I am intrigued and I have to ask: is there a specific best place to read the Ulster Cycle in English?

yo! welcome to the niche corner

okay so first up the “ulster cycle” is a modern term given to a huge and disparate body of texts, some of which connect obviously to each other and some of which don’t but happen to have some of the same characters. some retellings attempt to rewrite the whole thing into a single coherent narrative but those are, by necessity, retellings rather than translations since that isn’t actually... what it is.

not all the texts have been translated but most of the big ones have and some of them even have multiple translations which is great

the big, central text and the one i reference most often is táin bó cúailnge, which used to get translated as “the cattle-raid of cooley” until thomas kinsella came along and was like “hey, maybe people would take us more seriously if we called it the táin”, so that’s what it generally gets called now. kinsella’s translation is good, as is ciarán carson’s. carson’s is a bit cheaper and personally i prefer it for general reading because of the style, but kinsella’s has the big advantage that he includes a bunch of the other stories which relate to the táin

another useful book is gantz’s early irish myths and sagas, which includes a bunch of texts from the so-called “ulster” and “mythological” cycles (again, modern terms). i would... ignore 99% of what gantz says in his little textual introductions because a lot of it is now quite outdated scholarship, but the translations themselves are solid enough

there are some more texts translated in the celtic heroic age by john carey and john koch but these are more academic translations and don’t really try and smooth over the syntax or any gaps in the manuscript for a modern audience, so that’s only if you’re really keen

you can also find a lot of the texts in translation at CELT, the Corpus of Electronic Texts (whoever came up with that acronym must have been so proud of themselves) -- these are generally older translations but hey, they’re free and they’re online and a lot of them are very accurate, even if that can make them a bit less readable

@finnlongman makes videos about medieval irish lit and has retold several ulster cycle texts on youtube here

hope this helps! you will also find various retellings out there, many of them victorian or early 20th century (lady gregory, eleanor hull etc) but like i said, if you want the texts in their most “accurate” form, these are the best places to start

[please note that links are amazon uk affiliate links, if you buy via those i get a teeny tiny commission, but actually would advocate supporting your local bookshops if possible, they’re mostly there for illustrative purposes]

I wish kinky sex ed wasn't so stigmatized even among left-leaning "sex positive" circles. Everyone's all "uwu I'm a sub I'll do anything you ask" okay mommy wants you to read The New Bottoming Book so you learn how to sub without hurting yourself since your sex ed up to this point is porn and your ex boyfriend Jared who liked to choke you incorrectly

The reason why NBC’s Hannibal found such a huge female audience is because Fuller’s/Mads’ Lecter is not a male power fantasy: he’s a female power fantasy.

He’s not a broody snippy git whose appeal is assumed apriori and who in real life would drive away absolutely everyone he met (e.g. any sad manboy ever trotted out as a lead by Moffat).

He’s not an “aspirational” over-muscled hulk.

He’s not a fighter for ‘truth’ or ‘justice’ for whom bodies are just collateral on his path to heroic self-actualization

This Hannibal is the Head Bitch In Charge.

He is independent to the n-th degree. He lives to please himself and no one else. He is fabulous. He shamelessly geeks out over obscure and refined pastimes and shares them with friends. He is the Queen Bee of his social circle. He takes any excuse to treat himself, but he also has perfect self-discipline: gym is not optional. His time-management skills are superhuman. He can decorate and keep a house like Martha Stewart, hold down several jobs, and practice multiple hobbies daily.

(And what are his hobbies, aside from slaughter? Cooking, foreign languages, drawing, playing musical instruments and composing. And clearly clothes shopping. He is probably on first-name basis with the best tailors and cordwainers in town. Contrast with Will, whose hobbies are stereotypically masculine: fixing motor boats, fishing, playing outside with his dogs.)

Hannibal is not young, but he wears his age gracefully. He regrets nothing, like an embodiment of Piaf’s “Non, rien de rien”. His hair is perfect because he clearly spends time in front of the mirror styling it, not because the show’s producer wanted him to look effortlessly cool (*cough*Sherlock*cough*).

He never, ever loses his temper in public, as if he knows that the world/audience will not fawn over him for trying to assert himself through vulgarity, posturing, or volume - all the typical ways in which men like to hijack and dominate conversations.

He can dispatch a creepy stalker like Franklyn with a single neck twist, with no consequences. A sweet fantasy, indeed. If only real life stalkers were so easy to dispose of.

Hannibal’s victims - those who were not killed in self-defense or as ‘murder presents’ for Will - tend to fall into two categories: other killers who act like *they* are the baddest bitches in town (Gideon, Tobias, the mural guy) and people who disrespect him. Of those, there are surprisingly many. In fact, it seems like the very esteemed pillar of Baltimore society Dr. Lecter goes through life constantly being dissed. This is rather puzzling. Hannibal is a tall good-looking white gentleman who speaks like a professor, dresses like a count, and drives a Bentley that costs more than people’s houses. And yet something about him prompts many people, especially in the service industry, to be rude to him.

But he doesn’t confront these “pigs” (already a gender-loaded term, even though it gets applied to victims of both sexes) in a head-on, macho way. Instead, he bides his time and dispatches his prey through some kind of a sneak attack. His preferred philosophy of fighting is “feminine”: assume your opponent is physically stronger and don’t try to out-muscle them. (Even if his opponent is much smaller and weaker, like Chilton.) Subterfuge, ambush, sedatives - Hannibal wins his fights by fighting on his own terms. Nevertheless, if a man should come at him with a weapon, he defends himself with perfect adroitness: Tobias, Jack, Mason’s henchmen, etc.

Even some aspects of Hannibal’s relationship with Will would make more sense if he were female. In particular the issue of, well, issue. Hannibal is clearly Not Okay with Will having children with anyone but him. This is somewhat odd for a man, especially one who seems to have never wanted kids before this. But it makes sense for a woman just past menopause: fate finally delivered her dream partner, but it’s too late to have a family. And so Hannibal sets up the dominoes for Margot’s pregnancy to be terminated practically as soon as he learns of it. If he can’t have Will’s kids, then no one can. They may be adopted, but they have to be *theirs*.

It also makes sense that when Hannibal discovers Will’s treachery, he goes full Medea on him. Killing the man’s children is common to cultural narratives of wronged women all over the world. It’s often the only leverage they have over the men, the only way they can exact revenge. Hannibal can take much more than Abigail from Will, but she is the only thing he can take that truly matters.

Bonus exercise for the reader: imagine a version of the show where everything is the same, but Hannibal is played by Meryl Streep.

Or even just swap Mads Mikkelsen & Gillian Anderson places. Let her be Hannah Lecter; let him be Dr. Bennett Du Maurier, her wary shrink. Both the characterization and plot still work almost 100%.

Sites to Help with Writing

1 - [ https://www.yourdictionary.com ] I use this site for the thesaurus, It helps to find synonyms for words so you don't repeat "said" a thousand times in your book.

2 - [ https://milanote.com ] This one is very helpful for organising your ideas with story boards, though it's partially free it has a paid version where you can get even more features. I use the free version.

3 - [ https://inkarnate.com ] This site is very popular to create maps, and for good reason. It's free version gives you all the features necessary to create maps, but the paid version gives you extra features. I use the free version.

4 - [ https://www.behindthename.com ] I use this one for names. It has a database of endless names alongside their country of origin and meaning. Very useful, though I use it to make sure the names I come up with don't end the wrong way.

5 - [ https://www.pinterest.com ] Do I even need to explain? Ideas? Here. Visualisation? Here. Everything you'll ever need? Here.

6 - [ https://quillbot.com ] Heard of it from a beloved friend. This site is useful for tone checks, grammar checks, and more. I only use it to edit.

7 - [ Google Docs ] I only use this one for writing, its free and perfectly usable.

8 - [ https://www.artbreeder.com ] This one is essential for character creation. It has many features that allows you to visualise and create portraits for your characters.

Bonus:

I use [ https://tabletopaudio.com ] for background noise while writing, because i cant focus in silence.

That's all, I hope this proves useful :)

From a friend: Google is so powerful that it "hides" other search systems from us. We just don't know the existence of most of them.

Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information.

Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

WEBSITES FOR WRITERS {masterpost}

E.A. Deverell - FREE worksheets (characters, world building, narrator, etc.) and paid courses;

Hiveword - Helps to research any topic to write about (has other resources, too);

BetaBooks - Share your draft with your beta reader (can be more than one), and see where they stopped reading, their comments, etc.;

Charlotte Dillon - Research links;

Writing realistic injuries - The title is pretty self-explanatory: while writing about an injury, take a look at this useful website;

One Stop for Writers - You guys... this website has literally everything we need: a) Description thesaurus collection, b) Character builder, c) Story maps, d) Scene maps & timelines, e) World building surveys, f) Worksheets, f) Tutorials, and much more! Although it has a paid plan ($90/year | $50/6 months | $9/month), you can still get a 2-week FREE trial;

One Stop for Writers Roadmap - It has many tips for you, divided into three different topics: a) How to plan a story, b) How to write a story, c) How to revise a story. The best thing about this? It's FREE!

Story Structure Database - The Story Structure Database is an archive of books and movies, recording all their major plot points;

National Centre for Writing - FREE worksheets and writing courses. Has also paid courses;

Penguin Random House - Has some writing contests and great opportunities;

Crime Reads - Get inspired before writing a crime scene;

The Creative Academy for Writers - "Writers helping writers along every step of the path to publication." It's FREE and has ZOOM writing rooms;

Reedsy - "A trusted place to learn how to successfully publish your book" It has many tips, and tools (generators), contests, prompts lists, etc. FREE;

QueryTracker - Find agents for your books (personally, I've never used this before, but I thought I should feature it here);

Pacemaker - Track your goals (example: Write 50K words - then, everytime you write, you track the number of the words, and it will make a graphic for you with your progress). It's FREE but has a paid plan;

Save the Cat! - The blog of the most known storytelling method. You can find posts, sheets, a software (student discount - 70%), and other things;

I hope this is helpful for you!

(Also, check my blog if you want to!)