one of my favorite books as a kid was this one on speculative
zoology/evolution that I loved so much I borrowed it to the point my
school had to chase me up on returning it several times. it influenced my early creature art and design and pushed me to delve into my own specbio (on dragons. no surprises there). I loved the informatic entries, all their little lore bits and ecological adaptations; the wild color palettes, their weird little shapes. it was called The New Dinosaurs, by Dougal Dixon.
there were two more books in the series that my school didn’t have, which is either a blessing or a curse, because the third book in the set is called Man After Man.
people bitching about the usage of “too modern” words in fantasy or historical fiction is sometimes justified, but ultimately I think it’s a waste of time because
all words exist within a specific time frame and it’s pointless to avoid the fact that you’re writing with the language of your own time
which words are actually “newer” than other words is sometimes wildly unintuitive
according to the dates given in the Oxford English Dictionary, if you wrote a book set in 1897, you could have your characters say “fuckable,” (1889) “sexy” (1896) “uncomfy” (1868) “hellacious” (1847) “dude” (1877) “all righty” (1877) and “heck” (1887), but not “wiggly” (1932) “moronic” (1910) “uptight” (1934) “lowbrow” (1901) “fifty-fifty” (1913) “burp” (1932) “bagel” (1898) or use the word “rewrite” as a noun (1901)
Some more words where the date of their first known usage just Doesn’t Sound Right:
hangry, as in the portmanteau of ‘hungry’ and 'angry’ (1912)
dildo (1590)
yucky (1970)
grungy (1965)
freebie (1925)
shitty (1768)
boost (1815)
boss (1856)
TGIF, as in Thank God It’s Friday (1941)
yay (1963)
Fucked up (1863) is much older than fuck you (1943) but older still is the now-obscure fucked out (1862) which means what it sounds like—exhausted from too much sex.
dont forget that shakespere invented the words “bandit” and “lonely” so anything set in medieval fantasy wouldnt have those words if youre going for accuracy
Cannae find my post abt hot santa from rotg bc tumblr’s search system continues to be a cockblock but here’s my obligatory reminder that the rotg santa is hot. Hottest movie santas imo are rotg santa, klaus 2019 santa, and now david harbour’s santa from violent night. Smth abt the topknot and tats really does it for me. And the violence.
Going to add something here as a few people in the notes don’t know the significance of the date here, or think this might be a dig at Sesame Street somehow - on November 18th, 2003, there was an absolutely landmark legal case in the state of Massachusetts that ruled that civil unions in that state needed to be given the same rights as marriage. This was HUGE - gay marriage was not legally recognized in any state at the time, and civil unions were the closest you could get. This is a WONDERFULLY hopeful, sweet comic drawn five whole days after an enormous, major step forward for gay marriage POSSIBLY being legal. Massachusetts wouldn’t even properly legalize gay marriage until May 2004, and it was the first state to do so.
You can Google Goodridge v Department of Public Health for more details.
ALT
