five things: dinosaur feathers, writing outlines, friendship, trans backstory, pidw mobing thought

[sophia_sol]

whoops this week you get five things, I couldn't narrow it down!

one

the current state of research into feathers on dinosaurs (and pterosaurs!) is so INTERESTING, we keep learning new things that complicate our understanding, and it's possible that proto-feathers are a basal trait to the archosaur ancestor of both dinosaurs and pterosaurs?!! OR that feather-like structures convergently evolved like 4 or 5 times within archosaurs, which is ALSO super cool. either option is just so exciting!!!

we do know though that all coelurosaurs -- this includes tyrannosaurs -- are from a feathered lineage. so any coelurosaur either had feathers or was an oddity who evolved from feathered relatives to no longer have feathers.

It's hard to say for sure though about a lot of specific species because feathers don't preserve well in most contexts so we just don't have evidence.

but still. LOTS of feathered dinosaurs for sure.

so many feathery possibilities out there!

two

did you know! you could be a discovery type of writer and still find outlines helpful? it's just that you write the outline to cover the parts of the story you've ALREADY written, so you can better see your structure and remember your story beats as you keep going!

three

I love.... friendship 💖

I love all the different kinds of friendship one can have, and how they each bring a different kind of wonderfulness to your life!

four

in retrospect it was very trans egg of me in high school to be like "idk why this is but it is very emotionally important to me that I be allowed to sing in my school's men's chorus; I have a decent tenor voice and my gender shouldn't be a barrier"

AND to be able to TELL people I was in a men's chorus! I got so much satisfaction out of that!

(yes the men's chorus did let me in. thank you to the director for being a terrifying teacher but a decent person.)

five

a thought from 2022 when I was attempting to have a fandom-specific twitter presence:

pidw mobing is just.....so good to think about

I think they don't talk about it, they don't act on it, they maybe don't even realise they feel it, but they are each other's most stable and reliable connection, no backstabbing or politicking or pretense

even when they're angry with each other it feels like a relief. no secrets between them. lbh can safely let all his worst qualities be visible, no need to turn on the seductive charm. mbj can relax in the knowledge he's not being played by someone who pretends to care.

mbj will do whatever his lord requires of him. lbh will protect his trusted lieutenant.

any other feelings are unnecessary for them to analyse or pay attention to

Comments

[dolorosa_12]

so many feathery possibilities out there!

This was so cool and interesting to read about!

[sophia_sol]

yay! <3 god I love that there are still endless new things we are learning about dinosaurs

[pauraque]

it's just that you write the outline to cover the parts of the story you've ALREADY written, so you can better see your structure and remember your story beats as you keep going!

This is me! If I'm writing a longer or more complex story, I'll stop in the middle and write an outline so I can see what I have and what still needs to be filled in.

I also love friendship. <3

[sophia_sol]

It had never even occurred to me before that that could be a use case for an outline, I'd always seen it talked about (at least as far as I can remember) as a tool for planning where you're going, rather than as a tool for handling the information load! It's neat to see though that there are others who also use outlines in a variety of ways!

[chestnut_pod]

I love the thought of all their beautiful feathers! It also implies the mythical "little drab dinosaur," answer to the modern "little brown bird."

[sophia_sol]

omg YES. little drab brown dinosaurs darting around through the plant litter! <3

[cahn]

ahahaha yeah I am totally the writer who does my outlines after writing half the draft! (Actually what usually happens is I write some of the draft, I realize my story is about something else entirely, chuck half of what I'd written, rewrite like mad, and then write an outline, like you say, to outline what I've written (and hopefully by that time I know at least vaguely what gets filled in).

and yay feathered dinosaurs! It's so neat what my kiddos learn that were NOT what I learned as a kid, lol.

and men's choirs are so awesome. I can't sing tenor long-term because it chews up my voice like mad (I did do this one semester because they needed more tenors and lived to regret it) but gosh I love it!

[sophia_sol]

that makes a great deal of sense as an approach to writing tbh! I'm glad it works for you!

I think I remember that when I was a kid, the idea that there MIGHT have been SOME dinosaurs who MAYBE had feathers was like a big new thought. And the asteroid impact theory of dinosaur extinction was cutting edge science. I'm so curious now what's trickled down from current research into the info that kids are learning

what chews up my voice a lot more tbh is singing mid-range alto, where I spend a lot of time right around the breaking point between my chest voice and head voice (around middle F/G for me), and I end up pushing my chest voice to get a couple notes higher than I should. Brutal. Tenor is all comfortably in my chest voice! But my biggest problem as a tenor is that I can't actually hit the C below middle C (C3 I think?) and that is a standard lowest-note for a tenor part in a lot of choral music....

[lirazel]

I am not a Dinosaur Person, but I am absolutely delighted by your love of them! Yay for passion!

[sophia_sol]

imagine me having to like physically restrain myself from attempting to explain to you why you SHOULD be a dinosaur person, why obviously dinosaurs are so cool that EVERYONE should care about them...... XD

[lirazel]

If it makes you happy to talk about it, go right ahead, though I cannot assure you that it will bring me around!