🌊 Water Is Life. It Is Death. It Represents A Cosmological Cycle Of Both In Many Ethnic Groups In

PHILIPPINE GODS AND GODDESSES: Bathala

Bathala, also known as Abba, is said to be the creator of everything. He dwells in the sky which is called Kawalhatian together with the lesser gods and goddesses. He is kind, giving the people everything they need to the point of spoiling them. This was where the Filipino saying “Bahala na” (come what may) came from. It is also known that Bathala sends anito (ancestor spirits, nature spirits, and deities) to help mankind with their daily activities.

photo credits: ledsetgo & melisica

Babaylan Knowledge: A Complete Tutorial About Herbal Medicine in the Philippines

Certain herbs, even some fruits are used as traditional and alternative medicine in the Philippines. This Buzzle article presents information on some popular medicinal plants, which are approved by the Department of Health, Philippines.  […] Source: A Complete Tutorial About Herbal Medicine in the Philippines

A Visual #Fashion Guide For Women - Necklines, Skirt Types & More!

By KikiCloset.com

PHILIPPINE GODS AND GODDESSES: The Four Agents of Sitan

In Tagalog mythology, Sitan (the Guardian of Kasamaan) had four agents whose task was to lead mankind to sin and destruction. These four agents were Manggagaway (Disease), Manisilat (Breaker of Families), Mangkukulam (Fire), and Hukluban (Death).

I've made this post like six times but it still fucks me up the China's mountains just look like that. Like I spent decades thinking it was stylistic but no, they just have different mountains over there.

Luyong Baybay, A Philippine goddess who was in love with the moon. Her name means “She who was born from the waves”.

my old doodles with winter sengen ❄️

when i tell u i left everything for this-

why do i love u sm why?! ill do the same for you if tumblr notified me, but pls, it's prob smth u don't want to see, tumblrs lying 😭😭

Writing advice #?: Have your characters wash the dishes while they talk.

This is one of my favorite tricks, picked up from E.M. Forester and filtered through my own domestic-homebody lens.  Forester says that you should never ever tell us how a character feels; instead, show us what those emotions are doing to a character’s posture and tone and expression.  This makes “I felt sadness” into “my shoulders hunched and I sighed heavily, staring at the ground as my eyes filled with tears.”  Those emotions-as-motions are called objective correlatives.  Honestly, fic writers have gotten the memo on objective correlatives, but sometimes struggle with how to use them.

Objective correlatives can quickly become a) repetitive or b) melodramatic.  On the repetitive end, long scenes of dialogue can quickly turn into “he sighed” and “she nodded” so many times that he starts to feel like a window fan and she like a bobblehead.  On the melodramatic end, a debate about where to eat dinner can start to feel like an episode of Jerry Springer because “he shrieked” while “she clenched her fists” and they both “ground their teeth.”  If you leave the objective correlatives out entirely, then you have what’s known as “floating” dialogue — we get the words themselves but no idea how they’re being said, and feel completely disconnected from the scene.  If you try to get meaning across by telling us the characters’ thoughts instead, this quickly drifts into purple prose.

Instead, have them wash the dishes while they talk.

To be clear: it doesn’t have to be dishes.  They could be folding laundry or sweeping the floor or cooking a meal or making a bed or changing a lightbulb.  The point is to engage your characters in some meaningless, everyday household task that does not directly relate to the subject of the conversation.

This trick gives you a whole wealth of objective correlatives.  If your character is angry, then the way they scrub a bowl will be very different from how they’ll be scrubbing while happy.  If your character is taking a moment to think, then they might splash suds around for a few seconds.  A character who is not that invested in the conversation will be looking at the sink not paying much attention.  A character moderately invested will be looking at the speaker while continuing to scrub a pot.  If the character is suddenly very invested in the conversation, you can convey this by having them set the pot down entirely and give their full attention to the speaker.

A demonstration:

1

“I’m leaving,” Anastasia said.

“What?”  Drizella continued dropping forks into the dishwasher.

2

“I’m leaving,” Anastasia said.

Drizella paused midway through slotting a fork into the dishwasher.  “What?”

3

“I’m leaving,” Anastasia said.

Drizella laughed, not looking up from where she was arranging forks in the dishwasher.  “What?”

4

“I’m leaving,” Anastasia said.

The forks slipped out of Drizella’s hand and clattered onto the floor of the dishwasher.  “What?”

5

“I’m leaving,” Anastasia said.

“What?”  Drizella shoved several forks into the dishwasher with unnecessary force, not seeming to notice when several bounced back out of the silverware rack.

See how cheaply and easily we can get across Drizella’s five different emotions about Anastasia leaving, all by telling the reader how she’s doing the dishes?  And all the while no heads were nodded, no teeth were clenched.

The reason I recommend having it be one of these boring domestic chores instead of, say, scaling a building or picking a lock, is that chores add a sense of realism and are low-stakes enough not to be distracting.  If you add a concurrent task that’s high-stakes, then potentially your readers are going to be so focused on the question of whether your characters will pick the lock in time that they don’t catch the dialogue.  But no one’s going to be on the edge of their seat wondering whether Drizella’s going to have enough clean forks for tomorrow.

And chores are a cheap-n-easy way to add a lot of realism to your story.  So much of the appeal of contemporary superhero stories comes from Spider-Man having to wash his costume in a Queens laundromat or Green Arrow cheating at darts, because those details are fun and interesting and make a story feel “real.”  Actually ask the question of what dishes or clothing or furniture your character owns and how often that stuff gets washed.  That’s how you avoid reality-breaking continuity errors like stating in Chapter 3 that all of your character’s worldly possessions fit in a single backpack and in Chapter 7 having your character find a pair of pants he forgot he owns.  You don’t have to tell the reader what dishes your character owns (please don’t; it’s already bad enough when Tolkien does it) but you should ideally know for yourself.

Anyway: objective correlatives are your friends.  They get emotion across, but for low-energy scenes can become repetitive and for high-energy scenes can become melodramatic.  The solution is to give your characters something relatively mundane to do while the conversation is going on, and domestic chores are not a bad starting place.

mythology family ♥︎ hanan for @gisabarrovv​

in tagalog mythology, hanan is the goddess of morning, dawn, child birth and new beginnings. she is one of the three demigod daughters of bathalang, the creator of the universe. hanan is the sister of mayari (goddess of the moon), and tala (goddess of the stars).