#Also those aren’t actually my top 5 posts I deleted a couple because the notes got out of control | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thedudewiththedragontattoos · 3 years

Text

Genetically Correct Pleasantview with Scripted Events CC FREE

Hey people! Welcome to my latest project - A genetically correct Pleasantview with scripted events!

When I first found out (a while ago) that the playables we all know and love in Pleasantview aren’t actually genetically related to their ancestors, it totally broke immersion for me. For some reason it really bothered me and that kept me from really getting into a playthrough of the hoods that Eaxis shipped with the game. Then I discovered this crazy cool thing that people did which involved extracting the appearances of the first ancestors from each family, and breeding them in CAS from generation to generation, eventually creating Genetically Correct versions of the sims we all know. This is where I began this exhausting journey - there was a lot of learning but I am really happy with how it turned out!

There have been a ton of various Pleasantview makeovers - all of which are super awesome! However, I was unable to find a Pleasantview that not only already had all the sims genetically correct, but still had their relationships, biographies, personalities, and most importantly, scripted events...because let’s face it - who the hell wants to start a new Pleasantview if they can’t play through the cool ass scripted events in the beginning? I know I don’t. And that’s why I made this hood.

What is this? This is a Pleasantview in which I have made all the playable sims (and their ancestors) genetically correct. It contains no cc and was built on top of a clean template Pleasantview as well. Below are pics of the premades:

More Info, pics, and download below the cut!

My main goal for this was to make the premades genetically correct while still keeping them actually recognizable. I know there are some GC versions that are totally different, and I absolutely respect that, but I still wanted to look at Daniel Pleasant and say “Yep, that’s Daniel”.

IMPORTANT: After taking the pictures I realized the skin I use (No longer after this), which I will link below drastically whitewashes the sims. Some sims with skin 3 look super light, such as Daniel Pleasant and Jennifer Burb. They still have the correct skin, it just may appear lighter in my images. I didn’t realize this until after I made the sims and took their pictures. Also note that the eyes may look like different colors. People have said the light blue looks grey, so if you see a strange eye color on a sim it doesn’t match with, be aware it’s likely just the defaults I used.

Notice: I used a mod, equal genetics while creating these sims. I do not claim to be anything but a simpleton when it comes to genetics, and I know that some of these sims’ genetics aren’t realistic - Like a blond and brunette having a blond kid. I don’t claim to know anything about genetics, so before you genetic purists come at me just know - I know this and don’t care.

My general notion was that if one of their ancestors had a gene, then they could too.

With that being said, all living premades with the exception of Coral Oldie, Herb Oldie, Mortimer Goth, and Bella Goth have the same eye and hair colors as they did originally. Some ancestors or dead spouses (like Michael Bachelor and Skip Broke) have had a few changes as well. More on that at the very end, for those interested.

TLDR - General Information

I ramble, I know. The main idea is that ALL of the sims are the same exact sims as you’re used to. They all have the same personalities, zodiac signs, hobbies, jobs, aspirations, relationships, memories, etc...They just have corrected appearances. Scripted events still work, and Brandi Broke’s baby is also now going to be genetically correct and related to both her and Skip.

A few things to note:

- I used a default skin and eyes when taking the pictures. The sims will not come with these. I used Pitstop Skinblend and Poppet Clear Eyes

- Yes, I know Michael Bachelor’s eyes aren’t right. That is fixed in the game.

- This is CC FREE!!

- Brandi’s pregnancy may be a couple hours behind

- All sims have just about the same dominant and recessive traits as they do in the original clean templates from meetme. No sim is homozygous unless intended by meetme/eaxis.

- Sims may get some wants or fears of their ancestors or dead relatives becoming zombies or resurrected, this is just because of the way I did this, their deaths are fresh in the playables minds.

- This hood was build on a clean template Pleasantview, all ancestors and dead sims are safe to resurrect

- This was made with Ultimate Collection, so unfortunately you will need this or all packs for this to work.

- The versions without townies still include Bella Goth, Kaylynn Langerak, and Gordon King.

- When you add the subhood version with townies, you’ll notice that the townie and NPC names get randomized and aren’t their original names. Though annoying, this is normal and you will have to rename them all yourself.

Update:

It seems that some mods can break the scripted events, it was unclear exactly which mods in my folder did it. To circumvent this issue I would recommend that when you initially install and play the scripted events in the hood, take out all of your non essential mods (leave in mods like no unlink on delete, no townie regen, things that are essential) from your mods folder (just mods, cc is fine to stay in) and put it in a safe folder while you just play through the SE - then when they're done, put the mods back in. This seems like a random occurrence - as they only broke 1 out of every 5 times I tested it.

More Pics:

Link to imgur album of individual sims and all (or most) ancestors.

Link to imgur album of individual families

Download Instructions:

This comes in 4 versions:

GC Main Hood Pleasantview with Townies

GC Main Hood Pleasantview without Townies

GC Subhood (Shopping district) Pleasantview with Townies

GC Subhood (Shopping district) Pleasantview without Townies

Download the version you want.

For Main Hoods, place the folder in the following location:

Ultimate Collection:

Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection\Neighborhoods

Disk Version:

Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods

For Subhoods, place the folder in the following location:

Ultimate Collection:

Program Files\Origin Games\The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection\Best of Business\EP3\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate

Disk Version:

:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Open for Business\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate

Credits:

meemetotheriver for the clean templates

Carrit for the ancestral sims

Special thanks to:

Sabrina from PleasantSims discord and @isabella-goth for their patience and help with my idiocy throughout this project - I couldn’t have figured it out without your help specifically!!

Download:

Genetically Correct Pleasantview with Townies

Genetically Correct Pleasantview without Townies (Still includes Bella, Kaylynn, and Gordon King)

I hope you all enjoy this! As usual, let me know if you run into any issues! Tag me in pics or posts of what you do with the sims if you’d like!

Till’ next time

-Mike

P.S. Changes to premades/dead spouses:

Bella Goth - Hair changed to brown

Mortimer Goth - Hair changed to black

Coral Oldie - Hair changed to blond

Herb Oldie - Eyes changed to dark blue

Skip Broke - Eyes changed to dark blue

Michael Bachelor - Given blond hair, medium skin, and dark blue eyes

That should be the only changes to premades and/or their spouses. Some ancestors have been adjusted too!

#sims 2 #ts2 #ts2 hood #pleasantview #dwtdtpleasantviewgc #sims 2 neighborhood #ts2cc #sims 2 build #sims #simblr #the sims 2 #the sims 2 cc #the sims 2 hood #dwtdt

175 notes · View notes

carlyraejcpsen · 3 years

Text

alright, i’ve tried to keep quiet because i truly believe in karma and wanted this rp to close through the admin’s own actions and not give them any opportunities to blame it on me instead. it also felt like beating a dead horse, because i was sure they’d close the rp after losing a huge proportion of their active members and the majority of their diversity. however, after seeing multiple people sharing their experiences today, they are still posting promo posts and starting their event. so yeah, here’s my experience with @thevillagerp

NOTE: i no longer have screenshots from my conversations with the admins, as i blocked them when i left the rp for the sake of my own mental health, but i did save the text in my drafts, so the messages below are copy pasted. i have not edited them in any way. They also deleted my original anonymous messages off of their blog.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: racism, very vague allusions to homophobia and transphobia

so i was a member of this roleplay for around two months. during my time there, it was startlingly obvious that white fcs were preferred and prioritised, both from the fact that they got more plots and interactions in general and from the fact that admins never promoted diversity on the main. even now, they repeatedly say they “would still love to receive some more male and non-binary apps” while ignoring that they currently have a ratio of 8 fcs of colour to 24 white fcs. their diversity rules at the time were that 1/3 of a mun’s characters had to be played by an fcoc. so people could easily just play one or two white characters.

a while ago, i sent an anonymous message to the main asking if they had considered perhaps changing this rule to be 2/3 characters instead of 1/3, since there were so few muses of colour in the roleplay (as i said before, they’ve since deleted this from their blog so i cannot provide a screenshot). they responded that they had been thinking of upping the character limit to four instead of three, with a rule that 2/4 must be played by an fcoc. i gave them the benefit of the doubt and the time to enact this change, but nothing happened.

so a few weeks later, i sent them this message on anonymous:

I was wondering if you had thought any more about the diversity rules here? I know you said before that you were considering increasing the character limit, but I noticed that hasn’t happened and I wanted to know if that was a change we’re going to see or if you would consider changing the rules in another way? I’m really disheartened by the lack of diversity in the roleplay

at the time there were 18 characters of colour out of a total of over 60. they responded (again, i’m sorry i don’t have the actual wording since they’ve deleted the messages) that they had thought about it and decided against upping the character limit, but instead would be having a weekly “poc acceptance day,” where they would only be accepting apps with fcs of colour. they also said they were doing this “now that the waitlist was mostly cleared,” which meant that the rp was mostly at capacity anyway, so they needed to look more at how to encourage their existing members to promote diversity, since there weren’t spaces open for new people to bring them in.

i responded with another anon expressing my disappointment and pointing out that they had done more to prevent having too many celebrity characters than too few muses of colour, as at the time they had a ban on celebrity muses. i wouldn’t usually suggest a ban on certain fcs, but as it was something they had done for celebrity characters, then i supposed it was a reasonable option.

they didn’t even respond to this message and instead posted on the main asking me to come off anon to discuss it. so i did, and i sent them the following dm:

i didn’t want to come off anon because i honestly feel really ostracised in this group and didn’t want to make it worse, but i don’t want to drop this issue and you aren’t comfortable addressing it publicly so here we are i guess. like i said in my previous message, i really don’t see how a “poc acceptance day” is going to make anywhere near enough of a difference. people will just wait for the opportunity to play their white characters. there are only 18 characters of colour in a roleplay with over 60 characters. that’s less than a third, which is obviously concerning. what’s even more concerning for me is that these characters are more often than not overlooked. i am often ghosted when plotting, or people don’t even reach out at all when i like plotting calls or intro posts. and then i have to watch characters like leo almost exclusively interact with white women (i’m sure that’s not the only example, but it is the first that comes to mind as he is one of the more active characters).

so this issue goes so much deeper than there just not being adequate representation in the rp. i really tried to help, i suggested making it a rule that 2/3 characters need to be poc in my original ask and you mentioned upping the character limit in response. i was worried that my concerns were being brushed aside, but i waited a while to give you the benefit of the doubt and the space to discuss the issue. so you can understand why it was really upsetting today to learn that the one thing you suggested was dropped and instead replaced with something that is barely scratching the surface of the problem. and i don’t know if it was your intention, but by saying that you were waiting for the waitlist to clear, it comes across as not wanting to receive any backlash from people who would want to join with only white characters. and even if people did want to join with faceclaims of colour, they can’t because the waitlist is cleared. like i suggested, you could change the rules so that 2 out of 3 characters must be people of colour. or, as was your proposed idea, up the character limit to four. you could also put a temporary ban on white faceclaims until the ratio evens out. as i mentioned, it’s really distressing that this was something you were willing to do for celebrity characters, but not to aid diversity.

i also just want to make it clear that these have been the only anons i’ve sent, i know you’ve been getting other ones, but those weren’t from me!!

( for context, they were receiving anons from someone else claiming that they felt left out in the rp ).

i had hoped that coming off anon would show them that this was a very real issue which was affecting their members, as well as giving them a space to discuss it privately instead of on the main. they responded with:

Hi Em, thank you for coming forward. We really, really appreciate it and we understand it’s not an easy thing to do. We also appreciate you flying the flag for diversity so strongly. We can always strive to be better, we are on the same page with you here.

Let us just explain our decision making. Firstly, just to address the waitlist, that was certainly not at all our intention when we brought it up. It was a logistical decision with 5+ applicants having already waited a week for acceptance and aware of their position on a waitlist.

When we decided against upping the character limit (and therefore the 2/4 POC character rule), we thought a POC acceptance day could be a good alternative course of action. In our eyes, this was something that would probably bring more POC characters to the group than the 2/4 rule because we knew there weren’t going to be many muns taking up an additional fourth character. This was a rule we’ve seen other groups enjoy success from so we wanted to try it out here. Plus, we think a day that explicitly highlights diversity every week would bring the message to the forefront of everyone’s minds. As we said, we’re going to monitor this over the next couple of weeks to see if it brings any improvement because we’d really like to have it as an ongoing rule.

The non-POC ban is actually a measure we’ve spoken about too and we are considering putting one in place should this fail. Thank you for raising your concerns, know that we’ve taken them very seriously and we hope that you’ll trust our judgement in trying this rule out first to see where it leads.

first of all, i don’t think i even have to mention the wording of “flying the flag for diversity.” but the real crux of the issue here is that they supposedly wanted me to come off anon to discuss the issue, but instead just explained their idea further and didn’t take anything i said on board. they didn’t even say a single word about how i told them i felt ostracised and regularly got ignored. i knew from speaking to other muns in the rp who played muses of colour (and just from looking at the dash) that they felt the same way too, but of course was only speaking from my own experience.

i thought long and hard about how to respond to this, as i was so disheartened by their unwillingness to listen to their members and the fact that they didn’t care that i felt left out. it felt like they had asked me to come off anon just so they knew who was messaging them and therefore put a target on my back, so honestly the thought of being on the dash or talking to the admins made me incredibly anxious. before i had a chance, however, they responded again with:

Hi hun, we’ve continued discussing this issue over the last couple of days and we wanted to let you know that we’ve decided to put in place a non-POC ban instead. Thank you again for holding a mirror up to the group. We do hope that this will recorrect the balance.

so i waited to see how things would play out. they posted about this new ban here and pinned the post to the top of the main:

[ IMAGE ID: a screenshot from thevillagehq of an admin update, which reads: in the interest of keeping the village a diverse space, we are currently only accepting applications for POCs. please note that any apps or reserves submitted to us for faceclaims that are not POCs will be deleted. we will lift this rule once we see fit.

thank you for your understanding and your efforts in making this group a brighter, more inclusive and diverse place for all. /END ID ]

this rule remained in place for around two weeks, during which time they made almost no effort to promote it. the above post was pinned to the main page, but that was the only mention of the ban anywhere on their page, they didn’t update the rules page or even put a note on the application page about it. during this two week period, the admins posted 10 promo posts, none of which suggested fcs or even mentioned the ban or diversity at all. the ban was then lifted suddenly when the pinned post was removed and the admins just went back to accepting apps with white fcs. the ratio had only evened out in those two weeks (from 18 out of 65 to 24/50) because of people going inactive or leaving, and there was nothing put into place to continue to promote diversity after the lift of the ban. in the three days after the ban was lifted, the admins posted over 10 promo posts, the same amount they had posted during the entirety of the ban. it was clear that they had no intention of actually making changes in their rp and had only done so because i refused to drop the issue.

again, i thought a lot about what i wanted to message them. i knew at this point that they didn’t want to make any real changes, but i still felt like i had to make it clear to them how disappointing their actions were. once again, i was messaged before i even had a chance, this time for bubbling.

as you can see in the above correspondence, i had told the admins point blank that i felt left out and ignored in the rp because of the characters i played (aubrey plaza, mj rodriguez and keiynan lonsdale fcs. all of my characters were queer and used either she/they or they/them pronouns). as a general rule, the only people who wanted to write with me and have interesting plots with me were people who played other muses of colour. the rp had a rule that you must reply to 3+ muns on every character, which i had been doing. i had only been back from my hiatus for a few days at this point and had responded to 6 different open starters the day prior. their message to me read:

Hi hun. There’s something we wanted to address to you directly. It’s been expressed to us by multiple members during these last few weeks that they have felt excluded by your character within the group, especially when it comes to the friend bubble that has formed between Mars, Bowie, Luvena, Asher and others.

While we encourage the development of friendships and trust that this isn’t intentional, we have a zero tolerance for bubble roleplaying at The Village. We are aware that our three mun activity rules have been met by all parties involved, however, bubbling is usually a little more nuanced than that and it seems it has unfortunately begun to create a bit of a divide within the group.

We have already issued individual warnings to a few people within the bubble, however with multiple members still expressing their concerns to us, we decided it would be better to address the group as a whole. We hope that by pointing this out to you, you will try and branch out to your fellow members a little more from now on - and try and be a little more inclusive when it comes to everyone else in the group.

We take such matters very seriously as admins, and while we hope it won’t have to come to this, there will be consequential steps taken should we not see any changes in your interactions in the weeks to come.

as you can imagine, i was incredibly upset to receive this message after already telling them i didn’t get plots from many of their members and they had done nothing. even people who i had previously messaged continued to only write with the same few white characters. i don’t deny that we definitely had a friendship group between our characters, but there were multiple people in that roleplay, including the admins, who only cared about ship plots or plots with the same few muns. me and other people who received the same message had all previously told the admins that people aren’t plotting with us and gotten ignored, so receiving this message made it clear that they neither cared about us nor wanted us in their rp. and so i responded as below:

yeah i literally told you i felt left out because there are multiple people only writing with white characters and you never addressed it, so this message is honestly insulting. i have reached out to almost every new member, responded to multiple open starters and have tried to plot with as many people as possible. like i told you, i am often left on read or people don’t even message me at all. if people do message me, i am usually expected to put in all of the effort and if people aren’t interested in actually developing plots with me then i am obviously not going to force my characters on them. all of my characters are queer, non binary people of colour and the harsh truth of this roleplay is that people don’t care about them. i even wrote out a whole list of 20 detailed suggested connections in an attempt to get more plots and nothing came from that either. i’ve even gotten anonymous hate saying that offering to explain my characters’ pronouns was “patronising,” which i didn’t feel like i could approach you about because, when i told you about how i’m feeling excluded, you didn’t care.

so if i only have actual plots with the people who actually care about my characters, i make no apologies. i also don’t even have threads with half of the characters you named, asher being the only one, and have literally only just come off hiatus. so please explain how i am bubbling, because this really just feels targeted at this point.

you’ve made it endlessly clear that this rp isn’t a safe space for people who want to play diverse characters. the main was practically silent while you had a ban on white faceclaims, which you never actively promoted, and then you dropped that suddenly without putting anything else in place. you also deleted my initial anonymous messages asking about diversity as if you were trying to hide that there was ever an issue. you turned anonymous messages off, so that no one can safely criticise you. because i did that off anon and ever since it has felt like there is a massive target on my back. my characters have been “accidentally” on the activity checks multiple times despite me being on hiatus (people get a notification that they were tagged even if you remove their name from the list btw). plus when i asked for an extension on my hiatus, you said that you would allow it “just this once” which now makes me feel like i can’t come to you if i’m busy. right now, for example, i am in the middle of moving house, but i’m also stressed about trying to stay active because you have made yourselves completely unapproachable.

the ratio only evened out slightly because members left. then suddenly after the ban you’re posting multiple promo posts a day??? you couldn’t get more obvious. i came to you about diversity in good faith, hoping that it was something you were unaware of, but you have made it abundantly clear that you actively do not want to promote diversity in your roleplay, we are just here to be witnesses to your ship. there are multiple members who are actually bubbling who have been brought to your attention, but nothing has been done. leo continues to only write with the same three white and white passing characters. charlotte pretty much only appears to write with leo and post a vague “message me for plots” post that wasn’t even tagged. both of you only put effort into your ship threads with each other and the occasional text threads. even with something like group events: while i’ve been here, there’s been a pride event that neither of your characters were even in new york for (an event where i was the only one reaching out and posting multiple starters, by the way); there was no event last month, and this month all you’re talking about is this housewarming party.

i’m really disheartened that it’s come to this, but i can’t be here anymore. please post unfollows for all my characters. you’ve said multiple times that we should trust you as admins, but this message shows again that i simply can’t do that. from the disregard of trigger warnings, to the way you treated being held accountable for the lack of diversity, to how you respond to people asking for hiatuses, this isn’t a safe space. even if i stayed, the target you have placed on me is making it insufferable to just write my characters in peace.

the other muns who received the same bubbling message (copy pasted btw, we all got the same one word for word) all responded with their own concerns and criticisms in responses of a similar length to mine. none of us received a reply, our unfollows were just posted the next day without any further responses from the admins. a few of the other members who had written and plotted with us chose to leave as well, which the admins wrote off as us just dragging them with us as opposed to them being able to make their own decisions and being aware of the situation (which was incredibly obvious. no promotion of a white fc ban, suddenly being active on the main once they try to stealthily drop the ban, then the majority of their muses of colour leaving???)

i haven’t paid the rp much attention since i left, as i mentioned above i blocked the main and the majority of the members just for my own mental health. but from a quick scroll through today i can see that the only change in diversity rules is that now instead of your third character having to be a poc, it is now your second. however, you still only have to have 1 character out of 3 have a fc of colour. so very little has been done, but of course i’m not surprised in the slightist.

these admins don’t want diversity in their roleplay. if you play any character who isn’t a rich, white, cishet neurotypical, please avoid it at all costs. it’s not in any way a safe environment.

#rpc #rpt #rp #thevillagerp #hope this makes sense i think there's a lot that needs context and hopefully i did a good enough job explaining #sorry to my non rp followers this blog is such a mess

59 notes · View notes

lindstromm · 4 years

Text

Simplified Bookbinding: Font and Text Ornaments

In the first post in this series, How to Make a Cheap First Book, I set out the four steps of bookbinding:

1. Format the text and print it. (This post is all about this step.)

2. Create the text block.

3. Create the case.

4. Attach the case to the text block.

In this post, I’ll give some pointers to get your story from a word processor, or an AO3 story, to a printed page. There are two main formatting sections: (1) the intro pages like the title page and the “about this book” page:

And (2) the text of the book, which may include specialized chapter title font and text separators:

Formatting tips and pics under the cut.

I use Microsoft Word for formatting and printing. I know one method and I stick to that, and I use basically the same formatting process on every story. I get overwhelmed if I have to do something specialized every time or have too many choices. So look at this tutorial as your starter pack, and once you get comfortable, branch out and get as fancy and specialized as you want.

In the Simplified Bookbinding method, we print on A5 pages, which makes the pagination a whole lot easier than printing signature booklets. I have two separate files per book - the intro pages are one file; the text is a second file. This way I don’t have to figure out how to suppress page numbers on part of a file. The intro pages file does not have page numbers; the text file has page numbers.

Page Setup in Word

1. Open a new document.

2. Click “Layout” then “Size.” You need to tell Word that you’re printing on A5 size paper. If the dropdown menu doesn’t include A5, then click on “More Paper Sizes” at the bottom of the menu and fill in the A5 size manually. It’s 5.83 wide by 8.27 high:

Click ‘OK’ and let’s get started putting text on the page.

The Intro Pages

Go pull a professionally published book off your shelf and look at the title page. You’re going to format your title page basically the same way. It’s going to have the title, the author and maybe a text ornament. Center it on the page.

I googled the name of the fandom to get a text block that says “The Old Guard.” A recognizable symbol for that movie is the main character’s labrys, so I googled “labrys line drawing” and snipped it. I titled my story “The Next Job” because I lack the fanfiction ability to select beautiful lines of poetry for story titles. Not as lovely, I’ll grant you, but it fits better on the spine of a book. Anyway, play around with your formatting until you like how it looks. Print a test page.

This is a good time to find out how to print on A5 paper. My printer has a paper size option in the menu, in which I could select “A5″ and then just push the paper holder in the tray for the smaller paper. If you don’t have a printer or can’t connect it, then . . . um, problem. Some bookbinders send print jobs to Staples or other office supply shops. You would have to ask them about printing on custom sized paper and see what they charge. (If you’re going to have it printed at a shop, don’t use easily identifiable text ornaments unless you want to explain to the print shop employee why you aren’t violating copyright laws.)

Depending on your fandom, you may be able to find a fun text ornament that identifies your fandom, like the Avenger’s symbol, a Star Trek symbol, Star Wars, whatever fandom you’re in, I’m sure there’s a graphic you can use. Things like these:

Now we’re going to format the “about this book” page. Look at a professionally published book. This is where you have the copyright information and publisher information. I put in basic information in a list format. In most of my books, I put in a word count and which font I used, just so I can keep track of about how many pages a word count will be. You can put in different info.

On a third page, you can format the author summary and any author notes you want to include. I keep author notes that talk about what the story means to the author. I don’t keep author notes that are basically apologies for not updating often enough. That’s entirely up to you.

So those are your intro pages. It’s 2-4 sheets of paper. I always set 4 blank pages in front of the title page. You’ll notice that professionally published books have a few blank pages before the title page as well. I also put 4 blank pages at the end of the book.

Story Text Pages

Now we’re going to format the actual story. There is a page limit to how much you can bind into one book when using this Simplified Method. You’re limited by the size of the binder clips used in perfect binding. Yep, true, binder clips are your limiting factor. The most I can usually get into big binder clips is about 225 sheets of paper. It varies depending on your paper weight. Take out about 12 sheets for intro and end pages, and that leaves me about 210 printed pages, which double-sided is 420 pages of text. The max word count I’ve bound in one book is 140,000 words. You can bind lengthy works but you will have to play around with margins and font size to keep the number of pages to something that fits into the binder clips.

1. Open a new Word document.

2. Set the paper size to A5 the same way you did for the intro pages document.

3. I always set all four margins to 0.7 just to get more words on a page. I wouldn’t go much smaller than that. You can keep your margins at 1 inch if you want, and I would recommend it if you’re printing less than 50,000 words.

4. Insert page numbers.

5. Go to the story on AO3. Make sure you’re in the “Entire Work” view because it’s a pain to cut and paste chapter by chapter. Press Ctrl-A to “Select All.”

6. Navigate back to your document. Press Ctrl-V to paste the entire mess into your document.

7. Save the file. Save often. You don’t want to lose your formatting.

8. Delete all the stuff that isn’t story text. The “Select All” will have picked up all the buttons and the kudos list and comment box and everything. Just delete it all until you only have text left. The text will have spacing between paragraphs, no indents, chapter headings in the middle of pages, and so forth.

9. When you’ve got nothing but text, press Ctrl-A again to select all the text and we’re going to do some basic formatting. With all the text selected, make these changes:

a. Change the font to Gentium Book Basic 12 pt. (There are hundreds of fonts to choose from. I stick to Gentium Book Basic 12 pt or Book Antiqua 12 pt for the text of the story.)

b. Get into the paragraph format menu. Change the spacing Before and After to 0, and add a first line indent of 0.3. On an A5 page, the standard indent of 0.5 is too deep.

Click out and your page count should change drastically to something pretty close to what your finished page count will be.

10. Now we’re going to format the chapter headings. If you’re in a highly merchandised fandom, you’ll be able to find custom fonts that you can use for chapter headings. Some are free to download. I’ve got the font for Frozen and another one for Star Trek.

Fun, right? If you don’t have a fandom-specific font, I recommend using Narkisim or Baskerville Old Face for chapter heading text. Both are included with Word.

a. If you have more than a couple chapters, it’s easier to set a Heading to auto-format your chapter titles than it is to select text, change font, and center for every single chapter. To do that, format Chapter One the way you want it. Select font, font size, center it on the page (you’ll have to turn off that 0.3 first line indent for just the chapter heading text). While you have your chapter heading text formatted and selected, go to the Home menu and right-click on Heading 2, then select the top option: “Update Heading 2 to Match Selection”. I couldn’t get a snip with the right-click, but this is what you want to right-click on:

Then for your next paragraph, just select the text of chapter number and title, click Heading 2, and it automatically applies all the formatting for you. Yay!

b. With the copy and paste we did to get the text from AO3 into Word, the chapters may start in the middle of a page. Make sure you press Ctrl-Enter at the end of a chapter to start the next chapter on a new page.

c. If you want to insert a text ornament at each chapter heading, that can be fun. If that’s too much right now, don’t worry about. I didn’t start using text ornaments until I had done about 15 books. You’ll have to work to get the text ornament the right size and positioned under the chapter heading text.

Are you done with chapter headings? Moving on!

11. Scene breaks. You know those places inside a chapter where there’s a scene break? Go look at a professionally published book. Many will just have a double space between paragraphs to mark a scene break. That’s probably the easiest way to mark a scene break. Go right ahead and do it that way.

12. Text separators at scene breaks. If you want, you can put in a text ornament to mark a scene break. There are full line text ornaments, or tiny text ornaments:

I found all my text separators by googling ‘images text ornaments’ or ‘text dividers’ and then snipping from the screen. Here are a few I haven’t used yet, which aren’t quite as blurry as everything I take a photo of (sucky camera phone):

To get a text ornament on the page of a Word doc, you go to “Insert” and click on “Pictures” and then select your image file. Then you have to resize it and position it, plus curse because it knocked all your text out of alignment, wonder what the purpose of image anchors are, drag, accidentally drop it in the middle of the paragraph, discover that Word has green guidelines that appear at random. I tell you what, text ornaments are a real treat. I just like them, okay? I like the way they look, I mean, they are annoying to work with. I did discover that once I have it resized, I copy that image, and then paste it into the next scene break rather than inserting the image from file again. That way I know all the text ornaments are the same size.

All done? Got it all formatted? Looks so great, doesn’t it?

Take a deep breath. Take a few days off. The hardest part is yet to come.

Printing

You’ll have to figure out how to print double-sided on A5 paper. I have very little advice here. It’s going to be you figuring out how to get your printer to cooperate. I’ve discovered that auto-double sided printing does not work on A5 paper. The print rollers just aren’t designed for little pieces of paper. My inkjet printer would auto-double-side on A5 paper, but it would offset the text on the front and back by a centimeter. My laser printer won’t auto-double-side at all on A5 paper. I manually double-side the pages. I can do it in batches of 20 pages at a time, so it’s not so bad.

If you are manually double-siding, make sure you know how to orient the pages when you stick them back in the printer. Instead of practicing on your actual book, just print pages that are blank other than the page number. Print pages 1-10 double-sided and see if you have to rotate the pages 180 degrees, or flip them over before putting them back in the paper tray.

Printing is a pain in the butt. Especially if you run out of toner partway through, or your printer starts printing a black line down the middle of every page. WHY??? It just does. It takes me about an hour to print about 80,000 words. I hope you will someday be more efficient than I am, but that’s how long it takes me.

Phew. Okay. Formatting and printing are done. Yay!! I’m very proud of you. That’s a huge job.

#simplified bookbinding #bookbinding #bookbinding for beginners #renegade publishers #renegade bookbinders #font and text ornaments #lindstrom2020 #op

111 notes · View notes

villa-kulla · 3 years

Text

Fic Writer Review

Tagged by @fontainebleau22, thanks for the tag, sorry for the delay!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

26 at the moment.

2. What’s your total AO3 wordcount?

722 309. I’d have thought it would be more considering how long some of mine seem to get, although looking at other people’s answers to this meme, I guess 26 isn’t really a huge number!

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

My first fic ever was a little Lord of the Rings experiment for an exchange thing. But my first proper dip into writing for a fandom would have been Breaking Bad, where I wrote for a couple of years before it felt like my ideas had run their course. Then there was a Kingsman fic, and then Mag7 where - similarly to BrBa - wrote feverishly for a couple years until it felt like the well had been plumbed. Oh yeah and then jumped into the Marvel fandom to drop one Marvel fic before immediately jumping back out lol.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

So the Marvel fic has officially just become my most kudoed fic, which is kind of hilarious considering it was a SUEZ! CANAL! FIC! But in my opinion, a good one lol. So yeah, it would be 1. The SamBucky Suez Canal fic, 2. The Kingsman soccer AU, 3. Desert Sand, 4. Chisolm’s 7, and 5. Blue Devils. That last one surprises me, but I guess it was an early one for the fandom, so I think it became an automatic read.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not

I do! It’s possible I’ve missed some here and there, but generally I try to get them all.

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

I don’t think any of them! While my fics definitely include angst, ideally it’s still in a fun way, or at minimum, bittersweet? I don’t generally want the last taste in a reader’s mouth to be angst. ALTHOUGH. I really really wanted to include an epilogue to the selkie fic that’s kind of angsty. Basically the story would end, but then many years later we’d see an old man get off a bus on the coastal road, carrying a suitcase. He’d be wearing a suit, clearly back from many years travelling. He’d walk to the coast, back over a hill where there’d once been a little fishing cottage, long since torn down. He’d walk down to the beach and into a little cove where he’d kneel by the water he knew better than anyone. Opening the suitcase he’d take out a box which he’d then empty into the ocean, ashes spreading across the water. He’d take out a folded bundle of cloth and wrap it around his shoulders. Then he’d dive into the water, disappearing into the waves, leaving nothing but an empty suitcase behind him, and a folded pile of clothes.

I loved that ending but I’m still not 100% sure if it was keeping in tone with the actual ending, so I left it out. Maybe one day I’ll go and add it as en extra chapter snippet.

7. Do you write crossovers? If so what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I don’t know if I’d call them ‘crossovers’ exactly, although I did stick Goody and Billy into a Some Like it Hot ‘jazz band on a train’ situation, and I also did a Breaking Bad one that used some elements of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Those feel more like ‘AUs’ though. I like situational crossovers, but I’ve never been super into fics where characters from different fandoms actually interact.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Thankfully not. The most off-putting comment I’ve gotten was someone who - despite being very complimentary - decided to make a full-on laundry list all the anachronisms in a chapter lmao, like what. Stuff like "interesting that this character used this expression when XYZ would only been invented 10 years later!” etc. I’m positive they didn’t realize how it came off, but still, that was kind of hilarious in its.....obliviousness lol. It was special.

9. Do you write smut? If so what kind?

I do. And I guess I’ve done the full spectrum of ‘fade to black’ to ‘describe every bead of sweat in pearlescent detail’. It really depends on what the fic calls for! I’ve done some I’m quite proud of tbh, but there are others I’d like to go back and have another stab at, just because they felt kinda cookie-cutter.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of!

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

There’ve been a couple! I can’t remember which ones specially, but I had some people asking to translate some Breaking Bad ones, and I think a Mag7 one too. I remember someone messaging to ask permission like “We love your fics in Russia!” and that was a very sweet and wild thing to hear.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes, I wrote one with @yoporkchopsandwiches! Our Victorian opium dens Breaking Bad AU lol. I was just thinking of that recently actually and remembering how fun it was to read what the other wrote! We plotted out most of it together, and then took turns writing chapters or scenes. But of course while writing you come up with other details or ideas, so we’d then present the new chapter to the other with all the new bits added. And it was so fun to read what the other came up with like ‘omg no way didn’t see that coming/good idea!’ and then picking up their idea from there. In that sense it was almost like improv but for writers.

13. What’s your all-time favourite ship?

That I’ve written? I think I’ve had the most fun with Goodnight/Billy, partly for the time period, partly for the dynamic, but mostly for the plausibility. While I really enjoyed writing BrBa, it felt more like it came from enthusiasm for the show, not the central ship lol. Don’t get me wrong, the chemistry and its potential was extremely fun to write in a fic setting, but I don’t find I actually shipped it while watching the show itself. Whereas it’s been nice with Mag7 to write for a ship that’s actually....more believable lol.

14. What’s a wip that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Ugh I can’t beLIEVE I have an unfinished fic up on ao3 lol it haunts me. I was sure I was done with Goodnight/Billy, and then early quarantine last year I had a train robbers AU idea, so I posted a couple chapters. But I don’t think my heart was super in it, I was more just messing around with the idea. I don’t want to delete it, but I’m also not super motivated to finish it haha, but we’ll see what happens. But tbh I like the poem summary better than the fic itself:P

15. What are your writing strengths?

Plotting, keeping things moving, and making stories feel visual maybe? They’re almost all movies in my head anyways, so I think I have good instincts for ‘cinematic moments’.

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

I think I’m a little lazy, and also ‘end-product oriented’. In some ways it’s helpful to picture the whole fic before you write it, but sometimes it results in some scenes feeling slightly slapdash because I’m just trying to get them out to move onto the next. Like ‘everyone did everything I wanted to in this scene? Great, next.’ I could stand to ‘stop and smell the roses’ more while I write, and actually see what else I can do to improve a scene.

(also if I use a word once it sticks in my head I end up using it like 5 other times in a scene and don’t notice lol, I need to stop that)

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

All for it! Depends how it’s done though. I personally find long scenes of dialogue where you have to constantly jump down to the author’s notes for the translations to be distracting. I like when it’s integrated more naturally where actual translations aren’t super important. Like in River Grit, Billy overhears this little exchange between Goodnight and his childhood nanny:

“Ah c’est vrai, mon petit Bonsoir! J’en peux pas le croire!” she cried out and laughed as she embraced Goody. Billy realized with a start that he actually recognized one of the words: ‘Bonsoir’. Goodnight. (insert brief flashback of Goody teaching him the nickname) / “Ma Serafine,” Goodnight said with a laugh. “C’est vrai que tu ne vieillis pas. Tu vas me rendre jaloux, heh?” / Billy had no idea what Goodnight was saying, but he sure as hell recognized Goodnight’s tone for flattery, and it was confirmed when the old woman laughed and smacked his arm.

What they’re actually saying is: “Oh it’s true, my little Goodnight! I can’t believe it!” / “My Serafine, it’s true you never age. You’re going to make me jealous”. But it doesn’t matter because this fic is from Billy’s POV so it’s about how he experiences the language around him, which is why I wouldn’t have included a translation for the reader. If you understand it then it’s a bonus, but the words themselves aren’t really the point!

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

That lil Lord of the Rings fic.

19. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

Hmm for Mag7 I’ve always liked River Grit and love how it turned out. I also think Ashes feels very complete as a fic and I liked the flashback format. And while it’s not my favourite fic, in hindsight I’m impressed with the Kingsman football fic and how I had to write about 5 different soccer games and make them all feel different and exciting, and not just some variation of ‘He kicked the ball!’ I’m really pleased with how those sequences all turned out.

La fin! Not tagging anyone this time, but please feel free to do this if you see it! I love when people just take initiative to do these things without waiting for a tag (also please tag me in it if you do, ‘cause I love reading these things lol)

#shares #fontainebleau22

6 notes · View notes

northernscruffycat · 3 years

Text

Tagged by @101flavoursofweird

I’ll tag @pandirpus @krokonoko @my-artblog-is-ssjumi @yallemagne @amberrgalaxy @swamp-y and anyone else who wants to do this. But this is a pretty long one, so don’t feel like you have to :3 (On that note, I’ll be putting most of this under a cut for exactly that reason)

How many works do you have on AO3?

131 at the moment. But some of those are different oneshots from FFN that I posted into one fic when porting over to AO3, so I’d be fascinated by what the actual amount of fanfics I’ve written is.

What’s your total AO3 word count?

1242922 words

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Just counting what’s on AO3, so far I’ve written for 17 fandoms. They are: Free!, Professor Layton, Hades Game, Steven Universe, Pokemon, Ace Attorney, Yu-Gi-Oh DM, Yu-Gi-Oh GX, Yu-Gi-Oh 5d’s, Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario, Dr. Stone, Tintin, Night in the Woods, GetBackers, Good Omens and Cooking Mama What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

‘just wanted to write a fic where senku says ‘get excited’ during sex’ (My SenGen oneshot that gets a wave of attention whenever a new chapter or episode of Dr. Stone comes out)

‘laughable’ (An Ares/Hypnos oneshot I wrote purely as a sample for a zine app and underestimated how popular that ship is lol)

‘the prince with specific tastes; the king with specific regrets’ (THAT Theseus fic. My absolute fave thing I’ve ever written)

‘Shallow Grave, Shallow Bae’ (A Reigisa fic based on Octopimp’s 50% Off! abridged series of Free!; I honestly do think this fic slaps and I’m glad folks like it)

‘Barrel of Monkeys’ (The AsaIku & KisuHiyo collab fic I wrote with Amber that was a lotta fun and I’d love to do something like this with them again one day for a different fandom. Also, I feel like we captained the small KisuHiyo fandom with this fic back in the day)

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I generally respond to comments. Almost always, unless I really can’t think of anything to say in reply, which is pretty rare. Comments make me so happy and I just want to let people who do comment know that I appreciate them.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

I think the angstiest fic I wrote was a Free! fic called ‘Moves Across the Land’ - the premise of which is that Makoto died as a young adult of an illness and each chapter is a different person in his life receiving a letter that he wrote for them before he died. But that one had an optimistic ending, with Haru and Kisumi unexpectedly finding a newly strengthened friendship in sharing the grief of Makoto’s death. So I guess technically the angstiest ending I wrote was a short Archie/Maxie oneshot where Maxie gets killed by Kyogre lol

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Yes, but I ended up agreeing with it! Waaay back (probably more that 10 years ago at this point), I wrote a bunch of Layton/Rosetta oneshots that I now don’t stand by. One of them, in my naivety, I went too far with and breached uncomfortable territory. I got a couple of comments about how uncomfortable it was, so I ended up deleting that particular fic and felt better after it was gone.

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

I am a fledgling at writing smut, which is probably obvious to anyone who’s read my smut haha. When I do write it, I prefer to focus on the dialogue between the characters - I like a banterous smut scene. Also, they’re usually pretty tame. I like writing about handjobs, blowjobs and wanking the most when I do write smut.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Again, not that I know of, but that would be awesome! A few years ago, a kind person messaged me about potentially translating my Layton fic ‘Grasping Liquid’ into French, but I don’t think they went through with it in the end. Though honestly, the dialogue and slang in that fic is pretty much illegible in English, so I reckon it’d be a tough fic to translate.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes, the aforementioned ‘Barrel of Monkeys’ that I co-wrote with @amberrgalaxy It was a lot of fun and I love it :D

What’s your all time favorite ship?

Hmm... I don’t think I have a single all time favourite. I jump through a lot of OTPs and they always mean a lot to me, but it wouldn’t seem fair to pick out a single one that’s always shined brighter than the others, because that’s not really how my hyperfixations work. But my current favourite ships are Momus/Heracles (to be narcissistic) and TheseZag from Hades Game. While my oldest ship that I’m still invested in is Yami/Seto from Yu-Gi-Oh DM.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Shockingly, I don’t have any right now. A few years ago (I think 2018?), I made a point of going back and finishing ALL my old WIPs that I’d left hanging but intended to finish, even for fandoms I didn’t plan on going back to. So that freed my conscience of them and felt pretty good. At the moment, my only WIP is ‘if found please return to the underworld’ - an AU where Zagreus does make it to Olympus, so Hades sends Theseus, Asterius and Meg to try to get him back. But I’ve only just started writing that one, so I do hope to stick with it until it’s finished.

What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue. Definitely dialogue. I’m told that I capture the canon voices of characters pretty well and that’s always what I’m trying the hardest to get right, so it means a lot to me. I also feel like I’m good at keeping a fic flowing, without being bogged down by too much detail. But the downside of that is that I often sacrifice description, so I still hope to find the balance. Since Hades Game has more flowery prose than I’m used to, I think getting into that series actually helped me with this.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I do not think I am experienced enough to be able to pull this off well and would worry too much about making mistakes.

What was the first fandom you ever wrote for?

It was Pokemon, but those fics aren’t online anymore. The oldest fics you can still find buried somewhere with my name attached to them are Sonic fics.

What’s your favorite fic you’ve ever written?

‘the prince with specific tastes; the king with specific regrets’ - Sometimes I look back at that fic and wonder if I actually wrote it, since I avoided falling into all of my usual traps: I researched it properly and frequently, I kept the focus on the five main characters instead of getting distracted by introducing a million other character like I usually do, I plotted the fucker out from start to finish instead of winging it, and I worked the flashbacks into it in a way that balanced the present-day out instead of distracting from it. Also, I got the whole thing written in about two months, instead of staling for years. ...Whatever possessed me when I wrote that fic, please come back. (It was the first time I’d had two weeks off together in about three years, so I think that had a lot to do with it) OH YEAH and that same kinda villain OC who I recycle in every fandom I’m in actually landed this time. It brought me so much joy to see how much people loved to hate Momus. Those two months when I was posting that fic are easily a highlight of my life. :D

#*Talking #*About Me #*Writing #*Hades Game #*Dr. Stone #*Free Iwatobi Swim Club #*Professor Layton

7 notes · View notes

dungeonmalcontent · 4 years

Text

Thoughts on Encounter Balancing and the Meat Grinder

I’ve talked about running a meat grinder, and given a brief description of what that entails. But I want to go into detail on the matter. Below the cut there will be some visuals and ttrpg philosophy discussion for how to run good and balanced encounters in 5e d&d, primarily through the use of Roll20. This is a long post. I would put it on my Wordpress blog, but that’s getting some work and requires more effort.

So what is a meat grinder?

A meat grinder is a combat only one shot that allows for variety of play at high speed. Key aspects of the meat grinder are challenging encounter composition, terrain (re-positionable), and increased difficulty with every encounter round with the players leveling up between each. Ideally, the players have pre-planned how they want to level up their characters, have a different character ready for every level, or use a character manager tool like Aurora Builder, Fight Club 5e, or DNDBeyond (which I had my players use, because they could randomize and build widely varied characters) to facilitate fast level ups.

So how did I run the meat grinder? What does it look like? How do you even start this sort of project?

Well, let’s look.

This is the setup I used on Roll20. This is without FoW on, and I’ll zoom in on various aspects as I go on, but it isn’t that complicated. At the top we have a waiting room, where players can pick a token that speaks to them, and a “lion cage” with the tokens for each planned encounter (I deleted a few during the game I ran). Below that is the “arena,” which by itself isn’t all that special, as it was emptied out completely at the end of every encounter. At the very bottom, and pretty much never visible to the players, is the terrain room where I have shapes or tokens with terrain. My terrain was essentially just columns of various size that ran from floor to ceiling and either made walls or obstacles, but that was only because I put this together in a couple of hours.

Lets start with the waiting room.

At the start of the game, this is all the players should be able to see. There are a variety of tokens and instructions for how players can pick theirs; which in Roll20 you will then have to assign to the player (and then ideally color code as shown with the last four). All the tokens I threw on there, and I picked for variety, were pulled from the free assets on Roll20 (though I have plenty of my own, this was faster than uploading to my library). You can add on player/character names to help differentiate, but that also takes some extra time. The important part is that the players use this space to get used to what is about to happen. I also used an airlock room attached between the arena and the waiting room, just to give them a little more immersion and warning when the next round was ready, but that’s not really necessary.

Next is the “Lions Cage,” and I call it that in the spirit of the Roman Colosseum.

This is where I kept the tokens for each encounter. I had then arranged in rows with the first being at the top (which was deleted after it was beaten, but contained an Evil MageTM, two zombies, and two skeletons). I started at CR 1 (with four level 1 players), and went to CR 2 (animated armor and dragon wyrmling) and so on, following basics for balancing encounters based on CR. I will get into monster selection more later, but this is the room where I had all of that laid out. It is always blacked out for players. (I also had two spiderman PNGs and a barrel to use as variety tokens like Spiritual Weapon or familiars, they’re a running joke in my games.)

Now, the arena.

This is a big empty area. Every round I add in the tokens for the encounter monsters, the terrain, and I adjust the lighting as needed. The lighting is probably the biggest brain thing I’ve ever done on Roll20 and I encourage the use of this system for any arena or massive dungeons you build on the platform. You write out “Lighting” as well as “bright,” “dim,” and “dark.” You add this text to the background layer (along with all the boxes and things you don’t intend to move). Then you get boxes big enough to cover whatever lighting options are not in use. For bright rooms where there is enough light for all characters (save those with aversion to bright light) to see clearly, you cover up “dim” and “dark.” It’s that simple and it does so much for the players too, because it gives them actual use of their darkvision and they don’t have to ask you what the light in the room is like, they can just see. If they have disadvantage due to lighting, they can see the precedent based on the setting. It’s a good system and I am quite proud of it.

As a secondary note, FoW is interesting in this room. For after round cleanup and next round setup, it is recommended to black out the arena. When starting out a round, particularly if you are using sneaky creatures, it is advised to reveal the room gradually as the characters move about it. This is a great place to use the token lighting feature thing you get with a premium Roll20 subscription, as this feature enables rapid revealing and occluding of space in the arena based on the token’s given sight range. But that costs money. I got along just fine doing it manually.

Lastly, the terrain room.

This is just an empty space below the arena map, used to store terrain pieces. For my meat grinder I used six objects. Three squares and three circles, made to equilateral sizes with the shift function (should use high contrast colors and have both line and fill colors selected before making shapes, hence the purple and green). More shapes would have been ideal, but weren’t necessary. And shapes aren’t even required, you can add in terrain features from whatever map builder you use, but shapes are the easiest to prepare and move.

Another good option might be to add in one big solid black square to cover the whole arena and use other colored squares to represent platforms (possibly even color coding certain platforms to indicate height from a base level like the precipice of the waiting room). This adds an additional challenge to navigating the room and rewards characters with mobility based abilities like flight, or spells like spider climb. Alternatively alternatively, the room could be indicated to be submerged and the players given potions of waterbreathing, as this allows for underwater combat and aquatic monsters.

So what might an encounter look like? Here’s an idea for CR 4.

It doesn’t look that hard, honestly. Nothing in the lineup is actually even CR 4. But you also have to remember that most classes don’t get anything interesting or impactful at level 4. Level four is the designated ability score improvement level. So they aren’t going to be able handle anything much more challenging than before, even if they all take super useful feats instead of score ups (if you use those rules). The challenge of this setup is the terrain and the cube. Gelatinous cubes are a menace in group fights with small spaces, and gargoyles and werewolves have a lot of basic damage resistance and high speed.

So, suppose you open the room like this.

“The room is dark. You can see several pillars in front of you and not much else. There are vague shapes near the tops, as though they are ornamented with some statuary that you can’t quite make out. The room smells foul, like decay, and you can hear an uncomfortable squelching noise coming from further in.”

The players guess: Well, something is clinging to the tops of the pillars, and there’s some form of ooze in there. They probably won’t split up, so they can avoid getting taken out by falling creatures, and they expect to gang up on the ooze to take care of it quickly. But the cube is a tank and they have no clue the werewolf is hiding in the shadows. They are going to get ambushed, boxed in by the cube and divebombed by gargoyles. Now, if they’re smart they will take advantage of the tight spaces between pillars and act like tunnel fighters. The center middle or the bottom right are ideal for using the cube in their favor, as it will likely absorb the werewolf or careless gargoyles on accident if they don’t all have enough space. Worst case scenario, they all fail to see the cube (which I’ve made a size larger, arbitrarily), they stay in the open and split up to get picked up by big swooping maneuvers (which I would play out to the sound of Roundabout by Yes playing in the background).

So say, you run a round and the players win easily. Then what?

When the players win a hard fought battle I give them loot. One item from each killed monster, and there is usually at least one monster per player. I used the donjon random loot generator set to uncommon magic items. In the case of an easy victory you can adjust to no loot or less loot, or maybe just non-magic loot.

The players beat an encounter. I move them to the waiting room to level up and sort loot, cover the arena back up, move tokens and terrain around, and start again.

How did I select the encounters? Why certain creatures and why put them together?

The answer isn’t satisfying. Gut feelings, matching mechanics, and CR. I like thematic encounters for the meat grinder, though those themes are sometimes very arbitrary. My CR 3 lineup was themed “This looks like the dumbest and best hippie van art ever” and consisted of a gnome bard riding a gryphon and three centaurs. It used mounted combat, high speed, and mobile casting. Terrain would be sparse and likely against the walls to make crevasses for players to trap or get trapped in. If it felt like it was going to be too tricky, I could drop one or two centaurs from the encounter.

Generally speaking a creature of a certain CR is balanced for a party of 4-5 players of the same level as the creatures CR, with “boss” monsters being occasional outliers. So typically, an encounter consists of a high CR monsters (at or just above the PCs level/CR) and some fodder minion of a lower CR. Some monsters are also designed as fodder monsters, however, so putting just a lot of fodder monsters of the same CR as the players level is also an option. The beauty of the lions cage is that it allows you to also mix and match lineups on the fly, you can add or subtract monsters easily to make it harder or easier for your players. My players got wiped out by the animated armor and wyrmling, and had I used one less armor, they would have definitely survived, but it might have been too easy if they had picked up on the theme of the round (high armor, low health, so using save spells and abilities was the most effective method).

When putting together an encounter, I start by looking at the donjon creature index (another great tool you should have bookmarked) and browsing for a key creature for the encounter. This is usually the same CR as the players level. I pick one and then build up complimenting creatures from the same or lower CR. And that’s most of it.

The beauty of the meat grinder is its simplicity. It’s perfect for practicing combat balancing, getting new players used to the mechanics of combat, or running a quick one shot with little prep. You can even adjust it into a sort of tournament arc sort of narrative or a game show sort of last man standing operation (with killed players running pvp fights).

If you read this whole thing, holy cow. You’re a trooper. I hope you learned something useful or got some ideas. If you run a meat grinder of your own, I wish you all the luck in the world. It’s fun and can be very rewarding. Think of it like the infinity train (the one from Adventure Time, not the show [I haven’t watched the show and probably should]), lots of possibility—itty-bitty living space.

#dnd #d&d #5e #gming #dming #dungeons and dragons #meat grinder #combat #encounter balancing #monsters #arena #pvp #options for running a quick one shot

12 notes · View notes

girlmeetsliv3 · 4 years

Text

Q & A

The 2K follower special is here. Thank you to everyone that submitted a question. The transcript is below for those of you who would rather read. Hope you enjoy ♡ ♡ ♡

I do apologize in advance as my mic picked up on every little sound. Such as me rubbing my arm soothingly and my accidentally hitting my ankles against my chair. Also, sorry for the long pauses this was the third take and it was the best one.

youtube

Hi everyone, this is Cloud. I’m doing this Q & A special as a thank you for getting me to two thousand followers which I really appreciate. It’s twenty questions long, I don’t think it’s going to take a long time. I do apologize in advance if I’m a bit awkward, I’m alone in my room talking to a mic. So, I do apologize in advance.

1) Where are you from?

I’m from South Florida, but my family and I are Latinos.

2) What made you decide to write specifically yandere? And would you ever post a nonstandard story on the blog?

So, what got me into yandere or what really opened me up to writing it was the fact that when I was twelve or thirteen I was really into wattpad stories. A couple years ago, when I revisited them I realized that a lot of them painted these abusive relationships in a positive light or just romanticized them a lot. Which is terrible, because when I read that I grew up thinking that’s how relationships were supposed to be. That your partner is supposed to be possessive, kind of controlling, and a bit handsy sometimes. Which is obviously very wrong.

What I like about yandere, what got me into writing it, was the fact that I could portray these relationships that had been romanticized when I was younger - that the media often romanticizes - that it’s not healthy. It’s not good. Specifically, people who are inexperienced the way I was. I think you can hear about all these red flags and different things, but if you’ve never been in a relationship and you don’t really know what a red flag looks like I think it’s important to know those signs. I think that’s why I write my stories.

On whether I would ever post a nonstandard on the blog, I have wanted to write other stories but I don’t think I’ll do it on this blog. Just because this blog is so centered on being a yandere blog and my followers/readers sort of come to my blog expecting something. So, I would probably open a second blog and just write other stories on that.

3) Who is your bias?

I like to think I’m OT7 bias. I love all seven of the members and support them, however, the people who first caught my attention from BTS were Tae and Yoongi.

4) How long have you been writing?

So I’m twenty now, I would say I’ve been writing for over ten years now. I actually got in trouble a lot back when I was in elementary school and middle school because instead of paying attention I would just write little short stories or chaptered stories, that just really made no sense, during class. I would just write it on scraps of paper instead of actually taking notes.

5) What got you into writing?

I think like a lot of people I was really into books. I loved books so much. I want to get back into them, but I think a lot of people can relate when I say I’d rather read a 100k story than open up a book. What got me into writing was definitely reading, I read so much. I carried a book with me everywhere. I read so much that my parents told me I had to stop reading - that’s the level I was at. (insert awkward laugh) What got me into reading though was this little, not really popular, book called Twilight. I was eight when I saw the movie and then I got the book for my birthday. I just fell down a rabbit hole after that of just reading.

6) Your favorite fic so far?

That I’ve written would definitely be Datura. I just love it so much, it holds such a special place in my heart - all those characters.

7) What’s your favorite non-yandere fic?

I have several, I even have a blog called @girlmeetsfics (shameless plug) dedicated to all the stories that I find. Cause I have my likes locked. But, right now my top three are: @rkivenamu, I’m sorry if I mispronounce these usernames, Let’s Be Bad Guys. I’m a slut for OT7 in space, I just am. That story is so phenomenal. So well written. The characters are so interesting. The stakes are so well written. I think it’s difficult to get action done well in books, you can get tension, but when it comes to action scenes its difficult to elaborate on them, but she does it so well and you really feel that the character’s lives are in danger and that anything could happen at any second. I’m actually such a fan of that story and love it so much that I followed her or them and I put on the post notifications to be notified for when she would update again.

In second place, I have @btssavedmylifeblr Void. If you haven’t read that - you’re missing out. It’s amazing. It’s phenomenal. I love the character’s so much. Again, I’m a sucker for space stories, I just love sci-fi.

And then recently @gukslut Rattled is such a beautiful and heartbreaking tale. It’s so human. I’ve never read such human characters before, they are just so real and raw and I just love it. So, I would definitely recommend checking it out.

8) Is there any style of writing that you try to emulate?

Some of my favorite authors are those turn of the century authors: J.M. Barrie, Lewis Carrol, etc. I really love those stories. If you’ve ever read some of those authors - Edgar Allan Poe and some of Lovecraft - they are third-person point of view, but its this weird blend between you being a person in the story and the story being told to you.

9) Name a trope you hate.

I don’t really hate anything. What I don’t like to maybe read or write is a boring protagonist. I don’t like a character that is so blank slate that they just have no personality. Or nothing to do and they’re just there to be pushed around. They’re a really passive protagonist and don’t get me wrong, you can definitely do a passive protagonist right. I just really don’t like protagonists that are a blank slate, that you have to force yourself to give them a personality. That there’s no personality given to them by the author.

I do understand that the stories I write, and the most popular stories are, self-insert or member x reader but I think you can manage to get away with still having some characterization there.

10) What is a dynamic you always include in your stories?

Something I like to highlight a lot is codependency. From my personal experience, a lot of the toxic relationships that I’ve been in - even though they haven’t been romantic, mainly platonic - suffer from codependency or it’s definitely one of the dynamics that play a significant role. So, its something I always like to highlight in these relationships. With co-dependency, it might not always seem bad to be entirely reliant on someone, especially if your self-esteem isn’t that high (self-esteem as defined by Adler & Stewart), but it can really quickly turn toxic in the hands of the wrong person or even in the hands of the right person.

11) If you had to pick to be the OC of one of your stories who would you be?

This is going to sound weird and kinda masochistic, but I would be interested in being the OC of the Violent Delights story. Even though all the character’s in that story are so beyond intense and given how it ends. Well, the series might not end like that I’m still not sure. But given how the one-shot ends, it’s kinda depressing but that is the OC I would be.

12) Any upcoming fics you’re excited to write about?

I’m excited for Violent Delights. I have something in the works, regarding that story, with a really popular writer on Tumblr. Hopefully, it works out. I really hope it does, but I’m really excited for that story and I hope you guys are too.

13) Would you ever write for other groups that aren’t BTS?

I’m not sure. I really want to write girl groups, I think that’s my main thing. I think the yandere dynamic with women changes a lot. There’s this stereotype that most yandere tend to be girls, because misogyny, and whatnot but I really want to write a girl group. I don’t know which girl group…(thinks about it a little) eh, I kinda do. So yeah, definitely girl groups.

14) If you could do a collab, who are the top 5 writers you’d want to collab with?

The first two are the ones that got me into yandere or at least writing yandere, which are @sweetbunnykook and @chinkbihh. Min, @jooniescupcakes, I’d love to collab with Min. Recently I discovered, (by recently I mean two months ago) @taequois she writes some amazing yandere stories and she isn’t afraid to go there and I love that. I really like dark stories.

15) Are there any discontinued stories you can see yourself coming back to?

I would love to go back to Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. I’d love to go back to them and rewrite them - completely change them. I wouldn’t delete them perse, especially not Paradiso because that is the first story I ever wrote on the blog, but I think I’d reformat them and make them really long one-shots.

16) What’s your favorite animal?

My favorite animal used to a cheetah. I don’t really have a favorite animal anymore. The only animal that I can say that comes into my mind isn’t even real: it’s because I finished watching Avatar so a flying bison would definitely be my favorite animal. Realistically, maybe a cheetah and my second would be a cat (I really want a cat).

17) Would you ever write a hybrid story?

I would never say no, because I don’t know what the future entails, I’m just uncomfortable with hybrid stories. By that I don’t mean that they make me uncomfortable, I mean that I don’t know enough about them to feel comfortable writing them. There was a while between me saying I was going to write an ABO story and then me actually writing Lilies of the Valley because I had to do a lot of research. Search thinks like tropes because I really wanted to avoid a lot of cliches. I actually read and there are a lot of really good hybrid stories. So, I don’t know if I would ever write it. I am open to it, but I have a lot of works in progress right now.

18) Is there anything that’s a hard limit for you?

Yes, I think I could never write sexual assault. I know a lot of my stories feature dubious consent because of the situation the protagonists are in, but I don’t think I could ever write explicitly sexual assault. So that’s definitely a hard limit for me.

19) When is the next part of pon coming out? Before or after you finish lotv?

The reason pon has taken so long is that I have to catch up from where the second part ended to the end of the one-shot. Part three is essentially the one-shot. Obviously things are going to be different, but from where the story ended to the end of the one-shot which is insane. It’s a lot. Pon only has like five parts, I wanna say, so it’s definitely a lot. I have some of the outline worked out, but it’s a lot.

I can’t say right now if it’s before or after Lilies of the valley. I have most of Lilies of the valley written, I don’t think there is going to be more than ten chapters - maybe twelve at most. I want to say a mid to late June deadline is what I have right now. My plan is to put out prince of nothing part three and then the day after put out Violent Delights. So look forward to that, please.

20) Do you see yourself doing this in the long run?

I wanna say yes, I’ve only been here a year and it feels like such a short amount of time looking back because so much has happened. I never thought I would reach 2k followers. I never even really thought I would reach 1k, to be quite honest. So, I see myself doing this for maybe one more year - I don’t know. With the way things are going on in the world, things are difficult but at least now I have time. Time to write, even though god knows sometimes I just can’t.

I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. I really enjoy doing this and it makes me really happy. I feel like I have a safe space on this blog to go to when things get tough in life and I’d really like to thank you all for giving me that. For giving me a platform in which I could express myself and share my stories because for the longest time I thought that no one really wanted to hear them. So, again I’d like to thank you all so much for that.

Okay, so that’s the end. I’m sorry that this was a little long, I will have a transcript (this right now). So again I’d like to thank you all again for 2,000 followers. There is a lot more coming, I have a lot of surprises planned for you guys that I am currently working on. I’m recording this on Friday and plan to upload it on Sunday. Again thank you all, this is Cloud signing out. Kisses. Bye.

#2k followers #Q&A #girlmeetsliv3

12 notes · View notes

amphtaminedreams · 5 years

Text

All The Tattoos I Couldn’t Really Afford

Hi to anyone who’s reading!

I thought I’d write about my tattoos a lil bit.

Partly because I’d like to talk generally about tattoos and what they mean for people who have dealt with self-harm and poor body image and partly because I get questions now and again about the more practical side of things; who did them, how much did they hurt and probably the most frequent one, how much did they cost (I mean, only my entire livelihood and every last spare pound I had for about 2 years but nbd)? The point being that I can put all this information in one place, especially as I don’t plan to get any more in the foreseeable future.

See, as much as I get tired of people I don’t really know commenting on them, I suppose I did kind of bring it upon myself. Facially, I probably look about 15. I get told I'm exaggerating when I say that BUT I WAS STILL BUYING CHILD’S TICKETS ON THE BUS UP UNTIL LAST YEAR BC AIN’T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR £2.60 SINGLES. Where do you live for a bus single to cost £2.60 I hear you ask? In a tory heartland, my friend.

Anyway, the point is that I look pretty young to have a sort-of sleeve and tbh, I am. I’d say that for a lot of people, a sleeve is something you build on kinda throughout your life, not something you plan on getting pretty much the minute you turn 18. That isn’t exactly how it was for me either. I was more like 20 when I started on my left arm, lol. I started on the rest when I was 18 and had known most of the tattoos I wanted to get since I was about 14/15, so for quite a while. I think I always associated a tattooed version of me with a version of myself I liked and respected a lot more than the girl I saw myself as at that age, but I didn’t realise just how true that would be. The tattoos definitely aren’t the reason I’m so much more body confident than I was back then; I’m at a weight I feel more comfortable in, I’ve learned how to do my makeup better and I think I’ve grown into myself more. Plus, I got my braces off, which helps. The constant fear of having food in my teeth hardly conjures up a sense of nostalgia, lol. On top of that, seeing a wider and more diverse range of faces and body types celebrated online and in the media has definitely helped me too.

But one thing that I noticed is how much more respect having tattoos gives me for my own body. When you have talented men and women’s art all over you, it makes you feel like less of a body and more of a blank sheet. I think the attention moves away from the parts underneath that you might not like so much to something you don’t necessarily associate with yourself. It helps me to notice myself more objectively, with appreciation taking the place of scrutiny. And with regards to self-harm, on a practical level, I don’t want to damage somebody else’s hard work.

The first tattoo I actually got, about a month or so after I turned 18 was pretty simple. I found the studio by way of recommendation from someone who’s tattoo I liked, which imo is probably the best route to go down for your first one. Word of mouth is generally a pretty good indicator of what to expect.

The 5 planet formation on the back of my neck was based on a Tumblr photo I’d saved on my phone, though in the original design I believe the planets were on the person’s chest.

PROTIP: If you’re getting a tattoo based on something you found on Pinterest, Google Images or Tumblr, the best thing to do is first to probably make a note of the artist and ideally ask them for their permission. This is something I wish I’d done at the time; the majority of my tattoos are based on images I found on the sites I just mentioned and saved without thinking and I generally deleted the photos once I sent them to the tattoo artist. Understandably, artists see it as respect thing to credit them and if I do ever come across the designs some of my tattoos are based on, I will of course make sure to add their details to this post, BUT to be completely honest, nobody outside of the internet is that bothered if you copied a tattoo you saw on Pinterest one time.

I think the best thing to do is to ask your tattoo artist to put their own spin on a design and add to it, which is what I’ve generally done, and that way you should avoid anyone feeling like their work has been stolen. I like that approach anyway, especially if you’re going back to the same person for all your tattoos; it adds a consistency to them.

This being my first tattoo, there wasn’t really much of a deeper meaning behind it. I liked the way it looked and wanted something simple that could easily be covered. I got this done by dclxvi.tattoo on Instagram, and it cost around £40. In terms of pain, there wasn’t much at all. I thought it was going to be a lot worse from what others had told me, and more than anything I could feel the vibration of the needle. I’d give it a 1/10 on the pain threshold.

My second was the quote on my left side over my ribcage which reads “think deeply, speak gently, give freely and be kind”. This came from one of those cheesy typical middle class white people signs we usually put in our kitchens; we currently have about 6 and counting in ours. The full quote is “Think deeply, speak gently, love much, laugh a lot, work hard, give freely and be kind” but I thought that was a bit long winded so I kept the parts I liked. I suppose the meaning meaning of this is pretty self-explanatory, lol! When I was younger and still even now with the people I’m close to, I worry way too fucking much what people think of me. It’s a very cliche saying but at some point, I learnt that what others say about you says more about them than it does about you. From then, I started realising that as long as I know I do my best to treat people well, that’s the important thing and this tattoo is kind of just a reminder of that. IIRC, this one cost about £60 and was with the same artist as my first. She was really lovely and made me feel very comfortable so I went back to her for this one, and my next couple too. Again, even though it was on my ribs, I’d give it a 1/10 for pain.

I kinda lose track but I’m pretty sure it was over the summer of my 18th that I got the 3 you can see in the photo above, all still by the same artist. The first on this area of my arm was the quote “love yourself so no-one else has to” inside the heart/feminine symbol hybrid. Similarly, it’s quite self-explanatory but if I had to expand on it, it’s just a reminder that it’s not about what other people think and that as long as I’m happy in myself and BY myself, that’s what matters. This was around the £40 mark and I vaguely remember tattoos getting slightly more painful around this point as we’re getting into musclier territory. Not to make out I have guns or anything, lol, but I’ve always found that tattoos that are on top of muscle are the most difficult to sit through, still though I’d give it a 2/10 for pain. Shortly after I got the crystal ball with the quote underneath. The crystal ball is pretty much a copy of a tattoo I found on Pinterest by the tattoo artist Emily Malice/@emilymalice on Instagram:

I then chose a quote to add underneath it to make it my own which was: “it’s not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves”. It’s the modernised version of a quote from the Shakespeare play Julius Caesar, and basically sums up the idea that if we want something, we have to go and get it ourselves. I’m not really a believer in fate or destiny or the idea that the universe has a bigger plan for us and though that might sound really pessimistic, I find it empowering in that we can go out and make our lives into anything we want them to be. Of course there are things that are out of our hands but for the most part, it’s down to us; I’m on that inner locus of control shit. And yes I remembered that from A-level psychology, lol. On the pain scale, also a 2/10.

Next was my Lana tattoo. Imagine copious amounts of the heart eyes emoji here. It’s based on this drawing:

Which I cannot find the artist of fucking ANYWHERE. The image is all over the bloody internet and returned about 30 different results on TinEye but I can’t for the life of me find the original version so if anybody knows, lmk!

Anyway, it was my first of 2 Lana tattoos and it’s probably my favourite of them all. I’ve been a hardcore stan of this woman since I was about 12 and Video Games went viral (yes, I was a very pretentious 12 year old/general human being) and her music has been my soundtrack to EVERYTHING for the last 7/8 years. I’m a basic bitch and so Born to Die: Paradise Edition and Ultraviolence are still my favourite albums of hers but I wanted to pay tribute to the Lust for Life cover with the flowers in the hair because it represented her moving towards inner peace and contentment and I loved that.

COST: approx. £70

PAIN: 2/10

That was my last tattoo for a while until about November 2018, from which point onwards I was getting them pretty much constantly up until a few months ago. I was no longer at uni, had a part time job and for the first time had proper disposable income, so I got my first proper “piece” tattoo:

This one I very shittily designed myself, though the lip part was based on this tattoo by Heidi Kaye/@heidikayetattoo on Instagram:

The lips were always going to be the centrepiece though it was originally a much bigger design. The idea was that it would be a piece based around the elements, water, earth, air and fire, with the things that represents each being something sentimental to me. Well, apart from the lips which would represent the passion of the fire signs; I just thought they looked cool, lol. On a less shallow note, the butterflies, which represent air (along with the moons), I associate with my mum as she’s always wearing butterfly patterned outfits and jewellery. Yeah, I don’t know how you can claim a whole ass insect either but apparently they’re her thing! And similarly, the scorpion is for my sister; it represents water, scorpio being a water sign. She and I used to watch Orphan Black together and took to affectionately calling each other “sestra” instead of sister like the Ukranian character Helena pronounces it in the show. At one point, I believe it’s season 3, her character hallucinates a scorpion (don’t ask, that show was pretty wack at times), hence the scorpion tattoo. Lastly, the flowers and the agate rock represent earth, which is the home of my sun and moon sign. There were originally going to be a lot more details to the piece but I wanted to keep it on the back of my arm and when I showed it to my new tattoo artist, Matt Cassy (cassytattoo on Instagram), he simplified it for me so that it would fit. It cost around £140 and took the longest time yet, but I’d give it a 1/10 for pain and it’s my favourite tattoo after my Lana one, probably because it’s the most individual.

Next after this was my sunflower and it took me to one of kindest and most talented people I’ve ever met! I’m pretty sure this was the first one she did for me and from this point onwards, I went back to Bianca Kidd (biancakiddtattoo on Instagram) for 90% of my tattoos. It’s a pretty basic piece but I really wanted a tattoo on my shoulder and preferably something that will never really go “out of style”. Flower tattoos are so simple but the absolute prettiest imo and I don’t think I’ll ever look back on this one and be like “what was I thinking?” I got Bianca to add the stars which were SUPPOSED to be in the form of the constellations of my sun, moon and rising signs, Capricorn, Virgo and what I thought was Scorpio but turns out is actually Cancer. Shoulda known considering how much of a needy, over-emotional twat I am, lol. On the one hand, it seems kinda contradictory to my crystal ball tattoo quote to believe in astrology but on the other, I think there might be something to the time of year a person is born and the environmental factors that come with that (climate, financial patterns etc.) affecting a person’s temperament slightly. It could all be a load of BS, considering the vagueness of most star signs and our tendency to want to agree with positive statements about ourselves, and I DEFINITELY don’t believe in the stars having any impact on your future or fate but it’s still fun to read about either way. Would be even funner if I didn’t have regrets about getting my natal chart wrong and being sure enough that Scorpio was my rising sign to get a tattoo referencing it every time I did, but there you go. If anyone asks, the placement of the stars is TOTALLY. RANDOM.

COST: approx. £140

PAIN: I find that even if a tattoo isn’t in a super painful position, your skin begins to get a little raw and thus more sensitive when it’s under a needle for a long period of time so 3/10

Next was the snakey boy on the inside of my right arm which I got just before Christmas, again by Bianca:

I don’t have much to say about this one other than it’s pretty much a copy of one I saw on Pinterest that I’d saved quite a while before (unfortunately I can’t find it anywhere now but if anybody does know the source lmk!) because I fricken love snakes and think they’re cute and misunderstood af. Not as cute as cats but definitely up there. Bianca changed it slightly by adding the dots around the rose and we went from there, and the main thing I remember is that this one actually hurt. Close to the armpit and on top of the muscle is a bad combination and I’m totally in awe of the madmen that go right into the pit itself. It cost £80 and for pain I’d give it an 8/10.

Cop the exact same pose only with the other arm instead, but I also got my mermaid around this time:

She was done by Polly (biffinx on instagram) who’s an apprentice tattoo artist. If you are looking for a slightly cheaper tattoo, apprentices are a good shout, as they usually charge slightly less, though in Polly’s case are equally as skilled at what they do; you’re also helping them build their portfolio so it’s a win-win situation for both you and the tattoo artist. That being said, make sure you do your research and get someone who’s good at the style you’re looking for before you commit. Instagram is often your best bet, and if not, tattoo shops often have websites with photo galleries showcasing each artist’s work. It might take you a while to find what you’re looking for but you really can’t compromise when you’re talking about something that’s probably going to be on your body forever. NBD. I got the mermaid as a nod to both growing up by the sea and how much I loved to swim when I was younger. I feel like I’m going to end up saying this far too many times but she’s one of my favourites.

COST: £60

PAIN: 8/10

I also got the other 3 tattoos on my upper right arm during this time. Bianca did the satanic kitty (can’t find the source of the tattoo it was based on! again, if anyone does lmk!), because of course I had to have a cat tattoo, and that was around £50 and a 3/10 on the pain scale. The two shells, which again are a reminder of where I grew up, were done by Terry Weeks (terryweekstattoo on Instagram) and cost £70 for both. I’d give them a 2/10 for pain.

Next were my knee and calf tattoo in February of this year, for which I went back to Matt Cassy:

He did the two of them for £140 and it took around 3 hours. Palm trees always remind me of California which I absolutely love, and the spider’s web was kinda just because...spooky, ya know? Honestly, I hate spiders and I equally hate that it gave the old man on the bus the inspiration to make the joke (imagine this being said in a strong Dorset accent) “you’ve got ae spiderr on yerr leg” at me that one time on the bus. Plus, I’d give my knee tattoo a strong 9/10 for pain. Realistically, it probably wasn’t any more painful than the inner upper arm tattoos but you have the added burden of suppressing your reflexes; when somebody is carving into the skin on your leg, it really shouldn’t come as a surprise that your knee jerk reaction is to...well, kick that person in the face. Or away from you at least. I also got the elbow pit tattoo on my left arm from Bianca around this time for £160. 8/10 for pain on that one.

And then, there was the 10/10 in March. The things I do for Miss Lana Del fucking Rey.

Because the Just Ride tattoo above my knees HURT. I wasn’t expecting it at all but BLOODY HELL. My tattoo artist actually had to get the numbing spray out for this one. It was, again, the combined effect of it being on top of muscle and the need to resist my reflexes so that I didn’t flinch, which clearly I didn’t do a very good job at, hence the spray. I think my reaction at the time was kind of, what the fuck, has this stuff always existed? But the more you can put off asking for the spray, the better, because used in large quantities it can be pretty dangerous. This was the only tattoo I felt I did need it for because I literally couldn’t sit still and there was a risk of me jogging the tattoo artist, Megan, the amazing @bunnystattoos on Instagram. Her stuff is adorable and she has such a strong vision and brand and if I was going to get another, I’d love to just give her a starting point and see where she’d take it from there. Like, I’m not a Star Wars fan but LOOK at this set she designed for someone else:

I also got my Dream On tattoo with her in the same session and in total she charged me £110 for both which is pretty reasonable considering how in demand she is (and how much of a total baby I was about the Just Ride tattoo). I chose lyrics from Ride because lyrically, it’s probably one of my favourite songs of hers, plus the opening 30 seconds are pure magic.

Megan also did the linework orchid lady on the back of my arm around the same time:

I suppose you could say this is my most “meaningful” tattoo, because it was inspired by something my care-coordinator said to me about my diagnosis of BPD. In amongst all the other less than complimentary comments, she told me that it just means we need a little more care and sensitivity than others, like orchids do in comparison to other flowers, but that that doesn’t make us any less deserving of care or less beautiful. Basically, in the right circumstances, we can bloom too. And I liked that.

This one cost £80 and was about a 3/10 for pain. I can’t find any photos of the tattoo it was based on so for the millionth time, if you do know, hmu.

From April-May I got a shitload of tattoos and to be honest, I can’t really remember what order it was in so I’m going to group them into artists. First, the ones I got from Polly:

The anatomical heart I got in March and was based on this tattoo by Harry Plane (@harry.plane on Instagram):

COST: £50

PAIN: 7/10

And the sun and moon kissing was also around £50. 2/10 for pain.

Bianca did a few for me too, starting with the floral design on my lower left arm around March, which was probably my biggest piece yet:

The floral piece started off as a 4/10 though it creeped up to a 6 the closer it got to my wrist. Going over raised scars is also slightly more painful, something to bear in mind. Along with the Keep It Cute tattoo (6/10) on my wrist:

It came to £180.

Bianca also did the linework of my favourite GIF, like, ever.

Yes, it’s Go Go Yubari from Kill Bill about to try and maim The Bride, who don’t get me wrong I am perennially rooting for, but come on. It’s an iconic moment in film history Once Upon a Time in Hollywood wishes it could replicate. 4/10 for pain due to it being over scarring, otherwise we’re talking about the kind of placement that’s a reliable 2/10. I also got wrapped into the whole renaissance inspired trend and got Bianca to do me a little cherub gap filler based on this flash sheet I found on Google Images (link to the image found here https://creativemarket.com/Sonulkaster/280110-Angels-and-Cupids-collection.?utm_source=Pinterest&utm_medium=CM):

I suggested the cigarette as a cheeky little addition, lol! I’d give it a 5/10 for pain, being close to the inside of my arm n all and it set me back around £40. Unfortunately, I don’t have any great quality photos of it that I haven’t already used in the post but here’s one where you can see it a little bit (idk why my hair looks so brown and basically my natural colour in this photo but I DO NOT APPROVE, it is not at all fitting with my wannabe mildly goth aesthetic):

Finally, we have my last 2 tattoos.

See, getting my finger tattoos done was an absolute necessity before I went inter-railing and not because I’m an over-dramatic bitch who wanted a little something to make my multitude of me-holding-food photos more aesthetically pleasing (though of course it helped on that count), but because I made the fucking huge mistake of trying to stick and poke them myself. To be fair, they weren’t THAT bad at first. Like I was pretty pleased with them. Buuuut they faded super quickly and I guess that’s the issue with stick and pokes, especially on your fingers, where even professional tattoos are a bit of a flight risk anyway. So, after having to go over them a million times and spilling Indian ink all over my laptop keyboard, I decided to admit defeat and get Bianca to go over them for me. It cost £30 and I’d only give it a 4/10 on the pain scale. After months of having to explain my shitty faded finger tattoos to everyone and convince far too many customers at work that they weren’t just drawn on with a sharpie, I’m finally happy with them. Lesson learnt. Don’t stick and poke kids, especially not near your laptop.

Lastly is my “Wouldst Thou Like to Live Deliciously?” quote that Polly did for me:

The cost of this tattoo? £30. Having to explain to every person who hasn’t seen The VVitch what it actually says and then what it means too? Priceless. Hotel? Tri-

I joke. It’s actually very annoying having to explain what it says and vague what it means, not because I don’t EXACTLY know but also because I feel like a snobby film hoe (which is quite an accurate description of me) every time I do. The VVitch is super good, guys. Please watch if you’ve got the patience, it’s a slow burn.

Anyways, I hope anybody who read to the end enjoyed the post and found it informative! If you have any other tattoo questions, shoot me a message and I will definitely respond. I think one of the most common things I get is people saying they’re too indecisive to get a tattoo and that they want one, but are worried they’ll go off it. What I think is that once you get your first, getting a tattoo starts to feel like less of a momentous decision. Like there are tattoos I have that I probably wouldn’t get now but that doesn’t mean I regret them because, although it sounds cheesy, they sort of become a part of you and represent what you liked at the time. The more you have, the less significant one individual tattoo is. At the end of the day, are you ever going to regret getting a tiny rose? Worst case scenario, you can always get a cover up or if you’re brave and rich enough (lol), get laser removal. In terms of aftercare, I’ve always been kind of sloppy. Follow the instructions your tattoo artist gives you but also, if you don’t get time to moisturise them, it’s not the end of the world. TRY not to itch them but one tiny scratch isn’t going to permanently damage your tattoo.

One thing I will say, though, that’s probably kind of obvious to everyone but me (being the dumbass I am) is that you should NOT go in the sea right after getting a tattoo. It is literally the equivalent of pouring salt in an open wound and whilst it didn’t ruin my Lana, it really fucking stung for about 3 days afterwards. I’m an endless treasure chest of protips, didn’t you know?

Thank you for reading!

Lauren x

#tattoos #ink #lana del rey #lana #lana del rabies #inkaddict #tattoed girls #ewwhatacringeyhashtag #spooky #spoopy #personalstyle

4 notes · View notes

brandon-seifert-comics-writer · 6 years

Text

Writing Comics: The Brandon Seifert Way!

Hey folks! So, some comics writers have been posting about their script writing processes. I've been finding it an interesting look into other peoples' creative processes. So I figured I'd join in!

Laying out my creative process serves a second purpose, too. I have a tendency to... well... forget how to write scripts. It happens every so often. I'll get partway through the process of writing a script, run into trouble... and then realize that I've blanked on the Best Practices For Brandon Seifert Scripts that I've learned through trial and error. So having a written breakdown of the best method I've found for me to write my scripts will be useful for me too. So I can go back and reference it sometimes, and make sure I'm actually following it.

Okay. So, this is the most effective way I've found for the kind of scripts I write, and for the kind of brain I have.

1. Come up with a story idea. For me, this is the easy part. My brain is overflowing with ideas. (Oh god. So many ideas. Somebody make them slow down!!)

2. Brainstorm the living shit out of it. Once I've got the story idea, I unload my brain on the page about it. I write down potential plot points, ideas, questions to answer, things I might research relating to it. Pieces of dialogue. Sequences of panels. Entire pages, or sometimes entire scenes, that appear in my head without me having to work them through. Anything and everything I can come up with based on an idea, I write down. Plenty of this won't make it into the finished comic. But I write it all down anyway.

3. Make outlines. Make too many outlines. Once the ideas aren't coming quite as frantically, I take the plot points I ended up with, organize them, throw out the ones that don't seem to fit, and see what I have. From there, I build an outline. Or rather, I build several outlines.

My first outline is the one with the plot points that I brainstormed. It's a list of sentences, paragraphs and sentence fragments, arranged in the order that I think they'll occur in. (I do my writing in Scrivener, and all these pieces are individual text files. That way I can easily drag and drop them into different orders, delete some of them, and add new ones.) I flesh this out, adding more plot points until the story starts taking shape.

Meanwhile, I'm also writing outlines in my notebook. (Writing things out longhand is very important for my creative process. I find that writing something on paper, with a pen, frees up my brain a little. Since my final drafts are never written in pen ink, anything I write on a page automatically becomes a rough draft. So there's zero need to get it "right" the first time. Next time you're in the middle of a story and you have writer's block, I totally recommend trying it!) There's a couple different plot structures I find it useful to play with. One is Blake Snyder's "Save The Cat!" formula (which is VERY formulaic but can be a useful starting point). Another is Nigel Watts' Eight Point Plot structure. I often use one or both of these as a starting point. Basically as a writing exercise. I see if my plot points fit into these structures. If they don't, I see how they COULD fit... and then I either make changes based on that, or I don't. Anyway, this stuff goes in my notebook rather than on my laptop. (I don’t know why I do it that way. I just do.)

Think I'm done outlining? Think again! Next, I usually do a prose version of the outline I've decided on. I write out what I think happens in the story — the broad strokes, at least — in simple-but-complete sentences and paragraphs. Once the prose version reaches about a page long, I generally have enough material to start actually writing the issue.

...So then I start the issue. Right? NOPE! MOAR OUTLINES!

Well, one last outline. My last one is a page breakdown. It's a Google Doc with lines numbered 1-20. Each line represents a page of story in the final comic. I write in a really brief summary of what happens on each page. Usually starting with the page-turns. (I think of comics mostly in terms of two-page "units," a page-turn and a facing-page.) I take the material I've produced in my already-too-many outlines and plug it in here.

4. Place my brainstormed writing-bits in a script template. In Scrivener, I have a 20-page script template full of placeholders for panels and dialogue. Page-turns have three panels in the template because page-turns often have big reveal panels and lower overall panel counts. Facing pages have five panels. Each panel has a dialogue placeholder in it. (My scripts don't exclusively have three panels on page-turns and five on facing pages! It's just a good reminder for me that I'll likely need around that many panels or more on that page.)

Remember all that brainstorming I did? Which involved "pieces of dialogue," "sequences of panels," "entire pages," and "sometimes entire scenes?" Now I take that stuff and begin dropping it into the script template in the approximate place that I think it'll go. When I'm done with that, I've got a script template that's partially populated by actual script! That way, I never actually have a "blank page" in front of me when it comes time to do the actual scripting. There's always something in there!

5. Expand what I’ve got. That reveal panel, that I wrote for the page-turn on Page 4? Well, there's got to be set-up for it in the last panel of Page 3. So I make a note of that in the placeholder panel that's already there. Got three panels for Page 11, and then a beat I need to figure before I set-up the reveal on Page 12? Time to figure out that beat! Basically, the rest of my scripting process involves filling in those partially-populated pages, and then filling in the gaps between those pages.

There's two main ways that I write pages: Action-first, or dialogue-first.

Action-First: I figure out what happens (action-wise) in each panel in a sequence. And then I figure out exactly what the characters are saying.

Dialogue-First: I write out all the dialogue that a dialogue-based scene may involve. Then I cut it up where it’s easily cut, condense it, stick it in placeholder panels. And then figure out who’s in each panel, and what they’re doing.

Of the two, “Action-First” is much easier for me to do... with action-based scenes. It’s usually impossible for me to do for dialogue-oriented scenes... but for some reason I always forget the method of Dialogue-First when I initially attempt scenes like that!

6. Write the pages in whatever order works for me — starting with the easy pages. I do this because they’re easy, so I might as well get them out of the way! My finished-page count quickly soars. Man, this is easy! I’m on top of the world!

7. ...Realize that I left the hard pages for last. The further I get into the script, the harder things get. The slower things get. The more demoralized I get. I did it again. I saved the hard pages for last. I did the easy pages, and they went fast, and I got an unrealistic idea of how long the script would take. Deadlines loom.

8. Write the hard pages anyway. Oh. That wasn’t so bad.

9. Revise and polish the whole thing.

10. Send it in, with a feeling of relief and accomplishment.

After this, theres stuff like getting notes and doing additional drafts based on them (and based on any weaknesses that I manage to identify after the fact). But this is how the primary phase of my scripting process goes.

The important thing here is: This is what I’ve found works for me. You need to find what works for you. Maybe it’s something like my method. Maybe it’s wildly, massively different. The thing about writing is, everybody’s process is different. And:

The only “right” way to write is: Whatever way works.

#Brandon Seifert #writing #on writing #on writing comics #writing comics #process

2 notes · View notes

gethealthy18-blog · 4 years

Text

Digital Organizer: System for Storing + Organizing Digital Products

New Post has been published on http://healingawerness.com/news/digital-organizer-system-for-storing-organizing-digital-products/

Digital Organizer: System for Storing + Organizing Digital Products

Looking to set up a better digital organizer design? Here is a fool-proof system for storing and organizing digital products and organizing digital photos so you can stay on top of your products and not lose a thing.

I am a firm believer that your space affects your mental health. That junk drawer or linen closet that is “disheveled” (to put it lightly)… it’s probably causing you some level of anxiety without you even knowing it. When I have a clean home, my mind is so much more at ease.

The same goes for your tech products! We all have so much crap stored on our digital products… it’s bogging down your physical systems and your mind! So over the years I’ve developed a system for storing and organizing digital products that helps keep me sane. It also makes it so much easier to find things so you aren’t searching for that one picture or document.

Now if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed by this digital organizer, I get it! My recommendation? Start with one product at a time. Maybe it’s your phone or your tablet. Maybe it’s just backing things up to your hard drive. You can always build from there. But hopefully this system for organizing digital products can make it a little bit easier for you.

Organize Your Phone & Tablet

DELETE

Before you get to organizing your phone, start by clearing out the stuff you don’t need. Here are the most common culprits.

Contacts. Clear out anyone you a) don’t know or b) don’t talk to anymore. We all have that “First Name, Company” contact in our phone or an ex’s number that can go…

Pictures. I clear out my pictures regularly because I have so many on my phone. Back up to an external hard drive or the cloud and clear out your space! Feeling fancy? Organize into folders.

Apps. When’s the last time you went through all of your apps? You likely have a few that you have never used or rarely use. Delete ones you no longer need and organize similar apps into folders for a more streamlined screen.

Emails. Please for the love of god delete or mark as read your unread emails that you have no intention of getting to. The people who have 1000+ unread emails on your phone, you’re giving me anxiety! Have a system for reading emails as indicated below and delete or mark as read the rest.

ORGANIZE

Folders. Seriously if you don’t use folders on your phone, it’s time to start! Create folders for specific types of apps i.e. social media, photo apps, work tools, home etc…and then actually move your apps into those folders.

Email management. There’s a couple different ways to organize your emails. One option, “star” or “flag” important emails so they all go to one folder that you can come back to if you aren’t dealing with the email on the spot. OR place emails in specific folders if that’s more your style. Once read, always place important emails into folders so they’re easier to find i.e. important home documents, specific trips, occasions etc…

Clear Out Your Computer

DELETE

I have been using Google Drive since college apparently because I recently found some college papers saved in there… don’t need those! Go through alllll of the folders on your computer. Your desktop, downloads, documents, Google Drive storage, etc. If you’re like me, you’ve got things saved all over the place. Keep and organize what you need, delete what you don’t!

If you’re feeling super nostalgic for those high school biology notes you can store them on your hard drive, but I encourage you to Marie Kondo everything that doesn’t spark joy, because trust me you won’t be going back to those notes…

ORGANIZE

I know organizing everything can be overwhelming. In general here is how I like to organize:

Start by year. Everything from 2019 goes into a folder.

Categorize into projects, areas or life, businesses, etc. Some examples: The Healthy Maven (work stuff), taxes, Bodhi, house documents, kids, etc.

Break it down into categories. My work folder would be SO unorganized if I threw everything THM related into one folder so I break it down into subfolders when it makes sense. I call these “category” folders I.e. The Healthy Maven YouTube, Podcast, Blog etc…

Specific content. Sometimes this applies, and sometimes it doesn’t. Some examples: Podcast episode #100 or for a more personal example, Bodhi Yearly Vet Visit.

I know all of this seems extra but trust me when I say it makes finding things SO much easier. It also helps to start by breaking down each year as at the end of each year I can just dump the whole folder into my hard drive.

Organizing Your Hard Drive

This is similar to your computer. Start by going through and deleting everything you don’t need. Certain things probably sparked joy 5 years ago but most likely doesn’t anymore.

As with your computer, we’ll utilize the same organization tactics: year –> projects/areas of life –> category –> specific content

Label your hard drives on the outside so you know what is on them. If you have a lot of content/photos etc… Buy a new hard drive for each year. I personally love my Lacie 4T Portable Hard Drive. Note: same applies to your online cloud/drives like Google and Dropbox

How to Organize Digital Photos

I wanted to dedicate a section to organizing digital photos since photos don’t always fit specifically into the digital organization tools shared above. I generally like to keep my photos separate.

I encourage you to either create a separate folder for photos or even better, a separate hard drive or cloud account. If all of your photos are on your computer or phone, BACK THEM UP. Seriously, those are your memories, you should have a system for organizing your digital photos.

If you got for a physical hard drive, be sure to get one with a long warranty as if anything happens to the drive and you can’t access it, your photos are gone. Cloud or online drives tend to be a better option for this reason. I’m going to share with you how I organize my digital photos on my hard drive AND cloud account (Yes I do both cause I’m crazy).

Have a dedicated pictures folder. All of your pictures will live here. Don’t put pictures anywhere else

Organize folders by year

Within each year break down by activity, trip, event etc…

Divide into source of photos, if applicable

So let’s say I took a trip to Iceland in 2016 (I did FYI, you can see it here!), those pictures are organized as follows:

PHOTOS –> 2016 –> Iceland –> Camera photos, phone photos, drone photos etc…OR by location within a destination

Is this extra? Yes. But it also makes finding images so much easier. Hopefully this system can be helpful for you! If you give it a try, let me know – I literally get a high from hearing about other people’s organization success!

Like this post? Here are some others you might enjoy:

JOIN THE THM NEWSLETTER

Join 10,000+ members of the THM Community to get access to exclusive recipes, healthy lifestyle tips and behind-the-scenes news from our team!

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheHealthyMaven/~3/vZOIY_DmclY/

0 notes