#Hard Labour

[taurus-spacecraft]

NEW PONIES!!!

I love them aahshsg!!! George is so pretty ill be playing with jist him and Yoko now btw

Also fuck all people being assholes to my Yoko pony. She doesnt deserve it.

[mycptsdstory]

You DON'T compare pain to someone else. You just DONT. End off.

Just because you do hard labour work and say "well, my hard labour work is more physically tiring than your 9-5 job". Is just rude.

Also, the same goes to the opposite and you say "well, my 9-5 job is more mentally tiring than your hard labour work". Again, it's just rude.

Just because YOU think, one is more tiring than the other. DOESN'T make it right.

BOTH are TIRING equally, in their own right.

Pain is pain. Being tired is still being tired. Physically or mentally. Both are still tiring and one does NOT compare the other.

Stop judging other people, just because you haven't experienced it. Be empathetic, it's not that hard to do.

[pointless-letters]

CORONATION: Geoff from Eastbourne very generously taking account of human rights there.

[shirozen]

Hard labour for a sweet treat

[langernameohnebedeutung]

How does it keep happening

[uncanny-tranny]

I've talked before about how the way people treat suicide can be unintentionally devastating to the suicidal person, but I don't think I really ever said how to avoid that.

Speaking about suicide in how selfish it "is" ("think about how you'll transfer your pain to your loved ones!") might seem like a way to put logical sense into the suicidal person, but, honestly? It runs the risk of massively increasing their shame and guilt about being suicidal. Suicide is not inherently a revenge fantasy or a way to "get back" at someone's loved ones, so when the suicidal person is treated like a criminal of a "crime" they haven't even committed yet, you can imagine how unhelpful that can become.

Instead, if you want to point out how cherished your person is, frame their relationships as something they can keep fostering.

"Your cat will miss you :(!!!!" becomes "you and your cat seem close, right? I'm sure it's beautiful having a close friend like that!" and maybe include ways that they and their cat are close and meaningful to each other, tailored to that relationship.

That's only one example, but when you shift the focus away from why that person should repent and feel guilty for being suicidal, you can instead focus on why they would live for that reason. See how you can frame that as a positive? Whatever is keeping that person tethered should never be used as a bludgeon, I think, because then you're taking away why they're living, the positivity of why they are here. Whatever they are here for should be remembered often and honoured.

[imagine-darksiders]

Nothing will kill your self esteem faster than having to work for your dad, but every time you make any mistakes, you get the ‘I’ll have to hire someone competent if you keep shitting everything up’ threat.

What happened?

[Invoice lands on my desk]

[Call dad] Me: Who am I paying? There are two names on this invoice.

Dad: Pay X.

Me: Are you sure?

Dad: Yes I’m sure!

(Month passes)

[Phone rings, it’s dad] “YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO PAY Z!!!!”

[engagemythrusters]

BDG3 companions worst qualities:

Astarion: racist

Shadowheart: also racist

Lae'zel: also also racist

Wyll: naive

Karlach: on fire all the time

Gale: egotistically insecure

Halsin: cranky about cities

Minthara: advocates slavery. and also racist.

[batwynn]

I typically have a pretty healthy respect for farmers and their work, especially having lived on and worked on many different farms growing up. I've woken up at 4am to milk cows, feed chickens, chop wood. I've pulled more weeds than you can imagine, tilled rows, and run out in hailstorms to protect crops. But I can't seem to dredge up a drop of respect for the farms around where I live these days. Because these guys don't actually do anything, and yet have a serious attitude about how much of better a person they are because they 'work hard' and 'kids these days don't wanna work' yadda yadda. They've convinced themselves and everyone around them that they work like people used to work on farms. In the field, backs bent, heavy lifting, etc. Except, you know, they don't. Everything is mechanized, and more than half of the year is spent doing nothing at all while the potatoes grow/over the winter. Every step of the planting, watering, spraying, harvesting, and storing process is run by a machine. The tractors don't even need them to direct them for most of the process. I've watched these guys fart around on their phones and pick their noses for 6 hours as the tractor goes back and forth, only waking up enough to turn the thing at the end of the row. For what isn't mechanized, (kale) they hire migrant workers to do the actual work. Meanwhile, these guys drive around in their un-used-for-anything-but-driving pickup trucks, yelling about migrant (non-white) workers and people asking for 'handouts'. Ironic, of course, because every single farm up here gets massive 'handout' from the government for multiple claims of u w u growing pwoblems. These same people will pick apart every single thing that you do 'wrong' because you don't do it the way they do it. (Like have a giant bulldozer to clear their driveway vs a small snow blower) If that wasn't enough, these aren't the neighbors that I grew up with. These same people have the ability to help others, and won't. They pull up to you after 5 months of grueling shoveling and clearing the driveway of snow and say, "Oh we could have done that for you for $40." And then never offer to do it next year. They'll stand outside and crack jokes about how our house is going to burn down because of how we set up the pellet stove, but not offer advice. They'll happily run their generators and settle in during the bomb cyclone that turned off the power for over a week at -60º and not even question if they should check on anyone living around them. They're greedy, selfish, lazy, cruel people and they say the kids are the problem?

[rvspecter]

Bonus:

[tongsandcheese777]

the Kevin on the far right's shirt is supposed to read "Primus" but the other Kevin's gargantuan head is covering the P & the R.

the Kevin in the red cap is my brother's Kevin Spencer OC "Minkle Spencer".

[henry-fox-biggest-stan]

SCREAMING CRYING THROWING UP

A perfectly legal pdf ;)

https://twitter.com/livesforpercy/status/1653383512672591879?t=8O_guXAs0qBJ616Dae9Neg&s=19

YOU’RE WELCOME

[lilbodybuildermk2]

Went to buy 12 bags of cement wearing my hi-viz jacket to show off my biceps. I got a buzz seeing the other guys at the builders depot watching me easily lifting two 25kg cement bags at a time into my truck! Hope they enjoyed the gun show 💪

[brotherhumphrey]

at the end of the day, though i have manifold complaints about the monastic life, it is ultimately a blessing, for a lifelong devotion to christ means i need never consult with the hellspawn devil, Indeed Dot Com

[nabaath-areng]

" First impressions last. "

[elderberries-and-honey]

𝙈𝙮 𝘾𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙘𝙚𝙨𝙨 & 𝙋𝙡𝙖𝙣𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜

A while back I received this question asking if I'd mind explaining what my creative process is like and some wanted further explanation about what goes into planning multiple generations & arcs. I do apologize that this is so overdue, and it's literally taken me months to get to. My process is always changing, and I'm constantly adding in pieces that help make the process easier. Because of this, the way I answered the question back then is also quite outdated, at least in terms of how I plan each shoot/post, and I'll hopefully provide further clarification below the cut.

However, first and foremost, I want to say I am by no means an expert and different processes work for different people. Your creative process might look totally different than mine, and that's okay! Whatever keeps you coming back and sharing your work is always going to be the best & most efficient way of doing things.

But I do think it's helpful to get insight into what works for others when you have no clue how to plan things like this, or where to even begin. So, without further ado, here is my process.

Mainly, I use a website called Milanote. It's super helpful for organization purposes, and it's mostly free. They have free templates you can use, or you can make your own. The only downside to it is you're limited on the number of "cards" that are available to you. They do have a promo that you can use where if you get someone else to sign up, you get more cards, which is what I did.

My main folder basically looks like this:

𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙍𝙀𝙎𝙀𝘼𝙍𝘾𝙃

The research folder is an unorganized, organized mess and basically just looks like this:

This is where I keep all my resources, and all of the things I've researched for my story. As you can see, this includes various sources like YouTube videos, various articles, quotes, photos and even some music as well. I like having this all in one place so it's easily accessible for me, but you could just easily keep all of this in a Google or Word doc if you're low on 'cards'.

𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝘼𝙍𝘾𝙎

Next we have these two sections. Obviously, I had to cover them up to avoid spoilers but I did label them to hopefully provide insight. Essentially, for this decade in particular, there are going to be various arcs happening at once, especially since the children will be growing into adults and laying their foundation is going to become crucial to the story. However, I'm trying to limit myself from having too much going on at once, which is why I try to limit myself to only four arcs playing out at once.

I will also say that Plot's A through C are interconnected, or at least they will be eventually, while Plot D concerns one of the children and will impact things later down the line. This is super important for really tying different ideas together, and making sure random plots don't seem to just pop up out of the blue.

The table for myself helps a lot with this, so that I can easily see what arcs have been started, and how many 'scenes' each one has. I find this to be useful because then I know that none of the arcs are stretching too long, which ones might need more fine tuning and which ones have yet to flourish or even begin.

Each arc basically has something like this going from beginning to end, essentially following the classic three act structure. Not all of them have five components, some more or less, but generally it ends up being five. Now, this doesn't mean every plot is only five posts or anything like that. Most of the time, the timeline of events needs to be broken off into bite sized pieces and that's okay.

The resolution doesn't always mean a happy ending, and can also serve as a way for me to introduce any new arcs for a specific character, which would then start the process over. You can kind of think about this when watching a lot of television shows. We watch all this build up starting on episode one, and things get more and more intense until we finally reach the season finale. And then woah, with two minutes left of the episode, we see that the character they just thought was dead is actually alive?! Which then leads us into season two.

I do think planning this way could feel really tedious for some, but I like to map things out before I start introducing any arcs so I at least know it isn't a quick "one shot" plot, something without actual purpose or an arc that doesn't really seem to have any sort of end goal that makes logical sense. It also just helps me remember what everyone's up to, especially when there are so many characters to keep track of.

𝙎𝙃𝙊𝙊𝙏𝙄𝙉𝙂 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙎𝘾𝙀𝙉𝙀

Before I go into the game, I basically write out a "rough draft" of sorts. This includes dialogue, any background noises (things like a clock ticking or the tapping of a pencil), a brief description of each shot/photo (including any post-editing things like adding blur effect), and a summary of what's happening in each panel.

Because I only use one document for this, and clear it out once I complete a scene, I do not have any examples to show from The Baudelaire Legacy, so I created a mock-up scenario in which Ozzy flunks a difficult test at school, as seen below.

Once I have that written, I plug it into my 'scene planning' board. However, I only include the shot/photos, and the short summary. On Milanote, I also plug in the location, time of day, attire and any pose accessories I might need (so that I remember to create an extra outfit for it). This ends up looking like the example below.

I typically will only have this open on my second monitor while I'm shooting the scene, and I just tick the boxes as I go along. This is really nice if you have to stop mid-shoot, and helps me pick up where I left off without getting confused.

I do also edit each panel in-between shooting to make sure I'm getting the shots I want, however, I don't encourage everyone to have Photoshop and Sims 4 open at the same time.

𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝘾𝙃𝘼𝙍𝘼𝘾𝙏𝙀𝙍𝙎

Then we have the character sheets for each of our characters. Right now, I'm only focusing on Lawrence & Winifred (though, the children's arcs are in a 'idea dump' document).

For me, this is the most important piece of the story. One of the reasons shows like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad are considered some of the best writing in television history, is mostly due to the fact that, in my opinion, they prioritize this as well. It's always good to have a strong character in mind before you begin, and this is because you don't want them to step outside themselves.

Of course, your character can change and bend within their environment or plots happening around them, and they certainly should, but you also need to ask yourself if it's being done logically. Asking yourself, 'Why did they end up this way?', 'How did we get here?' and 'How would this character specifically react to an intense situation, stress or hardship?' is crucial when writing a character that feels alive.

Having something like this helps me build their "character arc" and map it out so no one ends up being left in the dust and makes sure that everyone is important in some way. Each of the children will have a sheet created for them once they reach the teen life state as well.

I also use this page as a way to record any quirks, or habits they have. These don't have to be major or super important either. So for example, on Lawrence's character sheet, I have it written down that he wears glasses to read; a very small thing casual readers probably wouldn't even pay attention to, so it feels like an important detail to me.

𝙈𝙔 𝙎𝙋𝙍𝙀𝘼𝘿𝙎𝙃𝙀𝙀𝙏𝙎

In addition to Milanote, I also Google Sheets/Docs. This is where I keep my spreadsheet and write / keep a hard copy of my story.

My spreadsheet is basically broken up into four different tabs - one for the main sims information (the Baudelaire's), side household information, my story posts and my ageing table.

My information tables look something like this:

For story posts, I use @aheathen-conceivably's method of tracking, which you can read about here. The only thing I have added in addition to what she has is a "notes" section, and this where I include any sort of post that doesn't specifically fit into any arc but is still important - things like birthdays, marriages, holidays, etc.

𝙈𝙄𝙎𝘾𝙀𝙇𝙇𝘼𝙉𝙀𝙊𝙐𝙎 𝙄𝙉𝙁𝙊𝙍𝙈𝘼𝙏𝙄𝙊𝙉

In addition to all of these things, I also use Pinterest to create moodboards for each decade, as well as each character. I like to include all sorts of things like any inspiration I'm drawing from (so, things like Greta Gerwig's Little Women or HBO's Gilded Age), photos, quotes, etc.

Annnnd that's basically it! I'm hoping this provides some good insight, and is helpful in some way. I know it seems like a lot, but the more you do it, and the more you plan, the more natural it will start to feel. Again, I am not an expert in any way, and it's always difficult to explain your process in this way (and probably why I put off trying to do so for such a long time). So, please feel free to ask for clarification in regards to any part of the above.

Happy Simming ‧₊˚ ☁��⋅♡𓂃