#How to use Canva for POD

[cozidreamsreimagine]

How to Create Designs That Work for Your Print-on-Demand Business

Running a print-on-demand business is both exciting and challenging. Whether you're selling on platforms like Redbubble or managing your own store, creating designs that resonate with your audience is the key to success. But how do you craft designs that not only look great but also sell? In this blog post, I’ll guide you through the process of creating designs that work for your print-on-demand business, with tips and tricks tailored to help you stand out in a competitive market. Let’s dive in!

Why Design Matters in Print-on-Demand

In the world of print-on-demand, your designs are your product. Unlike traditional retail, you’re not selling physical inventory—you’re selling ideas. Your customers are drawn to your creativity, so your designs need to:

- Capture attention: Bold, unique designs stand out in search results.

- Resonate with your audience: People buy designs that align with their personality, values, or interests.

- Fit the product: A design that looks great on a t-shirt might not work on a mug or phone case.

Understanding these principles is the first step to creating designs that work for your business.

Step 1: Know Your Niche

The most successful print-on-demand businesses are niche-focused. Instead of trying to appeal to everyone, target a specific audience.

- Research your audience: Who are they? What are their interests, hobbies, or values?

- Find trending niches: Use tools like Google Trends or Redbubble’s trending searches to discover what’s popular.

- Create for your passion: If you’re passionate about your niche, it will show in your designs.

For example, if your niche is cozy, minimalist designs, you could create products that appeal to people who love hygge-inspired aesthetics.

Step 2: Brainstorm Unique Design Ideas

Once you’ve identified your niche, it’s time to brainstorm ideas. Here’s how to get started:

- Use keyword research: Tools like Redbubble’s search bar or Pinterest Trends can help you find popular themes.

- Look for inspiration: Check out competitors, social media, or even nature for fresh ideas.

- Think seasonally: Holidays, seasons, and special events are great opportunities for themed designs.

Pro tip: Keep a notebook or digital folder for design ideas. Inspiration can strike at any time!

Step 3: Master the Tools of the Trade

You don’t need to be a professional graphic designer to create stunning designs. With the right tools, anyone can make high-quality artwork.

- Free design tools: Canva, GIMP, and Inkscape are great for beginners.

- Professional software: Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator offer advanced features for experienced designers.

- Mockup generators: Use tools like Placeit to see how your designs will look on products.

If you’re new to design, start simple. Minimalist designs with clean lines and bold typography are often bestsellers.

Step 4: Optimize Your Designs for Products

Not all designs work on every product. To maximize sales, tailor your designs to fit specific items.

- Consider placement: A design that looks great on a t-shirt might need adjustments for a mug or sticker.

- Use high-resolution files: Print-on-demand platforms require high-quality images to ensure sharp prints.

- Test your designs: Upload them to mockup tools to see how they look on different products.

For example, if you’re creating a design for a phone case, make sure the key elements aren’t cut off by the edges or camera hole.

Step 5: Write SEO-Friendly Titles and Tags

Even the best designs won’t sell if no one can find them. That’s where SEO comes in.

- Use relevant keywords: Include terms your audience is searching for, like “minimalist phone case” or “funny coffee mug.”

- Write descriptive titles: Instead of “Cool Design,” try “Retro Sunset Design for T-Shirts and Stickers.”

- Add detailed tags: Use a mix of broad and specific tags to improve your visibility.

For example, if your design is a cozy winter illustration, your tags might include “winter mug,” “cozy vibes,” and “holiday gift ideas.”

Step 6: Promote Your Designs

Creating great designs is only half the battle—you also need to market them.

- Leverage social media: Share your designs on Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok.

- Engage with your audience: Respond to comments and messages to build a loyal following.

- Collaborate with influencers: Partner with creators who align with your niche to reach a wider audience.

You can share behind-the-scenes content, like your design process or mockups, to connect with your audience on a personal level.

Step 7: Analyze and Improve

Finally, track your performance to see what’s working and what’s not.

- Check your analytics: Platforms like Redbubble provide insights into your sales and traffic.

- Experiment with new designs: Test different styles, themes, or niches to see what resonates.

- Listen to feedback: Pay attention to customer reviews and comments to improve your designs.

Remember, success in print-on-demand is a marathon, not a sprint. Keep learning and adapting as you go.

Final Thoughts

Creating designs that work for your print-on-demand business takes time, creativity, and strategy. By understanding your niche, mastering design tools, and optimizing your listings for SEO, you can build a successful shop that stands out from the crowd.

You have the power to turn your ideas into products that people love. So, what are you waiting for? Start creating today and watch your business grow!

Looking for unique, cozy designs that inspire and stand out? Visit my Redbubble shop to explore a collection of creative products made just for you!

[bamsara]

Hello! I was wondering what company you use for your sticker sheets? I bough one from your Ko-Fi shop and really like the quality, and the pricing you were able to sell at is waaaaaay more reasonable compared to any of the companies I've seen and used myself. Is it a POD company, or a mass purchase of them to sell on your own?

Thank you for your time if you're able to respond!

I'm really glad you like the quality, because I actually make them by hand at home! (Please forgive the lighting, my bedroom is my office lmao.)

I don't use a company (and Idk what a POD company is sorry!) but making them at home gives a lot more freedom of stock, just be wary it can be very time consuming depending on how many you need to make.

I've had other people ask before, so here's a rundown of how I make my stickers at home: At most you'll need:

Printer

Sticker paper (this is the type that I use)

Laminator and lamination paper (the lamination paper that I use.) You can also use adhesive non-heat lamination paper if you don't have a laminator, gives you the same result, just be careful of bubbles. You will get double your worth out of a pack because we are splitting the pouches to cover two sticker sheets.

Your choice of a sticker cutting machine or just using scissors.

First, I use Cricut's software to print out the sticker sheet with the guidelines around the corners so the machine can read it. If you do NOT have a Cricut machine, open up your art program, make a canvas of 2550x3300 and fill it up with your sticker design with some cutting space between them. This the 8.5x11 size for the sticker page.

I usually have bleed selected so the cut comes out cleaner. Tip for non-Cricut users below: Increase the border around your sticker design to fake the 'bleed' effect for a cleaner cut.

These are the print settings I use for my printer. I use the 'use system dialogue' to make sure I can adjust the settings otherwise it prints out low quality by default. Make sure if you're using the above paper that you have 'matte' selected, and 'best quality' selected, these aren't usually selected by default.

So you have your sticker sheet printed! Next is the lamination part. I use a hot laminator that was gifted to me, but there is no-heat types of lamination you can peel and stick on yourself if that's not an option.

(This is for protection and makes the colors pop, but if you prefer your stickers matte, you can skip to the cutting process.)

Important for Cricut users or those planning to get a Cricut: You're going to cut the lamination page to cover the stickers while also not covering the guidelines in the corners. First, take your lamination page and lay it over the sheet, take marker/pen and mark were the edges of your stickers are, and cut off the excess:

(I save the scrap to use for smaller stickers or bonuses later on)

After you've cut out your lamination rectangle, separate the two layers and lay one down on your sticker sheet over your stickers with matte side down, shiny side up. (Save the other sheet for another sticker page)

The gloss of the lamination will prevent the machine from reading the guidelines, so be careful not to lay it over them. It also helps to cut the corners afterwards to prevent accidentally interfering with the guidelines.

Now put that bad boy in the laminator! (Or self seal if you are using non-heat adhesive lamination)

Congrats! You now have a laminated page full of stickers.

For non-cricut/folks cutting them out by hand: this is the part where you start going ham on the page with scisscors. Have fun~

Cutting machine: I put the page on a cutting mat and keep it aligned in the corner, and feed it into the machine. For laminated pages I go between 'cardstock' and 'poster board' so that it cuts all the way through without any issues, but for non-laminated pages or thinner pages, I stick for 'vinyl' and 'light card stock'. Kinda test around.

Now I smash that go button:

You have a sticker now!

The pros of making stickers at home is that you save some cost, and you have more control of your stock and how soon you can make new designs. (I can't really afford to factory produce my stickers anyway)

However, this can be a very time consuming, tedious process especially if you have to make a lot of them. There is also a LOT chance for some errors (misprints, miscuts, lamination bubbles, ect) that will leave you with B-grade or otherwise not-so-perfect or damaged stickers. (Little note, if you have page mess up in printing and can't be fed into the cricut machine, you can still laminate it and cut it out by hand too.)

I have to do a lot of sticker cutting by hand, so if you don't have a cricut don't stress too much about it. I have an entire drawer filled to the top of miscuts/misprints. I keep them because I don't want to be wasteful, so maybe one day they'll find another home. Sucks for my hand though.

But yeah! This is how I make my stickers at home! Hope this is helpful to anyone curious

[flippinpancakes64]

Could you do the cullens with a mate who is a painter?

The Cullens with a Painter! Reader

I haven’t painted in YEARS omg, I moved to using my iPad a couple of years ago but I still remember the basics so here we go

Thank you for requesting and I hope you enjoy!

Edward:

He’s also an artistic person

So he understands what drives you to create

His favorite thing to do is to play the piano while you paint

It just makes him feel so warm inside

He loves watching you paint as well

It’s so fascinating to watch what you see in your mind and then as you translate it onto the canvas

And he loves your artwork

He hangs it up all over the walls in his room

Genuinely thinks you should enter in a contest

Alice:

She loves your artwork so much

It’s so fascinating to her how you can just conjure up something so amazing

She also loves to buy you new paints and canvases

Every time she’s out buying new clothes or something she sees a new paint and she’s like “ooh that color’s pretty”

Keeps every single thing you make for her

Loves watching you work

She doesn’t care if she’s being creepy

She just loves you and wants to hang out

Jasper:

He’s fascinated and enamored by your emotional state when you work

He loves when you paint faces because your mind flickers to whatever emotion you’re trying to convey on the paper

It’s a very interactive experience for him

He almost likes tuning in to your mind more than your actual artwork

But he does obviously love your paintings

He does whatever you want him to

You need a life model? Well it’s a good thing he can stay still for hours

Want more paint? He already has his car keys in his hand

Rosalie:

She used to be really into painting and drawing

But she always thought she was bad at it so she just stopped

So when you come around she falls in love with it again

She wants you to teach her everything

She’s always hard on herself

She thinks her stuff is never as good as yours

But she loves painting with you

She can almost overlook her own hatred for her artwork

And yes she hangs up everything that you make in her garage

Emmett:

I don’t think he’s a very artsy person

Unless you want to call the fact that he can gut and skin a bear in less than 30 seconds an art form

But he can appreciate good art

So when he sees some of your paintings for the first time he is blown away

“You made these? Like actually? That’s so fucking sick”

Proudly displays anything you give him

You doodled on a paper during school and he stuck it in the front pocket of his binder

And he tells everyone who asks exactly where it came from

Esme:

She’s a painter

I don’t make the rules I just follow them

All of the artwork currently hanging up in the Cullen house is her work

And yes she’s very proud of the grad cap piece

So she is so excited when she finds out you also love to paint

Two peas in a pod

Painting dates are a must

And she is more than happy to take down some of her stuff to make room for yours

You don’t even need to ask

Carlisle:

I feel like he’s a jack of all trades

He’s been around long enough I sure hope he knows how to do everything at least a little bit

But he’s nowhere near as good as you

He’s so proud that his SO is such a talented artist

He convinces the clinic to hang up a couple of your pieces in the boring exam rooms

People compliment them all the time and he tells them exactly who made them

Don’t ever worry about buying art supplies ever again btw

Vampire! Bella:

I don’t remember if she ever drew during the books or movies, but she just screams art kid to me

She had a phase in middle school, thought she sucked so she stopped

So she’s astonished when she sees what you make

“I couldn’t make that even if Van Gogh himself taught me”

She loves watching you work

It’s so calming to her

If she could sleep, she would fall asleep watching you

[evanescewriting]

"i can see all the colors"

above me they are shining and finally, I can see all the colors that surround me.

CONTENT: Vague descriptions of injury, descriptions of character death, potentially disturbing sensory (rotting corpse smell mentioned, etc.) comforting character death (for Curly), regret (for Anya’s situation), j***y is not named (🖕) SYNOPSIS: Captain Curly gets a glimpse of the universe outside the foamed up walls of the drifting Tulpar. AUTHOR'S NOTE: mouthwashing folks how are we feeling about that ending

In the end,

no one came.

No one came to free him from the cryopod. No one came to free the bodies scattered around the ship - no one to bring them home. Or for that one, dead, rotting pixel he had no choice but to now see - no one to throw him out into the endless universe like trash.

It was just him.

The bodies.

The tulpar.

And the cryopod he wasn’t meant for.

God, if one could hear him this far from Earth, he would give anything, anything, to be a captain worthy of that honor. Anything to go back in time, pick up the pieces of his sense he let fall to his feet, shattering and cutting him and all that once stood around and with him. And how they bled. How they bled so much that he thought, perhaps, the crimson beneath his feet was a red carpet that marked his glory. His leadership.

Perhaps this was punishment.

To want to give everything to go back as you freeze in a pod, slowly, slowly dying with no one to come save you.

A captain always goes down with his ship.

He wishes he could close his eyes - burning from dryness, and the cold. Perhaps this was punishment too. For not seeing. Now, all he could do was see. He felt as if he had been stripped away of everything. Gone were the skin and limbs. Leaving only behind the most vulnerable, most human mechanisms in his body. To see. To hear. To create sounds of pain, sadness, and desperation. He was a canvas of red - a tiny splotch of blue amongst the various crimson shades. Scaled small on the canvas, but within it so much knowledge. So many things that had finally been seen.

Time stretches by so slowly.

It rakes its nails across him and his ship. Chipping away at resolve and cleaning the remnants of sanity from his mind.

And still,

no one comes.

His ship is failing. His body is failing. What was it, that saying he had thought of not long ago as he considered his punishment? Ah- a captain always goes down with his ship. Well, Captain Curly was going down with his ship.

And his crew.

They are rotting. He is rotting.

And how long had it been, counting his time through the days, hours, and seconds that had gone by since he was.. not this. He felt that he had become something more. Something different. But truly - he was still himself, wasn’t he? The crash had changed him, of course, but isn’t that similar to the process of a sudden metamorphosis? It felt more burden than butterfly - but what if there were still the remnants of the caterpillar in him? Would it be somehow possible to call upon them? To use the skills from the past and translate them to something he could do now?

Yes - yes he thinks perhaps he could. He could call upon them. Use the strength of this form to deliver the most powerful something of all. Do something so very caterpillar (human) while being so butterfly (in his view, not human).

In this freezing, empty chrysalis, he reverts back to his roots, opening his jaw with pain - but that was a familiar thing already - and wheezing out something that only reverberates within the chamber. Echoing down the long hallway of his punishment, lost on the ears of the dead.

“S-S - orry.”

And then no one came.

And then he could not close his eyes.

And then, just before the end, he realized he was neither caterpillar, nor butterfly, nor human, nor anything more or less than that - but maybe, just maybe - he was forgiven.

And then he went down with his ship.

The metal walls and layers of the Tulpar had unraveled itself. All that remained was the exoskeleton of a ship - bones and ribs and skull - drifting through space. One, singular pod still connected to it. Two long dead bodies bound in their infinite voyage.

But maybe that wasn’t true.

Because he feels himself, somehow, come out from the pod - standing just on the edge of the peeling metal. Feet planted impossibly confidently with the absence of gravity.

Beyond death - Captain Curly can still see.

There are so many colors.

Purple, blue, orange, red - a cornucopia of color beyond imagination. Hues and shades the human mind could not even digest. He can see them all before him.

“I think my favorite might be the blues.” There is a voice behind him - sounding different when it lacks timidness.

“Guess mine!” Cheery, useless ray of sunshine that beams so far away from the sun.

“Green.” Straight to the point. But Curly knows that underneath the tone is a fondness for the two.

He can feel them behind him. Eyes turned to the mass of color above.

“Close! It’s pink, Swansea. Me and Anya’s colors make purple.” Daisuke says, and he just knows that maybe he is putting his hands on his hips in a ‘see how greatly that works out?’ motion.

For a moment, silence passes. Comfortable. Peaceful.

“What about you, Captain? What’s your favorite?”

And then he turns - and they are before them.

The crew. The three he should have saved. The three he could not save. The three he failed.

Whatever form he takes now - they stare at him with indifference. Passive curiosity on the simplicity of his favorite enveloped in the beautiful mass, far away from life.

He feels, somewhere within, the feeling of a held in cry or scream that only comes out as a freeing-

“Maybe the yellow. But the pink is nice - so is the blue.”

“Yellow is the best choice.” Swansea voices his agreement as he looks back above him.

“Yeah. Yellow is a good choice, Captain.” And of course, Daisuke’s eyes follow his mentors, even here. Even now.

“Blue is the best choice, though.” Anya says as she joins their gazes lifting back up.

He wants to ask them: was this always just right outside those walls? All these colors he could never see? All these ideas and concepts? All that pain and suffering?

But he knows that they’ll tell him yes, it was. And only now can you see it, Captain.

Only now can you see all the freedom, the relief, the joy, the stars and their colors.

And tell us - tell us when you come to that conclusion, too.

Tell us if you think it is beautiful.

[jordanching-blog]

Living lighter

I've been consciously trying to figure out ways to leave less of an imprint on the earth... here are a few things that I've implemented:

Reducing plastic use:

Water delivery in glass jars (spring water AND no plastic!)

Laundry pods instead of plastic containers

Refillable deodorant

Reusable jars for when I go to the herb store

I buy compostable garbage bags and reuse the produce ones for daily trash (would like to eliminate those though)

Reducing paper waste:

Using towels instead of paper towels and napkins

Using canvas totes when grocery shopping

Shopping local:

I stopped shopping at huge corporate owned grocery stores like Whole Foods and shop at my local neighborhood places

Curbed my Amazon addiction (still definitely use it, but try my best to reduce as much as possible)

Diet:

Eating mostly plant based (but some wings and fish here and there)

Things that weren't so great that were reusable:

Menstruation cup (super messy and not for me)

Q-tips (I bought this off a kickstarter and didn't feel like it was cleaning anything)

If I owned my own place, things I'd implement:

Bidet (use way less toilet paper and everything is so much cleaner)

Solar panels

Ways to reuse gray water

Compost (you'd think LA apartments would have this but nope)

It might not seem like much listed out, but it does make me feel better that I'm actively trying to reduce my imprint. If everyone did something small, it'd add up to something big! A book that I just finished, Braiding Sweet Grass, really made me think about our relationship with the Earth and how we can make it more reciprocal.

I'm always looking for more ways to improve, so if anyone has any suggestions, would love to learn!

[keanuquotes]

The Enduring Appeal of Keanu Reeves He battles evildoers in 'John Wick 4,' manufactures two-wheel pieces of art, and is worshiped by the internet, but Keanu Reeves swears he's just a normal guy. And he’s got the scars to prove it. Ky HendersonMar 15, 2023 9:00 AM EDT It’s easy to look cool when you’re riding a motorcycle, but it’s hard to look cooler than Keanu Reeves on a brisk, sunny afternoon in Los Angeles. He rests his left hand on his thigh and steers with his right, which gooses the throttle as he weaves around slow drivers. He wears a form-fitting black canvas motorcycle jacket that accentuates how trim he is—even more fit than he appears on-screen—and a beat-up Shoei helmet. He leaves the visor up, choosing instead to shield his eyes with sunglasses the Terminator might wear to a Hamptons garden party. Reeves looks at home and at ease on a motorcycle. He looks cool.

At a gas station stop, he suggests switching bikes. We’re each riding cruisers made by Arch, the motorcycle company Reeves co-founded with designer Gard Hollinger in 2011. The company produces high-end, highly personalized production bikes; I’m on a 1s, the company’s new $100,000+ sport cruiser. Reeves is on an older model, KRGT-1, but it’s his personal Arch, a true one-of-a-kind. It's the only Arch ever painted YK Blue, a color Reeves and Hollinger commissioned based on the ultramarine pigment famously mixed by mid-century French artist Yves Klein. Reeves says all that’s left of the paint is in a tiny can stored somewhere at Arch in case the bike’s paint ever needs touch-ups.

Which it most certainly would if, let’s say, some idiot were to put the bike down in front of a horrified Reeves while riding down the Pacific Coast Highway. Thankfully, there’ll be no lowsides today. Although the bike is beefy, with a 2,032cc V-twin powerplant, it’s easy to maneuver and comfy as a BarcaLounger.

Keanu Reeves stands in motorcycle factory holding blue mug Brian Bowen Smith

Reeves eventually leads us back to Arch’s factory building, which is nondescript from the outside but artfully decorated inside using shipping containers to separate working areas. Metal fabrication is done behind one; customer bikes are lined up in another with technicians hard at work. After Reeves dips outside for a cigarette—the 58-year-old both looks like a much younger man and smokes with the frequent abandon of one—he leads us to a small conference room.

“I like meeting people, but I’m a little reserved,” he warns as he settles into an office chair, looking far less comfortable than he did on a motorcycle. “How much of my private life do I want to talk about? I don’t know. Otherwise, let’s hang out.”

When Reeves was growing up in the Yorkville neighborhood of Toronto, he was consumed with existential thoughts. He discussed death a lot more than the average 11-year-old, for instance—but not because he wanted to die. He just wanted answers to big questions. Perhaps not entirely unrelated to his interest in mortality, he was also obsessed with the biker gangs that periodically motored into the neighborhood. It wasn't pods of dentists letting loose on weekends. It was leathers, patches, menace—the whole deal. And Reeves loved it.

“They looked exotic,” Reeves says. "They looked to me like they were free. Plus the bikes were cool and sounded great.”

Despite his childhood fascination, Reeves was in his early 20s before he first rode a motorcycle. It happened at a movie studio in Berlin—where else?—when he saw a woman on an off-road enduro bike in a parking lot. He approached her and asked if she’d teach him to ride, which she agreed to on the spot. (If you’re wondering why a woman would do that for a total stranger, search “Keanu Reeves in the 80s” in Google Images.)

Not long after he got back to Los Angeles, he bought a 1973 Mk2a Norton Commando, having long admired the classic brand. That bike currently sits in the Arch shop, which is notable for two reasons: One, few longtime riders are lucky enough to be able to hold onto their first bike. Two, over the years Reeves has…suffered some mishaps.

“Yeah, I’ve fallen off a few times,” he admits of the accidents he’s had on a variety of bikes. He takes a swig of water, then corrects himself. “Not ‘fallen off.’ Crashed. I’ve got a couple of hit-by-cars. A couple of going-too-fast. I’ve laid a couple of bikes down but I was riding in the winter, so that’s not really ‘crashing.’ That’s about it. The usual stuff.”

He’s broken ribs, knocked out teeth, sliced his leg open so deep that bone was visible. His most spectacular accident occurred in 1988, only a couple years after that day in Berlin. Reeves was riding alone at night in Malibu’s Topanga Canyon when he took one of the twisties too fast. By the time he came to a stop, he was lying on the pavement wondering if he was about to die. As you know, he didn’t—but he did fuck himself up pretty bad.

“I ruptured my spleen,” he says matter-of-factly. The widely reported version of the story goes that he needed the organ removed, but Reeves says it’s still intact. “They sutured it up and put a Band-Aid on.” He has a gnarly scar running vertically from his sternum down to his belly button, but in the right light it just ends up accentuating his abs because, well, he’s Keanu.

Reeves first met Hollinger through a mutual acquaintance about two decades after that crash, when Reeves wanted a custom sissy bar—basically, a backrest for a passenger—added to his 2005 Harley Davidson Dyna. Hollinger, who at that point was a relatively well-known, well-respected customizer with his own small LA shop, wasn’t interested.

“I knew I could build him the world’s most expensive sissy bar,” Hollinger says, “but I also knew it wouldn’t be satisfying for either of us.”

Instead, Hollinger spent the next five years completely reimagining the bike. He’d work in spurts, changing or adding something, then handing the bike back over to Reeves for months. By the time the bike was finished, Hollinger says, about the only parts of the original Dyna still remaining were the engine and the serial number on the chassis. Today that bike—a chromed-out ride fit for Mad Max—is displayed in the shop, the inspiration for what eventually became Arch.

Keanu Reeves on motorcycle wearing black canvas jacket and sunglasses Brian Bowen Smith

Eventually being the key word. When, during the long process of modding the bike, Reeves first suggested to Hollinger that the two team up to start a motorcycle company, Hollinger didn’t have to think about his answer.

“I knew what a tough business it is, what a challenge it would be—and that it would not be a great investment,” Hollinger, now 63, says with a laugh. “It was a wonderful motorcycle I built and it was wonderful getting to know Keanu, but starting a motorcycle company sounded like a horrible idea.”

Reeves didn’t relent. As the pair became better friends—and as the motorcycle continued to take shape—they’d have long conversations about the realities of starting the company. Hollinger would show up to their discussions with pages of questions written on a legal pad, but what gradually eroded his hesitation was the thoughtfulness with which Reeves described the experience of riding a motorcycle.

Finally, nearly convinced, Hollinger asked Reeves to boil everything down to one reason why they should do something as seemingly crazy as starting a motorcycle company. The actor came up with it on the spot—a reason Hollinger immediately understood, which allowed him to envision the company and its worth as an opportunity to do something meaningful and long-lasting.

“Because,” Reeves told him, channeling the mortality-obsessed 11-year-old kid gawking at dudes on motorcycles, “we’re going to die.”

Related: 2023 Arch 1s Sport Cruiser Is the American (V-twin) Dream

There have been many jokes made over the years about Reeves being a dummy, but after spending about 8 seconds with the guy it’s obvious he’s keenly intelligent. I mention that I read lots of sci-fi and fantasy books as a kid, which prompts him to ask whether I have opinions on several titles, followed by recommendations to read several others.

Thing is, his idiosyncratic public persona—which is sort of like Ted (not Bill) if Ted were a little more shy and a much better dresser—isn’t an act. Reeves isn’t trying to fool his critics or fans. And he isn’t really putting on an act in an attempt to prevent people from knowing who he is. He’s just this very singular, introspective, likable person who happened to become a pop culture icon.

All of that said? He can be pretty goofy. His physical mannerisms are sometimes at odds with what he’s saying, like he’s being controlled by feuding puppeteers. He speaks haltingly, stopping and starting and stopping again, often all in the same sentence, as he considers what exactly he wants to say or, just as likely, what he doesn’t want to say. More than once over the course of an afternoon he giggles—yes, giggles—at something he says or thinks, placing his cupped hand over his mouth like a theatrical school child hiding laughter; the gesture is as strange as it is endearing. He's somehow both laconic and verbose, calm and keyed up.

Although Reeves has long been known as “The internet’s boyfriend,” he’s currently dating—sorry, internet—acclaimed visual artist Alexandra Grant. The pair first collaborated on the 2011 book Ode to Happiness after having known each other previously; in the following years they collaborated on other projects and co-founded the small book imprint X Artists’ Books. Their romantic relationship began about five years ago but only became public knowledge two years in, when they arrived at a red carpet event together.

When asked about Grant, Reeves leans back in his chair as though trying to put both metaphorical and literal distance between himself and the idea of discussing his personal life.

So, uh, maybe it’s best to make it about bikes: What’s Grant’s opinion of Reeves’ (occasionally injurious) motorcycle fixation?

“She used to have a motorcycle, so she’s fine with it,” Reeves says. Then he pauses, as he so often does, seemingly considering whether to say anything more. “She hasn’t ridden in a while.”

Despite his lifelong love of bikes, Reeves hasn’t ridden them much in his movies. There’s a brief scene in the landmark 1991 indie film My Own Private Idaho. There’s some riding in 1996’s Chain Reaction, including one scene in which he manages to outrun an exploding hydrogen reactor. He’s technically on a bike in John Wick 3 while battling bad guys, but that was all done while stationary in front of a green screen. He has no interest in shoehorning Arches into his movies, though a couple of Arches are featured in the futuristic 2020 video game Cyberpunk 2077, in which he also played a major role.

Reeves says there’s a brief motorcycle scene in the upcoming John Wick 4, a movie whose eventual existence might have been laughed at when the original film debuted. Despite the series’ current status as an unstoppable franchise juggernaut, it originally wasn’t even planned as a franchise—and it certainly didn’t appear destined to be one after John Wick received a somewhat tepid theatrical reception in 2014.

“It had some success in the theater, but it really became more popular in second viewings,” Reeves says. “So the studio asked if we wanted to do another one.”

Reeves does more than just kick unbelievable amounts of ass in the movies; he’s also had a hand in plotting out the sequels. The genesis of the third and fourth installments, he says, took place while he and director Chad Stahelski were on the road promoting the second and third movies, respectively.

“Generally, Chad and I cook ’em up while we’re doing press tours,” Reeves says. “We talk about what we’d do next if the current film does well. I’m like, ‘I want to ride a horse and do a horse chase!’ And Chad says, ‘Yeah, we can do it in Central Park!’”

Reeves says he doesn’t know what comes next for him, but John Wick 5 will almost certainly be an option—if he wants to do it. He’s currently developing a TV series, and maybe he’ll make the motorcycle road movie he’s long thought about making. He’ll also no doubt continue riding bikes and growing Arch because he loves doing both.

He says he may continue BRZRKR, the comic series he co-writes. He won’t stop helping others via his philanthropy (he declines to discuss other than to say it’s “in health and the arts”). And he’ll burnish his already-glowing reputation as, in his words, “a pretty respectful and considerate person,” because that’s how he likes to treat people.

“I’m just,” Reeves says as his mouth curls into a smirk and his arms shoot out in front of him as though he’s pleading to be believed, “a normal guy.”

via keanuworld

[bagog]

N7 Month, 2023 - Day 18: Pack

Was stumped. A thin little angsty pre-relationship mshenko drabble about a mourning Kaidan after Alchera.

++

The debrief with the Citadel Council had been bad enough, but the debriefing under Admiral Hackett on Arcturus had completely wrung out the last of Kaidan’s patience. He and Joker had been the last to see Council Spectre and Alliance Commander Shepard alive. As ranking officer, Kaidan was getting most of the attention.

Search and survey missions above Alchera had come back negative for any other survivors. Many of the deceased crew had not been recovered, and neither had Shepard.

A burial in space. Kaidan wondered if that would be what Shepard would have wanted. He’d been in and out of meetings for the last 9 hours, telling the same story again and again. He wasn’t allowed to speak with Joker, or anyone from the Normandy. The isolation had galvanized his grief into such a thin point, he wasn’t even aware he still felt the prick of it. How many times could you describe the last moment of your Commander’s life before it became just another story, no added emotional weight. Just recounting the facts.

The small apartment he kept for himself on Arcturus Station felt foreign to him when he finally got back that evening. The Normandy, it’s claustrophobic sleeper pods, had begun to feel like home. He stripped off his uniform and lifted his shirt over his head, sat on the stiff foam mattress and sighed. He’d had friends on the Normandy, pretty good friends who he’d been through hard times with, and they were dead now. Too cold and too small in space to be recovered.

That was one thing he hadn’t gotten a chance to say in all the debriefs: he had lost friends. He had lost Shepard. And the loss was killing him. In a dim corner of the room sat Kaidan’s old brown pack: one of the straps sewn on haphazardly, numerous patches covering holes in the canvas. The sight of it forced a heavy huff out of him.

He walked over, picked up the pack carefully. The zipper stuck, but Kaidan knew how to pull it open anyway. There were civilian clothes inside: just a couple t-shirts, some slacks. There was a pair of swim trunks, sandals. In a separate bag was a menagerie of toiletries—cologne, hair products,--things he didn’t get to use aboard a starship.

The bag was packed for vacation. For shore leave, with Shepard. The two had agreed to spend shore leave on the Citadel together, and Kaidan—ever the boy scout—had packed ahead of their sweep of Alchera, it was supposed to be their final engagement before the well-earned break. Kaidan realized only now, looking at his ready pack, how excited he had been for the opportunity.

At the bottom of the pack was a data-pad: books Shepard had asked Kaidan to recommend to him. It was a task Kaidan had thrown himself at with unexpected fervor. Now that Shepard was dead… he couldn’t remember why.

He pulled the zipper back around, dropped the pack with a thud onto the deck, and returned to the bed. He didn’t need anything out of the pack. Didn’t want to smell like fine cologne, couldn’t stomach the soft civilian clothes, didn’t need to style his hair. All of that could wait, maybe forever.

He lay back in bed, telling himself “not forever.” The grief would pass away some day soon, and he’d be back to everything-as-usual.

The pack sat there in the corner for years.

[d1ana-m0nd]

╭─► ❝A sucker for you❞

Nicholas D. Wolfwood × GN! Reader || Written by Diana (d1ana-m0nd) || Inspired by @spinningwebsandtales

➢ Comedy && Not Proofread , Drabble && Word Count 561

➢ You just wanted some alone time with your thoughts and cigarette but a certain undertaker would not let you have that.

➢ NOTE : I'll be basing the fanfic on the original anime (TRIGUN) and I will mix my headcanon of Nicholas quiting smoking by using lollipop as a substitute.

"Hello, darling. Are you alone out here?" A familiar voice asked, you turned to see the lollipop-addict undertaker.

"We literally came here together." You retorded then went back to staring at the starry night sky. You didn’t want to tell him you had a hard time sleeping or else he would make a big fuss about it.

“And you shouldn’t have come here…”

“Oh please, you and I both know that this was inevitable.” Nicholas said with a knowing smile. You didn’t bother fighting him back. After all, he’s right, he would follow you everywhere you go just because you are his significant other. To Wolfwood, it felt like it was his obligation to be by your side 24/7 even though you didn’t hire for his services as your bodyguard.

With nothing else to say, you rummaged through your pocket and took out your secret stash of cigarettes, took a cigar then lit up the butt of it.

"I didn't take you for a smoker."

You merely let the smoke flared out of your mouth yet, no words were uttered.

The male who leaned against the wall, sighed in response to the silent treatment he received. “I have a feeling you’re not planning on telling me about what’s going on.”

“Oh, that isn’t a feeling.” You said followed by an empty laugh and small smile. You didn’t want to tell him that you wanted to give up on helping Vash, because you knew that would only break his heart, needle noggin’ and wolfwood are practically two peas and a pod. If one of them were to leave the other, the other person would be forced to embrace loneliness again.

Getting the memo, the man beside you decided he would just silently accompany you in star gazing. As he skimmed through the black canvas above him that had white specks of dots; he was looking for star alignments he was familiar with but had difficulty concentrating because of the smoke emanating from you. Wanting to get rid of the smoke, he thought he’d give you one of his lollies.

"Here, I got a sucker for you."

“Thanks.” You discarded the cigarette then took the lollipop from him and plopped it into your mouth. As your tongue plays with the orb of sweetness in your mouth, you realize something odd. The lollipop already had bitemarks and it had a layer of saliva on it, you momentarily took it out then faced him with an unamused look.

Nicholas feigned ignorance to your unamused gaze, even though he could see from his peripheral vision that you were silently seeking for his attention. He will admit, you looked adorable, though he will keep pretending he is busy enjoying the night sky. To grab his attention, you “lightly” punched his side ignoring how he grunted in pain.

“Was this the same one you were sucking on earlier?”

The undertaker wore a huge smile on his face. “To be fair, that was the last one, and it’s not like you haven’t sucked something that isn’t mine-” Before he could finish that sentence, you interrupted him with a punch to the jaw.

➢ TAGLIST : @attackontitansimper (If you're wondering why I tagged you in this one shot, here's my reason.)

[copperbadge]

Genuine question; how is it self publishing with Lulu and are there any copyright issues? Thinking about taking some of my older world building and turning it into a Actual Novel.

I hope it's okay if I answer this publicly, I've had a few questions about it recently!

I've been doing it long enough that my frame of reference for difficulty may be a little skewed, but it's relatively straightforward -- Lulu has a publishing wizard that walks you through selecting options, uploading a document, adding a cover, and such. There is still a lot you have to do yourself that they don't really tell you how to, but it's not hard to google for some and they do have forums that cover other bits.

There are generally speaking no copyright issues with going through a self-publisher, but it depends on the services you obtain from them. With Lulu -- as with, I think, most Print-On-Demand printers -- there's an array of routes to go from unpublished document to published book.

So you can do it all yourself -- you can edit, proof, typeset, design the cover, purchase an ISBN, and do all the marketing. Or, at any step in the process, you can purchase services from Lulu that will do that for you. I can't recommend purchasing their proofing/design/marketing stuff; on the one hand it's where they make their money, but because of that they're not providing super great value for what you pay. And as a self-publisher, unless you have a massive platform or great marketing and hustle, you probably won't recoup in sales what you paid for.

Whether or not you buy other services, Lulu charges a per-book print fee, but you set your own prices, so like the book might cost $5 to print, but if you set the price at $10 you're making a pretty sweet profit per book. Some other POD publishers also charge a "setup" fee, but I'm not familiar with what that entails.

In any case, there's only one point at which copyright becomes an issue, which is the ISBN -- the serial number and barcode that identifies your book so that (for example) bookstores can sell it and libraries can stock it. You don't HAVE to have an ISBN, but it makes it much harder to get it distributed if you don't.

You can obtain an ISBN on your own -- cost varies by country, many make them available for free but in the US a single ISBN is $125 or you can buy like 100 for $500. If you want to have one but don't want to buy one, Lulu will give you one, but they then become the publisher of record. I don't really know how that works in terms of copyright, but it does impact some rights to the book, so if you use a Lulu-issued ISBN that would be something to research. If you're just publishing a book through them without using their ISBN, they're basically a printer -- they have no right to your book as an item of intellectual property.

Now, outside of copyright considerations, it is certainly more work to self-pub. If you want it to look professional you have to have access to a good program for typesetting, you have to know how to set margins and gutters, title/author headers and page number footers, and if you want to do an epub that's a whole other ball of wax.

I don't get super fancy. I typeset in Word, because Libre Office and Open Office (at least last I checked) didn't have a few of the features Word has, but any other program has a much higher learning barrier to entry. You also have to upload the document as a PDF, so you have to be able to save/print it as a PDF.

Lulu does have a cover-design app you can use to make a cover, but it's extremely basic, so if you don't want your cover to look like it was designed in Canva, you'll need access to a design program like Photoshop or Glimpse, or to commission a cover from someone who does. Once you've uploaded your document, Lulu will give you a template that tells you exactly what size your cover should be, where the bleed margins are, and etc.

And then we get into the nitty-gritty stuff like how only certain fonts can be used for the document (there are twelve fonts that Lulu allows, it's listed on their site somewhere, I just use Garamond) and you need to make sure any art that goes on the cover is either free for use or Creative Commons or similar (or you buy the art for use). Google does have a handy Creative Commons filter on their imagesearch function, which has been useful for me in the past, but on the copyright pages of many of my books you'll see credit given for images used.

So to do your first book there is a bit of a steep learning curve, but once you're past the curve, you'll have some pretty good skills for future publishing. I did a book a year for several years, in my twenties, and then didn't publish at all for several years, and had to relearn a lot when I started publishing again, but it came back pretty quickly. And depending on how fancy or professional you want your book to look, you don't necessarily have to put in a TON of work. Like, I try to make mine look as much like pro-published books as possible, but some authors on Lulu just shove a formatted word document into a PDF and call it a day, they don't bother with headers/footers and fancy formatting and such.

In any case, while I think going the professional route of querying publishers and agents is laudable and certainly I wouldn't advise anyone to go to selfpub first thing, selfpub can be awfully satisfying, and it starts to feel kind of like a fun hobby after a while.

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week 2023-10-16

Another year older. Stealing the Untitled Wednesday Library Series format from Morrak for an open Reading section and then we'll get to the normal post.

Reading:

Untitled Monday Wednesday Library Entry No. 0

Do you like a recipe book? Do you like an unbearably comprehensive and frequently incorrect recipe book? Well boy do I have an item for you:

It's Indian Delights, the de facto standard book of South African Indian cooking. Assembled in the 60's by the Durban Women's Cultural Group and in print ever since then.

The How

A birthday gift from my parents, who sent it from South Africa.

There are apparently places that carry this book outside of South Africa but I do not know what those are.

The Text

Dubious, but useful despite this. It was written in the 60's by a bunch of people who had never and would never again write a recipe book. You may note from the frontmatter that while it has had sixteen impressions since its first publication in 1961, there has only ever been a single revision of the book. There are numerous errors, omissions, and flaws. Recipes may list ingredients that are not used, call for ingredients in the method not given before, begin preparing components and never use them, or outright lie about the quantities of ingredients you need. A challenging exercise.

Any given individual's copy of this book is full of little pen notes, slips of paper, and scratched out experiments. I have a blank canvas.

It is absolutely stuffed to the brim with recipes from the then-almost-century of South African development on South Asian cuisine. It is intended as a one-stop-shop for cooking from a diaspora of extremely wide origins.

South African Indians arrived in South Africa as indentured labour for British sugar farms and could just as easily be from the relatively cold and mountainous North Indian regions or the low, rainy, hot coastal areas of South India. As a result you've had almost a hundred years of adapting to the locally available ingredients, intermarriages across wide geographic origins, and failing memories. There are frequently many duplicates of any given recipe, each with some unique variation of note.

It is also extremely dated. It still lives in an era where "adding an elachi (cardamom) pod to your rice" is a luxurious choice that requires financial considerations, and where meat was still expensive. It also has a delightful section on mass cooking, such as the above "Biryani for 100 people" which has an additional note on the ingredients for a "Biryani for 800 people" on the opposite leaf. These things come up sometimes, although the largest biryani I've ever been involved in was for about 60 people.

It is not really for beginners but it does have a lot of introductory matter, in part because it has to contend with the mishmash of languages and loanwords that exist. You don't know if the reader uses the hindi word for cumin, or the tamil word for cumin, or makes a formal distinction between roti and chapati. As a result, there are extensive opening tables of translations.

The Object

Big, blocky hardcover recipe book. Cheap but hardwearing coated pages. I have seen these in every imaginable state of disrepair, unfortunately I do not have a photo on hand of my mother's which is completely beat to hell.

I mentioned that there have not been many updates, and this continues to the outside. Not a single impression has, for example, corrected the misalignment of the spine and the cover that means it stands out on any book storage system.

Some damage to the cover from the rigours of air travel. It'll recover, or rather, it'll get beat up in ways that make that negligible.

The photography is antiquated, having been taken by a photographer who was certainly good but was operating a) with 1961 camera technology, b) 1961 photographic sensibilities, and c) no real experience in food photography. As a result the images can look somewhat alien if you're familiar with more modern food photograpy. Colours are not accurate, framing is flat, and composition is often packed.

In addition to the colour glamour plates, there are black and white instructional photos, which are much more timeless.

The Why, Though?

Indian Delights is a very important cultural reference for the South African Indian population, and it's a pretty standard leaving home/getting married/leaving home and getting married gift. I've bought a copy for many friends and now this one is mine.

Will I actually use this much? Certainly not that often. My mother and her sisters learned to cook from this book, so it is the root of my personal culinary tradition. That means I already know a lot of what can be distilled from this for day-to-day recipes. Where it is handy is for more technical dishes, which require some guidance, or as an ingredient reference for something new you want to try.

In particular Diwali is coming up and while both my mother and I are staunch atheists, we will also take any excuse to make a ton of sweets for friends. If you are in Prague in the week of the 12th of November you can probably hit me up for something.

Listening: Acheney is a shockingly talented synth designer for the niche softsynth tracker sunvox, available now on windows, mac, linux, windows CE, android, and iOS. I was tooling around with their Guitar synths and decided to check out their music, which is a couple albums of very high concept EDM inspired ambient and/or noise stuff. Here's Euler Characteristic Zero

Watching: @humansbgone is an animated sci-fi series about intelligent giant arthropods and their attempts to deal with invasions of pesky little humans

Big spec-bio focus with a lot of end notes on the arthropods in question.

Playing: Played the Trans Siberian Railway Simulator demo, which I recorded and put up here, with crap audio because it's authentic to what I had lying around after I forgot my headphones at work.

Also: the digital version of the D&D themed agent placement game Lord of Waterdeep with my family, which works quite well. It's weird to have the game handling the admin of moving points around and automatically deducting resources, but it does make the game go very quickly, even if your parents are still figuring out the interface.

Making: Big cooking experiment with a slow roast lamb shank. Came out very well. Lamb shank definitely one of the more animal parts of an animal you can cook. Smells intensely of lanolin and other hair smells. Real greasy. Big honkin' bone. Smooth and fine but sturdy musculature. This thing used to be a very specific part of something alive and that thing lived the kind of life that develops the very particular smells of the insides of a sheep that are very close to the outside of a sheep. You will find some wool fibers in your pan from where the follicles reach down close to the bone and sinew.

Tools and Equipment: Easyeffects is the successor to PulseEffects and is a very complete set of audio tuning and manipulation tools for Linux. You can use it to process incoming and outgoing audio with basically any plugin you care to imagine.

[lu-dao-writes]

𝐄𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐝 (𝙷𝚞𝚊𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚗)

🐚 𝒮𝓊𝓂𝓂𝒶𝓇𝓎 ࿐ ˊˎ- 𝚃𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎’𝚜 𝚊 𝚗𝚎𝚠 𝚖𝚎𝚛 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚑𝚎 𝚋𝚎𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚜 𝚎𝚗𝚊𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚎𝚍 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚍𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚊𝚗𝚌𝚝𝚞𝚊𝚛𝚢.

🫧 𝒲𝒶𝓇𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔(𝓈) ࿐ ˊˎ- Mention of poachers, small mention of egg laying and being sold.

🪸 𝒜/𝒩 ࿐ ˊˎ- My first Hualian piece! I hope no one is too OOC🤞🏼🤞🏼! Also sorry for my possible weak descriptions 🫣💕. I created the image above in Canva, the artist of XL and HC is STARember.

𝐎𝐔𝐓 of all the mermaids they’ve rescued, Xiè Lián will forever be the easiest.

He hardly ever caused problems, fussed, or spilt any blood.

Líng Wén found it interesting because Xiè Lián lived in the ocean rather than in captivity, and he was very passive, almost as if he’s lived here his entire life.

Perhaps, she had concluded, he just lived in a large pod and safe environment and there was little to no danger. Líng Wén has been learning how to communicate with the mermaids and Xiè Lián had no problem wanting to help her learn, and she in turn was helping him learn human language.

But turns out, Xiè Lián was banished from his pod and that was the reason how they ended up rescuing him. The opalescent mermaid was captured by poachers and they were going to force him to produce eggs and sell them and his scales, and or maybe try to see if Xiè Lián himself could be sold for a pretty penny.

She’s glad that they saved him from a terrible fate.

Xiè Lián is not only intelligent, but just a friendly soul since he’s listened to her vent a few times when she’s had a rough day. Of course she doesn’t make this a habit though.

Of course Líng Wén shouldn’t have favorites, but she can’t help but elect Xiè Lián as her favorite.

There were some that were troublesome to deal with, like Qī Róng for example. He… Loved to play games and sometimes those games resulted in someone getting hurt or scared, but mostly disgusted.

Mù Qíng was rather bossy and fussy. If his tank wasn’t spotless he’d throw a huge tantrum. Thankfully Fēng Xìn had to deal with him and the bluette was glad she didn’t have to deal with what Fēng Xìn had to deal with on a day to day basis.

But looking at the newest mer creature that was rescued… Qī Róng might get a demotion…

This new mermaid is a male and if Líng Wén could describe him in a few words, she’d say he’s devastatingly beautiful. His tail is tri-colored: crimson red, onyx, and milky white that also decorate his torso, shoulders, fins, and face. The skin of his forearms are also black, and his fingers are deadly with sharp claws. The man is also missing an eye and the remaining one is pupil-less and a Smokey red, the corners being darker than in the center. And finally, he has long, flowing blank hair and ruddy red horns sticking out.

A very beautiful man indeed, but he was quite aggressive and stubborn.

He refused care or to eat and no one could enter into his domain because he’d attack them or give them the scare of a lifetime.

One day though… A breakthrough occurred.

Xiè Lián was passing by and the ravenette was instantly fascinated by the opal scaled mer, and Xiè Lián seemed just as captivated.

The ravenette refused to stop looking at Xiè Lián, even when Xiè Lián eventually had to tip his head back upright from having hung backwards, soon disappearing out of sight as he had to get a checkup.

Líng Wén was informed that the tri-colored mermaid refused to move or look away where Xiè Lián went, seemingly waiting for his return.

Péi Míng suggested that the two try to bond since they seem so interested in the other, but Líng Wén was hesitant.

Xiè Lián is the darling of the sanctuary and no one wanted him to get hurt.

This new mer is too unpredictable…

“IF we do this we need to be cautious. Perhaps we should take them out—.”

“Do you think he’ll even let us get him out of there?” Péi Míng asks with a knowing smile.

The bluette sighs tiredly, giving the man an unamused stare. Péi Míng does unfortunately have a good point…

“Let’s just put Xiè Lián into his tank. I honestly think he’ll be fine, call it a gut feeling.”

“…Fine.”

So here they are strapping Xiè Lián in so that he can be lowered into the tank. The marbled eyed mermaid gently squeezes Líng Wén’s arm, sensing her anxiety.

Her brows soften and she gives him a soft but small smile, reaching out to gently rub the top of his head. “Give him hell if he bothers you.”

Xiè Lián gives her a soft laugh and a nod before he’s being slowly lifted up and soon placed into the tank.

The water is a little colder and darker than he’s used to, but he soon gets used to it and leaves the safety of the ties, searching around for the tri-colored mer, but he was nowhere in sight.

‘So he’s hiding…’

Xiè Lián debates on finding him or just waiting for him to come out on his own terms.

‘It’s probably safer here,’ he thought, glancing towards his caretaker and Péi Míng . Although it quickly got boring just waiting, and to help warm himself up too, he starts humming and twirling around.

From outside the tank the two couldn’t help but smile as they watched Xiè Lián dance as it was always a treat to watch him perform.

“Look there!” Péi Míng suddenly gasps eagerly with a point, startling Líng Wén .

Xiè Lián was so lost in his own song and dance he didn’t notice that a red eye was trained on his form, inching out of the darkness.

It was only when the opal scaled mer heard foreign humming did he stop, spinning to find the source.

The newcomer is now a little closer and Xiè Lián can’t help but take in his form, his face slowly growing warm as he stares at his sculpted waist.

The ravenette was slowly growing closer and closer at a snail's pace, probably not wanting to scare the other, but Xiè Lián is far from scared.

The brown-black haired mer finally meets his eyes with the other and gives him a bright, encouraging smile, beckoning him over, and soon the ravenette was face to face with Xiè Lián.

Right away Xiè Lián notices that the other man dwarfs him by 2 to 3 inches, but still he wasn’t frightened.

The two were just gazing at each other and the opal scaled man can feel his heart fluttering a bit, not being able to deny how beautiful the tri-colored man is.

The ravenette’s lips suddenly inch upward into a smirk. “Am I that beautiful that I have you speechless~?”

Xiè Lián sputters a second before scoffing softly. “Don’t pretend you weren’t staring at me either… But to answer your question, yes, your beauty has me at a loss for words. You’re truly blessed.”

The ravenette’s fins fan out and he looks away briefly, his arms locking behind him.

“I’m Xiè Lián, and you are?” he asks, leaning a bit closer with a slight teasing smile.

The ravenette doesn’t reply right away and just as Xiè Lián goes to assure him, he speaks.

“Call me Sān Láng .”

[bits-and-babs]

🐺 - not all who wonder are lost (also congratulations on 6k! your writing is so lovely and I can’t put into words how much I appreciate you sharing it with us 🤍)

𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐖𝐇𝐎 𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑 𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐋𝐎𝐒𝐓

pairing: ezra (prospect) x f!reader

warnings: no warnings other than the fact that this is far more depressing than I intended it to be! I hope you enjoy either way!

ezra masterlist | main masterlist | follower celebration | taglist

The silence hangs heavy in the air, like the humidity that sticks to Ezra’s skin. It shines under the dim lighting of the Pod, concentrated and glistening across his brow. Seeping into the forest-green canvas of his lifesuit, the sweat causes the fabric to cling to his body, highlighting the heavy heaves of his chest as he sucks in desperate, fearful breaths. 

A deep, maroon split below his eye continues to weep blood down the apple of his cheek. It doesn’t get very far, Ezra consistently swipes his muddy sleeve across his face to halt its journey to the hollow of his throat, wincing slightly when he catches the cut on the rough material. 

“Ezra,” you whisper to him, brows furrowed as he reaches across the pod and digs inside the storage boxes. You assume, at last, that he’s reaching for the first aid kit. Instead, he hauls out a bottle of whiskey that he had stashed away for the trip to Bahkroma. ‘Just in case’, he had said. 

“Remember when we boarded the vessel?” He begins to talk, his thick, accented voice straining with the dryness in his throat. Ezra casts his oaky irises to the ceiling, swimming with a resentment for the four walls he had been trapped in for days now, the planet you were stuck on, himself. “You were struck with an air of trepidation, were you not? Foretold a danger that I dismissed in my infinite wisdom.” 

The sarcasm that drips from his lips turns your stomach over, and you swallow thickly as he falls into a pit of despair and self-hatred. You had worried this would happen, that Ezra would blame himself for your dire situation. In reality, it didn’t matter anymore. 

“I should have been more attentive,” he whispers, all emotion removed from the tone of his admission and leaving only a vessel, confessing in a monotone drone, “I escorted you into a mouse trap, craving the wealth and the validation that Aurelac gems promised - how foolish of me.” 

A weak chuckle rumbles in his ribcage, his head shaking slowly. “Only one person's judgement mattered, didn’t it? And I squandered her affections, dismissed your eternal affections and belief in me for ridiculous stones that are not worth the labour.”

“Ezra,” you speak up with more force, and his head lolls forward, settling his eyes on you. “What’s done is done. We’ll-... We’ll make it work. We can survive here. Surely there is a way to get off world, or contact somebody back home– don’t give up on me yet. Please?” 

Carefully, slowly, you inch towards him. You’re grateful that Ezra doesn’t deny your affections, that he doesn’t push you away. Instead, he allows you to settle between his legs and rest your head on his chest. Instead of the pushback you expect, the outright denial of your survival chances, you only hear the thumping of his heart against your ear, and the glug of the whiskey as he drinks from the bottle, wallowing for just a little while longer.

[lazulian-devil]

Im in my last stretch of writing for the @into-the-frayed-pod, working on the first episode (and therefore also my proof of concept) and I've encountered two problems:

Im not a grimdark writer. Im a grim and Im a dark writer, but Im not a grimdark writer. How tf do I make people understand "Its only gonna be really stressful for three minutes, trust me" without making them close the episode. I dont want them to open this up and go "Blimey, this is a dark show" and then leave again. In essence: Tones are hard. I'll have to rewrite again. Lucky for everyone, I love writing.

And secondly: Omg. Character voices. Consistent character voices. Distinct quirks of writing. I shall consume the heart of the centaur, for it will be an easier exercise. That said, Franzis and Vaughn are getting franzier and vaughnier by the writing session.

Either way, I hope I can be done by sunday and start casting. Wish me luck, people. Oh and: Ive designed the "Cover". Its not done done, but you never know. Could be only the first cover in a series of changes, but I really rather like it so far.

It was designed using Canva, if anyone wants to know.

Cheers!

[pretensesoup]

How to Publish a Book, pt 2

Q: I'd like to do a print book too, not just an ebook. A: Do you realize that if you do a print book, your mom is going to read it? And the book has sex in there? Like, explicit gay sex? Like it says the word "cock" right there on the page.

Q: Yeah, she's like 77, she knows that sex exists. I've made my peace with this. A: All right, here we go. Publish on Demand books in some number of easy-ish steps.

There are a bunch of options for POD publishing now. IngramSpark, KDP, Draft2Digital, Lulu, etc. Other websites like Barnes & Noble will let you set up paperback publishing but outsource the actual printing to IngramSpark (IS). I think a bunch of these services do. IS is also slightly better if you want to have bookstores sell your book, have it in libraries, etc., because most bookstores won't order from Amazon, for obvious reasons. For Dionysus in Wisconsin, I've done both IS and Amazon, letting IS distribute to anywhere that isn't the Zon.

OH, IS allows preorders for paperbacks while the Zon doesn't.

First, you're going to need to write and edit the book. We went over this in pt. 1. Please refer there if you have any questions on this step. Okay, here is the exhaustive list of what to do once you're ready.

1. Decide what size the physical book should be. Look around your house at books in your genre and select the size that is most pleasing to you. This is called the trim size.

2. If you uploaded your text into a typesetting program like Atticus, tell it your trim size, preferred typeface size, line spacing, and margins and have it spit out a pdf. Otherwise, set Word up with those specifications. KDP has a helpful site where you can calculate the correct inner margins for your number of pages, while I think somehow IS just requires a .5" or .625" margin for all sizes (this doesn't make sense; I assume you just have to fix it after seeing a proof?). The book's gonna be exactly the same, so just do the same thing in both places.

Okay, one thing I couldn't find any guidance on is what size to make the typeface and line spacing. I wound up going with 11 pt typeface and 1.4 spacing. I figured this out by printing out the first page of my book, cutting it out at the correct size (5"x8") and comparing it to pages in similar books until I found one that looked readable and pretty. Anything from 10-12 is probably fine, also 1.1-1.4 spacing, but keep in mind that small/densely spaced typefaces will make your text look more intimidating. Someone on Mastodon said 1.5 spacing looks like a student paper, which I also agree with.

There are loads of websites that detail what typefaces to use for what types of books. "Look at your genre and try to match" is reasonable advice here too.

3. You need not just a cover, but a spine and a back cover. Books are three dimensional objects!

If you hire an artist, they should just be able to provide a wrap-around cover that is appropriate dimensions (again, KDP and IS both have templates), but if you're doing it yourself, I suggest laying out the entire cover on one large sheet of paper/canvas and doing your art like that rather than trying to photoshop together various pieces, unless you are really, really good at color leveling etc. You're gonna want to make sure that you have at least 300 dpi. Make sure you use open access typefaces or that you have rights to use them, ditto for any images you collage into stuff.

GIMP is a great free photoshop alternative. ImageMagick is a free image manipulation program that is incredibly powerful. I had to use ImageMagick to flip my cover file into CMYK and create a PDF. The command you want is this:

magick "inputfile.png" -colorspace sRGB -colorspace CMYK "outputfile.pdf"

4. Submitting your file for stuff: copyright here, LCCN (Library of Congress Control Number) here. Neither of these is obligatory, but both are cool in their own way. LCCN is a way for Library of Congress to pre-catalog your data (creating a stub record in OCLC) so that if a library acquires your book, it's easier for them to get it on the shelf. You need to submit your request for this PRIOR TO THE MONTH OF PUBLICATION. However, you don't need a final manuscript to submit, just a summary of the book. Also, note that you can only retroactively submit your MS for copyright registration for THREE MONTHS after publication, so decide now if you want it. And yes, everything you write in the US is automatically copyrighted, but having a certificate to prove it is nice in a court battle. Also also, you WILL want a finished copy of the text to submit when you make this request, or else you will have to submit two printed copies. By MAIL. So you have to GO OUT OF YOUR HOUSE TO THE POST OFFICE. UGH. (Technically, you are requested to send in a print copy for the LCCN program too. I don't think that's obligatory, but am I gonna pass up a chance to have my book fully cataloged by LOC? Fuck no.)

5. OKAY, assuming you got everything done, now you need an ISBN.

Do you really? Kind of. If you're only publishing on KDP, they'll give you a free one. But you can't reuse it if you try to also publish on IS. The reverse is also true. Technically, the entity that assigns the ISBN is the publisher, so this makes Amazon/IS the publisher of your book. Also, it makes editions slightly weird (technically, it's supposed to be one ISBN per edition). ANYWAY, in the US you buy ISBNs through Bowkers. Don't let them sell you barcodes or any of that garbage. Just buy your ISBN(s).

Sometimes, people report putting in information in KDP and then having the ISBN rejected as "in use" when inputting it into IS, so do this next part all at once. First, assign your ISBN to your book in the Bowkers database. Then assign it to your book at IS and save as draft. Then assign it to your book at KDP and save as draft.

One other note. If you have set up a business to be your press name (mine is Winnowing Fan Press, because the main character's name is Ulysses and I am a GIANT NERD), that will be set up as your publishing house in Bowkers. You won't have an imprint unless you specify one. (An imprint is like a special line of books, so Harlequin has a "digital-first" imprint called Carina Press that specializes in LGBT+ romance, because why would you publish LGBT+ romance in paperback first, ugh.) BUT Amazon will ask what the imprint is for your ISBN and it will be THE NAME OF THE PUBLISHING HOUSE. Why is Amazon using the term differently from everyone else? I DON'T KNOW. JUST GO WITH IT.

6. Upload all your files. Look at the previewers/e-proofs to make sure everything looks okay. Panic and reupload them five times with minute changes.

7. Set a price.

For real at this point I hope you're done making changes, because you suddenly have at least three versions across two different sites to update if you suddenly decide to add a credit for your author photo or something. (cough)

How to set a price the easy way: look at other similar books in your genre (your comps) and just set your book to that price (hopefully you aren't losing money that way).

8. You can order a physical proof at this stage. But if you want author copies, you're going to have to publish your book, meaning it becomes publicly available. I think that if you get through the KDP screens and hit "publish book," it goes live. So...save it as a draft; don't hit the go button until you're ready. IS meanwhile lets you make it available for preorder.

Deadlines: Try to get everything done and uploaded by five days before your planned publication date.

@tryxyhijinks I think that's everything. Wow, I'm tired now.

[somediyprojects]

DIY Ottoman Slipcover

Project by Brett Bara:

If you’ve got a boring old ottoman hanging around, or if, like me, if you happen to find one of those plain cubes on sale, it’s easy to recover with a custom slip cover.  This is another fantastic way to bring some fun textiles into a room with a project that you can sew in an afternoon or less. (I swear!)

This slip cover uses only basic straight seams, and I’ll show you the trick for getting nice, sharp 3-D corners. So let’s get started! –Brett Bara

What You’ll Need

1-2 yards fabric, depending on the size of your ottoman

Sewing thread to match

Tape measure

Sharp scissors

Straight pins

Sewing machine

Iron and ironing board

Selecting and Preparing Fabric

A heavier-weight fabric is great for this project since you’ll want it to be sturdy enough to stand up to some wear and tear. Heavy cotton, canvas or duck cloth are all great choices, as are many upholstery fabrics. If you have kids or pets or otherwise expect your ottoman to need to be laundered regularly, you might want to choose a machine-washable option. As always, I recommend beginners start with smooth-textured fabrics, so avoid any options with a lot of texture until you’re comfortable with sewing.

I’m using Butterfly Jubilee from Mod Green Pod, which is a heavy cotton.

If your fabric is machine-washable, wash, dry and iron it before beginning.

Measuring and Cutting

Measure the ottoman from edge to edge, and note the size of the top and sides.

To the top piece: add ¾” to the height and width. So if the ottoman top measures 14” square, you need to cut 1 piece of fabric that’s 14 ¾” square.

To each side piece: add ¾” to the width and 1 ½” to the length. So if each side of the ottoman measures 14” square, you need to cut 4 pieces of fabric that are 14 ¾” by 15 ½”. (As you proceed, be sure to sew the side pieces so that the longer sides are vertical; the extra length is for the hem.)

*Note: these instructions call for a ½” seam allowance, yet I’ve instructed you to cut each piece ¾” larger than actual size (normally you’d cut each piece 1” larger than actual size, to allow for the ½” seam allowance on both edges). But because you want the slip cover to be snug, we’re decreasing the normal 1” extra to ¾”, for just a smidge of negative ease.

Time to Start Sewing

Place two side panel pieces right sides together, with longer edges aligned. (You will be sewing along the longer edges.) Remember to check to be sure your fabric pattern print is facing in the right direction so that your print won’t be upside-down!

The trick of this project is that you want nice, neat corners on your slip cover. To accomplish this, leave ½” unsewn at the top of the seam. Measure ½” from the top edge of the fabric and place a pin to mark the spot. Continue to pin the two pieces together along the entire edge you will be sewing.

Begin sewing at the first pin with a ½” seam allowance. (Again, leaving that first ½” open). Backstitch to reinforce at the beginning and end of this and all seams for this project, and continue sewing all the way to the edge of the fabric.

This is what it will look like with the open ½” at the top of the seam.

Sew all four side pieces together in this manner, forming a tube. Iron all seams open and flat.

Slip the tube over the ottoman to make sure it fits well. If it’s not snug enough, make note of how much smaller it needs to be, and redo the seams where necessary. It it’s too snug, you can let out seams.

Now it’s time to add the top piece. Align one edge of the top with the edge of one of the sides. To get nice, neat corners, here’s the trick: Fold down the ½” open flap at the top of the side seam, completely out of the way. Then place the top piece of fabric over this.

Feel with your finger where that folded-over flap ends, and place a pin at an angle right at the spot where you feel the fabric ending underneath. Your goal will be to begin the next seam right at that spot. This spot is ½” from the top edge of the fabric, with a ½” seam allowance.

Continue to pin along the seam, and repeat the same process at the other corner, folding down the fabric underneath and placing a pin at that spot.

Sew along this edge, from corner to corner, with a ½” seam allowance – beginning and ending the seam ½” from the edge of the fabric (so you’re leaving ½” open on both ends). Remember to back stitch to reinforce the beginning and end of these seams.

Repeat around all four edges of the top, pinning and sewing each side separately as you go.

You’re almost done! Turn the slip cover right-side out and try it on again for size. Take this opportunity to double-check the hem; you should have 1” of excess fabric along the bottom for the hem, but if any shifting occurred, you may have more or less. Take note of that now and adjust accordingly when turning up the hem.

Turn the piece inside-out again and clip the corners on all three sides where they intersect. Removing this excess fabric reduces bulk inside the corners, for sharper edges.

To hem the bottom, turn under the fabric ½” along all 4 sides of the bottom, pressing as you go. Turn under another ½”, press, and pin in place.

Sew the hem, close to the interior folded edge. Finally, press open all seams on the finished piece.

You’re done! Don’t you love your new ottoman??

[lost-technology]

I was about to respond to someone directly on their thoughts in the ether, but I decided that I didn't want to harsh their buzz or cause a fight, so I'll just let out my thoughts here. Someone was talking about Wolfwood's grief-reaction in Badlands Rumble to thinking that Vash died. How he wrecked the red fridge in his hotel room (I also see red things and think of Vash. I've had a few things named "Vash" because they were red - good thing Wolfwood wasn't anywhere near my old tower computer). How he donned Vash's sunglasses to go to battle. Vashwooders point to that and go PROOF OF THE SHIP! and I'm like, huh? Really now. I don't think it's just because I'm an asexual. I think if people want to use that as romantic subtext, it's fine. I just think that it's proof of closeness, whatever the form. This is a problem I have with fandom in general, actually - people taking any and every interaction and making an entire thing on it and acting like people who see things differently are wrong. I am going to share a sad story now. I lost someone very dear to me this year. A found-family / chosen family nephew who was also my best friend. (An adult). This was back in January. A huge part of my grief-reaction early on was anger... like pure unfiltered rage without direction. I didn't put my fist through a fridge but I did other things. I screamed at so many people who did not deserve it. I actually had to quit the fast food job I had at the time because I feared that I was going to beat this one snide high school kid who worked there who liked to purposefully antagonize me upside the head with a greasy spatula and decided that getting therapy was better than getting an assault charge. (He did not know my situation, he was just a jerk in general, but I knew that he would be evil if he knew and I was just... not well). Another part of my grief reaction and subsequent healing has been surrounding myself with Eevees. I spent many days doing a canvas painting of a frolicking Eevee. I made careful displays of my nephew's Eevee figurines. We bought a big Eevee-plush for his memorial service that now lives on my bed. This was because my nephew loved Eevees and I associated Eevee as his icon. Either that or Optimus Prime. I can tell you absolutely that if my nephew had been murdered by a bandit rather than a random heart attack and it was time for me to go to battle to bring said bandit-gang to justice, I'd be ornamented with every Eevee-related item I have in his honor. We never banged. We never wanted to bang. We were Aunt and Nephew. We were peas in a pod geeks. And I think that is lost to people in fiction fandom sometimes - the value and importance and even the possibility of other kinds of relationships. I think it's because our society puts so much importance on romance and sex that all else is forgotten. It is perfectly okay to see certain Vash and Wolfwood interactions and reactions to each other as romantic. I know full well that my little Vash x Meryl heart SOARED during that scene in Stampede where Vash comes out of his Plant-coma and tells Meryl that he heard her (Rem's) voice through her / "I heard your voice, too." depending on whether you're watching dub or sub. I don't think it makes Vash x Meryl canon in any way and the relationship is just as easily friends / "Hey, some humans like me!" But, yes, I understand the impulse. It's just... it's not the only way to interpret it or "irrefutable proof" for all fans.