#It makes it seem like I'm always having to do like 500 tons of extra work that other people can just skip .. oughh | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

icewindandboringhorror · 1 year ago

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Other Misc. Rambling Thoughts on the topic:

(~ !!!!!!!!! if you're just reblogging this post for the Poll section, please reblog the original post without this addition* lol. ~)

(*not that there's anything super personal or weird about the addition, just that it's meant to be kind of casual Side Commentary, not really part of the Main Point Of The Poll, so it would feel kind of weird for it to be emphasized by being included in reblogs unless the reblogs were explicitly about the side commentary, etc..... if that makes sense.. ANYWAY!)

It's neat to read the written descriptions that people are mentioning in the tags, since it's almost like I can see or conceptualize the idea as well, but it's just.. I'm not SEEING it.

Like for example: I can imagine a vase, it's a muted mint green and slightly translucent, elaborate golden birds sprawled down the side in streaks of thin rough watery paint, the base material shimmers gently in the light, there's a small chip where it's cracked on the handle, etc, etc. .. But as I'm thinking about this I see literally nothing.

It seems like perhaps some people can visualize an object first, and THEN describe what they see. But I sort of work backwards. I am building the object in my mind, I can never see it, but it's a collection of concepts. Rather than visualizing all details as a whole at once, I am adding each detail one by one, building onto the IDEA of the thing.

The vase doesn't have a crack on the handle because I just automatically visualized a vase with a crack. It was more that I cognitively understand the concept of a vase, what they tend to be made out of, how they tend to look and feel, the properties they have. So based purely on that knowledge, I can imagine "a chip is something that a vase could have, it would look this way and behave this way" - more like... I'm constructing a bullet point Fact List about the object rather than seeing it.

So if you tell me to imagine an object, I can, in a way, imagine that object in great detail, but it's just.. I'm not SEEING those details, more just knowing it's qualities in a purely conceptual way. Sometimes in the tags when people are like "yeah I can see the skin of the apple, texture, little dots on the surface" it's like… I can imagine that too, I can know it's there, but just with no visual attached.

I guess rather than SEEING something and going ''ah. I know what this looks like because I have seen it''. I more just skip that visual step entirely and go ''I know what this looks like, I just randomly have a list of information about the concept in my mind.'' etc. Maybe similar to how sometimes in dreams, even though a house may look completely different and be in an entirely fake 'dreamlike' environment, you just somehow KNOW intuitively that it's meant to be your childhood home or something. Even when it looks nothing like it in reality. There's a built-in base knowledge of the properties or information of some things within a dreaming mind, etc.

This also makes me wonder about like.. how storytelling and myth is so important to cultures all across time. Or how this could tie also into concepts of religion.. etc. etc. If so many people really can kind of conjure these vivid images in their mind, then maybe that's part of why certain things are so meaningful to them? Like a "religious experience" being something you can actually really SEE/feel/lingering with you in your head, rather than just abstract words on a page, detached purely theoretical ideas, etc... hmmm

Plus also just for average emotional stuff too, even outside of broader cultural conceptual attachments..

Like, I don't think there's a direct 1 to 1 link (obviously not all people with mental illnesses that significantly reduce their emotional or expressive capacity also MUST have aphantasia or vice versa), but it's interesting as someone who DOES also have a much more lessened emotional range/pretty flat affect/etc. etc. to think like.. Maybe I WOULD be more emotional, in a way, if I could have these vivid experiences..?

Perhaps memories would hold deeper significance if they could really stay with me vividly. Or storytelling would evoke more of a deep emotional reaction to me if I could really picture and feel the things that are going on. If things were more TANGIBLE in my brain, rather than always merely conceptual highly abstracted ideas.

Kind of like, it's probably easier to get over the death of a pet or something, if after not seeing them for an hour you already don't remember what they looked like (beyond just a vague fact list of traits), and you have no vivid memories or mental reminders of them (beyond just factual information stores). COGNTIVIELY you can appreciate the idea of their absence, of course, you still miss them, but there's just no remaining visceral sensory ties. A very "out of sight, out of mind" sort of thing in terms of attachments, memories, emotions, etc. Maybe certain things are easier to "get over", when you're not having constant mental sensory reminders that occasionally rekindle your feelings about the event or etc.??

(like for example, maybe someone could remain angry about an argument longer if they could vividly replay it in their head over and over again. VS just like.. 'Yes I can factually recall the fact I had an argument, and I do have knowledge stored about what precisely was said, but any sort of sensory data such as sights/smells/feelings, etc. from the actual moment of the event are long gone and can never be conjured again in my mind." etc.)

Which again, I think lessened emotional permanence and image permanence in the mind are NOT inherently linked, can all be caused by different things for different people. And, since I can't visualize anything in my head, maybe I'm misunderstanding how it happens and the effect it may have on stuff like remembering things you miss or replaying arguments, etc. etc. But it's still a little interesting to think about, if they could influence each other to some degree.... :0c --

Lastly, It's also weird because I'm actually pretty good at estimating distance and spaces? I can quickly assemble furniture without an instruction manual, pretty easily have a concept of how much space a chair may take up in a room, how two mechanical parts might fit together - BUT, I am literally not actually visualizing anything. I cannot see 3D objects in my mind at ALL. It's like.. just based on the pure List Of Facts About Things Which I Have Observed.. I can intuitively go "oh this works like this/this is this size" just because.. I know it's that size. I don't have to see anything to know..?

But then on the other hand, I'm terrible at directions without a map (I guess because a 3d outdoor environment has WAY more complexity than like.. "Will this square fit into another square?"etc. lol ).

BUT, I also draw/sculpt/etc. entirely without references, and seem to do mostly okay at that..? Like.. I can't even remember the last time I actually used a reference or looked at anything whilst drawing. It's all muscle memory, and me just adjusting as I go until something "looks right" on paper, I never have a set image in my head (or external reference) before hand.. Hrmm....

AND.. I used to say that I had a photographic memory when I was younger, which I know NOW is not true (I always thought it was just an expression, not that people could literally see things in a photographic way). But what I was describing is, I do often associate information with imagery, just... without imagery....

Like "Oh, I know that I took my medicine earlier today because I have a distinct memory, a snapshot of a moment in time, of me rattling the pill bottle in my hands as I looked up at a stop sign while in the back seat of a car". When I say this, I can't ACTUALLY see/feel/hear a pill bottle, or vividly picture a stop sign, but it's more just a factual recall, of. Even though I don't see these things, I know they happened, the information of them happening (me hearing a sound and also looking at a stop sign at the same time) has been stored in my brain as a memory, a collection of linked facts. --

As for other senses, I cannot taste or feel anything in my head AT ALL.. wild that some people mention that. I mean, again, I can have a purely factual recall as if reading a textbook, knowing the information of 'X item typically has X texture, therefore I can imagine what it may be like to feel it' or 'X usually has this taste' etc. - but I can never actually experience those senses in any capacity in my mind alone. I would say audio is my strongest mental sense (maybe a 2.5 or 3 (if it were translated onto the above scale where 1 is most vivid and 5 is nothing)), then visual (4.5 at most, usually 5), and then taste and smell and such are just complete 5, absolutely nothing, I didn't even know people could experience taste or feeling just in their mind alone.. lol...

I know this is just a silly bad quality random screencap of a screencap that I found on facebook lol, BUT it's a succinct enough image to easily describe the concept in a quick/accessible way hopefully :

(and of course, feel free to elaborate in tags, etc.! (especially elaborating about other senses as well.. can you "hear" in your mind just as well as you can "see"? taste? etc.) It's an interesting topic to me, as someone who's like a 4.5 at MOST lol. I'm curious what option will be the most common :0c )

#repeat reblog #Hrmm.... this must be why you all like reading books so much lol… option 5.. so few of us…#Also I wonder if this is why I'm a more detail oriented writer. Like if I was making a story I would first have to plot out information #about the location. draw a map of the room the chararcters are in. sketch the characters. their outfits. do a lot of plotting and planning #about how the world and the setting works and what plants might be there and so on and so forth. Because I'm working #more from a factual knowledge base of like 'bullet point list of things I know about this setting/object/person/etc'#rather than actually just being able to see it in my mind. So to really conceptualize a person/place/thing - I have to build it #from the ground up conceptually. Gathering and organizing all the information about it until I have a Full Mental Concept of it - and THEN #I can work with it from there. But maybe someone who just Pictures all that in their brain from the beginning can kind of skip that step.#Like for example I literally have NO idea what any of my characters look like until I draw them. I have to actively decide what they look #like and think about all of those details and create the List Of Factual Information (black hair. green eyes. this tall. etc.) from scratch #. where the friend I talked to on the phone recently said that they literally just like... picture the character. like they just SEE them #doing stuff and know from there. And of course i have an IDEA of what I may want a characters appearnce to be or properties that would suit #them based on their Concept and Personality. but I literally do not know. And even when writing or thinking about characters doing things #I cannot visualize them no matter how hard I try. It's all theoretical factual recall for me. Also my friend said that to THEM the saying #''the characters write themselves'' was interpreted to mean.. they can literally sit down & watch the characters do things and it's as #if they are just creating a story in their mind from thin air. it writes itself. Where for ME I have always interpreted it to mean ''I have #undertaken the process of analyzing and plotting every detail of this character SO deeply that I know them SO well down to even #how they would walk or hold a pencil. and thus because I have such an intimate understanding of every intricacy of their personality. It's #extremely easy to just Put Them Into A Situation and assume exactly how they'd react/ exactly what they'd say because based #on what has factually been determined about them and their personality/worldview/etc. it's just.. literally automatic. The same way that #if you knew a friend's preferences extremely well you could probably easily predict how they'd respond to a birthday gift'' etc.#hmm.. ANYWAY... Which my friend may be an extreme example. I feel like it'd be obvious even for writers without aphantasia to STILL sit #down and plot out details & intimately understand their characters/setting/etc. But the idea that for ANYONE it's like ''yeah I dont have t #think much about designing the layout of a room/place/etc. I just kind of SEE it in my mind and know automatically''.... wild... lol #It makes it seem like I'm always having to do like 500 tons of extra work that other people can just skip .. oughh #''well after writing them for a YEAR and fully conceptualizing their personality and going through 15 sketch drafts. i have FINALLY #decided on an appearance for my character'' ... ''erm.. i have been seeing my character since day 1.. what do you mean?'' ... lol #ANYWAY.. and thank you to those who have sent in asks abt your experiences.. very inchresting.. sorry not posting/responding yet since im #still a bit sick feeling and energy is very scattered/low social ability/etc... even this post i typed over the course of days lol..

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noemitenshi · 3 months ago

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Forgive me if this sounds rude it's not intended to, but are you ever going to finish any of your Troy fics? It seems like every time one starts to actually go somewhere you drop it and start a new one. 😟

i've cycled through a ton of emotions after getting that ask, from 'fair enough' to being hesitant/less excited about continuing writing…

Here's the thing. Writing, though a ton of fun, is also a ton of work. Maybe not for everyone, but I take on average about two hours for about 500 words (from first draft to edited publishable version - plotting not included). You can do the math yourself on how long it does take to get a story to the finishing line… Now add to that the ebb and flow of motivation and inspiration. My (and my coauthors) brains are wired in such a way that new things do give us quite a motivational boost (and also.. they make it difficult to get back to older things). We don't even post most story ideas we have! (you get maybe about 10%) But whenever a story really speaks to us/we can't stop thinking about it… well. We gotta write it. It's a surefire way to get it out of our system - and honestly, I am always excited to share a new version. I'd actually love to be able to share every version. Alas both my coauthor and I do have IRL responsibilities (and not too few…) which dramatically cuts into our writing time. And going from story idea to something publishable, even if it is just a summary type post takes quite some time… Then there's not only which story our brains are focusing on/we're excited about writing, there's also low effort and high effort stories and they need, as their names suggest, different amount of work put in. Sometimes, even though we'd like to continue EYK for example (I'd say this is our highest effort story), all we can do is something easy like 'Second Chances' (or 'you're the sin…') and so that is what gets continued. In the end it does mean we get some writing done (instead of not doing any writing) so we've been very happy with this system. Because whenever we do get writing done (esp. a chapter finished) we get a motivational boost too. I mean, listen. We know how every story ends. We know most of the beats we want to hit. The extra effort put in to get a story publishable is for the readers. And I know I'm repeating myself, but it is a lot of effort that gets into it. I routinely get discouraged because most stories are relatively slow in progression and I'd just love to be at a different point in time already. With our big ones (eyk and atm) we haven't even reached the midpoint yet! Yet we keep soldiering on (and no, we haven't dropped any story so far! (I mean, personally, I probably won't ever get to continue 'Kept', sadly. even though I also do know most of what happens there. But I'm also very open to discussing stories with readers, give a plot point or two away ;) )) Which brings me to my last point. A great way to make sure a story you like gets continued (not only speaking about my coauthor and I, just in general), is letting the author know. Know that you enjoy it, maybe even what you enjoy. And yes, I may have added things because a reader let me know what they like (this is by no means a guarantee! But a reader's excitement may feed into the authors (and vice versa)). I also have finished a chapter once that had been sitting around on my harddrive half-done for months, just because someone told me what they loved about the story and what they were curious about seeing, moving forward. Now this may sound like I'm begging for engagement but honestly. I will continue writing regardless. Because it is fun, even with all the hurdles I described. This is more me telling you what means you have in terms of steering authors. Because you do. May be more or less pronounced, depending on the individual author, but there's always a measure of it. Fanfiction isn't supposed to be a one-way street. It's a team sport.

Now about your actual question (which I may have already touched upon but I want to reiterate the point). I (we) plan on finishing all Troy-stories (except 'kept'. or well, maybe once we're done with every other story, i may come back to it. i still love ana and troy a lot. But guess I love troy with lee and ri more). They're all very dear to us, we love every iteration, every universe, and we also love to share them with others! And even though my first part of the answer may sound stern, I wanted you to know that I also got excited about recieving the ask - specifically about being let known that someone cares about our stories. Makes us both feel less like we're shouting into the void. Fanfiction is community, so I hope I haven't scared you off. Your question just tapped into something that's been on my mind for the past few weeks - maybe also because writing time has been even less than normal and so I took the opportunity to lay it all out. I (we) would still love it if you reached out again though.

#ask #fanfic #writing

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v171 · 10 months ago

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My year in books, 2023

2023 was a pretty good year as far as reading went. Was my lowest reading year for the past three years with the goal of finishing 40 books, and ending up finishing 45 (finished 50 last year), but that's okay. This happened to be a very good video gaming year, so reading took the backseat a bit. Watch me nerd out about my book stats below!

I like crunching some basic metrics around my reading each year, mixing some stuff from Goodreads, TheStoryGraph, and some of my own calculations. Let's start with the basics.

God The Priory of the Orange Tree was the first book I read last year, and it feels like forever ago. I really did try to get to the prequel this year, but it fell through the cracks!

Otessa Moshfegh has quickly become one of my favorite authors. I can't wait to read her entire backlog of works. And of course I stan Ann Leckie, I'll always read whatever she puts out. Was so thankful to get to read an advance copy of a short story collection she has coming out.

Man I read a lot of sci fi this year. Usually sci fi and fantasy are a bit more balanced, but I read some really good sci fi this year, so I was stuck on it. Notably, I didn't read any nonfiction, romance, or thrillers the whole year. I usually get a couple of those in.

My book ratings look pretty good for 2023, lots of 4 stars and few 2s and 3s. Standard disclaimer, I usually stop reading books that I really don't like, so I generally don't have many one-star reviews because I just stop reading them and I don't rate books that I don't finish.

This is interesting, because in previous years, I didn't really read any ebooks ever. What changed this year was that I got on Netgalley, a site where you can read advance copies of books to provide feedback to publishers before the books release, and they generally provide an ebook for you to read. Extra surprising that I read more that way than audiobooks, which have been on a slow decline given the fact that I don't do a ton of activities that can be paired with listening to a book these days.

I read at least one science fiction book for six months out of the year. Actually pretty surprised to see so much Historical Fiction on here as well as I don't really like that genre.

Damn, I sound like a broken record, but this makes it clear how much I really enjoyed science fiction 13 of the 16 sci fi books I read got a 4 or 5 star. Surprising to see that contemporary fiction got mainly middling ratings, that's generally my second favorite genre. I know I read a lot of fantasy, but I don't actually tend to love a lot of it lol. But this looks like a successful fantasy year as far as ratings go.

Man, 100-200 page books had it rough this year. This is interesting to me, I think the 300-400 range is my ideal, and while it had a similar number of 4/5 star ratings as the 400-500 range, it obviously had some duds in there too. But I'm surprised to see how much I seemed to enjoy the really long books, usually I start to get pretty bored at the 450 page mark.

This is one of my favorite graphs because it shows the months where I rush to finish short books so I can keep up with my reading goal of the year. July seems to be particularly egregious with reading 5 books but not even reading 1000 pages total. I always start the year with the long books...

This is a new metric for me, I decided to compare my rating of books with their average rating on goodreads to see how much I generally agreed/disagreed with the average. This was honestly probably not the best year to do this as I mentioned before, I read a lot of ARCs (advanced reader copies) meaning they have few to no ratings, so my ratings of them skewed the average quite a bit, throwing this whole thing into question (I didn't record number of ratings so I couldn't put in error bars, and I'm lazy and don't know stats that much). Anyway, in this graph, the size of the bubble indicates the number of books I read at that rating during the year, so you can see the 1 star bubble is small because I didn't read a ton of books I rated 1 star. This is such an interesting pattern though, my 1 star books aren't the lowest average, but they're pretty low, but my 5 star books are definitely the best. But the 2-4 star books are a bit all over the place. I'm interested to see how this will map over time when I throw in some of the previous years in

Anyway, that's all I have. I'm going to bump up my goal back to 50 this year, hopefully I can tackle it. I'm hoping to get involved in some book clubs as well, so I hope that'll keep me honest. I don't think people actually care about these posts, but keep an eye out for some more bookish posts soon as I dive into some of the notable reads of last year. To end, here's all of the books I read in 2023

#books #my year in books #reading

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yournewapartment · 7 years ago

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So I'm a Canadian who will be moving to Scotland later this month for university and I'm wondering: Do you have any tips for getting settled in a new country? This will be the first time I'm buying my own groceries and not using student loans so budgeting advice is also welcome.

This ask has been sitting in my inbox for like at least a month... I’m so sorry! Some posts take more time to write then others. I actually have about four asks that are all essentially this same question, so I’m going to just combine them all into one post.

As for budgeting... here’s my two cents, in terms of Minimum Wage.

Budgeting on Minimum Wage

Overview

The average minimum wage in the US is $7.25/hr. Even working full time at 40 hours a week, that’s only a profit of $290 before taxes. This is not a fair living wage! You are worth way more than this amount! I strongly encourage you to start looking for another job that pays better, look for something around the $10-$15 range.

While $7.25 is atrocious, thousands of people around the world support families on much less. If they can do it while supporting children, so can you! To live off a minimum wage budget you need to declare yourself independent. If your parents are still claiming you as a dependent YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DO THIS. I also recommend that you have the highest amount possible taken out of your taxes so that you get money back from your state at the end of the year, instead of being in debt to them.

What I’ve done is come up with a budgeting plan based off some made up factors and my own personal experience.

Housing

1. City life. Forget about the city! Apartments located in cities can be three times as expensive as apartments in small towns or villages. On top of the extra expense, they’re much smaller and have less amenities included. I’d much rather live in a one bedroom apartment with a dishwasher and a conveniently located Laundromat, than a literal closet with no windows on a fifth floor walkup. Look for apartments twenty minutes to a half hour outside of your closest city. Now you have the close conveniences of a city, with none of those pesky city prices that your budget can’t handle.

2. College towns. Shop around and look at apartments by local colleges. Large colleges with have apartment complexes within walking distance of the school grounds. Landlords know that college students have less money (you might even be a college student yourself) and adjust their prices accordingly. Even apartments next to ivy league schools are priced this way, so don’t be discouraged by the institution’s “prestige”.

3. Locale. Your safety is more important than your bank account. It doesn’t matter if you live in Section 8 housing or in an affluent suburb. Some apartment complexes and neighborhoods are just safer than others. I live in a heavily populated and upper middle class suburb, and the first year I moved in, a drunk woman tried to throw a beer bottle at my car. Thankfully this is the only time this happened to me, but it made me feel unsafe in my environment. Before signing a lease, walk or drive around your prospective home’s neighborhood at night. Take in the atmosphere, and make sure it’s one where you could comfortably run to the local supermarket at 10:30pm and pick up toilet paper.

4. Roommates. Living on minimum wage requires that you find one or two roommates to help split the rent. The more the better! Get together with your more responsible friends, so at least you’re living with people whose company you enjoy. There are lots of “roommate wanted” forums and message boards for you to browse on the internet, but always bring a responsible adult with you before meeting a stranger. Please. Bring your mom if you have too.

Food

1. Low-spoon food. I created this post a few months ago which offers lots of suggestions about cooking and shopping on a budget.

2. Online recipes. Here are some of my favorite online Tumblr cookbook resources.

- College Student Cookbook. Click here.

- Meals On The Go. Click here. (Not a cookbook, but super helpful)

- Broke College Kid Masterpost. Click here.

- Cooking on A Bootstrap. Click here.

- Good and Cheap. Click here.

- Budget Bytes. Click here.

3. I also regularly update my cooking on a budget tag.

Misc Expenses

1. Gas. Shop around and find the cheapest gas in your area. Avoid gas stations next to colleges, highways, and in touristy areas. Look into getting as gas rewards card from your favorite supermarket. I get 10 cents off a gallon with Stop & Shop every time I do a big shop.

2. Dollar store. Get to know your local dollar and bargain stores. You can buy everything from pots and pans to bed sheets there. These stores often sell bulk ramen for $1 and large cans of crushed tomatoes for 75 cents. That’s enough food for you to live off of for several days. When shopping, I make three grocery store stops to ensure that I spend the least amount possible on my pantry needs. I go Dollar Store, Stop and Shop, and then to my local organic grocery store. I’m going to make a list of things that I buy at Dollar Stores and things that I don’t buy at Dollar Stores soon!

3. Cable. We are living in the digital age- you don’t need cable television. Use Netflix or Hulu or whatever. It will save you tons of $$.

4. Internet. As far as internet speed goes, if you’re living with roommates you will probably need a higher speed. Living by yourself, choose a lower one. Most internet companies offer large discounts to new subscribers. These typically only last a year, but will save you serious money. Make sure to take note of when this discount expires, and contact the company before it does. If you don’t, they’ll begin charging you the full amount without notice.

5. Verizon. I just want to take a moment to talk about how much I love Verizon because they have literally saved me so much money in the three years I’ve been with them. After you sign a contract with a new internet company, they charge you a bunch of ridiculous fees like “activation fees” and “installation fees”. I called Verizon and was like “I’m a poor college student, I can’t afford this” and they were like “don’t worry, we’ll waive the fee”. I signed a two year contract with them that saved me $80 on a high-speed internet bill per month (my price being only 50.99 a month). After the contract expired I call them and they put me on a month to month, keeping the price absolutely the same. TLDR- get Verizon if you can.

6. Utility. Get on a monthly budget with whatever utility company services your new apartment. Although it may seem like the cheaper option, paying the actual amount of electricity you spend per month is the more expensive. It’s also unpredictable, and a minimum wage budget won’t allow for it. See this for more info.

7. Amazon. I buy a lot of my beauty, cleaning, and cat products online. Amazon offers Prime shipping free for a year with a student email address, and then offers it at a greatly reduced price after the year. If you are a student, snap up that free deal ASAP. If it’s in your budget, I’d greatly recommend investing in Amazon Prime.

8. Saving money. It’s so important to attempt to break way from the “paycheck to paycheck” vicious cycle. Living this way does not allow for emergency expense money, and trust me, sometime soon you will need emergency expense money. Your cat might get sick or your car may die, whatever it is, it’s always smart to have at least $500 squirreled away. I’m gonna level with you, things have been tight for my budget and I haven’t been able to save anything for the past three months. But this month I will!

Example Budgets

Full Time

Working with the $7.25/hr and 40hr/week model, here’s an example budget for living on minimum wage. That’s $1,160 a month without taxes.

Housing: Let’s say you’re sharing an apartment with two close friends, the rent being $1,500 without any amenities. That rent split three ways is $500 each.

Gas I commute twenty minutes every day, and I drop about $20-$25 a week on gas. That’s $100 on gas a month.

Food: I do one big shopping a month with my boyfriend. We drop around $180 and that’s including toiletries and soap and stuff. So maybe you’ll spend about $100 a month on all your shopping needs.

Cable/internet: Hopefully you took my advice and skipped cable. Let’s say you’re paying around $50 per month for internet. Split three ways that’s $17 each.

Laundry: Hopefully you’re not like me and are only spending around $20 on laundry per month.

Random expenses: Because there always are some. Let’s just tack on another $100.

With everything added up, you still have around $290 left before taxes! That money can go into a savings account, and after several months, you’ll have that $500 worth of emergency money saved.

Part Time

Working with the $7.25/hr and 25hr/week model, here’s an example budget for living on minimum wage. That’s $725 without taxes.

Housing: In this case, you need to look for apartments in the $800-900 range. In my area, one bedroom apartments go for around $1000, so you may need to get creative with your roommate (I don’t think you could have more than one roommate in this situation). Buy dividers to split the bedroom or studio in half! Let’s say your rent is $850 with nothing included, that’s $425 each.

Gas You’re still looking at a large gas bill per month, so it may be more inexpensive to ride a bike or use public transportation. Let’s say you use public transportation, and spend around $50 a month on that. Or maybe you and your roommate can split gas expenses and share a car?

Food: Pinch those pennies! Use some of those budget cookbooks I linked above to help you cook healthy and delicious meals for under $4 each. See if you can only spend $80 a month on groceries.

Cable/internet: Hopefully you took my advice and skipped cable. Let’s say you’re paying around $50 per month for internet. Split two ways is $25 each.

Laundry: Hopefully you’re not like me and are only spending around $20 on laundry per month.

Random expenses: Because there always are some. Let’s just tack on another $100.

That leaves you $25 to put in your bank account, if that. This is a paycheck to paycheck situation, and you will probably need to get another source of income to feel secure. But you can still do it!

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mysplaced-pen · 7 years ago

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Is it worth playing v's route? I don't know I feel like people are not happy with it especially when it comes to rika and v being together and also some people doesn't like the good ending. I want to continue but it might be spoilers but seriously I feel like it isn't exciting as we thought I respect cheritz hard work and I'm saying that because I will buy hourglasses and i don't want to waste my money.

ah, well…let me give you my honest opinion.

Personally, I think it’s worth it. I’m not done yet, so I don’t know how I’ll feel about the ending - but more on that in a bit.

I’m biased because I’m a writer for this game. This route gives me a lot of information that I could use, especially regarding V, Rika, and Saeran. It gives me more on the other 5, yeah, but I’m especially thankful for all this new, canon V content. I know more about him, so I can write him better. So if you read these things and maybe want to know where we got this certain trait for him from - it’s now canon~

As a player, I still think it’s worth it. Even if I didn’t start writing anything, a lot of my questions have been answered so far. So I’m pretty happy with it. Right now, I’m excited to see what comes in my next chatroom. It’s a pretty intense plot line, in my opinion. You have a lot of choices to make and some of them are different from how the Casual and Deep stories are. And I think there are things in the route to Get You Going. Maybe not in the best way, but you’ll have Emotions.

With V and Rika being together…I read a post that shows a certain ending. It’s a bad ending, so I really don’t mind being shown those since I don’t plan to play them anyways. And…well, it’s a bad ending. Of course it sucks. Of course they’re together and you’re gonna yell at your screen because why would they do that. But plot wise, a lot of their interactions are stuff no one can change. It’s the past. So yeah, I might be upset over some things, but I get it. It’s backstory.

The good ending..I’ve heard that people don’t like it too. But as I’ve said before, this is V’s route. Not anyone else’s. I know you can get the little magenta hearts now, but that’s not going to get you a little pic of Ray in that Day 5 box. It’s going to get you a bad ending(which, I haven’t seen, but with the way Ray acts, could only end up in an abusive relationship. It’s definitely not good. Not for MC or for him.). And the good ending is a good ending for V. That’s the point. It’s good because he grew as a person and learned to overcome the obstacles he has. It’s not a good end for everyone, I’m sure, but it’s a good end for V. Who is the main character of this whole Another Story.

I don’t know if I’ll like it or not. I’ll tell you in 4 days. But for now, that’s my view on this whole thing. I personally wouldn’t spend money on hourglasses, but that’s because my financial situation is quite shit. I can’t spend $8 on hourglasses;;;

Cheritz worked real hard on this for us because we asked. And they did give us a ton of hourglasses for free - like the 100 for the anniversary, the regular 10 for the update[ fun fact: i didnt get it :’) ], the 150 for aos users for the glitch, the 30 for the server error - [ fun fact pt 2: if you got all that and didn’t use it, that’s 290 hg👀👀 ] i totally understand if you used them lmao, I did, but I always buy them back with my hearts. Which,,,is something you could do tbh, I keep a spare 500 at all times(and in V’s route case, I guess I’d keep an extra 1500). I know that seems like a lot, but the HBC chips comes in handy quite a bit..or I’m just one of those heart hoarder mc’s lmao

So…I guess it’s up to you. But that’s my opinion, dear.

#this was long af but there it is #now excuse me while i attempt to read Plato's Republic :')#anon #v route #ams answers

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kagapop · 8 years ago

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I'm thinking of buying botw. I'm already buying nier automata and horizon zero dawn, but botw seems nice and seeing you so hyped about it makes me consider it. May I ask you to convince me to? Like, scream all you like about the game, tell me what's awesome about it, please. I don't even mind some minor spoilers if you think it's gonna convince me. Please, I don't know much about Zelda, but this game seems so good. (If you don't mind, of course).

IT HAS A BEAUTIFUL FISH PRINCE AND PRINCESS WHAT MORE CONVINCING IS NEEDED.

Ok but in all seriousness, even if you aren’t really familiar or into the Zelda series, here are some fun things about this game from what I’ve played so far:

absolute freedom to travel the world and discover quests and places all on your own in whatever order or way you like (i don’t even usually go for open world stuff but i’m praising this aspect so i guess that says something? idk.)

the game doesn’t treat you like an idiot and hold your hand every 2 seconds with needless tutorials or guidance which was also a thing in past zelda games. it never bothered me but i know it bothers a ton of people so like. there’s that.

you can find wild horses and tame them and name them and there are lots of colors which is important to me. mine are all named after desserts. which seems to be a common trend. eclair is my fave horse.

this is extra cool ‘cause usually zelda games just throw a mount at you (usually a brown horse. sometimes a bird. sometimes a boat that is a person. sometimes you’re a dog.) and that’s it but you can find different ones with different stats and have several of them!!

also you can befriend doggies????

there are tons and tons and tons of people to interact with in this world!!

ENDLESS SUPPLY OF BOMBS.

BOMB EVERYTHING I’M NOT JOKING.

again there are beautiful fish people

also bird people

the bird people part confuses me bc the story in another game’s setting was that the bird people evolved from the fish people but they are both in this world and idk if i’m gonna get an explanation but i hope i do

badass ladies

giant fairy women who could probably eat you whole but they give you better clothes instead

the towns are cute and i love them

the characters i’ve met so far are all pretty interesting!!

you can cook which at first i was kinda like “uughh what is this harvest moon” when i heard about it BUT IT’S SO ADDICTING AND USEFUL AND FUN. combining shit to see what you can make and what effects you can get is great.

it’s so fun to just explore and get distracted in this game. if there are any walkthroughs or anything available when you get it, fucking ignore them ‘cause all the fun is in exploring in this

the game will tell you you need to go somewhere but you can absolutely go somewhere else and do 500 other things before you even bother

except i should’ve gone to kakariko village when i was told to i would’ve had better armor earlier on but no i had to chase zora fin instead

BUT I DIDN’T HAVE TO AND I STILL HAD FUN

there’s a cool old man in the beginning who you will maybe want to give a hug

i wanna give him a hug

are you convinced yet

is me talking about fish people and giant fairy women doing the trick

i should point out that the zelda series is one of my fave things i literally wore heart container earrings to work yesterday so i mean maybe there’s a lot of bias here BUT

IT’S A GOOD GAME OK

LIKE I DO HAVE PROBLEMS WITH OTHER ZELDA GAMES BUT THE ONES IN THIS ONE ARE SO NIT-PICKY THEY HARDLY MATTER.

except idk how i feel about the motion control puzzles

there aren’t too many so far but

fuck ‘em

idk about the wiiu but the switch is hella sensitive and i scream

there’s a lot of ancient technology stuff which is always neat

you have this stone tablet thing but it’s basically an ancient magic iphone

complete with google maps

but like you gotta venture out to these big towers to download the google maps updates

and then you aren’t getting enough updates so you go to the apple store to upgrade your phone tablet and the apple store is run by an adorable little child with an also adorable outfit

also you can buy a house

so you have an iphone and a house

and maybe 5 horses

also your iphone comes with cool apps that give you superpowers

you can take your shirt off

your first mission is “equip pants” basically

there are small fish children among the fish people and i’m adopting all of them

that’s not an actual mechanic or anything i’ve just decided to adopt them

and i’m marrying the not-child ones

you can get lots of different clothes and also you can have them dyed different colors

i’m gonna cut myself off bc i could be playing it right now but i’m out of control

you’re probably better off looking up an actual review on youtube or something but i mean i typed this out it’s here

here you go

just bomb everything.

#ask #the legend of zelda #long post

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symbianosgames · 7 years ago

Link

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

Every now and then someone makes the argument that all really good games eventually do well, otherwise "if there are really good games that don't sell, how come I never come across one?"

That argument is always refuted by the statement that of course you don't come across games that are obscure, by definition. Which is itself then easy to refute by saying yeah, but surely you'd still come across one occasionally if you went looking.

Let's go looking.

---

First, let's take all the games on Steam.[1]

Then let's sort them by Evan Miller's recommended weighted method from here. That is, a lower bound of Wilson score confidence interval for a Bernoulli parameter. Basically, look at the score, but also consider how confident you can be in that score - i.e. how many reviews it has in total.

Now we have quite a nice list of the best games on Steam:

[Click for a top 250 with working links. Also note that you’ll probably see the occasional DLC in the full list that I didn’t manage to filter out.]

It's very similar to Steam's official top rated games page, with the notable exception of #1 game Wuppo and a couple of others. This is because Steam's official page sorts the results into "buckets", and to get into the top "Overwhelmingly Positive" bucket you need a score of at least 95% and at least 500 reviews. It's essentially a more primitive way of weighting the results so that games with few reviews don't top the charts. But it means that even though Wuppo has a score of 100%, since it only has 200 reviews total it has to slip in later past all the Overwhelmingly Positive games.

---

Next we want to fish out any "hidden gems": Games that people really like but that aren't very popular. Here's a basic formula I made up:

Take the weighted score above.

Leave games with less than 150 reviews[2] per year alone. Rate of user reviews is a decent gauge of popularity.

If the game gets more than 150 reviews on Steam per year, start penalising its score. I slowly rolled the score off linearly, penalising it 0.0002 per additional review.

Lastly, I added a release date limit of 1 January 2008. That one is a bit of a hack that shouldn't really be needed, but the problem is I'm basing "reviews per year" on the stated release date, but some games came to Steam recently yet list their original, earlier release date. This meant that without the date cutoff, re-released games from the 90s ended up looking like the most hiddenest gems ever.

Some older games that have been recently re-released on Steam, and have used their Steam release date as their release date, have ended up on the lists. I decided to leave them in since I would have had to go through manually to find them all. Technically their data is correct, for Steam.

Putting all that together, here's a list of top Hidden Gems on Steam:

[Click for a top 250 with working links.]

Wuppo is again a good example of this system. It's looking like it'll get around 329 reviews per year since it has 200 reviews now, but it's been out less than a year. This is above the 150 reviews/year "no effect" cutoff, but the penalty also comes in slowly; so because it's such a good game and it's not that popular it still gets in at #15. Castle Must Be Mine and The House in Fata Morgana also make it in from the previous list, with the latter shooting up to the top spot now that all the big popular games are gone.

There's a lot of obscure stuff, a few cult games that you might have heard of but didn't buy, obviously (the Blackwell games, Escape Goat), and… Bejeweled 3? Apparently Bejeweled just doesn't sell on Steam. Although it actually has over 900 reviews, it's just that that's only 144 per year - it's pretty old too. You could choose to cap the total number of reviews in a Hidden Gems formula to avoid games like this.

I think it's interesting that the top Hidden Gems here tend to be games in less popular genres, or VR games requiring uncommon hardware. There are two theories I can think of for that. One theory is that great games in a popular genre always tend to sell better than great games in obscure genres. My other theory is that games in popular genres may have more critical reviewers, since the players have a lot more games to choose from. In less popular genres, or in VR, people may be happy to be getting a decent game at all!

In a more complete Hidden Gem finding system, you'd probably want to be able to view a list per genre, per tag, or based off what else you've played. That way you could view the complete list if you wanted to explore whole new genres you might like, but you could also easily find little-known games in your favourite genre.

---

There are also various ways you could decide what a Hidden Gem is exactly. In my system above, since it's based on the weighted score, a game with 95% positive over 150 reviews will still be considered "better" than a game with 95% positive over 100 reviews. Only after 150/yr does it start trending down.

Maybe you'd rather treat all games that fit in the "Hidden Gem" range equally. Here they are with the same rules as before (plus one extra - see below), using an unweighted score:

[Click for a top 250 with working links.]

I also added a 20 total (not per year) reviews minimum threshold to this one, since weighting doesn't take care of it in this version and games with a very low amount of reviews just can't have reliable scores. This variant doesn't work so well in practice because all the 100% games get lumped together first, right down to the 20 threshold, before the 99% games start. Without the 20 review threshold you'd have a ton more.

---

Looping back to the initial statement of this article, how many games are out there on Steam that have great reviews but little exposure?

The answer is A LOT.

For instance one game I knew of already was NeonXSZ. It's a 6DOF shooter made by one person, with an 89% positive score on Steam and 63 reviews. It's always made me a bit sad that it got so little exposure while being so good, but it's telling that in the weighted hidden gems calculation above, it's #1147.

There are over one thousand near-unknown games on Steam, in all sorts of genres, that are subjectively better than NeonXSZ.

It might be nice if Steam had a way to easily find lesser-known but well-reviewed games like this, so more people could try them and see if they deserved a boost. This is the category of broken dreams. Lars Doucet does some of this sort of theorising and a bit of my knowledge of this stuff comes from his work.

One thing I will note, is that while there are games in popular genres that fall into the Hidden Gems category, so it's not a guaranteed ticket out of obscurity, it definitely seems more likely for games in less popular genres to get in there. If I had the data to split games by genre without manually going through them all, it would be interesting to see how much less likely a highly-rated FPS is to languish in obscurity versus say a visual novel. In fact it could be that popular genres aren't any less likely to end up in obscurity, but instead they have harsher critics who prevent them from being highly rated enough to make the top of the list! There are plenty of hidden non-gems.

Popular genres have a bigger audience but they're also more flooded with games to choose from. Wuppo is near the top of the Hidden Gems list and it's a platformer, one of the most popular genres of all. But there are so many platformers.

---

Finally, a couple of bonus lists.

[Click for a top 250 with working links. Taking the weighted hidden gems formula and making it much more strict on review counts.]

There is actually some really interesting stuff in there. Dream Quest for instance is a deck building game with a glowing review from the creator of Magic: The Gathering. Although actually the Steam-listed release date for that one is set earlier than its actual release date on Steam, skewing it up in the charts.

After these there are many more games with great scores but even fewer reviews. Eventually the review counts become too low to get any real meaning from the scores.

[Click for a top 250 with working links. Same as Top Games but reversed - more reviews and worse overall scores are better.]

These are of course the most popular really bad games. In the depths below these there is an enormous supply of badly rated games with few reviews.

And a bonus chart:

[Click for full size. Showing overall user review score vs. total review count for all games on Steam. There is at least some general correlation between quality and popularity. X-axis is logarithmic.]

---

[1] As of 2017-05-09. I couldn't find any information from Valve about what they think re scraping data from Steam. I wrote a little tool to grab some basic details of each game on Steam and I only ran it once, and I'm not sharing the full data set here. I hope that's simple enough to be okay.

[2] Review counts used here are the ones Steam counts in its overall rating, which at the time of writing is only Steam reviews where the game was purchased directly on Steam. Reviews don't count for users who just activated a key on Steam - this is a measure by Valve to prevent shady developers gaming the system.

#IFTTT #Blogger

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yournewapartment · 7 years ago

Note

I've been looking around for a while and I don't know if minimum wage would be enough to get an apartment, buy food, and take care of all my cats and it's just generally stressing me out and now I'm wondering if I should even think of living alone

Take a deep breath! While not ideal, living on minimum wage can be done. My advice to you would be to look for some sort of roommate situation as opposed to living on your own. You could also rent a room in a house which would be significantly cheaper than a one bedroom apartment. Your cats shouldn’t cost you more than $50 extra a month, and they will give you such relief and comfort. Moving out of your parent’s house and living on your own can be stressful and feel overwhelming- you’ll want your furry friends by your side!

Budgeting on Minimum Wage

Overview

What I’ve done is come up with a budgeting plan based off some made up factors and my own personal experience.

Housing

Food

1. Low-spoon food. I created this post a few months ago which offers lots of suggestions about cooking and shopping on a budget.

2. Online recipes. Here are some of my favorite online Tumblr cookbook resources.

- College Student Cookbook. Click here.

- Meals On The Go. Click here. (Not a cookbook, but super helpful)

- Broke College Kid Masterpost. Click here.

- Cooking on A Bootstrap. Click here.

- Good and Cheap. Click here.

- Budget Bytes. Click here.

3. I also regularly update my cooking on a budget tag.

Misc Expenses

3. Cable. We are living in the digital age- you don’t need cable television. Use Netflix or Hulu or whatever. It will save you tons of $$.

Example Budgets

Full Time

Working with the $7.25/hr and 40hr/week model, here’s an example budget for living on minimum wage. That’s $1,160 a month without taxes.

Housing: Let’s say you’re sharing an apartment with two close friends, the rent being $1,500 without any amenities. That rent split three ways is $500 each.

Gas I commute twenty minutes every day, and I drop about $20-$25 a week on gas. That’s $100 on gas a month.

Food: I do one big shopping a month with my boyfriend. We drop around $180 and that’s including toiletries and soap and stuff. So maybe you’ll spend about $100 a month on all your shopping needs.

Cable/internet: Hopefully you took my advice and skipped cable. Let’s say you’re paying around $50 per month for internet. Split three ways that’s $17 each.

Laundry: Hopefully you’re not like me and are only spending around $20 on laundry per month.

Random expenses: Because there always are some. Especially when you have cats. Let’s just tack on another $100.

With everything added up, you still have around $290 left before taxes! That money can go into a savings account, and after several months, you’ll have that $500 worth of emergency money saved.

Part Time

Working with the $7.25/hr and 25hr/week model, here’s an example budget for living on minimum wage. That’s $725 without taxes.

Food: Pinch those pennies! Use some of those budget cookbooks I linked above to help you cook healthy and delicious meals for under $4 each. See if you can only spend $80 a month on groceries.

Cable/internet: Hopefully you took my advice and skipped cable. Let’s say you’re paying around $50 per month for internet. Split two ways is $25 each.

Laundry: Hopefully you’re not like me and are only spending around $20 on laundry per month.

Random expenses: Because there always are some. Let’s just tack on another $100.

That leaves you $25 to put in your bank account, if that. This is a paycheck to paycheck situation, and you will probably need to get another source of income to feel secure. But you can still do it!

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yournewapartment · 8 years ago

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Hello, I'm the anon who's freaking out about being thrown into adulthood, and thank you for your previous help. 1.) How do I mamage/budget a minimum wage salary? 2.) I've never been great with any sort of organization, but would you mind teaching me about home organization and important paper organization?

Okay, so this post will be about budgeting on minimum wage, and later in the day I will also post about paper organization. Enjoy!